antiplex
coming up at boston's independent moviehouses - the brattle, harvard film archive, mfa and coolidge

A Dog's Life preceded by Shoulder Arms MFA saturday, september 4 1:50
A Dogs Life by Charlie Chaplin (1918, 40 min.) A short, silent film, A Dogs Life stars Chaplin as the Little Tramp opposite his animal co-star Scraps, who helps lead the Tramp and his wife Ednawho works as a dance hall singertoward a better life. one day only find a trailer find/upload a trailer
Limelight MFA saturday, september 4 11 am
Limelight by Charlie Chaplin (1952, 134 min.). The last of Chaplans American films, as his identification with left forced him to resettle in Europe in the early 1950s. Set in 1914 London, Chaplin portrays Calvero, a once-famous stage clown who saves a young dancer (Claire Bloom) from suicide. While nursing her back to health, Calveros self-confidence is restored, despite his failed attempts at making a comeback. As the dancer recovers, she falls in love with Calvero and wants to marry him, despite their age difference. Calvero resists, encouraging her to find a younger, more suitable mate. While Calvero is working as a street entertainer, the dancer finds him and persuades him to perform at her new show. showing through sunday find a trailer find/upload a trailer
Love Meetings Harvard Film Archive saturday, september 4 9:30 pm
Directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini. With Pier Paolo Pasolini, Alberto Moravia, Cesare Musatti. Italy 1964, 35mm, b/w, 92 min. Italian with English subtitles Print from the Pasolini Foundation The remarkable Love Meetings is nothing less than a cinema-vérité Kinsey Report – with occasional Godardian touches – on Italian sexual mores in the 1960s. Traveling across Italy, Pasolini and his camera interview people on the street, sunbathers at the beach and soccer players on the pitch about their attitudes towards marriage and divorce, homosexuality, prostitution, machismo and gender roles. While a notable consensus agrees that things are changing it remains less clear what, if anything, these changes mean. In one of his few essays on cinema, Michel Foucault wrote admiringly of the film’s ability to capture the complex ambiguity of reactions to the so-called “sexual revolution.” one day only find a trailer find/upload a trailer
Nobody's Perfect MFA saturday, september 4 3:45
Nobodys Perfect by Niko von Glasow (2009, 84 min.). This documentary follows the director as he looks for 11 peoplewho, like him, were born disabled due to the disastrous side effects of Thalidomide, a prescription medication given to pregnant women in the late 1950s to relieve symptoms of morning sicknessto pose nude for a book of photographs. Filmed with a darkly humorous touch and no deference to political correctness, the fascinating story follows the lives of the 12 extraordinary participants learning to live with their disabilities with an impressive level of normality. showing through sunday find a trailer find/upload a trailer
Directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini. With Enrique Irazoqui, Margherita Caruso, Susanna Pasolini Italy 1964, 35mm, b/w, 137 min. Italian with English subtitles Print from the Harvard Film Archive CollectionPasolini’s disarmingly straightforward version of the life of Christ secured his reputation as a filmmaker, rather than simply a poet dabbling in cinema. Aiming to strip away the sanctimony typical of screen adaptations of the Gospels, Pasolini sought to recover the rough poetry of the original texts, pointedly omitting the “Saint” from his title to secularize Matthew. Pasolini’s Christ emerges as much a political revolutionary as a religious figure, addressing the problems of the poor and undermining the patriarchy of the traditional family. With a visual style heavily influenced by Rossellini’s The Flowers of St. Francis (1950), the film contains a number of frontal, static shots that reveal Pasolini’s love for early Renaissance painting and point toward the radical classicism of hi Directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini. Italy 1970, 35mm, color, 63 min. Italian with English subtitles While shooting Medea, a film about the subjugation of the ancient world to an alienating modernity, Pasolini developed the idea to make a companion piece about another Greek myth – the story of Orestes. This story would end more happily, with the archaic making way for a different kind of modernity, built not on exploitation but on communalism. Encouraged by emerging socialist governments in post-colonial Africa, Pasolini hoped to shoot his film there, and so he went to Uganda and Tanzania to scout for locations and actors. That footage became the basis for this film, with Pasolini explaining his ideas on the soundtrack. A perfect example of leftist intellectual auto-critique, the film climaxes with Pasolini discussing his plans with a group of African students in Rome. The discussion hovers somewhere between tragedy and farce as one by one, the students calmly and kindly offer numerous reaso one day only find a trailer find/upload a trailer