The Criterion Collection

The Harvard Film Archive in Cambridge, Massachusetts, pays tribute to cinema’s ultimate surrealist in its new series Buñuel—The Beginning and the End. Running from June 17 to 27, the series encompasses the crucial and controversial films from the transgressive director’s early and late periods. In this week’s selections, unsurprisingly, sex, violence, and blasphemy take center stage: Viridiana (June 18), That Obscure Object of Desire (June 18), Simon of the Desert (June 19), and The Milky Way (June 20). And Buñuel isn’t the only Spanish filmmaker on the big screen this week: Juan Antonio Bardem’s exacting moral fable Death of a Cyclist crashes into Brooklyn’s BAMCinematek (June 17), and Carlos Saura’s disturbingly intimate coming-of-age tale Cría cuervos . . . continues its long run at London’s BFI Southbank (through July 9).

Art-film auteurs are out in full force as we move through our guide to Criterion titles playing this week at cinematheques, repertory houses, and museums around the world. First, the U.S.: Louis Malle’s oddball Black Moon shines at Chicago’s Music Box Theatre (June 17). Akira Kurosawa’s High and Low is far and wide: the sweat-inducing kidnapping saga is playing at the Freer and Sackler Galleries at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. (June 17), the IFC Center in New York (June 17–19), and the Circle Cinema in Tulsa (June 20 and 23). Pier Paolo Pasolini’s passionate Mamma Roma ignites the Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville, New York (June 17, 18, 20, and 23). The New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles devotes its screens to both Bergman (with a double feature of Wild Strawberries and The Virgin Spring) and Terry Gilliam (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, June 22 and 23). The International House Philadelphia goes for those marvelous modernist mind benders Chris Marker (Sans Soleil, June 17) and Abbas Kiarostami (Taste of Cherry, June 18). The Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley offers a pair of films from two of Japanese cinema’s greatest, Kenji Mizoguchi (Ugetsu, June 17) and Yasujiro Ozu (Tokyo Story, June 22). The Normal Theater in Normal, Illinois, saddles up for John Ford’s Stagecoach (June 17).

The Provincetown International Film Festival continues celebrating the films of the Maysleses; on June 18, it’s Gimme Shelter’s moment in the spotlight. The Museum of Modern Art in New York showcases a diverse group of works: the unique, Paul Robeson–narrated documentary and fiction hybrid Native Land (June 17), a collaboration between Leo Hurwitz and Paul Strand; Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s heartbreaking romance Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (June 19); and Steven Soderbergh’s epic biopic Che (June 19). Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times winds up audiences at George Eastman House’s Dryden Theatre in Rochester, New York (June 19). Viewers at the Red Vic Movie House in San Francisco will be in movie heaven with Wim Wenders’s Wings of Desire (June 19 and 20). Terrence Malick is all the rage at Nashville’s Belcourt Theatre (The Thin Red Line, June 21) and Columbus’s Wexner Center for the Arts (Days of Heaven, June 23), which is also showing Tokyo Story on June 21. The Honolulu Academy of Arts puts its faith in new Korean cinema master Lee Chang-dong’s Secret Sunshine (June 22). And the Northwest Film Center in Portland, Oregon, takes Luchino Visconti’s The Leopard for one last spin around the room (June 23).

Across the Atlantic, London’s BFI Southbank is also spotlighting work by Powell and Pressburger (Black Narcissus, June 18 and 23) and Sergei Eisenstein (Ivan the Terrible, Part I and Part II June 23). The Swiss Cinémathèque in Lausanne is still clowning around with Fellini: this week’s offerings include Nights of Cabiria (June 17 and 19), 8½ (June 21 and 23), and Amarcord (June 22)—plus François Truffaut’s indelible The 400 Blows (June 19 and 20). Forum des images, meet Max Fisher: the Paris movie house overachieves with Wes Anderson’s Rushmore (June 19). Jean Vigo is the man of the hour at the Queensland Art Gallery in Brisbane, with À propos de Nice (June 19) and Zéro de conduite (June 19). And Brussels’s Belgian Cinematek drives off with Jean-Luc Godard’s Pierrot le fou (June 17), goes on a weekend outing with Robert Siodmak and Edgar G. Ulmer’s People on Sunday (June 20), flies away with Ken Loach’s Kes (June 21), and marches to the beat of À nous la liberté (June 22 and 23).