The French Revolution

Feb 6, 2014 — Who better to explain what an auteur of the cinema is than one of the originators of auteur theory? In his famous 1954 essay “A Certain Tendency in French Cinema,” published in Cahiers du cinéma five years before the release...

Apr 10, 2013 — Teinosuke Kinugasa’s landmark color film is a visual feast that has finally been vibrantly restored.

Aug 31, 2011 — Let there be no trouble, no pranks . . . Do you realize the enormity of our moral responsibility? —Headmaster in Zéro de conduite There is nothing in the history of movies that mirrors or matches the achievement of Jean...

Aug 16, 2011 — “It is my best film. I always loved it. I always believed in it. It is real cinema, done for cinema—like art for art.” That was Roman Polanski’s view of Cul-de-sac in 1970, four years after its release and just...

Oct 1, 2018 — A breathtaking, rarely screened vérité document encapsulates the social and aesthetic sea change that transformed France in the spring of 1968.

Jun 5, 2026 — We’re wrapping the week with conversations with Lilly Wachowski, Shunji Iwai, and Tsui Hark as well as essays on Ozu and Ghatak.

May 5, 2026 — The nation’s largest silent film festival returns to the newly renovated Castro Theatre.

Apr 29, 2025 — To commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the fall of Saigon, the director of Three Seasons discusses a selection of landmark films that have shaped how we remember this devastating and divisive conflict.

May 8, 2024 — Thelma Schoonmaker brings Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom to the inaugural edition of JBFC Restored and Rediscovered.

May 9, 2023 — The Austrian Film Museum pairs features by the great French directors Jacques Becker and Claude Sautet.