Umbracle

May 8, 2017 — With his mix of documentary-like immediacy and profound moral inquiry, Roberto Rossellini became a pioneer of Italian neorealism, a movement that transformed the way filmmakers captured the fabric of everyday life and and grappled with the most urgent social issues...

May 2, 2017 — On a trip to the Library of Congress’s Mostly Lost workshop—affectionately known as “film-geek heaven”—Imogen Sara Smith joined early-cinema aficionados in uncovering treasures from the vaults.

Apr 21, 2017 — George Stevens’s Oscar-winning comedy captures the first sparks of attraction that ignited one of the great on- and offscreen romances in Hollywood history.

Apr 12, 2017 — British director Jack Clayton elicited landmark performances from a host of great ladies of the cinema, including Maggie Smith, Deborah Kerr, and Anne Bancroft.

Mar 21, 2017 — A “celluloid atrocity” overflowing with deviant shenanigans, John Waters’s low-budget satire makes mincemeat of the peace-and-love era.

Jan 19, 2017 — Rainer Werner Fassbinder plays a working-class gay man hoodwinked by his uppity bourgeois lover in this unsparing portrait of queer culture in 1970s West Germany.

Dec 18, 2016 — Imogen Sara Smith examines the tensions between tradition and modernity reflected in two silent crime films by Yasujiro Ozu and Tomu Uchida.

Sep 28, 2016 — The salacious sixties phenomenon of the Dirty Book made its way to the big screen in this adaptation of Jacqueline Susann’s best seller.

Sep 22, 2016 — As part of a two-month series highlighting Yasujiro Ozu’s late-career work, the Pacific Film Archive is showing Equinox Flower, a family drama about a conservative father and his rebellious daughter, who refuses to accept his plans for her arranged marriage.

Sep 21, 2016 — An exhilarating blend of noir and splatter-flick tropes, the Coen brothers’ debut feature established their unique brand of cosmic fatalism.