THE DREAMLAND TURNS 4!
Revisiting some of our (and your!) favorites from our first four years.
THE VIRGIN SUICIDES 1999
With this debut feature, Sofia Coppola announced her singular vision, exploring the aesthetics of femininity while illuminating the interior lives of young women. An adaptation of Jeffrey Eugenides’s highly acclaimed first novel, The Virgin Suicides conjures the ineffable melancholy of teenage longing and ennui in its story of the suicides of the five Lisbon sisters, stifled by the rules of their overprotective religious parents—as told through the collective memory of a group of men who were boys at the time and still yearn to understand what happened. Evoking its 1970s suburban setting through ethereal cinematography by Ed Lachman and an atmospheric score by Air, and featuring a magnetic performance by Kirsten Dunst, the film secured a place for its director in the landscape of American independent cinema and has become a coming-of-age touchstone.
Friday, June 5
Sunday, June 7
Director: Sofia Coppola
Starring: Kirsten Dunst, Josh Hartnett, Kathleen Turner, James Woods
Runtime: 97 min., USA
Language: English
BLUE VELVET 1986
Home from college, Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan) makes an unsettling discovery: a severed human ear, lying in a field. In the mystery that follows, by turns terrifying and darkly funny, writer-director David Lynch burrows deep beneath the picturesque surfaces of small-town life. Driven to investigate, Jeffrey finds himself drawing closer to his fellow amateur sleuth, Sandy Williams (Laura Dern), as well as their person of interest, lounge singer Dorothy Vallens (Isabella Rossellini)—and facing the fury of Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper), a psychopath who will stop at nothing to keep Dorothy in his grasp. With intense performances and hauntingly powerful scenes and images, Blue Velvet is an unforgettable vision of innocence lost, and one of the most influential American films of the late twentieth century.
Saturday, June 13
Sunday, June 14
Director: David Lynch
Starring: Kyle MacLachlan, Laura Dern, Dennis Hopper, Isabella Rosselini
Runtime: 118 min., USA
Language: English
MULTIPLE MANIACS 1970
John Waters’ gloriously grotesque second feature is replete with all manner of depravity, from robbery to murder to one of cinema’s most memorably blasphemous moments. Made on a shoestring budget in Waters’ native Baltimore, with the filmmaker taking on nearly every technical task, this gleeful mockery of the peace-and-love ethos of its era features the Cavalcade of Perversion, a traveling show mounted by a troupe of misfits whose shocking proclivities are topped only by those of their leader: the glammer-than-glam, larger-than-life Divine, out for blood after discovering her lover’s affair. Starring members of Waters’ beloved regular cast, the Dreamlanders (including David Lochary, Mary Vivian Pearce, Mink Stole, Susan Lowe, Edith Massey, George Figgs, and Cookie Mueller), Multiple Maniacs is an anarchic masterwork from an artist who has doggedly tested the limits of good taste for decades.
Thursday, June 18
Director: John Waters
Starring: Divine, Mink Stole, David Lochary, Edith Massey, Mary Vivian Pearce
Runtime: 96 min., USA
Language: English
DRIVE 2011
In director Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive, Ryan Gosling stars as an enigmatic stunt driver who works on Hollywood productions during the day and moonlights as a getaway driver for hire who doesn’t ask questions. After sparking a connection with his mild-mannered neighbor (Carey Mulligan) and her young son, he feels compelled to help her ex-convict husband who is being threatened by a local crime syndicate. Glowing nighttime Los Angeles cityscapes, neon text, and a synthpop score set the tone of this cinematic world full of hope, love, criminal activity, and brutal violence. (Academy Museum)
Friday, June 19
Sunday, June 21
Director: Nicolas Winding Refn
Starring: Ryan Gosling, Carey Mulligan, Bryan Cranston
Runtime: 100 min., USA
Language: English
SON OF THE WHITE MARE 1981
One of the great psychedelic masterpieces of world animation, Son of the White Mare is a swirling, color-mad maelstrom of mythic monsters and Scythian heroes, part-Nibelungenlied, part-Yellow Submarine, lit by jagged bolts of lightning and drenched in rivers of blue, red, gold and green. A massive cosmic oak stands at the gates of the Underworld, holding seventy-seven dragons in its roots; to combat these monsters, a dazzling white mare goddess gives birth to three heroes – Treeshaker and his brothers – who embark on an epic journey to save the universe. Directed by Hungarian animator Marcell Jankovics (famed for his 1974 Oscar-nominated short Sisyphus), Son of the White Mare has been restored in 4K using the original 35mm camera negative and sound elements by Arbelos in collaboration with the Hungarian National Film Institute – Film Archive.
Wednesday, June 24
Director: Marcell Jankovics
Starring: György Cserhalmi, Pap Vera, Gyula Szabó
Runtime: 86 min., Hungary
Language: Hungarian w/ English subtitles