Revivals
Enjoy these classics from world cinema on the big screen in Brown Auditorium Theater!
Showtimes
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Sun, May 19 5 p.m.
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A concert film unlike any other, Trances presents extraordinary footage of Nass El Ghiwane—known as the Rolling Stones of Africa—whose legendary performances combined music, poetry, and theater. “We eavesdrop on the group, whose troubadour style has won them a large and rapturous following in their home country of Morocco. The debt owed to the musical traditions of their faith and land is freely acknowledged, and vividly brought to mind by the trance-like state their compelling, percussive music induces in their ... more info
Showtimes
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Fri, May 24 7 p.m.
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Sat, May 25 7 p.m.
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Sun, May 26 4 p.m.
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Mon, May 27 2 p.m.
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60th anniversary re-release In this utterly charming fable that poetically captures the joys and wonders of childhood, seven-year-old Joey (Richie Andrusco) is tricked into believing he killed his brother, and flees to New York’s Coney Island where he experiences a day and night filled with adventures. With a concealed, custom-made 35mm camera, legendary photographer Engel — whose collaborators included future wife Ruth Orkin, herself a photography titan — captured a perfect time capsule of Coney in the waning years of ... more info
Past Films in This Series
Restored 35mm print! This Oscar-nominated film uses a cinema verité style to chronicle three days on New York’s skid row, the Bowery. Noted for offering the flip side of the 1950s “American dream,” the film’s stark realism is evoked by a combination of documentary and scripted footage. The storyline follows railroad worker Ray as he visits bars, sleeps on the streets, and is victimized by a thief, with whom he ends up bonding. “A milestone in American cinema. . . ... more info
Screenings cosponsored by Holocaust Museum Houston *Part I & II: Thursday, July 7, 10 am (636 min.) Part I: Saturday, July 9, 2 pm (291 min.) Part II: Sunday, July 10, 2 pm (345 min.) New 35mm print! Special ticket prices apply! General admission is $10 for one part; $15 for both parts. MFAH Members and HMH Members, students with ID, seniors, and members of Film Buffs receive a $2 discount. Twelve years in the making and re-released for its ... more info
Uncut 35th Anniversary Edition David Bowie stars as an alien who visits Earth to find a cure for his dying race on another planet. Shortly after he arrives, the alien hires an attorney (Buck Henry) to patent ten groundbreaking inventions. The alien is homesick and devises his own space program to return home, but his plans are sabotaged by jealousy, suspicion, and greed. This new 35mm print of the uncut director’s version allows viewers to experience the dazzling visuals of ... more info
A 1921 British field expedition to Egypt uncovers the mummy of Prince Imhotep, who was condemned and buried alive 3,700 years ago, along with the Scroll of Thoth, which can bring the dead back to life. When a young member of the expedition reads the Scroll out loud, Imhotep (Boris Karloff) is reawakened. Eleven years later, the ageless mummy, disguised as a modern Egyptian, attempts to reunite with his lost love, an ancient princess who has been reincarnated as a beautiful young woman (Zita Johann). more info
Lionel Rogosin’s Come Back, Africa is a historical wonder and an honest glimpse into the harsh reality of life under the now-abolished South African apartheid government. (Rogosin's On the Bowery screened at the MFAH last year.) After witnessing firsthand the terrors of fascism as a soldier in World War II, Rogosin vowed to fight against it wherever and whenever he saw its threats reemerging. Rogosin traveled to South Africa and secretly filmed Come Back, Africa, which revealed the cruelty and injustice with which ... more info
Click here for the related Artful Thursday* event on May 10. The cathartic decade of the 1960s culminated in a prolific year of moviemaking in 1969, with Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice as one of the leading American success stories. “Consider the possibilities,” read the ads for writer-director Paul Mazursky’s satirically comic second feature about what happens when the sexual revolution meets the bourgeoisie. After Bob (Robert Culp) and Carol (Natalie Wood) return to Los Angeles from a retreat, resolved to pursue ... more info
Written by Houstonian Helen Childress and filmed in Houston, Reality Bites was the first “Gen X” comedy based on recent graduates facing life and love after college. Winona Ryder stars as a valedictorian searching for a meaningful job and relationship while bouncing between two interested men (Ben Stiller and Ethan Hawke), and her group of friends including Steve Zahn and Janeane Garofalo. more info
Children of Paradise
Les enfants du paradis
1945 in French with English subtitles
Directed by Marcel Carné
Restored print Poetic realism reaches sublime heights in this 1945 classic. Repeatedly declared the greatest French film of all time, Children of Paradise (Les enfants du paradis) is a tragic tale of ill-fated love between a theater mime (Jean-Louis Barrault) and an actress (Arletty) loved by three other men. Deftly entwining theater, literature, music, and design, director Marcel Carné and screenwriter Jacques Prévert resurrect the tumultuous world of 19th-century Paris, teeming with hucksters and aristocrats, thieves and courtesans, pimps and seers. "From ... more info
Celebrate the 80th birthday of Czech-born filmmaker Miloš Forman with an adaptation of the counterculture musical Hair. Based on the Broadway musical of the 1960s, Hair relates the story of Claude (John Savage), a young Oklahoman who leaves his family ranch for New York City. He quickly becomes involved with the hippie subculture and falls in love with a girl (Beverly D’Angelo). However, their happiness is short-lived when Claude is subsequently drafted. The musical also stars Treat Williams. Forman studied ... more info
A touchstone of the Czech New Wave that is best described as a feminist, psychedelic, surreal Eastern European answer to Howard Hawks’s Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum calls this film “one of the most exhilarating stylistic and psychedelic eruptions of the 60s.” Two young women, each named Marie, decide to behave outrageously in response to the world: they consume as much as possible, devouring expensive food paid for by rich men, setting in motion a series of pranks ... more info
In conjunction with this revival of The Shining, the MFAH presents several screenings of the documentary Room 237 (April 11–14). Click here for more information. Loosely based on the Stephen King novel, The Shining follows a writer (Jack Nicholson), his wife (Shelley Duvall), and son as they become caretakers of the Overlook resort hotel during the winter off-season. Isolated and snowbound, the family experiences an evil presence that encourages the father to commit violence, while his psychic son sees frightening visions from the ... more info
Numerous U.S. film critics—including the Houston Film Critics Society—voted Holy Motors the best foreign film of 2012. Join the shadowy Monsieur Oscar (Denis Lavant) on his rollicking, soulful journey by limousine through the streets of Paris as he transforms into multiple characters for a series of mysterious “appointments” as a captain of industry, assassin, beggar, monster, and family man. Léos Carax’s mirthful, mind-bending masterwork is a ravishing fever dream of becoming, unraveling, and starting all over again. “. . . an exhilarating hybrid of ... more info