MVFF49—JOSEPHINE (2026) / AVEDON (2026) / ODYSSEY (2026) / THE LAST PLACE ON EARTH (2026): REVIEWS

Josephine (2026); Dir. Beth de Araújo—Channing Tatum delivers one of the most nuanced performances of his career as Damien, a young father who has overcome the abuse of his own childhood by projecting his survival onto his daughter Josephine (newcomer Mason Reeves). Without seeming to know it, he is trying to make a man of her, even though she is only eight years old, and in the process unwittingly places her in harm’s way. During an early-morning jog with her father and momentarily separated from him, Josephine witnesses a rape. Her efforts to make sense of what she has seen and her father’s insistence that she be a witness in the court trial of the rapist creates tension with his wife Claire (Gemma Chan) whose idea of how to be a protective parent are in gendered conflict with Damien. She sees that Josephine is haunted by the presence of the rapist in her everyday life; one of the most unnerving visuals in San Francisco native de Araújo’s second feature. Tatum’s portrayal of how his character comes to an awareness of his culpability is quite moving and Mason Reeves delivers the most astounding child performance in recent memory. Josephine is one of MVFF’s Big Night screenings with a Spotlight Award on de Araújo as recipient of the MVFF Bay Area Rising Star Award and Elton Creation Special Jury Prize. Mason Reeves will join her for an after-screening conversation.

   

Avedon (2026); Dir. Ron Howard—This portrait of the master of portraits situates Richard Avedon within the pulsing currents of his time, from early fashion, through the counterculture, to the controversial themes of his later years that bucked anticipation. By documenting the historical moment, Avedon himself becomes history. Through his iconic images of celebrities like Marilyn Monroe and Charlie Chaplin, his artistic process in itself achieves iconicity. I was moved by the difficulty of his childhood years and how his suffering enforced in him a sense of responsibility to the sufferings of others.  

Odyssey (2026); Dir. Avi Belkin—I was nine years old when, in the fifth grade, I wrote my first poem “I Want to Be A Spaceman” for our mimeographed grade school “newspaper.” I was 16 when I stood beside my stepfather Moises Reyes who had wandered away from television coverage of the moon landing to stare up at the moon. With the sweetest incredulity in his voice that I will remember to my dying day, Moises asked me: “Hijo, is that the moon they’re landing on?” 

Tom Hanks, who portrayed astronaut and commander Jim Lovell in the 1995 film Apollo 13, serves as Executive Producer for Avi Belkin’s riveting reconstruction of the rise and fall of the Apollo space program—seen largely through Jim Lovell’s perspective and focusing notably on the compromised Apollo 13 mission. Relying solely on 2500 hours of archival footage, though augmented by the contemporary grinding score of Danny Bensi and Saunder Jurriaans to sci-fi effect, Belkin masterfully edits together a remarkably thrilling documentary that captures the tension of events as they occurred while an entire planet watched with halted breath as the crew of the jeopardized Apollo 13 mission struggled to return home to Earth. I’m 73 now and at odds with how our dreams of space have been co-opted by billionaires for their own spurious ends. 

The Last Place On Earth (2026); Dir. David Booth Gardner—I hardly know how to write about a documentary with an all-too-familiar if vivid theme of how our habits of consumption here at home are wreaking environmental havoc elsewhere in the world, namely the Leuser Ecosystem in the Aceh Province of Sumatra, whose 10,039 square miles—as the film’s title attests—is the last place on earth where orangutans, rhinos, tigers, and elephants still roam freely in the wild. It is also under threat of being decimated by illegal deforestation, wildlife poaching and trafficking, and an unregulated palm oil industry that generates a myriad of products consumers here at home take for granted. Regardless, I have to give credit to director Gardner for his well-mounted effort to raise awareness. This dire emergency is presented through the woven perspectives of wildlife activists, including Panut Hadisiswoyo of the Natural Resource Conservation Unit who rescues an orangutan, nicknamed Irmelin, chained by the neck to a wall in a cramped crawlspace and eventually released back into the wild. Panut’s commitment to Irmelin serves as the heart to this documentary and, along with director Gardner, Panut is expected to attend MVFF.

NYFF64—L’INCONNUE / THE UNKNOWN (2026): REVIEW

So what exactly do we know after viewing Arthur Harari’s L’Inconnue / The Unknown (2026)? 

First, we learn that the heady concept of “metempsychosis” (i.e., the passing of the soul after death into a new physical body, whether human or animal) is not as infrequent a cinematic subject as one might presume. Since the term “metempsychosis” sounds like a mess I’ve made in the kitchen, I’ll adopt the usage of “the transmigration of souls” which has a directionality to it that strikes me as eminently more serviceable. 

Apparently, there are hundreds of films that have tackled the theme of the transmigration of souls albeit through broad interpretations necessarily associated with specific genres. The Unknown fits comfortably into the supernatural or metaphysical thriller subgenre; but, we need to consider that this is the transmigration of one soul; a particularly malevolent entity that has found it can project itself into a new body through orgasmic sex. After all, the Greek roots of “metempsychosis” derive from "change" (meta) and "to put a soul into" (empsychoun). I can’t think of a better euphemism for ejaculation at the moment. Notwithstanding, this swapping of souls through seeding leans not only into the horror genre but actually provides L’Inconnue with some of its most laugh outloud, even if uncomfortably so, moments. 

Secondly, we learn that this malevolent entity—which remains unknown throughout the film and drifts away after we focus on a few of its victims—is still out there switching bodies through sex, but for what reason other than malevolence, again, is unknown. It’s not always switching to a younger body or a prettier body or a more athletic body, none of that. It simply insists upon switching with all the rationale of a virus or any STD that any of us might be, unfortunately, familiar with. So L’Inconnue is arguably a cautionary tale to all those polyamorous, philanderous or simply promiscuous players out there. You could be next and God knows where you might end up or in who you might end up after you’ve ended up being in them. 

Let me back up to provide a little narrative context, cribbing from the NYFF program capsule: “One night, in a deserted backroom of a costume party, Parisian photographer David (Niels Schneider) impulsively hooks up with a stranger named Eva (Léa Seydoux); after their intense sexual encounter, David wakes up alone to find that he has somehow swapped bodies with the woman. This wild metaphysical gambit is treated with the utmost sincerity and unsettling realism…. [The Unknown] takes the viewer on a series of leaps and turns as narratively absorbing as the scenario is metaphorically rich. Refusing to be read in any single or simple way, The Unknown pushes a pulpy supernatural premise into the realm of the genuinely uncanny, its tricky play with subjectivity and identification reinforced by the brilliantly embodied performances of its two leads.” 

It’s those embodied performances that director Harari expanded upon in the Q&A session after the film. After deciding that Léa Seydoux should play Eva / David, Seydoux’s pregnancy stalled the project until a few months after delivery. Yet retaining a hefty physicality from her pregnancy worked with masculinizing her movements. By contrast, Niels Schneider’s bony thinness emphasized a frailty one could interpret as feminine because—as this twisting, if twisted plot reveals—by the time Eva / David understands what has happened to him, his original body has been switched with that of a younger woman, thus increasing the chances that no one is ever going to really catch up to themselves. 

So, thirdly, let’s talk about what I found brilliant about the film, if not difficult to discuss, and that is the political hot potato of gender dysphoria, the psychological distress a person feels when their internal gender identity does not match the sex they were assigned at birth; though, in this instance, at rebirth. Notions of birth and death are upended in this film. The transmigration of souls is often a result of death, though in this instance it’s more the little death ("la petit mort") that counts. As skinny David discovers he is trapped within a voluptuous woman’s body, and as young Malia (Lilith Grasburg) discovers she is trapped in David’s skinny body, their horror and discomfort is palpable and disorienting, trending towards self-harm. I have no idea if Harari intended to create one of the most sympathetic portrayals of the transgender experience or not, but it certainly comes across as one of the most visceral representations this viewer has seen on screen in some time. Then again, I’ve suffered from identity issues and gender confusion for most of my life so I’m not sure whether my insights into this film are symptomatic or experiential. 

Suffice it to say that the head scratching engendered by The Unknown is satisfying for being so unexpected and, admittedly, complicated to track. By film’s end, a break in the chain of transmigration induces some of the film’s most challenging questions about the nature of identity. Most transmigration tales involve reincarnation, but I’ve always thought that reincarnation was a silly and vain idea: as if the ego—the identity yoked to the soul—would actually carry over from body to body. That doesn’t make any sense to me. Any good Tibetan worth his salt will profess that the ego shards apart at death. There’s no evidence that it would group back together into a new soul in a new body. The Unknown suggests the possibility of a soul transferred into another body disconnected from its original ego. That is true food for thought, if ultimately unknowable. 

 For those who haven’t been put off by this subject, the New York Film Festival offers one of the Q&A sessions with director Arthur Harari and lead actor Niels Schneider. At The Daily, David Hudson rounds up the reviews.

 

SFFP 2026—The Evening Class Interview With Kathy Rose O'Reagan & Jonathan Marlow

With the inaugural edition of the San Francisco Film Preservation ("SFFP") Re:Vision Festival of Restoration and Rediscovery about to launch this week (September 24-27, 2026) at San Francisco’s historic Roxie Theater, I ran a few questions past SFFP Executive Director Kathy Rose O’Reagan and Board Member Jonathan Marlow.  

Michael Guillén: The SFFP website lays out the organization's objectives but doesn't provide much history. Can you tell me about the history of the organization? When it started, who started it, how long it's been around? I noticed Rob Byrne's helmship and wondered if the establishment of SFFP was in conjunction with or an offshoot of the Silent Film Festival? 

Kathy Rose O’Reagan: SFFP started life as the preservation department of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival ("SFSFF"). While SFSFF occasionally restored films starting in 2012, by the time of SFFP’s founding two years ago the preservation department was working on up to nine projects simultaneously. In essence, by the summer of 2024, the preservation department of SFSFF had grown to such an extent that it was operating as almost a separate organization under the festival umbrella. It was at this juncture that the decision was made for the preservation department to become an entirely separate organization, allowing SFSFF to focus more fully on its mission dedicated to the superb presentation of silent cinema. SFFP’s first day of operation was October 1, 2024, with Robert Byrne as founder/Board President, and myself as Executive Director.  

Guillén: Jonathan, I note that you're on SFFP’s board of directors so am wondering if you have been with them from the beginning? Can you speak to your involvement? 

Marlow: I was invited to join the Board relatively early in the process (although not at its initial formation).  

Guillén: I have especially enjoyed previewing František Vláčil’s Valley of the Bees (1968) [screening 3:00PM on Friday, September 25, 2026] and Robert Wynne-Simmons’ The Outcasts (1982) [screening 8:30PM on Friday, September 25, 2026]. Why were you motivated to include them in the festival's first edition? Why should San Franciscans take note? 

Marlow: I have had an unreasonable fondness for Valley of the Bees (1968) upon my first viewing roughly a decade ago (as part of a larger pursuit in search of the work of composer Zdeněk Liška). I was aware of recent work on the film in parallel with a restoration of František Vláčil's better-known Marketa Lazarová (1967) but I had yet to see the restoration when we were making our selections. Fortunately, Rob had seen it during his many travels (and possessed a similar appreciation for the film). 

As for The Outcasts (1982), that particular restoration had been shortlisted for the tenth-and-final edition of Camera Obscura the year-before-last, coincidentally enough! Kathy was keenly interested in presenting a superlative (albeit rarely-screened) example of Irish folk-horror at Re:Vision. Meanwhile, at the Orphans Film Symposium earlier in the year, Walter Forsberg presented a discussion on the work of Smithsonian Institution alum Karen Loveland, leading to an anomaly in her filmography: Witch (1973), intended for an installation at the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic. Not a short film, as such, but a miraculous ephemeral fragment which should be enjoyed by audiences of eclectic and refined interests, perfectly paired! There certainly isn't a comparable film in this series (or any other). 

The guiding hand of the program followed a decided effort to disrupt conventional "canon-building" (which, itself, is a reflection of whatever is otherwise accessible—an avenue film restoration has the unique ability to repair). Therein, we'd wanted works from many different eras of filmmaking, representing as many countries as possible with a wide variety of genres, often genres not generally associated with the region, such as the quasi-noir of Bodil Ipsen's Mordets Melodi / Melody of Murder (1944) [screening at 8:40PM on Sunday, September 27, 2026]. 

The majority of these works are screening in the Bay Area for the first time or, at least, the first time in many decades. Dakan / Destiny (1997), for instance, [screening at 5:45PM on Friday, September 25, 2026] had its local premiere at Frameline and was distributed domestically by California Newsreel yet hasn't screened in the area since its initial release. That screening is accompanied by Nancy, Henri and Elizabeth (1973), a fascinatingly candid documentary short recently preserved by Dino Everett at USC and brought to my attention by Michael Metzger at the Block Museum. Which is another way of noting that ideal suggestions come from all corners! A handful of additional selections in the program debuted at Il Cinema Ritrovato in June, where SFFP's luminous restoration of Sunrise (1927) premiered.  

Guillén: Can you provide further insight into the process of shaping the program? 

Marlow: With an expanding number of restorations in recent years, a majority of these films would make a belated appearance on Bay Area screens. There are a handful of grand showcases for restored and rediscovered works around the world but nothing of the dedicated sort along the western half of North America. I'd discussed the complications of seeing these archival efforts during one of my many conversations with Rob Byrne and he had already been thinking along the same route. Kathy Rose O'Regan, Executive Director of the San Francisco Film Preserve, immediately joined the discussion and then Elise Schierbeek, a recent addition as Collections Director of SFFP, completed the team.  

Guillén: Mention has been made that the festival will have special guests. Can you say who? 

Marlow: Each screening includes an introduction by a guest (and that makes all of the programs perpetually special in my humble estimation)! However, I'd particularly note an appearance and introduction from Karen Sperling prior to her remarkable sophomore feature-length The Waiting Room (1973) [screening at 1:20PM on Sunday, September 27, 2026]; introductory remarks from Peter Conheim (who restored the film) to Los Leprosos y el Sexo [Lepers & Sex] aka Santo vs. the Riders of Terror (1970) [screening at 9:00PM on Saturday, September 26]; and a video introduction from director Angie Chen ahead of her opening-night Hong Kong dramedy My Name Ain't Suzie (1985) [screening at 7:00PM on Thursday, September 24, 2026].

SFFP 2026—DAKAN (1997) / THE OUTCASTS (1982) / ARAYA (1955) / TRI (1965): REVIEWS

With the inaugural edition of the Re:Vision Festival of Restoration and Rediscovery (“SFFP”) about to launch this weekend (September 24-27, 2026) at San Francisco’s historic Roxie Theater, here are some selections to consider. The word that keeps surfacing to my mind with regard to SFFP’s inaugural program is that these films are all important, of consequence, too easily dismissed and forgotten, yet deserving of continued attention and, yes, even affection. They range wildly in genres and styles, which makes for a rich variety of spectatorial responses.  

Dakan / Destiny (1997); dir. Mohamed Camara—Guinean filmmaker Camara has never shied away from controversial subjects and has, in fact, created an oeuvre based upon them. Denko (1993) tackled incest; Minka (1995) child suicide; and Dakan (1997) has earned its stature as the first Black African film on homosexuality, for which it was lauded at L.A. Outfest with the Grand Jury Award for Outstanding Foreign Narrative Feature. 

From its opening sequence of two high-school boys kissing, Dakan makes no apologies for its homosexual subject matter. Manga and Sory are in love with each other and admit same to their parents, both who object and insist upon their separation. Sory’s father sends him off to college to learn business so he can take over the family fishing enterprise. Manga’s mother ships him off to a tribal witch doctor in hopes ritual magic will "cure" him. The through-line of their attraction for each other, however, pierces through all the efforts of others to force their conformity. Their love is—as dakan translated implies—destiny. Dakan is, then, more a study of how the true love of these two young men influences, agitates and transforms the sensibilities of those around them. It is their parents and the young women who believe they can change them that, in turn, are tasked with change. The film’s point-of-view positively emphasizes that the only behavior to be judged is anyone who tries to thwart a destined love. 

Camara’s signature edginess is on full display during the witch doctor sequence where Manga’s mother is required to roll around in a muddy cemetery and instructed to steal a funeral shroud from a grave. Meanwhile, back at the village, a handful of dwarves assist the witch doctor in her aversion rituals. Camara doesn’t even shy away from an interracial romance. The upsetting of social taboos unabashedly comprises the film’s thrust. 

For those unable to attend the festival, Dakan is available for streaming on YouTube. 

   

The Outcasts (1982); dir. Robert Wynne-Simmons—Social taboos and superstitions run rampant in early 1800s Ireland, though the maligned love affair here is between Maura (Mary Ryan) a moody withdrawn girl and her demon lover Scarf Michael (Mick Lalley) who the locals suspect is the devil incarnate. But is he? Or is he simply an itinerant fiddler who has accepted the aspersions cast upon him, reining them in to negotiate his own survival? And is he, consequently, in a perfect position to counsel Maura on how to escape the backward village where she has been shunned as strangely aberrant and forced to live a miserable isolated existence as a suspected witch? 

Difference is extolled as magical and transformative in The Outcasts in an atmospheric and absorbing narrative that is credited with singlehandedly reviving the cinema of Ireland after nearly a half century of no films being made. Its mythopoeic air was popular with audiences when it made its festival rounds, winning Best Film and Critics Prize at the Brussels International Fantastic Film Festival, and Best First Feature and Best Actress at the San Remo Film Festival. It earned a Special Prize for Originality and Jury Prize at the Fantasporto Film Festival 1984, and the Prix du Publique at Geneva Film Festival. The Arts Council of Ireland recognized it with an award.

Araya (1959); dir. Margot Benaceraff—Long before Brazilian social documentary photojournalist Sebastião Salgado stunned the world with his bracing photographs of the dignified beauty of manual labor worldwide, Araya captured the life of salineros at the natural salt mine Araya located on a peninsula in northeastern Venezuela. Though grueling physical labor is involved in extracting salt through methods centuries-old, a community of laborers eke out a living for themselves and their families. 

Their quotidian tenacity is rendered poetic in Benaceraff’s essay structure, with abstracted black and white cinematography, and a score composed from sounds of the sea mixed with traditional Andalusian polo songs.

Araya shared the Cannes International Critics Prize with Alain Resnais's Hiroshima mon amour at the festival’s 1959 edition and SFFP audiences will have the privileged perspective of watching Araya on 35mm.

   

Tri / Three (1965); dir. Aleksandar Petrović—There’s something about black-and-white WWII narratives out of Eastern Europe that shred my soul each and every time. Their urgent testaments of resistance remain timeless. 

Hailing from the former Yugoslavia, Tri—a proponent of the Yugoslav Black Wave—was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film at the 39th Academy Awards. Tri concerns itself with the moral weight of bearing witness to the unavoidable atrocities of war. The film is structured in three segments. The first is in April 1941, the April War (sometimes called Operation 25), when Germans begin invading Yugoslavia. The second is towards the middle of the war where protagonist Miloš Bojanić (Bata Živojinović) has joined the partisans and is being relentlessly pursued by German soldiers. In the third section he has matured and been promoted as a high-ranking officer for OZNA, Communist Yugoslavia’s Secret Police. 

In each segment Miloš is forced to watch people he cares for die. A kind of befuddled amazement in the first segment capsizes into abject despair in the second as he rages against an indifferent God. By the third, he is more circumspect but still feels for the plight of a woman who collaborated with the Nazis and is in queue to be executed. It’s a marvelous character study that serves to critique the ravages of war, lustrously filmed by Tomislav Pinter in black and white, with compositional touches that halt breath and visual surprises, such as a dancing bear on a railroad platform.

 

MVFF49: ¡VIVA EL CINÉ!—BITTER CHRISTMAS (2026) / BUNKER (2026) REVIEWS

For 13 years through their ¡Viva el Cine! sidebar, the Mill Valley Film Festival (MVFF) has celebrated the richness of Ibero-American cinema, featuring films in Spanish and Portuguese, as well as Latinx and Latin American stories from around the world. This initiative curates films that resonate with these communities, offering a space where history, culture, and identity come alive. The offerings range from shorts programs to feature films in both narrative and documentary genres, several recently lauded in their festival runs. Sony Pictures has picked up two major entries for theatrical from the fifteen on view in this year’s selection.  

Bitter Christmas / Amarga Navidad (2026); Dir. Pedro Almodóvar—In recent political parlance it is often said that “the process is the punishment.” The same could be applied to creativity and its attendant hazards. Just when you think you can hold a mirror up to your relationships and winnow out an inspired theme or two, you discover the strategy doesn’t fly with friends and partners who object to being fictionalized without their consent. Which worries the point spotlighted by João Federici in his MVFF program capsule: “Who owns the story?” 

Almodóvar cleverly layers his narratives—the one you’re supposed to accept as real and the one you’re supposed to accept as imagined—and it’s in the discrepancy between the two where the entertainment lies. With a vibrant palette of reds and blues that flows like a narrative trajectory of its own, it’s fascinating how gay film director Raúl Rossetti (Leonardo Sbaraglia) recklessly switches gender and inserts himself into a draft script as comely Elsa (Bárbara Lennie), an alter ego who isn’t quite as sensitive to the plight of her real-life counterpart Mónica (Aitana Sánchez-Gijón) as (s)he should be. Let alone that Raúl imagines his life partner Santi (Quim Gutiérrez) as an overly objectified blonde firefighter turned stripper in his spare time named Bonifacio (deliciously played by Patrick Criado). You know how they say truth is often said in jest? Well, fiction often reveals unintended truths, which is often not a laughing matter.

   

Bunker (2026); Dir. Florian Zeller—Yet another political conceit in our current moment is reportage from major media outlets, tech reporting, and broadcast networks extensively documenting the trend of ultra-wealthy individuals constructing underground bunkers, private compounds, and remote survival infrastructure. Bunker asks, “Why?” The billionaire (Paul Dano) who has asked architect Miguel Moreno (Javier Bardem) to design such an underground bunker finds the question naïve and the answer evident when confronted during a Zoom session. The more challenging question is why Moreno doesn’t recognize he’s bunkering down as well, against his wife Sofia (Penélope Cruz) and his blue-collar neighbor Toby (Stephen Graham)? 

The ideas in Bunker are compelling and current and the performances strong enough to sustain them, but their execution, their articulation, is often heavy-handed and sometimes feel preciously metaphorical. At an art opening Miguel and Sofia question the paintings of an artist who paints scenes and then disguises them under a layer of black paint. A dispute with a neighbor results in a black tarp placed over a hole punched into a wall and it looks exactly like the black painting. I appreciate the exercise in concealing what asks to be revealed, but Bunker is indecisive on its feet; first it meanders and agonizes and then rushes towards insight head-on without looking both ways.

 

THE LAST PICTURE SHOWS (2026)—REVIEW

Cribbing from Peter Bogdonavich’s 1971 film The Last Picture Show for its title, and following through on that film’s melancholic, near elegiac, tone, Rustin Thompson’s documentary The Last Picture Shows (2026) incorporates clips from the Bogdonavich film to texture his journey into the American West—10 western states, 10,825 miles, 123 theaters—searching for what he describes as “traces of what was once a center of small-town life: the movie theater.” 

Back in the aughts when the Blogosphere was ramping up, there was plenty of discussion among the Bay Area bloggers about the perils of digital disruption and the loss of repertory theaters in one neighborhood after the other in San Francisco and environs, but that was more of an urban complaint about many becoming fewer. The Last Picture Shows shifts focus to rural, smaller communities were the brick-and-mortar movie house is often the one and only. The loss, therefore, is much more critical and as poignant as dusk when the allure of their neon marquees begin to gleam. 

It was during discussions of the loss of repertory houses in the Bay Area that I first turned on to Cinema Treasures, which at the time was still in its infancy. A quarter of a century later and it’s sensible that Cinema Treasures co-founder Ross Melnick surfaces as the documentary’s “expert” talking head, reserving remaining interview time for the owners and staff members (the “thoughtful caretakers”) of beleaguered independent movie theaters who recount their valiant efforts to stay afloat in competition with multiplexes and streaming services.  

The Last Picture Shows’ audience is structured into its cautionary message. Why would urbanites care? Why would stay-at-home streamers care? But as community building, let alone community retention, strengthens in our post-COVID, post safety-in-place, world, the notion that we need community and a shared communal experience past NO KINGS protest rallies becomes a consistent refrain in Thompson’s documentary narrative. Which is to say that this documentary will primarily speak to those who really care. Thompson’s preach is to the theme’s choir. 

For an essay film, I appreciated Thompson’s atmospheric catalog of movie house marquees and street fronts, their origin dates, some of which have been abandoned and forgotten as they fall into disrepair, some of which have been salvaged as they struggle to survive and—in some heartening examples—some which even thrive. Folks will, of course, shout out to their own. Bay Area audiences will be invested in the Monte Rio theater on the Russian River; but, here in Boise, Idaho, I gave a thrilled shout-out to the Parma Motor-Vu Drive-In in Parma, Idaho (which kicked into gear the same year I did: 1953). Thompson’s nostalgic tribute to drive-in theaters resonated warmly as I remembered how as a child it would thrill me to drive by a drive-in theater and see a cinematic image projected large against an evening sky. Better yet was to sneak into a drive-in theater, a giggle of kids hidden in the trunk, tumbling out once the car was parked on its slope with the speakers hooked onto the rolled-down windows. 

Thompson’s footage of these movie houses and drive-in theaters are nearly photographic, more than filmic. They’re often planimetric, leaning into my love for ghost signs, harkening back to the redolent commercial era of the fifties. Utilizing postcard aesthetics, and reconstructing memories of certain moviehouses with inserted black and white photographs into current captures, The Last Picture Shows is clever and resilient in how it breaks up its focus with these textured stylistic flourishes. 

Hopefully, its passion will prove contagious as The Last Picture Shows opens today in the Bay Area.

SFFP 2026—THE VALLEY OF BEES / ÚDOLÍ VČEL (1968)

There are times when I regret that I no longer live in San Francisco and those regrets usually revolve around notions of film literacy emphasized by film preservation. I’m envious of my friends in the Bay Area who will be able (and should!) take advantage of the inaugural edition of the Re:Vision Festival of Restoration and Rediscovery (September 24-27, 2026) sponsored by the San Francisco Film Preserve (SFFP). 

SFFP’s mission statement underscores restoration, preservation, access and advocacy: the four pillars that support a viable film culture. Adhering to the code of ethics laid out by the International Federation of Film Archives, SFFP aims to restore works in as faithful a manner as possible to their original appearance. When a restoration requires a new negative, SFFP commits to preservation and makes a new negative, which are then housed in the SFFP collection at the Library of Congress. Understanding, however, that access must be the end point of all preservation initiatives, SFFP is dedicated to providing access to films that were not previously accessible, either through their online portal or their thriving domestic and international loan program. The Festival of Restoration and Rediscovery is their latest initiative to provide access through the film festival experience, by which they advocate for the field of moving image preservation by raising awareness of preservation initiatives both within the Bay Area and beyond. 

Venued at San Francisco’s historic Roxie Theater, Re:Vision will showcase astounding works of cinema from around the world across a wide variety of genres, decades, and styles. The ambitious and eclectic selection of films will be organized into 14 programs, each including a feature film and a short with added value of special introductions and guests. Although I won’t be able to attend Re:Vision in person—missing out on the best value added of all: the audience—I’m grateful to Tim Buckwalter and Trista Ngo of Associated Publicity for the opportunity to cover the festival remotely. Here is one program you shouldn’t miss.  

Valley of the Bees / Údolí včel (1968), Dir.: František Vláčil—"While his name lacks the recognition of other Eastern European filmmakers,” Jonathan Marlow writes in his program capsule, “writer / director / occasional actor František Vláčil could be considered among the greatest motion picture practitioners on the strength of his adaptation of Marketa Lazarová alone. Yet his follow-up, The Valley of the Bees [Údolí včel], is a similarly stunning period-piece of archetypal drama (and, like its predecessor and other works by the filmmaker, features an extraordinary score by Zdeněk Liška).” 

For decades, The Valley of the Bees has only been available in faded prints or unsatisfactory transfers. The 2025 digital restoration was sourced from the original sound and image negatives preserved by the Czech National Film Archive in Prague. 

Writing for the Village Voice in June 2002 in an essay entitled “Plastic Fantastic”, Michael Atkinson celebrated František Vláčil (who “with just a handful of films to prove it”) Atkinson extolled as “the Czech New Wave’s formalist, post-expressionist wrecking ball” and a master of “pure film” whose atmospheric, symbol-laden works stand as monumental achievements in Czech cinema. “His best movies display a lackadaisical attitude toward narrative clarity,” Atkinson continues “and a hypnotic plastic originality.” 

Which begs an understanding of “plasticity” in film. The plasticity of film refers to cinema's unique capacity to shape, stretch, transform, and even shatter time and visual form. Borrowed from philosophy and material science—and significantly developed in film theory through thinkers like Catherine Malabou—plasticity describes a medium that can both receive a shape and blow it apart. 

As outlined by film theorists Debarshi Arathdar and Jayjit Sarkar, the plasticity of film relates to the malleability of time. They opine that film acts as a "plastic" organism because time itself is cut, stitched, slowed down, reversed, or superimposed in the editing room. Time does not just pass; it is molded like clay. 

In their overview of Catherine Malabou’s theories, Benjamin Dalton and Ben Tyrer track the term “plasticity” to its historic understanding of the physical flexibility and chemical makeup of celluloid (plastic-based film stock) but expand that historicity towards a more current metaphoric description of how stories, characters, and human emotions bend under pressure or trauma on screen. 

Atkinson’s ascription of plasticity is pertinent. Summarizing the plot of The Valley of the Bees (read Wikipedia) reveals—as Atkinson terms it—a “slight” narrative. So why then is it so compelling and its images so indelible, so “gorgeous”? Atkinson suggests that it’s because Vláčil is in pursuit of cinematic rhythm and texture over standard narrative clarity. 

Visual composition is certainly key and SFFP’s digital restoration is stunning. Vlácil’s lens is a painter’s eye, using a palette of chiaroscuro shades and camera placement that thrill the senses. In his Letterboxd review, Graham Williamson argues that Vláčil’s compositional talent stands comparison with Carl Dreyer and Stanley Kubrick. 

At Sight and Sound, Michael Brooke concurs that “[Vláčil's films have] a painter’s eye for telling and / or dissonant detail, an intensely realized sense of period and place, a preference for music over dialogue and a strong affinity with landscapes and their natural flora and fauna [...] the wild sprawl of Marketa Lazarová and the formal rigor of The Valley of the Bees, rank alongside Bergman’s The Seventh Seal and The Virgin Spring, Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev and Welles’s Chimes at Midnight as the most convincing evocations of the medieval era ever committed to film.”  

The Valley of the Bees is the final installment in František Vláčil’s trilogy of historical epics (directly following his most widely heralded work, Marketa Lazarová (1967) and its predecessor The Devil’s Trap (1962). As stated previously, the narrative is simple and swift. Set in thirteenth-century Europe, youthful Ondrej (Petr Čepek) offends his father who nearly kills him in a fit of rage. Instantly regretting his violence, the father swears to God that—if Ondrej is allowed to live—his father will commit him to join the repressive religious order of the Teutonic Knights. Ondrej survives and is punished accordingly. While training with the knights, Ondrej befriends and is mentored by Armin (Jan Kačer), recently returned from the Crusades, who aims to instill in Ondrej passionate abstinence from all things natural. There’s a strong homoerotic tinge to his blatant miosogyny (as there so frequently is) and—when Ondrej, unable to stand it any longer, escapes from the Order—Armin feels compelled to pursue him to punish him for his betrayal, behaving as emotionally as a spurned lover. 

Ondrej’s determination to escape Armin’s retribution reminds me of the seminal fantasy housed within Nikos Kazantzakis’ The Last Temptation of Christ where a life separated from religious fundamentalism is imagined through a veil of pain. Ondrej wants only to be personally free to return home to lead a normal life with a wife and children. In his fanaticism Armin seeks to destroy that fantasy, which he has been indoctrinated to believe is sin.