encore screenings: the saragossa manuscript and my friend ivan lapshin may 21 - 26, 1999 photo: THE SARAGOSSA MANUSCRIPT

calendar walter reade theater box office and ticket information Encore Screening! THE SARAGOSSA MANUSCRIPT A newly restored and subtitled print presented by Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola in dedication to Jerry Garcia Wojciech Has, Poland, 1964; 175m After falling in love with the two-hour version of SARAGOSSA that was virtually a cult item in the counterculture 60s, the Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia learned that the original three-hour version had never been released in the U.S. He enlisted the help of Pacific Film Archive's Edith Kramer in a years-long process of restoring the film to its lost glory but, sadly, died before the completion of his dream. Martin Scorsese took up the torch and then Francis Ford Coppola, another ardent supporter of SARAGOSSA.

MY FRIEND IVAN LAPSHIN

This mesmerizing film follows the fantastic travels of Belgian Captain Alphonse van Worden (Zbigniew Cybulski, Poland's James Dean) through 18th-century Spain, during which he becomes embroiled in a wonderful web of ghosts, Moorish princesses, cabalists, gypsies, haunted gallows and Chaucerian cuckolds. Adapted from Jan Potocki's 1813 novel, this elegant wide-screen superproduction faithfully reproduces the chinese-box narrative structure of its source. Fri May 21: 2 pm & 6:15 pm; Sun May 23: 6 pm Mon May 24: 2 pm & 6:15 pm Wed May 26: 2 pm Encore Screening! MY FRIEND IVAN LAPSHIN Alexei Guerman, Soviet Union, 1986; 100m Alexei Guerman was finally allowed to make his fourth film in 1982, 13 years after submitting a script to Soviet authorities. It was then withheld from release until 1985, when it premiered at the Moscow Film Festival, and word of its greatness spread like wildfire around the globe. Since then, MY FRIEND IVAN LAPSHIN has come to be regarded not only as the most powerful work of the Glasnost era (in a poll of Russian critcs, it was voted one of the ten best Soviet films of all time) but one of the true masterpieces of modern cinema. Based on an autobiographical text by Guerman's father, Yuri, IVAN LAPSHIN is an intrepid mix of bold stylistic moves and narrative devices dedicated to a singular (and singularly brave) purpose: the illumination of a particular moment in the Soviet past, the memory of which government officials were eager to erase. In 1935, on the eve of Stalin's purges, Ivan Lapshin (Andrei Boltnev) is an idealistic police investigator who will stop at nothing to eradicate a band of criminals plaguing his provincial northern Russian town. Natasha (Nina Ruslanova), the actress whom Ivan adores, is in love with his best friend. Most of the action is centered around the communal flats where Lapshin and his friends live. But Guerman's real aim is not so much to tell a story but rather to bring a dead historical moment back to life, to recreate not just its look but its feel. "The story I am telling is about the real life of these people," said Guerman, "their faith, their melancholy, the fact that they go straight ahead toward communism without understanding that the road is long and dangerous. Maybe these people included my father and my mother." Sat May 22: 4 pm & 8 pm; Sun May 23: 4 pm Tues May 25: 2 pm & 4 pm