In small-town Lumberton, USA, Jeffrey Beaumont (MacLachlan), recently home from college, discovers a severed ear. Along with the sweet Sandy (Laura Dern), Jeffrey investigates and soon becomes enmeshed in Lumberton’s underworld and with troubled nightclub singer Dorothy Valens (Rossellini). Hopper is absolutely unforgettable as the psychotic, raving fetishist Frank Booth, who keeps Dorothy for his personal slave. After the box-office disaster of Dune, writer-director Lynch and producer Dino De Laurentiis re-teamed for this frightening, funny, and brilliantly surreal thriller that was a milestone for auteurist, art-house filmmaking in the 1980s. A 4K DCP will be screened.

You’ve never seen a Taiwanese martial arts movie like this one! Two sword-wielding sisters out to avenge the massacre of their family seek a confrontation with the villains who murdered their family. But these are no ordinary villains—they’re wizards with giant, elasticized tongues who use black magic to control . . . kung fu gorillas! Starring the magnificent Judy Lee (Queen Boxer) and the fierce Carter Wong (Big Trouble in Little China), this whacked-out action movie blends fever dream imagery with exceptional fight choreography to deliver an otherworldly experience. A new DCP, made from the best known existing 35mm elements, will be screened, preceded by a selection of trailers for the most bonkers kung fu movies of the 70s and 80s.

After discovering the murdered body of a young girl deep in a mountainous forest, a hardened homicide detective pushes himself to increasingly obsessive ends in his quest to catch the serial killer responsible for the crime. An existential mystery that unfolds with the imagery and logic of a fever dream, Twilight is the much admired but long unavailable masterpiece by influential Hungarian auteur and regular Béla Tarr collaborator György Fehér. The stunning black and white cinematography is by Miklós Gurbán, who also lensed Tarr’s Werckmeister Harmonies, screening July 14.

The second feature from the director of Drive My Car, Passion was Hamaguchi’s thesis project at Tokyo University of the Arts, and it lays the thematic foundations for what would become his internationally renowned body of work. Unfolding over a few hours, the story begins with the announcement of a young couple’s engagement, leading to a long night where they separately reckon with past relationships. Infused with emotional clarity and honesty, “Hamaguchi’s script offers florid arias of confrontation and self-revelation; in his striking repertoire of visual compositions, including flurries of urgent closeups and thrillingly panoramic long takes, the poised and assertive actors seem to fill not just the screen but the city itself with his prose” (Richard Brody, The New Yorker).

Meyer’s most-elaborate production follows Kelly, Casey, and Pet, buxom members of the female rock group The Carrie Nations who find themselves at the dizzying height of an LA music scene filled with treachery, drug abuse, and sexual perversity. Part comedy, part rock musical (with terrific songs!), part over-the-top melodrama, BVD has gradually become one of the most beloved of early-Seventies counterculture films. The witty, wonderfully pulpy screenplay was written by frequent Meyer collaborator Roger Ebert.

The title of Eustache’s cinematic memoir, his best known feature after The Mother and the Whore, literally translates to “my little loves.” Authentic and engaging, there’s not much that’s cute or sentimental in Eustache’s story of a lonely adolescent boy who is taken from his grandmother's home in the country to live with his mother and stepfather in the city. This wonderful, sometimes heartbreaking movie about the discovery of sexuality and adulthood features lovely cinematography by Nestor Almendros (The Wild Child, Days of Heaven).

After living as an Israeli citizen for years, the Palestinian-born Sami (Bakri) returns home to the Arab village of his youth to attend his brother’s wedding. After the wedding, Sami’s hometown is put under a military lockdown by an Israeli blockade, effectively cutting him off from the outside world. As he deals with questions about his own identity and hidden secrets are revealed, Sami watches everything he holds dear begin to fall apart. The latest movie from the writer/director of The Band’s Visit, Let it Be Morning “presents a timely, pointed, at times cleverly satirical snapshot of Israeli-Palestinian relations. It also offers an often poignant look at a dysfunctional family at the center of it all” (Los Angeles Times). Presented with the support of UW-Madison’s Middle Eastern and Mediterranean Language Institute (MEDLI) summer program June 19-August 11 and Institute for Regional and International Studies National Resource Center (IRIS NRC).

With humor and honesty, Fellini drew upon his adolescence to masterfully tell the story of five aimless young men who slowly come to realize that their futures in their small-town are not looking so bright. From American Graffiti to Diner to Mean Streets, Fellini influenced personal filmmaking for many years to come with his splintered storyline, melancholic moods, and "wandering" camera. A new 4K DCP will be screened.

Turn of the century small-town Wisconsin is the setting for this underrated Sirk melodrama featuring a fiery Stanwyck as a failed actress who returns to (the fictional) Riverdale years after abandoning her husband (a terrific Carlson) and children to pursue her career. Based on a sharply-titled novel, Stopover by Carol Ryrie Brink, and saddled, against the director’s wishes, with a happy ending, Desire is nonetheless a typically and effectively scathing Sirkian indictment against the petty moralism of America’s middle-class and middle-west. (BR)