The Pageant Theatre

VERONIKA VOSS

Rainer Werner Fassbinder

  • 104 minutes
  • 1982
  • German with English subtitles
  • March 29 - 31

    A once-beloved Third Reich–era starlet, Veronika Voss (Rosel Zech) lives in obscurity in postwar Munich. Struggling for survival and haunted by past glories, she encounters sportswriter Robert Krohn (Hilmar Thate) in a rain-swept park and intrigues him with her mysterious beauty. As their unlikely relationship develops, Robert comes to discover the dark secrets that brought about the decline of Veronika’s career. Based on the true story of a World War II Ufa star, filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s penultimate film of his legendary career, VERONIKA VOSS is wicked satire disguised as a 1950s melodrama.

    Friday March 29 --- 7pm

    Saturday March 30 --- 5:30pm

    Sunday March 31 --- 1:45pm

    PLEASE NOTE: FILMS BEGIN AT POSTED SHOWTIMES

BLADE RUNNER: Final Cut

Ridley Scott

  • 117 minutes
  • 1982
  • English
  • March 29 - 31

    Visually spectacular, intensely action-packed and powerfully prophetic, Ridley Scott’s definitive Final Cut of his sci-fi classic BLADE RUNNER is one of the most influential and achingly beautiful films of all time. A dazzling fusion of retro-noir and futuristic paranoia, the film is set in a decaying Los Angeles and follows a government-sanctioned killer (Harrison Ford) as he hunts down Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer) and his rogue band of genetically engineered replicants and is drawn to a mystery woman whose secrets may undermine his soul. Based on Phillip K Dick’s cult novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.

    Friday March 29 --- 4:15pm

    Saturday March 30 --- 8pm

    Sunday March 31 --- 4:15pm

    PLEASE NOTE: FILMS BEGIN AT POSTED SHOWTIMES

THEY SHOT THE PIANO PLAYER

Fernando Trueba, Javier Mariscal

  • 103 minutes
  • 2023
  • English
  • March 31

    Special Event Screening! One Night Only!

    A New York music journalist (voiced by Jeff Goldblum) goes on a quest to uncover the truth behind the mysterious disappearance of young Brazilian piano virtuoso Tenorio Jr. A celebratory origin story of the world-renowned Latino musical movement Bossa Nova, THEY SHOT THE PIANO PLAYER captures a fleeting time bursting with creative freedom at a turning point in Latin American history in the 60s and 70s, just before the continent was engulfed by totalitarian regimes. Animated in visually exuberant playful riot of colors, THEY SHOT THE PIANO PLAYER is a mystery story, history and celebration of a rich musical era, told through the words of some of its leading musicians.

    Sunday March 31 --- 7pm

    PLEASE NOTE: FILMS BEGIN AT POSTED SHOWTIMES

LABELS: Lives Behind the Labels

Chris Smith

  • 40 minutes
  • 2023
  • English
  • April 4

    Special Event All Seats $5

    Recently part of an interactive exhibit at Museum of Northern California Art (MONCA), we present a special viewing of the local documentary by Chris Smith in collaboration with the Labels project. Homelessness has become a present and pressing issue right here in our own community and across the world. Housing costs have outstripped the ability to afford shelter and lives have been shattered by disasters and personal traumas. This thought-provoking film touches on the lives of members of our Chico area community who have or are experiencing homelessness and offers insights that reach across the divide.

    Join us in discussion after the film (film is apx 40 minutes)

    Thursday April 4 --- 6:30pm

    PLEASE NOTE: FILMS BEGIN AT POSTED SHOWTIMES

COME AND SEE

Elem Klimov

  • 142 minutes
  • 1982
  • Russian and German with English subtitles
  • April 5 - 7

    This legendary film from Soviet director Elem Klimov is a senses-shattering plunge into the dehumanizing horrors of war. As Nazi forces encroach on his small village in what is now known as Belarus, teenage Flyora (Alexei Kravchenko, in a searing depiction of anguish) eagerly joins the Soviet resistance. Rather than the adventure and glory he envisioned, what he finds is a waking nightmare of unimaginable carnage and cruelty—rendered with a feverish, otherworldly intensity by Klimov’s subjective camera work and expressionistic sound design. Nearly blocked from being made by Soviet censors, who took seven years to approve its script, COME AND SEE is perhaps the most visceral, impossible-to-forget antiwar film ever made.

    Friday April 5 --- 4pm

    Saturday April 6 --- 7pm

    Sunday April 7 --- 4pm

    PLEASE NOTE: FILMS BEGIN AT POSTED SHOWTIMES

CAT PEOPLE

Jacques Tourneur

  • 73 minutes
  • 1942
  • English
  • April 5 - 7

    Simone Simon stars as a Serbian émigré in Manhattan who believes that, because of an ancient curse, any physical intimacy with the man she loves (Kent Smith) will turn her into a feline predator. Lewton, a consummate producer-auteur who oversaw every aspect of his projects, found an ideal director in Jacques Tourneur, a chiaroscuro stylist adept at keeping viewers off-kilter with startling compositions and psychological innuendo. Together, they eschewed the canned effects of earlier monster movies in favor of shocking with subtle shadows and creative audio cues. The first of the horror films producer Val Lewton made for RKO Pictures redefined the genre by leaving its most frightening terrors to its audience’s imagination. One of the studio’s most successful movies of the 1940s, CAT PEOPLE raised the creature feature to new heights of sophistication and mystery.

    Friday April 5 --- 7pm

    Saturday April 6 --- 5pm

    Sunday April 7 --- 2pm

    PLEASE NOTE: FILMS BEGIN AT POSTED SHOWTIMES

ORIGIN

Ava DuVernay

  • 135 minutes
  • 2023
  • English
  • April 6 - 7

    Inspired by the New York Times Best-Seller CASTE: THE ORIGINS OF OUR DISCONTENTS. While grappling with tremendous personal tragedy, Isabel sets herself on a path of global investigation and discovery. Despite the colossal scope of her project, she finds beauty and bravery while crafting one of the defining American books of our time. A moving drama that's unafraid to ask big questions, ORIGIN honors its source material with powerful performances in service of a deeply emotional story.

    Saturday April 6 --- 2pm

    Sunday April 7 --- 7pm

    PLEASE NOTE: FILMS BEGIN AT POSTED SHOWTIMES

PROBLEMISTA

Julio Torres

  • 142 minutes
  • 2023
  • English
  • April 11 - 14

    Alejandro (Julio Torres) is an aspiring toy designer from El Salvador, struggling to bring his unusual ideas to life in New York City. As time on his work visa runs out, a job assisting an erratic art-world outcast (Tilda Swinton) becomes his only hope to stay in the country and realize his dream. From writer/director Julio Torres comes a surreal adventure through the equally treacherous worlds of New York City and the U.S. Immigration system. Torres' utterly unique sensibilities prove a perfectly cracked lens through which to find the surreal humor in bleak aspects of the human experience.

    Thursday April 11 --- 7pm

    Friday April 12 --- 4:30pm and 7pm

    Saturday April 13 --- 2pm, 4:30pm and 7pm

    Sunday April 14 --- 2pm and 4:30pm

    PLEASE NOTE: FILMS BEGIN AT POSTED SHOWTIMES

OPEN COUNTRY

Jesse Drew, Glenda Drew

  • 86 minutes
  • 2023
  • English
  • April 25

    Special one night only event! Filmmakers in person for intro and post film Q and A and local acoustic roots musicians THE FAMILY BAND will play a live pre-show set starting at 6:30! Co-presented with KZFR. All seats $10 a benefit for the PAGEANT THEATER!

    OPEN COUNTRY is a journey into the roots of American Country music. Although one wouldn’t realize it from listening to today’s pop Country-Western radio stations, country music has been anything but a rightwing soundtrack. To the contrary, the roots of Country and Western lie firmly in classic American traditions of resistance to capital and defense of the right of workers, poor farmers, and the dispossessed to live their lives in dignity and freedom. OPEN COUNTRY repositions country music into its rightful place as a people’s music. Featuring interviews with Billy Bragg, Mat Callahan, Hazel Dickens, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Jon Langford, Utah Phillips, Pete Seeger and many more.

    Thursday April 25 --- Doors and live music 6:30pm / film 7pm with post film Q & A

LA CHIMERA

Alice Rohrwacher

  • 130 minutes
  • 2023
  • Italian with English subtitles
  • April 26 - 28

    Everyone has their own Chimera, something they try to achieve but never manage to find. For the band of tombaroli, thieves of ancient grave goods and archaeological wonders, the Chimera means redemption from work and the dream of easy wealth. For Arthur, the Chimera looks like the woman he lost, Beniamina. To find her, Arthur challenges the invisible, searches everywhere, goes inside the earth -- in search of the door to the afterlife of which myths speak. In an adventurous journey between the living and the dead, between forests and cities, between celebrations and solitudes, the intertwined destinies of these characters unfold, all in search of the Chimera. Clever, ambitious, and funny throughout, an intelligent meditation on our attitudes toward life, love, and death, there’s nothing quite like LA CHIMERA. Starring Josh O'Connor, Carol Duarte, Alba Rohrwacher, and Isabella Rossellini

    Friday April 26 --- 4pm and 7pm

    Saturday April 27 --- 4pm and 7pm

    Sunday April 28 --- 1pm and 4pm

    PLEASE NOTE: FILMS BEGIN AT POSTED SHOWTIMES

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