Starts Friday July 21

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MAUDIE, based on a true story, is an unlikely romance in which the reclusive Everett Lewis (Ethan Hawke) hires a fragile yet determined woman named Maudie (Sally Hawkins) to be his housekeeper. Maudie, bright-eyed but hunched with crippled hands, yearns to be independent, to live away from her protective family and she also yearns, passionately, to create art. Unexpectedly, Everett finds himself falling in love. MAUDIE charts Everett's efforts to protect himself from being hurt, Maudie's deep and abiding love for this difficult man and her surprising rise to fame as a folk painter.

A striking, charming portrait of a woman who has every reason to surrender to pessimism but found a life of simple contentment with a most unlikely partner. An unsentimental but emotional film with a remarkable performance by Hawkins, whose impossibly wide smile seems to bring the sun.

One Night Only! Sunday July 23 - 7pm

Badlands announced the arrival of a major talent: Terrence Malick. His impressionistic take on the notorious Charles Starkweather killing spree of the late 1950s uses a serial-killer narrative as a springboard for an oblique teenage romance, lovingly and idiosyncratically enacted by Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek. The film introduced many of the elements that would earn Malick his passionate following: the enigmatic approach to narrative and character, the unusual use of voice-over, the juxtaposition of human violence with natural beauty, the poetic investigation of American dreams and nightmares. This debut has spawned countless imitations, but none have equaled its strange sublimity.

New, restored 4K digital transfer, approved by director Terrence Malick

One Night Only! Thursday July 27 - 7pm

Join us as AK PRESS and BLACKBIRD present a night of radical film, books and community discussion. Featuring two new 30 min. films from the anarchist collective subMedia: NO JUSTICE… JUST US looks at he strategies and tactics that the state will use against us, how to build our own infrastructure to defend against these attacks, and incorporate meaningful solidarity and collective defense into all facets of our organizing. BASH THE FASH examines the rise of reactionary right-wing politics in the wake the Trump’ presidency in order to get a better understanding of just what it is that we’re up against, what a viable strategy for confronting this threat might look like, and what steps we can take in order to mount an effective response. Proceeds from the screening and the sale of (cheap!) AK PRESS books will benefit J20 legal defense. $5 - $10 suggested donation, no one turned away for lack of funds.

On January 20, 2017, tens of thousands of people converged in Washington, D.C. for the #DisruptJ20 protests to oppose the inauguration of Donald Trump. An “anticapitalist and antifascist” march was brutally attacked by police, who used chemical and crowd control weapons along with physical force on protesters, including children, the elderly, and people with disabilities. Everyone on an entire city block was arrested and given the same charge of felony rioting. Approximately 214 arrestees now face a total of eight felony charges, including conspiracy and destruction of property. All of the J20 defendants are now facing up to 75 years in prison.

With these heightened charges the state is trying to set a precedent for harsh crackdowns of disruptive protest in the future, so that Trump can proceed with his agenda unimpeded by anything but symbolic hand-wringing. This strategy corresponds with a broader wave of repression and reaction, from the arrests and grand jury investigations of Indigenous water protectors at Standing Rock to backlash against Black Lives Matter.

The charges against J20 defendants are an experiment. If the courts are able to successfully prosecute those arrested at J20, this will send a green light to the forces of repression seeking to contain, control, and eliminate social movements around the country. Just as all of our struggles are connected, we understand these arrests to represent a real threat to all efforts towards true freedom, dignity, and autonomy. We call for the immediate dropping of all charges, and express our sincere solidarity with and support for those arrested, and encourage others to do so as well.

Starts Friday July 28

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Through renowned father of the midnight movies Alejandro Jodorowsky's intensely personal lens, ENDLESS POETRY tells the story of his years spent as an aspiring poet in Chile in the 1940's. Against the wishes of his authoritarian father, the 20 year-old Alejandro Jodorowsky (Adan Jodorowsky, Alejandro's son), leaves home to pursue his dream of becoming a poet, and is introduced into the bohemian and artistic inner circle of Santiago where he meets Enrique Lihn (Leandro Taub), Stella Diaz Varín (Pamela Flores), Nicanor Parra (Felipe Rios), all unknown at the time, but who would later become driving forces of twentieth century Hispanic literature. Living with these inspirational artists, Jodorowsky's exploration of his inner feelings takes him on a journey of sensual experimentation leading him to realize his innermost desires and passions. Continuing the autobiographical story he began in THE DANCE OF REALITY, ENDLESS POETRY is an ode to the quest for beauty and inner truth, as a universal force capable of changing one's life forever, written by a man who has dedicated his existence to creating spiritual and artistic awareness, told through Jodorowsky's unique surreal and psychedelic visual language.

One Night Only! Saturday July 29 - 11pm / Doors 10pm with THE BUKOWSKI TAPES

Louis Armstrong was trying to explain jazz one day, and he finally gave up and said, "There are some folks that, if they don't know, you can't tell 'em." The world of Charles Bukowski, the poet of Skid Row, could be addressed in the same way. Bukowski’s screenplay of BARFLY is a semi-autobiography of the writer during his youth drinking heavily in Los Angeles.

Henry Chinaski (Mikey Rourke) never cared for the American dream. Henry spends his days drinking and listening to the radio, and he spends his nights drinking and fighting. In the middle of this he finds the time to jot down a few lines of poetry and meets and falls in love with a distressed goddess named Wanda (Faye Dunaway). When one of Henry’s poems is published it brings him a brief shot at fame and fortune. But Henry and Wanda have only one real goal in life: drinking.

Director by Barbet Schroeder commissioned the original screenplay by Bukowski and then spent eight years trying to get it made. Indeed, he committed to filming Bukowski's screenplay exactly as written, in all its rambling, romantic detail. Rourke and Dunaway take their characters as opportunities to stretch as actors, to take chances and do extreme things.The result is a truly original American movie, a film like no other.

Come early for a THE BUKOWSKI TAPES!

One Night Only! Sunday July 30 - 7pm

Stanley Kubrick’s painfully funny take on Cold War anxiety is one of the fiercest satires of human folly ever to come out of Hollywood. The matchless shape-shifter Peter Sellers plays three wildly different roles: Royal Air Force Captain Lionel Mandrake, timidly trying to stop a nuclear attack on the USSR ordered by an unbalanced general (Sterling Hayden); the ineffectual and perpetually dumbfounded U.S. President Merkin Muffley, who must deliver the very bad news to the Soviet premier; and the titular Strangelove himself, a wheelchair-bound presidential adviser with a Nazi past. Finding improbable hilarity in nearly every unimaginable scenario, Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb is a subversive masterpiece that officially announced Kubrick as an unparalleled stylist and pitch-black ironist

New, restored 4K digital transfer

One Night Only! Wednesday August 2 - 7pm / Filmmaker In Person!

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Dave, an artist who has yet to complete anything significant in his career, builds a fort in his living room out of pure frustration, only to wind up trapped by the fantastical pitfalls, booby traps, and critters of his own creation. Ignoring his warnings, Dave's girlfriend Annie leads a band of oddball explorers on a rescue mission. Once inside, they find themselves trapped in an ever-changing supernatural world, threatened by booby traps and pursued by a bloodthirsty Minotaur.

Filmmaker John Charles Meyer will be in attendance to intro the film and Q & A after the screening!

Starts Friday August 4

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With A GHOST STORY, acclaimed director David Lowery (AIN'T THEM BODIES SAINTS, PETE'S DRAGON) returns with a singular exploration of legacy, loss, and the essential human longing for meaning and connection. Recently deceased, a white-sheeted ghost (Academy Award-winner Casey Affleck) returns to his suburban home to console his bereft wife (Academy Award-nominee Rooney Mara), only to find that in his spectral state he has become unstuck in time, forced to watch passively as the life he knew and the woman he loves slowly slip away. Increasingly unmoored, the ghost embarks on a cosmic journey through memory and history, confronting life's ineffable questions and the enormity of existence. An unforgettable meditation on love and grief, A GHOST STORY emerges ecstatic and surreal - a wholly unique experience that lingers long after the credits roll.

One Night Only! Sunday August 6 - 7pm

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TURN IT AROUND: THE STORY OIF EAST BAY PUNK explores Northern California’s pivotal role in evolution of punk rock - the loud, intense and anti-authoritarian philosophy of music and politics that arose in the late 1970s. Early San Francisco Bay Area punk pioneers like Dead Kennedys, Avengers and Flipper as well as the Maximum Rocknroll fanzine helped take the punk underground global. As the once-vibrant local scene became wrought with violence, corruption and racism, punks over the bridge in the East Bay responded by creating a fun and inclusive style of punk that also carried on the region’s tradition of radical thought. Banding together around Berkeley’s all- volunteer 924 Gilman Club, this diverse collective of misfits created a do-it-yourself, no-spectators’ petri dish for art & music that changed the Bay Area punk scene… and the world at large. Narrated by Iggy Pop, TURN IT AROUND: THE STORY OIF EAST BAY PUNK is told by the people who were there.