Special Event | 7.1 Soundtrack Rochester Premieres There's a noise in the middle of the night. It is loud and unidentifiable. For the next two hours, it will recur time and time again. It always sounds the same, but it never becomes more easily describable. Jessica (Tilda Swinton) seems to be the only person who can hear it. Is it only for her, and can it even be explained? 

Silent Tuesdays On July 21, 1926, Warner Bros. announced that their upcoming feature Don Juan, starring John Barrymore, would be the first film to utilize their Vitaphone process. This technique required both a 35mm print of the film as well as a set of sound discs to be played alongside, synchronized and amplified into the theater. Less than a month later, the film had its world premiere at the Warners’ Theatre in New York City.

Noir ’47: The Year Darkness Came to Light The remaining films in our Noir ’47 series were all nominated for Academy Awards the following year, demonstrating the quality of the film noirs released that year. Kiss of Death’s most famous nomination was for Richard Widmark’s indelible supporting performance as Tommy Udo, a psychotic criminal on a path of revenge.

Eco-Anxiety In 2014, seventy-nine countries decided to combat global warming with a worldwide cooling experiment. The result left the world in a deep freeze, killing most life on the planet. In 2031, the remaining humans all live on a perpetually moving elevated train called Snowpiercer

Labor Film Series In 2014, Chinese billionaire Cao Dewong opened a Fuyao auto glass manufacturing plant near Dayton, Ohio, six years after General Motors shuttered their plant there. For the local workforce, this represented a new opportunity for hope, to once again earn regular employment and security for their families.

ImageOut of the Archive | The New Classics (Wong Kar-wai, Hong Kong/Japan/South Koreas 1997, 96 min., DCP)

Noir '47: The Year Darkness Came to Light Even Charlie Chaplin was not immune to the lure of film noir in 1947, and earned his second Academy Award nomination for writing (after The Great Dictator) for Monsieur Verdoux. Henri Verdoux (Chaplin) has lost his job at the bank he worked at for thirty years.

MEMBER MOVIE NIGHT | Eco-Anxiety In a near future where melting ice caps have covered large sections of the American coast, a tight-knit community lives on the water at the mouth of the Mississippi Delta.

Labor Film Series A documentary about the American Dream, Family Business focuses on a single family in Muncie, Indiana. Howie Snyder has seemingly done everything right. After serving his country in the US Marine Corps, he returns home to his wife and nine children hoping to start his own business, purchasing a franchise in the Shakey’s Pizza chain.

Silent Tuesdays One of the great silent movie cowboys, William S. Hart was—much like his peer “Broncho” Billy Anderson—a writer, director, and producer as well. Hart fulfills all of those roles in The Narrow Trail, where he stars as Ice Harding, an escaped outlaw, ambivalent about his future life in crime.

Halloween An action-horror hybrid from Senegal, Saloum is director Jean Luc Herbulot’s second feature film. The action begins during the 2003 coup d’état in Guinea-Bissau, as a trio of mercenaries known as Bangui’s Hyenas extract a drug dealer—along with his gold and drugs.

Polish Film Festival | Three Colors Trilogy Blue is the color of sadness, coolness, detachment, and freedom. After Julie (Juliette Binoche) survives a car crash that kills her husband and daughter, she attempts to break all ties with her former life, selling her house, adopting her maiden name, and moving to a neighborhood where no one will know her.

Labor Film Series Director Matthew Heineman (Cartel Land, A Private War) was given remarkable access to New York City health care facilities between March and June of 2020, the first four months the COVID-19 pandemic hit the United States.

Leave Her to Heaven Gene Tierney’s acting career can sometimes be overlooked, despite roles in such films as Laura, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, and Heaven Can Wait. She received her only Academy Award nomination for her role in Leave Her to Heaven, a noir en couleur, in which she plays an jealous wife who “loves too much.”

Silent Tuesdays One of only four films German emigré Paul Leni directed in Hollywood before his untimely death, The Man Who Laughs is his most iconic. In it, he reunites with fellow German Conrad Veidt, who takes on the role of Gwynplaine, who, as a small boy, was disfigured by decree of King James II so that he has a permanent wide grin.

Make Mine Musicals Frank Sinatra shines in this postwar musical. Danny Miller (Sinatra), after finishing his military service, returns to Brooklyn to work as a song-plugger and live with friend Nick Lombardi (Jimmy Durante).

Polish Film Festival | Three Colors Trilogy White is the color of weddings, blinding passion, newly fallen snow, and equality. Karol Karol (Zbigniew Zamachowski), a Polish immigrant hairdresser in France, marries French citizen Dominique (Julie Delpy) after a whirlwind romance.

Labor Film Series Sundance triple award winner and Kosovo’s official submission for the Academy Awards, Hive is a searing drama based on the true story of Fahrije (Yllka Gashi), who, like many of the other women in her patriarchal village, has lived with fading hope and burgeoning grief since her husband went missing during the war in Kosovo.

Noir ‘47: The Year Darkness Came to Light John Garfield received his only Best Actor nomination for this story of a man caught up in the corrupt world of boxing. Charley Davis (Garfield), an amateur boxer, becomes the only source of income for his family when his father is killed when a bomb is thrown into a nearby speakeasy.