Although Josef von Sternberg's oeuvre is often linked with actress Marlene Dietrich, this director's relatively unknown early work was accomplished largely without the German diva. A six-film series includes two silent films that established his reputation as a poet of setting and mood. Special thanks to Il Cinema Ritrovato, Bologna, Library of Congress, and to the UCLA Film and Television Archive for 35 mm prints.

The photographs, films, and media installations of Hungarian avant-garde artist Péter Forgács captivate with their unique combination of style and layered historical content. While his themes are not easy — family, war, philosophy, vanishing times and places — the films themselves are magical, constructing ephemeral spaces from amateur footage and forgotten texts. Forgács' introductory lecture will be followed by three recent films.

The early films of Sir David Lean (1908–1991) have been restored for his centennial by the British Film Institute National Archive, Granada International, and Studio Canal. Although Lean's later 70 mm epics are generally better known, these films of the 1940s are so elegant and alive, so well written and constructed that, penned critic David Thomson, "they seem in love with the screen's power."

Latvian-born Finnish actor and director Teuvo Tulio (1912 – 2000) forged a distinctive style in the late 1930s, loading his wildly melodramatic narratives with exaggerated metaphor and feeling. Starkly beautiful Scandinavian nature cinematography mirrors emotion—rivers surge when love is realized; a tempest rages when anger swells. Although Tulio's films are rarely screened today, the celebrated contemporary Finnish filmmakers Mika and Aki Kaurismäki acknowledge their stylistic debt to him. These four works from the 1930s and 1940s are presented through the cooperation of the National Audiovisual Archive, Helsinki, with special thanks to Satu Laaksonen, Florence Almozini, Adrienne Mancia, and Kathy Geritz.

In association with the exhibition Looking In: Robert Frank's "The Americans," this program surveys in six sections the artist-made and avant-garde film movement of the 1950s and early 1960s. Themes and subject matter often overlap with contemporary art, photography, and music as filmmakers find a language for interior thought and expression.

Born a generation apart in Barcelona, Pere Portabella (b. 1929) and José Luis Guerín (b. 1960) share a genius for making uniquely imaginative works of uncommon breadth and beauty. Although their interests are different, both combine fictional and documentary elements to explore mythology, memory, and art as well as the mundane facets of daily life. Interspersed throughout are fascinating diversions and strange junctures of sights and sounds. Coinciding with Preview Spain Arts and Culture, the Gallery wishes to thank the Embassy of Spain, Helena Goma, Mary Baron, Linda Lilienfeld, and Filmoteca de Catalunya.

The filmmaker who ushered in the Japanese New Wave in the late 1950s, Nagisa Oshima (b. 1932, Kyoto), rejected the genteel tenor of Japanese filmmaking and chose as his métier the turmoil of contemporary politics and culture. Imperfect characters from society's fringes were his vehicles for complex and often controversial ideas, while his formal brilliance won accolades around the world. This series, organized by James Quandt, Cinematheque Ontario, and The Japan Foundation, Tokyo, is presented in Washington at the Freer Gallery of Art, the American Film Institute, and the National Gallery of Art.

Conservators and curators from the UK and US disclose details of the history, iconography, and preservation of one of the great works by Jan van Eyck in the National Gallery's collection. (BBC, 2006, digital beta, 50 minutes)

Introduction by Martin Winkler

British playwright Wilson Barrett's Victorian melodrama was the source for Cecil B. DeMille's lavish epic about early Christians in Nero's Rome. This precode archival print preserves the director’s fondness for an "extravagant fantasia on Roman pomp"—Andrew Sarris. (Cecil B. DeMille, 35 mm, print from UCLA Film and Television Archive, 1932, 124 minutes)

Following Robert Frank's footsteps fifty years after The Americans, French filmmaker Philippe Séclier retraces Frank's trip around the United States in 1955 and 1956. Using the same unplanned, intuitive approach Frank pioneered, and working with only a small digital camera, Séclier explores the spirit of the Beat Generation and the impact of The Americans on photography and culture in his 15,000-mile odyssey through present-day America. (Philippe Séclier, 2008, digital beta, 60 minutes)

Introduction by Bernard Génin

A rare assemblage of line drawing animations from the Gaumont Pathé Archives includes caricaturist Émile Cohl's earliest moving images—Fantasmagorie (1908) and Le Cauchemar du Fantoche (1908)—as well as others with the whimsical Fantoche, the prototype for many later cartoon characters. Bernard Génin, author of Émile Cohl, the Inventor of the Animated Film (2008), introduces the program. (approximately 85 minutes)

Films restored by Les Archives Françaises du Film

Augustus Saint-Gaudens' key position in the history of American art and culture is the subject of a new film biography revolving around six works, including Standing Lincoln in Chicago's Lincoln Park, the Shaw Memorial in Boston, the Sherman Monument in New York, and the Adams Memorial in Washington. (Paul Sanderson, digital video, 2007, 74 minutes.) Paul Sanderson introduces the film on Sunday only.

Presented in connection with Living the Legacy: Lincoln in Washington, DC

Five new examples from France illustrate the beauty and versatility of the shortfilm form: 200,000 Fantômes (Jean-Gabriel Périot, 2007, 10 minutes); La dernière journée (Olivier Bourbeillon, 2007, 12 minutes); Mic Jean-Louis (Kathy Sebbah, 2007, 26 minutes); Pina Colada (Alice Winocour, 2008, 15 minutes); and L’Enfant borne (Pascal Mieszala, 2007, 15 minutes).

Stephen Horne on piano

Asian-American icon Anna May Wong flourished in Germany for a brief time in the 1920s. One of her triumphs was this obliquely romantic tale of unrequited love between a waif and a knife thrower, a Madame Butterfly scenario filled with dance and cabaret. Made at the renowned Babelsberg Studios, the film's original title was Schmutziges Geld (Dirty Money). (Richard Eichberg, 1928, English intertitles, silent with live accompaniment by London pianist Stephen Horne, 94 minutes)

Named for Thomas Edison's pioneering West Orange, New Jersey, film studio, the "Black Maria," this renowned festival competition is now in its twenty-eighth year. A selection of the best cutting-edge experimental shorts and documentaries culled from the December 2008 judging is introduced by the Black Maria Festival's director, John Columbus. (approximately 120 minutes)

Selections include the following: A Horse is Not a Metaphor (Barbara Hammer, 30 minutes); Ice Bears of the Beaufort (Arthur C. Smith, 52 minutes); Nora (Alla Kovgen, 35 minutes); Yours Truly (Osbert Parker, 7 minutes); Bob's Knee (Michael Attie, 4 minutes); The Sheriff (Jeff Giordano, 13 minutes); Five Days in July (Esther Podemski, 10 minutes); Utopia Variations (Gregg Biermann, 5 minutes); The Last Butcher in Little Italy (Laura Terruso, 6 minutes); Like Other People Do (Alex Kelly, 5 minutes); Davy Crockett in Outer Space (Ru Kuwahata, 2 minutes); Temporary Services (Dina Noto, 4 minutes); The Idiot Stinks (Helder K. Sun, 2 minutes); The World's Largest Shopping Mall (Sam Green, 12 minutes); How to Disappear Without a Trace (Jane Steuerwald, 3 minutes); Hold the Soup, Motzo Ball Eating Contest (Faye Lederman, 14 minutes)

Washington premiere
Petr Zelenka in person

Acclaimed Czech director Petr Zelenka has taken his inspiration for his most recent film from the famously long-running stage adaptation of Dostoyevsky's novel at Prague's Dejvicke Theatre. In the film, actors rehearse the Karamazov story in a huge empty steelworks factory outside the historic city of Nowa Huta, Poland. Zelenka's story includes a foray into the play's audience as well as the lives of its actors. (Petr Zelenka, 2008, 35 mm, Czech and Polish with subtitles, 110 minutes)

Special thanks to the Embassy of the Czech Republic.

Introduction by Martin Winkler
Burnett Thompson on piano

Director Enrico Guazzoni made a number of historical epics for the successful Italian production house Cinès. This one, Cajus Julius Caesar (Caio Giulio Cesare), was released just one year after Guazzoni's Antony and Cleopatra, screened last fall at the National Gallery. Burnett Thompson performs his original piano score for the film. (Enrico Guazzoni, 1914, 35 mm, 60 minutes)

Washington Premiere

British filmmaker Terence Davies' native Liverpool is the subject of his latest essay film — a glorious evocation of his own childhood and poetic account of the city's once Dickensian spirit, a mystique that has all but disappeared. His stance vis-à-vis urban cultural conservation is eloquently expressed in often surprising and thought-provoking juxtapositions of imagery and sound. Presented in association with the Environmental Film Festival. (Terence Davies, 35 mm, 2008, 77 minutes)

A methodical chronicle about the most commonplace material — ordinary dust — uncovers astonishing facts and in the end offers nothing less than a new way to view the world. "Perceives the subject as one of nature's undefeatable enemies, yet one of its most fascinating" — Nathan Southern. (Hartmut Bitomsky, 35 mm, 2007, 90 minutes)

Narrated by Sir Derek Jacobi and produced by the National Gallery, this thirty-minute film examines the explosion of artistic activity around the Bay of Naples beginning in the first century BC. The film includes original footage of houses in Pompeii and of the seaside villas that dotted the coastline of the Bay of Naples. A ten-minute version is shown in the exhibition. It will be aired on Maryland Public Television, WETA-TV in Washington, and on public broadcasting stations throughout the United States.

The film is made possible by the HRH Foundation.