It’s a good week for seldom-seen cinema, with two series reviving films whose public exhibition has been rare, at least in the years or decades since their original release. Approaching a snow-leopard-sighting level of rarity is BAMPFA’s “Robert Beavers: Filmmaker in Residence” (Fri/30-Sat/7) a career retrospective for an expat American who moved to Europe with domestic and creative partner Gregory Markopoulos in 1976. Both during their life together and after Markopoulos’ 1992 death, the two experimentalists’ works were notable for extremely limited accessibility: Screenings were infrequent (particularly outside Europe), requested interviews declined, digitalization for home-format viewing nixed.
Now based in Berlin, the septuagenarian will appear to lecture (on Fri/6) and present seven programs of his shorts, dating from the mid-late 1960s to titles as recent as 2024. They are said to strike a balance between the personal, poetical and avant-garde, frequently drawing on the deep well of European landscapes, cultures, architecture and art. He will be in conversation with various scholars and experts at each event taking place at BAMPFA in Berkeley this Fri/30 through Sat/7. A full schedule is here.
A near-constant Bay Area resident since his parents moved to Mill Valley in 1954, Rob Nilsson has lived nearly his entire filmmaking life here, starting with involvement in the activist 1970s collective Cine Manifest, on through independent features (Northern Lights, Signal 7, Heat & Sunlight, Chalk) that got limited commercial release. Then he accelerated: While continuing to generate a variety of other screen works until quite recently, over a fourteen-year course in collaboration with the Tenderloin yGroup he developed, shot and completed the 9 @ Night series of primarily B&W, digitally-shot features. They encompassed participants from that acting workshop for homeless residents as well as professional actors, creating improv-based dramatic narratives with diverse themes and styles, the separate entries occasionally linked by overlapping characters or incidents.
Some of these films (my personal favorites are probably 2000’s Stroke and the next year’s Scheme C6) are remarkable. But as Nilsson is so much more interested in process than exposure, they’ve barely been seen since their premieres at the Mill Valley Film Festival. A very rare chance to catch the whole cycle will be provided by the Tenderloin Museum on Tuesday and Thursday nights starting this week, Thu/29 through February 25. Nilsson and others will participate in Q&A sessions after each screening. Full info here.
Moving from the rare to the ubiquitous, chance has brought us this week the simultaneous debut of new documentaries about two of the 21st century’s most overexposed women. One you’ve likely heard about: Melania, the vanity portrait of our immigrant First Lady, chronicling 20 days leading up to her spouse’s 2nd inauguration. It reportedly cost $40 million-plus, and as the average high-grade nonfiction feature’s budget is maybe one-twentieth of that, you may well wonder where so much money went. (An account in Qatar?) Director Brett Ratner’s Hollywood career screeched to a halt nearly a decade ago when several women accused him of sexual assault. Apparently that was not a problem for the White House, however.
Presumably there really are people out there who can’t wait for what’s promised as nearly two hours’ “unprecedented access” to “Mrs. Trump’s return to one of the world’s most powerful roles.” Hey, wanna buy a bridge?
The lower-profile enterprise is humbly titled Infinite Icon, which is also the name of the dance-pop album Oughties It Girl Paris Hilton released about 18 months ago. This “Visual Memoir” from co-directors Bruce Robertson and JJ Duncan chronicles her “evolution from a woman silenced by the media machine to an artist reclaiming her story through music.” Okey-doke. Both these films are going to be unleashed nationwide Fri/30. We do not have info as yet on specific local venues. But then to quote one glamorous subject, “I really don’t care, do you?”
Other new releases this weekend:
A Private Life
Dr. Lillian Steiner (Jodie Foster) is a Parisian psychotherapist who holds sessions in an office within her historied residential-building apartment. You rather marvel that she actually has clients, given how officious and curt she is—doesn’t this job require a degree of demonstrable empathy? We soon realize she is also a grouch towards her amiable ex-husband (Daniel Auteuil), and a very hands-off parent to her adult son (Vincent Lacoste), whose newborn child she seems almost allergic to embracing in trad grandmotherly fashion. Then a patient unexpectedly commits suicide, and in attending her wake, then funeral, Lillian gets such a hostile reaction from the woman’s spouse (Mathieu Amaric) that she begins to fear the death was actually a homicide.
This is one of those sort of “cozy mystery” tales in which a somewhat comically ill-suited protagonist decides to go sleuthing around, stirring trouble and uncovering discomfiting truths as they persist in sticking nose where it’s unwanted. Foster, who attended a lycee while growing up in LA, is a novelty here not just for her completely fluent French, but for playing an unusually crabby role—the sort normally given over to someone like Judi Dench or Isabelle Huppert.
Lillian is such a stiff-necked pill, she’s funny—particularly in her mortification when something begins chemically triggering involuntary tears for several days running, a display with no connection to any actual emotions she’s aware of. Though just middle-aged, she already acts like a cranky-old-bag stereotype. It’s a very entertaining performance that makes you think Foster should’ve played more prissy scolds.
What is satisfying about director-cowriter Rebecca Zlotowski’s comedy thriller is that it presents this “Karen” with sly but understanding humor, then lets us enjoy the gradual de-blocking of her constipated personality. In investigating an ostensible murder, she comes to discover more about herself than any criminal deed, and problems she didn’t know she had get resolved to rather touching effect. It’s an amusingly low-key movie whose biggest twist is that ultimately it’s simply a character study of someone who’s gotten off-track, and learns to like themselves again, as well as those they never really meant to alienate. A Private Life opens at Bay Area theaters including SF’s AMC Metreon 16 on Fri/30.
Arco
A very different Girl’s Own Adventure is had by the 10-year-old heroine of this first feature by French animator Ugo Bienvenu. In 2075, Iris and her baby brother are being raised primarily by a very humanoid robot-nanny while their parents are forced to work and primarily live elsewhere—evidently a pretty standard arrangement in this near future. Feeling bored and neglected, she dreams of excitement that duly arrives when she happens to glimpse a figure in a rainbow-hued suit, streaking from the sky to a nearby wooded area. That turns out to be fellow 10-year-old Arco, a boy from a considerably more distant future. In his era, humanity’s survival depends on time travel—which he has rather recklessly taken to without family oversight, leading to his current status marooned in an unfamiliar period with no way home. The two kids must figure that out, while outwitting three bumbling emissaries from Arco’s time who appear to mean him harm.
Probably a little too complicated story-wise for children under 8 or so, this is a colorful and clever juvenile tale that acquires a fair amount of depth in its final stretch. It ultimately has something substantial to say about the fate of our species, and the consequences to our poor caretaking of the planet. It’s a French-US coproduction whose English-language version includes voice contributions from Natalie Portman, Mark Ruffalo, America Ferrera, Will Ferrell, Andy Samberg and more. 2025 did not strike me as a great year for animation features, over-glutted with tired franchise entries, but Arco (which is opening here some weeks after an Oscar-qualifying runs elsewhere) does brighten that picture somewhat. It opens Fri/30 in Bay Area theaters including SF’s Alamo Drafthouse Mission and the Cinemark Century 20 in Daly City.
