This Week at SF Film Society | NEW PEOPLE Cinema is the continuation of THE DEVIL, PROBABLY, BATTLE ROYALE, THE MOTH DIARIES, and JAMES AND THE GIANT PEACH!

August 3 – 9
(Directed by Robert Bresson)
3:00, 5:00, 7:00, 9:00pm

New 35mm print! Constructed as a flashback from news reports of a young man’s suspicious suicide, Robert Bresson’s splenetic 1977 drama puts the post-1968 world on trial and judges it unlivable. Charles (Antoine Monnier), a quietly imperious sensualist of blazing intelligence, lives idly in a bare garret and does little but brazenly chase women. Essaying the gamut of modern pursuits—politics, religion, education, drugs, psychoanalysis—he finds them all pointless. Bresson’s chilling visions of daily life—including a brilliant sequence aboard a bus that depicts the mechanical world as a horror—suggest its hostility to the passions of youth. Both the world and Bresson’s cinema are in disarray, and the signs of his inner conflict are deeply troubling and tremendously moving. (Richard Brody, The New Yorker) More info >>

Watch Clip!

August 10 – 16
(Directed by Kinji Fukasaku)
2:00, 6:30pm (Fri, Sun, Tues, Thurs); 4:30, 9:00pm (Sat, Mon, Wed).

Battle Royale is about a group of teen-agers murdering each other in a gladiatorial contest. If that plot sounds familiar, just be aware that the film came out eight years before Suzanne Collins wrote The Hunger Games. In present-day Japan, a law has been passed that requires the yearly selection of a ninth-grade class to be taken to a remote island where they will kill each other until a single survivor remains. In the current iteration, a trio of teens attempts to survive without resorting to violence. Against their gleefully murderous peers, their chances of success are slim. Surreal and blackly comic, Battle Royale is bloody good entertainment bearing a plangent and admonitory message about today’s youth. More info >>

Watch Clip!

August 10 – 16
(Directed by Mary Harron)
4:30, 9:00pm (Fri, Sun, Tues, Thurs); 2:30, 7:00pm (Sat, Mon, Wed).

At an elite girls’ boarding school, eerie new student Ernessa (Lily Cole) disrupts the dynamics between a close group of friends including Rebecca (Sarah Bolger) who is coming to terms with a family tragedy. Inspired by her reading of gothic literature in English class, Rebecca starts to suspect that Ernessa’s powers to corrupt may be supernatural. Are the odd and violent events that begin to occur accidents, or is Ernessa exerting a menacing power over the girls? Can Rebecca save her best friend from the influence of this creepy and suspiciously talented new student before it’s too late? Mary Harron’s modern gothic thriller, based on the novel by Rachel Klein, skirts the line between horror film and psychological study while making full use of the atmospheric possibilities of its setting. More info >>

August 11
(Directed by Henry Selick)
11:00am

Originally released 16 years ago, this made-in-San Francisco production directed by stop-motion master Henry Selick and produced by Tim Burton combines live-action, stop-motion animation and computer-generated special effects in a delightful film for the whole family. Adapted from Roald Dahl’s classic book of the same name, the film follows our young hero James, who has been living a life of misery with his horrible aunts who have unwillingly taken custody of him after his parents’ untimely demise. When an enormous peach sprouts out of the ground next to their house, James senses a possible escape from his dreary surroundings and climbs inside, where he meets an astonishing menagerie of insects and embarks on a magical journey full of thrills and adventure. 11:00 am.

The screening will be followed by a Q&A and show-and-tell with artists who worked on the film—and some of the puppets and props they used—and are currently working with Henry Selick on his next stop-motion project. More info >>