This Week at SF Film Society | NEW PEOPLE Cinema is the continuation of BATTLE ROYALE, THE MOTH DIARIES, and LOVE IN THE CITY!

Through August 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 17 – 23
(Directed by Michelangelo Antonioni, Federico Fellini, Alberto Lattuada, Carlo Lizzani, Francesco Maselli, Dino Risi, Cesare Zavattini)
2:00, 4:15, 6:30, 8:45pm

Six of Italy’s most talented filmmakers—including Fellini and Antonioni—collaborate on this diverse ‘50s time capsule focusing on lives, mostly female, disappointed by love. Aiming for a “newly conscious kind of cinema” (as described in voiceover), the collection presents a journalistic view of city life using the actual people who experienced the events portrayed. From couples in a dance hall to prostitutes plying their trade, the film’s varied segments offer a wide-ranging examination of how mid-century mores often led to suffering, particularly for women. On the more upbeat side is Fellini’s tale of a woman longing for marriage and Alberto Lattuada’s nearly wordless portrait of men checking out women on the streets of Rome. More info >>