September 2021 Programming on the Criterion Channel Announced

Each month, the programmers at the Criterion Channel produce incredible line-ups for their subscribers. For September, the Channel will feature films from Laura Poitras, Billy Wilder, Aki Kaurismäki, and more!

Below you’ll find the programming schedule for the month, along with a complete list of titles that Criterion has in store for us. Don’t forget to check the Criterion Channel’s main page regularly though, as they occasionally will drop surprises that aren’t included in the official press release.

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FEATURED SERIES

Premiering September 1

New York Stories

From the fiscal crisis of the 1970s to the September 11 attacks twenty years ago to a global pandemic that swept through America’s largest city, New York has seen its share of troubles over the years—but its resilience and vibrancy remain indomitable. Surveying a century of cinematic history, this panoramic celebration of films set in the five boroughs captures the mix of grime, glamour, and anything-can-happen energy that has made the Big Apple an unforgettable canvas for generations of filmmakers. Swoon-inducing romance (The Clock), street-level desperation (The Panic in Needle Park), subway snafus (The Taking of Pelham One Two Three), creative cool (Downtown 81), racial tension (Do the Right Thing), queer liberation (Paris Is Burning), criminal ambition (The King of New York), immigrant struggle (Man Push Cart), and moral education (Margaret)—these are just some of the eight million stories that make up life in the world’s most exciting city.

• The Immigrant, Charles Chaplin, 1917
• The Crowd, King Vidor, 1928
• Speedy, Ted Wilde, 1928
• The Clock, Vincente Minnelli, 1945
• The Naked City, Jules Dassin, 1948
• Little Fugitive, Morris Engel, Ruth Orkin, and Raymond Abrashkin, 1953
• On the Bowery, Lionel Rogosin, 1956
• An Affair to Remember, Leo McCarey, 1957
• The Garment Jungle, Vincent Sherman, 1957
• Shadows, John Cassavetes, 1959
• The Apartment, Billy Wilder, 1960
• West Side Story, Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins, 1961
• The Incident, Larry Peerce, 1967
• The Queen, Frank Simon, 1968
• Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One, William Greaves, 1968
• Putney Swope, Robert Downey Sr., 1969
• The Angel Levine, Ján Kadár, 1970
• The Out-of-Towners, Arthur Hiller, 1970
• Born to Win, Ivan Passer, 1971
• Little Murders, Alan Arkin, 1971
• The Panic in Needle Park, Jerry Schatzberg, 1971
• Ciao! Manhattan, John Palmer, 1972
• Sisters, Brian De Palma, 1972
• Super Fly, Gordon Parks Jr., 1972
• The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, Joseph Sargent, 1974
• God Told Me To, Larry Cohen, 1976
• News from Home, Chantal Akerman, 1977
• Eyes of Laura Mars, Irvin Kershner, 1978
• Town Bloody Hall, D. A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus, 1979
• Permanent Vacation, Jim Jarmusch, 1980
• Escape from New York, John Carpenter, 1981 *
• My Dinner with Andre, Louis Malle, 1981
• Stations of the Elevated, Manfred Kirchheimer, 1981
• Smithereens, Susan Seidelman, 1982
• Variety, Bette Gordon, 1983
• Los Sures, Diego Echeverria, 1984
• Old Enough, Marisa Silver, 1984
• Stranger Than Paradise, Jim Jarmusch, 1984
• After Hours, Martin Scorsese, 1985
• Five Corners, Tony Bill, 1987
• Moonstruck, Norman Jewison, 1987
• Do the Right Thing, Spike Lee, 1989
• Sidewalk Stories, Charles Lane, 1989
• The King of New York, Abel Ferrara, 1990
• Metropolitan, Whit Stillman, 1990
• Paris Is Burning, Jennie Livingston, 1990
• Just Another Girl on the I.R.T., Leslie Harris, 1992
• Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle, Alan Rudolph, 1994
• Rhythm Thief, Matthew Harrison, 1994
• Smoke, Wayne Wang, 1995 *
• The Daytrippers, Greg Mottola, 1996
• Mr. Jealousy, Noah Baumbach, 1997
• Dark Days, Marc Singer, 2000
• Downtown 81, Edo Bertoglio, 2000
• In the Cut, Jane Campion, 2003
• Brother to Brother, Rodney Evans, 2004
• Man Push Cart, Ramin Bahrani, 2005
• The Squid and the Whale, Noah Baumbach, 2005
• Chop Shop, Ramin Bahrani, 2007
• Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child, Tamra Davis, 2010
• Margaret, Kenneth Lonergan, 2011
• Frances Ha, Noah Baumbach, 2012
• The Hottest August, Brett Story, 2019

*Available October 1

Plus: New York Shorts

• Bumping Into Broadway, Hal Roach, 1919
• Daybreak Express, D. A. Pennebaker, 1953
• Bridges-Go-Round 1, Shirley Clarke, 1958
• Bridges-Go-Round 2, Shirley Clarke, 1958
• Skyscraper, Shirley Clarke, 1959
• What’s a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This?, Martin Scorsese, 1963
• Surface Tension, Hollis Frampton, 1968
• Joyce at 34, Joyce Chopra, 1972
• Italianamerican, Martin Scorsese, 1974
• Clotheslines, Roberta Cantow, 1981
• So Far from India, Mira Nair, 1983
• The Bowery, Sara Driver, 1994
• 11’09”01—September 11, Mira Nair, 2002
• How Can It Be, Mira Nair, 2008
• The Acquaintances of a Lonely John, Benny Safdie, 2008
• John’s Gone, Josh Safdie and Benny Safdie, 2010
• Forever’s Gonna Start Tonight, Eliza Hittman, 2011
• The Black Balloon, Josh Safdie and Benny Safdie, 2012
• Me the Terrible, Josephine Decker, 2012
• A Guide to Breathing Underwater, Raven Jackson, 2018
• Hair Wolf, Mariama Diallo, 2018
• Fit Model, Myna Joseph, 2019

Starring Deborah Kerr

Whether playing a repressed nun in the Himalayas or an adulterous army wife engaged in a passionate beachside tussle with Burt Lancaster, the Scottish-born Deborah Kerr—whose one-hundredth birthday we’re celebrating this September—exuded both a refined elegance and an undeniable inner strength and fire. Displaying preternatural poise in Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s British classics The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp and Black Narcissus, Kerr soon captured the attention of Hollywood, where she proved her versatility with her boldly sensual turn in From Here to Eternity, sensitive portrayal of an unfulfilled faculty wife in Vincente Minnelli’s Tea and Sympathy, and heartfelt performance in Leo McCarey’s classic romance An Affair to Remember. To each of these roles, she brought an intelligence and equanimity that made her the epitome of dignified grace.

• Major Barbara, Gabriel Pascal, 1941
• The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1943
• Vacation from Marriage, Alexander Korda, 1945
• I See a Dark Stranger, Frank Launder, 1946
• Black Narcissus, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1947
• The Hucksters, Jack Conway, 1947
• Edward, My Son, George Cukor, 1949
• The Prisoner of Zenda, Richard Thorpe, 1952
• From Here to Eternity, Fred Zinnemann, 1953
• The End of the Affair, Edward Dmytryk, 1955
• Tea and Sympathy, Vincente Minnelli, 1956
• Heaven Knows Mr. Allison, John Huston, 1957
• An Affair to Remember, Leo McCarey, 1957
• Bonjour tristesse, Otto Preminger, 1958
• The Sundowners, Fred Zinnemann, 1960
• The Innocents, Jack Clayton, 1961
• The Night of the Iguana, John Huston, 1964
• The Chalk Garden, Ronald Neame, 1964*
• Eye of the Devil, J. Lee Thompson, 1966

*Available November 1

The Lubitsch Touch

A delicate hand, effervescent humor, and an economy with words and images define the subtle but instantly recognizable style of the émigré master of the Hollywood comedy Ernst Lubitsch, whose celebrated “touch” lent a special elegance and sophistication to each project he helmed. This selection of some of the director’s later gems—made during a period when his risqué wit had to craftily evade the Production Code censors—features a subversive foray into melodrama starring Marlene Dietrich (Angel), the fizzy romantic charmer that introduced audiences to a lighter side of Greta Garbo (Ninotchka), a supernatural farce in divine Technicolor (Heaven Can Wait), and an audacious anti-Nazi satire (To Be or Not to Be) that only Lubitsch could pull off.

• Angel, 1937
• Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife, 1938
• Ninotchka, 1939
• That Uncertain Feeling, 1941
• To Be or Not to Be, 1942
• Heaven Can Wait, 1943
• A Royal Scandal, 1945
• Cluny Brown, 1946

Plus, coming in October: Lubitsch Musicals

China Lost and Found: Eight Films by Jia Zhangke

Featuring Walter Salles’s 2014 documentary Jia Zhangke, A Guy from Fenyang

Among the greatest filmmakers working today, Chinese master Jia Zhangke is the foremost chronicler of the vast changes that have transformed his country over the last half century in its transition from communism to a globalized, increasingly market-based society. Working without state approval on his early underground Hometown Trilogy—Xiao Wu, Platform, and Unknown Pleasures, all set in the province of Shanxi, where he grew up—Jia transitioned to state-sanctioned filmmaking with 2004’s The World, but his films remain deeply critical of China’s modernization and the disillusionment it has wrought among the country’s youth. Employing rigorously composed long takes, unblinking naturalism, and audacious narrative structures, Jia captures the ironies, ennui, and often surreal metamorphoses of a country suspended between the past and an accelerating future.

Features

• Xiao Wu, 1997
• Platform, 2000
• Unknown Pleasures, 2002
• The World, 2004
• Still Life, 2006
• 24 City, 2008
• A Touch of Sin, 2013
• Mountains May Depart, 2015

Plus: Jia Zhangke, A Guy from Fenyang, Walter Salles, 2014

Five by Billy Wilder

Featuring Billy, How Did You Do It?, a 1992 documentary by Volker Schlöndorff with Gisela Grischow

Although—or perhaps because—he was born in Austria, writer, director, and Hollywood legend Billy Wilder saw America more clearly than most, probing its absurdities and hypocrisies with a witty yet lacerating eye. This sampler of five of his finest—including the Tinseltown tragedy Sunset Boulevard, scathing media satire Ace in the Hole, and gripping POW drama Stalag 17—showcases the pitch-perfect blend of human understanding and barbed cynicism that defines Wilder worldview.

• Sunset Boulevard, 1950
• Ace in the Hole, 1951
• Stalag 17, 1953
• Sabrina, 1954
• The Apartment, 1960

EXCLUSIVE STREAMING PREMIERES

Thursday, September 9

maɬni—towards the ocean, towards the shore

A poetic experimental documentary circling the origin of the death myth of the Chinookan people in the Pacific Northwest, maɬni—towards the ocean, towards the shore follows two individuals as they wander through nature, the spirit world, and something much deeper. At its center are Sweetwater Sahme and Jordan Mercier, who take separate paths contemplating the afterlife, rebirth, and death. Probing questions about humanity’s place on Earth and other worlds, Sky Hopinka’s debut feature takes viewers on a journey through language and belief that will leave them thinking—and dreaming—about it long after.

Thursday, September 16

Center Stage

International superstar Maggie Cheung embodies tragic screen siren Ruan Lingyu, known as the Greta Garbo of China, in this unconventional biopic by Hong Kong New Wave master Stanley Kwan. Though Ruan was praised for her moving and emotive screen presence, her private life, which was frequent fodder for the vicious Shanghai tabloids, began to mirror the melodramas that brought her fame, culminating in her suicide at age twenty-four. Kwan and Cheung paint a kaleidoscopic yet intimate portrait of the ill-fated actor, deftly blending lush period drama, archival footage, and metatextual documentary sequences of Cheung reflecting on Ruan’s legacy. The result is as exquisitely moving as the indelible films that Ruan left behind.

Wednesday, September 29

The Perfect Candidate

The latest from trailblazing Saudi Arabian director Haifaa al-Mansour (Wadjda) is a courageous critique of patriarchal oppression in her home country and a vivid portrait of a singularly determined woman. When Maryam (Mila Al Zahrani), a hardworking young doctor in a small-town clinic, is prevented from flying to Dubai for a conference without a male guardian’s approval, she seeks help from a politically connected cousin but inadvertently registers as a candidate for the municipal council. Seeing the election as a way to fix the flooded road in front of her clinic, Maryam becomes her town’s first female candidate and, with the help of her sisters—and a viral campaign video—takes on her community’s ingrained sexism.

CRITERION COLLECTION EDITIONS

Premiering September 1

Do the Right Thing: Criterion Collection Edition #97

Spike Lee’s politically and emotionally charged portrait of one day in the life of a single Brooklyn block confirmed him as a filmmaker of peerless vision and passionate social engagement.

SUPPLEMENTAL FEATURES: Audio commentary featuring Lee and other cast and crew members, a making-of documentary by St. Clair Bourne, extensive interviews with cast and crew members, behind-the-scenes footage, and more.

Flowers of Shanghai: Criterion Collection Edition #1077

Hou Hsiao-hsien’s gorgeous period reverie unfolds as an intoxicating, time-bending experience as it traces the romantic intrigue, jealousies, and tensions swirling around a late-nineteenth-century Shanghai brothel.

SUPPLEMENTAL FEATURES: An introduction by critic Tony Rayns, a documentary by Daniel Raim and Eugene Suen on the making of the film, and excerpts from an interview with Hou.

Irma Vep: Criterion Collection Edition #1074

Olivier Assayas’s live-wire international breakthrough stars a magnetic Maggie Cheung in a hallucinatory, postmodern-cool reflection on the tension between art and commercial entertainment.

SUPPLEMENTAL FEATURES: Interviews with Assayas, Cheung, and actor Nathalie Richard; an episode from Louis Feuillade’s Les vampires; a behind-the-scenes featurette; and more.

Cluny Brown: Criterion Collection Edition #997

The final film completed by Ernst Lubitsch, this zany, zippy comedy of manners—starring Jennifer Jones in a rare comedic turn—is one of the celebrated director’s most effervescent creations.

SUPPLEMENTAL FEATURES: A conversation between film critics Molly Haskell and Farran Smith Nehme, a video essay by film scholar Kristin Thompson, an interview with film scholar Bernard Eisenschitz, and more.

La Cage aux Folles: Criterion Collection Edition #671

The hilarious, ahead-of-its-time queer classic celebrates the importance of nonconformity and being true to oneself.

SUPPLEMENTAL FEATURES: Interviews with director Edouard Molinaro and author Laurence Senelick and archival footage featuring actor Michel Serrault and Jean Poiret, writer and star of the original stage production of La Cage aux Folles.

WOMEN FILMMAKERS

Wednesday, September 1

Titus

Julie Taymor transforms Shakespeare’s most gruesome play into a mesmerizing visual spectacle and a terrifyingly relevant commentary on modern political violence.

Wednesday, September 8

Laura Poitras’s 9/11 Trilogy

Intrepid documentarian Laura Poitras chronicles the rise of the American security state in the aftermath of 9/11 in these trenchant looks at the far-reaching effects that the war on terror has had on both geopolitics and individual freedoms. Documenting Iraqi life under American occupation in My Country, My Country, the fates of two men linked to Al Qaeda in The Oath, and the behind-the-scenes story of Edward Snowden’s exposure of NSA surveillance in the Oscar-winning Citizenfour, these brave, eye-opening works of cinematic journalism offer a sobering look at the myriad ways our world has changed in the twenty years since 9/11.

Features

• My Country, My Country, 2006
• The Oath, 2010
• Citizen Four, 2014

Shorts

• O’Say Can You See 1, 2011
• O’Say Can You See 2, 2011

Wednesday, September 15

Old Enough

Two young women from very different backgrounds form a surprising bond during a hot New York summer in Marisa Silver’s sensitive coming-of-age story.

Wednesday, September 22

Working Girls: Criterion Collection Edition #1087

Lizzie Borden’s richly detailed look at society’s most stigmatized profession offers an empathetic, humanizing, often humorous depiction of women for whom sex work is just another day at the office.

SUPPLEMENTAL FEATURES: Audio commentary featuring Borden, director of photography Judy Irola, and actor Amanda Goodwin; a conversation between Borden and filmmaker Bette Gordon; a roundtable discussion among sex workers; and more.

More women filmmakers featured in this month’s programming:

• Under the SoCal Sun
• Little Fugitive, Morris Engel, Ruth Orkin, and Raymond Abrashkin, 1953
• Bridges-Go-Round 1, Shirley Clarke, 1958
• Bridges-Go-Round 2, Shirley Clarke, 1958
• Skyscraper, Shirley Clarke, 1959
• Joyce at 34, Joyce Chopra, 1972
• News from Home, Chantal Akerman, 1977
• Town Bloody Hall, D. A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus, 1979
• Clotheslines, Roberta Cantow, 1981
• Smithereens, Susan Seidelman, 1982
• So Far from India, Mira Nair, 1983
• Variety, Bette Gordon, 1983
• Old Enough, Marisa Silver, 1984
• Paris Is Burning, Jennie Livingston, 1990
• Just Another Girl on the I.R.T., Leslie Harris, 1992
• The Bowery, Sara Driver, 1994
• 11’09”01—September 11, Mira Nair, 2002
• In the Cut, Jane Campion, 2003
• How Can It Be?, Mira Nair, 2008
• Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child, Tamra Davis, 2010
• Forever’s Gonna Start Tonight, Eliza Hittman, 2011
• Me the Terrible, Josephine Decker, 2012
• And Nothing Happened, Naima Ramos-Chapman, 2016
• A Guide to Breathing Underwater, Raven Jackson, 2018
• Freedom Fields, Naziha Arebi, 2018
• Hair Wolf, Mariama Diallo, 2018
• The Hottest August, Brett Story, 2019
• Fit Model, Myna Joseph, 2019
• Koshien: Japan’s Field of Dreams, Ema Ryan Yamazaki, 2019
• The Perfect Candidate, Haifaa al-Mansour, 2019
• What Is a Woman?, Marin Håskjold, 2020

TRUE STORIES

Monday, September 6

Two Films by Menelik Shabazz

The groundbreaking Barbados-born British filmmaker Menelik Shabazz, who passed away this June, was one of the leading lights of Black British cinema. Part of a generation of filmmakers who built their own institutions in order to bring their visions to the screen, Shabazz cofounded the Ceddo Film and Video Workshop, named after Ousmane Sembène’s 1977 masterpiece in an act of diasporic solidarity. His passionate engagement is evident in these two politically charged nonfiction works: the genre-defying sci-fi documentary Time and Judgement, which spans four hundred years to tell the sweeping story of the African liberation movement across the world, and The Story of Lovers Rock, an affectionate look at the Black British musical phenomenon often called “romantic reggae” and its development amid a society riven by institutional racism and police violence.

• Time and Judgement, 1988
• The Story of Lovers Rock, 2011

Monday, September 13

Freedom Fields

Three women attempt to establish the first female soccer team in postrevolution Libya in this inspiring love letter to sisterhood and the power of sport.

Monday, September 13

The Devil and Daniel Johnston

Director Jeff Feuerzeig explores the relationship between genius and mental illness in this revealing portrait of the late outsider musician and cult icon Daniel Johnston.

Monday, September 20

Grass: A Nation’s Battle for Life

This astonishing 1924 documentary from the future creators of King Kong finds unparalleled drama and adventure in an epic human migration across Iran.

Monday, September 27

Fear of a Black Hat

Gangsta rap gets the Spinal Tap treatment in this gag-a-minute mockumentary about a controversy-inciting trio with a penchant for outrageous headwear, questionable lyrics, and a seriously NSFW approach to turntablism.

More documentaries featured in this month’s programming:

• Laura Poitras’s 9/11 Trilogy
• On the Bowery, Lionel Rogosin, 1956
• The Queen, Frank Simon, 1968
• Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One, William Greaves, 1968
• Joyce at 34, Joyce Chopra, 1972
• Italianamerican, Martin Scorsese, 1974
• News from Home, Chantal Akerman, 1977
• Town Bloody Hall, D. A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus, 1979
• Clotheslines, Roberta Cantow, 1981
• Stations of the Elevated, Manfred Kirchheimer, 1981
• So Far from India, Mira Nair, 1983
• Los Sures, Diego Echeverria, 1984
• The Bowery, Sara Driver, 1994
• Paris Is Burning, Jennie Livingston, 1990
• Dark Days, Marc Singer, 2000
• 24 City, Jia Zhangke, 2008
• Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child, Tamra Davis, 2010
• Jia Zhangke, A Guy from Fenyang, Walter Salles, 2014
• Koshien: Japan’s Field of Dreams, Ema Ryan Yamazaki, 2019
• The Hottest August, Brett Story, 2019
• maɬni—towards the ocean, towards the shore, Sky Hopinka, 2020

TWENTY-FIRST-CENTURY CINEMA

Monday, September 20

Crimson Gold

Two master filmmakers, Abbas Kiarostami and Jafar Panahi, teamed up as writer and director, respectively, for this singular crime thriller, which blends truth and fiction into a gripping look at class conflict in Iran. Based on an actual botched robbery attempt at a Tehran jewelry store, Crimson Gold follows Hussein (Hossain Emadeddin, a real-life pizza delivery worker with paranoid schizophrenia), a wounded war veteran delivering pizzas by night. After a humiliating encounter with a jewelry-shop owner who won’t allow him in his store and, later, a brush with a wealthy man who gives him a taste of luxury, Hussein comes to feel that he can no longer accept his lowly status and takes matters into his own hands.

More twenty-first-century films featured in this month’s programming:

• China Lost and Found: Eight Films by Jia Zhangke
• Laura Poitras’s 9/11 Trilogy
• The End of Innocence
• Saints Alive!
• Dark Days, Marc Singer, 2000
• Downtown 81, Edo Bertoglio, 2000
• 11’09”01—September 11, Mira Nair, 2002
• The Man Without a Past, 2002
• In the Cut, Jane Campion, 2003
• Brother to Brother, Rodney Evans, 2004
• The Devil and Daniel Johnston, Jeff Feuerzeig, 2005
• Man Push Cart, Ramin Bahrani, 2005
• The Squid and the Whale, Noah Baumbach, 2005
• Lights in the Dusk, 2006
• Chop Shop, Ramin Bahrani, 2007
• The Acquaintances of a Lonely John, Benny Safdie, 2008
• How Can It Be, Mira Nair, 2008
• Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child, Tamra Davis, 2010
• John’s Gone, Josh Safdie and Benny Safdie, 2010
• Forever’s Gonna Start Tonight, Eliza Hittman, 2011
• The Story of Lovers Rock, 2011
• Margaret, Kenneth Lonergan, 2011
• The Black Balloon, Josh Safdie and Benny Safdie, 2012
• Frances Ha, Noah Baumbach, 2012
• Me the Terrible, Josephine Decker, 2012
• The Rocket, Kim Mordaunt, 2013
• Jason and Shirley, Stephen Winter, 2015
• Freedom Fields, Naziha Arebi, 2018
• A Guide to Breathing Underwater, Raven Jackson, 2018
• Hair Wolf, Mariama Diallo, 2018
• Fit Model, Myna Joseph, 2019
• The Hottest August, Brett Story, 2019
• Koshien: Japan’s Field of Dreams, Ema Ryan Yamazaki, 2019
• The Perfect Candidate, Haifaa al-Mansour, 2019
• maɬni—towards the ocean, towards the shore, Sky Hopinka, 2020
• What Is a Woman?, Marin Håskjold, 2020

THREE DIMENSIONS

Thursday, September 23

Aki Kaurismäki’s Finland Trilogy

The chilly landscapes of Helsinki are warmed by the stubborn humanism and wry humor of Finland’s greatest filmmaker in this trio of poignant, deadpan tales of life on the social and economic margins.

• Drifting Clouds, 1996
• The Man Without a Past, 2002
• Lights in the Dusk, 2006

SATURDAY MATINEES

Saturday, September 4

The Prisoner of Zenda

This rousing adaptation of the classic adventure novel by Anthony Hope features swashbuckling heroics, spectacular Technicolor, sumptuous period costuming, and a star-studded cast.

Saturday, September 11

Abel’s Island and The Story of the Dancing Frog

The charming hand-drawn animation of Michael Sporn is on delightful display in these sensitive and imaginative tales of an elegant mouse stranded on a deserted island and a talented frog on a grand theatrical tour.

Saturday, September 18

The Rocket

This tender, beautifully observed family tale about a boy’s quest to win a rocket-building competition is steeped in the landscapes, traditions, and folklore of rural Laos.

Saturday, September 25

Koshien: Japan’s Field of Dreams

This revealing documentary explores Japanese culture through the intimate story of the country’s hundredth annual high-school baseball championship.

SHORT-FILM PROGRAMS

Tuesday, September 7

Under the SoCal Sun

Words, Planets and Border Radio

The sunbaked desert landscapes and laid-back cool of Southern California permeate a playful avant-garde short and a postpunk road movie, both shot in evocatively lo-fi 16 mm.

Tuesday, September 14

Summer Wonderlands

A Day with the Boys and George Washington

Drift into the dreamy realm of childhood imagination with these ethereal visions of endless summer from Clu Gulager and David Gordon Green.

Tuesday, September 21

What Is a Woman?

Tackling complex issues head-on in a frank, naturalistic style, Norwegian director Marin Håskjold examines the everyday prejudices that trans and nonbinary people face in the course of their everyday lives.

Tuesday, September 28

The End of Innocence

Da yie and Munyurangabo

The illusions of youth come to an abrupt end in two heartrending tales of innocence lost set along the coast of Ghana and in Rwanda in the wake of the genocide.

DOUBLE FEATURES

Friday, September 3

Two by Stephen Winter

Chocolate Babies and Jason and Shirley

One of the most exciting and iconoclastic voices in radical queer cinema, Stephen Winter makes films that are as politically explosive as they are riotously entertaining. In his outré satire Chocolate Babies, a band of self-described “raging, atheist, meat-eating, HIV-positive, colored terrorists” fight back against homophobic politicians on the streets of 1990s New York City. Its searing statement of Black queer power is echoed in his latest film, Jason and Shirley, an audacious reimagining of the making of Shirley Clarke’s 1967 cinema verité landmark, Portrait of Jason.

Friday, September 10

Saints Alive!

Jeannette: The Childhood of Joan of Arc and Joan of Arc

The ever-surprising French iconoclast Bruno Dumont reimagines the story of Joan of Arc first as an ecstatic heavy-metal musical, then as an uncanny, absurdist mood piece.

Friday, September 17

Boardwalks of Life

The Entertainer and Wish You Were Here

The dingy, decaying landscapes of Britain’s seaside towns mirror the trajectories of the unforgettable misfits at the center of these darkly funny character studies.

Friday, September 24

Pipe Dreams

Cluny Brown and The Plumber

A zippy screwball farce from Hollywood’s golden age and an absurdist home-invasion comedy from the Australian New Wave revolve around a topic sorely under-explored on-screen: the challenges of finding a good plumber.

Complete list of films premiering on the Criterion Channel this month:

• 24 City, Jia Zhangke, 2008
• Abel’s Island, Michael Sporn, 1988
• Ace in the Hole, Billy Wilder, 1951
• After Hours, Martin Scorsese, 1985
• An Affair to Remember, Leo McCarey, 1957
• Angel, Ernst Lubitsch, 1937
• The Angel Levine, Ján Kadár, 1970
• The Apartment, Billy Wilder, 1960
• Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife, Ernst Lubitsch, 1938
• Bonjour tristesse, Otto Preminger, 1958
• Born to Win, Ivan Passer, 1971
• Center Stage, Stanley Kwan, 1991
• Chocolate Babies, Stephen Winter, 1996
• Ciao! Manhattan, John Palmer, 1972
• Citizenfour, Laura Poitras, 2014 *
• The Clock, Vincente Minnelli, 1945
• The Crowd, King Vidor, 1928
• Cluny Brown, Ernst Lubitsch, 1946
• Crimson Gold, Jafar Panahi, 2003 *
• Da yie, Anthony Nti, 2019
• Dark Days, Marc Singer, 2000
• The Devil and Daniel Johnston, Jeff Feuerzeig, 2005
• Do the Right Thing, Spike Lee, 1989
• Downtown 81, Edo Bertoglio, 2000
• Drifting Clouds, Aki Kaurismäki, 1996
• Edward, My Son, George Cukor, 1949
• The End of the Affair, Edward Dmytryk, 1955
• Eye of the Devil, J. Lee Thompson, 1966
• Fear of a Black Hat, Rusty Cundieff, 1993
• Flowers of Shanghai, Hou Hsiao-hsien, 1998
• Freedom Fields, Naziha Arebi, 2018
• The Garment Jungle, Vincent Sherman, 1957
• God Told Me To, Larry Cohen, 1976
• Grass: A Nation’s Battle for Life, Ernest B. Schoedsack and Merian C. Cooper, 1925
• Heaven Can Wait, Ernst Lubitsch, 1943
• The Hottest August, Brett Story, 2019
• The Hucksters, Jack Conway, 1947
• In the Cut, Jane Campion, 2003 *
• The Innocents, Jack Clayton, 1961
• Jason and Shirley, Stephen Winter, 2015
• Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child, Tamra Davis, 2010
• Jeannette: The Childhood of Joan of Arc, Bruno Dumont, 2017
• Jia Zhangke, A Guy from Fenyang, Walter Salles, 2014 *
• Joan of Arc,​​ Bruno Dumont, 2019
• Just Another Girl on the I.R.T., Leslie Harris, 1992
• King of New York, Abel Ferrara, 1990
• Koshien: Japan’s Field of Dreams, Ema Ryan Yamazaki, 2019
• La Cage aux Folles, Edouard Molinaro, 1978
• Lights in the Dusk, Aki Kaurismäki, 2006 *
• Little Fugitive, Morris Engel, Ruth Orkin, and Raymond Abrashkin, 1953
• Little Murders, Alan Arkin, 1971
• Los Sures, Diego Echeverria, 1984
• maɬni—towards the ocean, towards the shore, Sky Hopinka, 2020
• The Man Without a Past, Aki Kaurismäki, 2002
• Margaret, Kenneth Lonergan, 2011
• Mountains May Depart, Jia Zhangke, 2015 *
• Mr. Jealousy, Noah Baumbach, 1997
• Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle, Alan Rudolph, 1994
• My Country, My Country, Laura Poitras, 2006
• Ninotchka, Ernst Lubitsch, 1939
• O’Say Can You See 1, Laura Poitras, 2011
• O’Say Can You See 2, Laura Poitras, 2011
• The Oath, Laura Poitras, 2010
• Old Enough, Marisa Silver, 1984
• On the Bowery, Lionel Rogosin, 1956
• On the Waterfront, Elia Kazan, 1954
• The Out-of-Towners, Arthur Hiller, 1970
• The Panic in Needle Park, Jerry Schatzberg, 1971
• The Perfect Candidate, Haifaa al-Mansour, 2019
• Platform, Jia Zhangke, 2000
• Point Blank, John Boorman, 1967
• The Prisoner of Zenda, Richard Thorpe, 1952
• Rhythm Thief, Matthew Harrison, 1994
• The Rocket, Kim Mordaunt, 2013
• A Royal Scandal, Otto Preminger and Ernst Lubitsch, 1945
• Sabrina, Billy Wilder, 1954 *
• Smoke, Wayne Wang, 1995
• Soup to Nuts, Benjamin Stoloff, 1930
• The Squid and the Whale, Noah Baumbach, 2005 *
• Stalag 17, Billy Wilder, 1953
• Stations of the Elevated, Manfred Kirchheimer, 1981
• Still Life, Jia Zhangke, 2006
• still/here, Christopher Harris, 2019
• The Story of the Dancing Frog, Michael Sporn, 1989
• The Story of Lovers Rock, Menelik Shabazz, 2011
• The Sundowners, Fred Zinnemann, 1960
• Sunset Boulevard, Billy Wilder, 1950
• Super Fly, Gordon Parks Jr., 1972
• The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, Joseph Sargent, 1974
• Tea and Sympathy, Vincente Minnelli, 1956
• That Uncertain Feeling, Ernst Lubitsch, 1941
• Thief, Michael Mann, 1981
• Time and Judgement, Menelik Shabazz, 1988
• Titus, Julie Taymor, 1999
• A Touch of Sin, Jia Zhangke, 2013 *
• Vacation from Marriage, Alexander Korda, 1945
• Variety, Bette Gordon, 1983
• West Side Story, Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins, 1961
• What Is a Woman?, Marin Håskjold, 2020
• Wish You Were Here, David Leland, 1987
• Working Girls, Lizzie Borden, 1986

*Available in the U.S. only