Summary: Based on one of the most controversial plays of its time, shows how a disaffected teenager finds her way amid the economic desperation of industrial Manchester, and despite an absent, self-absorbed mother. With its unapologetic identification with social outcasts and its sensitive, modern approach to matters of sexuality and race, a classic that is still a startling benchmark work of realism.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2016

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Summary: An enterprising gambler and a bordello madam, both newcomers to the raw Pacific Northwest mining town of Presbyterian Church, join forces to provide the miners with a superior kind of whorehouse experience. The appearance of representatives of a powerful mining company with interests of its own, however, threatens to be the undoing of their plans.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2016

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: A small town in the south-west of France, summer of 1944. Having failed to join the resistance, the 18 year old Lucien Lacombe, whose father is a prisoner in Germany and whose mother dates her employer, works for the German police.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: The Criterion Collection 2006

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Summary: Depicts the romantic lives of two Londoners, a middle-aged doctor and a prickly thirty something divorcee, who are sleeping with the same handsome young artist. A revelation in its day, this may be the 1970s most intelligent, multitextured film about the complexities of romantic relationships; it is keenly acted and sensitively directed, from a penetrating screenplay.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: Criterion Collection 2012

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Summary: Marianne and Johan always seemed to be the perfect couple. But when Johan suddenly leaves Marianne for another woman, they are forced to confront the disintegration of their marriage. Chronicles ten years of turmoil and love that bind the couple despite their divorce and subsequent marriages. Portrays the brutal pain and uplifting peace that accompany a lifetime of loving.--Container.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: Criterion Collection 2004

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Summary: Tells the life story of terrorist Ilich Ramírez Sanchez, internationally known as Carlos the Jackal.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: Criterion Collection 2011

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Summary: A farmworker sneaks across the border from Mexico into California in an effort to make money to send to his family back home. It is a story that happens every day, told here in an uncompromising, groundbreaking work of realism from American independent filmmaker Robert M. Young. Vivid and spare where other films about illegal immigration might sentimentalize, Young's take on the subject is...

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: Criterion Collection 2012

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: The last person to die on New Year's Eve before the clock strikes twelve is doomed to take the reins of Death's chariot and work tirelessly collecting fresh souls for the next year. So says the legend that drives the Phantom Carriage, about an alcoholic, abusive ne'er-do-well who is shown the error of his ways and the pure-of-heart Salvation Army sister who believes in his redemption.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: Criterion Collection 2011

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Summary: The great Agnes Varda's film career began with this graceful, penetrating study of a marriage on the rocks, set against the backdrop of a small Mediterranean fishing village. Both a stylized depiction of the complicated relationship between a married couple and a documentary-like look at the daily struggles of the locals, Varda's discursive, gorgeously filmed debut was radical enough to later...

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: Criterion Collection 2007

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Bunuel, Luis

Summary: A group of high-society friends find themselves unable to leave their host's mansion after a lavish dinner party.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: Criterion 2009

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Miguel, Blondin

Summary: A young African refugee is saved from deportation by a kindly old man, who shines shoes for a living, and his tight-knit community.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: Criterion Collection 2012

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Summary: "Ousmane Sembène ... made his feature debut in 1966 with the brilliant and stirring Black Girl. Sembène, who was also an acclaimed novelist in his native Senegal, transforms a deceptively simple plot--about a young Senegalese woman who moves to France to work for a wealthy white family and finds that life in their small apartment becomes a prison, both figuratively and literally--into a...

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2017

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: A boxing match in Brooklyn; life in postwar Bosnia and Herzegovina; the daily routine of a Nigerian midwife; an intimate family moment at home with the director: Kirsten Johnson weaves these scenes and others into her film, a tapestry of footage captured over her twenty-five-year career as a documentary cinematographer.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2017

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Summary: A celebrated literary scholar, seemingly happily married, embarks on an affair with a gorgeous stewardess, who is captivated by his charm and reputation. As their romance gets serious, the film grows anxious, leading to a wallop of a conclusion.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: the Criterion Collection 2015

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Summary: This heartrending masterpiece by Kenji Mizoguchi about the give-and-take between life and art marked the director's first use of the hypnotic long takes and eloquent camera movements that would come to define his films. The adopted son of legendary kabuki actor Kikunosuke, who is striving to achieve stardom by mastering female roles, turns to his infant brother's wet nurse for support and...

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2016

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Summary: A four-year-old boy is trapped in a loveless family with his suicidal father and his adulteress mother.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: Criterion Collection 2006

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Summary: A wealthy merchant in nineteenth century Macao becomes obsessed with bringing to life an oft-related anecdote about a rich man who gives a poor sailor a small sum of money to impregnate his wife.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2016

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: A one-night stand develops into a weekend-long idyll for two very different young men in the English Midlands, in an emotionally naked film that's both a snapshot of the complexities of contemporary gay living, and a portrait of a love affair.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: Criterion Collection 2012

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: "In 1970, Twentieth Century-Fox, impressed by the visual zing 'King of the Nudies' Russ Meyer had been bringing to bargain-basement exploitation fare, handed the director a studio budget and the title to one of its biggest hits, Valley of the Dolls. With a satirical screenplay by Roger Ebert, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls follows three young female rockers going Hollywood, in hell-bent sixties...

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2016

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: Made up of intimate, revelatory footage of the singular author and poet filmed over the course of five years, Howard Brookner's 1983 documentary about William S. Burroughs (Naked Lunch) was for decades mainly the stuff of legend; that changed when Aaron Brookner, the late director's nephew, discovered a print of it in 2011 and spearheaded a restoration. Includes on-screen appearances by Allen...

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2015

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Summary: Set in late 19th-century, pre-independence India, this film is about a woman's artistic and romantic yearning. It is about the lonely wife of a workaholic newspaper editor, Charulata, whose beautiful face masks a burning creativity. When her husband's poet cousin comes to stay with them, Charulata finds herself both inspired by him creatively and dangerously drawn to him physically. A delicate...

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: Criterion Collection 2013

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Summary: An absorbing drama about a Belgian teenager who is gradually coming to understand the implications of his father making a living off of abusing illegal alien workers.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: Criterion Collection 2012

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Summary: The Belgian filmmaking team of brothers Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne turned heads with Rosetta, an intense verite drama that closely follows a poor young woman struggling to hold onto a job to support herself and her alcoholic mother. It's a swift and simple tale made revelatory by the raw, empathic way in which the directors render Rosetta's desperation, keeping the camera nearly perched on...

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: Criterion Collection 2012

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: A complex exploration of the physical and emotional effects of trauma. A college student attempts suicide after a brutal sexual assault but is stopped by a mechanic whose kindness, however, soon takes an unsettling turn. Startlingly modern in its frankness and psychological realism, the film represents one of the purest on-screen expressions of the sensibility of the intimate community of...

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2017

Copies Available at Woodmere