Film Seminars | Discussions | Intros

Haru and Luis love competing in Tokyo’s ballroom dance scene, but after tragedy strikes, Haru withdraws into isolation. When friends coax her back to the studio, she develops an infatuation with the new instructor — and she must face what comes next as sparks fly. Grief, romance, Fosse-like dance numbers and little magical realism collide in a true crowd-pleaser from this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

A Hollywood director sets out to explore life as a homeless person in order to gain relevant life experience for his next movie. Joel McCrea and sultry Veronica Lake star in this starkly realistic yet highly humorous satire from writer-director Preston Sturges.

Three secretaries (Jane Fonda, Dolly Parton, Lily Tomlin) turn the tables on their tyrannical, sexist boss (Dabney Coleman) by abducting him and running the business themselves.

Pioneering queer avant-garde filmmaker Barbara Hammer (1939–2019) broke barriers by centering frank lesbian sexuality and pleasure in an expansive body of beautiful, poetic, personal work. Constructed largely from Hammer’s own archive, director Brydie O’Connor crafts a loving portrait of a force of nature while accompanying her through her final years and creative processes.

The Butthole Surfers exploded onto the underground music scene in the 1980s, amassing a growing audience as they built one of the most mind-boggling surrealist rock and roll spectacles ever devised. They were radically inclusive art-punk pioneers on an endless tour, blowing minds and spreading their art to a cult following.

Part of Staff Picks and programmed by Rusty, who says: “I loved getting lost in this swashbuckling, musical adventure on the big screen as a kid and I still find it just as big, blue, and wet-thing as ever. This salty adventure to the Caribbean is equal parts dark and hilarious — but most of all just plain weird. Thirty years after it first shipwrecked into theaters, it can still shiver your timbers or else you’ll walk the plank, Matey!”

Sacred Harp singing has survived over 200 years tucked away from sight in the rural deep South. To the casual observer, it is foreign and unintelligible, but to the singers, it is the key that unlocks mysteries — songs of both beauty and sorrow, of life and of death, songs that cause feet to stomp and tears to flow, often at the same time. AWAKE, MY SOUL has been re-edited and remastered for its 20th anniversary.

Returning for its 15th incarnation — our quinceañscare-a if you will — the Belcourt’s annual all-night onslaught of eerie evocations again assaults the eyes and ears of our eager audience.

With live shadow cast Little Morals! This fast-paced potpourri of camp, sci-fi and rock 'n' roll tracks the exploits of naïve couple Brad and Janet after they stumble upon the lair of transvestite Dr. Frank-N-Furter. 18+ only.

Part of Staff Picks and programmed by Tony, who says: “I find UtSL to be the rare puzzle box movie, which yields new insights and interpretations with every watch. The film loves old Hollywood, classic cinema, puzzles and ciphers, and the paranoid-soaked works of Phillip K. Dick and Robert Anton Wilson as much as I do. Will you help me break the code?”

The iconic gender-exploding rock sensation and enduring cult classic big-screen adaptation of John Cameron Mitchell and Stephen Trask’s stage musical about an “internationally ignored” but divinely talented rock diva, characterized by Mitchell as inhabiting a “beautiful gender of one.” Film screening followed by Q&A and an acoustic set with John Cameron Mitchell.