Film Seminars | Discussions | Intros

A retired criminal profiler (William Petersen) reluctantly returns to the FBI to help track down a serial killer of families and is forced to consult an expert — the imprisoned Dr. Hannibal Lecktor (Brian Cox in a subtly chilling performance). This new 4K Final Cut, overseen by Mann, enhances the film’s depth, visual clarity and sound, offering audiences the ultimate immersive version.

At a posh country club outside Manila, 17-year-old Isabel from the rural north works the immaculate grounds, sampling its luxuries as the members engage in a complex dance with the staff. The deeper she journeys into its most exclusive corners, the closer she gets to the violent truths of the club, her native Philippines, and her own past.

A shapeless organism has come to earth with the parallel urges to consume and expand, spreading muculent mayhem and wrecking the status quo of small-town America. The late, great Chuck Russell delivers one of the all-time horror remakes — and no flesh is safe.

Dr. Warren Chapin (Vincent Price) conducts autopsies on executed prisoners and — upon deducing that a spine-dwelling creature is suppressed by the human scream — he doses a deaf and mute woman with LSD and builds for her a terrible nightmare in an attempt to lure the creature.

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!”

After the success of POINT BLANK and DELIVERANCE, Warner Brothers offered John Boorman the opportunity of a lifetime — the chance to direct a sequel to their smash hit, THE EXORCIST. The result was one of the biggest disasters in movie history. Part of Doctober and Shocktober

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.

What game designer Allegra Geller has created is a whole new way of gaming — eXistenZ by Antenna — plugs directly into the spinal column and uses the structure of the brain as its playing field. It’s causing pandemonium with the public, including a faction of fundamentalists who want her and her technology dead. No one does mind/body schism like David Cronenberg. Part of Shocktober

In conjunction with Belcourt’s Shocktober series, this seminar explores the history and cultural impact of the American horror comedy film.

When a Harvard abnormal psychology professor (William Hurt) begins to experiment with mushrooms indigenous to a remote Mexican tribe, signs of both mental and physical devolution lead to the phasing in and out of material existence. Written by Paddy Chayefsky with an original score from modern composer John Corigliano, Ken Russell’s 1980 film is a fantastic and frightening trip into the deepest, darkest recesses of human consciousness. Part of Shocktober, Music City Mondays and Ken Russell x4.

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.