Aspiring actor Edward undergoes a radical medical procedure to drastically transform his appearance. But his new dream face quickly turns into a nightmare, as he loses out on the role he was born to play and becomes obsessed with reclaiming what was lost.

Join us for the CCA’s year-long Frederick Wiseman Retrospective, where we will showcase twelve of Wiseman’s rarely seen masterworks. Enjoy a Sunday matinee each month from October 2024 through September 2025. Each unique film will be screened just once on our massive Cinema Theater screen. Each film in CCA’s Frederick Wiseman Retrospective has recently been meticulously restored using original 16mm film negatives and sound elements, and has previously never been available in digital format. This monumental five-year long restoration project, overseen and approved by Wiseman himself, is a collaboration between Zipporah Films, the Library of Congress, DuArt Labs and Goldcrest Post Production. Merchandise Alert: Grab your Limited Edition Wiseman Retrospective t-shirts in the cinema lobby, available while supplies last! BALLET is a profile of the American Ballet Theatre, an important classical ballet company. The film presents the company in rehearsal in their New York studio and on tour in Athens and Copenhagen. Choreographers, ballet masters and mistresses are shown at work with principal dancers, soloists and the corps de ballet. Other sequences involve the administration and fundraising aspects of the company. "Ballet is an eloquent statement about the crucial role of art in bringing extra dimensions to our lives … As much as any seminarian, dancers have a special calling, an intense dedication. In classes and rehearsals, we see youngsters with ideal bodies looking for direction from those who have gone before. Outside the studios, they are just ordinary young people going to the beach… Then the lights go down, the curtain goes up and they are transformed into the vessels of incredible beauty." –John J. O'Connor, The New York Times "[Wiseman] follows American Ballet Theatre’s dancers, choreographers, and backstage personnel through the arduous construction of a dance. Whether he’s recording a ballet master’s interview with a young hopeful or observing Natalia Makarova giving instructions in the projection of glamour and allure, Wiseman remains transfixed by the rigorous and highly traditional notion of beauty that the workers are trying to honor." – The New Yorker "BALLET, in its characteristic unadorned, unsentimentalized manner, remains unique, and its portrait of ballet dancers at work has no parallel." –Alan M. Kriegsman, The Washington Post Total runtime: 129 mins

Filmmakers in attendance with Q&A's for the 6pm screenings on Fri 10/25, Sat 10/26, and Sun 10/27! The United States border is not just a geographic location. The border is everywhere. It lies within every undocumented immigrant family with the threat that at any moment they can be captured, incarcerated, deported; their lives destroyed. BORDERLAND | The Line Within not only exposes the profitable business of immigration and its human cost, but weaves together the stories of immigrant heroines and heroes resisting and showing a way forward, intent on building a movement in the shadow of the border industrial complex, recognizing the human rights of all.

Filmmakers in attendance with Q&A's for the 6pm screenings on Fri 10/25, Sat 10/26, and Sun 10/27! The United States border is not just a geographic location. The border is everywhere. It lies within every undocumented immigrant family with the threat that at any moment they can be captured, incarcerated, deported; their lives destroyed. BORDERLAND | The Line Within not only exposes the profitable business of immigration and its human cost, but weaves together the stories of immigrant heroines and heroes resisting and showing a way forward, intent on building a movement in the shadow of the border industrial complex, recognizing the human rights of all.

New York City, 1980s. A struggling, deadbeat musician named Julius has fallen on hard times. With no guitar, band or paying gigs, he cooks up a get-rich-quick scheme – to find the legendary, yet elusive guitar-maker Elmore Silk. Considered one of the greatest luthiers in the business, Silk’s disappearance from the scene has only made his work more coveted by musicians and executives looking to make a buck off his name. Julius agrees to track the man down and sets out on the road. Meant to be a simple journey upstate, Julius stumbles down a long, winding road full of dead-ends and wrong turns towards an eventual revelatory conclusion in the Canadian wilderness. One of the great cult classics of the 1980s and starring character actors Kevin J O’Conner and Harris Yulin, the supporting cast features real-life music legends Tom Waits, Leon Redbone, Joe Strummer, Dr. John, David Johansen and more. “A wry, laid-back Heart of Darkness" (Chicago Reader), Candy Mountain combines the keen eye of legendary photographer Robert Frank with novelist/screenwriter Rudy Wurlitzer’s mythic American prose to produce the quintessential road movie.

CCA's monthly Closer Looks series, November 2024. Selected by Paul Barnes. The crowning triumph of a career cut tragically short, the final film from Larisa Shepitko won the Golden Bear at the 1977 Berlin Film Festival and went on to be hailed as one of the finest works of late Soviet cinema. In the darkest days of World War II, two partisans set out for supplies to sustain their beleaguered outfit, braving the blizzard-swept landscape of Nazi-occupied Belorussia. When they fall into the hands of German forces and come face-to-face with death, each must choose between martyrdom and betrayal, in a spiritual ordeal that lifts the film’s earthy drama to the plane of religious allegory. With stark, visceral cinematography that pits blinding white snow against pitch-black despair, The Ascent finds poetry and transcendence in the harrowing trials of war.

A French journalist meets the iconic surrealist artist Salvador Dalí on several occasions for a documentary project that never came to be.

PRESENTED WITH CLOSED CAPTIONING FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER! Join us for the CCA’s year-long Frederick Wiseman Retrospective, where we will showcase twelve of Wiseman’s rarely seen masterworks. Enjoy a Sunday matinee each month from October 2024 through September 2025. Each unique film will be screened just once on our massive Cinema Theater screen. Each film in CCA’s Frederick Wiseman Retrospective has recently been meticulously restored using original 16mm film negatives and sound elements, and has previously never been available in digital format. This monumental five-year long restoration project, overseen and approved by Wiseman himself, is a collaboration between Zipporah Films, the Library of Congress, DuArt Labs and Goldcrest Post Production. Merchandise Alert: Grab your Limited Edition Wiseman Retrospective t-shirts in the cinema lobby, available while supplies last! The School for the Deaf at the Alabama Institute is organized around a theory of total communication i.e. the use of signs and finger spelling in conjunction with speech, hearing aids, lip reading, gestures and the written word. The film shows sequences dealing with various aspects of this comprehensive training such as teaching students and parents to sign; speech therapy; psychological counseling; regular academic courses; vocational training; disciplinary problems; parents visits; sports and recreational activity; training in living and working independently; and developing skills in home and money management. Total runtime: 164 mins "Not only does Wiseman present an empathetic picture of the disabled students and loving staff, but he makes his way into organizational meetings, the parental decision making process — all the facets of the lives of the disabled, as they find an increasing role in today’s society." –Arthur Unger, The Christian Science Monitor "Some of the teachers are deaf themselves, and their earnest professional devotion obviously draws on reservoirs of personal experience." –Robert Coles, The New Republic "If a time capsule were prepared today for opening in a couple of hundred years, ‘DEAF’ and ‘BLIND’ would be an ideal choice for inclusion. There’s no doubt that a society is reflected in its institutions. The Alabama Institute catches us at our most caring and compassionate moments.: –John J. O'Connor, The New York Times "Never a word of narration, never a voice telling us what we are seeing, guiding our reactions, advising us how to feel. We are on our own… The reward is a new awareness not only of the blind and deaf, but of those who work with them." –Michael Keman, The Washington Post

Join us for the CCA’s year-long Frederick Wiseman Retrospective, where we will showcase twelve of Wiseman’s rarely seen masterworks. Enjoy a Sunday matinee each month from October 2024 through September 2025. Each unique film will be screened just once on our massive Cinema Theater screen. Each film in CCA’s Frederick Wiseman Retrospective has recently been meticulously restored using original 16mm film negatives and sound elements, and has previously never been available in digital format. This monumental five-year long restoration project, overseen and approved by Wiseman himself, is a collaboration between Zipporah Films, the Library of Congress, DuArt Labs and Goldcrest Post Production. Merchandise Alert: Grab your Limited Edition Wiseman Retrospective t-shirts in the cinema lobby, available while supplies last! Essene (1972) is about daily life in a Benedictine monastery and the resolution of conflict between personal needs and the institutional and organizational priorities of the community. In the Order, where the focus of life is the relationship of individual work and worship to the community as a whole, the brethren must cope with the same issues that arise in any community: rules, work, worship, values, love, and play. Total runtime: 86 mins "ESSENE is one of the best religious films ever made… Fred Wiseman’s cinema verite look at life inside a monastery also studies the essential meanings inherent in any institutional framework… It is fluid, extraordinarily honest and non theatrical experience… Wiseman conveys humility without resorting to humble expressions, an awareness of profound piety without mock spirituality… ESSENE raises the question of God urgently and eloquently." –Malcolm Boyd, The New York Times "Mr. Wiseman has given the viewer a superb human comedy — funny, pathetic, touching, absurd, moving." –John J. O'Connor, The New York Times

Join us for the CCA’s year-long Frederick Wiseman Retrospective, where we will showcase twelve of Wiseman’s rarely seen masterworks. Enjoy a Sunday matinee each month from October 2024 through September 2025. Each unique film will be screened just once on our massive Cinema Theater screen. Each film in CCA’s Frederick Wiseman Retrospective has recently been meticulously restored using original 16mm film negatives and sound elements, and has previously never been available in digital format. This monumental five-year long restoration project, overseen and approved by Wiseman himself, is a collaboration between Zipporah Films, the Library of Congress, DuArt Labs and Goldcrest Post Production. Merchandise Alert: Grab your Limited Edition Wiseman Retrospective t-shirts in the cinema lobby, available while supplies last! HIGH SCHOOL (1968) was filmed at a large urban high school in Philadelphia. The film documents how the school system exists not only to pass on "facts" but also transmits social values from one generation to another. HIGH SCHOOL presents a series of formal and informal encounters between teachers, students, parents, and administrators through which the ideology and values of the school emerge. Total runtime: 75 mins "HIGH SCHOOL, a wicked, brilliant documentary about life in a lower-middle-class secondary school." –Richard Schickel, Life "HIGH SCHOOL shows no stretching of minds. It does show the overwhelming dreariness of administrators and teachers who confuse teaching with discipline. The school somehow takes warm, breathing teen-agers and tries to turn them into 40-year old mental eunuchs… No wonder the kids turn off, stare out windows, become surly, try to escape… The most frightening thing about ‘HIGH SCHOOL’ is that it captures the battlefield so clearly; the film is too true." –Peter Janssen, Newsweek "The high school is the very heart of America, and Wiseman has captured its strength and rhythm perfectly." –Edgar Z. Friedenberg, The New York Review of Books

CCA continues with our popular Cult Film Series with a ONE NIGHT ONLY screening for the Halloween season of Nobuhiko Obayashi’s classic experimental comedy horror film, HOUSE! How to describe Obayashi’s indescribable 1977 movie House (Hausu)? As a psychedelic ghost tale? A stream-of-consciousness bedtime story? An episode of Scooby-Doo as directed by Mario Bava? Any of the above will do for this hallucinatory head trip about a schoolgirl who travels with six classmates to her ailing aunt’s creaky country home and comes face-to-face with evil spirits, a demonic house cat, a bloodthirsty piano, and other ghoulish visions, all realized by Obayashi via mattes, animation, and collage effects. Equally absurd and nightmarish, House might have been beamed to Earth from some other planet. Never before available on home video in the United States until recently, it’s one of the most exciting cult discoveries in years.

Join us for the CCA’s year-long Frederick Wiseman Retrospective, where we will showcase twelve of Wiseman’s rarely seen masterworks. Enjoy a Sunday matinee each month from October 2024 through September 2025. Each unique film will be screened just once on our massive Cinema Theater screen. Each film in CCA’s Frederick Wiseman Retrospective has recently been meticulously restored using original 16mm film negatives and sound elements, and has previously never been available in digital format. This monumental five-year long restoration project, overseen and approved by Wiseman himself, is a collaboration between Zipporah Films, the Library of Congress, DuArt Labs and Goldcrest Post Production. Merchandise Alert: Grab your Limited Edition Wiseman Retrospective t-shirts in the cinema lobby, available while supplies last! JUVENILE COURT shows the complex variety of cases before the Memphis Juvenile Court: foster home placement, drug abuse, armed robbery, child abuse, and sexual offenses. The sequences illustrate such issues as community protection vs. the desire for rehabilitation, the range and the limits of the choices available to the court, the psychology of the offender, and the constitutional and procedural questions involved in administering a juvenile court. "Literally and figuratively, Wiseman opens the doors of perception in the daily routine of a juvenile court… (A) master educator, (he) refuses to preach or even teach, but we learn — and are immeasurably enriched by the experience." –Jerrold Hickey, The Boston Globe "The film’s chief impact stems from its graphic, often grim glances at the unforgettable subjects who are brought before the court… JUVENILE COURT does not attack the institution it explores, nor does it suggest new or different solutions to age old human problems." –David Sterritt, The Christian Science Monitor

Join us for the CCA’s year-long Frederick Wiseman Retrospective, where we will showcase twelve of Wiseman’s rarely seen masterworks. Enjoy a Sunday matinee each month from October 2024 through September 2025. Each unique film will be screened just once on our massive Cinema Theater screen. Each film in CCA’s Frederick Wiseman Retrospective has recently been meticulously restored using original 16mm film negatives and sound elements, and has previously never been available in digital format. This monumental five-year long restoration project, overseen and approved by Wiseman himself, is a collaboration between Zipporah Films, the Library of Congress, DuArt Labs and Goldcrest Post Production. Merchandise Alert: Grab your Limited Edition Wiseman Retrospective t-shirts in the cinema lobby, available while supplies last! La Comédie-Française is the oldest continuous repertory company in the world, founded in Paris in the late 17th century. This is the first time a documentary film-maker has been allowed to look at all the aspects of the work of this great theatrical company. Sequences in the film include sections of plays, casting, set and costume design, administrative meetings and rehearsals and performances of four classic French plays, Don Juan by Molière, La Thebaide by Racine, La Double Inconstance by Marivaux and Occupe-toi d’Amelie by Feydeau. “LA COMÉDIE-FRANÇAISE is a multifaceted exploration of the art and commerce of theater…What emerges from this epic work of nonfiction is a rare glimpse into what makes theater theater and what makes film, in the right hands, an art.” –Michael Blowen, Boston Globe “This film is about a culture that takes serious culture very seriously… Ever the master documentary maker, Wiseman, brings home his points without saying a word.” –Laurie Winters, L.A. Times “At various points the viewer might be standing in line to buy tickets, watching a seamstress working on costumes and wigs, viewing a set being erected — or listening to an erudite discussion by actors and their director about what Marivaux intended in his play ‘La Double Inconstance,’ one of four seen in rehearsal (Moliere, Racine and Feydeau are also represented.). During the easily flowing three hours, the viewer can also drop in on administrative meetings, listen to budget woes and hear an actress eloquently plead for financial aid for retirees. One of the fun highlights: a 100th birthday party for a retired actress who calls the Comédie-Française ‘a religion.’ I call it a wonderful, exciting, thoroughly enlightening place to visit for a few wonderful hours of television. This is indeed, a Wiseman winner!” -Kay Gardella, New York Daily News Total runtime: 223 mins

Join us for the CCA’s year-long Frederick Wiseman Retrospective, where we will showcase twelve of Wiseman’s rarely seen masterworks. Enjoy a Sunday matinee each month from October 2024 through September 2025. Each unique film will be screened just once on our massive Cinema Theater screen. Each film in CCA’s Frederick Wiseman Retrospective has recently been meticulously restored using original 16mm film negatives and sound elements, and has previously never been available in digital format. This monumental five-year long restoration project, overseen and approved by Wiseman himself, is a collaboration between Zipporah Films, the Library of Congress, DuArt Labs and Goldcrest Post Production. Merchandise Alert: Grab your Limited Edition Wiseman Retrospective t-shirts in the cinema lobby, available while supplies last! “Wiseman’s MODEL (1980) focuses on the doings and dealings of the New York modeling agency Zoli, which serves clients ranging from Chanel to Bloomingdales. Frederick Wiseman captures the hectic office atmosphere, intakes with potential models, opinions on looks and portfolios, and screen tests and photo shoots, both in studios and on location. Models act while photographers direct them: “A little less innocent, a little sexier, more provocative,” or “Fun, fun, fun!” In , it quickly becomes clear how much the art of seduction relies on casting, outfits, makeup, and staging. Wiseman shows us media figures who do the polar opposite of what he does as a representative of Direct Cinema: they intervene, set the stage, and run the show. In this sense, the film is about “the gap between reality and illusion,” as a male model puts it while talking with Andy Warhol. Wiseman dissects the artificiality of the beauty ideal by paying a lot of attention to makeup. He intersperses footage of photo shoots with shots of trucks, couriers, and hobos. The most unusual scenes are the ones in which reality and illusion intersect, such as when a director tells a young actress that her angry reaction to the media has to feel natural — or when a group of demonstrating feminists turn out to be models.” -IDFA “In MODEL, he shows us the business side of an agency, photography sessions, models talking, playing, and wasting time. He highlights the mad perfectionism of TV-commercial- makers —rehearsals, retakes, huge crews, anxieties, tantrums, and exhaustion, all for a few seconds of film selling hosiery.” -David Denby, New York Magazine A “microcosm of American life we have all more or less slavishly copied” -The Guardian Total runtime: 129 mins

The Grammy-nominated documentary The Music of Strangers, follows members of the Ensemble as they gather in locations across the world, exploring the ways art can both preserve traditions and shape cultural evolution. Blending performance footage, personal interviews, and archival film, Oscar-winning director Morgan Neville and producer Caitrin Rogers focus on the personal journeys of a small group of Silkroad Ensemble mainstays — Kinan Azmeh (Syria), Kayhan Kalhor (Iran), Yo-Yo Ma (France/United States), Wu Man (China), and Cristina Pato (Spain) — to chronicle passion, talent, and sacrifice. Through these moving individual stories, the filmmakers paint a vivid portrait of a bold musical experiment and a global search for the ties that bind. BONUS: Kinan Azmeh and Colin Jacobsen, members of the Silk Road Ensemble that are featured in the film, will join us in person as special guests. Private wine reception prior to the film for ticket purchasers. Director: Morgan Neville Features: Yo-Yo Ma, Kinan Azmeh, Kayhan Kalhor Film Run time: 1 hr. 36 min.   Film: Documentary, Music Language: English Rating: PG-13

Saturday, October 26, 1:30-3p In-person at the CCA Gallery Since ancient times around the world, humans have used metaphor to make sense of the chaos of their existence. In this workshop, poets and lyric essayists of all levels will examine metaphor as a craft technique: a way of using small things to reference big ideas. Join us as we read several poems and lyric essays to examine the playfulness in figurative language, after which we will employ some of what we see in a series of generative prompts. Please bring Please bring journals or a good surface for writing at your seat. Deborah Taffa’s memoir, Whiskey Tender (HarperCollins) has been named to "best" lists at Esquire, Oprah Daily, ELLE, The NY Times, and The Washington Post. With fellowships and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, PEN America, MacDowell, and the NY State Summer Writer’s Institute, Deborah received her MFA from the NWP at the University of Iowa. A citizen of the Kwatsaan (Yuma) Nation and Laguna Pueblo, she is the director of the MFA CW program at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, NM. This program is supported by the Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry

Join us for the CCA’s year-long Frederick Wiseman Retrospective, where we will showcase twelve of Wiseman’s rarely seen masterworks. Enjoy a Sunday matinee each month from October 2024 through September 2025. Each unique film will be screened just once on our massive Cinema Theater screen. Each film in CCA’s Frederick Wiseman Retrospective has recently been meticulously restored using original 16mm film negatives and sound elements, and has previously never been available in digital format. This monumental five-year long restoration project, overseen and approved by Wiseman himself, is a collaboration between Zipporah Films, the Library of Congress, DuArt Labs and Goldcrest Post Production. Merchandise Alert: Grab your Limited Edition Wiseman Retrospective t-shirts in the cinema lobby, available while supplies last! “Riddled with scenes reminiscent of both horror and science fiction films, Primate (1974) displays behavior of both the human and non-human kind at the Yerkes Primate Research Center. However, it is the latter who are housed like prisoners and subjected to an endless barrage of tests and invasive procedures. Even intimate moments—such as an orangutan with her newborn—and the occasional affection, play or cute nickname seem like cold compensation for an institutionalized existence. While repeatedly demonstrating that the creatures they have caged are intelligent, sensitive beings, the scientists carry on with experiments that occasionally veer into the bizarre. Wiseman allows the viewer to experience a confusion and fear similar to that of the lab’s residents: being injected with an unknown substance or anxiously awaiting whatever terrors or rewards are in store when a white-coated figure opens the cage. Regardless of the argument for or against animal testing, Wiseman’s harrowing record might be asking what else humans are sacrificing in this unsettling exchange.” -Harvard Film Archive “It is essentially about one set of primates who have power, using it against another who haven’t… Wiseman found no Frankensteins during his apparently very amicable visit to the centre; just nice people adding to the sum of human knowledge by subtracting from the sum of humanity itself.” -Derek Malcolm, The (London) Guardian “PRIMATE ostensibly has to do with the routine investigations of primate life and behavior (notably sexual behavior) which are conducted at the Yerkes Primate Research Center in Atlanta. What it’s actually about is scientific research: its seemingly accepted presence in American life, and its ambiguous purposes.” -Michael Arlen, The New Yorker Total runtime: 105 mins

Join us for the CCA’s year-long Frederick Wiseman Retrospective, where we will showcase twelve of Wiseman’s rarely seen masterworks. Enjoy a Sunday matinee each month from October 2024 through September 2025. Each unique film will be screened just once on our massive Cinema Theater screen. Each film in CCA’s Frederick Wiseman Retrospective has recently been meticulously restored using original 16mm film negatives and sound elements, and has previously never been available in digital format. This monumental five-year long restoration project, overseen and approved by Wiseman himself, is a collaboration between Zipporah Films, the Library of Congress, DuArt Labs and Goldcrest Post Production. Merchandise Alert: Grab your Limited Edition Wiseman Retrospective t-shirts in the cinema lobby, available while supplies last! RACETRACK (1985) is about the Belmont Race Track, one of the world’s leading race tracks for thoroughbred racing. The film highlights the training, maintaining and racing of thoroughbred horses. Everyday occurrences are shown: in the backstretch — the grooming, feeding, shoeing, and caring for horses and the preparation for races; at the practice track the various aspects of training, exercising, and timing the horses; at the paddock — the pre-race presentation of the horses; and in the grandstand — betting and watching the races. The film also has sequences showing the variety of work done by trainers, jockeys, jockey agents, grooms, hot walkers, stable hands, and veterinarians. Total runtime: 114 mins “Beginning with the birth of a thoroughbred and running through to the conclusion of the 1981 Belmont Stakes in which Summing upset heavily-favored Pleasant Colony, RACETRACK makes all other movies about horse races, including the few cute ones look like a ride on a cute little merry-go-round.” -Gene Siskel, Chicago Tribune “Wiseman wanders around Belmont finding ripe, illustrative material, most of which fits into the abiding themes of his films, the melancholia peculiar to industrial societies, the emotional wages of materialism. Horse racing is a small industry comparatively, but it serves as a rich microcosm… It’s a super super film, from a super super filmmaker” -Tom Shales, The Washington Post “The film is not about winning or losing; the show is about an institution, an industry, and its rituals. In RACETRACK, the industry Wiseman reveals is a peculiar one, pervaded by both a romantic respect for the magnificent animals at its center and an almost corporate atmosphere.” -Cathleen Schine, Vogue

Presented as part of CCA's monthly Cult Film Series on the film's 40th Anniversary! A quintessential cult film of the 1980s, Alex Cox’s singular sci-fi comedy REPO MAN stars the always captivating Harry Dean Stanton as a weathered repo man in a desolate Los Angeles, and Emilio Estevez as the nihilistic middle-class punk he takes under his wing. The job becomes more than either of them bargained for when they get involved in repossessing a mysterious —and otherworldly—Chevy Malibu with a hefty reward attached to it. Featuring the ultimate early-eighties LA punk soundtrack, this grungily hilarious odyssey is also a politically trenchant take on President Reagan’s domestic and foreign policies. Total runtime: 92 mins

Silents Synced pairs classic silent movies with epic rock music. Created by an independent cinema owner for independent cinemas! Silents Synced will be available to book exclusively for independents and drive-ins only! The first film will feature Radiohead’s KID A (2000) / AMNESIAC (2001), paired with NOSFERATU.

Presented by NOW (National Organization for Women) ONE NIGHT ONLY! Still Working 9 to 5 is a documentary that explores the still-relevant gender disparity in today’s workplace and society, and whether progress has been made since the 1980 release of the blockbuster comedy 9 to 5 about 3 secretaries fighting for basic workplace equality. The documentary includes commentary from the original 9 to 5 cast members Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, Dolly Parton, and Dabney Coleman, as well as Rita Moreno, Allison Janney, and leaders of prominent women’s rights organizations including Lilly Ledbetter, Zoe Nicholson, Karen Nussbaum, Ellen Cassedy and women of all ages and backgrounds discussing their everyday lived experiences.

From the simple story of love and misery of a young couple from the Harlem ghetto to meetings with twelve great blues singers (BB King, Mance Lipscomb, Robert Pete Williams, Roosevelt Sykes), filmed in their social milieu.

Join us for the CCA’s year-long Frederick Wiseman Retrospective, where we will showcase twelve of Wiseman’s rarely seen masterworks. Enjoy a Sunday matinee each month from October 2024 through September 2025. Each unique film will be screened just once on our massive Cinema Theater screen. Each film in CCA’s Frederick Wiseman Retrospective has recently been meticulously restored using original 16mm film negatives and sound elements, and has previously never been available in digital format. This monumental five-year long restoration project, overseen and approved by Wiseman himself, is a collaboration between Zipporah Films, the Library of Congress, DuArt Labs and Goldcrest Post Production. Merchandise Alert: Grab your Limited Edition Wiseman Retrospective t-shirts in the cinema lobby, available while supplies last! Filmed in the four weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas at the main Neiman-Marcus store and corporate headquarters in Dallas, TX, Wiseman’s revelatory look at the renowned department store discloses the many strategies and practices involved in the selling of luxury goods, from sable coats to lingerie. As he cuts between marketing meetings, personnel training, and fitting room sessions, Wiseman deftly shows how the store’s many departments operate in sync, enticing their customers into buying products on every floor. According to Wiseman, The Store was made as an outgrowth of his previous documentary Model (1981), in which he focused on “the aestheticization of the body to sell commercial products.” Here, his attention to how those products are sold alongside his depiction of everyone involved in manicuring their appearance to look desirable—from workers arranging light fixtures to salespeople pulling samples for customers—zeroes in on the sophisticated customs involved in selling and buying products in America, an everyday transaction that Wiseman is keen to present as an event rather than a banality. ”If you are going to have theories about American society, you’ve got to look at all aspects of it.” You’ve got to look at how the images are created that affect people’s lives and the choices of consumer goods they buy.” -FREDERICK WISEMAN Total runtime: 118 mins

A small but growing Texas town, filled with strange and musical characters, celebrates its sesquicentennial and converge on a local parade and talent show.

"Water Is Love: Ripples of Regeneration" is a poignant documentary that delves into the intricate relationship between communities and their water sources. The film highlights the challenges faced by various communities worldwide in ensuring sustainable water management and showcases inspiring stories of resilience and regeneration.

Join us for the CCA’s year-long Frederick Wiseman Retrospective, where we will showcase twelve of Wiseman’s rarely seen masterworks. Enjoy a Sunday matinee each month from October 2024 through September 2025. Each unique film will be screened just once on our massive Cinema Theater screen. Each film in CCA’s Frederick Wiseman Retrospective has recently been meticulously restored using original 16mm film negatives and sound elements, and has previously never been available in digital format. This monumental five-year long restoration project, overseen and approved by Wiseman himself, is a collaboration between Zipporah Films, the Library of Congress, DuArt Labs and Goldcrest Post Production. Merchandise Alert: Grab your Limited Edition Wiseman Retrospective t-shirts in the cinema lobby, available while supplies last! WELFARE (1975) shows the nature and complexity of the welfare system in sequences illustrating the staggering diversity of problems that constitute welfare: housing, unemployment, divorce, medical and psychiatric problems, abandoned and abused children, and the elderly. These issues are presented in a context where welfare workers as well as clients struggle to cope with and interpret the laws and regulations that govern their work and life. Total runtime: 167 mins “I wish all the public, as well as all legislators and politicians, could see this film. It could have been made in any urban area in the United States…” –James R. Dumpson, Commissioner of the New York City Department of Social Welfare, in Better Times “WELFARE is an inside look at one of the key institutions around which society functions… and like his other films it is profoundly disturbing, especially for those with preconceptions … As Wiseman’s film shows, a welfare centre is a battleground with the poor fighting desperately against a complex web of Catch 22 regulations that can defeat even the strongest and cleverest… An amazing film.” –Ken Wlaschin, London Film Festival Program, 1975

Your Monster tells the story of the soft-spoken actor Laura Franco (Melissa Barrera), who is dumped by her longtime boyfriend (Edmund Donovan) while recovering from surgery and retreats to her childhood home to recover. With her future looking bleak, insult is added to injury when Laura discovers her ex is staging a musical that she helped him develop. But out of these gut-wrenching life changes emerges a monster (Tommy Dewey) with whom she finds a connection, encouraging Laura to follow her dreams, open her heart and fall in love with her inner rage.

Join us for the CCA’s year-long Frederick Wiseman Retrospective, where we will showcase twelve of Wiseman’s rarely seen masterworks. Enjoy a Sunday matinee each month from October 2024 through September 2025. Each unique film will be screened just once on our massive Cinema Theater screen. Each film in CCA’s Frederick Wiseman Retrospective has recently been meticulously restored using original 16mm film negatives and sound elements, and has previously never been available in digital format. This monumental five-year long restoration project, overseen and approved by Wiseman himself, is a collaboration between Zipporah Films, the Library of Congress, DuArt Labs and Goldcrest Post Production. Merchandise Alert: Grab your Limited Edition Wiseman Retrospective t-shirts in the cinema lobby, available while supplies last! ZOO is a film about the zoo in Miami, Florida, the care and maintenance of the animals by the keepers, the work of the veterinarians and their staff, and the visits to the zoo by people from all over the world. The film presents the wide diversity of interests and activities at the zoo and the interrelatedness of the animal, human, ethical, financial, technical, organizational and research aspects of operating the zoo. Total runtime: 130 mins "ZOO is a brooding, poignant, poetic consideration of nothing less than the human condition… The awe and wonder and the gratitude we all feel is up there on the screen, but it is humbling, because as Rabbi Wiseman shows us, we are not adequate to be keepers, no matter how hard we may try or how fervently we may pray for help and guidance." –David R. Slavitt, Chronicles "Zoo visitors busily photograph, videotape, and peer through various ocular apparatuses as if they couldn’t see without them; the dedicated, caring staff assiduously records every aspect of their animal charges’ lives, loves, and deaths." –Melissa Pierson, Vogue