Miramax: 25 Years
January 1–August 2005

On the occasion of Miramax's twenty-fifth anniversary, The Museum of Modern Art presents a retrospective of fifty significant films that Miramax and its division, Dimension, produced and distributed over the past quarter-century. This retrospective will be presented in two parts: first, from January through March, and then resuming in the summer. Harvey and Bob Weinstein, two brothers who grew up in Queens, founded Miramax in 1979, naming the company after their parents, Miriam and Max.

Headquartered in downtown Manhattan, Miramax has grown substantially from its modest beginnings through shrewd acquisitions and marketing policies. Most important, Miramax has encouraged broader support of independent cinema while making available an extraordinarily rich and eclectic library of significant works by some of the world’s finest filmmakers, including Woody Allen, Stephen Frears, Krzysztof Kieslowski, Martin Scorsese, and many others.

Organized by Laurence Kardish, Senior Curator, Department of Film and Media.

See a list of past screenings in this series

Sling Blade. 1996. USA. Written and directed by Billy Bob Thornton. With Thornton, Dwight Yoakam, J. T. Walsh. The only theatrical presentation in New York of the director's cut, soon to be released on DVD. Shot in Benton, Arkansas, Thornton's impressive debut is a gripping Southern Gothic about a murderer recently released from an asylum who finds himself in a domestic situation dangerously like the one that propelled him to kill his mother. Digital projection. 157 min.
Wednesday, June 8, 7:15. T1

The Piano. 1993. Australia/France. Written and directed by Jane Campion. With Holly Hunter, Harvey Keitel, Anna Paquin. The Piano is much like its remarkable heroine, a mute (but not deaf) young Scots widow, who, with her nine-year-old daughter, travels to New Zealand to marry a man she has never met. "A severely beautiful, mysterious movie that as if by magic liberates the romantic imagination" (Vincent Canby, The New York Times, 1993). 120 min.
Thursday, June 16, 6:00. T1; Sunday, June 26, 5:30. T2

Bullets over Broadway. 1994. USA. Directed by Woody Allen. Screenplay by Allen, Douglas McGrath. With John Cusack, Chazz Palminteri, Dianne Wiest. Allen’s romantic comedy is a Runyonesque burlesque on the conflict between artistic vision and compromise. A playwright casts Broadway’s greatest actress along with its worst—the mistress of the play’s gangster producer. 99 min.

Friday, July 1, 5:00. T1; Saturday, July 2, 4:30. T2

Dirty Pretty Things. 2002. Great Britain. Directed by Stephen Frears. Screenplay by Steven Knight. With Audrey Tautou, Chiwetel Ejiofor. Frears fashions a timely and disturbing suspense melodrama about a Nigerian immigrant who is horrified to discover what really goes on behind the closed doors of the seedy London hotel where he works. 94 min.

Saturday, July 2, 8:30. T2; Thursday, July 7, 6:00. T1

Mimic. 1997. USA. Directed by Guillermo Del Toro. Screenplay by Matthew Robbins, Del Toro. With Mira Sorvino, Jeremy Northam. Mexican director Del Toro’s first American feature is an intelligent horror film that spawned two sequels. In New York’s subway system, giant cockroaches mutate into their prey—you and me. 105 min.

Monday, July 4, 7:00. T2; Sunday, August 21, 5:00. T1

Swingers. 1996. USA. Directed by Doug Liman. Screenplay by Jon Favreau. With Favreau, Vince Vaughan, Ron Livingston. A comedy about friendship and being single in Los Angeles. This collaboration between Liman and Favreau is driven by character, atmosphere, and an enthusiasm for American filmmaking. 97 min.

Thursday, July 7, 8:00; Wednesday, August 17, 6:00. T1

Trainspotting. 1996. Great Britain. Directed by Danny Boyle. Screenplay by John Hodges, based on the novel by Irvine Welsh. With Ewan McGregor, Robert Carlyle. A frenetic, harrowing, and iconic portrait of young drug addicts in Edinburgh in the 1980s. Boyle’s insolent sophomore feature provoked controversy over its comic treatment of a serious subject. 94 min.

Friday, July 8, 6:00; Monday, July 18, 8:45. T1

The Crying Game. 1992. Great Britain. Written and directed by Neil Jordan. With Stephen Rea, Jaye Davidson, Forest Whitaker. Irish director of the moody thrillers Angel (1983) and Mona Lisa (1986), Jordan subverted conventions in this haunting, melodramatic tease, which begins as an assassination drama and ends as a dark romance. 113 min.

Friday, July 8, 8:00. T1; Saturday, August 27, 6:00. T2

The Aviator. 2004. USA. Directed by Martin Scorsese. Screen-play by John Logan. With Leonardo DiCaprio, Cate Blanchett, Alan Alda. Scorsese’s bravura biography of the enigmatic and legendary Howard Hughes—a billionaire pilot and influential producer and director during Hollywood’s Golden Age who romanced Katharine Hepburn, Ava Gardner, and Jean Harlow. 165 min.

Saturday, July 9, 3:00; Monday, August 22, 5:00. T1

The Crow. 1994. USA. Directed by Alex Proyas. Screenplay by David J. Schow, John Shirley, based on the comic book by James O’Barr. This dark and visually inventive early film adaptation of a graphic novel, about a murder victim returning as an “undead,” is infamous: actor Brandon Lee died during the shoot. 100 min.

Saturday, July 9, 9:00; Sunday, August 21, 2:00. T1

Cider House Rules. 1999. USA. Directed by Lasse Hallström. Screenplay by John Irving, based on his novel. With Tobey Maguire, Charlize Theron, Michael Caine. A romantic, larger-than-life, magical film about a young Maine orphan’s coming-of-age and the extended “family” he must leave in order to grow up. 125 min.

Sunday, July 10, 5:00; Thursday, July 21, 5:30. T1

Shakespeare in Love. 1998. Great Britain/USA. Directed by John Madden. Screenplay by Marc Norman, Tom Stoppard. With Gwyneth Paltrow, Joseph Fiennes. A young playwright in Elizabethan London—where theater is censorable and women are barred from performing—struggles over his new play, Romeo and Ethel, the Pirate’s Daughter. 113 min.

Wednesday, July 13, 7:00; Thursday, August 25, 8:00. T1

Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain (Amélie). 2001. France. Directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Screenplay by Guillaume Laurant, Jeunet. With Audrey Tautou, Mathieu Kassovitz. One of France’s most popular films ever, this contemporary fairy tale is set in a dreamlike Paris where charm and romance cohabit and an irrepressible waif changes lonely lives. In French, English subtitles. 120 min.

Thursday, July 14, 6:00; Monday, August 29, 8:00. T1

Como agua para chocolate (Like Water for Chocolate). 1992. Mexico. Directed by Alfonso Arau. Screenplay by Laura Esquivel, based on her novel. With Lumi Cavazos. Cooking is a rich subject for cinema, and this multigenerational Mexican melodrama about a woman who finds satisfaction in feeding family, friends, and strangers is a most affecting example. In Spanish, English subtitles. 113 min.

Thursday, July 14, 8:30. T1; Friday, August 26, 6:00. T2

Bride and Prejudice. 2004. Great Britain. Directed by Gurinder Chadha. Screenplay by Chadha, Paul Mayeda Berges, based on Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. With Aishwarya Rai, Martin Henderson. Four sisters with small dowries in modern India go husband hunting in this cheerfully exuberant musical, directed by an Anglo-Indian filmmaker. 110 min.

Friday, July 15, 6:00. T1; Wednesday, August 17, 8:00. T2

Cidade de Deus (City of God). 2002. Brazil. Directed by Fernando Meirelles. Screenplay by Bráulio Mantovani, based on the novel by Paulo Lins. A housing project built in 1960s Rio de Janeiro had become violent by the 1980s; Meirelles, a video artist turned maker of commercials, traces its deterioration through the perilous lives of children. In Portuguese, English subtitles. 130 min.

Friday, July 15, 8:30; Monday, July 18, 6:00. T1

The Grifters. 1990. USA. Directed by Stephen Frears. Screen-play by Donald E. Westlake, based on the novel by Jim Thompson. With Anjelica Huston, John Cusack, Annette Bening. This first American feature by British filmmaker Frears (My Beautiful Laundrette and Dangerous Liaisons) is a mordantly wicked film about three swindlers who should never have worked together. 119 min.

Saturday, July 16, 2:00; Wednesday, August 17, 8:15. T1

Trois Coleurs (Three Colors). 1993–94. France/Poland/ Switzerland. Directed by Krzysztof Kieslowski. Screenplay by Krzysztof Piesiewicz, Kieslowski. Kieslowksi based his trilogy on the ideals of the French Revolution: Liberty (Blue), Equality (White), and Fraternity (Red).

Bleu (Blue). With Juliette Binoche. Having lost both her husband and her daughter in an accident, a woman considers suicide. Haunted by the music composed by her late husband as well as by suspicions of his infidelity, she slowly attempts to reinvigorate her life. 97 min.

Saturday, July 16, 4:30. T1; Friday, August 26, 8:30. T2

Blanche (White). With Zbigniew Zamachowski, Julie Delpy. A black comedy about a Polish hairdresser who, evicted by his frustrated wife from their Paris home and their unconsummated marriage, returns to Poland and learns some surprising lessons. 93 min.

Saturday, July 16, 6:30. T1; Thursday, August 25, 8:00. T2

Rouge (Red). With Irene Jacob, Jean-Marie Trintignant. A successful model attempts a relationship with a retired judge, a reclusive and misanthropic man. Their relationship takes unexpected turns. 99 min.

Saturday, July 16, 8:30. T1; Wednesday, August 24, 8:00. T2

Kill Bill (Vols. 1 and 2). 2003/2004. USA. Written and directed by Quentin Tarantino. With Uma Thurman, David Carradine, Sonny Chiba. Tarantino’s exhilarating tribute to the unassailable and ineludible power of women is directed in hyper mode, punctuated with astonishingly choreographed passages.

Vol. 1 (110 min.): Sunday, July 17, 2:00; Friday, August 19, 6:00. T1

Vol. 2 (136 min.): Sunday, July 17, 5:00; Friday, August 19, 8:15. T1

In the Bedroom. 2001. USA. Directed by Todd Field. Screen-play by Field, Rob Festinger, based on an Andre Dubus story. With Sissy Spacek, Tom Wilkinson, Marisa Tomei. Actor Field’s debut as director recognizes the power of performance. The film describes with emotional precision a middle-aged couple’s reaction to unexpected catastrophe. 138 min.

Wednesday, July 20, 8:45; Friday, August 19, 8:00. T2

The English Patient. 1996. Great Britain/USA. Written and directed by Anthony Minghella. With Ralph Fiennes, Kristin Scott Thomas, Juliette Binoche. During World War II, a nurse cares for a badly burned pilot whose memories slowly return. Minghella adheres to the moral complexity of Michael Ondaatje’s celebrated novel. 160 min.

Saturday, August 20, 1:00. T1; Saturday, August 27, 8:30. T2

Good Will Hunting. 1997. USA. Directed by Gus Van Sant. Screenplay by Ben Affleck, Matt Damon. With Robin Williams, Damon, Affleck. The friendship between two young men in Boston’s South End is tested when M.I.T. administrators discover that one of them, a janitor, is a genius. Van Sant is a keen observer of the tensions in male relationships. 126 min.

Monday, August 22, 8:15; Wednesday, August 24, 8:00. T1

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Past screenings in the exhibition Miramax: 25 Years

Spy Kids. 2001. USA.Written and directed by Robert Rodriguez. With Antonio Banderas, Carla Gugino, Alan Cumming. A perfect family film that children find "awesome" and parents can enjoy wholeheartedly. Upon learning that their parents are secret agents, a brother and sister set out to rescue them from capture by an army of "Thumb-Thumbs," among other surreal indignities. 88 min.
Saturday, January 1, 2:30. T2); Sunday, January 23, 2:00 (T1)

Les Choristes (The Chorus). 2004. France. Directed by Christophe Barratier. Screenplay by Barratier, Philippe Lopes-Curval.With Gérard Jugnot, François Berleand, Jacques Perrin. MoMA kicks off the New Year with Barratier's enormously successful debut feature, a Miramax release and France's submission for Best Foreign-Language Feature. In 1949, at a rural dormitory school for recalcitrant boys, a mild-mannered teacher starts up a choral group to channel the boys' unruliness into song. In French, English subtitles.
Saturday, January 1, 7:30; Thursday, January 6, 6:00. T1

Chicago. 2002. USA. Directed and choreographed by Rob Marshall. Screenplay by Bill Condon, based on the stage musical by Bob Fosse and Fred Ebb.With Renée Zellweger, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Richard Gere. Chicago is one firecracker of a musical film, bursting from the proscenium into the ether of cinematic space. The Academy-Award winner for Best Picture in 2002, Chicago both honors and transcends its theatrical roots and Bob Fosse's original staging—no mean achievement for first-time director Marshall. 108 min.
Sunday, January 2, 2:00; Thursday, January 13, 5:30. T1

Command Z. 2004. USA. Directed by Candy Kugel, Vincent Cafarelli. Design by Lee Lozano. Another charming animated film from New York's Buzzco studio. What if the "undo" computer command could solve all of life's problems? 5 min.

Strictly Ballroom. 1992. Australia. Written and directed by Baz Luhrmann.With Paul Mercurio, Tara Morice, Bill Hunter. Strictly Ballroom is as elegantly choreographed as its subject—competitive ballroom dancing—and wins over its audience from the start. A Cinderella story and a gentle satire on the rituals of competition, the film follows a young man who wants to dance to his own steps, and the girl who reluctantly becomes his partner. The film's striking compositions, driving pace, and ebullient dance and music coalesce into a surprisingly satisfying entertainment. 92 min.
Saturday, January 8, 5:00; Wednesday, January 12, 8:00. T1

Reservoir Dogs. 1992. USA. Written and directed by Quentin Tarantino.With Harvey Keitel, Tim Roth, Steve Buscemi. Released by Miramax, Tarantino's first feature is a pitchblack, brutal existential comedy about a caper gone wrong. Reservoir Dogs so invigorated the gangster film with its timeshift plotting, explosive and fluid action, and foul-mouthed yet intelligent dialogue that it virtually established its own genre. 99 min.
Sunday, January 9, 5:30. T1

Exotica. 1994. Canada. Written and directed by Atom Egoyan. With Arsinee Khanjian, Bruce Greenwood, Mia Kirshner. Canadian filmmaker Egoyan set his breakthrough film Exotica in three locations—a strip club, an opera house, and a pet shop—contending that he wanted to "structure the film like a striptease, gradually revealing an emotionally loaded history." 103 min.
Thursday, January 20, 6:15; Sunday, January 30, 2:00. T1

Dead Man. 1996. USA. Written and directed by Jim Jarmusch. With Johnny Depp, Gary Farmer, Lance Henriksen. Jarmusch filmed this singular Western in hypnotic black and white, choosing landscapes that are more arboreal than plain. Depp's reluctant antihero, Bill Blake, and his enigmatic Native American guide Nobody, played by Farmer, escape civilization and narrative development as they traverse a frontier as much metaphysical as it is geographic. 114 min.
Sunday, January 23, 5:00 (T1); Monday, January 24, 8:15 (T2)

Il Postino (The Postman). 1994. Italy/France. Directed by Michael Radford.With Philippe Noiret, Massimo Troisi, Maria Grazia Cucinotta. While in exile on a Neapolitan island, the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda received so much mail that the local postmaster hired a fisherman's son, Mario, to deliver it to him. When the reclusive Neruda learned that Mario was pining for a woman in the village, he helped him by composing the words to woo her. Radford tells this moving story, based on true events, simply and gracefully. In Italian, English subtitles. 113 min.
Monday, January 24, 5:00 (T2); Thursday, January 27, 8:30 (T1)

Heavenly Creatures. 1994. New Zealand. Directed by Peter Jackson. Screenplay by Jackson, Frances Walsh.With Kate Winslet, Melanie Lynsky. Before Jackson turned his attention to J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, he did a dry run, as it were, with the rather diabolical creatures of Borovnia in Heavenly Creatures. Jackson established an international reputation with this vivid melodrama, drawn from the trial transcripts of the real-life murder in 1954 of Honora Parker by her teenage daughter and her daughter's best friend in Christchurch, New Zealand. 99 min.
Monday, January 24, 8:30 (T1); Thursday, January 27, 8:00 (T2)

Farewell, My Concubine. 1993. China/Hong Kong. Directed by Chen Kaige.With Leslie Cheung, Gong Li, Zhang Fengyi. Chen's austere debuts Yellow Earth (1984) and The Big Parade (1986) premiered in the New Directors/New Films festival. Farewell, My Concubine spans a dramatic half-century of modern Chinese history, from the Japanese occupation through civil war, the Communist regime, and Mao's Cultural Revolution. One national organization, the Peking Opera, survived all these, and Farewell, My Concubine traces the five-decadelong relationship between two of its male apprentices. In Cantonese, English subtitles. 155 min.
Wednesday, January 26, 6:00 (T1); Friday, January 28, 7:45 (T2)

Les Invasions barbares (The Barbarian Invasions). 2003. Canada. Written and directed by Denys Arcand.With Rémy Girard, Stéphane Rousseau, Marie-Josée Croze. The first film from Canada to win an Academy Award for Best Foreign-Language Film, The Barbarian Invasions is a bracing, sharply observed and bittersweet comedy of friendship, filial relationships, public health, and terminal illness. In this sequel to his Decline of the American Empire, Arcand imagines the first film's garrulous and passionate intellectual liberals gathering twenty years later at the hospital bedside of one of their own—a randy and outspoken teacher whose estranged son is determined to see his father die with grace. In French, English subtitles. 99 min.
Thursday, January 27, 5:30 (T2); Saturday, January 29, 2:00 (T1)

Princess Mononoke. 1997. Japan. Directed by Hayao Miyazaki.With the voices of Gillian Anderson, Billy Crudup, Claire Danes. Miyazaki's lush and fantastic animes use a subtle blend of hand-drawn cels and computer-generated images to create an extraordinarily vivid and imaginative universe populated by amazing landscapes, people, creatures, and, well, things. In English. 133 min.
Friday, January 28, 5:00 (T2); Saturday, January 29, 8:00 (T1)

Shall We Dance? Japan. 1996. Directed by Masayuki Suo. With Koji Yakusho, Tamiyo Kusakari, Naoto Takenaka. "In a country where even married couples do not hold hands in public, ballroom dancing has long been regarded as corrupt. Until now.With one graceful swoop, writer-director Suo has made a film that thoroughly captivated Japan and turned a vice into social virtue. Shall We Dance? is about the liberating power of dance and what happens to one commuter who gets off before his stop" (New Directors/New Films festival, 1997). In Japanese, English subtitles. 118 min.
Friday, January 28, 6:00 (T1); Saturday, January 29, 2:30 (T2)

Chunghing Samlam (Chungking Express). 1994. Hong Kong. Written and directed by Wong Kar-wai.With Tony Leung, Faye Wang.Wong, who became one of Hong Kong's most celebrated directors after making In the Mood for Love in 2000, made his New York debut nine years earlier with Days of Being Wild, introduced in MoMA's New Directors/New Films festival. He then made Chungking Express in fewer than three months. Largely shot with a handheld camera by his longtime cinematographer Christopher Doyle, with additional photography by Lau Wai-Keung, Chungking Express is a lively two-part film about love and crime in the big city. In Cantonese, English subtitles. 103 min.
Saturday, January 29, 5:00 (T1); Sunday, January 30, 5:00 (T2)

Through the Olive Trees. 1994. Iran. Written and directed by Abbas Kiarostami. With Hossein Rezai,Mohamad Ali Keshavarz. Kiarostami’s cinema interrogates reality. A director, played by an actor, returns to a village damaged in an earthquake to make And Life Goes On…, which is actually a Kiarostami film about two children who appeared in an even earlier feature, Where Is the Friend’s Home? In Farsi, English subtitles. 103 min.

Wednesday, February 2, 6:00. T1; Saturday, February 5, 5:30. T2

Holy Smoke. 1999. USA. Directed by Jane Campion. Screenplay by Anne Campion, Jane Campion. With Kate Winslet, Harvey Keitel. In this perfervid melodrama, a young woman finds happiness with a guru and his disciples. Her family hires an “exit counselor”—a cocky older man—to deprogram her. The sensuous film follows what happens as two strong characters humiliate, manipulate, and perhaps love each other.

114 min.

Wednesday, February 2, 8:15. T1; Thursday, February 3, 5:30. T2

Jackie Brown. 1997. USA. Directed by Quentin Tarantino. Screenplay by Tarantino, based on Elmore Leonard’s Rum Punch. With Pam Grier, Samuel L. Jackson, Robert Forster. Tarantino’s third film, about a canny older woman who must best some really tough guys or die, demonstrates the filmmaker’s savoring of character. The ingeniously plotted feature sports much crackling dialogue, but is also rich in what is unspoken, keeping everyone onscreen and in the audience guessing. 154 min.

Thursday, February 3, 8:30. T1; Saturday, February 5, 8:00. T2

The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover. 1989. France/The Netherlands. Directed by Peter Greenaway. With Richard Bohringer, Michael Gambon, Helen Mirren. In an upscale modish restaurant, run by a cook for whom presentation is critical, a thief dines nightly with his wife. Bored with her husband’s logorrhea, the wife takes another customer as her lover. Revenge is served warm and on a plate. 126 min.

Friday, February 4, 6:00; Sunday, February 6, 5:00. T1

My Left Foot. 1989. Great Britain. Directed by Jim Sheridan. Screenplay by Shane Connaughton, Sheridan. With Daniel Day-Lewis, Brenda Fricker, Fiona Shaw. Sheridan’s first feature was nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director, and won two. Best Actor went to Day-Lewis as Christy Brown, the brilliant, angry Dublin writer and painter born with cerebral palsy, and Best Supporting Actress went to Fricker as his supportive mother who holds her working-class family together. 98 min. Friday, February 4, 8:30. T1; Wednesday, February 9, 5:30. T1

Ju Dou. 1990. China/Japan. Directed by Zhang Yimou, Yang Fengliang. Screenplay by Liu Heng. With Gong Li, Li Baotian, Li Wei. Zhang began his career as a cameraman. In this lush, sensual melodrama his enthusiasm for the gorgeous image, dramatic frame, and rhythm of narrative enticement is harnessed to a story of passion, betrayal, and death set in the Chinese countryside during the 1920s. In Mandarin, English subtitles. 95 min.

Saturday, February 5, 8:15; Wednesday, February 16, 8:00. T1

Paris Is Burning. 1991. USA. Directed by Jennie Livingston. With Pepper Labeija, Willi Ninja, Octavia Saint Laurent. An intimate nonfictional account of a spectacular piece of New York social history: voguing, with its balls and glorious competitions. Livingston films young African-American and Hispanic gay men who embrace and mimic the culture that excludes them. 78 min.

Monday, February 7, 5:30. T2

Bad Santa. 2003. USA. Directed by Terry Zwigoff. Screenplay by Glenn Ficarra, John Requa. With Billy Bob Thornton, Tony Cox, Brett Kelly. Zwigoff’s acidic comedy stars about as dyspeptic a pair of thieves as ever to appear in an American caper film. Willie, a fornicating, alcoholic ex-convict, and Marcus, a dwarf with a grudge, travel the country masquerading as Santa and elf in the suburban stores they prepare to rob. 91 min.

Wednesday, March 2, 6:00; Friday, March 11, 8:00. T1

Scream. 1996. USA. Directed by Wes Craven. Screenplay by Kevin Williamson. With Neve Campbell, David Arquette, Courtney Cox. Scream refreshes the teen slasher genre of horror films and plays subversively with the notion of fear. From the opening phone call until the identity of the psychopathic killer is revealed, several young people are murdered... Or are they? Craven fills his elegant rampage with so many twists that surprises spring not only from the shadows but from the plot itself. 110 min.

Saturday, March 5, 7:30. T2; Wednesday, March 23, 7:00. T1

The Others. 2001. Spain/USA. Written and directed by Alejandro Amenábar. With Nicole Kidman, Alakina Mann, James Bentley. A stylish and haunting exercise in supernatural deliquescence, Amenábar’s first English-language film is calibrated to deliver the iciest of chills. During World War II, a soldier’s wife takes her two children to a spooky home on the Isle of Jersey. The children suffer a rare allergic reaction to the sun, and the single mother, played with frightening authority by Kidman, keeps them locked away from natural light, aided by her strange housekeepers. 101 min.

Thursday, March 10, 8:30; Sunday, March 13, 2:00. T1

Clerks. 1993. USA. Written and directed by Kevin Smith. With Brian O’Halloran, Jeff Anderson, Jason Mewes. Smith’s first film premiered in the New Directors/New Films festival: “Hilarious and terrifically smart, Clerks is a foulmouthed, deadpan, nobudget comedy that gives unexpected new meaning to the idea of absurdity. Dante Hicks works at the Quick Stop, a convenience store in lower New Jersey, where every customer is antisocial and where Dante’s romantic biography seems to be in continual replay. Clerks describes in lunatic detail what should have been the poor guy’s day off.” 91 min.

Saturday, March 12, 5:00. T1; Monday, March 21, 5:30. T2

I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing. 1987. Canada. Written and directed by Patricia Rozema. With Sheila McCarthy, Paule Baillargeon, Ann-Marie McDonald. In Toronto, a wide-eyed young woman with a camera and an innocent charm hears the chants of mermaids, her muses. Personable and spirited, she becomes infatuated with a curator of contemporary art, a somewhat pretentious woman. Rozema’s winning first film, roughhewn and energetic, limns a bittersweet journey of discovery. 81 min.

Sunday, March 13, 5:00. T2; Monday, March 14, 5:30. T1

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