"Gotta light?"
Part 8 of Twin Peaks' third season, "The Return," focuses on the origins of evil and the Black Lodge, exploring the concept of cyclical evil through a surreal sequence set in 1945 after the first atomic bomb test.
BLEAK WEEK : CINEMA OF DESPAIR is co-presented by the American Cinematheque.
Edward Yang's second feature is a mournful anatomy of a city caught between the past and the present. Made in collaboration with Yang's fellow New Taiwan Cinema master Hou Hsiao-hsien, TAIPEI STORY chronicles the growing estrangement between a washed-up baseball player (Hou, in a rare on-screen performance) working in his family's textile business and his girlfriend (Tsai Chin), who clings to the upward mobility of her career in property development. As the couple's dreams of marriage and emigration begin to unravel, Yang's gaze illuminates the precariousness of domestic life and the desperation of Taiwan's globalised modernity.
On Sunday 21st June, we will be welcoming Writer & Director WALTER MURCH to our stage for a post-film Q&A as part of BLEAK WEEK 2026.
Dorothy discovers she is back in the land of Oz, and finds the yellow brick road is now a pile of rubble, and the Emerald City is in ruins. Discovering that the magical land is now under the control of an evil empire, she sets off to rescue the scarecrow, the tin man and the lion with the help of her new friends.
After professional hitman Jef Costello is seen by witnesses his efforts to provide himself an alibi drive him further into a corner.
Presented with a special introduction from Editor, Re-Recording Mixer & Sound Designer WALTER MURCH - as part of BLEAK WEEK 2026.
In Vietnam in 1970, Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) takes a perilous and increasingly hallucinatory journey upriver to find and terminate Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando), a once-promising officer who has reportedly gone completely mad. In the company of a Navy patrol boat filled with street-smart kids, a surfing-obsessed Air Cavalry officer (Robert Duvall), and a crazed freelance photographer (Dennis Hopper), Willard travels further and further into the heart of darkness.
A bedridden patient in a hospital on the outskirts of 1920s Los Angeles befriends a fellow patient, and shares a fantastic tale of heroes, myths, and villains on a desert island with the little girl.