Dive Into Noir and Drama: BAMPFA’s Summer 2025 Film Highlights
There’s a special celebratory air to the Summer 2025 film series being offered by the Berkeley Art Museum Pacific Film Archive (hereafter “BAMPFA”), and this is not something to be knocked. The films presented this quarter may not be filled with wall-to-wall joyousness. Homicidal jealousy, alienation, betrayal, and war’s brutality are among the themes filling the frames of these upcoming movies. Yet the auteurs of these cinematic offerings have found various ways to transform the negative emotional vortices of these themes into art, and that in itself is an achievement always worthy of celebration.
2025 marks the centenary of the birth of one of America’s great film directors, Robert Altman. In the late auteur’s honor, the film series “Robert Altman At 100 (June 13 – August 30, 2025)” presents a selection of the director’s movies from across five decades. Altman’s industrial film “How To Run A Filling Station” won’t be part of this series for obvious reasons. But what will be shown here are his 1970s classics as well as some of his lesser-known films such as the early psychodrama “That Cold Day In The Park (July 6, 2025)” and the comic strip adaptation “Popeye (August 16, 2025)” whose title character was played by a comedian making his big screen debut, some schmoe named Robin Williams.
One must-see is “Nashville (5 PM on July 4, 2025 and 6:30 PM on August 24, 2025).” It’s not a coincidence that the first screening takes place on Independence Day. This ensemble drama takes place in the Country Music Capital of the World at a time when America’s bicentennial loomed around the corner. Yet rather than serving as a microcosmic look at a nation charging ahead towards greatness, Altman’s film captures the sense of a nation which still hasn’t recovered from the chaos of the 1960s. Among the characters featured in this film are a queen of country music with mental health issues, a clueless BBC reporter, and a runaway wife who aspires to be a singer.
Altman’s first cinematic hit, Cannes Palme d’Or winner “M*A*S*H (7 PM on June 15, 2025),” is a far different beast from the long-running 1970s TV sitcom of the same name. The setting may be the same, the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital operating near the front lines of the Korean War. However, the film’s unflinching depiction of operating room gore and the “poker-faced hatred” (thanks, Roger Ebert) of Hawkeye and Trapper John are totally sanded away in the television series. Yet as Altman’s memorable original shows, the cruel practical jokes are what helps keep these surgeons sane as they deal with a seemingly endless stream of injured and maimed human bodies.
For those who are enjoying the Seth Rogen series “The Studio,” they should make time for Altman’s film industry satire “The Player (7 PM on August 6, 2025),” the director’s “mild indictment” of Hollywood (because the reality’s far worse). Anti-hero Griffin Mill is a movie studio vice-president who’s paid enormous sums of money to pass movie proposals he likes further up the decision-making chain. A series of anonymous death threats start arriving from a writer Mill ghosted, but what sort of justice can be achieved in Hollywood is not something you’ll see on the “Law And Order” franchise.
Traditional film noir fans, on the other hand, are bound to be upset by Altman’s updated adaptation of “The Long Goodbye (7 PM on June 13, 2025 and 7 PM on July 23, 2025).” Set in 1970s Hollywood, private eye Philip Marlowe has as much trouble finding out what sort of dirty business close friend Terry Lennox may have been involved in, as he does locating his missing cat. The detective will soon cross paths with ruthless gangster Marty Augustine, self-destructive alcoholic novelist Roger Wade, and money-hungry clinician Dr. Verringer. But the noirish plot is less important than seeing Marlowe flounder through encounters with 1970s Los Angeles’ health nuts and wellness addicts.
Haters of Altman’s Marlowe film will probably prefer the film series “In Lonely Places: Film Noir Beyond The City (June 6 – July 24, 2025).” The films here deal with such traditional film noir themes as autonomy and the search for freedom. However, their settings are not urban metropolises, but such venues as suburbia, the desert, and even the open road. The series includes such well-known film noir staples as “Shadow Of A Doubt (June 14, 2025),” “Detour (June 25, 2025),” and “the 1998 Walter Murch re-edit of Touch Of Evil (July 12, 2025)” But there are some other films in the series that are worth checking out.
In Max Ophuls’ “The Reckless Moment (7 PM on June 21, 2025),” suburban housewife Lucia Harper discovers her daughter Bea is involved in the death of low-life criminal and former lover Darby. But Lucia’s burying of the criminal’s body in the swamp doesn’t prove to be the end of the matter. Brutal loan shark Nagel has incriminating letters Bea had written to Darby, and he’s willing to let Bea’s relationship become public knowledge unless Lucia pays back the money Darby borrowed from him. Could the key to Lucia’s salvation be Nagel’s sympathetic partner Donnelly?
John M. Stahl’s “Leave Her To Heaven (4:30 PM on July 5, 2025)” begins with novelist Richard Harland accidentally encountering beautiful socialite Ellen Berent (Gene Tierney) on a train trip. The two soon begin a whirlwind romance. He’s entranced by the socialite’s beauty and emotional intensity; she loves the novelist’s giving off the same vibes as her dear dead father. But it’s only after the duo marry that Richard learns of Ellen’s major personal flaw: pathological jealousy that sparks extreme behavior. After watching Stahl’s film, a male viewer might declare that the next woman suggesting getting into a serious relationship with her would cause him to set a new land-speed record running in the opposite direction, shrieking all the while.
Raoul M. Walsh’s “Pursued (4 PM on June 8, 2025)” is set in turn of the century New Mexico. Jeb Rand (Robert Mitchum) has been traumatized for years by the vicious slaughter of his family when he was a child. His only memories of the event are nightmares involving spurs and gunshots. Raised by the widowed Mrs. Callum as her son, life is otherwise peaceful until the day a mysterious person makes a failed attempt to kill Jeb. The murder attempt turns out to be connected to Mrs. Callum’s brother-in-law Grant, whose secret may well lead to the destruction of Jeb’s relationship with his foster mother.
Phil Karlson’s docudrama “The Phenix City Story (7 PM on July 24, 2025)” was made decades before the advent of the Orange Felon’s second administration. Yet echoes of current events can be found in its real-life setting of a small Alabama town transformed into the Sin City of the Southeast thanks to Syndicate vice operations and generous amounts of graft to public officials. Lawyer Albert Patterson runs for State Attorney General on a platform of driving the Syndicate out of Phenix City. But the Syndicate has little intention of letting Patterson destroy their operations.
Speaking of old but still relevant films, the “Special Screenings” section this quarter offers a mix of new restorations of old classics (Francois Trauffaut’s “The 400 Blows (June 12 and August 9, 2025),” Luis Bunuel’s “El (June 29 and July 30, 2025),” and King Hu’s “Dragon Inn (August 14, 2025)”) and recent acclaimed films. Incidentally, broke-ass viewers will want to check out a free screening of Donna Deitch’s classic lesbian romance “Desert Hearts (August 16, 2025).”
One of the aforementioned recent acclaimed films is the Silver Lion winner at this year’s Venice Film Festival. It’s Maura Delpero’s “Vermiglio (7 PM on June 18, 2025 and 4:30 PM on July 6, 2025),” which is set near the end of World War II in a mountain village in the Italian Alps. After the taciturn Sicilian deserter Pietro arrives, life for the Graziadei family and the rest of the village dramatically changes over the course of an eventful year.
Another highly honored film is Rachel Elizabeth Seed’s Independent Spirit Award-winning documentary “A Photographic Memory (4 PM on June 28, 2025 and 4:30 PM on July 20, 2025).” Seed may be the daughter of acclaimed journalist and photographer Sheila Turner Seed. Yet she has no recollections of her mother. Could the substantial archives Seed’s mother left behind help the filmmaker construct a picture of her dead parent?
Finally, legendary Bay Area film editor Vivien Hillgrove reflects on her career in the documentary “Vivien’s Wild Ride (7 PM on June 8, 2025 and 4 PM on June 21, 2025).” Hillgrove’s film career has included working with such acclaimed directors as Francis Ford Coppola, Milos Forman, and Lourdes Portillo. But when her eyesight starts deteriorating, the news brings up Hillgrove’s decades-old trauma of surrendering her baby. The film’s subject soon draws on her inner resilience to reinvent herself as an artist with a disability.
It’s likely that Hillgrove would have enjoyed the films of Mikio Naruse. Over the course of four decades, Naruse would make nearly a hundred films on time and on budget. Many of the films this auteur/salaryman made focused on the struggles and endurance of ordinary people, particularly women in crisis. This quarter, the BAMPFA begins screening the film series “Mikio Naruse: The Auteur As Salaryman (July 3 – December 21, 2025).” The first part of this series focuses on the Naruse films starring Hideko Takemine.
In the Naruse classic “When A Woman Ascends The Stairs (7 PM on July 3, 2025),” Keiko (Takemine) works as a bar hostess in postwar Tokyo’s Ginza district. She’s popular and determined to open her own business, but failed affairs and financial reverses have left her lonely and in debt. Three suitors offer Keiko the possibility of escape from her current situation, but will fortune finally smile on the middle-aged woman?
“A Wanderer’s Notebook (4 PM on August 10, 2025)” comes from a semi-autobiographical novel by Fumiko Hayashi, whose stories Naruse frequently adapted for film. Hayashi (Takemine) writes impressive tales about her impoverished life, but no publisher will buy her novel. In the meantime, she continues working both as a bar girl and a factory worker. Her newest partner is tubercular aspiring writer Fukichi. Despite their joint struggle and Hayashi’s nursing him, he abuses her both verbally and physically.
Another Naruse must-see is “Floating Clouds (7 PM on July 16, 2025).” When Yukiko Koda (Takemine) gets repatriated to post-World War II Tokyo, she hopes to resume her wartime affair with married forestry engineer Kengo Tomioka. However, Kengo has cold feet regarding the idea of divorcing his wife for Yukiko. Yet the former secretary can’t move on from Kengo despite a forced abortion and Kengo’s starting up an affair with a different woman.
While the Naruse series is just getting started, BAMPFA’s Swedish Cinema Project follows its Mai Zetterling series with “Smiles Of A Summer Night: Swedish Auteurs (July 11 – August 29, 2025).” The famed Swedish auteurs appearing in this series made films featuring the white nights of Swedish summers.
Ingmar Bergman is here of course with his erotic comedy “Smiles Of A Summer Night (August 7, 2025),” the film that gives this series its name. But he’s also represented by several other films, one of which is “Through A Glass Darkly (7 PM on August 13, 2025).” This Academy Award-winning tale concerns recently released mental patient Karin (Harriet Andersson), who’s recuperating at her family’s seaside summer home. The woman needs emotional sustenance to aid her recovery, yet the men in her life are utterly clueless regarding how they can satisfy Karin’s emotional needs.
Alf Sjoberg ably applies cinematic devices to make August Strindberg’s classic play “Miss Julie (7 PM on July 11, 2025)” work on the film screen. The titular character is an upper class woman who’s carrying on an affair with her father’s valet Jean. Their relationship, though, is not so much hearts and flowers as it is class warfare with generous helpings of sadomasochism.
This series contains a few rarities, such as Ingrid Bergman’s film debut “The Count Of The Old Town (July 19, 2025).” Another feature debut, “A Swedish Love Story (7 PM on August 23, 2025),“ comes from director Roy Andersson working in an uncharacteristic (for him) realist mode. Par and Annika, two teen small town lovers, learn that the stresses of courtship are nothing compared to the tensions of maintaining a relationship in the face of jealousy, miscommunication, and hormones. It doesn’t help the lead characters that their respective parental units have strong deficits in the role model department.
Andrei Tarkovsky’s “The Sacrifice (6:30 PM on July 20, 2025 and 3:30 PM on August 29, 2025)” may seem an odd inclusion in this series given that the director hails from Russia. But the great director’s final film is a Swedish co-production starring Swedish acting great Erland Josephson. Cinematography happens to be done by Sven Nykvist, whose imagery graced more than a few Ingmar Bergman films. Finally, director Bergman himself calls Tarkovsky the greatest director he’s ever seen.
Viewers impressed by Tarkovsky’s tale of an actor (Josephson) whose birthday celebration gets interrupted by the eruption of nuclear war may want to check out some of the Russian director’s other films. Fortunately, the BAMPFA is here to oblige with the “Andrei Tarkovsky: Voyages In Time (June 20 – August 29, 2025)” film series.
Childish innocence will definitely be in short supply in Tarkovsky’s powerful debut film “Ivan’s Childhood (7 PM on June 20, 2025 and 4 PM on August 3, 2025).” The titular 12-year-old happens to be a survivor/premature soldier stuck in World War II’s Russian/German front. Whether it’s bombed-out ruins or frozen lands, the wandering boy becomes both hero and monster, finding solace only in memories of his missing mother. Winner of the Venice Film Festival’s Golden Lion.
Tarkovsky’s historical biopic “Andrei Rublev (7 PM on June 26, 2025 and 7 PM on August 9, 2025)” may sound at first listen like something the Orange Felon’s commissars would greatly support. The titular character is a great medieval painter of Orthodox Christian imagery. However, the painter’s willingness to use his art to document humanity’s cruelty rather than continually looking the other way would make him a pariah to the Orange Payola King’s lickspittles.
“Solaris (7 PM on June 29, 2025 and 7 PM on August 16, 2025)” is admittedly the first Tarkovsky film this writer ever saw. Then again, this Stanislaw Lem adaptation was as far as a film could get from the action-adventure approach usually taken by science fiction films of the time. Psychologist Kris Kelvin has been sent to the space laboratory studying the alien planet known as Solaris to determine if the mission should continue. The psychologist discovers the all-ocean planet has driven the station’s remaining scientists insane thanks to its ability to manifest their unconscious desires. Now Hari, Kelvin’s long-dead wife, starts repeatedly appearing in the flesh before him.
Viewers who want to see just how further out the visual image can be taken beyond Tarkovsky’s work would do well to check out the “Bruce Conner: Films From The BAMPFFA Collection (5 PM on June 15, 2025 and 7 PM on June 27, 2025)” programs. American experimental filmmaker Bruce Conner specialized in making avant-garde collage film shorts. He took such raw cinematic material as documentaries, cartoons, and even countdown leaders, then transformed them with inventive editing into commentaries on Americans’ fascination with the apocalypse. Included in these two programs of Conner shorts are such titles as “Cosmic Ray,” “Looking For Mushrooms,” “Take The 5:10 To Dreamland,” and “Crossroads.” Incidentally, the filmmaker was also an accomplished sculptor, painter, and photographer. Some of this work appears as part of the Berkeley Art Museum exhibit “To Exalt The Ephemeral: The (Im)permanent Collection (ongoing through July 6, 2025).”
Last, but certainly not least, describes the BAMPFA film series “Tsai Ming-liang In Person (August 14 – 31, 2025).” Taiwanese director Tsai Ming-liang is one of world cinema’s greatest current directors. This series offers a chance to talk with both the director himself and actor Lee Kang-Sheng, who’s appeared in many of Tsai’s films. However, as is the case with BAMPFA’s film series featuring famous directors making in-person appearances (e.g. last quarter’s Todd Haynes series), most of these screenings are already sold out as of this writing.
It still doesn’t hurt to talk about some of the films in this series, as this piece might introduce the viewer to a new favorite art film director. As the Harvard Film Archive notes, a central theme of Tsai’s oeuvre is “what constitutes fulfilling human connection.” The director doesn’t rush to answer that question in his films. His situations unfold at a languorous pace, which allow viewers to absorb at their leisure moments of alienation and even dry humor.
For example, Tsai’s Venice Golden Lion winner “Vive l’amour (7 PM on August 27, 2025)” concerns a love quadrangle involving teenage ossuary salesman Hsiao-kang (Lee), real-estate agent May Lin, street vendor Ah-Jung (who also chases hookups), and the vacant luxury apartment each of them desires. Call this an anti-romantic comedy.
Near the turn of the Millennium, a group of international filmmakers were asked to envision their feelings about the coming of the year 2000 for the “2000, Seen By…” project. Tsai’s contribution, “The Hole (7 PM on August 28, 2025),” happens to be set in Taipei a week before the year 2000’s arrival. But it’s hardly a celebratory occasion. It’s raining constantly, and there’s a plague going around which causes its victims to crawl on the floor and seek out dark places. Despite evacuation orders, two tenants of a rundown apartment building stay put: Hsiao Kang (Lee), whose food store gets few customers, and a downstairs neighbor woman who’s been stockpiling toilet paper in her flooded apartment. Oddly enough, the two antagonistic neighbors form a connection.
“Sand (3 PM on August 31, 2025)” is the only film in this series for which advance tickets are still available as of this writing. It’s part of the director’s ongoing “Walker” series, but viewers need not have seen previous installments to get the film’s gist. A barefoot priest (Lee) in red robes walks silently and slowly across a static landscape. In this installment, the locale happens to be the coasts of Yilan County in northeastern Taiwan during monsoon season. There are plenty of abandoned tents and dilapidated buildings to be seen along the way, but no people out and about except Lee’s character.
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