film

Every March, YBCA presents a selection of powerful films with distinctive human rights themes featuring a vast range of nationalities and topics. Past films include the Academy Award-winning Born into Brothels, War/Dance and Shakespeare Behind Bars to name a few.

Blending film techniques with a mastery of painting, Belgian artist Luc Tuymans explores themes of history, memory and mass media. The exhibit showcases a comprehensive array of his work to date, with about 75 key paintings from 1985 to the present. The artist is influenced greatly by Northern European painting tradition, as well as photography, television and cinema.

Get ready for a packed two weeks of intruiging movies that will blow your mind. Kicked off by WA DO DEM (starring Norah Jones and San Bones) on February 4, there's a lot to be anxious about in this year's lineup. A promising season of the highly anticipated, the documented and the plain crazy makes The Roxie the place to be seen.

For all of you who think the French are so serious, YBCA gives you Jacques Tati, genius of French comedy. Following a successful run at Cinémathèque Française and then MOMA in New York, YBCA's screening room will be showing a series of films by the famous French comic and filmmaker. His work, mostly about the humor of humanity attempting to survive in an industrial age, is relevant more than ever today as technology advances and digitized communication take over the world. Take the chance to discover or rediscover Tati through a set of brilliant 35mm prints.

A comedy festival just wouldn't be complete without a little Monty Python, so it's perfectly fitting that the SF Film Society will copresent two events honoring the legendary film at the legendary Castro Theatre. At 7 p.m., Python's Terry Jones will converse with Inside Joke's host and comedian with Carl Arnheiter followed by a 35th anniversary screening of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Then, at 10 p.m., Terry Jones will introduce the showing of Life of Brian.

If you're at all eco-minded, we suggest reserving tickets for 18 Reasons' first Fish 'n' Flicks event. Talk ocean overfishing while dining on a five-course meal featuring sustainable seafood, wine pairings, and dessert prepared by Tom Worthington of Monterey Fish Market. About halfway through, right when the talk starts to turn really heavy, you'll screen a 26-minute version of the international documentary The End of the Line.

Get a glimpse inside the Paris Opera Ballet, courtesyof documentary master Frederick Wiseman. La Danse devotes most of its time to watching impossibly beautiful young men and women—among them Nicolas Le Riche, Marie-Agnès Gillot and Agnès Letestu—rehearsing the choreography of Mats Ek, Wayne McGregor, Rudolf Nureyev and Pina Bausch. The camera spans the vast Palais Garnier, from its crystal chandelier-laden corridors and labyrinthine underground chambers to its gloriously light-filled rehearsal studios and luxurious theater with Marc Chagall ceiling.