Caroline Poggi & Jonathan Vinel, 2024, France, 107 min

Pablo, a small-time drug dealer, and his teenage sister Apolline have forged an unbreakable bond through their shared obsession with the online video game Darknoon. When Pablo falls for the mysterious Night, he gets swept up in their liaison, abandoning his sister to deal with the impending shutdown of their digital haven alone. As Pablo’s reckless choices provoke the wrath of a dangerous rival gang, the end of their virtual life draws near, upending their reality. The newest vision from Caroline Poggi & Jonathan Vinel ('Jessica Forever') is a bittersweet apocalyptic love story with a modern MMORPG twist.

Melvin Van Peebles, 1967, USA, 86 min

Melvin Van Peebles’s edgy, angsty, romantic first feature could never have been made in America. Unable to break into a segregated Hollywood, Van Peebles decamped to France, taught himself the language, and wrote a number of books in French, one of which, La permission, would become his stylistically innovative feature debut. Turner (Harry Baird), an African American soldier stationed in France, is granted a promotion and a three-day leave from base by his casually racist commanding officer and heads to Paris, where he finds whirlwind romance with a white woman (Nicole Berger)—but what happens to their love when his furlough is over? Channeling the brash exuberance of the French New Wave, Van Peebles creates an exploration of the psychology of an interracial relationship as well as a commentary on France’s contradictory attitudes about race that is playful, sarcastic, and stingingly subversive by turns, and that laid the foundation for the scorched-earth cinematic revolution he would unleash just a few years later with Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song.

Caroline Poggi & Jonathan Vinel, 2024, France, 107 min

Pablo, a small-time drug dealer, and his teenage sister Apolline have forged an unbreakable bond through their shared obsession with the online video game Darknoon. When Pablo falls for the mysterious Night, he gets swept up in their liaison, abandoning his sister to deal with the impending shutdown of their digital haven alone. As Pablo’s reckless choices provoke the wrath of a dangerous rival gang, the end of their virtual life draws near, upending their reality. The newest vision from Caroline Poggi & Jonathan Vinel ('Jessica Forever') is a bittersweet apocalyptic love story with a modern MMORPG twist.

Carter Lord, USA, 1984, 90 min

Featuring a virtual live Q&A with director Carter Lord!

A Floridian folktale with Gothic flair, 1984’s spellbinding THE ENCHANTED is a one-of-a-kind cinematic dreamscape from the heart of the Sunshine State. Royce, an untethered sailor, moves inland to rural Florida to settle his late father’s affairs only to fall in love with a mysterious woman whose family lives in the woods around his new home. With its trance-inducing soundtrack and evocative landscapes, the lines between reality and fantasy blur in stunningly beautiful fashion in THE ENCHANTED.

Lino Brocka, Philippines, 1976, 94 min

Jealousy and violence take center stage in this claustrophobic melo­drama, a tautly constructed character study set in the slums of Manila. Lino Brocka crafts an eviscerating portrait of an innocent daughter and her bitter mother as women scorned. Insiang leads a quiet life dominated by household duties, but after she is raped by her mother’s lover and abandoned by the young man who claims to care for her, she exacts vicious revenge. A savage commentary on the degradations of urban poverty, especially for women, Insiang was the first Philippine film ever to play at Cannes.

Lino Brocka, Philippines, 1980, 82 min

Middle class school girl Bona skips class to hang around the sets of bit actor Gardo. When her father attempts to beat some sense into her, Bona moves into Gardo’s shack in the slums, delighted to play house–only to find herself not the wife, but the maid. Groundbreaking singer, actor, and producer Nora Aunor works with director Lino Brocka to subvert her stardom at the height of her fame. Brocka, following the success of Manila in the Claws of Light (1975) and Insiang (1976), takes her up on the challenge and sets Aunor against his familiar backdrop Manila’s slum, yet steers clear of making poverty the sole focus of the film. Instead, Bona is about blinding adoration and its stranglehold on both the lover and the beloved. Restored from the original camera negatives and available for the first time in more than 40 years, Bona embarks on a new life on in a stunning new 4K restoration!

Lino Brocka, Philippines, 1980, 82 min

Middle class school girl Bona skips class to hang around the sets of bit actor Gardo. When her father attempts to beat some sense into her, Bona moves into Gardo’s shack in the slums, delighted to play house–only to find herself not the wife, but the maid. Groundbreaking singer, actor, and producer Nora Aunor works with director Lino Brocka to subvert her stardom at the height of her fame. Brocka, following the success of Manila in the Claws of Light (1975) and Insiang (1976), takes her up on the challenge and sets Aunor against his familiar backdrop Manila’s slum, yet steers clear of making poverty the sole focus of the film. Instead, Bona is about blinding adoration and its stranglehold on both the lover and the beloved. Restored from the original camera negatives and available for the first time in more than 40 years, Bona embarks on a new life on in a stunning new 4K restoration!

Lino Brocka, Philippines, 1975, 125 min

Lino Brocka broke through to international acclaim with this candid portrait of 1970s Manila, the second film in the director’s turn to more serious-minded filmmaking after building a career on mainstream films he described as “soaps.” A young fisherman from a provincial village arrives in the capital on a quest to track down his girlfriend, who was lured there with the promise of work and hasn’t been heard from since. In the meantime, he takes a low-wage job at a construction site and witnesses life on the streets, where death strikes without warning, corruption and exploitation are commonplace, and protests hint at escalating civil unrest. Mixing visceral, documentary-like realism with the narrative focus of Hollywood noir and melodrama, Manila in the Claws of Light is a howl of anguish from one of the most celebrated figures in Philippine cinema.

The Thinking Game chronicles the extraordinary life of Demis Hassabis, a visionary scientist on a relentless quest to solve the enigma of artificial general intelligence (AGI).

To get your ticket for only $5 use promo code IRLCLUB at checkout and you'll automatically join the IRL Movie Club for free and join the email list to hear about future events! Already an IRL Movie Club Member? Use the same promo code to get your $5 ticket!"

David France, 2012, USA, 109 min

Co-presented with DFW Anti-War Committee & Dallas Social Queer Organization (DSQO). Free screening!

How To Survive a Plague is the story of two coalitions—ACT UP and TAG (Treatment Action Group)—whose activism and innovation turned AIDS from a death sentence into a manageable condition. Despite having no scientific training, these self-made activists infiltrated the pharmaceutical industry and helped identify promising new drugs, moving them from experimental trials to patients in record time. With unfettered access to a treasure trove of never-before-seen archival footage from the 1980s and ’90s, filmmaker David France puts the viewer smack in the middle of the controversial actions, the heated meetings, the heartbreaking failures, and the exultant breakthroughs of heroes in the making.

Yalcy is a Dallas based DJ & producer that also runs the DFW based record label Innasection.

Music Time is a class in which you will:

• Collaborate with a community of like-minded individuals

• Cultivate a sustainable creative practice

• Develop skills and knowledge in music production, Ableton and mixing

• Make some cool music

Class is Sunday, Jan 26th from 2-5pm. $30 admission to this class. In addition, you can book 3 classes at once for $60!

Pier Paolo Pasolini, Italy, 1968, 95 min

One of the iconoclastic Pier Paolo Pasolini’s most radical provocations finds the auteur moving beyond the poetic, proletarian earthiness that first won him renown and notoriety with a coolly cryptic exploration of bourgeois spiritual emptiness. Terence Stamp stars as the mysterious stranger—perhaps an angel, perhaps a devil—who, one by one, seduces the members of a wealthy Milanese family (including European cinema icons Silvana Mangano, Massimo Girotti, Laura Betti, and Anne Wiazemsky), precipitating an existential crisis in each of their lives. Unfolding nearly wordlessly in a procession of sacred and profane images, this tantalizing metaphysical riddle—blocked from exhibition by the Catholic Church for degeneracy—is at once a blistering Marxist treatise on sex, religion, and art and a primal scream into the void.

Chantal Akerman, Belgium, 1978, 127 min

In one of Akerman’s most penetrating character studies, Anna, an accomplished filmmaker (played by Aurore Clément), makes her way through a series of European cities to promote her latest movie. Via a succession of eerie, exquisitely shot, brief encounters—with men and women, family and strangers—we come to see her emotional and physical detachment from the world.

Jean-Luc Godard, Switzerland/France, 2004, 80 min

Three Dante-inspired chapters—“Hell,” ​“Purgatory,” and ​“Paradise”—divide Godard’s scathing portrait of the 20th century afire in this woefully underseen 2004 masterwork. War, political violence, and cinema’s role in relation to them have preoccupied Godard throughout his career. In the searing Notre musique, the auteur provides perhaps his most honest and profound articulation of these ideas, using a montage of war footage and a narrative about a Sarajevo symposium (with Godard himself as one of the speakers) to address the occupation of Palestine, the long arm of colonialism, and the state of American imperialism, all within the context of film art. Its relevance at this moment is staggering.

Mikio Naruse, Japan, 1960, 111 min

When a Woman Ascends the Stairs might be Japanese filmmaker Mikio Naruse's finest hour—a delicate, devastating study of a woman, Keiko (played heartbreakingly by Hideko Takamine), who works as a bar hostess in Tokyo's very modern postwar Ginza district, who entertains businessmen after work. Sly, resourceful, but trapped, Keiko comes to embody the conflicts and struggles of a woman trying to establish her independence in a male-dominated society. When a Woman Ascends the Stairs shows the largely unsung yet widely beloved master Naruse at his most socially exacting and profoundly emotional.

Charles Burnett, 1983, USA, 115 min

Pierce Mundy works at his parents’ South Central dry cleaners with no prospects for the future and his childhood buddies in prison or dead. With his best friend just getting out of jail and his brother busy planning a wedding to a snooty upper-middle-class Black woman, Pierce navigates his conflicting obligations while trying to figure out what he really wants in life.

Luis Ospina and Carlos Mayolo were among the most influential figures in Colombian cinema. In the 1970's they captured stories of their country and their friends and explored the boundaries between fiction and documentary cinema with a sense of humor, audacity, formal imagination and an enormous empathy for marginal people. We present a program of four of their shorts from the 1970's:

• Listen, Look!

• Cali on Film

• Asunción

• The Vampires of Poverty

Total runtime: 86 min

Abbas Kiarostami, Iran, 1994, 103 min

Kiarostami takes meta-narrative gamesmanship to masterful new heights in the final installment of his celebrated Koker trilogy. Unfolding “behind the scenes” of the shooting of the previous film in the series, And Life Goes On…, Through the Olive Trees traces the complications that arise when the romantic misfortune of one of the actors—a lovelorn young man who pines for the woman cast as his wife even though, in real life, she will have nothing to do with him—creates turmoil on set and leaves the hapless director caught in the middle. An ineffably lovely, gentle human comedy steeped in the folkways of Iranian village life, this Pirandellian pastoral peels away layer after layer of artifice as it investigates the elusive, alchemical relationship between cinema and reality.

Charles Roxburgh, 2021, USA, 109 min

1/11, 9:30pm With Charlie Roxburgh And Matt Farley in attendance for Q&A. Special All Day $20 pass for all four Motern movies on 1/11!

See that man in the distance? The guy who has been using his metal detector to investigate the same patch of grass in this public park for over an hour? Is he a peaceful hobbyist, searching for historical artifacts? Or, is he some sort of devious maniac, hiding in plain sight, waiting for an opportunity to prey upon the innocent?  

When Matt Farley & Tom Scalzo, music professors currently on sabbatical, spot this man, they become immediately suspicious. Given Tom’s highly sensitive “vibe receptors,” these suspicions carry significant weight. Fearing their sleepy bedroom community to be in jeopardy, our heroes have little choice but to reinvent themselves as citizen sleuths and dive headlong into a full investigation. The hair-raising secrets that they uncover must be seen to be believed!

Charles Roxburgh, 2007, USA, 83 min

1/11, 7:30pm With Charlie Roxburgh And Matt Farley in attendance for Q&A. Special All Day $20 pass for all four Motern movies on 1/11!

When Farley Wilder (a weirdo peeping Tom in a small New England town) meets a daring young woman, he gains the confidence to both stand up to his overbearing father and also save the town from the hushed-up secret that's been killing people for decades! Beautifully shot on 16mm and newly scanned in 2k thanks to Gold Ninja Video, Freaky Farley is an ode to regional slashers of yore and just might be the closest the Motern Media crew have come to a De Palma riff. Full of peeping shenanigans and all the small town charm that keeps us coming back to these films, you won’t want to miss out on this one!

Charles Roxburgh, 2022, USA, 87 min

1/11, 3:30pm. With Charlie Roxburgh And Matt Farley in attendance for Q&A. Special All Day $20 pass for all four Motern movies on 1/11!

When local broadcaster Walter Moore (Matt Farley) and his cousin Poopy (Chris Peterson) discover a magic spot in the local woods, their lives are forever altered in the most surprising of ways, as the spot turns out to be not only magic but also a portal to the past that can be utilized for good or for ill! 

Will the two friends finally discover the truth behind the events that led to the demise of their Uncle Dan (Kevin McGee)? Will Matt use the power of the spot to figure out what his old flame Alyssa (Elizabeth Peterson) was wearing on their first date? And who are the mysterious men that seem to be following them everywhere they go? Could it have something to do with the world's end as we know it? 

We’ll have hot chocolate in the lobby for one of the coziest winter afternoon films of all time - Magic Spot is BACK TO THE FUTURE meets TWIN PEAKS, and the most heartwarming film you’ll ever see where people scream, 'Acclimate, Poopy! Acclimate!’

Charles Roxburgh, 2016, USA, 90 min

1/11, 1:15pm with Charlie Roxburgh And Matt Farley in attendance for Q&A. Special All Day $20 pass for all four Motern movies on 1/11!

A supernatural menace is stealing the senses of innocent townfolk. Officers Rusty and Wolf are the last line of defense!

If you’ve ever wondered “what if my uncle was the star of a buddy cop movie,” then we have the perfect film for you. Featuring one of Motern legend Kevin McGee’s most meaty performances, Slingshot Cops is the most ambitious Motern project to date in terms of scope & dials up the small town charm to a rapturous height. 

Hitoshi Ozawa, 2013, Japan, 86 min

When a powerful Yakuza boss passes away, his final order is to locate his long-lost child and name them as his successor. Their search leads to an unexpected place: a lively queer bar, where they meet Nana—a trans woman and the boss’s heir! A fresh and heartfelt reimagining of the yakuza genre, The Clan’s Heir Is a Trans Woman blends action, drama, and surprising tenderness. This genre-bending tale marks a unique and poignant moment in the landscape of trans cinema.

Jean Renoir, France, 1951, 99 min

First Impressions

Director Jean Renoir’s entrancing first color feature—shot entirely on location in India—is a visual tour de force. Based on the novel by Rumer Godden, the film eloquently contrasts the growing pains of three young women with the immutability of the Bengal river around which their daily lives unfold. Enriched by Renoir’s subtle understanding and appreciation for India and its people, The River gracefully explores the fragile connections between transitory emotions and everlasting creation.

Yasujiro Ozu, Japan, 1958, 118 min

First Impressions

Later in his career, Ozu started becoming increasingly sympathetic with the younger generation, a shift that was cemented in Equinox Flower, his gorgeously detailed first color film, about an old-fashioned father and his newfangled daughter.