Film Series
Programmers’ Notebook: On Memory
The second edition of an occasional series in which the members of BAM’s film programming team respond to a thought-provoking theme.
With its ability to evoke interior states through impressionistic images and associative editing, cinema is a medium uniquely suited to capturing the elusive nature of memory. These works—poetic, surreal, intensely personal reflections on childhood, history, and human relationships—filter the past through the subjectivity of some of cinema’s most visionary artists, capturing the emotional experience of two temporal planes colliding as only film can.
Terrence Malick’s rapturous meditation on humankind’s place within the universe.
Sarah Polley’s tender, moving exploration of the ways in which family mythologies form.
Cinematic philosopher Andrei Tarkovsky’s stunning, hallucinatory memory piece.
Thai visionary Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Palme d’Or-winning dream state drift.
Christopher Nolan’s ingenious, time-shuffling psychological puzzle.
Akira Kurosawa’s radically influential landmark of nonlinear narrative.
Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman reignite a romance for the ages amid World War II intrigue.
Alain Resnais’ sumptuously hypnotic investigation of time and memory.
A politically and stylistically radical landmark of post-revolution Cuban cinema.
Chantal Akerman’s final film is a moving, formally adventurous tribute to her mother
Black Audio Film Collective visionary John Akomfrah confronts postcolonial disillusionment.
Gregory’s Nava’s novelistic epic traces three generations of a Chicano family.
Miniature miracles of personal filmmaking from the Scottish independent cinema pioneer.
Michel Gondry’s deliriously imaginative trip down the rabbit holes of memory and love.
A wide-ranging look at this most fundamental yet complex of emotions in all its forms.