March 28, 2026

This week we are showing Alain Resnais’ masterpiece, *Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959) *on *Saturday, 3/28, *at 7pm.

Here is the link to RSVP. Please note the uncharacteristic Saturday screening date! Doors are at 6:50 and we’re starting the movie at 7:10.

Alain Resnais adaptation of Marguertie Duras’ screenplay is simply one of the greatest films ever made. The film follows the roughly 24 hours spent together by a French actress and a Japanese architect in post-war Hiroshima, weaving through the memories and spaces touched on in their conversation. Astonishingly gorgeous filmmaking, it explores the nature of memory, war, love, grief, and the interinscriptions of city and soul.

I watched this film for the first and only time 10 years ago on my laptop on the clock at my college library job on a slow, summer day. I’d plucked the DVD from the hold shelf for a course that had the film on its syllabus, unprepared for what I’d stumbled into. Hiroshima Mon Amour looms in my own memory now as one of the most stunning, devastating films I’ve ever seen. Over the decade since I never found the opportunity to see it properly up on a big screen, and what’s the From Below for me but fulfilling our little wishes and wiping off the dust of cinematic neglect?

This film also distills our recent tangled mess of emergent concerns into 90 minutes: 1959, the shadowy threat of bombs, and French-Japanese artistic exchanges. Like *Level 5 *last week, we get another glimpse at post-war Japan through the eyes of French artists. Next week, perhaps spoiling too much, we’ll see post-war France through the eyes of a Japanese filmmaker, while simultaneously introducing one more element into the thematic knot we’re tying: apes.

APE-ril is coming! For (much of) the next month we’ll be showing movies that examine, transgress, or reinforce the thin boundary between humans and apes. Stay tuned for the Charlie-made original poster with the full run of APEril films listed.

With love, Stefan, Charlie, and Stark