(See Corrections & Amplifications item below.)


Museum of Modern Art
Through Nov. 14

Barbara Loden in her only directorial effort, 1970's 'Wanda.' Leo Kazan, Marco Joachim and UCLA Film & Television Archive

There's no guiding theme for this ambitious 35-film series, other than each movie has been, in some way, lost, forgotten or left in disrepair —and is, in very distinctive ways, a must-see for anyone who cares about the medium.

The coming week alone offers an impressive sweep of films, each recently restored or recovered, and some hardly ever seen at all. Saturday offers a double-header of extreme rarities. First up is a program of short films by the underground innovator Paul Sharits (1943-1993), who was known for making structural experiments that broke down each frame of celluloid into an optic artifact—flicker films, if you will—that could generate visual phenomena. To get an idea of how this might work, check out the opening credit sequence to the current "Enter the Void," in which director Gaspar Noe acknowledges Sharits as a direct influence. The program, to be introduced by Andrew Lampert of Anthology Film Archives, diverts from that body of Sharits work, including the 1962 "Wintercourse," his earliest film, and efforts intended as "locational" films for gallery installations.

Later, the 1926 film "A Page of Madness (Kurutta Ippeiji)," is conjured from the distant history of Japanese silent cinema, with a live score performed by the chamber quintet Ensemble N_JP, featuring shakuhachi master Akikazu Nakamura. The film, by Teinosuke Kinugasa, is an avant-garde interpretation of life in a mental asylum, swinging from vivid hallucinations to meditative calm.

That might also serve as a description for Andy Warhol's "The Velvet Underground in Boston," a half-hour document of the legendary rock act's 1967 performance at a Boston club that captures the notion of "exploding plastic inevitable" in all its stroboscopic speed-freak glory. It's accompanied by "Face" (1965), composed entirely of two fixed-frame shots of Edie Sedgwick, youth-quaking muse and drug casualty.

Another lost soul was the title character of "Wanda." Released in 1970, it was the single film directed by Barbara Loden, an actress who was married to Elia Kazan until her untimely death in 1980 at the age of 48. "Wanda" tells the fiercely realistic story of a runaway wife-urchin from Pennsylvania coal mining country whose only rationale for her actions is: "I'm just no good." Passive forays into low-rent whoring, petty thieving, and a botched kidnapping prove that, at the very least, Wanda isn't a liar. As portrayed by Ms. Loden, she's also a classic American persona, a tragic enigma at the heart of a Southern feminist noir whose depiction of life on the margins is as unflinching as anything the WPA ever produced. Filmmakers Sofia Coppola and Tamara Jenkins will introduce the Monday screening, which features a new print restored by the UCLA Film & Television Archive.

'I Don't Hear the Guitar Anymore'

30 Lafayette Ave., Brooklyn
(718) 636-4100

As part of BAM's ongoing series "Post-Punk Auteur: Olivier Assayas," the French director selected a few of his favorite films to show alongside his own. Among them is the intense, painfully intimate "J'entends plus la guitare" by Philippe Garrel, who enjoyed his own retrospective at BAMcinématek a few years ago. The 1991 drama, whose title is more eloquently translated as "I Can No Longer Hear the Guitar," is a thinly veiled autobiographical account of Mr. Garrel's waning relationship with the ethereal Swedish singer Nico (played by Dutch actress Johanna ter Steege), their mutual heroin addiction, and a personal dissolution that dovetails with the irreversible death of the 1960s. "It's also about surviving youth," Mr. Assayas has said, "surviving in an age where everything you stood for, believed in, dreamed of has been crushed."


Film Forum
Friday-Oct. 28

No Halloween slasher flick can match the artistry on display in this 1968 Japanese ghost story, an elegant cinematic staging of a tragic folk tale whose title alludes to a mysterious black cat. Restored and re-released in time for the spooky season, the beautiful print does justice to the austere black-and-white palette of director Kaneto Shindo ("Onibaba"), who strips everything down to its poetic essence. The rape and murder of a young woman and her mother by rampaging ronin precedes a spectral reign of terror, as samurai are lured to their gruesome deaths in a haunted bamboo forest. When a would-be warrior is given the task of ghostbusting, he comes to suspect the vengeful wraiths are more than they appear—prompting a moral and romantic crisis that plays out in a ritual manner inspired by Noh theater. The film's otherworldly shakuhachi score sets a tone that is jarred by shocking eruptions of violence.

Sikh Film Festival

The Asia Society
725 Park Ave., (212) 288-6400

A dozen new documentaries are on the slate for the seventh annual Sikh Film Festival, a two-day event that explores the world of Sikhism from cultural and political perspectives. Some likely highlights include "Holy Kitchens: A True Business," which examines the practice of providing free food at temple kitchens known as langar, to which members of each temple are expected to contribute. Michael Singh's work in progress, "Riding the Tiger," offers a more personal transit through terrifying public events, namely the 1984 massacres of Sikhs in India, which led to the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by her own Sikh bodyguards, and yet more violence. The half-Sikh Mr. Singh contrasts this history with his own experience, passing for white and denying his heritage to save his life.

The 10 Best Latin American Films of the Decade

IFC Center
323 6th Ave., (212) 924-7771
Through Monday

Guillermo del Toro's 'Pan's Labyrinth' is screened as one of MoMA's 10 best Latin American films of the decade. Everett Collection

More like "Latin American Films: The Greatest Hits," this series of popular and art-house successes from Mexico, Argentina and Brazil rounds up some predictable suspects—"Y Tu Mama Tambien" and "Pan's Labyrinth"—as selected in a poll of 32 Latin American film professionals working in New York. Organized by the nonprofit organization Cinema Tropical, the series also serves as inspiration for a sneaky Lucrecia Martel retrospective. Each of the Argentine director's films will be screened, including "The Holy Girl" and "The Headless Woman." The filmmaker will be present for Saturday's showing of "La Ciénaga," her 2001 debut, which was voted No. 1 by the critics. The film circles around the yawning entropy that consumes a bourgeois family, and the 50-something Mecha (Graciela Borges), in a rundown country house during the doggiest days of summer.

Corrections & Amplifications:

Sikhism is a distinct monotheistic religion. An earlier version of this movie calendar misidentified it as a sect of Islam.