Film Series

As part of its Essential Cinema series "Smashing the Rules: Films of Oshida Nagisa," Austin Film Society will show the 1967 film Japanese Summer: Double Suicide. Admission is free for AFS members and $6 for the general public. Essential Cinema screenings often sell out so you may want to buy tickets in advance from the AFS website.

Austin Film Festival kicks off its 2010 "Made in Texas" series with the 1980 film Roadie, shot in Austin. The cast includes local actor Sonny Carl Davis (The Whole Shootin' Match), Ray Benson and Asleep at the Wheel, and a number of other musicians. Screenwriter "Big Boy" Medlin will be there and will hold a Q&A afterwards.

Austin Cinematheque kicks off its spring semester lineup of free screenings of 35mm films with Hobson's Choice, the 1954 film from David Lean.

Austin Film Society is hosting a screening of pair of 16mm films directed by experimental filmmaker Chick Strand, who died last year. The films are Cosas Di Mi Vida, from 1976, and Soft Fiction, from 1979.

Cine Las Americas is hosting the series "The Mexico of Emilio Fernández and Gabriel Figueroa," which features five films from the "Golden Age of Mexican Cinema." Admission is free. This week's selection is the 1947 film La Perla, adapted from John Steinbeck's The Pearl.

Cine Las Americas is hosting the series "The Mexico of Emilio Fernández and Gabriel Figueroa," which features five films from the "Golden Age of Mexican Cinema." Admission is free. This week's selection is the 1949 drama Pueblerina.

Cine Las Americas is hosting the series "The Mexico of Emilio Fernández and Gabriel Figueroa," which features five films from the "Golden Age of Mexican Cinema." Admission is free. This week's selection is Las Abandonadas, a 1944 film starring Dolores del Rio.

This month's Saturday morning Alamo Kids Club selection is the 1976 film Bugsy Malone, starring Jodie Foster and Scott Baio. Admission is free.

Here's what Lars has to say about this week's Weird Wednesday selection, the 1975 film Delinquent Schoolgirls:

"Not just politically incorrect and inexpedient, this movie is wrong. We won't attempt any grand pronouncements about its great sociohistorical merit. There are no excuses offered. It's a movie about three violently insane criminals who escape from an asylum and take refuge in what turns out to be a reform school for girls. The three psychos, a failed nightclub impressionist, a muscular baseball player and a comically mincing homosexual, are funny in a 'so unfunny it's funny' way and the actresses playing the students vary from somewhat competent to obvious cue-card readers. It's one of those movies that makes audiences ask afterwards, 'was that a real movie?' Strange, stupid, oddly amusing, really a one of a kind piece. The three convicts are played by busy actor Michael Pataki, pioneering black stuntman Bob Minor and Stephen Stucker, the funny gay guy from the AIRPLANE movies. AKA CARNAL MADNESS, BAD GIRLS, THE SIZZLERS and SCRUBBERS 2."

Perhaps to prepare us for Stephanie Rothman's upcoming appearance with some of her other films at Alamo Drafthouse in April, this week's Weird Wednesday film is her 1973 film Terminal Island. Let's take it to Lars:

"'Where society dumps its human garbage!' At some indistinct point in the very near future, which looks suspiciously like the early '70s, America has outlawed capital punishment. So murderers are sent to a blockaded island to fend for themselves. A new Darwinian social order asserts itself and the few women on the island have a pretty rough go of it -- until they decide to fight back. This is very likely the first women-in-prison movie directed by a woman, but it's hardly a chick flick. Stephanie Rothman, like so many other talented people in the movie business, was given her start in films by the great Roger Corman, who certainly deserves a statue in Hollywood, albeit an inexpensive one. Her films, while every bit as sweaty and violent as those of her male counterparts, always contain fascinating touches of feminine insight. Featuring the glistening naked torsos of Phyllis Davis, Barbara Leigh and Marta 'Lost In Space' Kristen. Plus, look for Tom Selleck as a coke-snorting doctor."