This week at CCA (June 17-21), mark your calendars for for two remarkable film openings that will each be around for one week only!



First, delve into the 50th Anniversary screening of Gena Rowlands's unforgettable performance in John Cassavetes's A Woman Under the Influence, a poignant exploration of mental health and relationships that has garnered multiple awards and nominations.

Also showing as part of CCA's Auteur Series is a new restoration of Beijing Watermelon by director Nobuhiko Obayashi (HOUSE). This thought-provoking masterwork presents the director at his most modern, while experimental flourishes delicately examine the dynamics of relationships and invite viewers to fill in the blanks of history.

In addition, don't miss your last opportunity to see these two films that have captivated Santa Fe audiences. Both titles are being held over for one more week!

Tuesday is a story of a mother and daughter struggling with a fatal illness as Death comes in the form of a talking macaw straight out of magic realism. Julia Louis-Dreyfus stars in this daringly original film in a challenging dramatic role that she nails – a possible Oscar nomination is being talked about. For Tickets: Click here.

I Used to be Funny follows Sam, in a remarkable performance played by comedian Rachel Sennott (Shiva Baby), as a stand-up comedian afflicted with PTSD who struggles with whether or not to join the search for a missing teenage girl she used to nanny.

For Tickets: Click here.

We also have several special events lined up this week. Join us for a remarkable documentary, Amazing Grace, featuring a filmed gospel concert with Aretha Franklin. Presented as part of our monthly music/film series, Amplified, this experience on our big screen with exceptional sound promises to transport and possibly transform you.

The second event is in collaboration with Santa Fe Opera’s From Screen to Stage film series for the 2024 season.

The Picture of Dorian Gray stands as a timeless cinematic masterpiece, captivating audiences with its gripping narrative and stunning visual imagery. With its rich atmosphere and engrossing performances, this adaptation remains a haunting exploration of the human psyche and the perils of unchecked ambition.

We're excited to see you this week at CCA!

Nominated for multiple Oscars, Emmys, and Golden Globes (and taking home her share of wins), Gena Rowlands is a legend forever. Charting Rowlands’s transformation as “Mabel” from endearingly kooky to bleakly incoherent (and back again), John Cassavetes's A Woman Under the Influence is perhaps the most important examination of mental health ever captured onscreen.

Cassavetes observes the ricochets between Mabel’s health and her in-laws’s “influence." But at the heart of this film is her relationship with her conservative husband (an equally amazing Peter Falk), who struggles in vain to pull Mabel out of her decline. Both tough-as-bricks and delicate, A Woman Under the Influence goes straight for the throat.

“A Woman Under the Influence” gives us a woman whose influences only gradually reveal themselves. And as they do, they give us insights not only into one specific, brilliantly created, woman but into some of the problems of surviving in a society where very few people are fully liberated." - Roger Ebert

Shunzo (Bengal) runs a beloved greengrocer in the outskirts of Tokyo. When Lee, a struggling exchange student from China, visits the shop but is unable to afford the produce, an uneasy relationship sprouts. As Shunzo’s generosity sneaks up on him he is confronted by his role as a surrogate father to his newfound Chinese friends. Shot between May and July of 1989 and addressing the historically charged notion of a Sino-Japanese friendship, this lesser-seen masterpiece from director Nobuhiko Obayashi (House) subtly chronicles the end of a decade marked by the Japanese economic bubble and the brutal close of possibility in China.

A delicate elegy to the Chinese students of its time, Beijing Watermelon finds Obayashi at his most modern, channeling Yasujiro Ozu, while his experimental flourishes provide the perfect disruption, inviting viewers to fill in the blanks of history.

"Where Ôbayashi’s earlier work is markedly surreal, Beijing Watermelon exhibits neorealist sensibilities, with misty images of daikon, cabbage, and green onion, and scenes of Chinese students and Japanese locals dancing and debating on the beach.” - Film Comment Review

“The effect is ecstatic; she sounds like the holiest of trumpets, with every note piercingly bright yet as soft as velvet. Listening to Franklin, you feel like you could ride that voice into the heavens. She’s not just a singer, she’s a human chariot” –Variety

In 1972, having topped the pop charts, Aretha Franklin returned to her family’s gospel roots, performing two concerts of deeply moving spirituals at a Baptist church in Watts, a California neighborhood still recovering from the riots. The result was the best-selling gospel album of all time … and a documentary that, for more than 40 years, sat unfinished. Footage shot by the Oscar-winning director Sydney Pollack couldn’t be synced with the audio, until an enterprising producer took on the project.

Years later, AMAZING GRACE is here, and it is an ecstatic, raw, heartful celebration of African American perseverance and culture, featuring an extraordinary group of gifted musicians and an audience that will be forever altered. You will be, too.

In collaboration with Santa Fe Opera’s From Screen to Stage film series for the 2024 season.

This film classic was chosen by Stephen Barlow, the director of this season’s production of Don Giovanni. Barlow sets his new production in Victorian London, viewed through the lens of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Read more about this production of Don Giovanni here.