Come and See (1985)

The inaugural season of the American Cinematheque collection Bleak Week: Cinema of Despair passed off in 2022, a cheeky stab at some summertime counter-programming. Its various lineup was aimed, as per the Cinematheque’s web site, at spotlighting “filmmakers who wholly embrace a cinema of despair in pursuit of disagreeable truths and uncooked empathy.” Certainly, within the pageant’s first 33 movie–sturdy slate of repertory classics like Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975), Come and See (1985), Winter Gentle (1963), Humorous Video games (1997), Breaking the Waves (1996), and Sátántangó (1994), this visceral high quality was entrance and middle as an organizing precept, even when the movies weren’t united by a lot apart from their baseline dreariness and arthouse bonafides. Now getting into its fifth and most curatorially centered iteration, Bleak Week has grown from a neighborhood phenomenon right into a worldwide occasion: a 73-city, almost 100-theater enlargement begins in June, an invite for programmers from all over the world to interpret the collection’ broad definition of “bleakness” for their very own audiences.

Chris LeMaire, Director of Programming on the American Cinematheque, has all the time embraced movies which may in any other case be labeled heavy or miserable. Earlier than the pandemic, he led programming efforts to highlight uncommon Andrei Tarkovsky prints, and in addition enticed Lav Diaz to return to the US for the very first time. Tarkovsky and Diaz’s austere, usually durational movies about nationwide historical past and political atrocity function in very totally different aesthetic modes, however are each invested in existential issues. On this spirit, Bleak Week’s apparently surface-level branding truly encourages audiences to take care of our most foundational human qualities, although it could be simple to say, “I’m not within the temper at this time…” This dedication to persistence and humanism—to sticking with what could seem intimidatingly heavy—is the center and soul of Bleak Week.

American Cinematheque Creative Director Grant Moninger advised me over Zoom that the germ of Bleak Week got here out of a want to “take Chris’s sensible programming and current it in a option to actually carry some recognition to artwork home movies and nice auteurs all through the historical past of cinema.” LeMaire and Moninger achieved this, partially, by bucking one of many American Cinematheque’s unstated programming guidelines. Slightly than current the primary version of Bleak Week as only one amongst many thematic applications from which their viewers might select, they as an alternative stuffed the schedules of all three of their LA-based venues with wall-to-wall despair.

This new approach of programming offered each a predicament and a chance. If their viewers had no alternative however to take part in Bleak Week, then how would possibly they personally navigate this system? This led LeMaire to surprise in regards to the other ways wherein motion pictures might be bleak, or as he put it, “What if there are several types of bleaks?” There weren’t many left-field selections within the first Bleek Week program apart from Arthur Penn’s black comedy Penn & Teller Get Killed (1989). This 12 months’s extra various lineup, nevertheless, presents arthouse and repertory staples—together with Bleak Week favourite Béla Tarr, Jane Campion’s The Piano (1993), and Ingmar Bergman’s warfare apologia Disgrace (1968)—as equals to all method of style movie like Richard Kelly’s Southland Tales (2006) and Mick Jackson’s post-apocalyptic nightmare Threads (1984), which aren’t usually programmed alongside them. With retrospective strands on Isabelle Huppert, Warwick Thornton, and Ari Aster, all on the town for Q&As, as centerpieces of the lineup, the hope is that there’s something for each kind of viewers member.

Nonetheless, Moninger and LeMaire had been apprehensive in regards to the public’s response to a pageant with such a selected tone. The Hollywood Reporter advised that audiences’ pursuits had been veering in the wrong way in Carly Thomas’s current article about “Hopecore,” or a development in uncynical storytelling that celebrates collaboration and the indomitable human spirit. The sci-fi blockbuster Undertaking Hail Mary is, as Thomas describes, “on the vanguard” of this new development, a definite break from Hollywood’s penchant for downbeat, grayscale filmmaking inaugurated by Christopher Nolan’s Batman movies. Sweeping generalizations apart, Thomas’s argument flies within the face of one thing like Bleak Week. After a gradual enlargement from Los Angeles into different main hubs like New York Metropolis, Chicago, Dallas, and London, this 12 months’s version options programming in 73 cities worldwide. Such a widespread urge for food appears to recommend a strong want amongst audiences to see movies extra reflective of actuality—warts and all. “To me,” stated Moninger, “the larger hope is that locations are uniting. These are movies made by people, programmed by people, for people, in regards to the human situation. There’s nothing extra hopeful than that.”

To Moninger’s level, Bleak Week’s geographic enlargement has been collaborative. Kerstin Larson, programming director at Milwaukee’s Oriental Theater (my former hometown cinema) famous in a Zoom name that LeMaire reached out immediately about probably collaborating within the enlargement; although, Larsen identified first, she was conscious of the collection already via her personal programming analysis and after LA-based buddies attended screenings. As for the collaborative nature, Larson stated it wasn’t “too collaborative,” however they had been open with sources comparable to “an enormous spreadsheet” of previous applications and distributors’ upcoming slates of restorations. “What’s extraordinarily vital to us,” LeMaire famous, “is that we don’t impose a lineup. We don’t even say it needs to be seven days. What’s a ‘week’ to you? What would that appear to be in your programming?”

This ethos is clear within the range of nationwide Bleak Week programming. The Oriental Theater, for instance, could have a really centered lineup of seven movies due to the supply of screens, however the overlap between their program and the American Cinematheque’s is proscribed simply to William Friedkin’s heist thriller Sorcerer (1977). “I did determine to residence in on a little bit of a theme for our programming,” she advised me. “One of many movies that I completely needed to present was the restoration of American Job (1996), as a result of Chris Smith’s American Film (1999) is so well-regarded right here in Milwaukee. We determined to increase that right into a [thematic strand] about how work and labor continues to be bleak. We’re exhibiting The Turin Horse (2011) on Father’s Day, which is also simply hilarious—doing all of this programming in June when all the pieces is so shiny and sunny.”

Maybe simply as a lot because the programmers, filmmakers and actors have additionally wished to get in on the Bleak Week motion. “When Chris satisfied Béla Tarr, who stated he would by no means come again to the USA, to return again for Bleak Week, it immediately modified the stature of the pageant,” stated Moninger. As one of many “heroes” of Bleak Week, Béla Tarr’s approval and presence imparted a way of event that the collection may not in any other case have had. Within the years since, different famend cinematic voices have come into the fold. In 2025, impartial maverick Jon Jost was readily available for a uncommon retrospective, and 2024 featured tributes to Kenneth Lonergan, Lynne Ramsay, and Charlie Kaufman.

“It’s cool we are able to even name Bleak Week a movie pageant,” stated LeMaire. “There are not any premieres of recent movies. It’s just about all repertory programming. And the response to it on this city is like, ‘I gotta get a ticket for each evening.’ 12 months one, we by no means would have dreamed.” Moninger echoed this evaluation, noting that Ari Aster’s retrospective bought out “in just some minutes.” LeMaire is fast to emphasise the vital position that distributors have performed within the pleasure across the pageant. “Janus Movies and American Style Movie Archive are prepared to carry some restorations they’ve for the 12 months for Bleak Week,” he shares, “which is de facto cool.” To that time, this 12 months’s version flexes restorations of the Coen Brothers’ The Man Who Wasn’t There (2001) and Daniel Petrie’s difficult-to-see Buster and Billie (1974), each of which is able to display screen as world premieres.

In fact, it’s onerous to low cost the enhance {that a} massive title like Isabelle Huppert can carry. “That is the simplest 12 months we’ve ever programmed,” LeMaire stated. “As a result of after getting her, everybody’s saying ‘sure.’” There’s a trickle-down facet to this type of strategizing, too. “If we are able to have somebody that massive, then we are able to ask audiences to take an opportunity on a number of the rarer issues within the lineup,” LeMaire added. “If it’s in a pageant with Isabelle Huppert and Ari Aster, it should be fascinating.”

A notable omission in Bleak Week’s programming is nonfiction filmmaking. If one views narrative as a automobile for fantasy and extrapolation, then screening documentaries about real-world atrocities beneath a relatively glib collection banner may not sit proper with audiences. “We don’t truly wish to present the struggling,” defined Moninger. “Bleak Week is de facto triumphant. It’s saying that it doesn’t matter what folks have been via, what they’re going via now, or who they’re, you may make artwork about it.” Nonetheless, avoiding direct reflections of the true world feels oddly limiting for a program as open-ended as Bleak Week, so it might take one other programmer’s concentrate on unflinching however equally pressing documentaries to border these movies thoughtfully for audiences.

I used to be nonetheless curious why one thing as particular as Bleak Week is vital to cinema tradition. The “Hopecore” development registers extra like a clickbaity media headline somewhat than a rigorously documented shift in tradition; treacly sentimentality has by no means actually been in or out of favor, however a continuing all through movie historical past. Equally, as Moninger stated, “There’s by no means been a time on this earth that wasn’t bleak. It will not be bleak in your own home, however I assure that subsequent door it’s sort of bleak. And I assure you throughout the ocean it’s sort of bleak. So to say it’s actually all about ‘now’ is limiting.” Setting apart this system’s limitations, I discover resonances between mine and Moninger’s pleasure about Bleak Week, which unsurprisingly returns to the communal potential that cinema gives. “Having the ability to expertise sorrow and grief collectively—there’s one thing extra hopeful about that than folks watching leisure at residence.”