Provincetown Film Art Series

The Provincetown Film Art Series is presented annually by PAAM and the Provincetown Film Society (PFS) and curated and hosted by film scholar Howard Karren.

Films in the series, both recent and vintage, are chosen around central themes, but the focus is on films about artists and creativity, and films that are themselves works of art.

A special Opening Celebration (free with pass) will be held on Sunday, November 10, with a reception at 11:30am and screening at 12:30pm at Waters Edge Cinema in Provincetown, 237 Commercial St (Whaler’s Wharf, 3^rd floor). Refreshments will be served. Tickets for non-passholders are $35 ($30 for PFS or PAAM members).

A special Closing Night (free with pass) screening will also be held at Waters Edge Cinema on Wednesday, May 14, 2025, with a reception at 6pm and screening at 7pm. Refreshments will be served. Tickets for non-passholders are $25 ($20 for PFS or PAAM members).

The remaining thirteen regular screenings (free with pass) will be held on Thursday nights at 7 pm at the Waters Edge Cinema, starting November 21 and then every two weeks (with one exception) through May 14, 2025. Screenings are introduced by Howard Karren with program notes and are followed by a discussion.

Season Passes, which include admission to the opening and closing celebrations and all thirteen Thursday night screenings, are $165 for PFS or PAAM members; $195 for non-members.

The 2024-5 Season: Society, Survival, and Being True to Oneself

OPENING CELEBRATION: SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 10. RECEPTION: 11:30AM, SCREENING: 12:30PM.

The Eight Mountains (2022)

Written and directed by Felix van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch. Based on the novel by Paolo Cognetti. With Luca Marinelli and Alessandro Borghi. 2 hours, 27 minutes. In Italian, subtitled.

This beautiful film is a wise, bittersweet and sweeping saga of two friends — Italian boys who meet in an alpine village outside Milan. One is a summer visitor from the city and the other is from a local dairy farming family. They grow up together, grow apart, then rejoin each other as adults — a journey of profound life lessons.

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 7PM

Girls Will Be Girls (2024)

Written and directed by Shuchi Talati. With Preeti Panigrahi, Kesav Binoy Kiron, and Kani Kusruti. In Hindi and English, subtitled. 1 hour, 58 minutes.

In the sexually repressed and pressure-cooker world of a private Indian school in the Himalayas, 16-year-old Mira embarks on a romantic friendship with a young man under the watchful and conflicted eye of her mother.

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 5, 7PM

Holy Spider (2022)

Directed and cowritten by Ali Abbasi. With Zar Amir Ebrahimi and Mehdi Bajestani. In Persian, subtitled. 1 hour, 58 minutes.

An independent-minded Iranian woman working as a journalist travels to the holy city of Mashhad to bring a serial killer of prostitutes to justice. Based on a true story and shot in Jordan, this riveting, incendiary film by Ali Abbasi (The Apprentice) exposes the cruelty and hypocrisy of Iran’s theocratic regime.

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 19, 7PM

Daddio (2023)

Written and directed by Christy Hall. With Dakota Johnson and Sean Penn. 1 hour, 40 minutes.

Christy Hall’s sly and probing two-person drama takes place almost entirely in a New York City yellow taxi, as Sean Penn’s grizzled cabbie drives slick young Dakota Johnson from Kennedy Airport to her Manhattan apartment and, in the process, unearths both of their deepest yearnings.

THURSDAY, JANUARY 2, 7PM

Merchant Ivory (2024)

Directed and cowritten by Stephen Soucy. With James Ivory. Documentary. 1 hour, 52 minutes.

Director James Ivory and producer Ismail Merchant were a 20th-century curiosity: a filmmaking powerhouse and a gay couple. Their triumphant careers began humbly in India and reached a critical and commercial peak with exquisite adaptations of classic novels with screenplays by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala and scores by Richard Robbins. Stephen Soucy’s documentary presents a star-studded collection of actors and collaborators who create a compelling, deeply personal picture of Merchant and Ivory’s lives in art.

THURSDAY, JANUARY 16,7PM

Howards End (1992)

Directed by James Ivory. Screenplay by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, based on the novel by E.M. Forster. With Emma Thompson, Helena Bonham Carter, Vanessa Redgrave, and Anthony Hopkins. 2 hours, 22 minutes.

Of Merchant Ivory’s three brilliant E.M. Forster adaptations — A Room With a View, Maurice, and Howards End — the latter one, which is equally as romantic and scathing as the previous two — offers the richest tableau of the British bourgeoisie at the dawn of the modern era.

THURSDAY, JANUARY 30, 7PM

Hester Street (1975)

Written and directed by Joan Micklin Silver, based on a novella by Abraham Cahan. With Carol Kane and Stephen Keats. In Yiddish and English, subtitled. B&W. 1 hour, 30 minutes.

Joan Micklin Silver’s feature debut is a low-budget gem: the story of a Russian Jewish immigrant (Carol Kane), who comes to New York with a young son only to find that she’s no longer compatible with her Americanized husband, who scorns her Old World ways.

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 7PM

Isadora (1968)

Directed by Karel Reisz. With Vanessa Redgrave, Jason Robards, and James Fox. 2 hours, 20 minutes (European cut).

Isadora Duncan, a pioneer of modern dance, was a free spirit in her art and in her romantic relationships — and way ahead of her time. She lived and died famously, and, as fearlessly played by Vanessa Redgrave (and expressively directed by British New Wave stalwart Karel Reisz), she’s neither saint nor satyr but a wonder nonetheless.

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 7PM

Mad About the Boy: The Noël Coward Story (2023)

Written and directed by Barnaby Thompson. Narrated by Alan Cumming. Documentary. 1 hour, 35 minutes.

This impressive film portrait of theater maestro Noël Coward, a lifelong professional wit and the playwright of Blithe Spirit, Private Lives, Design for Living, and Present Laughter, makes good use of archival material and fully claims Coward as an exalted part of queer history.

THURSDAY, MARCH 6, 7PM

Showing Up (2022)

Directed and cowritten by Kelly Reichardt. With Michelle Williams and Hong Chau. 1 hour, 47 minutes.

Filmmaker Kelly Reichardt, once again in an intimate give and take with her frequent star, Michelle Williams (Wendy and Lucy, Meek’s Cutoff), presents another brilliant character study, this time of Lizzy, a tormented and depressed Portland, Oregon, sculptor.

THURSDAY, MARCH 20, 7PM

Fox and His Friends (1975)

Directed and cowritten by Rainer Werner Fassbinder. With Fassbinder and Peter Chatel. In German, subtitled. 2 hours, 4 minutes.

The ’70s movies of Rainer Werner Fassbinder are dazzling as a whole and devastating individually. Most are fables of soullessness set in postwar West Germany, and so is this story of a poor gay carny who wins the lottery and is viciously exploited, played with sullen passion by Fassbinder himself.

THURSDAY, APRIL 3, 7PM

The Tale of Zatoichi (1962)

Directed by Kenji Misumi. Screenplay by Minoru Inuzuka, based on the short story by Kan Shimozawa. With Shintaro Katsu. In Japanese, subtitled. B&W. 1 hour, 35 minutes.

In Japan’s pre-Western Edo period in the mid-1800s, Zatoichi is a blind itinerant samurai with an unflinching sense of honor and an otherworldly mastery of swordsmanship. His blindness is anything but a disability: Zatoichi is almost always underestimated by those he’s up against. This 1962 classic is the first of a 26-film series, in which Zatoichi is mostly played by the great Shintaro Katsu.

THURSDAY, APRIL 17, 7PM

The Quiet Girl (2022)

Written and directed by Colm Bairéad, based on the novella Foster by Claire Keegan. With Carrie Crowley, Andrew Bennett, and Catherine Clinch. In English and Irish, subtitled. 1 hour, 35 minutes.

Poor and unloved in rural Ireland, 1981, young Cáit is sent away to spend a summer with relatives. There, with some kindness and attention, she learns some truths about herself, life in the world, and her messed-up family. A lovely, perspicacious film that is inseparable from its setting.

THURSDAY, MAY 1, 7PM

An American in Paris (1951)

Directed by Vincente Minnelli. Produced by Arthur Freed. Story and screenplay by Alan Jay Lerner. With Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron. Choreographed by Gene Kelly. 1 hour, 54 minutes.

This romantic tale of an American painter in Paris (Gene Kelly) who falls for a sweet Parisienne (Leslie Caron) is really a meditation on love, art, and money — in other words, Hollywood. It’s also the ultimate expression of studio artistry: directed by Vincente Minnelli with exquisite taste, lavishly produced by MGM’s Freed unit in Los Angeles, inventively choreographed by Kelly, and inspired by George Gershwin’s luscious jazz-inflected score.

CLOSING CELEBRATION: WEDNESDAY, MAY 14. RECEPTION: 6PM, SCREENING: 7PM.

A Thousand and One (2023)

Written and directed by A.V. Rockwell. With Teyana Taylor, Will Catlett, and Josiah Cross. 1 hour, 57 minutes.

A young mother in Brooklyn kidnaps the young son who she says was taken from her and they spend a life of undercover domestic harmony until the boy grows up and real-world truths shatter their hopeful narrative. Teyana Taylor delivers a knockout performance as the driven single mom, and this Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner weaves a rich storytelling experience.

Season Pass