Sat 16 Mar, 11:30am Sun 17 Mar, 11:30am

Citizen Kane (1941)

directed by Orson Welles starring Orson Welles, Joseph Cotten, Dorothy Comingore in English

Consistently rated (until very recently) the best film ever made, Welles’ debut broke all the rules and invented some new ones in telling the life story of a Hearst-like media mogul whose excesses and ego damn him to a wealthy yet lonely end. And how’s this for making you feel lazy: Orson Welles was only 25 when he made the picture!

Sat 23 Mar, 11:30am Sun 24 Mar, 11:30am

The Stranger (1946)

directed by Orson Welles starring Orson Welles, Edward G. Robinson, Loretta Young in English, Spanish

Welles plays a Nazi spy living sedately among a quiet Connecticut town, about to be married to the unsuspecting Loretta Young. In comes the wonderfully understated Edward G. Robinson, a federal agent on the trail of a Nazi spook. The smoldering performances by Welles and Robinson as they engage in a glacially-paced cat-and-mouse game are thrillingly tense!

Sun 7 Apr, 11:30am

Macbeth (1948)

directed by Orson Welles starring Orson Welles, Jeanette Nolan, Dan O'Herlihy in English

With the actors speaking in authentic Scot accents and the action filmed in bizarrely stylized interiors meant to emphasize the theatricality of the production, Welles’ Shakespeare adaptation is one moody strip of celluloid. Produced by the small-time studio Republic Pictures after being kicked off the RKO lot, Welles envisioned several cost-cutting techniques (such as actors lip-syncing to a pre-recorded soundtrack) to make an historical epic from a B-movie budget. 35mm restored print courtesy of the UCLA Film & Television Archive. Preservation funding provided by The Film Foundation and the Hollywood Foreign Press Association.

Sat 13 Apr, 11:30am Sun 14 Apr, 11:30am

The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)

directed by Orson Welles starring Tim Holt, Joseph Cotten, Dolores Costello in English

The follow-up to Citizen Kane is a fascinating adaptation of the Booth Tarkington novel about a family unwilling to change their way of life with the times. Wrapped up in making nearly a dozen different projects at once, Orson Welles foolishly left the post-production work in the studio’s hands, which resulted in nearly an hour of Welles’ rough-cut being removed. The long-lost footage has fueled one of the greatest What-Ifs in cinema history, right up there with Greed.

Sat 20 Apr, 11:30am Sun 21 Apr, 11:30am

The Lady From Shanghai (1947)

directed by Orson Welles starring Rita Hayworth, Orson Welles, Everett Sloane in English

Orson Welles takes the classic femme fatale tale to globe-spanning lengths and hallucinatory heights. Hard-luck seaman Michael O’Hara (Welles) tumbles into the net of mysterious Elsa Bannister (Hayworth) only to find himself caught in the murderous conspiracies of her viperous cohorts. One of the most startlingly inventive crime films released by a Hollywood studio in the 1940s.

Sat 27 Apr, 11:30am Sun 28 Apr, 11:30am

Confidential Report aka Mr. Arkadin (1955)

directed by Orson Welles starring Orson Welles, Peter van Eyck, Michael Redgrave in English, German, French, Polish with English subtitles

Welles’s Mr. Arkadin — the story of an elusive billionaire who hires an American smuggler to investigate his past, leading to a dizzying descent into a cold-war landscape of a Europe trying to erase its history — is a famously mercurial production existing in multiple different versions, thanks to Welles being banned from the editing room. We will screen the European cut of the film, entitled Confidential Report.

Sat 4 May, 11:30am Sun 5 May, 11:30am

Touch of Evil (1958)

directed by Orson Welles starring Charlton Heston, Orson Welles, Janet Leigh in English, Spanish

Opening with its famous three minute and twenty second crane shot, this final example of film noir is filled with baroque inflections of style showcasing a master filmmaker’s command of the medium. The moment crooked cop Quinlan (Orson Welles) shows his inebriate face onscreen and stares down Mexican Narc Charlton Heston, you know you’re in for one hell of a ride.

Sun 12 May, 11:30am

Chimes at Midnight (1965)

directed by Orson Welles starring Orson Welles, Jeanne Moreau, Margaret Rutherford in English

Orson Welles was born to play Falstaff, a man whose mouth and mind are as oversized as his belly, and Welles’ full embodiment of the character is surely the film’s greatest performance.

Roundly considering Welles’ greatest achievement, it is said there is not a word in the film not written by Shakespeare. Quite a feat, considering the film feels so completely Orson Welles!

Sat 18 May, 11:30am Sun 19 May, 11:30am

The Trial (1962)

directed by Orson Welles starring Anthony Perkins, Jeanne Moreau, Romy Schneider in English

A gripping adaptation of Franz Kafka’s tale of Joseph K (Anthony Perkins in an outstanding performance), a man arrested for a crime that is never explained to him. Though his neighbors all scorn him, no one seems willing or able to help him, not even his mysterious defense attorney. Filmed in an abandoned train station in Paris, the strange setting perfectly captured the bizarre and nightmarish world of Kafka’s mythical totalitarian state.

Sat 25 May, 11:30am Sun 26 May, 11:30am

F For Fake (1973)

directed by Orson Welles starring Orson Welles, Oja Kodar, Joseph Cotten in English, Spanish, French

In Orson Welles’s free-form documentary F for Fake, the legendary filmmaker (and self-described charlatan) gleefully engages the central preoccupation of his career—the tenuous line between truth and illusion, art and lies. Beginning with portraits of world-renowned art forger Elmyr de Hory and his equally devious biographer, Clifford Irving, Welles embarks on a dizzying cinematic journey that simultaneously exposes and revels in fakery and fakers of all stripes—not the least of whom is Welles himself.