The Warriors

In 16th-century Japan, a small farming village faces the threat of a bandit gang plundering their next harvest. Following the advice of Gisaku, the community elder, the villagers embark on a quest to recruit samurai to help defend their village. Led by the disciplined and skillful Kambei (Takashi Shimura), the samurai train the townsfolk to prepare for battle. This action-packed epic was highly influential upon its release, spawning several adaptations and remakes, most notably The Magnificent Seven (1960). Seven Samurai garnered two Academy Award nominations for Best Art Direction (black-and-white), and Best Costume Design (black-and-white).

In person: Ashley Clark and director Ngozi Onwurah

Restoration world premiere  

Known internationally for her divisive, erotic wartime drama The Night Porter (1974), Italian filmmaker Liliana Cavani got her start in biographical television dramas with films about Saint Francis of Assisi and the astronomer Galileo. Her memorable theatrical feature debut is loosely based on Sophocles’s Antigone, a play in which the titular heroine attempts to bury her brother despite laws forbidding it. Set in a totalitarian Milan, The Year of the Cannibals opens on streets strewn with the corpses of rebels, their “dead bodies serv[ing] as an example to prevent more death.” Grieving her brother, whose body lies in front of a bar, Cavani’s modern-day Antigone (Britt Ekland) seeks help to defy the burial ban, finding an ally in a foreigner (Pierre Clémenti). Featuring a score by the incomparable Ennio Morricone and with editing by Sergio Leone regular Nino Baragli, this shocking, no-holds-barred political satire is primed for rediscovery in its newly restored 4K edition.

Programmed and note by K.J. Relth-Miller.