movie

Women’s Work: Satan Said Dance

Karolina (Magdalena Berus), a hedonistic young writer, celebrates the success of her new novel. Drifting between lovers, her life is a dizzying blur of casual sex and hard partying, fueled by cocaine and booze. But beneath her carefree image, Karolina struggles with addiction, eating disorders, and loneliness. Kasia Roslaniec's striking character study is composed of 54 short vignettes, from which a fragmented narrative unfolds like a sideways scroll through a stranger's Instagram stories. Deploying the 1:1 aspect ratio used on social media sites, Roslaniec keeps Berus' gutsy performance tightly in the frame, while suggesting the limits of a life lived in the public eye. Fusing smartphone aesthetics with cinematic form, Satan Said Dance is both a bold storytelling experiment and a canny critique of the selfie generation.

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Dam’d Docs: The Artist & The Pervert

Mollena Williams-Haas is an influential Black American sex educator. Her husband Georg Friedrich Haas is a celebrated Austrian composer and the child of Nazi parents. The two live in an openly sadomasochistic relationship, with Mollena acting as Georg's slave and artistic muse. Their provocative partnership challenges the public to confront the nuances of race, power, and sexual intimacy.

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Soviet Classics: Circus (free screening)

Fleeing persecution in the United States for having a mixed race baby, trapeze artist Marion Dixon (Lyubov Orlova) meets Franz von Kneishitz (Pavel Massalsky), a sinister German talent agent. He takes Marion to the Soviet Union, where she gets a job being shot from a cannon in the Moscow Circus. Marion finds love and acceptance in her new home, but will von Kneishitz let her be happy?

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