Hard Light Cinema

Hey all,

Thanks for coming through for an exciting November at Hard Light! We had a blend of newer arthouse films at different venues with Phoenix, Horse Money, and Atlantics, and we capped it off with a beloved Letterboxd fav in Tampopo to send you off to your Thanksgiving holiday hungry. Well we’re now excited to give a preview of December where we have a rarely-screened modern jam, a Criterion Classic, and a new release from our friends at Cinema Guild. It’s a packed schedule in the first two weeks of December before we regroup for our big 2026 plans. We’ll see you at the cinema!

1. Dec. 2nd: Lovers Rock (2020) dir. Steve McQueen
2. Dec. 7th: Taste of Cherry (1997) dir. Abbas Kiarostami
3. Dec. 10th: The Ballad of Suzanne Césaire (2024) dir. Madeline Hunt-Ehrlich

Dec. 2nd: Lovers Rock (2020) dir. Steve McQueen

🌊 Part 3/4 of our Black Atlantic series

Suffused with iconic reggae, dub, and Lovers Rock tracks, the second installment in Steve McQueen’s Small Axe series unfolds over the course of one night in early-1980s West London, as a young woman (the luminous Amarah-Jae St. Aubyn) sneaks out to attend a house party. As the alternately languorous and ecstatic rhythms pulse from a homemade sound system, romance sparks on the dance floor, small human dramas play out, and, for a moment, this gathering is a safe haven from the outside world. Aided by the sensuous cinematography of Shabier Kirchner, McQueen captures an exhilarating expression of Black joy in a society often intent on stifling it.

— Lewis Peterson, Hard Light Cinema

Dec. 7th: Taste of Cherry (1997) dir. Abbas Kiarostami

🐌 Part 4/4 of our Slow Sundays series

Kiarostami’s minimalist style is frequently named as one of the major influences on contemporary slow cinema. In Taste of Cherry, his minimalism is on full display – in plot, landscape, dialogue, and subject matter. The film follows a middle aged man driving around the Iranian countryside trying to find someone to bury his body after he kills himself. In its simplicity, it reveals all the complexity of what it is to be human.

There is ample free street parking surrounding RPL that is unlimited on weekends. Free refreshments will also be available inside. Come through for a lovely afternoon of slow cinema! As always, we are very appreciative of our hosts at the Richmond Public Library Main Branch for making this partnership possible.

— Syd, Hard Light Cinema

Dec. 10th: The Ballad of Suzanne Césaire (2024) dir. Madeline Hunt-Ehrlich

🌊 Part 4/4 of our Black Atlantic series

The Ballad of Suzanne Césaire, starring César-award-winning actor Zita Hanrot and Motell Gyn Foster,is inspired by the life and archive of Martinican Surrealist Suzanne Cesaire, a poet and theorist and partner to the poet and politician Aimé Césaire, one of the key founders of the early twentieth-century Negritude movement. The Ballad, a post-biopic, examines her relationship with her husband and famed surrealist André Breton.

Filmed in the space of the film set itself, which was set on the grounds of a tree archive in South Florida, Madeline Hunt-Ehrlich’s first feature shows a small group of actors and crew confronting the history of Césaire in her youth, and staging scenes from her life. In this meta-commentary on filmmaking, the “paradise” of historic and political memory is questioned. Inspired by the structures of Césaire’s own writing, the film deconstructs the narrative period biopic genre, moving between conventional cinema and deconstructed experimental scenes.

— Lewis Peterson, Hard Light Cinema