Hard Light Cinema

happy friday, hl nation 😎

We’ve been doing more of these monthly wrap-ups lately because we’ve just got so many new movies to show you. We don’t know how it happened; it just did. And now we need your help to watch them. Can you do that?

We’re kicking it off this Sunday with the final entry of our EXPERIMENTAL DOCUMENTARY series, the harrowing and utterly unique The Act of Killing. Echoing the famous quote from Act of Killing producer Werner Herzog that “the common denominator of the universe is not harmony; but chaos, hostility, and murder,” this film physically puts a camera in the hands of the perpetrators of such hostility and dares to ask them to show us how they see their own actions.

Also this month, we’re somehow bringing you TWO (count ’em!) new releases! First, we’ve got the much-anticipated Resurrection, which I can best describe as a prose poetry script with a Marvel budget. It’s honestly insane that it exists. And it’s just as good as you’ve heard. Later in the month, we’re also presenting the new 4K restoration of The Razor’s Edge as a fundraiser for Gaza Soup Kitchen. A favorite from last year’s NYFF for Hard Light CEO Lewis, we’re honored to be presenting such a great film for a worthwhile cause.

Finally, we round it out with the penultimate film in our A TRIP TO ITALY series at UR with The Great Silence. It’s the second film we’ve shown at UR starring Klaus Kinski in just as many series. Maybe we’ll keep up this bit, or maybe not. Maybe you’ll just have to join us in case we don’t.

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MARCH AT HARD LIGHT CINEMA:

1. 3/1: The Act of Killing (2012) dir. Robert Oppenheimer
2. 3/8: Resurrection (2025) dir. Bi Gan
3. 3/17: The Great Silence (1968) dir. Sergio Corbucci
4. 3/18: The Razor’s Edge (1985) dir. Jocelyne Saab

3/1: The Act of Killing (2012) dir. Robert Oppenheimer

🎥 Part 3/3 of our Experimental Documentary series

Joshua Oppenheimer asks Indonesian death squad leaders to stage and recreate the executions they committed against suspected communists in the 60s. As the distance between memory and media deteriorates, they confront the reality of the blood on their hands.

— Syd, Hard Light Cinema

3/8: Resurrection (2025) dir. Bi Gan

🌟 NEW RELEASES

Prepare to dream…

In a future where humanity has surrendered its ability to dream in exchange for immortality, an outcast finds illusion, nightmarish visions, and beauty in an intoxicating world of his own making.

Bi Gan builds on his slow-cinema epics in Kaili Blues and A Long Day’s Journey Into Night with a momentous masterpiece in Resurrection, a sensory anthology film starring pop-star Jackson Yee and Millennium Mambo’s Shu Qi, that attempts to encapsulate all of cinema’s history into one evolutionary film. With a score by M83 and heavy inspiration from auteurs like Tarkovsky, Dreyer, Kobayashi, Melville, Murnau, Kojima, and Kore-eda, Resurrection will have something for everyone to enjoy before it culminates in a propulsive Wong Kar-Wai inspired 30-minute one-shot take that has to be seen to be believed. Join us on March 7th to see my personal favorite film of the year (and possibly the decade) on the big screen and prepare to be amazed.

— Warner West, Hard Light Cinema

3/17: The Great Silence (1968) dir. Sergio Corbucci

🇮🇹 Part 3/4 of our series Hard Light at UR: A Trip to Italy

Created as a response to the deaths of Malcolm X and Che Guevara, The Great Silence is your favorite politically-charged, revisionist Western that you haven’t seen yet. The film stars Jean-Louis Trintignant as “Silence”, a mute gunslinger who is opposed by the bounty hunter “Loco” played by Klaus Kinski. The film questions vigilante justice and grey morality in a freezing snowy landscape. A favorite of Alex Cox and Quentin Tarantino, this “no-hope” cult classic is not one to be missed, so we’ll see you there!

— Warner West, Hard Light Cinema

3/18: The Razor’s Edge (1985) dir. Jocelyne Saab

🌟 NEW RELEASES

This screening will be free admission with donations strongly encouraged. All proceeds will be donated to Gaza Soup Kitchen, a grassroots organization that provides meals to Gazans in need.

Samar, a child of the Lebanese Civil War, finds relief from the chaos around her through Egyptian movies she watches on television. Karim, an artist in retreat from life, remains in his apartment in war-torn West Beirut, confident that he is safe in his familiar neighborhood. An unlikely bond is formed between the two as they face the devastating civil war.

— TMDB

It is difficult to put into words what so grabs me about this film. The imagery is the most immediately striking element, but the story itself is quite moving. Young girls who are forced to grow up before their childhood ends due to war and occupation. Older and younger generations who see themselves in each other. For better or worse, war has equalized them. There’s a shared need for escape – through the cinema, through poetry, or through one’s own artistic existence. Life during wartime is not and cannot only be about war.

— Lewis Peterson, Hard Light Cinema