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  Zouzou (1934)

  If you’ve never seen Josephine Baker onscreen, you’re missing out. To watch Baker is to watch the birth of “movie star” as a concept. She’s all bright eyes and an effervescent smile, hilarious and beautiful all at once. Seriously, it’s almost unfair for someone to be that gorgeous and that much of a natural clown. Zouzou was designed as a breakout starring role, and it showcases Baker’s immense talent beautifully. She sings, she dances, she pines over the man who was raised as her twin brother in the circus, you know. Standard film fare. Zouzou is not the dry homework of foreign film history. It’s a magnetic story, part romance, part tragedy, and part dance revue. – Cat McCarrey

  Nov. 25, 27 & 29

  AFS Cinema

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  Special Screenings

  

  Essential Cinema: The Eyes of Peter Lorre

  There’s no history of the Golden Age of Hollywood that doesn’t feature the distinctive face of Peter Lorre – those bulging eyes, that clammy visage. Yet it’s his own history that hovers over the last two films in AFS Cinema’s tribute to this émigré master of the small screen. Is it too much to imagine that he saw his own father, a former WWI prison camp superintendent, when he inflicted sadistic punishments on the convicts confined to the Island of Doomed Men (Thu. 21 & Sat. 23)? Or that audiences wouldn’t wonder that he’d made two films about hands with lethal minds of their own, 1935’s Mad Love and this season’s inclusion, 1946’s The Beast With Five Fingers (Tue. 26 & Sat. 30)? – Richard Whittaker

  Through Nov. 30

  AFS Cinema

• Film

  Special Screenings

  

  Luther the Geek (1990)

  Freddy has his glove. Jason has his machete. And Luther has his metal dentures. The titular killer of gruesome and deranged 1989 low-budget slasher Luther the Geek dispatches his victims by biting their heads off. Taking inspiration from the old carnival act where a man bit a head off a live chicken, writer/director Carlton J. Albright dived deep into the depths of his sleazy concept, while Edward Terry will have your jaw dropping as he chomps his way through the South. – Richard Whittaker

  Fri., Nov. 29

  We Luv Video

• Film

  Special Screenings

  

  Silent Night, Deadly Night

  Not all heroes wear capes. Some wear a bloodstained Father Christmas costume. Well, maybe Christmas-wrecking Bill Chapman (Robert Brian Wilson) isn’t quite a hero. Yet there’s a certain catharsis for anyone who has photographic evidence of getting traumatized by a mall Santa every time the axe-wielding protagonist of this wintry chiller warns people about his naughty list. Pulled from cinemas on release in 1984 because finger-wagging prudes said Santa onscreen should be inviolate, they deserve coal in their stocking for denying audiences this screamingly funny seasonal slasher. – Richard Whittaker

  Nov. 29 & Dec. 2