THE TERRITORY
Dir. Raúl Ruiz, 1981
Portugal, 104 min.
In English and French with English subtitles

TUESDAY, MARCH 3 – 7:30
MONDAY, MARCH 9 – 10 PM
FRIDAY, MARCH 20 – 10 PM
SUNDAY, MARCH 22 – 5 PM

Madness in excess but with a snowballing narrative effect, Raúl Ruiz’s THE TERRITORY takes peculiar people and surrounds them in a more peculiar setting and eventually plunges us into their inevitable lunacy. Ruiz’s hidden gem follows a group who embark on a hiking trip and get lost after ditching their guide. The situation turns vastly surreal with bright pops of color in photography but never turns into psychedelia. While the film is littered with non-sequitur jokes, it is more faithful to being an intellectual fantasy horror than a comedy. Compared to the bulk of his output during his eccentric 1980s era, THE TERRITORY can be considered one of Ruiz’s more accessible films of this time.

THREE CROWNS OF THE SAILOR
Dir. Raúl Ruiz, 1983
France, 117 min.
In French with English subtitles

THURSDAY, MARCH 5 – 7:30 PM
MONDAY, MARCH 16 – 10 PM
FRIDAY, MARCH 20 – 7:30 PM
SUNDAY, MARCH 22 – 7:30 PM

One of the 1980s’ art house masterpieces, Raúl Ruiz’s THREE CROWNS OF THE SAILOR is an absolutely absurd if not profound ghost ship tall tale that sails on a existential nonsense map to nowhere. Spoken in strange code, most of the cryptic language answers questions that were never asked and revels in its fractured fake histories. It is a story that is on another realm with multiverses being pulled through a singular and revelations of alternate characters that may have not existed. The film comes as a strategic stream of conscience that tries to shoe lace faded memories to the fragmented damaged stories. THREE CROWNS OF THE SAILOR is filled to the brim with over complicated ideas and none of them would work if humor and a grain of salt wasn’t included.

3 RUIZ SHORTS: VOYAGE OF THE HAND / ZIG ZAG / DOG’S DIALOGUE
Dir. Raúl Ruiz, 1985, 1980, and 1977
France, 25 min. / 31 min. / 22 min.
In French and English with English subtitles

TUESDAY, MARCH 3 – 10 PM
SUNDAY, MARCH 8 – 7:30 PM
MONDAY, MARCH 16 – 7:30 PM
THURSDAY, MARCH 19 – 10 PM

As a special supplemental collection to the two full lengths featured this month, these three shorts from Ruiz are perhaps his most notable and clever of this era. Presented in reverse chronological order, the program begins with VOYAGE OF THE HAND, one of his more successful impromptu nonsense nightmares. It focuses on the story of a man’s left hand, but in true Ruiz nature, many elements begin to blur. The second short ZIG ZAG is about a man reluctantly joining in a grand scale cartography game of conundrums where the rules constantly change and the scope grows infinitely. The final short in this collection is the landmark DOG’S DIALOGUE which set the off-center tone for the oncoming decades for Ruiz. Presented in the superior English language version, DOG’S DIALOGUE is an act of tomfoolery employing only stock footage and stills. By using clever repetition, what begins as a melodrama of a lovelorn woman breaks into other people’s narratives and eventually dissolves into an endless loop.