Persona

Critic John Simon says "Persona is to film what Ulysses is to the novel." Here it is paired with an influential short by Deren, "the high priestess of experimental cinema" (Senses of Cinema).

One of the landmarks of '60s cinema and Swedish director Ingmar Bergman's career, Persona examines the increasing frustrations of a nurse (Bergman veteran Bibi Andersson) as she tends to an actress (Liv Ulmann, in her Bergman debut) who has gone mute following a nervous breakdown. After a series of deeply personal confessions—including what famed New Yorker critic Pauline Kael called "one of the rare truly erotic sequences in movie history"—the identities of the two women begin to merge together. (81 mins., 35mm)

The evening begins with Meshes of the Afternoon, a dreamlike, surrealistic psychological portrait of a troubled woman that is one of the most important films to come out of the American avant-garde. Its influence can still be seen today in the work of David Lynch and countless other filmmakers. (14 mins., 16mm)