Charles, Dead or Alive

Created in the wake of May ’68, Tanner’s debut feature Charles, Dead or Alive follows a small-business owner who, disillusioned by his middle-class comforts, abandons his perceived dead-end life to take up with a counterculture couple living on the fringes of society. Tanner’s first film introduces a theme that runs throughout his body of work: a character making radical life changes without benefit of a safety net. (93 mins., 35mm)