In addition to several films making their local debuts in our Labor Film Series and our Werner Herzog retrospective, the Dryden will present the Rochester Premieres of three more terrific new features for mature audiences in September and October.

A sequel that comes almost 40 years after the film that inspired it, Belle Toujours (screening September 8 & 9) follows up Luis Buñuel’s surreal and erotic classic Belle de Jour. You’ll also be able to see the original Belle de Jour prior to each screening of the sequel.

Playful, but in a much darker vein, is Christiane Cegavske’s magical Blood Tea and Red String (September 22 & 23), a hauntingly beautiful stop-motion animation fantasy. Thirteen years in the making, Cegavske worked without the assistance of computers and her story is told exclusively without dialogue.

Bruno Dumont’s Flanders (October 20 & 21) is the latest provocation from the director of La Vie de Jesus and L’Humanité. Dumont’s patented style alternates serenely beautiful images of nature with shockingly graphic depictions of sex and violence. Urgently provocative and stylistically bold, it’s an anti-war film like no other ever made. No one under 18 will be admitted to the screenings of Flanders.

Jim Healy, Assistant Curator, Exhibitions, Motion Picture Department