1991 - 102 MINUTES - CANADA
A FILM BY BRUCE MCDONALD
FEATURING VALERIE BUHAGIAR, EARL PASTKO, DON MCKELLAR
Inspired by Bob Dylan’s classic song and the fact that Highway 61 actually starts in Thunder Bay, Ontario, Bruce McDonald and Don McKellar joined forces to create this acclaimed rock ’n’ roll road movie.
With a dead-end job and a potentially pregnant girlfriend jeopardizing his freedom, Des (Cathy’s Curse’s Alan Scarfe) spirals into bitterness, misanthropy, and fantasies of violent crime. While visiting a sick friend one afternoon, he crosses paths with the similarly jaded, even suicidal Laurie (Lynn Stewart), a young parent working as a waitress to provide for her child and struggling playwright husband (Philip Brown). Desperate to recapture a sense of vitality – and raise money for rent – this troubled couple invites Des and a group of local beatniks over for a hedonistic party that culminates in a series of shocking acts of violence and betrayal.
Busy navigating his final year of high school, brainy aspiring teacher Tom (Waiting for Caroline’s Robert Howay) is determined to land an elusive scholarship, but his hard work is constantly interrupted by his real obsession: pursuing the opposite sex. Before long, he develops a romance with former classmate Elaine (The Boy Who Could Fly’s Angela Gann), who persistently declines his sexual advances. This inspires Tom to consider other options, including his good-natured study buddy Kathy (Carol Pastinsky). But when they take their friendship to the next level, shocking complications threaten to derail Tom’s future, inspiring his friends to take drastic action.
Frustrated housewife Gwen James (Rabid’s Patricia Gage) feels like little more than a servant to her accountant husband (Strange Brew’s Douglas Campbell) and two daughters. Devoting all her time to their needs – and the demands of her cantankerous father – she feels her sense of self-worth slipping. As Gwen wrestles with increasingly despairing thoughts, she escapes into a world of glamorous fantasy and eventually finds a new sense of purpose by enrolling in a university course, where she strikes up a special bond with her young professor (American Nightmare’s Neil Dainard). But as Gwen reverts to a more youthful, carefree state, her family descends into chaos.
Cindy (Born for Hell’s Andrée Pelletier) is outraged by the sadism of her pimp boyfriend Dan (Ghost Story’s Miguel Fernandes), so she turns her back on him and her seedy profession. As he attempts to lure her back, she doubles down on her rebellion by liberating new recruit Marianne (Bingo’s Anne-Marie Provencher) and giving safe haven to several of Dan’s most prized employees, crippling his business. As this gang of frustrated sex workers waits for the dust to settle, Dan grows incensed, escalating the dispute into a full-blown war. Leaning into his mafia connections and insatiable appetite for violence, Dan orders vicious retaliation… but Cindy has some vengeful tricks up her sleeve.
Veteran country musician Jim King (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid’s Donnelly Rhodes) has spent decades honing his craft, but he has yet to find success beyond the small-town touring circuit. With a prominent record label circling his current band, King and Country, Jim may be on the brink of a professional breakthrough, but the rest of his life is in disarray. From a suicidal son (Death Wish II’s David Daniels) and a terminally ill friend (Phobia's Neil Vipond) to a rocky romance with his bandmate Jenny (Pinocchio's Birthday Party's Nancy Belle Fuller), Jim's life is hard – and it’s only getting harder.
During a casual run in the forest, student athlete Renee (The Dead Zone’s Roberta Weiss) is unceremoniously interrupted by deranged mountain man Vern (Rolling Vengeance’s Lawrence King-Phillips), who ties a rope around her neck, drags her through the woods, and brings her to an isolated cabin. As helicopters search the area, Vern torments Renee with a series of terrifying and humiliating violations, but a glimmer of hope appears when his father Joe (Elves star Dan Haggerty) arrives on the scene and pledges to set her free. But Vern is incensed by this attack on his “property,” and he will stop at nothing to maintain his oppressive grip on Renee.
Theatrical November 5, 2024
1997 - CANADA - 112 MINUTES
A FILM BY ATOM EGOYAN
FEATURING IAN HOLM, SARAH POLLEY, CAERTHAN BANKS
A small mountain community in Canada is devastated when a school bus accident leaves more than a dozen of its children dead. A big-city lawyer (Ian Holm) arrives to help the survivors' and victims' families prepare a class-action suit, but his efforts only seem to push the townspeople further apart. At the same time, one teenage survivor of the accident (Sarah Polley) has to reckon with the loss of innocence brought about by a different kind of damage.
Theatrical Starts November 5, 2024
4K 25TH ANNIVERSARY
1999 - 110 MINUTES
A FILM BY ALAN RUDOLPH
WITH BRUCE WILLIS, NICK NOLTE, ALBERT FINNEY
A portrait of a fictional town in the midwest that is home to a group of idiosyncratic and slightly neurotic characters. Dwayne Hoover is a wealthy car dealership owner that's on the brink of suicide, and is losing touch with reality.
Theatrical Starts November 22, 2023
USA – 1967 – 124 MIN – BLACK & WHITE - FEATURE - IN ENGLISH
A FILM BY EMILE DE ANTONIO
BASED ON THE BOOK BY MARK LANE
Mark Lane and de Antonio, for the first time, create a vivid, frank legal brief which asks the still unanswered question: who killed John F. Kennedy?
A critique of the Warren Commission’s report on the murder of President John F. Kennedy.
*Restored to 4K for the 60th anniversary of the JFK assassination
Theatrical Starts November 14, 2023
1990 - CANADA - 77 MINUTES - ENGLISH
A FILM BY GUY MADDIN
Literally a film like no other, this weird, wild and extraordinary photoplay is both melodrama and deadpan parody. With striking black and white cinematography and stylized set design, Guy Maddin tells a tale of obsessive love in the arctic Russian town of Archangel, where Bolsheviks, White Russians and German Huns converge during World War I.
Theatrical starts Fall 2025
DIGITAL RESTORATION BY SPHINX PRODUCTIONS PRODUCED WITH THE GENEROUS FINANCIAL SUPPORT OF TELEFILM CANADA
CANADA - 1994 - 92 MINUTES
A FILM BY BY LARRY WEINSTEIN
WITH WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS, BETTY CARTER, NICK CAVE, ELVIS COSTELLO, LOU REED
September Songs: The Music of Kurt Weill is a visually arresting and musically rich tribute to the legendary German-American composer Kurt Weill. Directed by Larry Weinstein and made in collaboration with visionary music producer Hal Willner, the film was originally released in 1994, and is now digitally rerstored by Sphinx Productions for re-release in September 2025.
1992 - CANADA - 100 MINUTES - ENGLISH
A FILM BY GUY MADDIN
Guy Maddin’s early masterpiece takes place in a 19th-century Alpine village where the wary residents —adult, child and animal!—must speak softly and tread lightly lest they cause an avalanche. But sexual frenzies teem in this world of repression, setting off incestuous love triangles and quadrangles with deadly consequences. Bathed in lurid, luminescent tints, Careful resembles a vintage melodrama from another planet—something that could only emerge from the singular mind of Maddin.
Theatrical starts September 30, 2022
1988 - 64 MINUTES - B&W - 4K - STEREO - MANITOBA, CANADA - IN ENGLISH + ICELANDIC
A FILM BY GUY MADDIN
FEATURING: KYLE MCCULLOCH, MICHAEL GOTTLI, ANGELA HECK, MARGARET ANNE MACLEOD, HEATHER NEALE, DAVID NEALE, CAROLINE BONNER
Set during a smallpox epidemic in the village of Gimli, Manitoba near the turn of the century, Tales From The Gimli Hospitalis a dreamlike, elliptical film which explores the jealousy and madness instilled in two men who share a hospital room "in a Gimli we no longer know." The two men, Einar (Kyle McCulloch) and Gunnar (Michael Gottli) are friends at first, until they reveal their darkest secrets to each other. Tales of creeping pestilence, unconsummated passions, reckless envy and necrophilia are told, climaxing in a deadly battle between the two patients, now rivals. Does a better world await these two lost souls on Earth...or in Heaven?
4K REMASTER!
1989 - CANADA - 80 MINUTES
A FILM BY BRUCE MCDONALD
Ramona works in a concert agency and is sent after the rock band 'Children of Paradise' who have disappeared. Since she can't drive, she has to take the train and bus and eventually hitchhike. On her way through the Canadian back country she meets the weirdest people - and learns to drive, what leads to... roadkill.
Theatrical starts Fall 2025
NEW 4K RESTORATION
USA – 1965 – 97 MIN – BLACK & WHITE - FEATURE - IN ENGLISH
A FILM BY EMILE DE ANTONIO
DIGITAL RESTORATION BY THE WISCONSIN CENTER FOR FILM AND THEATRE RESEARCH, UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON AND SPHINX PRODUCTIONS
The great demagogue, Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, at bay before the establishment. Lawyer Welch: "Have you at long last, sir, no sense of decency?" Silence and the end of a meteoric career.