Visionary director Terry Gilliam began his career as an animator. His unique body of work continues to be defined by an attention to aesthetic playfulness and experimentation, as well as a powerful awareness of the graphic potential of the image. His work first gained widespread acclaim while he was working as the only American-born member of Monty Python. It was with Python that he would evolve into a world-class feature-film director, starting with MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL (1975, co-directed with Terry Jones). Gilliam went on to create a series of fantastic spectacles characterized by striking imagery, bold characterizations, and a strong mistrust of authority in films such as TIME BANDITS (1981), BRAZIL (1985), and TWELVE MONKEYS (1995), to name a few.  Whether it's conveying the inner state of a drug-addled but brilliant journalist (FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS, 1998) or the angst of a self-loathing shock jock (THE FISHER KING, 1991), Terry Gilliam is a master of using the visual to express the emotional - perhaps a residual effect of his eye for animation. 

Join us for a selection of Gilliam’s best-loved films, along with a sneak preview of his latest masterpiece, THE IMAGINARIUM OF DOCTOR PARNASSUS, Heath Ledger’s final film.  

Sunday, December 6 - 7:30 PM TERRY GILLIAM

Sneak Preview! THE IMAGINARIUM OF DOCTOR PARNASSUS, 2009, Sony Pictures Classics, 122 min. Terry Gilliam reteams with his BROTHERS GRIMM star Heath Ledger for this, the actor’s final film. Christopher Plummer plays the film's title character, the impresario behind a traveling theatrical company that offers its customers the chance to use a magical mirror to go beyond reality. When the devil, with whom Parnassus once struck a deal, comes around to collect, the company and an enigmatic outsider (played at alternate points by Ledger, Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell) join forces to save Parnassus' daughter (Lily Cole). Trailer | Official Website

Saturday, December 12 - 7:30 PM TERRY GILLIAM

Double Feature: BRAZIL, 1985, Universal, 142 min. Director Terry Gilliam’s groundbreaking science fiction satire is an anachronistic masterpiece. Winner of the Los Angeles Film Critics Award for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Screenplay (Gilliam, Charles McKeown and theatre legend Tom Stoppard). Inspired by George Orwell’s 1984 and Fritz Lang’s METROPOLIS, this darkest of comedies pits everyman Jonathan Pryce against a world of crushing conformity, pursuing elusive love, Kim Greist. Featuring fellow-Python Michael Palin as upwardly mobile Jack Lint and Robert De Niro as an outlaw heating engineer. Its jaw dropping retro-futuristic design helped give birth to the steam punk genre. Trailer

THE FISHER KING, 1991, Sony Repertory, 137 min. Jeff Bridges pulls out all the stops as a shattered shock jock trying to escape self-pity and remorse, and Robin Williams is the sanity-challenged homeless vagabond who helps him in director Terry Gilliam’s modern fable of love and redemption. Co-starring Mercedes Ruehl (who won an Academy Award as Best Supporting Actress), Amanda Plummer, and Harry Shearer. Trailer

Sunday, December 13 - 7:30 PM TERRY GILLIAM
Double Feature: TIME BANDITS, 1981, HandMade, 110 min. Dir. Terry Gilliam. When eleven-year old history buff Kevin discovers a time-and-space portal in his bedroom wall, a band of dwarves takes him on a series of rousing, funny, and scary quests, where they meet Robin Hood, Napoleon, and Agamemnon and search for "The Most Fabulous Object in the World." As the Chicago Reader's Dave Kehr pointed out at the time of its release, "All the hidden themes of the Disney films…are made brutally, and often hilariously, explicit. The film is resolutely, passionately antiadult, yet much of the humor has an adult sophistication and edge to it; this is one kids' movie that doesn't condescend." [BR/DMX Digital Cinema Presentation] Trailer