This weekend, local moviegoers can see the sights of two of America’s great cities without leaving the (equally great) city of Cambridge. From Friday through Monday, the Harvard Film Archive presents a lovingly curated series titled Visions of a City, or A Weekend in San Francisco . With its steep hills and iconic streetcars (to say nothing of its rich cultural history), San Francisco is a uniquely cinematic town, and the films selected by the HFA make for a rich guided tour. The series begins Friday with a pair of thrillers: “Bullitt” (1968), featuring Steve McQueen and some of the greatest car chases committed to film, and Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Conversation” (1974), which finds Gene Hackman at the height of Nixon-era paranoia. Saturday brings us into even more emotionally fraught territory with the classic psychodramas “Sudden Fear” (1952) and “Experiment in Terror” (1962), as well as Philip Kaufman’s remake of “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” (1978), which transposes the original’s Cold War panic into a story about aging hipsters battling square conformity. Sunday is for film noir, with Delmer Daves’ “Dark Passage” (1957) and Don Siegel’s “The Lineup” (1958). The series ends on Monday, as it must, with arguably the most famous San Francisco film of all: Alfred Hitchcock’s “Vertigo” (1958), which combines the eeriness of all the preceding films into one endlessly beguiling package.
While the HFA decamps to the West Coast, the Brattle Theatre keeps us East with a series of its own, titled Location Location Location: ‘80s NYC . Inspired by the local premiere run of Paula Andrea Gonzalez-Nasser’s “The Scout” (2026, screening at the Brattle Friday through Tuesday), about a day in the life of a New York City location scout, the Brattle’s series gathers five films which make perfect use of the Big Apple’s city streets. The series begins Friday and Saturday with Martin Scorsese’s black comedy “After Hours” (1985), starring Griffin Dunne as a yuppie desperately trying to get home from a bad date’s SoHo loft to the safety of his Midtown pad. Also on Saturday is Charles Lane’s delightful “Sidewalk Stories” (1989), in which the writer-director-star gives Charlie Chaplin’s “The Kid” a modern, urban update. Sunday and Monday bring John Sayles’ wry scifi satire “The Brother from Another Planet” (1984), starring Joe Morton as a mute extraterrestrial navigating his way through the streets of Harlem. The series closes Tuesday with a double feature of countercultural classics, Jim Jarmusch’s debut feature “Permanent Vacation” (1980) and Bette Gordon’s gritty character study “Variety” (1983), the latter of which features cameos from New York art world staples Nan Goldin and Spalding Gray. Between the two theaters’ series, you have a great opportunity to travel the country without spending a dime on gas.
Last year, the world of experimental film said goodbye to two titans in underground filmmaker Ken Jacobs and his wife and longtime collaborator Flo. To celebrate the Jacobses’ lives and work, the programmers at RPM Fest take up residence at the Brattle on Sunday with a program of their greatest work. At the center of the program is “Tom, Tom, the Piper’s Son” (1969), arguably Jacobses most famous work, in which the filmmaker disassembles and reconstructs a 1905 silent comedy short into a two-hour exploration of space, time and film itself. Also in the program are “Perfect Film” (1986), assembled from newsreel outtakes surrounding the assassination of Malcolm X, and “Little Stabs at Happiness” (1962), an early short featuring fellow underground icon Jack Smith. All three films will be projected on 16 mm, allowing us to view the Jacobs’ work as originally intended.
This week, the newly secured Somerville Theatre ’s Cult Cinema Tuesdays makes its way to the original midnight movie. In “El Topo” (1970), writer-director Alejandro Jodorowsky plays a black-clad outlaw on a quest through the desert to defeat four master shooters and claim the title of the greatest gunslinger in the West. This is no ordinary oater, however; each master represents a spiritual or metaphysical concept, and a mid-film plot twist takes the story into even stranger directions. Though initially overlooked, “El Topo” played nightly midnight showings at New York’s Elgin Theater for months, where it amassed a fiercely loyal cult following (including John Lennon and Yoko Ono, who convinced their manager to fund Jodorowsky’s follow-up, “The Holy Mountain”). On Tuesday, “El Topo” screens at the much more bedtime-friendly hour of 7:30 p.m., allowing you to open your third eye and still show up for work on time the next morning.
In addition to the aforementioned “The Scout,” a number of independent new releases screen this week in Cambridge and Somerville:
- “Cast Aside the Clouds” (Somerville Theatre, Friday): An award-winning drama about a star-crossed love story across cultural divides in contemporary Tehran. Followed by a live Q&A with co-directors Mary Darling and Bre Vader.
- “Women on Trial” (Brattle Theatre, Saturday): The Boston Jewish Film Festival presents the true story of crusading French lawyer Gisèle Halimi (played by Charlotte Gainsbourg), who defended three women accused of illegal abortions in a landmark 1972 trial. Followed by a conversation between UMass Boston professor Kelly Colvin and Boston College professor Julian Bourg.
- “ìfé: (The Sequel)” (Somerville Theatre, Sunday): Wicked Queer kicks off its Fall Film Frolic with Pamela Adie’s sequel to the groundbreaking 2020 queer love story, presented in a double feature with Uyaiedu Ikpe-Etim’s 37-minute original.
- “My Undesirable Friends: Part II – Exile” (Brattle Theatre, Wednesday and Thursday): Julia Loktev’s follow-up to her sprawling, essential 2025 documentary follows a team of independent Russian journalists as they are forced to flee Ukraine and continue their work in different countries. Screens in two parts, with chapters 1-3 on Wednesday and 4-6 on Thursday.
- “I Can Do Hard Things: Samantha’s Story” (Somerville Theatre, Thursday): An inspiring documentary following Samantha Gibbs, who has Down syndrome, as she transforms her life through activism, advocacy and positivity.
Finally, Cambridge Day congratulates artist Aubrey Nash, whose incredible cutout design has been announced as the winner of the Brattle Theatre’s 25th Anniversary Poster Contest . The design will be featured on T-shirts in the coming month; for updates (and to check out the other amazing finalists), be sure to keep an eye on the Brattle’s website!
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