Here are just a few of the hidden gems screening at Albuquerque’s Guild Cinema in March.
From March 7-10, the Guild will screen the new Norwegian film “Armand.” The directorial debut of Halfdan Ullmann Tøndel, the film is about a famous actress who must contend with her young son’s behavior at school.
“Armand” won the Caméra d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 2024, which is the festival’s award for best feature-film debut. It stars Renate Reinsve, whose breakthrough performance in the 2021 film “The Worst Person in the World” earned her the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actress. Reinsve’s sensitive and commanding acting style is again garnering her acclaim, with IndieWire deeming it her best performance yet.
As a part of the Guild’s monthly Arthouse Classics series, the theater will show two new restorations of 1990s independent films by Black filmmakers.
Charles Burnett, who directed the acclaimed 1977 film “Killer of Sheep” — a radical depiction of Black working-class life — made “The Annihilation of Fish” in 1999. However, the film never received an official theatrical release. After a premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, it “essentially vanished in the wake of a negative Variety review, failing to secure distribution and seemingly destined to languish in obscurity,” according to the Los Angeles Times.
Now, “The Annihilation of Fish” is receiving a theatrical release for the first time. The film stars James Earl Jones and Lynn Redgrave as two eccentric middle-aged people who find love against all odds. A poignant reminder of how society views outsiders, Burnett’s film is an atypical rom-com that is sure to both delight and provoke moviegoers. It will screen March 8-9.
From March 11-13, Canadian filmmaker Matthew Rankin’s new film “Universal Language” will make its Guild debut. The film follows a group of characters — including a couple of kids who find money frozen in ice, an Iranian Canadian tour guide and a dissatisfied government worker — in a surreal, purgatorial state somewhere between Winnipeg and Tehran.
Rankin’s debut film, 2019’s “The Twentieth Century,” was a hilarious and wholly original take on the biopic — a fictionalized depiction of the life of former Canadian Prime Minister W.L. Mackenzie King. His use of surrealism and deadpan humor to interrogate history and explore social issues continues in his acclaimed sophomore work.
Cheryl Dunye’s 1996 film “The Watermelon Woman” was the first feature-length film written and directed by a Black lesbian, according to NPR. A cornerstone of the New Queer Cinema movement of the 1990s, the film has reached cult status among Queer fans and reappraisal from film scholars.
Dunye stars as a fictionalized version of herself — an aspiring filmmaker who, fascinated with the lives of forgotten Black actresses in Old Hollywood, sets out to make a documentary about an actress known only as The Watermelon Woman. In the process, Cheryl develops a relationship with a white lesbian named Diana, forcing her to confront her own notions of race and interracial relationships, as well as the audience’s.
A brash yet immensely charming film, “The Watermelon Woman” tackles a universal Queer experience — the importance of seeing yourself represented on screen — through the specific lens of Black womanhood. Dunye’s masterpiece can be seen March 22-23.
A complete list of the Guild’s upcoming showings can be found on its website.
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Elijah Ritch is a freelance reporter for the Daily Lobo. They can be reached at culture@dailylobo.com or on X @dailylobo
