The Harvard Film Archive’s world-class collection is especially rich in classic European art cinema, documentary and experimental film. Charged with the formidable task of discovering the rarest items within newly acquired collections, the Archive’s conservators have arguably the most in-depth knowledge of the HFA’s holdings. With this in mind, our conservators have assembled this special summer series as an alternate cross-section of the Archive, playfully juxtaposing auteurist art film with popular genre cinema. The many different kinds of cinephilic pleasures, be they intellectual or kinetic, are celebrated in an eclectic program that ranges from Shirley Clarke’s The Connection, a rarely screened classic of the New American Cinema, and the wonderful Beatles documentary Let It Be, to lesser-known treasures of the “vernacular fantastic,” from The Man Without a Body to Night of the Comet.

This series was curated by Liz Coffey, Amy Sloper and Trisha Lendo of the HFA Conservation Center, who will each introduce one of the evening’s programs.