"Baby Doll" screens Thursday, Jan. 21 at 8:30 p.m.

Miami Theatrical Premiere
La Ciénaga
Directed by Lucrecia Martel / Argentina / 2001 / 100 mins. With Mercedes Moran, Graciela Borges

Like Luis Buñuel before her, award-winning filmmaker Lucrecia Martel offers an unapologetic peek into the world of Argentina's decadent bourgeoisie. Mecha (Graciela Borges) is a middle-aged woman with several accident-prone teenagers, a husband who dyes his hair, and the tedious problem of sullen servants. To avoid the uncomfortably hot and humid weather, they spend their summers at a country estate of long-faded glory. In Spanish with English subtitles.
Saturday, Jan. 16 at 7 p.m.

Argentina's Auteur: Lucrecia Martel
The Holy Girl (La Niña Santa)
Directed by Lucrecia Martel / Argentina / 2004 / 104 mins. With Mercedes Moran, Carlos Belloso,  Alejandro Urdapilletta

Prepare to be carried away into the dreamlike world of “The Holy Girl,” Lucrecia Martel's sultry mood piece. In a dowdy hotel in Argentina, a small-scale morality play is unfolding: devout teenager Amalia (Maria Alche) determines to save the soul of the middle-aged man who inappropriately rubbed against her in the street. It gets complicated when Amalia's mother finds herself attracted to him — without knowing about his dark little secret. The overall effect is like the hotel's pool room, a heady feeling of humid atmosphere but with a lucid argument at its core. In Spanish with English subtitles.
Sunday, Jan. 17 at 7 p.m.

The Headless Woman (La mujer sin cabeza)
Directed by Lucrecia Martel / Argentina / 2008 / 87 mins. With María Onetto, Claudia Cantero, César Borden, Daniel Genoud

The suspense and intrigue quietly builds in this third feature from Lucrecia Martel, as the story of a real — or was it imagined — vehicular homicide unfolds. Vero, a woman with a few other secrets already brewing, hits something she thinks is a dog while driving on a dirt road, but doesn't stop to find out. Emerging from the confusion of the head wound from the collision, she begins to suspect that perhaps there was something more tragic involved in her hit and run. We follow her through a web of quiet deceptions and revelations as she remembers, and attempts to piece together and expose the truth, while others attempt to conceal it. Official selection of the Cannes and New York Film Festival. In Spanish with English subtitles.
Saturday, Jan. 16 and Sunday, Jan. 17 at 9 p.m.

Cinema Green Series
The MBC Environmental Film Series in collaboration with
ECOMB, The Environmental Coalition of Miami Beach
Genesis
Documentary directed by Claude Nuridsany and Marie Perenou / 2004 / 81 mins.

From the amazing team that brought you “Microcosmos” comes this blend of humor, seriousness, innocence and wisdom which results when African storyteller Sotigui Kouyate uses the language of myth and fable to relate the birth of the universe and the appearance of life on Earth — in essence, the story of all of us. Kouyate presents a fascinating tale of time, matter, birth, love and death in which animals are the main players. In French with English subtitles.
The film will be introduced and followed by Q-and-A.
Tuesday, Jan. 19 at 8 p.m.

Steamy Tennessee Series
Baby Doll
Directed by Elia Kazan / 1956 / 114 mins. With Karl Malden, Carrol Baker, Eli Wallach

In one of the most controversial adaptations that ever made it onto American screens, causing such a stir within the industry that it changed the industry, Carrol Baker plays “Baby Doll,” a 19-year-old Southern bride who is not quite ready to be a woman yet. She has good reasons, like her frustrated alcoholic husband, and what will come of their relationship incensed with desperation and deep Sicilian vengeance.
Thursday, Jan. 21 at 8:30 p.m.

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