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When Ken Russell’s provocative religious horror “The Devils” became available to stream for the first time last week, cinephiles the world over were re-introduced to one of the greatest under appreciated films of all time — one that is surprisingly poignant in our current state of political unease. Infamous for its controversial release (the film was banned in several countries and received an X rating only after Russell cut a handful of the most incendiary scenes), the 1971 epic offers a stylish and scathing parable about the dangerous ways that the powerful can exploit religious zeal to stay that way.

Based on the true story of the trial of Urbain Grandier, a Catholic priest who was executed in 1634 on charges of witchcraft, Russell adapted “The Devils” from John Whiting’s 1960 play and Aldous Huxley’s 1952 novel, The Devils of Loudun. Russell digressed stylistically from his source material, taking a contemporary approach...

Since any New York City cinephile has a nearly suffocating wealth of theatrical options, we figured it’d be best to compile some of the more worthwhile repertory showings into one handy list. Displayed below are a few of the city’s most reliable theaters and links to screenings of their weekend offerings — films you’re not likely to see in a theater again anytime soon, and many of which are, also, on 35mm. If you have a chance to attend any of these, we’re of the mind that it’s time extremely well-spent.

Metrograph

“Queer ’90s” continues with the likes of Basic Instinct, The Crying Game, and Priscilla.

Films from George Cukor and Azazel Jacobs can be seen on Friday.

The Disney documentary Oceans plays this Saturday; Allan Dwan’s The Inside Story screens this Sunday.

Anthology Film Archives

A series on voyeurism and surveillance brings Citizenfour, Haroun Farocki’s Prison Images,...

For the first 16 years of her life, Marina Lutz's every moment was filmed, even the most intimate. What was her father's motive – and when does art become exploitation?

When Marina Lutz, then aged 37, lost her mother to dementia 10 years after losing her father, she began the slow process of going through their storage. There she found box after box of reel-to-reel audio tape, Super-8 films and more than 10,000 photographs. They were all of her, each one taken or shot by her father, Abbot Lutz, microscopically documenting the first 16 years of her life through the prism of his lens. There were pictures of her on the lavatory, pictures of her naked as a pre-verbal child, some in which her hand was innocently holding her genitals; pictures of her in her underwear as a pubescent girl and footage of her asleep with her teddies, tossing and turning while having a dream.

Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival, Berwick-upon-Tweed

England's northernmost town exploits its tourist-friendly heritage for this imaginative festival, with a trail of film-based artworks commissioned for local landmarks as well as regular cinema screenings. The theme is Stagings, which means all manner of film-related art based around ideas of performance. So you'll find dance in the 14th-century Coxon's Tower and animation in the town hall prison cells, while film artist Guy Sherwin presents his ingenious projected pieces in the Holy Trinity Church. The screenings are also performance-themed, ranging from The Keystone Cut Ups, a live event colliding music, silent comedy and early avant garde cinema, to Malaysian drama Karaoke (you can guess what it's about), a Finnish rugby mockumentary and the Marx brothers' A Night At The Opera.

Various venues, Wed to 19 Sep, berwickfilm-artsfest.com

The Scoop Film Season, London

The holidays are over, the kids are back to school...

An Op-Ed

by Jon Zelazny

Critics, artists, and intellectuals the world over took last month’s release of The Ghost Writer as a fresh opportunity to proclaim both Roman Polanski’s genius and bemoan his despicable treatment by Los Angeles County and the Swiss government.

Don’t be fooled. The Ghost Writer is a perfectly capable adaptation of a rather pedestrian political thriller, but one can feel the maestro pouring thought and energy into every tiny nuance while either ignoring or disdaining the fact that the work as a whole is brittle, hollow, and often just plain silly. Ewan McGregor, a trouper, is saddled with playing a protagonist who seems less of a human being than an automaton tasked with carrying the plot; he reminded me of poor Sean Connery in Hitchcock’s Marnie… another case of a dynamic actor left stranded by an old director who didn’t seem...