Film adaptations of novels tend to get a bad rap, and with Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights landing last month, suddenly everyone holds a strong stance for or against them. Take a breath, dear reader. Perhaps within the tranquil confines of your local cinema…? Because this month, indie screens zero in on film-literature crossovers that hit, actually. On the docket are Karel Zeman’s inventive Jules Verne-inspired animation, La Llorona’s folkloric roots, and Agnès Varda’s approach to cinécriture. (More on that below.)
The Gleaners and I
For fans of W.G. Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn, estate sales.
Agnès Varda’s sprightly late-career documentary The Gleaners and I (2000) is more complex than it first appears. The film follows foragers of all forms, from dumpster diggers to oyster scavengers, while drifting into meditations on waste and art. Varda becomes a gleaner in her own right, gathering images and ideas that most wouldn’t give a second glance. For her, it’s instinctual; the pathfinder of the French New Wave modeled a life of restless curiosity until her last moment. Her later works express this philosophy most clearly.
Ever the flneuse (a meandering observer, often on foot), Varda pioneered a new form of documentary in The Gleaners and I. She called it a “wandering road documentary,” emphasizing small notes of beauty amid subtle social commentary and accentuating the camera’s presence. (Working with a handheld Sony camera, Varda sometimes turns the lens onto her own aging hand.) Make no mistake, though: The Gleaners and I didn’t develop by chance. Varda described her directorial method as cinécriture, roughly translating to “cinema-writing” and emphasizing the writerly intentionality embedded in every stage of filmmaking. Fans of W.G. Sebald and Rachel Cusk’s observational genre-bending will get it. (Hollywood Theatre, 4122 NE Sandy, Thurs March 12, 7:30 pm, $10-$12, more info, not rated)
Invention for Destruction
For fans of Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, Georges Méliès.
Loosely inspired by Jules Verne’s exploratory vision, Karel Zeman’s Invention for Destruction (1958) provides a kind of steampunk blueprint. The film looks like a Victorian illustration in motion, all flying gizmos and petticoats and questionable facial hair. Zeman—the great master of woozy, consciousness-shifting Czech animation—blended live actors into hand-drawn imagery, placing them into meticulously crafted frames resembling etchings from an old adventure book. The result strikes an irreplicable tone, both antiquated and totally original.
The story is less important than Zeman’s aesthetic vision, but for your information, Invention for Destruction follows a band of pirates determined to steal an inventor’s powerful weapon. A mad dash across land and sea in increasingly strange contraptions ensues. The Museum of Stop Motion Animation (MOSMA) co-presents this screening, aiming to help the organization inch toward its mission to establish a stop-motion museum in Portland. (Hollywood Theatre, 4122 NE Sandy, Mon March 16, 7:30 pm, $10-$12, more info, not rated)
Also worth it:
Seven Films by Kelly Reichardt
For fans of Jon Raymond’s God and Sex (2025), Pacific Northwest history, hiking in the rain.
Clinton Street’s month-long series centers the Pacific Northwest’s director supreme, screening almost her entire filmography and opening with Old Joy on March 5. Reichardt’s artistic collaborator, screenwriter and novelist Jon Raymond, will attend three showings (Wendy and Lucy, Meek’s Cutoff, Showing Up) and offer post-film Q&As. If you missed Reichardt’s The Mastermind (2025), you’ll have another shot on March 22. (Clinton Street Theater, various dates and times through March 22, more info)
An Angel at My Table
For fans of Lidia Yuknavitch’s The Chronology of Water, or Kristen Stewart’s film adaptation.
Agnès Varda picked up Jane Campion’s An Angel at My Table (1990) during her visit to the Criterion closet—”So sensible, so intelligent,” she said. The film lends dreamy visuals to novelist Janet Frame’s New Zealand upbringing, which was defined by misdiagnosis, institutionalization, and occasional beauty. (5th Avenue Cinema, March 6-8, more info)
Born in Flames
For fans of Octavia Butler’s Parable series, Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed.
Lizzie Borden’s dystopian docufiction Born in Flames (1983) imagines the fractured aftermath of a revolution that didn’t keep its promises. The director’s guerrilla approach blends real news footage with direct-action feminism; don’t blink and you’ll catch Kathryn Bigelow in a small role. (5th Avenue Cinema, March 13-15, more info)
La Llorona
For fans of ghost stories, Latin American folklore, Juan Rulfo’s Pedro Páramo.
Few films manage to fuse folkloric terror with social ethics—in fact, though it’s billed as horror, Jayro Bustamante’s La Llorona (2019) might be in a category all its own. A retired Guatemalan general implicated in the genocide of native Maya communities cowers like a baby in his mansion as protests rattle the walls. But don’t worry: A supernatural force—the vengeful kind—penetrates his barricade. Note: La Llorona is not the schlocky The Curse of La Llorona, also released in 2019. Bustamante’s film is an atmospheric and far superior demand for justice. (Hollywood Theatre, Wed March 18, more info)
