Louis B. Mayer Library, American Film Institute

The Mayer Library is closing early today at 1pm in observance of Juneteenth.

Stop by the Louis B. Mayer Library and peruse our selection of recent acquisitions on Blu-ray & DVD.

Stop by the Louis B. Mayer Library and check out the latest selections from the Criterion Collection.

AFI Fellows, Faculty & Staff. Beginning today, June 14, the Louis B. Mayer Library, the Computer Lab, and the Digital Design Lab (WB103) will be open for in-person access for those who have been approved to visit campus. The library will be open from 9am-7pm Monday through Friday, 10am-6pm on Saturdays, and closed Sundays. Please remember, face masks must be worn while on the AFI Campus. To facilitate social distancing, some of our spaces will have limited access. Should you ...have specific needs related to hardware, programs, or printing, please communicate this in advance by emailing: [email protected] so that we may better assist you in planning your visit. As a result of our return to in-person access we have ended our Contactless Borrowing & Returns service. If you have any questions, please contact the Library Staff directly at [email protected]. We are looking forward to seeing you all again in-person, Your Library Staff

Today is Mike Pepin's last day at AFI. Mike has worked at AFI for 17 years and as the Manager of the Louis B. Mayer Library for most of the past decade. Thank you Mike for all you've done to make the library a welcoming place for Fellows, Faculty, Staff, and researchers. You will be missed.

Available in the Louis B. Mayer Library. AN UNMARRIED WOMAN (1978) One woman’s journey of self-discovery brings about a warmly human cultural conversation about female liberation, in this wonderfully frank, funny chronicle of changing 1970s sexual politics by Paul Mazursky. When her husband of sixteen years abruptly leaves her for a younger woman, Manhattan gallery worker Erica (a fantastic, Oscar-nominated Jill Clayburgh in her defining role) finds herself alone and adriftb...ut also newly empowered to explore her needs and desires as she tests the waters of a new relationship with a charismatic artist (Alan Bates). Candidly addressing issues of sex, intimacy, loneliness, and divorce from an unabashedly feminist perspective, AN UNMARRIED WOMAN makes the simple but radical assertion that a woman’s most important relationship is the one she has with herself. See more

Available in the Louis B. Mayer Library. TONI (1935) In 1934, Jean Renoir stepped off the soundstage and headed to the South of France, where he captured vivid human drama amid the bucolic splendor and everyday social rituals of the countryside. Based on a true story and set in a community of immigrants living, working, and loving on the margins of French society, TONI follows the eponymous Italian migrant (Charles Blavette), whose tempestuous affairs with two womenthe faithful Marie (Jenny Hélia) and the flirtatious Josefa (Celia Montalván)unleash a wave of tragedy. Making use of nonprofessional actors, on-location shooting, and the resources of the great Marcel Pagnol’s Provence studio, Renoir crafted a marvel of poetic feeling that anticipated Italian neorealism and became a favorite of the directors of the French New Wave

Happy Thanksgiving from your friends in the Louis B. Mayer Library.

Available in the Louis B. Mayer Library. BEAU TRAVAIL (1999) With her ravishingly sensual take on Herman Melville’s Billy Budd, Sailor, Claire Denis firmly established herself as one of the great visual tone poets of our time. Amid the azure waters and sunbaked desert landscapes of Djibouti, a French Foreign Legion sergeant (Denis Lavant) sows the seeds of his own ruin as his obsession with a striking young recruit (Grégoire Colin) plays out to the thunderous, operatic strains of Benjamin Britten. Denis and cinematographer Agnès Godard fold military and masculine codes of honor, colonialism’s legacy, destructive jealousy, and repressed desire into shimmering, hypnotic images that ultimately explode in one of the most startling and unforgettable endings in all of modern cinema.

Happy Thanksgiving from your friends in the Louis B. Mayer Library.

Available in the Louis B. Mayer Library. BEAU TRAVAIL (1999) With her ravishingly sensual take on Herman Melville’s Billy Budd, Sailor, Claire Denis firmly established herself as one of the great visual tone poets of our time. Amid the azure waters and sunbaked desert landscapes of Djibouti, a French Foreign Legion sergeant (Denis Lavant) sows the seeds of his own ruin as his obsession with a striking young recruit (Grégoire Colin) plays out to the thunderous, operatic strains of Benjamin Britten. Denis and cinematographer Agnès Godard fold military and masculine codes of honor, colonialism’s legacy, destructive jealousy, and repressed desire into shimmering, hypnotic images that ultimately explode in one of the most startling and unforgettable endings in all of modern cinema.

Available in the Louis B. Mayer Library. DANCE, GIRL, DANCE (1940) Dorothy Arzner, the sole woman to work as a director in the Hollywood studio system of the 1930s and early ’40s, brings a subversive feminist sensibility to this juicily entertaining backstage melodrama. A behind-the-footlights look at friendship, jealousy, and ambition in the ruthless world of show business, Dance, Girl, Dance follows the intertwining fates of two chorus girls: a starry-eyed dancer (Maureen O’Hara) who dreams of making it as a ballerina, and the brassy gold digger (a scene-stealing Lucille Ball) who becomes her rival both on the stage and in love. The rare Hollywood picture of the era to deal seriously with issues of female artistic struggle and self-actualization, Arzner’s film is a rich, fascinating statement from an auteur decades ahead of her time.

Available in the Louis B. Mayer Library. ME AND YOU AND EVERYONE WE KNOW (2005) With this compassionate, startling comedy that could have come from no other artistic sensibility, the brilliant Miranda July reveals a world both familiar and strangean original vision of creativity, sexuality, childhood, and loneliness that emerges from a series of braided vignettes around a pair of potential lovers: Richard, a newly single shoe salesman and father of two (John Hawkes), and Chr...istine, a lonely video artist and Eldercab driver (July). While they take hesitant steps toward romance, Richard’s sons follow their own curiosity toward their first sexual experiences, online and in real life, venturing into uncharted territories in their attempts to connect with others. Playful and profoundly transgressive, ME AND YOU AND EVERYONE WE KNOW is a poetic look at the tortuous routes we take to intimacy in an isolating world, and the moments of magic and redemption that unite us. See more

Available in the Louis B. Mayer Library. BACURAU (2019) A few years from now... Bacurau, a small village in the Brazilian sertão, mourns the loss of its matriarch, Carmelita, who lived to be 94. Days later, its inhabitants (among them Sônia Braga) notice that their village has literally vanished from online maps and a UFO-shaped drone is seen flying overhead. There are forces that want to expel them from their homes, and soon, in a genre-bending twist, a band of armed mercenaries led by Udo Kier arrive in town picking off the inhabitants one by one. A fierce confrontation takes place when the townspeople turn the tables on the villainous outsiders, banding together by any means necessary to protect and maintain their remote community. The mercenaries just may have met their match in the fed-up, resourceful denizens of little Bacurau.

Happy Halloween from your friends in the Louis B. Mayer Library.

Another spooktacular movie recommendation from the staff of the Louis B. Mayer Library. ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN (1948) Comedy meets horror when Budd Abbott and Lou Costello encounter Universal’s classic monsters, Dracula, the Wolf Man and Frankenstein’s Monster. This family-friendly classic is still a killer, wringing non-stop laughs from all your favorite horror icons.... Available for contactless delivery https://www.afi.com/contactless-delivery/

Tonight, the chilling selection from the staff of the Louis B. Mayer Library is LET THE RIGHT ONE IN (2008). 12-year-old Oscar is a fragile and bullied boy who finds love and revenge when he meets Eli, a beautiful but peculiar girl who has moved into his building. When strange disappearances and murders start happening in the town, suspicions mount from her neighbors and police and Eli must move on to stay alive or stay to help Oscar the only way she knows how. The 2010 Ameri...can remake LET ME IN is also available in the Louis B. Mayer Library. Request one of these films, or both using our contactless delivery form https://www.afi.com/contactless-delivery/.

Available in the Louis B. Mayer Library. THE WAR OF THE WOLRDS (1953) A mysterious, meteor-like object has landed in a small California town. All clocks have stopped. A fleet of glowing green UFOs hovers menacingly over the entire globe. The Martian invasion of Earth has begun, and it seems that nothingneither military might nor the scientific know-how of nuclear physicist Dr. Clayton Forrester (Gene Barry)can stop it. In the expert hands of genre specialists George Pal and... Byron Haskin, H. G. Wells’s end-of-civilization classic receives a chilling Cold Warera update, complete with hallucinatory Technicolor and visionary, Oscar-winning special effects. Emblazoned with iconographic images of 1950s science fiction, THE WAR OF THE WORLDS is both an influential triumph of visual imagination and a still-disquieting document of the wonder and terror of the atomic age. See more

It's the time of the year when the staff of the Louis B. Mayer are watching a lot of horror films. Our selection this evening is the horror thriller DON'T BREATHE (2016). Hoping to walk away with a massive fortune, a trio of thieves break into the house of a blind man who isn't as helpless as he seems. Fede Alvarez’s masterful direction proves there’s more to a good horror story than solely buckets of blood. Aside from being a tense thrill a minute, this film is also a masterclass in cinematic storytelling technique. This film is available in the Louis B. Mayer Library and may be requested using our new contactless delivery service. https://www.afi.com/contactless-delivery/

Another scary recommendation from the staff of the Louis B. Mayer are watching spooky films. Today, our selection is THE PEOPLE UNDER THE STAIRS (1991). A young boy, Fool, breaks into his uncaring landlord's house only to discover that the sibling's practice more nefarious crimes - what he discovers under the stairs makes him want out of the house as soon as possible. But can he escape with the landlord's daughter before it's too late? ... This film is available in the Louis B. Mayer Library and may be requested using our new contactless delivery service. https://www.afi.com/contactless-delivery/

Our spooky selection for this evening is brought to you by our Archivist Emily Wittenberg. Emily recommends CARNIVAL OF SOULS (1962) for your pre-Halloween festivities. Quiet and surreal CARNIVAL OF SOULS is one woman's quest to put a horrible car accident behind her and move on with her life, a new town, a new job, but does your past ever truly let you go? Shot with a crew of five, filmed on location at an abandoned carnival attraction, and utilizing fantastic music and make...up this film is an interesting and fun experience. This film is available on Criterion Collection Blu-ray and DVD and may be requested using our new contactless delivery service. https://www.afi.com/contactless-delivery/

It's the time of the year when the staff of the Louis B. Mayer are watching spooky films. Our selection this evening is THE INNOCENTS (1961). Set in a remote and grand manor, THE INNOCENTS is a visual delight. A young governess is charged with the care of two unique children and then odd events begin happening. Are the children possessed by ghosts or just precocious - or is the governess having a nervous breakdown? Masterfully crafted and ambiguous to the very end, THE INNOCENTS is deliciously eerie. This film is available on Criterion Collection Blu-ray and may be requested using our new contactless delivery service. https://www.afi.com/contactless-delivery/

Available in the Louis B. Mayer Library. SUKIYAKI WESTERN DJANGO (2008) Famed Japanese auteur Takashi Miike, best known for cult classics AUDITION and ICHI THE KILLER (both are also available in the library), redefines the spaghetti Western with SUKIYAKI WESTERN DJANGO, a tale written in blood. Two clans, Genji, the white clan led by Yoshitsune, and Heike, the red clan led by Kiyomori, battle for a legendary treasure hidden in a desolate mountain town. One day, a lone gunman, burdened with deep emotional scars but blessed with incredible shooting skills, drifts into town. Two clans try to woo the lone gunman to their sides, but he has ulterior motives. Dirty tricks, betrayal, desire and love collide as the situation erupts into a final, explosive showdown.

Available in the Louis B. Mayer Library. SCORSESE SHORTS (1963-1978) This compilation of five early short films by Martin Scorsese offers a fascinating window onto his artistic development. Spanning the years from Scorsese’s time at NYU in the mid-1960s to the late ’70s, when he was emerging as one of the era’s most electrifying talents, Scorsese Shorts centers on the intimate home movie Italianamericana loving snapshot of the director’s parentsand American Boy, a freewheel...ing portrait of the larger-than-life raconteur Steven Prince. Also included are The Big Shave, a daringly visceral response to America’s involvement in Vietnam, and the bracing student films What’s a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This? and It’s Not Just You, Murray! Touching on many of Scorsese’s key themesItalian American identity, family, his beloved New York Citythese are hilarious, candid, and illuminating works from the preeminent American filmmaker of our time. See more

Available in the Louis B. Mayer Library. PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE (2019) Passion brews quietly between an artist and her subject, until together they create a space in which it can briefly flourish, in this sumptuous eighteenth-century romance from Céline Sciamma, one of contemporary French cinema’s most acclaimed auteurs. Summoned to an isolated seaside estate on a secret assignment, Marianne (Noémie Merlant) must find a way to paint a wedding portrait of Héloïse (Adèle Ha...enel), who is resisting chattel marriage, by furtively observing her. What unfolds in exquisite tension is an exchange of sustained gazes in which the two women come to know each other’s gestures, expressions, and bodies with rapturous intimacy, ultimately forging a subversive creative collaboration as well as a delirious romance. Charged with a yearning that almost transcends time and space, PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE mines the emotional and artistic possibilities that emerge when women can freely live together and see one another in a world without men. See more

Today is the first day of contactless borrowing. Contact Library Staff for details.

Available in the Louis B. Mayer Library. DAUGHTER OF THE NILE (1987) A neglected gem in Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s filmography, Daughter of the Nile is a neon-lit, contemporary drama named after a Japanese manga series. With Hou’s gentle but keen observation, the film follows a young woman and her brother float along the periphery of the Taipei underworld, intriguingly blending the gangster tale with mood-drenched introspective drama.