Bleak Week

Werckmeister Harmonies

Monday, June 8, 2026 | 7:00pm

Little Theatre 1 (240 East Ave.)
Doors open at 6:30pm

Standard ticket prices
Tickets available online in advance, at our box office during open hours, or at the door (if tickets remain).

4K RESTORATION | One of the major achievements of twenty-first-century cinema thus far, Béla Tarr’s mesmeric parable of societal collapse is an enigma of transcendent visual, philosophical, and mystical resonance. Adapted from a novel by the celebrated writer and frequent Tarr collaborator László Krasznahorkai, Werckmeister Harmonies unfolds in an unknown era in an unnamed village, where, one day, a mysterious circus—complete with an enormous stuffed whale and a shadowy, demagogue-like figure known as the Prince—arrives and appears to awaken a kind of madness in the citizens, which builds inexorably toward violence and destruction.

In thirty-nine of his signature long takes, engraved in ghostly black and white, Tarr conjures an apocalyptic vision of dreamlike dread and fathomless beauty.

Bleak Week

Presented in partnership with the American Cinematheque, ‘Bleak Week: Cinema of Despair’ is an annual film festival showcasing some of the greatest works of cinema from across the globe that venture into the darkest sides of humanity and the bleakest points in human history. Browse films in this series