Ahhh, tomorrow is the beginning of November, the month we shed our spooky costumes and begin the long trudge of holiday dinners toward the new year. It's a month that always seems to go on forever, everyone crushed under the weight of Christmas decorations. But also, tomorrow begins Columbia City cinema The Beacon's new slate of programming for the month. Packed with films dealing with sex work, political revolt, crime, blacklisting, revolution, desire, and labor, the block of films over the month is something bright to look forward to.

This program focuses on the crime films by American director Jules Dassin, who in 1950 was put onto the infamous Hollywood blacklist for his associations with communism. He spent time in France where he was able to somewhat continue his career making crime films, like Rififi and Topkapi. The one that caught my eye was 1968's Uptight, which marked Dassin's return to the U.S. film scene. Following the tensions in a group of black activists who decide to militarize following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and discover there's a mole in the group, the film is "a ferocious look at the country that exiled [Dassin]."

All of the films within this program are excellent—I watched Klute in college and I remember feeling so unnerved by it, Jane Fonda's performance was incredible. A film I've been dying to see, however, is Bound which stars Jennifer Tilly and Gina Gershon as lesbian lovers who try to rip off Tilly's character's mafioso boyfriend (played by the best asshole in town, Joe Pantoliano) so they can run away and be together forever. Oh! And it's directed by the Wachowskis. Say absolutely nothing more, I'm there!

The screenwriter of films like The Battle of Algiers and Burn!, Franco Solinas was a member of the French Resistance and a lifelong communist, committing his ideals to the work he did on the screen. And this curation of his films at The Beacon is extra special because it features a recent restoration of the long-unavailable Mr. Klein. The film is set in Nazi-occupied France, following the Catholic Mr. Klein (Alain Delon) who doesn't seem to see anything wrong with the persecution of his Jewish neighbors, until he learns of his mysterious Jewish doppelgänger. This revelation sends him on a quest to find this man and prove his real identity, serving as a critique of French complacency during WWII. OOF. Helmed by American blacklisted director Joseph Losey (his first film in French) with a script by Solinas (and an uncredited Costa-Gavras), you shouldn't miss this!

Read more about the films and programs for the upcoming month at The Beacon here.