Mary Riepma Ross Film Theater is an alternately humourous and horrifying film about the United States. It is a film about the state of the Union, about the violent soul of America. Why do 11,000 people die in America each year at the hands of gun violence? The talking heads yelling from every TV camera blame everything from Satan to video games.

"Bowling for Columbine" is an alternately humourous and horrifying film about the United States. It is a film about the state of the Union, about the violent soul of America. Why do 11,000 people die in America each year at the hands of gun violence? The talking heads yelling from every TV camera blame everything from Satan to video games. But are we that much different from many other countries? What sets us apart? How have we become both the master and victim of such enormous amounts of violence? This is not a film about gun control. It is a film about the fearful heart and soul of the United States, and the 280 million Americans lucky enough to have the right to a constitutionaly protected Uzi.

"Bowling for Columbine" was the first documentary film accepted into competition at the Cannes Film Festival in 46 years. The Cannes jury unanimously awarded it the 55th Anniversary Prize. From a look at the Columbine High School security camera tapes to the home of Oscar-winning NRA President Charlton Heston, from a young man who makes homemade napalm with The Anarchist's Cookbook to the murder of a six-year-old girl by another six-year-old, "Bowling for Columbine" is a journey through America, and through our past, hoping to discover why our pursuit of happiness is so riddled with violence.

Written, Produced, And Directed By Michael Moore

24 HOUR PARTY PEOPLE by Michael Winterbottom (117 minutes)

Manchester, 1976. Tony Wilson (Steve Coogan) is an ambitious but frustrated local TV news reporter looking for a way to make his mark. After witnessing a life-changing concert by an unknown band called the Sex Pistols, he persuades his station to televise one of their performances, and soon Manchester’s punk groups are clamoring for him to manage them. Riding the wave of a musical revolution, Wilson and his friend create the legendary Factory Records label and The Hacienda club, and bands like Joy Division, New Order, and the Happy Mondays emerge to change the industry forever. Packed with an incredible soundtrack and a famous cast of characters, 24 Hour Party People is a sprawling, energetic, and humorous history of one of the most important periods in modern music. Screenings: Thursday, January 16 at 5 p.m.; Saturday, January 18 at 8:15 p.m.; Monday, January 20 at 5 p.m.; Friday, January 24 at 9 p.m.; & Sunday, January 26 at 4:45 p.m.

THE FAST RUNNER by Zacharias Kunuk (172 minutes)

"The Fast Runner is a masterpiece. It is, by any standard, an extraordinary film, a work of narrative sweep and visual beauty that honors the history of the art form even as it extends its perspective. The Fast Runner also abounds with humor and sensuality. The combination of dramatic realism and archaic grandeur is irresistibly powerful. The Fast Runner includes some unforgettable sequences. The most astonishing scene has already become something of a classic, a word that will quickly be bestowed on the film as a whole." —A.O. Scott, The New York Times

"The Fast Runner: Atanarjuat is an astonishing epic film made by and about the Inuit peoples of the Canadian arctic, telling a story of a crime that ruptures the trust within a closely knit group, and how justice is achieved and healing begins. Director Zacharias Kunuk and his writer, Paul Apak Angilin, collected oral versions of an Inuit legend from several elders, collated them into a story, submitted the story to the elders for suggestions and then filmed it as a collaborative expression of the group's memory. The "fast runner" of a title is a man who must run naked through the snow and is presumed to be dead, but survives; the three-hour film was entirely shot on location, and shows the tenacity and creativity of a people making a home of a frigid wilderness." —Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times. Screenings: Thursday, January 16 at 7:15 p.m.; Saturday, January 18 at 5 p.m.; Monday, January 20 at 7:15 p.m.; & Saturday, January 25 at 1 p.m.

ALL OR NOTHING by Mike Leigh (128 minutes)

Penny’s love for her partner, taxi driver Phil, has run dry. He is a gentle, philosophical guy, and she works on the checkout line at a supermarket. Their daughter Rachel cleans in a home for elderly people and their son Rory is unemployed and aggressive. The joy has gone out of Phil’s and Penny’s life, but when an unexpected tragedy occurs they are finally brought together to rediscover their love. All or Nothing is set on a London working-class housing estate over a long weekend, and also tells the stories of a range of Phil and Penny’s neighbors, some of whom become involved in the family’s lives and all of whom experience an emotional journey. Screenings: Friday, January 17 at 5 p.m.; Sunday, January 19 at 1 p.m.; Thursday, January 23 at 9:30 p.m.; Saturday, January 25 at 4:15 p.m.; & Monday, January 27 at 7:15 p.m.

HEAVEN byTom Tykwer (96 minutes)

From the director of Run Lola Run and the producer of The English Patient, comes Heaven, the last film written by the late master filmmaker Krzysztof Kieslowski, over a probing exploration of the modern world and its moral choices, Heaven stars Cate Blanchett and Giovanni Ribisi. Philippa (Cate Blanchett), a British teacher living in Turin, Italy, has seen many friends, including her husband, fall victim to drug overdoses. Philippa has repeatedly contacted the police with information about Turin’s biggest drug dealer but, complicit in his dealings, they have completely ignored her. So Philippa decides to dole out her own form of justice—setting her off on a journey, aided unexpectedly by a young police officer (Giovanni Ribisi), that moves through retribution and redemption, innocence and crime, and hope and desire as she goes from a young widow to a fugitive on the run. Screenings: Friday, January 17 at 7:30 p.m.; Sunday, January 19 at 3:30 p.m.; Thursday, January 23 at 5 p.m.; Saturday, January 25 at 7 p.m.; & Sunday, January 26 at 9 p.m.

INVINCIBLE by Werner Herzog (135 minutes)

“Following a string of documentaries, Werner Herzog returns with his first dramatic feature in a decade, and though it's based on the true story of Zische Breitbart, a Polish Jew whose feats of strength astounded Weimar Berlin, it unfolds with the elemental power of a legend. Zische (Jouko Ahola), a simple blacksmith from a modest family, is lured away from his shtetl by a wily theatrical agent, and once he arrives in Berlin he's booked at a cabaret presided over by a wicked clairvoyant (Tim Roth). At first Zische performs in a blond wig as "Siegfried, the Iron King," part of the seer's scheme to curry favor with high-ranking Nazis, but after the strongman reveals his racial identity to the audience and declares himself "the new Samson," he begins drawing a combustible mix of brownshirts and defiant Jews. Ahola, a Finnish bodybuilder twice named "the Strongest Man in the World," makes his screen debut in this English-language film, and though his acting is unschooled, to say the least, Herzog shrewdly uses his blunt sincerity to counterpoint Roth's spectacularly icy performance.” — J.R. Jones, The Chicago Reader. Screenings: Friday, January 17 at 9:15 p.m.; Sunday, January 19 at 5:15 p.m.; Thursday, January 23 at 7 p.m.; Saturday, January 25 at 9 p.m.; & Monday, January 27 at 4:45 p.m.

SECRETARY by Steven Shainberg (104 minutes)

This wicked little black comedy, adapted from a short story by Mary Gaitskill, chronicles the perverse attraction between a young typist (Maggie Gyllenhaal) and her uptight boss (James Spader), a sadomasochistic tango that strikes unexpected chords in each character. The young woman is a self-mutilator, and when the attorney spanks her for a minor mistake, she knows she's found the right job. The film's romantic conceit turns on the decidedly un-PC notion of female submissiveness, but director Steven Shainberg (Hit Me) twists the story into a sly and stylized study of two lonely souls who come to realize they're made for each other. Spader is both haughty and tender as the sadistic control freak, and Gyllenhaal is even better as the love-starved kitten, crawling around on all fours and meowing for more. Angelo Badalamenti wrote the creepy score; with Lesley Ann Warren as the typist's overly solicitous mother and Stephen McHattie as her self-loathing father. Screenings: Saturday, January 18 at 1 p.m.; Sunday, January 19 at 7:45 p.m.; Friday, January 24 at 5 p.m.; Sunday, January 26 at 1 p.m.; & Sunday, January 26 at 7 p.m.

SKINS by Chris Eyre (92 minutes)

Much of the praise for director Chris Eyre’s feature debut, Smoke Signals, came mixed with relief that the Native American filmmaker seemed more interested in telling affirming stories than in confronting us with the grim realities of reservation life. Eyre’s follow-up, Skins, adapted by Jennifer D. Lyne from the novel by Adrian C. Louis, proves most vital when Eyre allows his anger equal time. Unlike the road-tripping Signals, Skins unfolds entirely on South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, home to the country’s highest poverty rates. It’s a grim stage set with a scathing documentary sequence that pits the reservation’s tragic history against the region’s natural beauty and the ironic majesty of nearby Mount Rushmore. The sharpness of Eyre’s opening, however, ebbs away when he takes up the story of Rudy (Eric Schweig) and Mogie (Graham Greene), two brothers with neatly opposed responses to the reservation grind. Rudy is a frustrated "rez" cop —"Don’t tell me, drunks fighting again" — and Mogie is one of the drunks. Rather quickly, the film falls into a soothing formula of brotherly conflict and reconciliation that neither Rudy’s secret life as a reservation vigilante nor a climactic act of individual protest at Mount Rushmore ever threatens to disrupt. —Paul Malcolm, L.A. Weekly. Screenings: Saturday, January 18 at 3 p.m.; Sunday, January 19 at 9:45 p.m.; Friday, January 24 at 7 p.m.; Sunday, January 26 at 3 p.m.; & Monday, January 27 at 9:45 p.m.