DCist’s highly subjective and selective guide to some of the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week.

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Courtesy of the Freer

Closed Curtain

Director Jafar Panahi was arrested at a Tehran cemetery at the funeral for one of the protesters killed in the aftermath of the 2009 Iranian elections. The Iranian government sentenced Panahi to six years of house arrest and banned him from filmmaking for twenty years. But that hasn’t stopped him from working. The director made the autobiographical documentary This Is Not A Film in 2011 and returns with a work that the Freer calls “a self-reflexive, Pirandello-like consideration of his punishment’s effect on his psyche. Shot in Panahi’s beach house, Closed Curtain begins as the story of a man (codirector and actor Kambozia Partovi) hiding his adorable dog from Iran’s recent ban on dog-walking. He is joined by a neurotic young woman who takes shelter with them during a storm—but when Panahi himself appears on screen, it becomes obvious they are just figures from his imagination.” Part of the Freer’s 18th annual Iranian Film Festival.

View the trailer.
Friday, January 10 at 7 pm and Sunday, January 12 at 2 pm at the Freer. Free.

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Charles Lloyd

Charles Lloyd: Arrows into Infinity

This month The Mary Pickford Theater at the Library of Congress hosts Jazz Film Fridays, curated by WPFW personality and Library of Congress music specialist Larry Appelbaum. The series launches this Friday with a 2012 documentary on adventurous musical spirit Charles Lloyd. Directed by Dorothy Darr and Jeffery Morse, Arrows into Infinity features historical footage and insights shared by Ornette Coleman, Herbie Hancock, Zakir Hussein, and Jason Moran (120 min). WPFW’s Miyuki Williams will introduce the screening. (Disclosure: I work for the Library of Congress.)

View the trailer.
Friday, January 10 at 7 pm at the Mary Pickford Theater, 3rd floor of the Library of Congress James Madison Building, 101 Independence Avenue SE Doors open 30 minutes before screening. No tickets required. For information: call (202) 707-5502.

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(Photofest)

The General

This weekend the National Gallery of Art presents the world premiere of Andrew Simpson’s orchestral score to Buster Keaton’s 1927 silent classic The General. Keaton performs his own stunts as a Civil War engineer whose locomotive is stolen by Union spies. Base on an actual incident in which a Union spy broke through enemy lines to hijack a train run by engineer William Pittenger, whose book inspired the film’s screenplay. Note: This screening will be a digital presentation.

View the trailer.
Sunday at 6:30 pm at the National Gallery of Art. Free.

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from Elodie Pong’s “Ersatz” (2011). Courtesy of the Hirshhorn

Indestructible 1

In 1962, filmmakers attending the Oberhausen Short Film Festival signed a manifesto: “The old film is dead. We believe in the new one.” The Goethe-Institut DC and the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen present two screenings of European short films on the theme of destruction, in conjunction with the Hirshhorn exhibition Damage Control: Art and Destruction Since 1950. The program will be introduced by Cologne-based filmmaker Christiane Büchner, a member of the Oberhausen Short Film board. The program includes Walter Krüttner’s 1963 short, “Es muss ein Stück vom Hitler sein (It Must Be a Piece of Hitler),” as well as recent short films from Germany.

Monday, January 13 at 7 p.m. at the Hirshhorn’s Ring Auditorium. Free.

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Skatetown USA

Scott Baio and Flip Wilson get top billing in this 1979 roller-disco product, but watch for Maureen McCormick and a young Patrick Swayze in his first role. And what 1970s lowbrow comedy would be complete without cameos from the Unknown Comic and Billy Barty? The former Marcia Brady later said that the abundance of cocaine on set fed her addiction and increasing unreliability during production. The Washington Psychotronic Film Society warns, “Be afraid. Be very afraid.”

View the trailer.
Monday, January 13 at 8 pm at McFadden’s.

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Joey Heatherton

Streaming Pick: The Happy Hooker Goes to Washington

Before he went on to heights like Skatetown USA, director William Levey made this 1977 sequel to The Happy Hooker starring Joey Heatherton as Xaviera Hollander. Of course it’s terrible, but as a time capsule of cheap set design, garish fashion, second-tier cameos, and questionable humor, it’s kind of fascinating. Partially shot in location around Washington, the movie, unlike D.C. Cab, shows the side of the city we’re used to seeing in movies. Footage shot inside posh French restaurant Sans Souci is somehow prescient. It’s a McDonald’s now.

View the trailer.
Stream it on Netflix Instant.

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Also opening this week, Iranian director Asghar Farhadi’s powerful domestic drama The Past, which both Matt Cohen and I chose as one of the best movies of 2013. We’ll have a full review tomorrow.