Treasure Island

Unfortunately, the December 3, 8:30pm screening has been canceled due to an issue with the print. We will be contacting ticket holders about refunds or exchanges. Please email [email protected] with any questions.

Between 1983 and 1987, Ruiz made a cluster of utterly inimitable movies: dense metafictional experiments drawn loosely from literary texts, shot in an extravagant, baroque style full of vertiginous angles and splendid colors, and often centered on fantasies of moviegoing or storytelling. Treasure Island, from the middle of that period, is less an adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s book than a set of imaginative variations on the themes it suggests. In Ruiz’s vision, young Jim lives in a seaside inn populated by mysterious figures and intruders—a situation that sets the stage for an odd experiment in storytelling carried out by a cabal of feuding grownups (played by, among others, Anna Karina and Jean-Pierre Léaud). The result is unruly, disjointed, and maniacally enjoyable—a little-seen key text from one of Ruiz’s most fertile periods.