[At SPACE Gallery] PMA Films: “Bleak Week: Cinema of Despair”: Watership Down (1978) (Presented with SPACE Gallery)
Directed by Martin Rosen. 92 minutes. Rated PG. In English.
Screens as part of "Bleak Week: Cinema of Despair," a week-long festival presented in partnership with the American Cinematheque. Discounted festival passes ($65, or $50 for PMA members and students) are available here. A festival pass will automatically register you for all "Bleak Week" screenings. Click the "Get Tickets" link above to purchase tickets for this single screening.
Please Note: This film will screen at SPACE Gallery, at 538 Congress St. in Portland.
With this passion project, screenwriter-producer-director Martin Rosen brilliantly achieved what had been thought nearly impossible: a faithful big-screen adaptation of Richard Adams’s classic British dystopian novel about a community of rabbits under terrible threat from modern forces. With its naturalistic hand-drawn animation, dreamily expressionistic touches, gorgeously bucolic background design, and elegant voice work from such superb English actors as John Hurt, Ralph Richardson, Richard Briers, and Denholm Elliott, Watership Down is an emotionally arresting, dark-toned allegory about freedom amid political turmoil.
About “Bleak Week”:
Presented in partnership with the American Cinematheque, “Bleak Week: Cinema of Despair” is an annual 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.
PMA Films joins the fifth annual edition in June 2026 as the festival expands to nearly 100 theaters across the U.S., Canada, UK and South and Central America, with each venue presenting its own lineup of uncompromising films defined by unpleasant truths and raw empathy.
The Portland Museum of Art’s lineup features 11 masterpieces from a variety of decades, genres, and international auteurs, beginning with Ingmar Bergman’s Cries and Whispers on June 8 and concluding with Abbas Kiarostami’s Taste of Cherry on June 14. Oscar-nominated filmmaker Todd Field (In the Bedroom, Tár) will join us to discuss Taste of Cherry. PMA Films will also host its first 16mm film screenings in many years in partnership with Kinonik on June 9 (Kiss Me Deadly/La Jetée) and June 11 (Black Girl), and will partner with SPACE Gallery to screen the devastating animated films Watership Down and The Plague Dogs at SPACE on June 13.