The Story of a Three-Day Pass

press release: New Restoration

France | 1967 | DCP | 86 min. | English and French with English subtitles

Director: Melvin Van Peebles; Cast: Harry Baird, Nicole Berger, Hal Brav

Five years before Sweet Sweetback’s Badasssss Song became a box office sensation and a cinematic cause célèbre, writer-director Van Peebles impressed critics, audiences, and cinephiles with his feature debut, an edgy and energetic study of a African American soldier in France. In this Story, Turner (Baird) is promoted in rank and granted three days of leave in Paris, where he finds romance with a white woman (Berger), but the couple’s relationship is not without bumps and must be reckoned with as the furlough comes to an end. Adapting his own written-in-French novel, the self-taught cineaste Van Peebles crashed in on France’s nouvelle vague and created his own landmark new wave. A recent 4K restoration of The Story of a Three-Day Pass will be screened.

Screenings mostly take place at 4070 Vilas Hall, 821 University Avenue. Once-a-month Sunday afternoon screenings take place at the Chazen Museum of Art, 750 University Avenue. In accord with current UW Madison policies, masks are required for entry to our venues. All Cinematheque screenings are free and open to the public. Please visit our website for a complete listing of programs and descriptions from September 3 through December 18.

In addition to new copies of several restored movies showcased in our other series, Fall Cinematheque calendar is robust with one-off screenings of new digital preservations of several exciting titles from throughout international cinema history, including Luis Buñuel’s pitch-black satire The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz; Melvin Van Peebles’ produced-in-France debut feature The Story of a Three-Day Pass; Jean-Louis Roy’s Swiss Cold War oddity, The Unknown Man of Shandigor; and two featurettes by one of Senegal’s leading cinematic voices, Djibril Diop Mambety.