Film at Lincoln Center has announced a special screening series “The Other America: A Cosmology of Jordan Peele’s Us,” running from June 20–26, 2025.

The series is inspired by the recent publication Us: The Complete Annotated Screenplay by Inventory Press, included with in-depth footnotes, commentaries, marginalia, and a constellation of images, definitions, and inspirations. Film at Lincoln Center will interpret the cosmology outlined in this book through a presentation of double features, supplementary reading material, in-person appearances from some of the book’s contributing writers, and never-before-seen 35mm presentations of Us.

This 35mm-heavy series embraces the multitudes contained in Peele’s 2019 feature. Films are grouped under recurring motifs – “The Shadow Self,” “The Uncanny,” “Labyrinths,” “Rabbits,” “The Uniform”- each drawing out a distinct thread in Peele’s vision.

The series will include a range of in-person events featuring writers and special guests who contributed to Us: The Complete Annotated Screenplay.

Opening Night kicks off with a two-for-one 35mm double feature: Oscar Micheaux’s silent classic Body and Soul featuring live grand piano accompaniment by Makia Matsumura, followed by a conversation between Shana L. Redmond, Director of the Center for the Study of Social Difference at Columbia University, and Michael Gillespie, Associate Professor in NYU’s Department of Cinema Studies, and a reception. The evening will conclude with a screening of an unseen print of Us from Peele’s personal collection.

Fashion designer Mary Ping and Mellissa Huber, Associate Curator at The Costume Institute at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, will discuss costume design and the visual politics of the Tethered’s red uniform in Us. Later in the week, following a 35mm screening of Nightbreed, writer and designer Leila Taylor and filmmaker Sierra Pettengill will explore the subterranean parallels between Clive Barker’s Midian and the Underpass imagined in Us.

The Other America: A Cosmology of Jordan Peele’s Us – Films & Descriptions

All films will screen at the Walter Reade Theater (165 W. 65th St.)

Us
Jordan Peele, U.S., 2019, 35mm, 116m

The Shadow Self

“It is a frightening thought that man also has a shadow side to him, consisting not just of little weaknesses and foibles, but of a positively demonic dynamism. The individual seldom knows any thing of this; to him, as an individual, it is incredible that he should ever in any circumstances go beyond himself. But let these harmless creatures form a mass, and there emerges a raging monster.” –From Psychology of the Unconscious (1912) by Carl G. Jung

Body and Soul
Oscar Micheaux, U.S., 1925, 35mm, 105m
Silent with English intertitles

C.H.U.D.
Douglas Cheek, U.S., 1984, 35mm, 88m

Rabbits

What is so real as the cry of a child?
A rabbit’s cry may be wilder
But it has no soul.
–Lines from “Kindness,” a poem by Sylvia Plath

Who Framed Roger Rabbit
Robert Zemeckis, U.S., 1988, 35mm, 104m

Alice
Jan Švankmajer, Czechoslovakia, 1988, 35mm, 86m
Czech with English subtitles

Donnie Darko
Richard Kelly, U.S., 2001, 35mm, 113m

The Uniform

“The power of the uniform lives both in its simplicity and its magnitude when multiplied. When confronted by a collective many of the same, a monolith is formed. It can feel like a protective shield or a menacing threat. As an individual in uniform, only the role or service seems to exist, more enlightened depths of the person are pushed beneath the layers… The uniform’s ingenuity is its ability to communicate control and reliability while also being symbols of corporeal control.” –From “Uniform” by Mary Ping in Us: The Complete Annotated Screenplay (2024)

New 4K Remaster
Akira
Katsuhiro Otomo, Japan, 1988, 124m
Japanese with English subtitles

Dead Ringers
David Cronenberg, Canada, 1988, 35mm, 116m

Labyrinths

“At the heart of every labyrinth, in fact, there is a blind spot. And if the subject of the narrative wanders in the labyrinth of his own blindness, the narrative in turn becomes for us readers [or watchers] a labyrinth in which we wander until someone like Theseus, just a name, attempts to deliver us from it… the point of horror resides in the blind space.” –From “Partial Vision” (1981) in Cahiers du Cinéma by Pascal Bonitzer

The Lady from Shanghai
Orson Welles, U.S., 1947, 35mm, 87m

Nightbreed
Clive Barker, U.K./Canada/U.S., 1990, 35mm, 102m

Preceded by:
Labyrinthe
Piotr Kamler, France, 1969, 12m

The Uncanny

“The uncanny is that class of the frightening which leads back to what is known of old and long familiar.” –From The Uncanny (1919) by Sigmund Freud

Dead Again
Kenneth Branagh, U.S., 1991, 35mm, 107m

A Nightmare on Elm Street
Wes Craven, U.S., 1984, 35mm, 91m

Scissors
Frank De Felitta, U.S., 1991, 35mm, 105m