Rosie Perez appears in the 1989 classic Do the Right Thing, screening for free on August 25 in Berkeley.

Rosie Perez appears in the 1989 classic Do the Right Thing, screening for free on August 25 in Berkeley.

The UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA) is one of the last venues in Berkeley to present a repertory schedule of cinema classics to movie lovers on a regular basis. This month, film buffs are invited to bring a blanket or lawn chair to Addison and Oxford streets to enjoy free movies on the massive LED screen attached to the BAMPFA building.

The series kicks off Thursday, August 4, with a 7 p.m. showing of Charlie Chaplin’s silent comedy The Gold Rush. Chaplin plays a hapless prospector searching for treasure in the frozen north tundra in this delightful movie, which features some of the comedian’s most memorable filmed sequences.

The next event offers the French New Wave masterpiece Band of Outsiders on August 18 at 7 p.m. Director Jean-Luc Godard’s 1964 film reinvents the gangster genre as it follows tough-guy posers Franz and Arthur as they drive around Paris, act out scenes from their favorite crime movies, and plan a robbery. Band of Outsiders has been hailed as a cool classic by numerous critics and filmmakers, including Quentin Tarantino, who named his production company, A Band Apart, after the film’s French title, Bande à part.

Finally, the series presents Spike Lee’s classic Do the Right Thing on August 25 at 7 p.m. Lee’s film, set in Brooklyn on one of the hottest days of the summer, was released in 1989 but feels just as timely today. Its legacy as one of the most provocative American films has grown exponentially over the years—Barack and Michelle Obama famously went to see it on their first date in a Chicago neighborhood—making it a perfect entry in the series, which the people at BAMPFA hope will introduce more film lovers to the center’s programming throughout the year. bampfa.org.