We Can't Go Home Again + Don't Expect Too Much: Double Feature
Restored and reconstructed from its 1973 Cannes version, legendary director Nicholas Ray’s (REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE, IN A LONELY PLACE) experimental masterpiece WE CAN'T GO HOME AGAIN embodies the director’s practice of filmmaking as a “communal way of life”. Made with his college students in upstate New York, the film features Ray as mentor, friend, and reference point to his students and their stories of love, sex, rebellion, and lost innocence. With its expressionistic colorisation, the film exemplifies Ray’s groundbreaking approach to multiple-image storytelling, providing a unique, almost anthropological perspective in recording the “history, progress, manners, morals, and mores of everyday life” at a critical moment in 1970s America.
For this special Phantoscope screening, it is presented alongside DON'T EXPECT TOO MUCH, an intimate feature-length documentary by Nicholas Ray’s wife Susan investigating the making of WE CAN'T GO HOME AGAIN and the complex relationships within Ray’s life and art. Drawing on his archive of never-before-seen film, video, and stills, as well as new interviews with the film’s original crew, directors Jim Jarmusch, Victor Erice, and others, Susan Ray provides a compelling and candid exploration of the last years of this revered American auteur.
“[A] great, nearly lost work of reflexive modernist fury.” The New Yorker
Video
Date and Time
Saturday Jan 17, 2026
6:30 PM - 9:20 PM GMT
Location
Triskel Arts Centre, Tobin Street, Cork City
Fees/Admission
€11/8