This series presents an interpretation of the cosmology outlined in the book Us: The Complete Annotated Screenplay through a presentation of double features, appearances from contributing writers, and never-before-seen 35mm screenings of the film Us. The series also includes in-person conversations that delve into the motifs explored in the film, including doppelgängers, uniforms and labyrinths.

Series Highlights Include:

Friday, June 20, 2025 at 6:00 pm
Body and Soul + Us (Both in 35mm)
With live piano accompaniment, a reception between the double feature, and 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

Sunday, June 22, 2025 at 5:30 pm
Us (35mm)
With a post-screening conversation with fashion designer Mary Ping and Mellissa Huber, Associate Curator at The Costume Institute at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, on the topic of costume design and the visual politics of the Tethered’s red uniform in Us

Wednesday, June 25, 2025 at 6:00 pm
Nightbreed
With a post-screening discussion with writer and designer Leila Taylor and filmmaker Sierra Pettengill (Riotsville, U.S.A.) exploring the subterranean parallels between Clive Barker’s Midian and the Underpass imagined in Us, joined by Nightbreed star Anne Bobby.

More About The Series

Jordan Peele’s sophomore feature Us plumbed everything from American isolationist fears and labyrinthine power structures to the rich lineage of the doppelgänger motif and home-invasion thrillers. It also left just as many audiences enthralled and mystified as it prompted those to obsessively pore over its coincidences, paradoxes, and symbology.

With the publication of the book Us: The Complete Annotated Screenplay by Inventory Press, in-depth footnotes, commentaries, marginalia, and a constellation of images, definitions, and inspirations uncovered new references orbiting the film — from W. E. B. Du Bois, C.H.U.D., Sylvia Plath, and Oscar Micheaux, to Donnie Darko, Lewis Carroll, The Beach Boys, and more.

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. Some titles speak directly to Us through shared iconography: the indelible red scrubs of Dead Ringers, the scissor-wielding White Rabbit of Alice (screening from a rare imported print), the mirrored maze in The Lady from Shanghai, and the implements of psychological unraveling in Scissors and Dead Again. Others echo the film’s deeper fixations: A Nightmare on Elm Street weaponizing domestic space and repressed memories, C.H.U.D. and Donnie Darko spiraling through conspiratorial underworlds and looping timelines.

The series was organized by Florence Almozini and Tyler Wilson in collaboration with Monkeypaw Productions and Inventory Press.