The Sunday afternoon crowd reflects on Tristana during Detroit Film Theatre’s 40th anniversary weekend.

The Detroit Film Theatre celebrated its 40^th anniversary  Jan. 10-12 with a bonanza weekend featuring an eclectic group of 10 films offered at the 1970s ticket price of $2.

The celebration kicked off on Friday at 7 p.m. with Mon Oncle Antoine, a Canadian film from 1971 that was also the first film to be screened when Detroit Film Theatre originally opened. The weekend’s schedule featured numerous foreign language films, including Pedro Almodóvar’s immortal love story Talk to Her (Hable con ella; 2002), Hong Kong film In the Mood for Love (Fa yeung nin wa; 2000), Tristana (1970), a French film set in Toledo, Spain, and El Norte (1983), a searing, taken-from-life narrative about a brother and sister who flee their native Guatemala to find only hardship in the promised land of America. Detroit Film Theatre capped Saturday and Sunday night with horror films, The Spanish Dracula (also foreign language; 1931)  and Wake in Fright (1971), an Australian horror film that closed the festival.

Also on tap for the weekend, Russian Ark (far left), Burden of Dreams (second from left), and My Left Foot (far right)

The well-balanced festival heralded the arrival of Detroit Film Theatre’s winter programming schedule, which includes some special series. The lineup features the first four movies from “The Hitchcock 9”— nine silent Alfred Hitchcock films that have been restored by the British Film Institute and are being presented for the first time in decades. Blackmail (Feb. 1), Champagne (Feb. 15), The Farmer’s Wife (March 1) and The Ring (March 8) will be followed by the final five in the 2014 fall schedule. Saturday Animation Club is also still going strong, with an array of Miyazaki films in their English language versions that showcase a true master of the genre: the lesser-known Porco Rosso (Jan. 25), the contemporary classic Princess Mononoke (Feb. 22), Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind (March 29) and Howl’s Moving Castle (April 26). Finally, in conjunction with the upcoming Detroit Institute of Arts exhibit Samurai: Beyond the Sword, the Detroit Film Theatre will screen samurai pictures in April and May, including one of my all-time favorite films, Yojimbo (April 19), by Akira Kurosawa and starring the incomparable Toshiro Mifune.

Samurai, real and imagined: Samurai: Beyond the Sword opens at the Detroit Institute of Arts on March 9 and runs though June 1, 2014. Yojimbo (right) will play on Saturday, April 19, at 3 p.m. Detroit Film Theatre.

All this is in addition to a huge assortment of regular offerings, including the popular annual screenings of the Academy Award Nominated Animated Shorts, with more showtimes than ever to accommodate demand (still,  book tickets well in advance). Don’t let the winter get you down: When it’s gray outside, there are worlds waiting inside  Detroit Film Theatre. With offerings like this  no wonder it’s still going strong after 40 years.

Detroit Film Theatre: 5200 Woodward Ave., Detroit; 313-833-7887; www.dia.org/detroitfilmtheatre/14/DFT.aspx