One More Week Until the Return of Laemmle Moviegoing. Plus the Oscar Doc Shorts & More

Dear moviegoers, one more week until a return to some normalcy, the April 9 reopening of the Laemmle theatres. We will be posting film titles, showtimes and ticketing in the coming days. On April 5, L.A. County will move into the less restrictive Orange Tier, a long-sought accomplishment that will allow us to open at 50% capacity. (There are many more details at the County Health Department website.) At least locally, the virus is still in retreat, so kudos to all SoCal residents for helping stave off a fourth surge so far. We’ll do our part with our enhanced safety measures in compliance with the CinemaSafe protocols developed by the National Association of Theatre Owners. These measures include enhanced ventilation systems, reserved seating to ensure physical distancing, plexiglass barriers, hydrogen peroxide fogger machines each morning before opening, between-show auditorium cleaning and sanitizing wipe downs between every screening, hand-sanitizing stations, plentiful personal protective equipment, and devices to make customer/staff interactions as contact-free as possible. Visit www.Cinemasafe.org to learn more about the protocols and guidelines, developed and supported by leading epidemiologists to support a safe return to movie theaters.

Until then, we have Laemmle Virtual Cinema to tide us over. (And we’ll continue LVC after April 9 for those who can’t make it out to the theaters.) Leading the pack this week are the always amazing 2021 OSCAR SHORTS: DOCUMENTARY. The five nominees this year are A Love Song for Latasha: A portrait of a 15-year-old girl whose shooting death sparks the ‘92 L.A. Uprising. Do Not Split: The story of the 2019 Hong Kong protests. Filmed from inside therapeutic feeding centers in war-torn Yemen, Hunger Ward documents two health care workers fighting to thwart the spread of starvation. Colette: Resistance took courage in Nazi-occupied France. Seventy-five years later, facing one’s ghosts may take even more. A Concerto is a Conversation: A jazz pianist and composer tracks his family’s lineage through his 91-year-old grandfather from Jim Crow Florida to the Walt Disney Concert Hall.

In the winning comedy SHIVA BABY college student Danielle must cover her tracks when she unexpectedly runs into her sugar daddy at a shiva — with her parents, ex-girlfriend and family friends also in attendance. THE OUTSIDE STORY is a comedy about an introverted editor (Brian Tyree Henry) on a tight deadline who gets locked out of his apartment. In order to get back inside, he’s forced to do something he always avoids, interacting with his neighbors. NINA WU, which earned its director a nomination for the Un Certain Regard prize at Cannes, follows a struggling actress who finally gets her big break with a leading role in a spy thriller set in the 1960s, until her psychological resolve begins to crack under the pressure.

When her village is threatened with forced resettlement due to reservoir construction, an 80-year-old widow at the center of THIS IS NOT A BURIAL, IT’S A RESURRECTION finds a new will to live and ignites the spirit of resilience within her community. In CENTER STAGE Maggie Cheung embodies tragic screen siren Ruan Lingyu, known as the ‘Greta Garbo of China,’ in this unconventional biopic by Hong Kong New Wave master Stanley Kwan. In SOUL ECLIPSE a gold digger is coerced into a spiritual quest for enlightenment by a shaman, a man with dark secrets of his own.

Finally, we are delighted to have French New Waver Eric Rohmer’s restored Four Seasons tetralogy, A TALE OF SPRING (1990), A TALE OF WINTER (1992), A TALE OF SUMMER (1996) and A TALE OF AUTUMN (1998). In SPRING, a burgeoning friendship between philosophy teacher Jeanne and pianist Natacha is strained by jealousy, suspicion, and intrigue. WINTER is about a woman trying to choose between two men five years after losing touch with the love of her life and the father of her young daughter. In SUMMER amateur musician Gaspard travels to a seaside resort in Dinard, on the coast of Brittany, where three women each offer the possibility of romance, if he can overcome his inability to make a decision. AUTUMN is set in the Rhone Valley, the final film of the series concerns simultaneous schemes to find a new love for reserved winegrower and widow Magali.

Considering Laemmle Theatres made its bones screening French cinema, any of Rohmer’s titles would be perfect as an aperitif to our reopening after our first closure in 83 years.