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ONE CUT, ONE LIFE Q&A with Filmmakers Opening Night at the Music Hall

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When seminal documentary filmmaker Ed Pincus, considered the father of first-person nonfiction film, was diagnosed with a terminal illness, he and his collaborator Lucia Small teamed up to make one last film. One Cut, One Life is an intense, unflinchingly honest, and sometimes humorous exploration of the human condition that invites the viewer to contemplate what is important, not only at the end of life, but through all phases of live and creative pursuits.

We open One Cut, One Life at the Music Hall on Friday, June 12. Co-director Lucia Small and executive producer Neal Baer will participate in a Q&A after the 7:20 PM screening that night.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=maC94kPWbQI

UNCERTAIN TERMS Filmmakers in Person at the Music Hall this Weekend

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We’ll be opening UNCERTAIN TERMS, the terrific new film from rising American independent director Nathan Silver this Friday at the Music Hall. The story follows Robbie (David Dahlbom), who, after catching his wife with another guy, flees Brooklyn for the countryside to stay with his neurotic aunt. She runs a home for pregnant teenagers and as the only man in the house, Robbie inadvertently becomes the object of the girls’ attention… and affection. He eventually meets Nina, (India Menuez) who is mature beyond her age and struggling with relationship troubles of her own. The more Robbie and Nina get to know each other, the more “complicated” their friendship becomes. In his Village Voice review, Alan Scherstuhl described UNCERTAIN TERMS as “brisk, brief, well acted, smartly crafted, and shrewdly judged…[the director] does nothing less than put on the screen life as it’s lived.”

UNCERTAIN TERMS writer-producer Chloe Domont and producer Josh Mandel will introduce the 10 PM screenings at the Music Hall on Friday and Saturday, June 5 and 6.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8rXhpggs9Q

SEEDS OF TIME Filmmaker Sandy McLeod and Agriculture Pioneer Cary Fowler in Person at the Music Hall Opening Weekend

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A perfect storm is brewing as agriculture pioneer Cary Fowler races to protect the future of our food. Seed banks around the world are crumbling, crop failures are producing starvation and riots, and the accelerating effects of climate change are affecting farmers globally. Communities of Peruvian farmers try desperately to save over 1,500 varieties of native potato in their fields. With no time to waste, they begin passionate and personal journeys that may save the one resource we cannot live without: our seeds.

SEEDS OF TIME documents all of this. We open the film at the Music Hall on Friday, May 29. Filmmaker Sandy McLeod and Cary Fowler, the film’s subject, will appear in person for Q&A’s after the 7 PM screenings at the Music Hall on Friday, May 29 and Saturday, May 30.

https://vimeo.com/73726895

SUNSET EDGE Filmmaker Daniel Peddle in Person at the Playhouse 7

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SUNSET EDGE is an exquisitely crafted, meditative portrayal of disaffected youth set in a graveyard of abandoned mobile homes. Part gothic thriller, part coming-of-age tale, filmmaker Daniel Peddle’s narrative feature film debut is a Hitchcockian mash-up that upends teenage horror films. On a lazy afternoon, we follow four aimless suburban teenagers as they explore the ruins of an uninhabited trailer park. As the unsuspecting teens find escape and companionship in this ghost town-turned-amusement park, a lonesome boy lurks amongst them, unearthing clues to his horrific past.

We open SUNSET EDGE on Friday, May 29 at the Playhouse 7. The filmmaker will be there to participate in Q&A’s after the 7:50 PM screenings on Sunday, May 21 and Monday, June 1.

https://vimeo.com/84540744

THE NIGHTMARE Filmmaker Rodney Ascher in Person for a Q&A at the NoHo 7

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From the director of Room 237, THE NIGHTMARE is a documentary-horror film exploring the phenomenon of sleep paralysis. People who suffer this condition find themselves trapped between the sleeping and waking worlds, unable to move but aware of their surroundings, while subject to disturbing sights and sounds, including ghostly ‘shadow men.’ This is one of many reasons many people insist this is more than just a sleep disorder.

We open THE NIGHTMARE on Friday, June 5 at the NoHo 7, Music Hall and Playhouse 7. Director Rodney Ascher will participate in a Q&A after the 7:40 PM screening at the NoHo on Saturday, June 6.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoPsjWqvwT4

Actress Diane Lane in Person at the Music Hall for EVERY SECRET THING

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In the new the new drama EVERY SECRET THING, opening tomorrow at the NoHo and Music Hall, a detective (Elizabeth Banks) tries to unravel a mystery surrounding missing children and the prime suspects: two young women (Dakota Fanning and newcomer Danielle Macdonald) who, seven years ago, were imprisoned for an infant’s death. The screenplay is by Nicole Holofcener, based on Laura Lippman’s novel and actor Frances McDormand is the executive producer.

EVERY SECRET THING director Amy Berg, along with actors Diane Lane and Danielle Macdonald, will participate in a Q&A after the 2:10 screening at the Music Hall on Saturday, May 16.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QT0zKjvRfE

GROUNDSWELL RISING Q&A’s at the Music Hall

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GROUNDSWELL RISING, the new documentary from Emmy Award-winning Resolution Pictures which we open at the Music Hall on Friday, captures the passion of people engaged in a David and Goliath confrontation. They stand together, challenging a system that promotes profit over health. We meet mothers, fathers, scientists, doctors, farmers and people from all sides of the political spectrum taking a hard look at energy extraction techniques that have not been proven safe. With the oil and gas industry’s expansion of fracking seen as a moral issue, this provocative documentary tracks a people’s movement, a groundswell rising towards reason and sensitivity, to protect life, today and tomorrow.

The GROUNDSWELL RISING filmmakers will be participating in Q&A’s after the 7:40 PM screenings on Friday and Saturday, May 15 and 16, as well as Wednesday and Thursday, May 20 and 21. Special guests participating will include representatives from Food and Water Watch, the Sierra Club, Californians Against Fracking and the League of Women Voters.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cpCz0QPMso

Anniversary Classics Goes Subtitled, Comes to the Valley: 50th Anniversary Screening of THE SHOP ON MAIN STREET June 9 at the Town Center 5

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Jozef Kroner and Ida Kaminska

We’ve been having a lot of fun hosting our Anniversary Classics screening along with Los Angeles Film Critics Association President Stephen Farber. Following EXODUS (Eva Marie Saint in person!), WHERE’S POPPA? (George Segal in person!) and LOVERS AND OTHER STRANGERS (Renee Taylor and Joseph Bologna in person and tickets still available!), our fourth screening is our first subtitled film in the series and our first in the Valley: THE SHOP ON MAIN STREET (1965) was the first film from Eastern Europe ever to win an Academy Award.  Fifty years ago this powerful Czech drama won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language film. Directed by Ján Kadár and Elmar Klos, it was one of the key films in the Czech New Wave that flourished in the 1960s, before the Soviet invasion of 1968 stamped out this vital movement. Josef Kroner and Yiddish theater legend Ida Kaminska (nominated for an Oscar for her performance) star in this poignant tale of an Aryan functionary who takes over the button shop of an elderly Jewish woman in a Slovakian town in 1942. They develop a tentative friendship that is threatened when the Nazis begin rounding up all the Jews in the area.

Ida Kaminska

Esteemed critic Kenneth Tynan said this was “the most moving film about anti-Semitism ever made.”  Oscar-nominated screenwriter Eleanor Perry (David and Lisa, Diary of a Mad Housewife) reviewed the film for Life magazine and called it “a masterpiece, a flawless examination of the toll of indecision and the penalty of passive decency.”  Perry went on to write, “The film’s lasting power is that it poses a couple of additional questions to every spectator:  ‘If it had been you, what would you have done?’ If it ever is you, what will you do?'”

Joining Stephen Farber for a post-screening discussion, special guests director Ivan Passer and Michal Sedlacek, Consul General of Czech Republic in Los Angeles. Mr. Passer was one of the directors of the Czech New Wave of the 1960s. His acclaimed film, Intimate Lighting, was also made in 1965. He was the co-writer of Milos Forman’s films Loves of a Blonde and The Firemen’s Ball. Like Forman, he emigrated to America after the Russian invasion. In this country he directed such films as Born to Win with George Segal, Law and Disorder with Carroll O’Connor, Cutter’s Way with Jeff Bridges, and the Emmy-winning HBO movie, Stalin, starring Robert Duvall.

Purchase tickets here.