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The story of the “gentlemen guerrilla filmmaking operation,” MERCHANT IVORY opens August 30 at the Royal and Town Center.

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Merchant Ivory is the first definitive feature documentary to lend new and compelling perspectives on the partnership, both professional and personal, of director James Ivory, producer Ismail Merchant and their primary associates, writer Ruth Prawer Jhabvala and composer Richard Robbins. Some of their many career highlights include A Room with a View, Howards End, and The Remains of the Day. Footage from more than fifty interviews, clips, and archival material gives voice to the family of actors and technicians who helped define Merchant Ivory’s Academy Award-winning work of consummate quality and intelligence. With six Oscar winners among the notable artists participating, these close and often long-term collaborators intimately detail the transformational cinematic creativity and personal and professional drama of the wandering company that left an indelible impact on film culture.

Mr. Soucy on his film:

“There’s no other story like Merchant Ivory in the history of cinema and what a gift to be given an inside view of the Merchant Ivory
World from James Ivory and the more than 50 collaborators I interviewed in New York, London, Paris, and Los Angeles, in making this documentary film.

“James Ivory is one of our greatest living directors and, at 95 years old, this Oscar-winner for the much-lauded Call Me by Your Name shows no sign of slowing down. He’s still working, having recently adapted a Ruth Jhabvala short story The Judge’s Will for director Alexander Payne and the French novel The End of Eddy slated to be a multi-episode miniseries.

“Once James Ivory, Ismail Merchant, and Ruth Jhabvala met, they were connected forever. Their work and personal lives entwined for over forty-five years, and they became the most famous collaborative troika in film history.

“Merchant Ivory released 43 films. Many were fraught productions, often budget-related, and their last film, The City of Your Final Destination, brought the company to bankruptcy. A look at the comprehensive list of films that Merchant Ivory made, and the roster of talent they worked with, reveals that theirs was a spectacular achievement.

“The Merchant Ivory story, with James Ivory and Ismail Merchant at its center, is about art, money, partnership, loyalty, dysfunction, love, jealousy, and, eventually for Jim, the necessity to move forward and embark on a new chapter after Ismail’s passing.”

“Anyone with a fondness for these movies and for tales of what might be described as a gentlemen guerrilla filmmaking operation will find immense pleasure here.” ~ David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter

THE TERMINATOR 40th Anniversary Screening with Producer Gale Anne Hurd Thursday at the Laemmle NoHo!

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present a 40th anniversary screening of one of the most popular sci-fi films of all time, THE TERMINATOR, the movie that spawned one of the screen’s most profitable film franchises. The film stars Arnold Schwarzenegger, in his most iconic role, Linda Hamilton and Michael Biehn. We’re screening it as part of Art House Theater Day on Thursday, July 25 at 7 PM at the NoHo and will host producer Gale Anne Hurd for a Q&A. You might ask, is this really an indie film? Spoiler alert…it is!

“Knowing that many people have never seen the film or missed out on seeing it on the silver screen, I couldn’t be more thrilled to celebrate THE TERMINATOR‘s 40th anniversary with its return to cinemas on Art House Theater Day,” said producer Gale Anne Hurd (The Walking Dead, Armageddon). “People may wonder if THE TERMINATOR is truly an indie film. As the film’s producer, I can assure you it is. Jim Cameron and I made the film for $6.4 million, which included a completion bond and a 10% contingency. We had a variety of co-financiers, pre-sold rights and our distribution was through Orion Pictures rather than a major studio – the very definition of an indie film, both then and now. We hope you’ll enjoy the nostalgic experience of seeing it this summer!”

Writer-director Cameron and producer Hurd had both apprenticed at Roger Corman’s low-budget factory, New World Pictures, in the late 1970s and early 1980s when they joined forces to create THE TERMINATOR. Their original screenplay (with co-writer William Wisher, inspired by works of Harlan Ellison) chronicles the battle for the survival of the human race against Skynet, a synthetic intelligent machine network of the future. In 2029, an automaton killer, T-800 (Schwarzenegger) is dispatched through time to assassinate an unsuspecting waitress, Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) in 1984, who turns out to be the future mother of the twenty-first–century human resistance leader, John Connor. To protect her, Connor sends guerrilla fighter Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn). The ensuing chase, with the seemingly unstoppable Schwarzenegger, a laconic, leather-clad, and lumbering destruction machine pursuing Connor and Reese through the streets of Los Angeles, is a model of low-budget efficiency and resourcefulness.

Contemporary critics embraced the sci-fi suspense thriller, with Kirk Ellis of the Hollywood Reporter calling it “a genuine steel metal trap of a movie.” Dave Kehr of The Chicago Reader characterized its “almost graceful violence…(has) the air of a demented ballet,” and Janet Maslin in The New York Times cited it as a “B-movie with flair.” The film was a genuine sleeper, and its success led to several sequels, a television series and video games. The latest incarnation of the series, Terminator: Dark Fate, with Cameron returning to a creative role, is set to open theatrically later this year. The film that started it all, THE TERMINATOR, was added to the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry in 2008.

Cameron, of course, became one of the most sought-after filmmakers in Hollywood, staying in the sci-fi world for several landmark films (Aliens, The Abyss, Avatar) and winning Oscars for a venture into the past, Titanic, the biggest box-office hit of the twentieth century. Schwarzenegger went on to movie superstardom and political success. His terse line reading in the film, “I’ll be back,” is ranked 37th of the American Film Institute’s all-time great movie quotes, and his character Terminator is ranked as the 22nd greatest movie villain. Our guest, Gale Anne Hurd emerged as one of the most successful female producers of the era, with Aliens, Alien Nation, and Armageddon among her hits.

“I set out to make a film about solidarity and finding the small gestures of kindness and understanding between strangers and family alike.” Levan Akin on his film CROSSING, opening July 19 at the Royal.

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Next week at the Royal we open Crossing, the acclaimed new film by the Swedish-Georgian director Levan Akin (And Then We Danced). It follows Lia, a retired teacher living in Georgia, as she tries to fulfill a promise to find her long-lost niece, Tekla. The search takes her to Istanbul, a beautiful city that seems full of connections and possibilities. There she meets Evrim, a lawyer fighting for trans rights, and Tekla starts to feel closer than ever.
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Akin will attend the July 20 evening screening for a Q&A.
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“A piercing portrait of forgiveness across generations…Dumanli, making her screen feature debut here, is a pure joy to watch, enveloping the movie in a sense of warm coziness and safety as, just being in her presence, you feel like everything will somehow work out.” ~ Ryan Lattanzio, indieWire

“It’s seductive, fragmented, involving.” ~ Fionnuala Halligan, Screen International

“Akin makes a calculated choice to raise awareness of the trans community in Istanbul, but he does so through representation rather than manipulation.” ~ Peter Debruge, Variety

“This novelistic drama takes time to connect its central triangle but does so with a suppleness and restraint that amplify the emotional rewards of its lovely open-ended conclusion.” ~ David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter

Director’s statement: With Crossing I set out to make a film about solidarity and finding the small gestures of kindness and understanding between strangers and family alike. I also wanted to show rooms and places that are rarely explored in stories from the region. 

The film is based on a true story I was told whilst researching And Then We Danced, about a grandmother traveling from Georgia to Turkey in search of her trans granddaughter. Just like with my previous film, making Crossing was very challenging. The existence of LGBTQ+ people in Georgia and Turkey is under large pressure and Turkey’s president Erdogan ran most of his  recent presidential campaign around anti-LGBTQ+ rhetorics. 

In my film we follow retired schoolteacher Lia who is looking to fulfill her recently deceased sister’s dying wish – to find her lost trans daughter, Tekla. Together with a down on his luck  young man, Achi, who claims to have Tekla’s address in Istanbul, she travels from Georgia to  Turkey to find her niece. Lia and Achi are from different generations and as such don’t have  much in common even though they live in the same country. There is a great divide of ideology in Georgia between the Soviet and the post-Soviet generation. Achi desperately wants to leave Georgia as he lives under the oppressive rule of his older brother and he knows there is no future in Georgia for his young western leaning generation. 

As the journey unravels, so does Lia. Through her relationship to Achi and her encounters with  the trans community in Istanbul, specifically with Evrim (a trans woman who works as a lawyer for an NGO in Istanbul), Lia begins to open up and see the world and her place in it differently. All three main characters have made great sacrifices in limiting their lives and inhibitions in order to not upset the ruling hegemony. 

I myself am Georgian born in Sweden (my ancestry is from Batumi), and I have ties to Turkey (both my parents were born there). The journey from Batumi in Georgia, along the Black Sea to Istanbul is a journey I have taken many times myself as a child. I am a mix of many cultures, traditions and norms and the themes of modernity versus tradition are very personal and  something I have struggled with myself. I drew a lot from my own experiences, asking myself if  my grandparents were living today, would they accept me for who I am? Probably not – but in  showing these examples of acceptance I hope to inspire new ways forward.

The Cold War wasn’t just an arms race: TAKING VENICE opens Friday with filmmaker Amei Wallach in person.

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This Friday at the Royal and Town Center and June 7 at the Laemmle Glendale we’ll be opening Amei Wallach’s fascinating new documentary about the 1964 Venice Biennale Taking Venice, which, according to Alissa Wilkinson of the New York Times, “feels almost like science fiction, or maybe fantasy. Imagine the U.S. government taking such a keen interest in the fine arts that there may or may not have been an attempt to rig a major international prize for an American artist. A painter, no less!”

Ms. Wallach will participate in a Q&A at the Royal after the 7:20pm screening this Friday.

Last month the Times published an advance piece about Taking Venice by Nina Siegal headlined “Did America Cheat to Win the 1964 Venice Biennale? A new documentary takes a hard look at the persistent rumors around Robert Rauschenberg’s win in Venice in the midst of the Cold War.” Here’s an excerpt:

Did a conspiracy by U.S. State Department officials and art dealers secure a prize for painting for Robert Rauschenberg at the Venice Biennale in 1964?

Unconfirmed rumors of some sort of nefarious plot to that effect swirled in international art circles for years.

The documentary filmmaker Amei Wallach had heard them, and she was curious to know if they held any truth.

“This moment is a kind of urban legend in the art world,” said Wallach in a telephone interview from her home in New York on Long Island. “It was a flashpoint. The story goes: The Biennale had been a Eurocentric party, and this was the first time an outsider broke the code.”

Using archival footage and interviews with important figures involved in the 1964 Biennale, Wallach, the longtime chief art critic for Newsday and an occasional contributor to The New York Times, tried to unravel the mystery, exploring the charged political atmosphere that engendered those persistent claims.

The result is Zeitgeist Films’ Taking Venice, which will have its theatrical release next month in New York and Los Angeles.

The film revisits the Biennale and recreates the scene in which Rauschenberg’s artworks were brought through the Grand Canal by boat to get to the U.S. Pavilion in the Giardini, just in time to qualify for the award.

It also includes shots of the American art delegation flying into Venice in a U.S. military cargo plane filled with monumental Pop Art, and the opening party at the U.S. Consulate.

Wallach interviewed the leader of the 1964 Biennale team, Alice Denney, a Washington insider, who worked with the curator Alan Solomon and the art dealer Leo Castelli to bring Rauschenberg to victory.

“We didn’t cheat,” Denney said in the film, while conceding that a United States agency established to promote American dominance during the Cold War organized the art exhibition with an explicitly political agenda, to ensure that the show would reflect the United States well on the global stage. “We thought with Rauschenberg we had a very good chance.”

“One of the intriguing subplots of the Biennale all through the decades, more than a century, is how art and politics overlap,” said Philip Rylands, former director of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, in the film. “There’s a kind of high altitude moment with the American presence in 1964. It reverberates through history.”

Click here to read the full piece.

“This film tells the story of the 1964 Venice Biennale, at a time when State Department officials and a team of unlikely conspirators were joined in their conviction that American democracy was worth the fight.” TAKING VENICE opens May 24.

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The new documentary Taking Venice, which we open next week at the Royal in West L.A. and the Town Center in Encino, uncovers the true story behind rumors that the U.S. government and a team of high-placed insiders rigged the 1964 Venice Biennale – the Olympics of art – so their chosen artist, Robert Rauschenberg, could win the Grand Prize. Director Amei Wallach wrote this about her film:

“I grew up during the Cold War when the world seemed as dangerous as it does today. But it also seemed to be filled with possibility, with the actions of people who dreamed big and took big chances. This was especially true of artists, always looking to build something new. I became an art critic, then an author, and now a filmmaker. My goal is to make films about art that leap out of the art world and into a reckoning with what’s relevant in our lives through the stories that they tell.

Recreation of the 1964 transport of Robert Rauschenberg’s work in Venice canals for exhibition at the Venice Biennale, as seen in TAKING VENICE, a film by Amei Wallach. A Zeitgeist Films release in association with Kino Lorber.

“This film tells the story of the 1964 Venice Biennale, at a time when State Department officials and a team of unlikely conspirators were joined in their conviction that American democracy was worth the fight. They were determined to harness the audacity of American art to promote what was best about democracy. The artist they chose to represent the U.S. in their race to win the Biennale Grand Prize was Robert Rauschenberg, who was by no means a political artist, then. By the time I met him more than a decade later, he had come to believe that art had a more global responsibility.

Transporting Robert Rauschenberg’s Express at the XXXII International Biennale of Art Exhibition, Venice, 1964, as seen in TAKING VENICE, a film by Amei Wallach. A Zeitgeist Films release in association with Kino Lorber. Photo Ugo Mulas.

“The film builds on a tradition of telling the story of America then through the eyes of now because I want it to reflect how much the world and art have changed. I want there to be moments that sting with what we have lost, and moments that encapsulate what we have gained. The stakes are even higher than they were at that scandal-drenched Biennale, as artists everywhere try to create a way forward.”

Featuring a “spine-tingling” lead performance, NOWHERE SPECIAL opens April 26.

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Uberto Pasolini’s new film Nowhere Special stars the gifted English actor James Norton as a single father who dedicates the last few months of his life to finding a new family for his four-year-old son. It’s based on a true story. We open Nowhere Special April 26 at the Royal and May 3 at our Claremont, Glendale and Encino theaters. Pasolini wrote the following about how he, his cast and crew were able to create this brilliant, understated movie:

“I wanted to make this film as soon as I read about the case of a terminally ill father attempting to find a new family for his toddler son before his death. Although the situation the main characters find themselves in is very dramatic, the decision at script level was to approach the story in a very subtle, “quiet” way, as far away from melodrama and sentimentalism as possible, as in a film by Yasujirō Ozu, or, more recently, the work of Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne. This approach was reflected in the style of the filmmaking we adopted, direct and free from distracting stylistic flourishes. Marius Panduru’s camera work was designed to be both fluid and unobtrusive, when appropriate even reflecting the child’s point of view. The main directorial challenge of the film was that of working with a very young child, and of creating a believable and moving father-son relationship on camera. Fortunately, in young Daniel Lamont, then four years old, we have an extraordinarily aware and sensitive natural performer, and in James Norton a most generous actor, who was happy to dedicate long days into creating a connection with the boy well ahead of the shoot, and to support and guide Daniel throughout what for any child would have been an intense and at times bewildering experience.”

“In spite of myself I invested totally in Norton’s spine-tingling, intimate performance; and, in spite of myself, the end had me in floods of tears.” ~ Cath Clarke, Guardian

“Uberto Pasolini’s film takes a real-life story as his starting block and turns this tiny Northern Ireland-set tale into an almost sensory experience.” Fionnuala Halligan, Screen International
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“Be warned: you will need to keep a box of tissues to hand, if not all the tissues in the world.” ~ Deborah Ross, The Spectator

“If You See Only One Beaver Movie This Year …” HUNDREDS OF BEAVERS are coming!

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This week and next we’re delighted to show the sui generis farce Hundreds of Beavers. The March 14 Hundreds of Beavers screening at the Royal, March 15 & 16 late shows in Glendale, March 18 at the NoHo, and March 19 in Claremont will feature Q&As with the filmmakers plus a beaver or two.

The screenings have become something of a phenomenon, so much so that the New York Times posted a story about them last week. It begins:

“Last week, a bonkers low-budget movie that was shot in black and white and has no Hollywood stars, packed a 200-seat theater on a one-night engagement at the IFC Center in Manhattan. Additional screenings were added.

“Mike Cheslik, the film’s director, and Ryland Brickson Cole Tews, its leading man, don’t have Hollywood connections or sacks of cash. What the two 33-year-old friends do have that helped their film make a splash with its New York debut is a secret weapon that would make a shrewd old-school movie pitchman like William Castle tingle with envy.

“We’re talking beavers. Big ones.

“Two life-size beavers, actually — plus a horse, all played by humans — who took selfies with passers-by on the sidewalk and high-fived audience members in their seats before a screening of Cheslik’s frolicsome farce Hundreds of Beavers.

“At a time when Hollywood and scrappy filmmakers alike are stressing over how to get butts into seats, Cheslik and Tews are counting on a live make-believe beaver fight — a marketing gimmick dressed like a vaudeville act — to sell their movie.” Read the rest of the article here.

The filmmakers and distributor have a genius for marketing, as evidenced by some of the parody posters they’ve assembled:

However, this is not just hype; Hundreds of Beavers is good. As of this writing, it’s at 98% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes.

“A soulful silliness pervades the rootin’, tootin’ live-action cartoon Hundreds of Beavers from Milwaukee filmmakers Mike Cheslik and Ryland Brickson Cole Tews, merry pranksters who deploy a gleefully inventive lo-fi madness to their gag-stuffed wilderness comedy. Pitting a lovestruck fur trapper against a bucktoothed horde, this underground festival hit is a feverish fit of creative buffoonery — you haven’t experienced anything remotely like it.” ~ Robert Abele, Los Angeles Times

“A marvel of slapstick invention that in terms of pure unbridled creativity puts most big-screen comedies to shame.” ~ Nick Schager, The Daily Beast
“Hundreds of Beavers is fueled by a delirious spirit that reminded me sometimes of “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World,” and that’s a high compliment indeed.” ~ Randy Myers, San Jose Mercury News
“Part Guy Maddin, part Chuck Jones — a constant delight.” ~ Alonso Duralde, Breakfast All Day

“On paper, it would hardly be expected to remain funny for eight minutes, let alone 108. But this ingeniously homemade lark never runs out of steam.” ~ Dennis Harvey, Variety

“Hundreds of Beavers starts strange, gets stranger, and yet remains resolutely adorable.” ~ Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, AWFJ.org

“The world is seeing the strength of Iranian women now.” ~ Noora Niasari on her debut film SHAYDA.

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Shayda, an subtle, potent story of female empowerment, establishes first-time feature filmmaker Noora Niasari as a remarkably assured talent. She won an Audience Award and was nominated for a Grand Jury Prize last year at Sundance and received a nomination from the DGA for achievements by first-time filmmakers. Film critic Claudia Puig described the film on LAist’s FilmWeek as “one of the most masterful debuts of a filmmaker that I’ve seen in a long time.” We open the film this Friday at the Royal and expand March 8 to the Town Center and March 15 to the Laemmle Glendale.

From a piece about Shayda last year in The Guardian:

When Noora Niasari was five years old, she lived in a women’s shelter with her Iranian mother. They were fleeing family violence in a country that wasn’t entirely familiar, trying to make a new life.

That personal experience has informed Niasari’s debut feature, Shayda, which has been storming the global festival circuit since it premiered at Sundance film festival in January, winning an audience award. Released in Australia on 5 October, the film has already claimed the top prize at CinefestOz, opened the Melbourne international film festival, and been selected to represent Australia in the international film category at the Oscars.

It’s a sensational reception for a first film, particularly given the specificity of its story: Shayda is a dramatisation of Niasari’s early life, set in the Iranian diaspora community of suburban Melbourne. “It was something I had experienced, but I hadn’t really seen on screen before,” Niasari says of the movie she started thinking about straight after finishing film school. “But I first had to ask my mum for her permission and participation, because I had such a blurry memory of that time.”

Niasari asked her mother to write her memoirs, which took six months; that writing formed the basis of the first incarnation of Shayda’s script. Shayda evolved over time – and it’s not always a direct mirror of what happened to them both – but “it is very emotionally true to our experience”.

Executive produced by Cate Blanchett, Niasari’s movie tells the story of Shayda (Zar Amir Ebrahimi), an Iranian immigrant in Melbourne who leaves her abusive husband Hossein (Osamah Sami) with her daughter Mona (Selina Zahednia) in tow. Shayda finds refuge in a women’s shelter where the kindly Joyce (Leah Purcell) protects and guides her through the tough legal process of a custody fight.

It’s a tender and revealing film that balances Shayda’s discovery of inner strength with the sacrifices she makes for her daughter, as she tries to create a new family for her. It’s understated, relatable and drawn from such personal memories that Niasara describes working on it as “long-term exposure therapy”. Even doing interviews to promote the movie is difficult. “I have to sit with it and process it,” she says.

“But the thing is, now that it’s a film, it has a really different energy in the world. People bring their own experiences to it, it’s a very universal experience. We’ve screened it in Europe, North America and Australia and there is a real sense that it connects beyond my mother and I, beyond our experience. It’s not about us any more. That feels liberating and cathartic.”

Read the rest of The Guardian piece here.