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Zydeco, Godard, Inuit Throat Singer Tanya Tagaq, Klimt & Koons: The Final Culture Vulture Films of 2023.

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We have finished programming Culture Vulture, our long-running weekly film series of fine art, theater, opera, music and more, for the rest of the year. Have a look! The screenings are every Monday evening and Tuesday matinee at the Laemmle Claremont, Glendale and Monica Film Center. After a hiatus over the holidays, we’ll bring the series back in 2024, likely with additional screening days and venues. Nice! More opportunities to apply the balm of beauty against the burn of our harsh world. Keep an eye on our social media and weekly newsletter for updates.

November 6-7: Klimt & the Kiss: The Kiss by Gustav Klimt is one of the most recognized and reproduced paintings in the world. It is perhaps the most popular poster on student dorm walls from Beijing to Boston. Painted in Vienna around 1908, the evocative image of an unknown couple embracing has captivated viewers with its mystery, sensuality and dazzling materials ever since it was created. But just what lies behind the appeal of the painting – and just who was the artist that created it?

November 13-14: I Went to the Dance: The seminal film on the history of the foot-stomping, toe-tapping music of French Southwest Louisiana. Features many Cajun and Zydeco greats, Michael Doucet, BeauSoleil, Clifton Chenier, Canray Fontenont, Marc and Ann Savoy, D.L. Menard.

November 20-21: Jeff Koons: A Private Portrait: This is not just a documentary but an amazing journey inside the mind of the most controversial artist of our time. Jeff Koons is widely regarded as one of the most influential, popular and disputed artists of the last 30 years. This film shows the hidden mechanisms lying behind the person, the artist and the Koons brand. It’s an intimate exploration of Jeff Koons’ consciousness, aiming to discover what motivates him and shapes his incomparable vision.

November 27-28: Recordially Yours, Lou Curtiss: Yale Strom explores the life and work of Lou Curtiss – creator of the San Diego Folk Festival, audiophile, folklorist, author, raconteur, radio host and proprietor of Folk Arts Rare Records, a mecca for some of the most celebrated American roots musicians in America (Jack Tempchin, Jason Mraz, Tom Brousseau, A.J. Croce, George Winston, Sue Palmer, Alison Brown, Tomcat Courtney, Tom Waits, Gregory Page, Mike Seeger and many others). Archival footage, live interviews and music tell the story of this American icon.

December 4-5: Titanic: The Musical: Five-time Tony Award winner Titanic: The Musical is ‘breathtaking’ (The Guardian) and ‘magnificent’ (The Telegraph). A stunning and stirring production recounting the hopes, dreams and aspirations of her passengers, from the wealthy first class to the third class dreaming of a new life in America.

December 11-12: Ever Deadly weaves together intimate concert footage of Inuk throat singer Tanya Tagaq alongside moving personal reflections, stunning sequences filmed in Nunavut, and hand-drawn animation by Inuk artist Shuvinai Ashoona to seamlessly bridge history, landscapes, stories, and songs with pain, anger, and triumph – all through the expressions of one of the most innovative musical performers of our time.

December 15-21 at the Royal, December 18-19 at the Claremont, Glendale and Monica Film Center: Godard Cinema with Trailers of the Film that Will Never Exist: ‘Phony Wars’: Jean-Luc Godard is synonymous with cinema. With the release of Breathless in 1960, he established himself overnight as a cinematic rebel and symbol for the era’s progressive and anti-war youth. Sixty-two years and 140 films later, Godard is among the most renowned artists of all time, taught in every film school yet still shrouded in mystery. One of the founders of the French New Wave, political agitator, revolutionary misanthrope, film theorist and critic, the list of his descriptors goes on and on. Godard Cinema offers an opportunity for film lovers to look back at his career and the subjects and themes that obsessed him, while paying tribute to the ineffable essence of the most revered French director of all time.

We’ll screen Godard Cinema with Godard’s final work, Trailer of a Film That Will Never Exist: ‘Phony Wars.’ At the time of his death in September 2022, Jean-Luc Godard had been in the midst of planning another feature, an adaptation of Belgian author Charles Plisnier’s 1937 novel Faux Passports. Though the film was never produced, the intricate and beautiful “trailer” that Godard put together in preparation now stands as his final work, a complex collage of history, politics, and cinema constructed of paper and glue, paintings and photographs, sound and silence.

Godard often transformed his synopses into aesthetic programs. His swan song follows in this tradition and will remain as the ultimate gesture of cinema, which he accompanies with the following text: “Rejecting the billions of alphabetic diktats to liberate the incessant metamorphoses and metaphors of a necessary and true language by returning to the locations of past film shoots, while keeping track of modern times.”

SOPHIE SCHOLL: THE FINAL DAYS screenwriter Fred Breinersdorfer in person for a Q&A at the Royal.

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The powerful Oscar nominee for Best Foreign Language Film Sophie Scholl: The Final Days (2005) is based on the true story of Germany’s most famous, fearless anti-Nazi heroine of the resistance group the White Rose. Armed with long-buried historical records of her arrest and incarceration by the Gestapo‚ the filmmakers expertly recreate the last six days of Scholl’s life: a heart-stopping journey from arrest to interrogation‚ trial and sentence. “Harrowing, heroic, exhilarating, inspiring, riveting.” (L.A. Times)
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If you’ve never seen it on a big screen or want to experience it again, Sophie Scholl is more timely than ever, forcing the audience to ask: what is an individual’s responsibility to resist immorality when living under a terrifying, repressive regime? One that has no compunctions about murdering its own citizens if they are deemed the slightest threat to its hegemony?
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 SOPHIE SCHOLL: THE FINAL DAYS screenwriter Fred Breinersdorfer in person for a Q&A at the Royal.
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Sophie Scholl screenwriter Fred Breinersdorfer will join us on Thursday, October 26 at the Royal for a post-screening Q&A moderated by Laemmle Theatres President Greg Laemmle. The screening starts at 7 pm.
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Many thanks to the Goethe Institute and Villa Aurora for to making the screening possible.
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John Le Carré shares stories from his life with Errol Morris in the “enthralling” new documentary THE PIGEON TUNNEL, opening Friday at the NoHo.

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Academy Award-winning documentarian Errol Morris pulls back the curtain on the storied life and career of former British spy David Cornwell — better known as John le Carré — in The Pigeon Tunnel, opening Friday at the NoHo.
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“It’s a treat to learn that, before he died in 2020, the great novelist David Cornwell, aka John le Carré, provided Mr. Morris with an in-depth discussion of his deceit-steeped life and works. I was enthralled by every minute of it.” ~ Kyle Smith, Wall Street Journal
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“It’s much richer than a mere biographical documentary, fascinating even to those who haven’t read Cornwall’s work.” ~ Alissa Wilkinson, Vox
 John Le Carré shares stories from his life with Errol Morris in the "enthralling" new documentary THE PIGEON TUNNEL, opening Friday at the NoHo.

“In Errol Morris’s documentary, the sense of getting nowhere in particular proves to be crucial toward grasping John le Carré in all his impish glory.” ~ Keith Uhlich, Slant Magazine

“Through it all is the tension of whether one can truly know le Carré, a man who first made a living hiding his true self, and then another living as a writer delving into it. Morris captures that paradox… quite perfectly.” ~ David Sims, The Atlantic

“An interrogation of art and artist, The Pigeon Tunnel is an enthralling documentary both for fans of le Carré and those who’ve never read a page of his work.” ~ Barry Levitt, Empire Magazine

“Errol Morris’s biographical documentaries have got to the heart of figures ranging from Stephen Hawking to Donald Rumsfeld, but in John le Carré he has found a subject as unknowable as he is eloquent.” ~ Jake Kerridge, Daily Telegraph

“The result is a wide-ranging dialogue that manages to be both philosophical and playful, a personal portrait that goes exactly as deep as Cornwell wants it to go but never feels as if the author is getting away with obfuscation.” ~ Steve Pond, TheWrap

“He’s a grand chronicler of his own biography, and expertly goaded on by Morris, whose queries challenge present and past statements and compel further elaboration and contemplation.” ~ Nick Schager, The Daily Beast

“A genius tragicomedy on the elusive nature of freedom,” THE DELINQUENTS opens October 27.

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The free-flowing, delightful heist film/existential comedy from Argentina The Delinquents, which we open October 27 at the Royal, November 3 at the Claremont and Town Center and November 10 in Glendale, has been compared to a Pedro Almodóvar and Eric Rohmer collaboration. It’s “a consistently playful, gradually beguiling existential dramedy on the multitudinous subject of work and freedom.” (Isaac Feldberg, RogerEbert.com)
  "A genius tragicomedy on the elusive nature of freedom," THE DELINQUENTS opens October 27.
“Rodrigo Moreno methodically unfurls a genius tragicomedy on the elusive nature of freedom.” ~ Carlos Aguilar, The Playlist
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“A meandering and hilarious delight from end to end.” ~ David Jenkins, Little White Lies
"A genius tragicomedy on the elusive nature of freedom," THE DELINQUENTS opens October 27.

“Rodrigo Moreno’s dreamy and discursive The Delinquents might kick off with one of the most low-key bank robberies anyone has ever attempted, but it’s hard to overstate how thrilling it feels once the thief finally tells us about what he stole.” ~ David Ehrlich, indieWire

Moreno wrote the following about The Delinquents: One issue comes forth naturally when considering this film is the matter of freedom in the face of the mechanical routine imposed by work.

Morán imagines a risky plan to conquer that liberation even when it implies committing a crime and paying his dues. Román is his accessory.

These two men embody a collective fantasy: to break free from the rigors and obligations of the working life in order to attain a higher life filled with freedom.

To choose a better life means leaving the city, your job, even a family, and moving to the countryside, the ocean, the mountains, to give in to leisure, and to stop depending on something or someone. There are both existential and practical matters that make this dream a difficult one: How to make a living? How can I live without all the things I already have? When should I pursue it?

The protagonist solves these questions by virtue of a crime: to rob from a bank (the same bank he´s employed by) the equivalent of his salary times 25 years. It’s not about being millionaires; it’s about living without working all the way to the end.

As is the case in heist movies, the morality of the robbery is not the object, even more so when the target is a bank. I’m invoking the old maxim, always ascribed to Brecht, that it is a worse crime to establish a bank than it is to rob one.

This film, in that sense, takes a more anarchistic viewpoint and does not dwell on these bourgeois matters, but rather contemplates the notion that modern life, as it is intended, obliterates the possibility of a truly free man. It is this tension that Morán’s dream is built upon, that he finally acquires by means of the sacrifice of imprisonment. It is said in a passage of the film that the incarceration of jail for three years and a half is preferable to the incarceration of working for the rest of your life.

SUBJECT Q&As/panel discussion schedule.

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Subject Q&A schedule at the Laemmle Glendale.

7 pm, Friday, November 3rd: Post-screening Q&A with Subject co-director Jen Tiexiera along with producer and documentary subjects Margie Ratlif (The Staircase), co-producer and subject Jesse Friedman (Capturing the Friedmans), Executive Producer Alexandra Johnes (Time Studios) and cultural strategist Sonya Childress (Color Congress, Perspective Fund). Moderated by Sara Yasin (Managing Editor, Los Angeles Times).

7 pm, Saturday, November 4th: Post-screening Q&A with co-director Jen Tiexiera along with producer and documentary subjects Margie Ratlif (The Staircase), co-producer and subject Jesse Friedman (Capturing the Friedmans), Executive Producer Alexandra Johnes (Time Studios). Moderated by Matt Carey (Documentary Awards Editor, Deadline Hollywood).

4:10 pm, Sunday, November 5th: Post-screening Q&A with co-director Jen Tiexiera along with producer and documentary subjects Margie Ratlif (The Staircase), co-producer and subject Jesse Friedman (Capturing the Friedmans), Executive Producer Alexandra Johnes (Time Studios). Moderated by Caroline Libresco (Co-Executive Director, Jewish Story Partners)

THE SMELL OF MONEY Q&As this Weekend at the Monica Film Center.

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Here are details for the Fri/Sat Q&As for THE SMELL OF MONEY:
Fri 10/13 7:30 PM
PANELISTS:
Director: Shawn Bannon
Producer: Jamie Berger
Exec Prod: Travon Free
Exec Prod: Martin Desmond Roe
Exec Prod: David Lowery
MODERATOR: Tim Grierson – Screen International
Sat 10/14 7:30 PM
HOST: Joaquin Phoenix
PANELISTS::
Director: Shawn Bannon
Producer: Jamie Berger
Exec Prod: Michelle Cho
Exec Prod: Travon Free
Exec Prod: David Lowery
MODERATOR: Matt Carey – Deadline Hollywood
Richard Matson, the film’s U.S. distributor, will introduce the film Friday night.  Joaquin Phoenix will do it on Saturday.
Sun 10/15 3:20 PM
PANELISTS:
Director: Shawn Bannon
Producer: Jamie Berger

MY LOVE AFFAIR WITH MARRIAGE Q&A schedule.

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The My Love Affair with Marriage filmmaker will participate in Q&As on the following schedule:
10/12 – Royal – 7:00pm
Director Signe Baumane
10/13 – Glendale 1:30pm
Director Signe Baumane
10/13 – Glendale – 7:20pm
Director Signe Baumane
Moderated by animator Tom Sito
10/14 – Glendale 1:30pm
Director Signe Baumane
10/14 – Glendale 7:20pm
Director Signe Baumane and Shirley Issakhan, YWCA Glendale & Pasadena
Moderated by Wendy Blanco, Peace Over Violence
10/15 – Glendale 1:30pm
Director Signe Baumane
Professor Lilya Kaganovsky, UCLA
10/15 – Glendale 7:20pm
Director Signe Baumane

RUNNING ON EMPTY 35th Anniversary Screening with Actors Christine Lahti and Judd Hirsch in Person October 24.

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present a 35th anniversary screening of the potent Oscar-nominated drama Running on Empty, written by Naomi Foner and directed by Sidney Lumet in one of his late-career highlights. Christine Lahti, who was named best actress of the year by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association for her performance, Judd Hirsch, River Phoenix, and Martha Plimpton star in one of the few movies to examine the consequences of the revolutionary movements that swept America in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The film earned two Oscar nominations in 1988, for Foner’s original screenplay and for Phoenix as Best Supporting actor. We’ll screen Running on Empty at the Royal on October 24 at 7 pm with Ms. Lahti as our special guest.

Lahti and Hirsch play a married couple who were part of a 1960s revolutionary group, probably modeled on the Weather Underground, who participated in the bombing of a napalm laboratory that resulted in the serious injury of a janitor who was not supposed to be on the premises. Since then, they and their two sons have been on the run from the FBI, constantly changing their identities and moving when the authorities seemed close to locating them.  An added complication arises when their teenage son, played by Phoenix, begins to demonstrate extraordinary gifts as a pianist, and the parents realize that their unsettled lives could hinder the development of his talent. At the same time, Phoenix falls in love with the daughter (Plimpton) of his music teacher and feels compelled to reveal his true identity to her.

Lumet (12 Angry Men, Dog Day Afternoon, Network, The Verdict), who received an honorary Oscar late in his life, brought his characteristic dramatic vigor and emotional intensity to the film. A highlight is the meeting between Lahti and her long estranged father, played by Steven Hill, that is one of the most wrenching scenes in any film of the period. Most critics recognized the film’s achievements. Roger Ebert called it “one of the best films of the year,” and Newsweek’s David Ansen called it “emotionally overpowering.” Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times wrote, “Sophisticated, uncompromising and refreshingly original, it is one of those rare films which is likely to mean as much to teens as it does to their parents.”

Christine Lahti made her film debut opposite Al Pacino in 1979 in …And Justice for All. She went on to co-star in Whose Life Is It Anyway? opposite Richard Dreyfuss, The Doctor with William Hurt, Just Between Friends with Mary Tyler Moore, Bill Forsyth’s Housekeeping, and, more recently, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood with Tom Hanks. She earned an Oscar nomination when she co-starred with Goldie Hawn in Swing Shift. Later she won an Oscar for a live action short film that she directed, Lieberman in Love, in 1995. Lahti won an Emmy for her starring role in the hit TV series, Chicago Hope, and also had a recurring role in Law and Order SVU. In 2001 she directed her first feature, My First Mister, starring Albert Brooks and Leelee Sobieski.

Judd Hirsch has received two Oscar nominations for Best Supporting Actor—for the Oscar-winning best picture of 1980, Ordinary People, and for his performance just last year in Steven Spielberg’s acclaimed memory piece, The Fabelmans. He also won two Emmy Awards for his performance in the critically acclaimed and immensely popular TV show of the late 1970s, Taxi. Among his other notable feature film credits are Independence Day, A Beautiful Mind, The Meyerowitz Stories, and Uncut Gems. Hirsch co-starred in several other TV series—Dear John, Damages, Superior Donuts, and The Goldbergs.