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A HARD DAY’S NIGHT 60th Anniversary Screening June 25 with pop music expert Domenic Priore.

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present the 60th anniversary of A HARD DAY’S NIGHT (1964). Starring the Beatles at the height of Beatlemania, we’ll screen this rock ‘n’ roll movie classic on Tuesday, June 25, 7:30 PM at the historic Royal theatre in West Los Angeles. Directed by Richard Lester from an Oscar-nominated original screenplay by Alun Owen, the milestone film was also aptly nominated for musical scoring. (George Martin lost to Andre Previn for My Fair Lady.)

After the Beatles exploded onto the global stage by early 1964, the British pop group (John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Ringo Starr) conquered the American pop music charts with record-breaking domination, and their appearance on the “Ed Sullivan Show” on American television in February that year cemented their phenomenal popularity. A movie starring the quartet was then put into production in England, planned for a summer release. The finished film, A HARD DAY’S NIGHT, portrays 36 hours in the life of the group as they prepare for a televised variety show concert. Director Richard Lester utilizes several techniques in a semi-documentary style, reinforced by Gilbert Taylor’s black-and-white cinematography, all on dazzling display in the high energy musical comedy.

Lester’s approach was fully embraced by film critic Andrew Sarris, who wrote in the Village Voice, “A HARD DAY’S NIGHT (is)… the Citizen Kane of jukebox musicals, the brilliant crystallization of such diverse cultural particles as pop music, rock ‘n’ roll, cinema-verite, the nouvelle vague, free cinema, and studied spontaneity.” Roger Ebert was equally impressed, citing it as “one of the great life-affirming landmarks of the movies.” Bosley Crowther of the New York Times, one of the powerful tastemakers of the era, also raved, calling it “a whale of a comedy…a wonderfully lively and altogether good-natured spoof of the juvenile madness called Beatlemania.” Comparing the Beatles’ clowning to the Marx Brothers, Crowther enthusiastically endorsed the movie as “rollicking, madcap fun.”

The film was highly influential, spawning numerous imitators including the pop group the Monkees‘ television series later in the decade, and the advent of music videos in the 1980s. Lester went onto a long career, helming the second Beatles’ film Help, The Knack, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Petulia, and The Three (and Four) Musketeers among others. The Beatles, of course, became the most influential and innovative pop musicians of the twentieth century, achieving that lofty status in a single decade, the 1960s, before going their separate ways. A HARD DAY’S NIGHT showcases their dynamic music early in their careers, and, as pointed out by TV Guide, “ the strength of their songcraft is stirring.”

Our guest Domenic Priore is an author, pop music historian, and pop culture commentator. He has contributed to several books and is the co-author of “Riot on Sunset Strip: Rock ‘n’ Roll’s Last Stand in Hollywood.”

A HARD DAY’S NIGHT plays one night only Tuesday, June 25, 7:30 PM at the historic Royal Theatre, celebrating its centennial year, operating continuously as a movie theatre since opening in 1924. Our next attractions include The Secret Garden with guest Agnieszka Holland on June 29, and A Summer Place with film music historian Steven C. Smith on July 11.

GREEN BORDER + THE SECRET GARDEN – get ready for a weekend with Agnieszka Holland.

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Filmmaker Agnieszka Holland will be in town later this month for her latest film, the powerful Green Border. She’ll participate in Q&As after the evening screenings at the Royal on Friday and Saturday, June 28 and 29 and for good measure join us for a Q&A after the June 29 screening of her 1993 family film The Secret Garden, which we’re screening as part of our Anniversary Classics series. One moviegoer might want to ask her how she manages such range, because the movies are quite different.

Thirty years after her Oscar-nominated film Europa Europa, Holland’s poignant and essential Green Border is set in the treacherous and swampy forests that make up the so-called “green border” between Belarus and Poland. Here refugees from the Middle East and Africa trying to reach the European Union are trapped in a geopolitical crisis cynically engineered by Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko. In an attempt to provoke Europe, refugees are lured to the border by propaganda promising easy passage to the EU. Finding themselves pawns in this hidden war, the lives of Julia, a newly minted activist who has given up her comfortable life; Jan, a young border guard; and a Syrian family intertwine.

“A heart-in-mouth thriller… Agnieszka Holland‘s bruisingly powerful new refugee drama ultimately comes from a place of optimism.” – Jessica Kiang, Variety

“A righteous, infuriating and woefully compelling watch.” – Laura Bobiak, Observer

“Profoundly moving, flawlessly executed… if cinema is an empathy machine, to paraphrase the late Roger Ebert, then Agnieszka Holland‘s new film is one precision-tooled specimen.” – Leslie Felperin, The Hollywood Reporter

“A humanitarian masterpiece.” – Damon Wise, Deadline

The Secret Garden follows a young British girl born and reared in India who is returned to her uncle’s English castle after becoming an orphan. She begins exploring the estate and discovers a garden that has been locked and forgotten. Aided by one of the servants’ boys, she begins restoring the garden, and eventually discovers some other secrets of the manor. Writing in the New York Times, Janet Maslin began her review of The Secret Garden this way: “A fawn, a bunny, a lamb: these are among the last things anyone might expect to see in a film directed by Agnieszka Holland, whose other work (including Europa, Europa and Olivier, Olivier) had not a trace of sugarplums in its makeup. Yet Ms. Holland’s film of The Secret Garden is elegantly expressive, a discreet and lovely rendering of the children’s classic by Frances Hodgson Burnett. That book is a paean to the restorative powers of the natural world, and Ms. Holland succeeds in conveying much of its delicate beauty.”

FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE 60th Anniversary Screening May 28 at the Royal.

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present the third in our popular series of James Bond revival screenings. Following the successful showings of the very first Bond picture, ‘Dr. No,’ and the popular third film, ‘Goldfinger,’ we present the second movie in the long-running series, ‘From Russia with Love.’ This screening takes place almost 60 years to the day when the movie enjoyed its wide U.S. release in May 1964.

‘Dr. No’ had been a big hit when it opened a year earlier, and producers Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman decided to bring Bond back. They chose Ian Fleming’s novel ‘From Russia with Love’ in part because President John F. Kennedy had listed that book as one of his ten all-time favorite books in an article that appeared in Life magazine. The producers doubled the budget from $1 million to $2 million for this second appearance of 007, which turned out to be a modest investment considering that the new movie ended up grossing close to $80 million, approximately $800 million in today’s dollars. Terence Young, who had helmed ‘Dr. No,’ returned to the director’s chair. The screenplay was penned by Richard Maibaum (a frequent Bond screenwriter) and Johanna Harwood.

Sean Connery returned for his second appearance as Bond, along with Bernard Lee as M and Lois Maxwell as Miss Moneypenny. There were some new additions to the cast—Mexican actor Pedro Armandariz, who died before the film was released, and Oscar nominees Robert Shaw and Lotte Lenya as two of the villains. Daniela Banchi played the heroine, a Russian agent who defects to the West as a result of her romance with Bond.

A number of other elements that came to define the Bond series were introduced in ‘From Russia With Love.’ It was the first film to have a pre-title action sequence, and it was also the first picture to have a title song, written by Lionel Bart, the enormously successful composer of ‘Oliver!’ (British singer Matt Monro performed the song.) John Barry wrote his first Bond movie score, embellishing the theme music penned by Monty Norman for ‘Dr. No.’ In addition, this was the first picture in which Bond gets an arsenal of nifty weapons, though far more modest than what his team provided for him in later movies.

This picture also sent Bond to exotic locations—Istanbul and Venice, along with a perilous journey on the famed Orient Express. Other scenes were filmed at Pinewood Studios outside London. There were other novelties. Hollywood’s Production Code had been revised in 1961 to allow discreet treatment of homosexuality for the very first time, and the producers took advantage of this leniency to depict Lenya’s Rosa Klebb as a lesbian with fairly overt designs on the glamorous but naïve Banchi.

Robert Shaw (later to star in such enormous hits as ‘A Man For All Seasons,’ ‘The Sting,’ and ‘Jaws’), with his dyed-blond hair, also has a slightly androgynous quality as the fighter recruited by Klebb to assassinate Bond. The fight scene between Connery and Shaw aboard the Orient Express, regarded as one of the best fight scenes in cinema history, took three weeks to film.

Even though reviews were not crucial to the success of the Bond movies, ‘From Russia With Love’ had some of the best reviews of the entire franchise, currently listed at 97 percent positive on Rotten Tomatoes. At the time, Penelope Gilliatt, writing for The Observer, noted, “The set-pieces are a stunning box of tricks.” Time magazine called the picture “fast, smart, shrewdly directed and capably performed.” Variety praised “a preposterous, skillful slab of hard-hitting, sexy hokum.”

The film continues to be fondly remembered. Sean Connery, later Bond actors Timothy Dalton and Daniel Craig, as well as later Bond producer Barbara Broccoli have all named it as one of their favorite Bond movies.

Our guest Jon Burlingame is the nation’s leading writer on the the subject of music for film and television. He has taught film music history courses at the University of Southern California and has lectured on film and TV music over the past 30 years at locations around the world. Among his several books, he wrote the definitive history of 007 film music, THE MUSIC OF JAMES BOND, in addition to recently co-authoring MUSIC BY JOHN BARRY. He joins us to introduce ‘From Russia With Love‘ for a pre-screening Q & A at the historic Royal Theatre, celebrating its 100th anniversary this year.

“They don’t know who Fassbinder is and they don’t know who Éric Rohmer is and they don’t know who Kurosawa is. They think they’re modern and they haven’t seen DO THE RIGHT THING. Are you kidding?” Ethan Hawke on encouraging young people to watch older movies.

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Directed and co-written by four-time Academy Award® nominee Ethan Hawke, Wildcat invites the audience to weave in and out of celebrated Southern Gothic writer Flannery O’Connor’s mind as she ponders the great questions of her writing: Can scandalous art still serve God? Does suffering precede all greatness? Can illness be a blessing? In 1950, Flannery (Maya Hawke) visits her mother Regina (Laura Linney) in Georgia when she is diagnosed with lupus at twenty-four years old. Struggling with the same disease that took her father’s life when she was a child and desperate to make her mark as a great writer, this crisis pitches her imagination into a feverish exploration of belief. As she dives deeper into her craft, the lines between reality, imagination, and faith begin to blur, allowing Flannery to ultimately come to peace with her situation and heal a strained relationship with her mother.

We open Wildcat Friday at the Laemmle Claremont, Monica Film Center, Newhall and Town Center and Monday at the NoHo. During his recent press tour to support the release, Hawke spoke passionately about seeing older movies, including his personal favorite (Warren Beatty’s Reds). With one exception (see if you can spot it), we wholeheartedly agree. He name checks some of the greats, including Kurosawa (we’ll be screening Seven Samurai in July) and Fassbinder (we’ll be showing The Marriage of Maria Braun in November as part of our Anniversary Classics series.) What’s more, on May 22 we’ll be screening one of his first movies, Dead Poets Society. From MovieMaker Magazine:

Ethan Hawke hopes he doesn’t sound like the “old man yells at cloud” meme when he says this, but he says it anyway.

“The thing that I don’t understand — and this makes me sound old — but what I don’t understand about young people today is why they don’t watch more movies,” he tells MovieMaker.

“I mean, they’re perfectly willing to binge watch, for weeks of their life, something they know is really super okay [while] they could be watching Badlands as we speak,” he adds.

Hawke is particularly shocked by the lack of film education in young directors, specifically around the greats, like German filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder known for Love Is Colder Than Death (1969) and The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972).

“They don’t know who Fassbinder is and they don’t know who Éric Rohmer is and they don’t know who Kurosawa is. They think they’re modern and they haven’t seen Do the Right Thing. Are you kidding? It’s on your damn phone, watch it!” he says. “But they’d somehow rather watch some TV show that came out yesterday that they won’t remember.” [EDITOR’S NOTE: Several years ago, David Lynch succinctly addressed the idea of watching a movie on a telephone.]

Make no mistake: “I say all that not to sound crotchety,” he stresses.

“But there’s so much excellence in the past, so many of these thoughts of what we’re all going through emotionally and what we’re looking for — authenticity in our lives and healing — all these common threads of humanity people have been talking about for centuries. Cinema is a young art form, but it’s 100 years old now, and there’s a lot of great work, and you can rip it off madly.”

For those young filmmakers who might be interested in taking some of Hawke’s advice, he also suggests looking to your collaborators for recommendations. Like a director of photography, for example.

“The fun thing about having a great DP is the more you explain what you’re trying to drive at, they can turn you on to, ‘Well, you know who’s also into that idea — let’s watch this film. Let’s steal that shot. That’s a great shot.’ I really enjoy that,” he says.

“But I’m always amazed at how often young people who say, ‘I love movies and I want to make movies’ don’t actually watch movies.”

Click here to read the whole piece.

FINDING THE MONEY: come out for Q&As with the subject Stephanie Kelton, Harry Shearer, Cory Doctorow, & the filmmaker; see Kelton’s appearance on The Daily Show.

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Hope/Good News Alert! Next week we have three screenings of the new documentary Finding the Money. It follows former chief economist to the Senate Budget Committee, Stephanie Kelton, on a journey through Modern Money Theory or “MMT,” to unveil a deeper story about money, injecting new hope and empowering democracies around the world to tackle the biggest challenges of the 21st century: from climate change to inequality.

We’re hosting Q&As 5/14 in Claremont with director Maren Poitras; 5/15 in NoHo with Ms. Kelton, Cory Doctorow, and Ms. Poitras; and 5/16 at the Royal with Ms. Kelton, Harry Shearer, and Ms. Poitras.

Check out Ms. Kelton’s recent appearance on The Daily Show.

Patricia Rozema in person for the new 4K director’s cut restoration of her queer classic WHEN NIGHT IS FALLING + screenings of her latest, MOUTHPIECE.

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We’re proud to soon screen two films by Canadian filmmaker Patricia Rozema: her just-restored 1995 romance When Night is Falling (May 7 at the Royal and May 8 at the NoHo) and her most recent film, Mouthpiece (May 13 & 14 at the Town Center, Monica Film Center, Glendale, and Claremont). Rozema will participate in Q&As after the Tuesday, May 7 and 8 screenings of When Night is Falling at the Royal and NoHo. Tracy E. Gilchrist, VP, Executive Producer of Entertainment for equalpride, will moderate the Royal Q&A.

Long considered to be a pivotal entry in the LGTBQ+ canon, When Night is Falling is a sexy, daring and visually resplendent story about the thrilling temptations of passion. Camille, a Christian academic, is engaged to Martin, a fellow theologian. Then she meets Petra, a flamboyant performer in an avant-garde circus. To her surprise, Camille finds herself falling deeply and almost magically in love. Forced to choose between the woman she wants, and the man who loves her, Camille discovers that the only true duty of the soul is desire.

From WHEN NIGHT IS FALLING.

A Canadian classic that was in Official Competition at the 1995 Berlin International Film Festival, When Night is Falling tells a lesbian story beautifully photographed by Douglas Koch, catching a romantic, wintry Toronto landscape.

Adapted from the play by Amy Nostbakken and Norah Sadava, Mouthpiece follows Cassandra, an aspiring writer who, while struggling to compose a eulogy after the sudden death of her mother, comes to discover that her own rebelliousness is as much a response to the male gaze as her mother’s conformity. Enacting the two sides of Cassandra’s conflicting inner dialogue, playwright-performers Nostbakken and Sadava create a compelling portrayal of the tension between regression and progress that is often found within women.

From MOUTHPIECE

Mark Olson of the L.A. Times just published a good piece about Rozema and her work and also interviewed her, as did Gilchrist for The Advocate:

There’s a scene in Patricia Rozema’s 2018 film Mouthpiece where the main character, Cassandra, is flooded with a memory of her mother, who’s just died. The camera pans the room, lingering on Cassandra’s mother’s books and music. In the frame there appear works by Joni Mitchell, Margaret Atwood, Alice Munro, and the groundbreaking lesbian author, actor, and activist Ann-Marie McDonald, who appeared in Rozema’s first feature, 1987’s I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing. Through Cassandra’s memories of her mother, Rozema pays tribute to Canada’s great women storytellers, and considering the filmmaker’s body of work, her name belongs among them…Throughout her canon and evident in the restored films is Rozema’s singular poetic film language that includes queer identity, interior monologues, and a duality in her characters or what she refers to as “twoness.” Unburdened by the machine of Hollywood and working from artists’ grants from Canada, Rozema cemented herself as a true auteur out of the gate with I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing, a self-reflexive and heartfelt comedy about a quirky secretary to a lesbian art gallery owner. The film investigates the nature of art itself, something that Rozema would continue to examine throughout her career.

“But I think I was protecting my ability to make movies, because I was ambitious too. Not for fame or for money but for being able to make movies, which is the best job in the whole fucking world in my mind,” she adds. “I was terrified that I would be shut down. So I was careful, maybe too careful sometimes, so that I think some people wished was different sooner.”

Despite Rozema’s thoughts of being “too careful” at some points, as a progenitor of the Toronto New Wave with the likes of Atom Egoyan and Jeremy Podeswa, her contributions to cinema include making elevated films about queer women with happy or hopeful endings that expanded the notion of fixed sexuality.

“I also spoke quite early about fluidity, a gender continuum, and a sort of orientation continuum,” Rozema says. “At the time, it was very binary: You’re gay or you’re straight. Period. I felt like there’s got to be more colors in this human palette.”

I AM GITMO and BEYOND THE RAGING SEA Q&As May 3-5 at the Monica Film Center..

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BEYOND THE RAGING SEA

Friday May 3 – 7:30 PM

  • Q&A follows with director Maro Orsini, Omar Nour and Omar Samra

Saturday May 4 – 4:30 PM

  • Q&A follows with director Maro Orsini, Omar Nour and Omar Samra, moderated by Alya Alghamdi, Saudi Arabian athlete.
Sunday May 5 – 12:45,* 3:00* and 5:10 with the Q&As following 12:45 and 3:00
  • Q&A follows* with director Maro Orsini, Omar Nour and Omar Samra

I AM GITMO

Friday May 3 – 1:00* and 4:10

  • *Q&A with director Philippe Diaz and Fionnuala D. Ní Aoláin who was UN Special Rapporteur on Human rights and Counterterrorism moderated by journalist Jeremy Kuzmarov.

Saturday May 4 –1:00 & 7:00*

  • Q&A with director Philippe Diaz & cast members Eric Pierpoint and Chico Brown, moderated by journalist Jeremy Kuzmarov.

Sunday May 5 @ 7:15

  • Q&A with director Philippe Diaz & cast members Eric Pierpoint and Chico Brown, moderated by journalist Jeremy Kuzmarov.

UNCROPPED Q&A Saturday at the Royal with cinematographer Robert Yeoman.

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Robert Yeoman (Uncropped) and Scott Peterson (moderator) are confirmed for the 4pm Q&A on Saturday 4/27 at Laemmle Royal.

Celebrated cinematographer Robert Yeoman is known for his collaboration with director Wes Anderson, having worked on all of Anderson’s films beginning with Bottle Rocket (1996). Yeoman was nominated for an Academy Award for his work on Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel. Other notable credits include Gus Van Sant’s Drugstore Cowboy (for which he won the Independent Spirit Award for Cinematography), Noah Baumbach’s The Squid and the Whale, and Paul Feig’s Bridesmaids and Ghostbusters. Yeoman currently teaches at USC in the School of Cinematic Arts.

Scott Peterson is a Los Angeles-based script supervisor who has worked with Scott Cooper, Tom Ford, Steven Soderbergh, Joel Coen, Martin McDonagh, Gus Van Sant, and Wes Anderson. A highlight for Scott was working with his chums James Hamilton and Bob Yeoman on The Royal Tenenbaums.