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UNAPOLOGETIC Follows Black Abolitionist Organizers as they Challenge a Complicit Chicago Administration After Two Police Killings.

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The new documentary UNAPOLOGETIC, opening September 3 at the Monica Film Center and on the Laemmle Virtual Platform, captures a tense and polarizing moment in Chicago’s fight for the livelihood of its Black residents. The film follows Janaé and Bella, two young abolitionist organizers, as they work within the Movement for Black Lives to seek justice for Rekia Boyd and Laquan McDonald, two young Black people killed by Chicago police. They aim to elevate a progressive platform for criminal justice to a police board led by Lori Lightfoot and a complicit city administration, while also elevating leadership by women and femmes. Laemmle Theatres opens UNAPOLOGETIC Friday, September 3 at the Monica Film Center and on the Laemmle Virtual platform.

UNAPOLOGETIC subject Bella Bahhs and director Ashley O’Shay will participate in Q&As at the Monica Film Center after the 7:40 screening on Friday, September 3 and after the 1 and 7:40 PM screenings on Saturday, September 4.

What follows is Ms. O’Shay’s artistic statement:

“In the winter of 2012, Rekia Boyd was just getting started in life. Her friends describe her as someone prone to smiles and laughter. She dotted her i’s with hearts, was a big Drake fan, and expressed herself freely on Facebook while trying to figure out her relationship status. In the winter of 2012, I was also just getting started. I was in my first year at Northwestern University’s film program and was one of less than ten Black people in my class. A slew of racist campus events caused me to feel further isolated and pushed me to begin speaking out about how racism affected my everyday. Slowly but surely, I began integrating these realizations into my art.

“If we don’t get it, shut it down!” Janae takes command at a downtown rally credit: Christine Irvine. 

“In March of that same year, Rekia was hanging out with her friends near her home when she was killed by a stray bullet. It took three years for the police officer who shot her to be brought to court, and after years of waiting for justice, it was deemed a mistrial. It seemed that he would walk away without being held accountable.

“Three years later, people of all ages from neighborhoods throughout Chicago came together to organize around their frustration. With nothing but a borrowed camera and monopod in hand, I joined the hundreds descending upon Chicago Police Headquarters to demand justice. The energy was electrifying. Black women on bullhorns stood in front of crowds leading the space. For the first time, I experienced a different narrative unfolding in the enduring struggle for Black freedom – one led by Black feminist voices. I couldn’t help but see myself in them.

Janae fights to be heard at Chicago Police Board meeting. Credit: Ashley O’Shay

“Shortly after, I began to document two of these voices: Janaé Bonsu, a 24-year-old pursuing her PhD in social work while also rising the ranks of a national activist organization; and Bella Bahhs, a 22-year-old “rap-tivist” from the Westside of Chicago whose artistry and activism seek to heal women harmed by intergenerational effects of incarceration – women like herself. Over the course of two and a half years, we watch as these women grapple not only with what it means to lead a mass movement, but also to enter early adulthood as Black, queer women.

Comrades get in formation to shut down a Chicago highway. Credit: Ashley O’Shay

“I have been a filmmaker for nine years now; Unapologetic is my feature film directorial debut. Five years after beginning production, we have completed the film. While this documentation was certainly important at the time of filming, it proves even more essential now, especially in light of the recent killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor in 2020. As Lori Lightfoot has become the first Black, openly-queer mayor of Chicago, mainstream media has championed her as a symbol of progressive growth. However, the current reality in the city counters that. After years of intentional work, organizers are working to educate the community around abolishing and divesting from policing, despite a new mayor bolstered by representative politics. Unapologetic intentionally centers the narratives of the Black queer feminist organizers who brought forth the progressive platform that set the stage for Chicago’s historic shift in leadership.

Janae’s mom speaks her truth. Credit: Ashley O’Shay

“I have always known and felt the presence of Black resistance in my life. However, the strong feminine leadership in the Chicago movement caused me to question where my history had been placed. How might my world have been different if I saw a young PhD student or a rapper that looked like me organizing a mass movement? Unapologetic has given me an opportunity to discover more about myself through this legacy of resistance, and take a more active role in it.

Bella and her auntie hit a Chicago step at the Black Soul Nation picnic. Credit: Ashley O’Shay

“What does one usually require of a Black movement leader? Certainly not femme. Certainly not queer. Certainly not flawed, or quick to anger, or overly opinionated. By focusing on this refreshing counter narrative within the Movement for Black Lives, I wanted to recognize this heroic and thankless work, catalyzing empathy, understanding, and hope in all viewers at such a critical time for Black lives.” — Ashley O’Shay

UNAPOLOGETIC director Ashley O’Shay.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUPVLvL9Rsk

BEING A HUMAN PERSON, Documentary about the Sui Generis Swedish Filmmaker Roy Andersson, Opens this Friday on the Laemmle Virtual Platform.

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Roy Andersson is one of the world’s most eminent living film directors, and the main subject of Being a Human Person. This maverick Swedish auteur’s work has been celebrated at all of the world’s major film festivals, from his 1970 debut A Swedish Love Story, which picked up four prizes at Berlin, through to Songs from the Second Floor, which won the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 2000. His final two films (A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence and About Endlessness) both premiered in Venice, winning the Golden Lion in 2014 and Silver Lion in 2019, respectively.

At 76 years of age, Andersson was about to complete his final film, About Endlessness. With the end of his career in sight, the central thematic concerns of his work – vulnerability, insecurity and mortality – spilled over into his creative process, blurring the line between the personal and the professional. In documenting this process, Fred Scott’s Being a Human Person becomes a powerful meditation on the relationship between art and artist, and a heartbreakingly honest portrait of one of the most startlingly original and unremittingly humane directors in world cinema. Laemmle Theatres opens Being a Human Person on our virtual platform beginning this Friday, July 30. About Endlessness is available now.

The British production company Archer’s Mark wrote the following about the documentary:

There are some filmmakers whose style is so unique, they can announce themselves in a scene. Lynch, Spielberg, Welles, Malick. They have such intense and personal vision, such specificity of time, place and cultural context – that we only need to spend a minute in their world to recognise their signature. And then there is Roy Andersson. A director who possesses a style of visual storytelling that allows his work to be known in a single frame.* Because Roy – in a world where the hyperbolic use of such a phrase is all too commonplace – is truly one of a kind, for many reasons.

Each of his films takes an average of five years to make. His crew builds every set; films it; and then destroys it. He uses only fixed, long shots with no close-ups or edits. Each film is made up of an average of 40 intricate, painterly tableaux. He only casts non-professional actors. Roy’s intricate in-camera trickery employs surgical craftsmanship that is meticulous to the point of madness… And all of this takes place on the two floors below Roy’s apartment in an unassuming townhouse in central Stockholm – also known as the legendary Studio 24.

In short, Roy’s way is the antithesis of every film production of the last 50 years. It has won him garlands at the biggest festivals in the world – Cannes, Berlin, Venice – and the adulation of visionary directors like Darren Aronofsky and Alejandro G. Iñárritu.

 

In an age of the franchise, and a proliferation of cookie-cutter storytelling, Roy is quite simply the last of his kind. And now, at 76 years of age, he is about to present his last film to the world. That film – About Endlessness – will mark the end of a major chapter in cinema. For when Roy stops making films, they will simply never be made in this way again.

Set across a three year time period, Being a Human Person charts the arduous and unsettled arc of production of what Roy lovingly terms his “final effort”. Shot through with Roy’s candour, humour and insistence on capturing the process in all its truthfulness – even as he comes to terms with his own, increasingly fragile, mortality – it also becomes a meditation on the legacy of a master storyteller as he calls time on his career.

*From The Living Paintings of Roy Andersson by Film Qualia (YouTube)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3EaZCNFXSs

 

 

Tragedies of Youth: Nobuhiko Obayashi’s War Trilogy Coming to Laemmle Virtual Cinema.

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In the last decade of his long and prolific career, Nobuhiko Obayashi (1938-2020) —best-known in the U.S. as the filmmaker behind the cult hit House (1977)—wrote and directed a trio of deeply personal and formally audacious films that confronted Japan’s wartime past.

Made in the wake of the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami of March 2011 and informed by Obayashi’s firsthand experience as a child born on the eve of World War II in Hiroshima Prefecture, the staggering films in this trilogy—consisting of Casting Blossoms to the Sky (2012), Seven Weeks (2014) and Hanagatami (2017)—collectively consider the loss of innocence for an entire generation of Japanese youth raised in the shadow of war and national disaster. (Japan Society)

We’ll start screening all three films beginning this Friday, July 9 on watch.laemmle.com.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cs-SwNvOUZU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xi4zXYDrM9E
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZyU9PkQ96Y

J. Hoberman on the Restoration of the 1949 Masterpiece DISTANT JOURNEY, Opening July 9.

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One of the first films to confront the horrors of the Holocaust remains one of the most powerful. Suffused with the visceral dread of a waking nightmare, Distant Journey draws from director and Holocaust survivor Alfréd Radok’s own experiences to tell the story of a Czechoslovak Jewish family—including a young doctor (Blanka Waleská) and her gentile husband (Otomar Krejča)—whose lives are torn apart by the terrors of the Nazi occupation, leading them inexorably to a grim fight for survival in the Theresienstadt concentration camp. Blending expressionistic cinematography with archival documentary footage (some drawn from Triumph of the Will) to potent effect, this harrowing vision of human atrocity was banned in its home country for more than forty years, only to reemerge as urgent and impactful as ever.

Courtesy of Janus Films.

Tablet Magazine recently published J. Hoberman’s authoritative article about the film. Here are the opening paragraphs:

“Alfred Radok’s 1949 first feature, Distant Journey, was (and is) a landmark—a movie of its time that continues to speak to ours. Made in a no longer extant, once-communist state during the Cold War winter of 1948-1949, Radok’s remarkable debut is a masterpiece of Czech cinema. It was also one of the first and remains among the strongest, most original, and most influential movies to deal with the murder of European Jewry.

Courtesy of Janus Films.

“Distant Journey had its New York premiere in August 1950, not three months into the Korean War, at the Stanley, a shabby theater off Times Square that then served as the home of Yiddish movies, Israeli documentaries, and Soviet imports. The film was given the Yiddish title Geto Terezin, for the “transit camp” Theresienstadt, known in Czech as Terezin, where it was largely set and partially filmed; it was so enthusiastically received that it was held for over a month.

Courtesy of Janus Films.

“The New York Times critic Bosley Crowther called Distant Journey “the most brilliant, the most powerful and horrifying film on the Nazis’ persecution of the Jews,” that he had ever seen, albeit cautioning “the faint of heart” to see the movie “at their own risk.” The Yiddish daily Morgn Frayhayt reported the amazed public response of at least one spectator who claimed to recognize her fictionalized self on the screen—as well she might. The first fiction films to represent the Holocaust, produced in Eastern Europe soon after the war were typically made by and/or with actual survivors. All had aspects of psychodrama, docudrama, and documentary.

Courtesy of Janus Films.

“Nothing if not personal, Distant Journey was written by Erik Kolár, an assimilated Czech Jewish lawyer who, married to a gentile, managed to stave off deportation to Terezin until 1945. Director Radok, the son of a Catholic mother and a Jewish father, grew up in a Bohemian village and spent much of the war in hiding before being sent to a forced labor camp for mischlings in Poland. Both his father and grandfather died in Terezin. Based on his experiences, Kolár took a conciliatory attitude toward his gentile countrymen; based on his experience, Radok did not. In its attitude and attention to detail, Distant Journey was the most Jewish film made in Czechoslovakia up until that time and perhaps ever.”

Read the full article on Tablet’s website.

Laemmle Theatres will open Distant Journey July 9 at the Royal and Town Center and on watch.laemmle.com.

https://vimeo.com/542776321

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

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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.

Laemmle Theatres is Reopening April 9! Plus ‘The Mole Agent’ and Other New Films

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Dear moviegoers,

Now that L.A. County’s health department has announced we have left the purple tier and entered the red, we are thrilled to announce that we will reopen on April 9, 2021 at 25% capacity! If the County is in the orange tier at that time, we’ll go with 50% capacity. Our veteran general managers have returned, like cavalry coming over the hill, to ready our theaters and make sure the reopening will be safe. We’ll share the big date with you shortly. Go to www.laemmle.com/reopening for details on venues, films, advance ticketing, and more.

For those who are hesitant about returning, we understand. Consider, however, that a recent study — reported by the New York Times yesterday — showed that there has been a negative bias in national media coverage of the pandemic. International and U.S. local and regional coverage has been markedly more balanced. The virus is still an issue and we must not drop safety practices, but we want to share that there is good news, and not just regarding the resumption of commercial activity.

For now, virtual cinema is still all we are offering. And as always, we have some terrific new films available via Laemmle Virtual Cinema, starting with The Mole Agent, the warm, funny, Oscar-nominated feature documentary about an 83-year-old man who poses as a resident in a Chilean nursing home to investigate allegations of abuse. The powerful documentary Francesco portrays Pope Francis as he confronts gigantic issues such as the climate crisis, the refugee crisis, peace and religious intolerance, economic inequality, and more. Based on a real-life 1972 experiment, The Marijuana Conspiracy is a beautifully-made ensemble drama about an outlandish study on the effects of ever-increasing doses of tetrahydrocannabinol on young women. William Shatner and Jean Smart star in the Palm Springs-set Senior Moment. He plays a retired NASA test pilot fighting to regain his driver’s licence and impounded car who meets Smart’s character on a bus. Kuessipan is a Canadian film about two girls in a Quebec Innu community whose longtime friendship is shaken when one of them falls for a white boy. Her Name is Chef spotlights six bad-ass, inspiring, sheroes of the restaurant industry. We’re also screening Charles Gounod’s Faust, filmed lived at the famed Teatro Real in Madrid in 2018. Finally we’ll have two gallery experience films: Water Lilies of Monet: The Magic of Water, which recounts the story of Monsieur Claude’s groundbreaking series of paintings of Giverny, and The Prado Museum: A Collection of Wonders, which offers viewers a spell-binding experience through the works of Vélazquez, Rubens, Titian, Mantegna, Bosch, Goya, El Greco and more.

‘Soros’ and Other New Films

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[JUMP TO FILMS]

Dear Laemmle Fans,

Do you lie awake at night, tossing and turning in a cold sweat, craving the return of hot-buttered-popcorn? If so, Laemmle Theatres is here to help: you can stop by our North Hollywood location this weekend for our final PopCorn Pop-Up event of the year. Laemmle Virtual Cinema may be here to stay, but this weekend is your LAST CHANCE to fully realize the Laemmle-At-Home experience with a Movie Night Combo ($2 off with recent online film rental).

On that note… this week’s virtual lineup begins with the bio-doc Soros, highlighting the complicated career and public standing of the billionaire investor, philanthropist, and Holocaust-survivor for which it’s named. Other outstanding documentaries include Born To Be, concerning a pioneering hospital center for transgender medicine and surgery, as well as the investigative Romanian film Collective, a deep dive into corruption and fraud following a deadly nightclub fire in 2015.

The documentary train rolls on with Coded Bias, a fascinating foray into racial bias within facial-recognition algorithms, as uncovered by 29-year-old MIT Media Lab researcher Joy Buolamwini. Next up is Koshien, a touching Japanese film which follows a high-school baseball team as they compete for their national championship. Our final new documentary of the week is Manny Kirchheimer’s Free Time, an homage to New York City composed entirely of footage originally shot from 1958-1960.

We’re also offering a selection of new foreign dramas, from the refined French period-piece The Black Book of Father Dinis, to the “superbly imaginative” animated Japanese film No.7 Cherry Lane (Hollywood Reporter). There’s also the action-thriller Knuckledust, as well as two lighter entries: the independent romantic-comedy Modern Persuasion, and the absurdly fantastical and historically re-visionary Canadian black-comedy The 20th Century.

All the best,

Greg Laemmle

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Laemmle Virtual Cinema
New Releases for Friday November 20 • Click posters for “Watch Now” instructions.

                                        

‘Monsoon’ and Other New Films

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[JUMP TO FILMS]

Dear Laemmle Fans,

There’s mixed news on the Coronavirus this week, as new treatment approvals and encouraging reports of vaccine effectiveness have been overshadowed by rising case counts and positivity rates across the nation. As we approach the holidays, it’s important to maintain vigilance, and continue to practice the safety guidelines established by the medical community: keep washing your hands, keep wearing your masks, and keep watching movies on Laemmle Virtual Cinema. Or something like that…

New releases this week include the steamy romantic drama Monsoon, starring Henry Golding as a British man returning to Vietnam after fleeing the American war years prior. Other dramas include Dirty God, a character study and societal critique from the United Kingdom, and Antigone, a modern French-Canadian re-interpretation of the Greek tragedy.

Next up is Divine Love, a dystopian science-fiction romance set in a futuristic neon Brazil. Theres also the enigmatic thriller Make Up, from talented first-time director Claire Oakley, as well as today’s only new documentary: Queen of Hearts, concerning the groundbreaking feminist artist Audrey Flack.

We’re also offering a variety of excellent action-oriented films, a slight departure from our traditional programming. New releases include the WWII drama Recon, the satirical law enforcement training video Survival Skills, and the home-grown American thriller Blindfire, detailing the aftermath of a police shooting gone wrong. Last up in the genre category is a special presentation of Action USA, a re-release of the “extremely bonkers” 1980’s stunt film (Entertainment Weekly).

We conclude this week’s list of virtual titles with three other re-released classics: there’s 1985’s Smooth Talk (featuring a breakthrough role from a young Laura Dern), the French New Wave compilation film Six In Paris, and lastly Francisca, the opulent masterpiece from Portuguese director Manoel de Oliveira. Whether you’ve seen these throw-back films or not, try watching any classic movie this weekend… though the times may have changed, the stories – and the lessons therein – remain the same.

All the best,

Greg Laemmle

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P.S. Make sure to stop by our Glendale location this weekend for some hot buttered popcorn, and more of your favorite movie snacks! We’ll be open on Friday from 4:00 to 8:00 PM, and on Saturday from 2:00 to 6:00 PM, as part of our Pop-Corn Pop-Ups program.

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Laemmle Virtual Cinema
New Releases for Friday November 13 • Click posters for “Watch Now” instructions.