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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.”

Greg Laemmle on the return of the senior moviegoer.

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We know that over the past four years, you may have become accustomed to hearing bad news from us.  So we are pleased to share some good news. Qualified good news. But still, a sign of improvement.

It appears that older audiences are returning in larger numbers. That’s welcome news for all of us at Laemmle Theatres, and at art houses across the U.S. Before the pandemic, the hand wringing was about the “graying” of the arthouse audience. But since reopening, as arthouses have had success with younger-skewing films, the concern instead has been about how to reconnect with the older audiences that were once weekly guests at our theaters.  

Now, we love showing films like HUNDREDS OF BEAVERS and LOVE LIES BLEEDING. But we also love showing the English-language period films (i.e., Merchant Ivory films), foreign-language romantic dramas (pick your prototypical French film) and non-studio American independent films that are aimed at an audience that grew up in a world without cell phones and the internet. And since reopening, while we’ve had some success with films like THE DUKE, THE TASTE OF THINGS and MOVING ON, we can’t help but notice that the numbers are still not where they would have been in the days before COVID.

But starting at the end of 2023, it felt as if things were beginning to turn around a bit. Films like ANATOMY OF A FALL and THE HOLDOVERS made more of a mark at the box office than “comparable” films did in 2021 and 2022.  And you also have FALLEN LEAVES doing more business than almost any prior film from director Aki Kaurismäki.

So far this year, and leaving aside films that were part of the Oscar race, films like DRIVING MADELEINE, ONE LIFE, THE OLD OAK, FAREWELL MR. HAFFMANN, COUP DE CHANCE and WICKED LITTLE LETTERS are performing better. In fact, the latter four are hanging around, showing good word-of-mouth. These films are still doing a fraction of the business that they would have done pre-pandemic. But better is good. And hopefully, we and our distributor partners can build on this trend.

“When pandemic restrictions eased, many couldn’t wait to get back to the movie theater,” wrote Jon Keller of CBS last year. “But a new study found older adults are in no rush to return. And that trend is about more than just fear of COVID. Before the pandemic, people over 40 bought 41% of all movie tickets in the U.S. and Canada.”

It’s not COVID rates, which a quick check of the L.A. County Department of Public Health website shows are vanishingly low. And the fact remains that seeing a movie in a theater instead of at home is still 1000% better. (We’ll never tire of quoting the filmmaker Andrey Zvyagintsev, who compared watching a movie at home to reading a novel while skipping every other word.)

According to one of Variety’s recent dispatches from the annual trade show CinemaCon, “the box office hasn’t recaptured its pre-pandemic stride — studios estimate that roughly 15% to 20% of frequent moviegoers have yet to resume their old entertainment habits now that COVID has dissipated. Plus, the labor strikes that consumed the media industry for much of the previous year as actors and writers hit the picket lines resulted in production delays that left theaters with fewer movies to hawk on their marquees.”

Big budget popcorn movies that mostly appeal to younger audiences can be fantastic and we happily screen them at some of our venues, but those kinds of films are not Laemmle Theatres’ popcorn and butter, to alter a phrase. The current drama CIVIL WAR may be a surprise hit because it combines action movie elements with serious subject matter, drawing cinephiles of all ages. But what about films with zero guns which are purely cerebral? If audiences don’t turn out for these films, fewer will get made or picked up for distribution; it’s just supply and demand.

How do we reach older moviegoers when the L.A. Times isn’t running reviews?

We are happy to see some new signs of strength recently. But more would be better. So if you know an older moviegoer who used to attend regularly, but no longer does, we’d like to hear why not. Because the existence of a local movie theater that can show, for example, classic reissues like CLASSE TOUS RISQUE (opening May 3 at the Royal!) or the artful woman-made Senegalese drama BANEL & ADAMA (opening June 14 at the Royal!) is not a given.

Anniversary Classics in April ~ LA CÉRÉMONIE, WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE?, RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY & CHOCOLAT.

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Spring forward by looking back at some classic films next month. We’ve got two modern French classics, Claude Chabrol’s dark masterpiece La Cérémonie (April 2 at the Royal with actress Jacqueline Bisset in person for a Q&A, and Chocolat by Claire Denis (April 24 at multiple theaters). We’ll also be screening two quintessential films from the milestone movie year 1962: What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? and Ride the High Country, to coincide with the publication of the paperback edition of Cinema ’62: The Greatest Year at the Movies. The films will have separate screenings at two different Laemmle locations, with What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? only at the NoHo 7 in North Hollywood on April 11, and Ride the High Country only at Newhall in Santa Clarita on April 16. Both films are notably among nine 1962 movies selected by the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress for “historical,  cultural, or aesthetic significance.”

Acclaimed French auteur Claude Chabrol was one of the masters of the French New Wave, along with Francois Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, and Eric Rohmer. His acclaimed films of the 1950s, Le Beau Serge and The Cousins, established Chabrol’s reputation as an astute observer of contemporary French society.

Sandrine Bonnaire and Isabelle Huppert in ‘La Cérémonie.’

He continued to demonstrate satirical gifts in his later films but added an interest in suspense and crime stories with such films as La Femme Infidele, This Man Must Die, Le Boucher, and Violette, starring Isabelle Huppert. His partnership with Huppert continued over several films, including a new adaptation of Flaubert’s Madame Bovary and Story of Women, a bold study of a woman executed for performing illegal abortions during World War II.

Chabrol re-teamed with Huppert, who joined rising actress Sandrine Bonnaire and veterans Jacqueline Bisset and Jean-Pierre Cassel, for La Cérémonie, adapted from the novel by acclaimed mystery writer Ruth Rendell. Bonnaire plays a maid who is hired to work for a wealthy family living in an isolated mansion in Brittany. Eventually she strikes up a friendship with a savvy postal worker living in the nearby town, played by Huppert. The two young women devise a plan to take advantage of Bonnaire’s employers, played by Bisset and Cassel.

Huppert won the Cesar award, France’s equivalent of the Oscar, for her performance, and Bisset earned a nomination for Best Supporting Actress. The Guardian named La Cérémonie as one of the 25 greatest crime films of all time. Craig Williams of the British Film Institute called it “perhaps Chabrol’s greatest achievement.” Both the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and the National Society of Film Critics named it the Best Foreign Language Film of 1995.

The cult classic What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? stars Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, two screen legends from the Golden Age of Hollywood, who were facing career fadeouts by 1962, the plight of aging actresses both then and now. Studio disinterest and the lack of appropriate roles forced them to seek unorthodox parts, and the screen adaptation of a Henry Farrell novel about the intense psychological rivalry between two reclusive sisters, former actresses holed up in Hollywood obscurity, seemed tailor-made. Producer-director Robert Aldrich hired Lukas Heller to write the screenplay, and the expert mix of black comedy and suspense, along with powerful acting by the cast, made the film a worldwide success. The movie scored a trifecta: a box-office bonanza, pop culture phenomenon, and show business sensation. It also revived the careers of both Davis and Crawford, restoring their places in the Hollywood pantheon, and spawned a genre of Grande Dame Guignol that gave veteran actresses roles for the next decade.

Joan Crawford and Bette Davis in “What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?’

Part of the appeal of the film was the alleged off-screen rivalry between Davis and Crawford, and that rumored feud fostered high anticipation for both the press and fans of the day. “Feud,” a 2017 miniseries about the rivalry between Davis and Crawford while shooting the movie, sparked the most recent interest in the film. When the film was nominated for five Academy Awards, with Bette Davis among the Best Actress nominees, the feud was putatively exacerbated by the omission of Crawford. It won the Oscar for black-and-white costume design, and among its other nominations were Victor Buono (Best Supporting Actor) in his screen debut, and master cinematographer Ernest Haller (Oscar winner for Gone With the Wind), who had worked with both stars in their 1940s heyday. Among critical reception at the time, the Chicago Daily News saw “…the outlines of a modern Greek tragedy. Yet it is great fun too, because this is pure cinema drama set in a real house of horrors.”

Ride the High Country is now regarded as one of the all-time western classics and was only the second feature film by director Sam Peckinpah, who had honed his writing-directing skills on  television westerns. Peckinpah also had a hand in revising an original screenplay by writer N.B.  Stone, Jr. about two aging former lawmen tasked with a gold delivery from a mining camp at the turn of the twentieth century. Hollywood Golden Age actors Randolph Scott (in his final film) and Joel McCrea portray the venerable gunfighters, appropriate casting for the veteran actors who had extended their careers in post-war screen oaters. The film also features Mariette Hartley in her screen debut and character actors Warren Oates, L. Q. Jones, James Anderson, Edgar Buchanan, and R. G. Armstrong, with expert color cinematography by Lucien Ballard, another Golden Age veteran who became a frequent Peckinpah collaborator.

Randolph Scott & Joel McCrea in ‘Ride the High Country.’

Ride the High Country’s setting at the twilight of the Old West and its theme of men who have outlived their times but cling to their moral code (for the most part) would be revisited by Peckinpah later in his career, most notably at the end of the decade in The Wild Bunch and into the 1970s in The Ballad of Cable Hogue and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. Although The Wild Bunch would ensure his legacy, the underseen Ride the High Country is now considered a seminal film in the western canon and his first masterpiece.

MGM underwent a regime change after the film’s production wrapped and its new president thought so poorly of the film that it was relegated to the neighborhood theater circuits as the lower half of double bills, which effectively killed its U.S. box office. But critics worldwide rescued the film from obscurity and heralded the arrival of a major new talent in Peckinpah. Among the accolades were the Paris Council of Film Critics’ ranking as one of the best films of the year. Newsweek placed it atop their year-end ten best list, and upon its original release exclaimed, “In fact,  everything about this picture has the ring of truth, from the unglamorous settings to the flavorful dialogue and the natural acting, Ride the High Country is pure gold.”

Claire Denis drew on her own childhood experiences growing up in colonial French Africa for Chocolat, her multilayered, languorously absorbing feature debut, which explores many of the themes that would recur throughout her work. Returning to the town where she grew up in Cameroon after many years living in France, a white woman (Mireille Perrier) reflects on her relationship with Protée (Isaach De Bankolé), a Black servant with whom she formed a friendship while not fully grasping the racial divides that governed their worlds. We’ll show Chocolat April 24 at the Claremont, Glendale, Newhall and Royal.

Mireille Perrier in ‘Chocolat.’

 

Laemmle Oscar Contest Results!

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1st Place: Paola Lainez with 21 correct answers + the tie breaker question about the show’s running time.
2nd Place: Tami Lefko with 21 correct answers.
3rd Place: Kelly Kilmer with 20 correct answers.
Winners, we will soon be in touch with your movie pass prizes. Check out our snazzy pie charts for the full breakdown of how everyone voted.
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We had two people correctly guess 21 out of 23 categories! The top spot was ultimately decided by the customer that came closest to guessing the telecast run-time of 203 minutes! Best Actress Winner Emma Stone for Poor Things (still in theaters for at least one more week) was only chosen to win by 30% of our Laemmle patrons, who may have thought Lily Gladstone’s SAG win made her the favorite; nearly 60% of the vote tallied for Ms. Gladstone for Killers of the Flower Moon. Best Adapted Screenplay was also another changeling category, with votes close between Barbie, Oppenheimer, and eventual winner American Fiction.
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Thanks for playing! No time like the present to start thinking about 2025 Oscar favorites.
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“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

“Accepting and recovering from loss, undoubtedly, is the intellectual motor and the emotional reason for making the animated version of ROBOT DREAMS.”

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Next Wednesday the 6th we’ll be screening Robot Dreams at four of our seven theaters, offering a chance to see this lovely Academy Award-nominated animated feature on a big screen with an audience before the Oscars. The adventures of Dog and Robot in New York City during the 1980s is appropriate for all but the very young.

Director Pablo Berger’s Decalogue:

ROBOT DREAMS is a reflection on friendship. 

It’s importance and its fragility. The passing of time, loss but also about overcoming it. Why do we constantly put our relationships in danger? 

ROBOT DREAMS is an animated film. 

With ROBOT DREAMS I wanted to explore the infinite narrative possibilities of animation. A medium where everything is possible and there are no formal limits. 

ROBOT DREAMS is a sensorial journey. 

A story written with images, sound and music. A film for daydreaming and accompanying Dog and Robot on their adventures and misadventures. An experience to feel. 

ROBOT DREAMS is our interpretation of the graphic world of Sara Varon. 

Varon is one of the best known illustrators from the United States. Her anthropomorphic world of animals with human behavior who live in New York is a constant in all her books. Her stories, her recognizable style and her expressive use of color, make her an exceptional graphic artist. 

ROBOT DREAMS is a musical. 

From the first image to the end, music is present, giving voice to the characters and intensifying their emotions. The soundtrack combines original music by Alfonso de Vilallonga with great musical hits, from the legendary September by Earth, Wind & Fire to the 80s Let’s Go by The Feelies. 

ROBOT DREAMS is my “love letter” to New York. 

The spectators will travel back in time to the NYC of the 80s. They’ll live in a little apartment in East Village, they’ll take the subway to go to Chinatown, they’ll eat a hotdog from a street vendor on 5th Avenue or go skating in Central Park. ROBOT DREAMS is my particular homage to New York, the city that took me in for a decade and in which I became a filmmaker. 

ROBOT DREAMS is for all audiences. 

I want to captivate the spectators, the youngest and the oldest, from all around, telling them a story full of fantasy but as real as life itself. A different film for each one. 

ROBOT DREAMS is another twist in my filmography. 

My aim as a writer-director is always to surprise the audience. I try to make each one of my films a journey to the unknown. Torremolinos 73, Blancanieves and Abracadabra were that. Now it is the turn of ROBOT DREAMS. 

Pablo Berger

ROBOT DREAMS is a Spanish-French coproduction with an international focus. We merged our artistic and economic resources with France in order to carry out this project. ROBOT DREAMS had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival and it then participated in the Annecy Animation Festival. As with my previous films, it will be released worldwide. 

ROBOT DREAMS is full of emotions. 

A fantastical fable where a glance contains the boldest action. And where emotion comes from the “human” and sincere behavior of our protagonists when faced with adversity.

Director’s Notes 

Origin 

Over ten years ago, when I was embarked on my chimerical, but finally real, endeavor of making the film Blancanieves, I came across the graphic novel Robot Dreams by Sara Varon. I was gripped from the first pages. 

I didn’t read it, I devoured it. Like all good tales, its story took me to an unknown but recognizable place, where I felt at home. I was captivated by its temporal structure, it made me laugh and cry, and most importantly it made me reflect on friendship. While reading it I remembered my great friends, the ones who are still by my side, but above all, those who moved away or whom I lost along the way… I can say that Robot Dreams has reconciled me with my conflicting feelings about the loss of loved ones. Accepting and recovering from loss, undoubtedly, is the intellectual motor and the emotional reason for making the animated version of ROBOT DREAMS. 

The World of Sara Varon 

Sara Varon, the author of the homonymous graphic novel which inspired ROBOT DREAMS, is an artist with a world of her own. Her stories are fables inhabited by the most diverse animals with human behavior, who coexist in a recognizable, nostalgic New York. The diversity of their fauna reflects perfectly the cocktail of races and ethnicities that live in the Big Apple, giving her stories a greater Universality. Our interpretation of the world of Sara Varon has been from a respectful place, but also from a place of total freedom. Fortunately, from the start, Sara gave us “carte blanche” to create “our” particular ROBOT DREAMS and adapt it to a new medium, film. 

The “ligne claire,” A Visual Punch 

The graphic style of both the graphic novel and the film ROBOT DREAMS derives from the “Ligne Claire” style, with origins in the French- Belgian school and Hergé, the author of Tintin as its greatest exponent. It is characterized by a narrative way of representing reality using continuous clean lines, flat colors and limited shadows. A visual punch. A way of drawing that made a comeback with great popularity in the 

80s with the comics by Serge Clerc, Yves Chaland or Floc’h. In Spain, its ambassador was the publication Cairo and its greatest representative Daniel Torres. A style, the ligne claire, which today is again very present in the comic world thanks to Adrian Tomine or Chris Ware. 

A big part of my love for cinema comes from comics. 

ROBOT DREAMS, the film, was thought as a comic turned into animated drawings. To achieve this, we have used the characteristics typical of both media and the “Deep Focus” technique, meaning all elements in every shot. 

Writing with Images 

It has been over a century since the first animation film, Fantamagorie (1908) by Émil Cohl. A short film that retains its magic and its ability to amaze us based only on the power of the line. Of the image. That

is the essence of cinema, writing with images. As a filmmaker it is a challenge and at the same time an enormous pleasure to write stories without using dialog. 

After my film Blancanieves, I wanted to go back with ROBOT DREAMS to the essence of pure cinema. But this time from another angle, that of animation. A form of representation and storytelling that has no limits. 

The films by Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd have been mandatory viewings for the ROBOT DREAMS crew. The wisdom, humanity and humor present in their work have been a great source of inspiration. 

The World of Dreams 

An essential part of this film are the dreams of our protagonist, Robot. Cinema is daydreaming. Robot’s dreams are a delirious, Freudian, amazing expression of his most intimate desire to meet his friend Dog again. It’s his “return to Ithaca”. 

One of my reference comics, and graphic oracles, is Little Nemo in Slumberland (1905). A comic strip where the imagination of its author, Winsor McCay, takes us along with little Nemo on his journey to the “World of Dreams”, Slumberland. A place where everything is possible and in which the unexpected narrative twists follow on endlessly. With ROBOT DREAMS our aim has been the same: to put the spectator on a rollercoaster of continuous surprises. 

Art Direction 

As a fan of comics and illustration I have been an admirer of the work of José Luis Ágreda for over twenty five years. 

He has an impeccable technique and a unique sense of color. His exceptional work in the animation film Buñuel in The Labyrinth of the Turtles (2019) and his experience in the prestigious animation studio Cartoon Saloon, made him my first option as Art Director for ROBOT DREAMS. 

A great team of over twenty artists under José Luis’ direction developed concepts, characters, backgrounds, props, color script… the Robot Dreams world. Particular mention for the person in charge of character design, Daniel Fernández Casas. A young designer of enormous talent who has worked on some of the most important films in recent animation such as Klaus or the latest film by Benjamin Renner for the Illumination studio. His first mission on ROBOT DREAMS was to “redraw” our protagonists from the comic to a new medium, cinema. He gave them a fabulous make-over. Then, along with his team, he had to design the most varied jungle of New Yorkers. Hundreds. Sorry, thousands of extras. Be on the lookout. 

The Dreamed Film 

In preparing all my previous projects, I’ve always made a detailed storyboard of the entire film. For me, the storyboard is the treasure map. “The dreamed and edited film” as Hitchcock said. That is what I felt

my move to animation as something natural. Without being aware of it, my previous work process was perfect for the dynamics of animation. 

I used my experience in live action cinema to visualize the story in animated images. A cinematic language where the editing, the composition, the point of view, the visual poetry, the ellipsis and off-screen were essential elements when it came to telling the story of Dog and Robot. 

The process of doing the storyboard and the animatics of the film took a full year. We were fortunate in having the storyboard artist Maca Gil, who had just worked on My Father’s Dragon. Maca is a great artist who with two strokes is capable of expressing a range of emotions or representing very complex shots with precision. The team was completed by the editor Fernando Franco and the music editor Yuko Harami. 

Fernando and I had worked together on Blancanieves, and our experience had been so incredible that we were looking for an opportunity to repeat it. For a director his editor is like his dance partner, and Fernando and I dance wonderfully together. 

Yuko Harami has been the music editor of all my films. There is no making them without her. In ROBOT DREAMS she established the musical concept, looking for and manipulating pre-existing music or “temps” to give emotion and melodic unity to the animatics. Yuko has a unique sensitivity in the selection of this music, which later is of great use for inspiring the composers in their final musical pieces. 

Something particular of animation is the Animation storyboard or animatic. The “almost” final edited film. As a writer and director, this is, undoubtedly, the time that the final result is closest to “my dreamed film”. 

The Animation 

ROBOT DREAMS is a film that looks at the past, at traditional animation, but it is conceived for today’s audience. The film doesn’t exclude any kind of spectator. Classic animation, in two dimensions, drawn frame by frame, has its own 8 expressiveness, humanity and empathy. In ROBOT DREAMS, we have sought a fluidity and a line that reflect the story and its characters with simplicity. And coming from working with actors, I have given maximum importance to the eyes. Our animated characters’ gaze has been the essential element in obtaining performances full of life. In an animation film, in some way, the animators are the actors, they are the ones who give life to each character. Working with them has, definitely, been one of the most gratifying experiences on this long journey. 

During the animation stage of the project I relied on the great artist and animation director Benoît Feroumont. When I saw his last short film Le Lion et le Singe I immediately thought that he would be the ideal collaborator for ROBOT DREAMS. Le Lion et le Singe is a wonderful short film full of truth, tenderness and humor. And in addition, also without dialogue. Benoît has great experience as director of animation and has worked on outstanding films such as The Triplets of Belleville by Sylvain Chomet, or

The Book of Kells by Tom Moore. His know-how and sensitivity have been essential to successfully lead a team of over sixty animators. 

Music and Sound 

Collaborating again with Alfonso de Vilallonga, music composer for my films Blancanieves and Abracadabra, has been, once again, an enormous pleasure. Alfonso is an eclectic, surprising composer, with a prodigious capacity for creating music full of emotion, feelings and rhythm. In ROBOT DREAMS he has done it again thanks to the delicate piano melodies and the cool jazz, a very New York urban sound. 

The film’s sound design is a jungle of sound. From domestic environments and noises to the loud, bustling streets of the different neighborhoods in NYC. The sound design for ROBOT DREAMS is the third dimension. Fabiola Ordoyo, with whom I worked on my previous film, Abracadabra, is an alchemist of sound, capable of achieving the perfect color for any atmosphere or sound effect. But unlike in live action film where the base and backbone is the “location sound” recorded on set, in an animation film the designer has to create absolutely all the sounds. A challenge.

“Brevity is the soul of wit” and much more: the 2024 Oscar-nominated shorts open this Friday.

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As usual, Shakespeare put it best (with, of course, a touch of irony, putting the words in the mouth of the long-winded Polonius). We open the animated shorts this Friday at the NoHo and Newhall; February 23 at the Town Center, Glendale, and Claremont; and March 1 at the Monica Film Center. We open the live action shorts this Friday at the Glendale and Newhall; February 23 at the NoHo and Claremont; and March 1 at the Town Center and Monica Film Center. We open the short documentaries Friday at the Royal and Town Center; we’ll also screen them Saturday and Sunday mornings at the Newhall, Glendale and Claremont starting the next day.

The animated nominees:

Our Uniform – Yegane Moghaddam, 7 min., Iran (in Farsi); Letter to a Pig – Tal Kantor and Amit R. Gicelter, 17 min., France/Israel (in Hebrew); Pachyderm– Stéphanie Clément and Marc Rius, 11 min., USA (in English); Ninety-Five Senses – Jerusha Hess and Jared Hess, 13 min., USA (in English); War is Over! Inspired by the Music of John & Yoko – Dave Mullins and Brad Booker, 11 min., USA; Also screening: Wild Summon – Karni Arieli and Saul Freed, 14 min., UK (in English, narrated by Marianne Faithfull); nominated for a BAFTA and a Cristal Award at the Annecy International Animated film Festival; and I’m Hip – John Musker, 4 min., USA; nominated for a Cristal Award at the Annecy International Animated film Festival.

From ‘Letter to a Pig.’

The live action nominees:

The After – Misan Harriman and Nicky Bentham, 18 min., UK (in English); Red, White and Blue – Nazrin Choudhury and Sara McFarlane, 23 min., USA (in English); Knight of Fortune – Lasse Lyskjær Noer and Christian Norlyk, 25 min., Denmark (in Swedish/Danish); Invincible – Vincent René-Lortie and Samuel Caron, 29 min., Canada (in French); The Wonderful World of Henry Sugar – Wes Anderson and Steven Rales, 40 min., US/UK (in English).

From ‘The After.’

The documentary nominees:

Nǎi Nai and Wài Pó – Sean Wang and Sam Davis, 17 min., USA (in Mandarin); The Barber of Little Rock – John Hoffman and Christine Turner, 35 min., USA (in English); Island in Between – S. Leo Chiang and Jean Tsien, 20 min., Taiwan (in English/Mandarin); The ABC’s of Book Banning – Sheila Nevins and Trish Adlesic, 27 min., USA (in English); The Last Repair Shop – Ben Proudfoot and Kris Bowers, 39 min., USA (in English).

From ‘The ABCs of Book Banning.’