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See IDA Documentary Awards Nominees at Laemmle: ‘Faya Dayi,’ ‘Writing with Fire,’ ‘Not Going Quietly,’ and more.

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The International Documentary Association just announced the nominees for its 37th annual awards, and we’re screening or soon to screen almost a dozen from this cinematic treasure trove:

FAYA DAYI is a triple nominee for Best Feature, Director and Cinematography and is available on Laemmle Virtual Cinema.

NOT GOING QUIETLY also garnered three nominations: Best Feature, Director and Writing. It, too, is on LVC.

We open the animated FLEE (Best Feature and Director) in January.

We have Best Feature nominee WOJNAROWICZ: F**K YOU F*GGOT F**KER  now on Laemmle Virtual Cinema.

We open Best Feature nominee WRITING WITH FIRE on November 26 at the Royal.

Pare Lorentz Award Winner and Best Cinematography nominee THE FIRST WAVE opens this Friday at the Monica Film Center. The filmmaker will attend for Q&A’s after the 7:30 PM screening on Saturday, November 20 and after the 4:40 screening on Sunday, November 21.

Best Cinematography nominee ASCENSION is available now on LVC.

Best Music Documentary Nominee LYDIA LUNCH is now on LVC.

We open Best Editing Nominee PROCESSION this Friday at our Glendale theater.

Finally, we open ABC News VideoSource Award Nominee LIKE A ROLLING STONE: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF BEN FONG-TORRES November 26 at the Monica Film Center.

A triple award winner at Sundance, the Albanian drama HIVE opens at the Royal and Playhouse this Friday, November 12. The filmmaker and lead actress will attend two Royal screenings for Q&As.

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Winner of the Audience, Directing and Grand Jury Prize for World Cinema at Sundance earlier this year, HIVE is an intense, beautifully wrought drama based on the true story of Fahrije, an Albanian war widow coping with poverty and patriarchy. New York cinephiles turned out in force at the Film Forum last weekend following Manohla Dargis’ rave review in the Times. Headlined “In the Aftermath of War, a Survivor Finds Herself: In a tough, taut drama, the director Blerta Basholli explores the lives of women whose husbands went missing in the Kosovo War,” here’s an excerpt: “The spare, tightly wound drama HIVE opens with the movie equivalent of a hand grabbing your throat. An unsmiling woman with a hard, monumental profile stands alone next to a truck. People mill around nearby, murmuring indistinctly. Abruptly, the woman ducks under some police tape and into the truck, where she hastily begins unzipping one white body bag after another and just as quickly scanning their contents, her nose wrinkling at the exposed bundles of tattered clothing, remnants of missing persons. She’s soon ejected by a worker, but her search continues.
Photo by Alexander Bloom.

“The woman, Fahrije (Yllka Gashi), is looking for her husband, one of the missing, who disappeared years ago during the Kosovo War. Now, with her two children and a disabled father-in-law, she struggles to keep the family going. She labors with the beehives that her husband once managed, selling jars of honey at a local market. Sales are modest and sometimes close to nonexistent, but the bees are her only means of scraping together a meager living. Every so often, she meets up with a women’s collective whose members face the same hurdles under the unhelpful watch of the town’s men. And she keeps looking for her husband — a haunting, troubling phantom.

Photo by Astrit Ibrahimi.

“A liberation story told with easy naturalism and broad political strokes, HIVE tracks Fahrije on her path to independence. (It’s based on the experiences of an Albanian Kosovo woman of the same name.) Like its protagonist, the movie is stern, direct and attentive to ordinary life. The writer-director Blerta Basholli doesn’t bludgeon you with the character’s miseries, or hold your emotions hostage. Fahrije isn’t lovable; sometimes she’s scarcely likable, which means she’s more of a human being than an emblem of virtuous suffering. She has her charms, though these tend to emerge in the intimacies she shares with her family and female friends like Naza (a piquant Kumrije Hoxha)…HIVE seizes and holds your interest simply through the drama created by sympathetic characters trying to surmount awful, unfair hurdles. Mostly, though, what holds you rapt is Gashi’s powerful, physically grounded performance, which lyrically articulates her taciturn character’s inner workings. Together, the performer and her director reveal the arc of a life through Fahrije’s gestures and in the hard lines of her jaw, in her unsmiling lips and in her quickly lowered gaze. And while the character’s stoicism seems like an unbreachable wall, these two women dismantle — and rebuild it — to stirring effect.”

Photo by Alexander Bloom.

HIVE writer-director Blerta Basholi, producer Yll Uka, and lead actress Yllka Gashi will participate in Q&As at the Royal after the 7:30 PM screenings on Friday and Saturday, November 12 and 13. Clayton Davis, President of the Latino Entertainment Journalists Association, will moderate the Friday Q&A.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Yqwb2IfyUY

 

“The three great escapes — smoking, drinking, bed.” LA DOLCE VITA 60th Anniversary Screenings November 17.

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Abroad Series present Federico Fellini’s masterpiece, LA DOLCE VITA, as part of the monthly revival series of great international classics. LA DOLCE VITA earned four Academy Award nominations in 1961, including Best Director Federico Fellini (the first time in Oscar history for a director of a foreign language film) and Best Original Screenplay. It won the Oscar for Piero Gherardi’s elegant costumes.

Marcello Mastroianni & Anita Ekberg.

Fellini’s sardonic epic about the decadence of modern Rome is one of the most influential of foreign films, and its influence can still be seen today in films like the recent international Oscar winner, The Great Beauty. Fellini even added a new word to our vocabulary when he introduced the character of the celebrity-chasing photographer, Paparazzo. Cruise along the Via Veneto with Marcello Mastroianni, then take a dip in the Trevi Fountain with the voluptuous Anita Ekberg. Writing in The New York Times, critic Bosley Crowther praised the film as a “brilliantly graphic estimation of a whole swath of society in sad decay.” Roger Ebert called it “an allegory, a cautionary tale of a man without a center…a handsome, weary, desperate man, who dreams of someday doing something good, but is trapped in a life of empty nights and lonely dawns.”

Anouk Aimée & Marcello Mastroianni.

Also starring Anouk Aimee, Nadia Gray, Walter Santesso, and Yvonne Furneaux, the 60th anniversary of LA DOLCE VITA will play for one night only on November 17 at 7:00 PM at the Royal, Playhouse 7, Glendale and Newhall.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyC_mJ7QjRc

Free Red BECOMING COUSTEAU Beanies Friday, October 29.

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Stay warm and emulate Frère Jacques: All BECOMING COUSTEAU ticket buyers for the Friday, October 29 screenings at the Claremont, Monica Film Center, Newhall, Town Center, and Playhouse* get a free beanie while supplies last!

*at the Playhouse, starting with the 7:30 PM show.

‘The Doors: Live At The Bowl ’68 Special Edition’ Screenings November 4th Only at the Claremont, Newhall, NoHo, Playhouse and Royal.

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On July 5th, 1968, The Doors lit up the storied stage of the Hollywood Bowl with a legendary performance that is widely considered to be the band’s finest captured on film. Performing on the back of their 3rd album release “Waiting For The Sun” and the US #1 single “Hello, I Love You,” the quartet had been honing their live performances over the previous two years and were in absolute peak form.

Now, on November 4th, 2021, in celebration of the 50th anniversary of The Doors final studio album L.A. WOMAN (1971), The Doors: Live At The Bowl ’68 Special Edition will transform movie theaters into concert venues, giving Doors fans around the world the closest experience to being there live alongside Jim Morrison, John Densmore, Ray Manzarek and Robby Krieger, who stated, “the magic that has been done to enhance the picture and sound quality of this show will make everyone feel as though they have a front row seat at the Hollywood Bowl.”

In celebration of L.A. WOMAN, this special event includes a brand-new musical performance and a conversation with John Densmore, Robby Krieger and Doors Manager, Jeff Jampol, filmed exclusively for the big screen. Here’s  a clip:

 

This theatrical “Special Edition” release creates an in-cinema experience for fans like no other. The film has now been remastered in stunning Dolby ATMOS® (where available) and 5.1 surround sound by Bruce Botnick, the original engineer & mixer for The Doors who recorded the live performance at the Hollywood Bowl in 1968 and co-produced L.A. WOMAN. Here’s another clip:

 

Meticulously restored from original camera negatives and remixed and mastered using original multi-track tapes, The Doors: Live At The Bowl ’68 Special Edition features the concert in its entirety, including “Hello, I Love You”, “The WASP (Texas Radio and the Big Beat)”, “Light My Fire” and “The End.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYxbYt8Tp48

FIRE SHUT UP IN MY BONES, the first opera by an African American composer to be produced at the Met, screens live at the Claremont & Playhouse October 23.

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Opening Night of the Metropolitan Opera’s 2021–22 season will be a historic occasion—the Met’s first performance of an opera by a Black composer, FIRE SHUT UP IN MY BONES. Laemmle Theatres will screen the opera live on Saturday, October 23 at our Claremont and Pasadena theaters. Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducts Grammy Award–winning jazz musician and composer Terence Blanchard’s adaptation of Charles M. Blow’s moving memoir, which The New York Times praised after its 2019 world premiere at Opera Theatre of Saint Louis as “bold and affecting” and “subtly powerful.” Featuring a libretto by filmmaker Kasi Lemmons, the opera tells a poignant and profound story about a young man’s journey to overcome a life of trauma and hardship. James Robinson and Camille A. Brown—two of the creators of the Met’s sensational recent production of Porgy and Bess—co-direct this new staging; Brown, who is also the production’s choreographer, becomes the first Black director to create a mainstage Met production. Baritone Will Liverman, one of opera’s most exciting young artists, stars as Charles, alongside sopranos Angel Blue as Destiny/Loneliness/Greta and Latonia Moore as Billie.

From Zachary Woolfe’s New York Times piece September 23 piece A Black Composer Finally Arrives at the Metropolitan Opera: Terence Blanchard, best known for scoring Spike Lee films, reopens the 138-year-old opera company with FIRE SHUT UP IN MY BONES:

“In 1919, William Grant Still was in his 20s — many years from the eminence he would later enjoy as the widely acknowledged “dean” of Black American composers. But he had already begun to write operas, and he boldly approached the nation’s most important company: the Metropolitan Opera in New York. We have no evidence he got an answer. Two decades later, Still was far more established, with his “Afro-American Symphony” widely performed. In 1935, he sent the Met “Blue Steel,” its music infused with jazz and spirituals. “Not worthy of consideration,” a company official wrote in an internal submissions ledger. Then Still wrote another opera, “Troubled Island,” about the Haitian revolution, with a libretto by the poet Langston Hughes. “The Metropolitan was our first target, logically enough,” he later recalled. That, too, was dismissed. “It would be a mere waste of time,” a 1942 entry in that submissions ledger went, “to go into details about this opera which is an immature product of two dilettantes.” The Met, the country’s largest performing arts institution, opened in 1883, and in its 138 years has put on some 300 titles. Not one has been by a Black composer.

“Until now. Closed for a year and a half by the pandemic and rocked by the nationwide uprising for racial justice, the company will reopen on Monday with “Fire Shut Up in My Bones,” by Terence Blanchard, a jazz trumpeter and composer best known for scoring a host of Spike Lee films. “It’s a phenomenal honor, and it’s an overwhelming thing,” Blanchard, 59, said after a recent rehearsal. “But at the same time it’s bittersweet. I was just in St. Louis and heard the William Grant Still piece.” (Still’s one-act “Highway 1, U.S.A.” was done there this summer.) “And I’m like, OK, he was around. I’m honored, but I’m not the first qualified person to be here, that’s for sure.””

Click here to read the rest of the piece.

From Charles M. Blow’s September 29 New York Times piece It Wasn’t Just My Life on That Stage. So Was My Purpose:

“I strongly believe in therapy, the idea of talking things out, working them through, as a way of making it over. A therapist once told me that I liked to keep my glass filled to the brim, but in so doing, there was no space for the extra and unexpected in life. When those things came, as they surely would, I would inevitably feel overwhelmed because my cup would always overflow. His analysis was spot on, and it has stayed with me. I have tried at times not to keep my cup so full, but that instinct feels foreign to me. If I am not on the edge of too much, I don’t feel like myself, I don’t feel like I’m living up to my potential and aspirations.

“And so I have adjusted in another way: I have learned not to bask in any adulation too fully or feel any pain too deeply. I have learned to keep my life as even and steady as I can, so that I can better survive it and also better enjoy it. This is one reason the past few days have felt so otherworldly to me. On Monday, “Fire Shut Up in My Bones,” the opera composed by Terence Blanchard and based on my memoir of the same name, premiered at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. It was the first opera on that stage by a Black composer in the institution’s 138-year history.”

Click here to read the rest of the piece.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEalBSU0UuI

 

“I saw my job as getting people to know and love the sea…because you only protect what you love.” Jacque-Yves Cousteau in BECOMING COUSTEAU.

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Captain Jacques-Yves Cousteau was one of the 20th century’s great explorers, a filmmaker and beloved adventurer who documented the exotic wonders below the ocean with pioneering equipment that yielded a Cannes Film Festival-winning film, two Academy Awards®, and a pair of iconic and long-running television shows, “The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau” and “The Cousteau Odyssey.” His work became synonymous with life on the sea and on his famous boat, the Calypso. He authored over 50 books on his aquatic life and invented the Aqua-Lung, advancing the boundaries of scuba diving. Yet, it was as an environmentalist that Cousteau would have his most lasting impacts, alerting the world about the warming oceans decades before the climate crisis made headlines. Instrumental in protecting Antarctica and taking part in the first Earth Summit, Cousteau’s insight into what needs to be done for the planet continues to inspire generations.

In BECOMING COUSTEAU, from National Geographic Documentary Films and opening October 22 at the Laemmle Claremont, Monica Film Center, Newhall, Playhouse and Town Center, two-time Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Liz Garbus (All In: The Fight for Democracy, What Happened, Miss Simone?) poured through 550 hours of archival material and rarely-seen footage to let Cousteau’s films, words and recollections tell his own story. BECOMING COUSTEAU shines a spotlight on the man many of us grew up worshipping yet knew very little about while introducing him to a new generation. After prospecting for oil companies to support his globe-trotting adventuring, he had a late-in-life awakening and became the first great advocate for ocean preservation. Cousteau led a somewhat fractured family life, checkered with great loss, but he remained true to his one great love — the sea. Over 100 hours of audio journal entries, interviews and observations from collaborators and crew members add to this inside look at Cousteau. The documentary also chronicles his first wife and collaborator Simone Melchior (known aboard the Calypso as “The Shepherdess”), his family experiences, his second wife Francine Triplet, the creation of The Cousteau Society and the crucial work they do, and his evolution into one of the most important environmental voices of the 20th century, whose words and images are more vital today than ever.

Jacques Cousteau wears his iconic red diving cap aboard his ship Calypso, circa 1970s. (Credit: The Cousteau Society)

“Succeeds beautifully in its goal of reminding viewers of Jacques Cousteau’s important legacy of underwater exploration and environmental activism.” ~ Frank Scheck, Hollywood Reporter

Calypso crew members dive in dark waters while filming a scene for The Silent World. (Credit: National Geographic/Luis Marden)

“BECOMING COUSTEAU will well serve as a reminder and clarifier for those who remember him from their youth, and an invigorating introduction for those meeting him for the first time.” ~ Todd McCarthy, Deadline Hollywood Daily

Jacques Cousteau in a diving suit, 1972. (Credit: Yousuf Karsh)

“Compelling throughout, BECOMING COUSTEAU will make you want to strap on some flippers, grab a mask and plunge into an ocean near you.” ~ Christopher Llewellyn Reed, Hammer to Nail

Jacques Cousteau aboard Calypso on a 1963 expedition in the Red Sea. (Credit: National Geographic)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCjOjaE09gc

Jean Renoir’s FRENCH CANCAN ~ 65th Anniversary Screenings October 13 at the Royal, Playhouse, Glendale, Newhall.

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present FRENCH CANCAN, one of the best late films created by master director Jean Renoir: a rousing tribute to the 19th century world that his celebrated father, Pierre Auguste Renoir, and other Impressionists created in their paintings. Set mainly in Montmartre and the original Moulin Rouge nightclub in the 1890s, the film chronicles the revival of the cancan that electrified Paris. This film marked Renoir’s return to filmmaking in France after a lengthy exile caused by World War II.

Renoir’s main character, a theatrical impresario named Henri Danglard, is portrayed by legendary French actor Jean Gabin, who had worked with Renoir in the 1930s in The Lower Depths, La Bete Humaine, and the director’s antiwar masterpiece, La Grande Illusion. Gabin, for decades the face of French cinema, creates a vivid character in FRENCH CANCAN, a producer who has the restlessness of an artist, always seeking new challenges—and new romances in his personal life. The principal women in his life are portrayed by Francoise Arnoul and Maria Felix, with the legendary singer, Edith Piaf, in a tasty supporting role.

One of the critics who endorsed the film in the 1950s was Francois Truffaut, who was writing criticism before he embarked on his directing career. Truffaut considered FRENCH CANCAN a milestone in the history of color cinema. He observed that one scene of a dance class “reminds us of a Degas sketch,” and he added that Renoir’s direction was “as vigorous and youthful as ever.”

Later reviews also endorsed the film, especially after footage cut from the initial release was restored. Leonard Maltin paid tribute to the “brilliantly beautiful restored version” and called the film “an impressive, enjoyable fiction about beginnings of the Moulin Rouge and impresario Gabin’s revival of the cancan.” Roger Ebert called the film “a delicious musical comedy that deserves comparison with the golden age Hollywood musicals of the same period.” In The Guardian Peter Bradshaw wrote, “The glorious final sequence, in which the cancan is finally unveiled to the rowdy audience, is some kind of masterpiece, perhaps the equal of anything Renoir ever achieved: wild, free, turbulent, exhilarating.”

This musical delight will play at 7 PM on Wednesday, October 13, at four Laemmle theatres: the Royal in West L.A., the Playhouse in Pasadena, the Laemmle Glendale, and the Laemmle Newhall.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLivSvCNe84