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Wonder of Wonders – It’s Fiddler Sing-a-Long Time Again!

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*** FIDDLER UPDATES  (skip to main article)
We’re pleased to announce an all-star line-up of Fiddler Hosts for 2015!
Also, as in year’s past, we’ll have food trucks out at select locations. Here’s the per-location rundown of what’s shaking in the shtetl:

Ahrya Fine Arts
Dr. Ron Wolfson – author, professor – BUY TIX
BONUS! – Dr. Wolfson will be signing a copies of his new book, The Best Boy in the United States of America: A Memoir of Blessings and Kisses.

Claremont 5
Cantor Paul Buch – BUY TIX

NoHo 7
Craig Taubman – entertainer, community organizer – BUY TIX
FOOD TRUCK – The Deli Doctor (truck food welcome inside the theater)

Playhouse
Gary Wexler – blogger, public speaker – BUY TIX
FOOD TRUCK – Hungry Nomad (truck food welcome inside the theater)

Royal
Naomi Ackerman – actress, social activist – BUY TIX
BONUS! – Naomi will be joined by BARBARA ISENBERG who will be signing copies of her book TRADITION!: The Highly Improbable, Ultimately Triumphant Broadway-to-Hollywood Story of Fiddler on the Roof, the World’s Most Beloved Musical.
FOOD TRUCK – The Hurricane Kitchen (truck food welcome inside the theater)

Town Center 5
Cantors Herschel Fox & Phil Baron – BUY TIX

See below to find out more about our hosts.

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Wonder_of_Wonders_edit_2Will the matchmaker make you “the perfect match?” There’s only one way to find out … join us this year for our 8th annual FIDDLER ON THE ROOF Christmas Eve SING-A-LONG!

(Scroll down to watch the event trailer.  For tickets, visit Laemmle.com/Fiddler).

This year, the popular Fiddler program has been extended to more venues to accommodate demand including, for the first time, the recently reopened AHRYA FINE ARTS in Beverly Hills.

In addition to exuberant movie and song, the evening will feature TRIVIA with PRIZES being awarded to Fiddler buffs with the quickest recall.  Dressing in COSTUME is not required, but highly encouraged!  Will the best costume will garner a prize?  That will be up to the emcee.

Craig_pix_01_edit_lr_crop_4_p
CRAIG TAUBMAN will be hosting at the NoHo 7
Ron_Wolfson_pix_02_crop_p
RON WOLFSON will be hosting at the Fine Arts

Speaking of which, we’re very excited to announce two new, dynamic hosts for this year.  Acclaimed Jewish singer-songwriter and founder of the Pico Union Project CRAIG TAUBMAN will be bringing his signature blend of charisma and high-powered energy to the NOHO 7.  Over in the city side, professor, author, and community mensch Dr. RON WOLFSON will be headlining at the stunning AHYRA FINE ARTS in Beverly Hills. Wolfson is most recently the author of The Best Boy in the United States of America: A Memoir of Blessings and Kisses offered by Jewish Light Publishing. You can’t go wrong with either of these incredible gentlemen!

Our own Greg Laemmle is enthusiastic as ever about the Fiddler experience, declaring that “Christmas Eve isn’t just Chinese food anymore!”  Furthermore, “we welcome all those in the community who are looking for an alternative Christmas Eve experience.”

He continues, “This is your once-a-year chance to be the star of the shtetl. Join voices with friends and neighbors and sing your heart out alongside Fiddler’s screen legends. And it’s okay if you haven’t memorized all the songs. We provide the lyrics.”

Song highlights include the iconic “TRADITION”, “IF I WERE A RICH MAN”,  “TO LIFE”, “SUNRISE SUNSET”, “DO YOU LOVE ME?” and “ANATEVKA”, among many, many more.

Don’t miss the buggy! Those who wish to attend the program are advised to purchase tickets in advance as the program has traditionally sold to capacity.

See you in the shtetl…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnuyNaOEBt4&feature=youtu.be

Fiddler Hosts – 2015

Ron_Wolfson_pix_02_crop_p

Dr. Ron Wolfson at the Ahrya Fine Arts (Beverly Hills)
Renowned educator and author DR. RON WOLFSON will be our host at the Fine Arts in Beverly Hills. Wolfson is a Fingerhut Professor of Education at the American Jewish University and, most recently, author of The Best Boy in the United States of America: A Memoir of Blessings and Kisses offered by Jewish Lights Publishing. A pioneer in the field of Jewish family education, Dr. Wolfson is a frequent scholar-in-residence for synagogues and communities and a co-founder of Synagogue 3000. He is also the author of the well-known Art of Jewish Living book series.

Craig_pix_01_edit_lr_crop_4_pCraig Taubman at the NoHo 7 (North Hollywood)
Beloved Jewish singer/songwriter and community builder CRAIG TAUBMAN will be our host at the NoHo 7 venue in North Hollywood. Taubman is renowned for original compositions and live performances that speak to the Jewish American experience. He is the originator of events such as Friday Night Live, The Big Jewish Tent, and A Sacred Noise, among others. Most recently, he founded the Pico Union Project, an interfaith community center near L.A.’s downtown that celebrates diversity and unity within the framework of art, music, and worship.

Herschel Fox_prCantor Herschel Fox
at the Town Center 5 (Encino)
For over three decades, HERSCHEL FOX (top) has shared his knowledge, talent, and Yiddishkeit with Temple Valley Beth Shalom (Encino) and the greater L.A Jewish community. Born in Europe and raised in Winnipeg, Canada, among Holocaust survivors, he became a cantor at the age of 13.  In his early career, he performed in Yiddish theater, opening for Molly Picon, Fiddler’s “Yente the Matchmaker” for many years. Fox teaches classes in Yiddish language, culture and song, prayer and the art of the cantor.

Phil Baron_prCantor Phil Baron
at the Town Center 5 (Encino)
Also of VBS (Valley Beth Shalom), cantor PHIL BARON (left) is the son of a violinist and the grandson of a Vilna rabbi. Before becoming a cantor, he took a successful detour into children’s entertainment, where he had over 300 original songs recorded – nearly 200 of these by the Walt Disney Co. He co-created two television series for Jewish children, Bubbe’s Boarding House, and the multiple award-winning series Alef…Bet…Blast-off! As a vocalist he has been featured with the Los Angeles Jewish Symphony, the Cleveland Orchestra and the New Orleans Philharmonic.

Gary Wexler_prGary Wexler at the Playhouse 7 (Pasadena)
GARY WEXLER is a USC Adjunct Professor in the Masters program at the Annenberg School of Communication, teaching both Nonprofit Marketing, as well as Advertising and Copywriting. Wexler’s first career was as a Clio-winning copywriter for ad agencies such as Chiat-Day, DDB-Needham and others with clients ranging from Apple to Coca Cola. He since made the switch to the non-profit world, working with over 1000 nonprofits, including the foundations of Steven Spielberg, the Ford Foundation, United Ways and Jewish Federations. Today, he is an active blogger, consultant, seminar leader, and public speaker.

Naomi Ackerman_prNaomi Ackerman at the Royal (West L.A.)
An actress, social activist, and special education teacher, NAOMI ACKERMAN’s credits include theater, musicals, films, television as well as being an accomplished street performer and professional clown. She was a founding member of View Points an Arab Jewish dialogue theater produced by the Shimon Peres Center for Peace. In addition, she wrote, directed and performed the acclaimed one woman show Flowers Aren’t Enough. In 2011 she founded The Advot Project, transforming the lives of incarcerated girls in the L.A. probations system through drama instruction. This garnered her KCET’s Local Hero Award in 2014.

Paul Buch_prCantor Paul Buch at the Claremont 5 (Claremont)
Cantor PAUL BUCH has served Temple Beth Israel in Claremont since 2003. He came to the cantorate after a 25 year career in TV and film production in Los Angeles, New York, and Portland. In addition to his cantorial duties, Buch is President of the Claremont Interfaith Council and serves on the Faith-Based Roundtable of the Pomona Unified School District. He is also Chair of the City of Claremont’s Human Relations Committee and serves on an advisory committee at the Claremont School of Theology. This will be his third consecutive year as our Fiddler host in Claremont!

 

Writer-director Deniz Gamze Ergüven on MUSTANG, her fierce, feminist debut feature.

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On November 20 at the Royal and Christmas Day at the Playhouse and Town Center we’ll be opening one of the best films we’ve screened all year, the Turkish/French production MUSTANG. It begins in a village in Northern Turkey in early summer. Five free-spirited teenaged sisters splash about on the beach with their male classmates. Though their games are innocent fun, a neighbor passes by and reports to the girls’ family what she considers illicit behavior. The family overreacts, removing all “instruments of corruption,” like cell phones and computers, essentially imprisoning the girls, subjecting them to endless lessons in housework in preparation for them to become brides. As the eldest sisters are married off, the younger ones bond together to avoid the same fate. Their fierce love for each other emboldens them to rebel and chase a future where they can determine their own lives in the filmmaker’s feature debut, a powerful portrait of female empowerment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_JXyi1EGJk

The filmmaker is Deniz Gamze Ergüven. Born in Ankara in 1978, she had a very cosmopolitan upbringing, between France, Turkey and the United States. A compulsive cinephile, she studied directing at La Fémis in Paris, after a BA in literature and an MA in African History at Johannesburg. Her graduation film, Bir Damla Su (Unegoutted’eau), screened at the Cannes Festival Cinéfondation and won a Leopards of Tomorrow award at the Locarno Festival. Opening with a shot of a veiled woman blowing a bubble with chewing gum, the 19-minute short tells the story of a young Turkish woman (played by Deniz herself) rebelling against the patriarchal attitudes and authoritarianism of the men in her community.

After graduating from La Fémis, Denis Gamze Ergüven developed a debut feature set in South Los Angeles, during the 1992 riots. Titled Kings, the project was selected by Emergence, the Cinéfondation Workshop and Sundance Screenwriters Lab. Ms. Ergüven set it aside in favor of MUSTANG, co-written with Alice Winocour in the summer of 2012.

The story of an emancipation, MUSTANG is a powerful, feminist take on contemporary Turkey. Ms. Ergüven shot it around Inebolu in northern Turkey, 600 kilometers from Istanbul.

INTERVIEW WITH DIRECTOR DENIZ GAMZE ERGÜVEN

You were born in Ankara but have lived mostly in France. Why shoot your debut feature in Turkey?

Most of my family still lives in Turkey and I spent my whole life going back and forth. I feel particularly concerned by stories set in Turkey because the region is really fizzing, everything is changing. Recently, the country has swung toward a more conservative position but you can still feel the force and energy. There is a sense of being at the heart of something, that everything could go into a spin at any time, that it could go in any direction. It’s also an unbelievable reservoir of fiction.

MUSTANG_director_headshot
Deniz Gamze Ergüven

 

Just like your graduation short, MUSTANG is the story of an emancipation.  What were the origins of the project?

I wanted to talk about what it’s like to be a girl and a woman in modern-day Turkey, where the condition of women is more than ever a major public issue. Clearly, the fact that I had a different perspective, because I frequently left Turkey for France, played an important role. Every time I go back, I feel a form of constriction that surprises me. Everything that has anything to do with femininity is constantly reduced to sexuality. It’s as if everything a woman or even a young girl does is sexually loaded. For example, there are stories of school principals who ban boys and girls using the same stairs to get to class. They build separate staircases. It lends a huge erotic charge to the most banal things; climbing the stairs becomes a really big deal. It demonstrates the absurdity of that kind of conservatism: everything is sexual. In the end, they talk about sex the whole time. And a conception of society emerges that reduces women to baby-making machines who are only good for housework. Turkey was one of the first countries to give women the right to vote, in the 1930s, and now we have to defend basic rights, such as abortion.  It’s sad.

Why the English-sounding title, MUSTANG?

A mustang is a wild horse that perfectly symbolizes my five spirited and untamable heroines. Visually, even, their hair is like a mane and, in the village, they’re like a herd of mustangs coming through. And the story moves fast, galloping forward, and that energy is at the heart of the picture, just like the mustang that gave it its name.

How much of you personally is in the movie?

In the opening scenes, the minor scandal that the girls provoke by climbing onto the boys’ shoulders before being violently reprimanded really happened to me when I was a teen. Except that my reaction back then was absolutely not to answer back. I hung my head in shame. It was years before I was able even to protest. I wanted my characters to be heroines. And their courage had to pay off. They had to win in the end, in the most exhilarating way possible. I see the five girls as a kind of five-headed monster that loses a part of itself every time one of the girls is absent from the story, but the last-remaining piece succeeds. It’s because her elder sisters were ensnared that Lale, the youngest, rejects their destiny. She is a condensed version of everything I dream of being.

You seem to be saying that the only way out is education.

The girls’ removal from school and the reaction it provokes in them is crucial to the story, but I don’t adopt a militant approach. A film is not a political speech. Romain Gary used to say that he didn’t go on protests because he had a whole shelf of books that marched for him. There’s an element of that. The film expresses things much more sensitively and powerfully than I ever could. I see it as a fairy tale with mythological motifs, such as the Minotaur, the labyrinth, the Lernaean Hydra—the girl’s five-headed body—and a ball that is signified here by the soccer match that the girls long to attend.

A family with five teenage girls who arouse desires in local boys and must be protected for their own good. It brings to mind Sofia Coppola’s The Virgin Suicides. What were your cinematic references in making the movie?

[Read more…]

INDIEWIRE: “Cinelicious Pics is bringing two rarely seen Agnès Varda gems to a new generation of audiences.” JANE B. PAR AGNES V. and KUNG-FU MASTER! open at the Royal on November 13th.

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By Indiewire’s Ryan Lattanzio, April 13, 2015

L..A cinephiles had the pleasures of seeing two Agnès Varda discoveries from the middle of her career, and of seeing the legendary French filmmaker speak, at an American Cinematheque retrospective this past weekend.

Cinelicious Pics has just acquired the double bill “Jane B. by Agnès V.” and “Kung-Fu Master,” both starring Euro icon Jane Birkin, for U.S. theatrical, VOD and Home Video distribution. Supervised by Varda, the new restorations made their West Coast debut over the weekend, and looked gorgeous in digital 2K.

https://vimeo.com/135902729

Less a biopic than a quasi-fiction, poetic-realist documentary, “Jane B. By Agnes V.” looks at the actress’ many faces. Really, it’s Varda’s “Orlando,” a time-hopping stitching together of Birkin’s best and least-favorite roles, and the parts she dreams of playing (including Joan of Arc). The film features Birkin’s longtime collaborator and erstwhile lover Serge Gainsbourg, New Wave actor Jean-Pierre Léaud (a.k.a. Antoine Doinel), Birkin’s daughter Charlotte Gainsbourg (who went on to star in the films of Lars von Trier) and Varda’s son Mathieu Demy, whom she had with her filmmaker-husband Jacques Demy.

A young Mathieu Demy and 14-year-old Charlotte Gainsbourg also appear in Varda’s challenging romance “Kung Fu Master,” which stretches the “May-December” definition to its extremes. Aside from a video game that Demy’s early-teens Julien obsessively plays, the film has nothing to do with kung fu. Instead, the 40-year-old Birkin plays the single mother of two who falls in love with him. Their relationship is treated very matter-of-factly by Varda, who imbues it with a tenderness that is well-played, and earnestly acted, by Demy and Birkin.

https://vimeo.com/135903347?from=outro-embed

At the Aero Theatre on Saturday, Varda said she wrote the film in “two minutes” after Birkin pitched the story to her during the making of “Jane B.” They took a break on that production and shot “Kung-Fu” quickly in the summer. Varda, who most famously directed “Cleo From 5 to 7” and “The Gleaners and I,” didn’t feel weird about directing her young son as the object of a much older woman’s affections. “From the minute we started to film, he was Julien.”

According to Varda, “Kung-Fu Master” hasn’t played much on French TV due to its controversial subject matter. The film also deals head-on with the rise of AIDS in the ’80s, interjecting its whimsical broken-fairytale romance with PSAs about sexual awareness and the disease’s ever-growing reach.

When asked if “Jane B.” (never released in the U.S.) and “Kung-Fu” (released briefly in the 80s) belong together as a double bill, Varda said, “I don’t think so. They’re two separate films.” She may be right, but it’s a treat we get to see them at all, and newly resurrected from their original 35mm negatives.

arts•meme: SPARTACUS Meets Its Maker, Dalton Trumbo

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spartacus3The terrific fine arts blog arts•meme, published by longtime dance critic Debra Levine, gave our Anniversary Classics screening of SPARTACUS a nice plug last week. We’re showing it this Friday night November 6th at 7:30 in the Royal’s big auditorium on the same day that Trumbo opens in theaters. (We open it a bit later.) The new film celebrates the life of Dalton Trumbo, and with this 55th anniversary screening of their Oscar-winning film we pay our own tribute to the blacklisted screenwriter, as well as actor-producer Kirk Douglas and director Stanley Kubrick. The picture, adapted from Howard Fast’s novel about a slave revolt in ancient Rome, is generally regarded as “the best-paced and most slyly entertaining of all the decadent-ancient-Rome spectacular films,” as critic Pauline Kael wrote. Douglas bravely decided to break the blacklist by allowing Trumbo to use his own name on the screenplay for the first time in more than a decade.

dalton-trumboThe all-star cast includes Laurence Olivier, Charles Laughton, Jean Simmons, Tony Curtis, Woody Strode, and Peter Ustinov, who won the Academy Award for best supporting actor for his droll performance as a sycophantic slave dealer. (The film also won Oscars for cinematography, art direction, and costume design.) See this grand, thrilling sand-and-sandals epic—a precursor of Ridley Scott’s Oscar-winning Gladiator—on the big screen, in a brand new restoration.

WHAT OUR FATHERS DID and WELCOME TO LEITH: Two superb docs about Nazis, long ago and far away, but also here and now.

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Next month we’ll be opening two acclaimed documentaries about that notorious and virulent ideology, Nazism, one that deals with its incarnation in Germany during World War II and another about its presence here and now.

A poignant, thought-provoking account of friendship and the toll of inherited guilt, WHAT OUR FATHERS DID: A NAZI LEGACY explores the relationship between two men, each of whom are the children of very high-ranking Nazi officials and possess starkly contrasting attitudes toward their fathers. Eminent human rights lawyer Philippe Sands investigates the complicated connection between the two, and even delves into the story of his own grandfather, who escaped the same town where their fathers carried out mass killings. The three embark on an emotional journey together, as they travel through Europe and converse about the past, examining the sins of their fathers and providing a unique view of the father-son relationship, ultimately coming to some very unexpected and difficult conclusions.

In her Screen Daily review, Fionnuala Halligan described the film as “chilling” and “a layered examination of brutality, self-deception, guilt and the nature of justice which is compelling throughout.” We’ll screen WHAT OUR FATHERS DID beginning November 2nd at the Royal and November 13th at the Town Center.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGWY59hFBsI

WELCOME TO LEITH, which we’ll open November 6th at the Music Hall, chronicles the attempted takeover of a small town in North Dakota by notorious white supremacist Craig Cobb. As his behavior becomes more threatening, tensions soar, and the residents desperately look for ways to expel their unwanted neighbor. With incredible access to both longtime residents of Leith and white supremacists, the film examines a small community in the plains struggling for sovereignty against an extremist vision. In his Variety review, Dennis Harvey called the film “as engrossing as a fictional thriller.” In the New York Times, Stephen Holden wrote, “Mr. Cobb is a truly scary presence whose eyes burn with fervor as he describes his racist, anti-Semitic agenda. At the same time, he is articulate, intelligent, determined and dangerous.”

https://vimeo.com/131895164

“Riotously funny” sleeper MEET THE PATELS is “a lively and engaging universal story made with an unmistakable sense of fun.”

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Every year there are at least one or two films that come out of left field and delight audiences enough to generate that most ineffable and valuable kind of publicity, word of mouth publicity. Such is the case with the new comedic documentary MEET THE PATELS, which has shown great legs and made its way from a humble start in just one of our theaters to six of them: by this Friday we’ll be showing it at the NoHo, Royal, Claremont, Town Center and Playhouse. PATELS is a laugh-out-loud real life romantic comedy about Ravi Patel, an almost-30-year-old Indian-American who enters a love triangle between the woman of his dreams…and his parents. This hilarious and heartwarming film reveals how love can be a family affair.

In his L.A. Times review, Kenneth Turan wrote that the film “[turns] one man’s culturally specific journey into a lively and engaging universal story made with an unmistakable sense of fun.” In the New York Daily News, Jordan Hoffman wrote: “MEET THE PATELS is warm and loaded with laughs, and it might even create some intercultural understanding. If only all our relationship woes could be so worthwhile.” In Variety Andrew Barker called the film “often riotously funny.” If you haven’t seen it yet, check it out!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7litSYXbpRs

Anniversary Classics: Actress Blythe Danner In-Person After THE GREAT SANTINI on 10/27 at the Royal! Plus, a Pre-Halloween Double Feature 10/30 at the Fine Arts.

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After celebrating the 65th anniversary of ALL ABOUT EVE this past Tuesday, we look ahead to the two remaining Anniversary Classics events on the October calendar! Next up is the 35th anniversary of the Oscar-nominated drama THE GREAT SANTINI (1980), with special guest Blythe Danner, who played the long-suffering wife of domineering Marine pilot and Oscar nominee Robert Duvall. Danner received some of the best notices of her career this past summer for I’LL SEE YOU IN MY DREAMS, a performance which is being touted for year-end awards consideration. Join us for THE GREAT SANTINI and a conversation with Blythe Danner on Tuesday, October 27th at the Royal in West LA at 7:00 pm.

santini

Then don’t forget our special Halloween program on Friday, October 30th – a retro double feature of the 80th anniversary of THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1935), one of the great horror classics, paired with bonus feature ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN (1948), a scary and very funny vintage horror-comedy. Both features are from the vaults of Universal studios and to complete our trip into yesteryear are being presented at the beautifully restored and newly re-opened Ahrya Fine Arts in Beverly Hills. The classic double bill (yes, two for the price of one!) begins at 7:30 on the 30th.

Tickets are now on sale for both events and can be purchased online at www.laemmle.com/ac. See you soon at the Anniversary Classics series!

Win tickets to a Halloween screening of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde at the Walt Disney Concert Hall

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UPDATE: Winners have been drawn and emailed. Details below!

It’s “Horror in the Hall” this Halloween as the silent classic, DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE, is accompanied live by Clark Wilson on the Walt Disney Concert Hall’s monster organ.

jekyllParamount’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, directed by John S. Robertson and produced by Famous Players-Lasky, was the first of three film treatments of Robert Louis Stevenson’s famous novella produced in 1920. It starred John Barrymore as the fatally split personalities, and featured Martha Mansfield and Nita Naldi as their love interests, roles based on a stage treatment, not the original story.

Four winners (selected at random) will each receive a pair of tickets to DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE. As a bonus, winners will also receive two tickets to Laemmle’s very own pre-Halloween double feature of THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1935) & ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN (1948) on Friday, 10/30 at the Ahrya Fine Arts in Beverly Hills. Good luck!

Enter below!

Halloween at the Walt Disney Concert Hall Ticket Giveaway

Special thanks to the LA Phil for making these tickets available to our customers! If you don’t win, please consider purchasing tickets here.