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LAEMMLE LIVE: Presents Lincoln Middle School Madrigal Singers – Sunday March 5, 2017

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Join us at the MLincoln New Photoonica Film Center on Sunday, March 5, 2017 for Laemmle Live’s third concert featuring Lincoln Middle School Madrigal Singers. The program will include a variety of classical and popular music, folk songs and audience participation, too!  Under the direction of Vanessa Counte, Choral Director, the Madrigal Singers are an audition-based a cappella ensemble that perform as part of Santa Monica’s Lincoln Middle School choral program. They meet once a week to rehearse and focus on Renaissance through contemporary a cappella choral literature. Recipients of top ratings in Southern California Festivals, they have been guest performers at local elementary schools, cub scout holiday meetings and the Aga Khan Foundation Walk.

Vanessa Counte has been the Choir Director at Lincoln Middle School since 2005. Mrs. Counte earned her BA in Music Education at Western Michigan University. An active member of the American Choral Directors Association and the Southern California Vocal Association, she is currently finishing her Master of Music in Choral Conducting through CAL State LA’s three summer program.

RSVP using Eventbrite
This is a Free Event!

EVENT DETAILS
Sunday, March 5, 2017
11:00 AM
Monica Film Center

AMERICAN FABLE Q&A’s Opening Weekend at the Monica Film Center.

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AMERICAN FABLE filmmaker Anne Hamilton and select cast members will participate in a Q&A after the 7:10 PM screening at the Monica Film Center on Friday, February 17.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfQkdIoDjQ8

BORNLESS ONES Intro + Q&A Saturday Night at the Monicas.

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BORNLESS ONES producer-actor Devin Goodsell and actor Mark Furze will introduce and participate in a brief Q&A after the 7:30 PM screening at the Monica Film Center on Saturday, February 11th.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_HUnXPwC6I

 

 

‘1 NIGHT’ Q&A with Writer-Director and Lead Actors Opening Night in Santa Monica.

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1 NIGHT writer-director Minhal Baig and actors Justin Chatwin and Kyle Allen will participate in a Q&A after the 7:30 PM screening at the Monica Film Center on Friday, February 10th.

https://vimeo.com/200076380

THE FREEDOM TO MARRY Q&A’s March 10-12 at the Monica Film Center.

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FTMTHE FREEDOM TO MARRY director Eddie Rosenstein and subject Evan Wolfson will participate in Q&A’s at the Monica Film Center after the 7:50 PM screenings on Friday and Saturday, March 10 and 11, and after the 3:10 show on Sunday, March 12.

 

I AM MICHAEL Filmmaker in Person Opening Night at the Monica Film Center.

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I AM MICHAEL writer-director Justin Kelly will participate in Q&A’s after the 7:10 PM screening at the Monica Film Center on Friday, January 27. Benoit Denizet Lewis, the author of the story upon which the film is based, will interview him.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UI19hoTNaC4

Laemmle’s Umpteenth Annual Oscar Contest, 2017 Edition!

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oscars-bgIt’s time for our annual Predict the Oscars Contest! The person who most accurately predicts the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science’s choices in all 24 categories, from the shorts to Best Motion Picture, will win fabulous prizes (free movies and concessions at Laemmle)!

First place wins a Laemmle Premiere Card worth $150. Second place wins a Laemmle Premiere Card worth $100. Third place wins a Laemmle Premiere Card worth $50. Entries are due by 10AM the morning of the awards ceremony on February 26th.

prem-blogNot sure what a Laemmle Premiere Card is? Think of it like a prepaid gift card for yourself! Use it to pay for movie tickets and concessions. Plus, Premiere Card holders receive $2 off movie tickets and 20% off concessions. To find out more, visit www.laemmle.com/premiere-cards.

We’ve got some smart cookies for customers so we have a tie-breaker question: you also have to guess the show’s running time. Take the tie-breaker seriously! Last year, the running time question broke a tie between five entrants who correctly predicted 19 out of 24 categories!

We’ll announce the winners right here on our blog by March 1st. Good luck!

Enter Here

Adventurous Artist Documentary CARVALHO’S JOURNEY Screenings and Q&A’s Next Week.

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A real life 19th century American western adventure story, CARVALHO’S JOURNEY tells the extraordinary story of Solomon Nunes Carvalho (1815-1897), an observant Sephardic Jew born in Charleston, South Carolina, and his life as a groundbreaking photographer, artist and pioneer in American history. We’re screening it this Monday, January 30 at 7:30 PM and Tuesday, January 31 at 1 PM at the Claremont 5, Playhouse 7, Fine Arts, Town Center 5 and Monica Film Center as part of our ongoing Culture Vulture series.

Daguerreotypist Robert Shlaer is featured in CARVALHO’S JOURNEY as an interviewee and also on location, re-creating daguerreotypes along the route Carvalho traveled in 1853. He will participate in Q&A’s after the Pasadena screening on Monday night and the Beverly Hills screening on Tuesday afternoon. Filmmaker Steve Rivo will participate in Q&A’s after the Beverly Hills screening on Monday night and after the Encino screening on Tuesday afternoon.

Robert Shlaer, photo by M. Susan Barger.
Robert Shlaer, photo by M. Susan Barger.
“Born in Boston, an alumnus of Brookline High, Steve Rivo grew up in a film-loving family. He was exposed at an early age to many of the great films, but he always had a warm spot for Robert Aldrich’s “The Frisco Kid” (1979), in which Gene Wilder plays a rabbi assigned to a synagogue in San Francisco in 1850. To get there, the rabbi must cross the Rockies on horseback with a varmint played by Harrison Ford.

“Today, Rivo makes his own movies. He’s founder and owner of Down Low Pictures, an independent documentary production company based in Brooklyn. When he was offered a project about the painter and daguerreotypist Solomon Carvalho, a Sephardic Jew from Charleston, South Carolina, who accompanied legendary explorer John Fremont on his 1853 Fifth Western Expedition, the story’s resemblance to “The Frisco Kid” helped win him over.

“He talked about the resulting documentary, CARVALHO’S JOURNEY, on the phone from his studio in New York.”

Q. Did repeated viewings of “The Frisco Kid” give you an insight into Carvalho’s story?

A. That was kind of my only frame of reference. The comedic situations involved in having a rube on the trail, and not just any rube, but a classically Jewish character who has Jewish anxieties. Those elements of the Carvalho story were fun to play with. He was an observant Jew, so he couldn’t eat certain foods even when they were starving. And he wasn’t good at a lot of outdoorsy stuff like the rest of the party. He was a 38-year-old city slicker artistic type.

Q. The hardships of his trip were not so funny, though. More like “The Revenant.”

A. It is always surprising how physically difficult, challenging, and a little bit crazy it would be to get in a wagon and try to cross the country in the middle of winter. It’s inconceivable to us today. We get on an airplane and complain.

Q. What do you think viewers will take away from this film other than a new appreciation for air travel?

Solomon Nunes Carvalho. Dageerreotype courtesy of the Library of Congress.
Solomon Nunes Carvalho. Dageurreotype courtesy of the Library of Congress.

A. There are a lot of different things people have responded to — American Jewish history, Western expansion, the birth of photography, and a personal story of an artist. What attracted me was that it was a little bit of biography, but it was also kind of a travel story, and an adventure story through which you could talk about other things, the experience of outsiders in American culture. It’s a film about someone we didn’t know anything about.

Q. I understand you just finished a 10-part series for the True TV network on Hollywood comedies. Did you get to include “The Frisco Kid?”

A. I jokingly raised the possibility, but so few people have seen that movie. It’s the Solomon Carvalho of Jewish Western comedies.

Steve Rivo
Steve Rivo