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Special Guests + Q&A’s for AFTER AUSCHWITZ Screenings.

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AFTER AUSCHWITZ Q&A’s: Director Jon Kean will attend every 5:30pm showing at the Music Hall. Of special note: Saturday 5:30 Q & A will be moderated by Jane Lynch (Glee, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel). Sunday 5:30pm Q & A will be moderated by Melissa Rivers (E! Television Network) and will include survivor Renee Firestone. Monday at 5:30 we welcome Dr. Miriam Koral, UCLA professor of Yiddish language for our post film talk about Yiddish Culture Pre-Post War. Wednesday at 7:10 our talk will be moderated by Dr. Michael Berenbaum who will talk with three generations of Holocaust survivors including Renee Firestone. In Encino, join us May 6th at 1pm where director Jon Kean will talk with survivor Erika Jacoby and her son Jonathan. For other shows with Q & A discussions, visit www.afterauschwitz.com.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUWXfs18KXY

ART IN THE ARTHOUSE presents THE STROM PROJECT: FRAGMENT in Pasadena

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ART IN THE ARTHOUSE invites you to view our newest exhibit in Pasadena from photographer, musician, and cultural anthropologist Yale Strom.  All works in THE STROM PROJECT: FRAGMENT exhibit are for sale and on display until June 14, 2018.

About the exhibit

Forty years ago, musician and cultural anthropologist YALE STROM trekked to Eastern Europe. He came across Jews living in cities, towns and tiny villages, often reminiscent of a pre-war shtetl environment. He bore witness to a dwindled Jewish population with some areas completely devoid of Jewish life. But he also found that a few larger cities were quite populous, and had actually exhibited an increase in numbers.

On his journey, Strom discovered a rich tapestry, including remnants of Hasidic and Orthodox worlds, Jews who were greatly devoted to communism, and parents who were fervently seeking better lives for their children and their children’s children.This photographic exhibition is a small window into a large field of conditions as they were, as they are, and perhaps as they will remain. Strom seeks out the moment with an artist’s hyperawareness, capturing it with an emotion and tone that is singular and authentic. The artist expresses a quality of relaxed spontaneity in his work, an organic, natural approach that never feels preset. The shots were taken with a 35mm Nikon FE camera using Kodak Tri-X 400 B&W film.

Strom’s career has been incredibly multi-disciplinary. In the klezmer world, he is celebrated as a leading scholar, ethnographer, virtuoso violinist and bandleader. Remarkably, he is a writer of 12 books, a musician/composer of 15 recordings and a documentarian of 9 films.

His newest film, American Socialist: The Life & Times of Eugene Victor Debs, starts Friday, May 4th in Pasadena and Santa Monica. The film traces the history of American populism with the man who inspired progressive ideas– from FDR’s New Deal to Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign.

 – Joshua Elias, CURATOR

 

THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS 50th Anniversary Screening on Wednesday, April 18 in Encino, Pasadena, and West LA

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present the latest in our Anniversary Classics Abroad program, a 50th anniversary screening of Gillo Pontecorvo’s memorable and still timely political drama, THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS.

The film was an Oscar nominee for best foreign language film of 1966, but it was not released in the United States until 1968, when it received additional nominations for best director and for best original screenplay by Pontecorvo and Franco Solinas. The film was considered so inflammatory that it was not shown in France until 1971.

The picture, filmed in black-and-white to approximate the look of a newsreel, dramatizes Algeria’s war of independence against France. It focuses on the years from 1954 to 1957, when the National Liberation Front began to organize in the Casbah of Algiers to carry out terrorist attacks on civilians as well as the French army. This led to a fierce and brutal counter-insurgency by the French, which meant the battles dragged on for years.

To insure authenticity, Pontecorvo cast the film mainly with non-professional actors recruited in Algeria. The film’s one professional actor, Jean Martin, gave a vivid performance as the complex, intelligent French officer who understands the grievances of the Algerians even as he fights ruthlessly to defeat them. The film’s urgency was heightened by the score of Ennio Morricone.

The film’s influence extended well beyond the cinema. It became a sort of handbook of revolutionary techniques that was studied by many radical groups over the years. Yet in 2003, after the invasion of Iraq, the Pentagon also screened the movie in order to better understand the civil war unleashed in that country.

Many prominent filmmakers–including Spike Lee, Mira Nair, Steven Soderbergh, and Oliver Stone–all testified to influence of Pontecorvo’s movie on their own work. Critic David Elliott of the San Diego Union Tribune called The Battle of Algiers “perhaps the finest political film of the 1960s.” The LA Weekly’s Ella Taylor agreed that it was “a classic of politically engaged filmmaking.”

Our 50th anniversary screening of THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS (1968) screens Wednesday, April 18 at 7pm in Encino, Pasadena, and West LA. Click here for tickets.

Format: DCP

A Video Message to Laemmle Moviegoers from Filmmaker Eran Riklis About His New Thriller, SHELTER, Opening April 6.

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From SHELTER filmmaker Eran Riklis, (Lemon Tree, The Syrian Bride):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqRd8Vz92Q0&feature=youtu.be

55th Anniversary Screening of TOM JONES March 21st in Pasadena, Encino, and West LA

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present the latest in our Anniversary Classics Abroad program: a 55th anniversary presentation of the Oscar-winning film of 1963, TOM JONES.

Tony Richardson’s spirited comic romp was the first all-British production to be named best picture by the Academy since Laurence Olivier’s Hamlet in 1948. The film won three other Oscars—best director for Richardson, best adapted screenplay by award-winning British playwright John Osborne, and best musical score by a gifted new composer, John Addison. The film received six other nominations, including a record-tying five acting nods—Albert Finney for best actor, Hugh Griffith for best supporting actor (he had won in this category four years earlier, for Ben-Hur), and an unprecedented three nominations in the supporting actress category—for Diane Cilento, Edith Evans, and Joyce Redman.

Up to this point, Richardson was best known for hard-hitting social protest dramas filmed in black and white—Look Back in Anger (based on Osborne’s hit play), A Taste of Honey, and The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner. For his new film, adapted from Henry Fielding’s 18th century novel, Richardson made his first period piece, his first comedy, and his first film in color, with superb lensing by Walter Lassally. The director took a playful approach to the material, experimenting with a variety of film techniques, including a silent film opening, and a number of moments when characters broke the fourth wall to address the camera. Yet Richardson and Osborne retained the essence of Fielding’s picaresque tale of a young orphan adopted by a rich nobleman but then thrown into jeopardy by scheming enemies.

The film is remembered for several striking set pieces, including a savage hunt sequence and an erotic eating scene that commingled lust and gluttony. The outstanding cast also includes Susannah York, David Warner, Joan Greenwood, and Peter Bull.

In addition to its Oscar win, the film was named best picture of the year by the New York Film Critics Circle. The New York Times’ Bosley Crowther called Tom Jones “surely one of the wildest, bawdiest and funniest comedies that a refreshingly agile filmmaker has ever brought to the screen.”

Time magazine also extolled “a way-out, walleyed, wonderful exercise in cinema” but added that the film was not completely different from Richardson’s gritty earlier films. As the magazine noted, “It is also a social satire written in blood with a broadaxe.” Audiences turned the innovative film into a box office smash.

TOM JONES screens at 7:00pm on Wednesday, March 21st in Pasadena, Encino, and West LA. Click here for tickets.

Format: DCP

Sublime Israeli Drama FOXTROT Opens Friday

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This Friday we are excited to open Samuel Maoz’s FOXTROT at the Royal in West L.A. Cinephiles in the Valley and and Pasadena area can see the film starting March 9 at the Town Center and Playhouse. A biting social satire in which a troubled family copes with the death of their son at his isolated military post, FOXTROT is the official Oscar submission from Israel that wrecked audiences and earned rave reviews at the Venice, Telluride and Toronto Film Festivals. It won the Grand Jury prize at Venice, as well as eight Ophir Awards including Best Film, Best Director and Best Actor.

American film critics have been universally overwhelmed by the movie. Writing in the L.A. Times, Kenneth Turan said that “no matter what you’re expecting, FOXTROT is not the film you expect it to be. It’s better.” In the New York Times, Manohla Dargis called it “a movie that builds into a devastating indictment of a nation, shock by shock, brutal moment by brutal moment.” Jay Weisberg of Variety was similarly rapturous in his appraisal: “[FOXTROT is] brilliantly constructed with a visual audacity that serves the subject rather than the other way around, this is award-winning filmmaking on a fearless level.” Deborah Young of the Hollywood Reporter called it “bold modernist cinema at its most harrowing.”

When asked about his film, Mr. Moaz shared the following:

“Einstein said that coincidence is God’s way of remaining anonymous. FOXTROT is a dance of a man with his fate. It’s a philosophical parable trying to deconstruct this vague concept called ›fate‹ through a story about father and son. They are far from each other, but despite the distance and the total separation between them they change each other’s fate, and of course their fates. The challenge I set for myself was to deal with the gap between the things we control and those that are beyond our control.

“I chose to build my story as a classic Greek tragedy in which the hero creates his own punishment and fight against anyone who tries to save him. He is obviously unaware of the outcome that his action will bring about.

“On the contrary, he is doing something that seems right and logical to do. And that’s the difference between a casual coincidence and a coincidence that looks like a plan of fate. Chaos is settled. The punishment corresponds to the sin in its exact form. There is something classic and circular in this process. And there is also an irony that is always associated with fate. A structure of a Greek tragedy in three sequences seemed to me like an ideal dramatic platform to deliver my idea.

“I wanted to tell a story that would be relevant to the crooked reality in which I, and we, live. A story with a relevant statement – local and universal. A story about two generations – the second generation of the Holocaust survivors and the third generation – and each of them experienced trauma during his army service. Part of this endless traumatic situation was forced upon us and part of it could have been avoided. A drama about a family that breaks apart and reunites. A conflict between love and guilt; love that copes with extreme emotional pain. And as in my previous film, Lebanon, I wanted to continue to investigate, in an intensive manner that combines criticism and compassion, a human dynamic created in a closed unit. The film has a shot where you see a screen of a laptop with a notice of mourning and next to it a bowl withnoranges. This frame is the story of my country in four words – oranges and dead soldiers.

“When my eldest daughter went to high school, she never woke up on time, and in order not to be late she would ask me to call for a taxi. This habit cost us quite a bit of money, and it seemed to me like a bad education. One morning I got mad and told her to take the bus like everyone else. And if that’s why she’d be late, then she’d be late. Maybe she should learn the hard way to wake up in time. Her bus was line 5. Half an hour after she left, I see in a news site that a terrorist blew himself up in line 5, and that dozens of people were killed. I called her but the cellular operator collapsed because of the unexpected load. Half an hour later, she returned home. She was late for the bus that exploded. She saw him leave the station and took the next bus. And I’m still considered lucky because I have girls …”

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

Almodovar’s WOMEN ON THE VERGE OF A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN February 21st in Encino, Pasadena, and West LA

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series continue our Anniversary Classics Abroad program with Spanish auteur Pedro Almodovar’s international breakthrough film, WOMEN ON THE VERGE OF A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN. This delightful farce was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1988, and was named best foreign film that year by both the National Board of Review and the New York Film Critics Circle.

Carmen Maura, who has been a frequent Almodovar collaborator and is Spain’s most honored contemporary actress, stars as a soap opera actress sent into a spiral of comic misfortune when her longtime lover dumps her.

Almodovar had been delving into the liberating sexual politics of post-Franco Spain from his debut in 1980 in a series of scandalous black comedies (Matador, Law of Desire, What Have I Done to Deserve This?). He employs a lighter touch with Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, and the film’s commercial success launched his most productive years on the international stage, culminating with his Oscar winners All About My Mother and Talk to Her.

Critics of the day welcomed Almodovar’s delirious comedy of manners. The Washington Post noted, “In this glossy delight, it’s as if Doris Day had been brought forward in time and confronted with the consequences of living in sin.”

The New York Times’ Vincent Canby pointed out “Mr. Almodovar sets out to charm rather than shock. That he succeeds should not come as a surprise. The common denominator of all Almodovar films, even one that winds up in an ecstatic murder-suicide pact, is their great good humor.”

Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, written and directed by Pedro Almodovar, features Antonio Banderas in one of his early roles. Also starring Julietta Serrano, Maria Barranco, Rossy De Palma, and Fernando Guillen.

The 30th anniversary presentation screens on Wednesday, February 21 at 7PM at three Laemmle locations: Royal, Town Center 5, and Pasadena Playhouse 7.

Click here for tickets.

Format: DCP

ART IN THE ARTHOUSE presents: DAVE FOX: A TALE OF TWO CITIES

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RSVP HERE
This is a Free Event

ART IN THE ARTHOUSE proudly presents DAVE FOX: A TALE OF TWO CITIES featuring the works of artist Dave Fox. Laemmle Theatres invites the community to join Rabbi Karen Fox for an artist talk, a slideshow on the big screen and refreshments on March 7 at Laemmle’s Royal Theatre. The artwork is for sale at this free exhibit, which runs through June 2018.

About the exhibit:

Born in 1920 in Vienna, Dave Fox was a storyteller in paint, ink and clay. His art, captured in his sketchbook, his constant companion throughout his life, reflected what he saw every day wandering the Austrian countryside and what would become his new home in California. Shortly after the Nazi Annexation, Fox left Vienna because he had to choose between staying and risking his life, or escaping to freedom. He arrived in Los Angeles in 1939, served in the U.S. Army and then attended art school, a defining moment. He subsequently dedicated his life to perfecting his printmaking, drawing, painting, and ceramic skills.

Fox focused on landscapes, people and abstracts, from the Pacific Ocean to the mountains and all the streets in between. His works captured the ever-changing vistas of Los Angeles and his memories of Vienna. His body of work weaves together all the pieces of his life. His early works from the late 1940s and early 1950s captured the ever-changing vistas of Los Angeles. His body of work weaves together all the pieces of his life. Fox wanted people to stop for more than a moment to take a close look at his art and enter his life as it played out in California, oceans away from his beginnings in Vienna. Fox’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, and is collected by museums and private collectors. Fox passed away in 2011 at age 90 and created art until the last weeks of his life.

– Georgia Freedman-Harvey, CURATOR

Laemmle’s Royal Theatre
11523 Santa Monica Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90025

Wednesday, March 7, 7 pm

Refreshments  provided

RSVP HERE
This is a Free Event