If George Clooney’s “The Monuments Men” did nothing else, it made possible the theatrical re-release of “The Rape of Europa,” a splendid documentary that shows the true story behind the Nazi theft of European art and interviews some of the real-life Monuments Men who got it back. The film is packed with information and also tells a series of wonderful truth-is-stranger-than-fiction tales. “The Rape of Europa” even details the postwar fights about who owns which paintings that culminated in the sale of Gustav Klimt’s gold portrait for a record $135 million. This documentary paints a picture that is vivid and timely. Playing on Saturday and Sunday at [11 AM at] Laemmle’s Monica 4 in Santa Monica, Town Center 5 in Encino, Playhouse 7 in Pasadena and Claremont 5 in Claremont.
Support the Environment with Our New Healthy Snack Specials
Looking for an easy way to support sustainability, active transportation, and environmental causes? Buy one of our new tasty treats the next time you’re at Laemmle and we will donate a portion of sales to Climate Ride! One dollar of every Kind Bar, $2 of any O.N.E. Coconut Water, and $3 of all Climate Ride Combo purchases will go to help the environment. The combo includes a Small popcorn, one Kind Bar, and a Coconut Water.
This short video featuring company president Greg Laemmle will run before each film we screen to help raise awareness. Watch it here first and enjoy an exclusive outtake not in theaters:
Climate Ride Wine Country 2014 is a fully-supported, four-day group ride covering 250 miles of stellar Northern California scenery starting in San Francisco and winding through the famous wine growing regions of Napa Valley and the Russian River Valley. It culminates at the iconic state capitol building in Sacramento. Interested in doing more for Climate Ride? You can support the winners of our Climate Ride contest or register to participate in the ride yourself! Special thanks to our partners at Kind, O.N.E. Coconut Water, Climate Ride, and the Laemmle Charitable Foundation.
Jackson Pollock at the Getty
Jackson Pollock is a giant of American painting and one of his largest and most important pieces has been restored and is now on display here in Los Angeles through June 1st. From the Getty website:
“Commissioned by art collector and dealer Peggy Guggenheim for the entry to her New York City apartment in 1943, Mural by Jackson Pollock (American, 1912–1956) is considered one of the iconic paintings of the twentieth century. Now in the collection of the University of Iowa Museum of Art, it represents a transitional moment in Pollock’s career, as he moved toward an experimental application of paint. Following extensive study and treatment at the J. Paul Getty Museum and the Getty Conservation Institute, this exhibition presents the newly conserved work alongside findings from the Getty’s research.”
This is a not-to-be-missed opportunity to see a part of our American heritage as it was meant to be seen, not on a computer monitor or the page of a book, but in person with one’s own eyes.
And if you go, consider supplementing your weekend of visual arts with one of two excellent films about fine art we are currently showing as Saturday/Sunday morning screenings– THE RAPE OF EUROPA and TIM’S VERMEER.
L.A. Times: “Anita Hill’s still standing 22 years later”
We’re proud to open the “enthralling and revealing” documentary ANITA, about feminist heroine Anita Hill, this Friday at the Royal, Playhouse and Town Center. (Click here for details about Q&A’s with the filmmaker.) The L.A. Times published a piece about the film on Sunday which will give you an idea of how much more there is to Ms. Hill’s story:
THE TAKEAWAY
Anita Hills’s still standing 22 years later
The law professor who testified that Supreme court nominee Clarence Thomas had sexually harassed her in the subject of a new documentary.
By Robin Abcarian
March 16, 2014
The new documentary about Anita Hill opens with a close-up of a telephone and a bizarre voice mail message:
“Good morning, Anita Hill. It’s Ginni Thomas, and I just wanted to reach across the air waves, and the years and ask you to consider something. I would love you to consider an apology sometime, and some full explanation of why you did what you did with my husband. So give it some thought, I certainly pray about this and hope one day you will help us understand why you did what you did. OK! Have a good day.”
That obnoxious request, left on Hill’s office voice mail in October 2010, is the last we hear from Ginni Thomas in “Anita: Speaking Truth to Power” by Oscar-winning director Freida Mock. The film, which opened in Los Angeles and New York on Friday, is a perfect jumping-off point for Hill’s story, as it so perfectly distills the right-wing’s fervent desire to rewrite the history of the Clarence Thomas Supreme Court hearings.
It’s been more than 22 years since the Senate Judiciary Committee heard a soft-spoken 35-year-old University of Oklahoma law professor recount graphic instances of sexual harassment at the hands of her former boss. Despite Ginni Thomas’ prayers, Hill has never backed down from her allegations.
Why would she, since she was so obviously telling the truth?
The documentary is an unabashed love letter to Hill, guaranteed to open old wounds. It examines Hill’s life in the aftermath of a spotlight she did not seek, and the positive legacy of her testimony.
At 57, Hill seems serene and happy. She teaches law at Brandeis University and is in a long-term relationship with a restaurateur named Chuck Malone, who seems crazy about her.
It’s painful to be dragged back into the past via old clips as senators try to embarrass Hill by forcing her to repeat porn names like “Long Dong Silver,” descriptions of pubic hair on Coke cans and discussions of penis size that she says she was forced to endure as Thomas’ employee at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
At a long table by herself, in a blue turquoise suit, she sits calmly, without erupting or crying. When pressed about why she hadn’t come forward sooner, she seems as perplexed as some of the senators. But 20 years ago, that wasn’t exactly unusual behavior for women whose bosses made unwanted sexual advances. It still isn’t. Hiring a sexual harassment attorney is now one of the best paths to take, whereas all those years ago it wasn’t seen as normal, because it was swept under the rug as much as possible to protect the ‘reputations’ of these harassers.
No question, what the Senate hearings unleashed was dreadful for Hill (and certainly it was no picnic for Clarence Thomas, either). But it was also a watershed moment in American politics. American women looked at how the Senate treated Hill and said: This is not right.
The all-male Senate Judiciary Committee, chaired by then-Sen. Joe Biden, grilled her, impugned her honesty and forced her to repeat the most graphic insults.
“They were humiliating her by making her go over these things again and again and again,” said New Yorker reporter Jane Mayer, who appears in the film along with Jill Abramson, now the New York Times executive editor, with whom she wrote the 1994 book “Strange Justice.” (The book will leave you with no doubts about Thomas’ proclivities.)
Hill was hung out to dry by the committee’s Democrats, who really did not want to have a conversation about a black Supreme Court nominee and leader of the EEOC allegedly sexually harassing an employee. (Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, the documentary points out, was so compromised that he was played in a”Saturday Night Live” skit about the hearings by an actor with a bag over his head.)
And she was brutalized by the committee’s Republicans. The documentary shows a clip of Alan Simpson of Wyoming saying he’d gotten letters, phone calls and faxes warning him to “watch out for this woman” about “this sexual harassment crap.”
I’m glad that Mock included the powerful clip of Thomas responding to Hill’s accusations, his only meaningful appearance in the film. It is a tour de force of indignation as he tells senators he is the victim of a “high-tech lynching for uppity blacks.”
That phrase still resonates today for John Carr, an African American attorney and friend of Hill’s who testified on her behalf in the Senate. “I hate the term ‘race card,'” Carr says now. “But that’s what he did.”
Charles Ogletree, a Harvard University law professor who stepped forward to support Hill when he saw that no other high-profile black men had, also took exception to Thomas’ phrase.
“They didn’t say, ‘Hey, wait a minute. What about the legal lynching of a black woman?” Ogletree says. “They didn’t want to be appearing to go after a black man who said ‘I didn’t do it.’ And for them, the case was closed.”
A few days after Hill testified, Thomas was confirmed by the Senate, 52 to 48.
Without a trace of rancor, Hill says that when she returned to Oklahoma afterward, “Republicans tried to get the school to fire me, even though I was tenured. My dean – they tried to get him fired. They tried to close the law school. I was threatened with just about everything – death, sexual violence.”
Click here to read the rest of the piece at the L.A. Times website.
SHIRIN IN LOVE Filmmaker Appearances Tonight
SHIRIN IN LOVE writer-director Ramin Niami will introduce the 7:30 PM screening at the Music Hall and participate in a Q&A after the 7:10 screening at the Town Center on Friday, March 14.
THE RAPE OF EUROPA: The L.A. Times’ Kenneth Turan on this Essential Documentary
Posted this afternoon on the L.A. Times website:
MOVIES NOW
FILMS: PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE
Critic’s Pick: The feature film ‘The Monuments Men’ has brought about the re-release of the documentary “The Rape of Europa,’ which details the Nazi wartime theft of European art.
Movie and a Meal: Follow THE LUNCHBOX with a Visit to an Indian Restaurant
This scene from THE GODFATHER always makes me want Italian food. And that’s just one scene. Films in which food is a major part of the plot are a beloved genre all their own. Time will tell, but the new Indian movie THE LUNCHBOX may join the ranks of other great foodie movies like BABETTE’S FEAST, BIG NIGHT and LIKE WATER FOR CHOCOLATE. We at Laemmle Theatres humbly recommend you try preceding lunch or dinner at one of the many Indian restaurants near our theaters by taking in THE LUNCHBOX to whet your appetite. Here are some close by:
Fourteen minute walk west down Santa Monica Blvd. from the Royal: All India Cafe
Across the street from the Playhouse (where we open THE LUNCHBOX this Friday): Sitar Indian Cuisine
Two minute walk west down Ventura Blvd. from the Town Center (where we open THE LUNCHBOX this Friday): Anarbagh
Or choose one of your personal favorites. Bon appetit!
BEA HUSMAN: BEATIFICA Comes to NoHo 7
Join us for the NoHo 7’s first art gallery opening and the second installment of Laemmle’s ART IN THE ARTHOUSE program! At select Laemmle Theatre locations, you’ll soon be enjoying fine works by visual artists in our lobbies and on your way to the auditorium.
BEA HUSMAN: BEATIFICA opens this coming Wednesday, February 26, 6-9pm. To join us for the opening celebration, RSVP HERE.
This extraordinary exhibit uncovers the work of BEA HUSMAN (1915-2011), an iconoclast who translated her world travels into inspired artworks in a variety of media. Rarely exhibited during her lifetime, Husman produced art for the sheer pleasure of it, resulting in a legacy unsullied by the marketplace and a body of work that exudes joy and lyricism.
Husman, a fashion designer turned artist, discovered the Intaglio process in the 1970s and soon a printing press and metal plates for etching and engraving became part of her studio, alongside large easel, oil, and acrylic paints. In turn, this led to an interest in paper-making, and, circa 1980, Husman made her way to Kyoto, Japan for a paper-making class with DAVID HOCKNEY. Upon her return, she began utilizing both paper and print making disciplines to create breathtaking collage pieces that incorporated fabrics, string, torn sections of prints, found objects, and coarse, handmade papers.
As she matured as an artist, Husman exhibited an uncanny ability to weave together her myriad influences, including explorations of remote cultures, to create pieces of increasing sophistication. She died in 2011 at 96. leaving a treasure trove of never-before-seen work for the public to discover.
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About ART IN THE ARTHOUSE:
Art in the Arthouse is the brainchild of Laemmle president, Greg Laemmle. Switching to digital poster frames conserves both paper and wall space, creating the opportunity to extend the cultural scope of our theaters to include the visual fine arts.
By reclaiming wall space throughout our theaters for the display of fine art, patrons will have a chance to bond with notable and emerging L.A. based visual artists and their work. Proceeds from the sale of art benefit the activities of the Laemmle Charitable Foundation.
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