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Fifty-fifth Anniversary Screenings of Luchino Visconti’s THE LEOPARD on December 5th in Encino, Pasadena, and West LA

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present a 55th anniversary screening of acclaimed director Luchino Visconti’s sumptuous masterpiece, THE LEOPARD (Il Gattopardo). The film will close out the year for the popular Anniversary Classics Abroad program of showcasing vintage foreign-language cinema.

The Leopard is based on the historical novel by Giuseppe Tomasi de Lampedusa, an international best seller upon publication in 1958. The story is set in the 1860s during the turbulent period of the “Risorgimento,” the struggle for the unification of Italy.

All this is reflected in the fate of one Sicilian aristocratic family, headed by Prince Fabrizio de Salina (Burt Lancaster). The Prince (the Leopard) at first resists all the political and social changes, but comes to accept them after their embrace by his pragmatic nephew (Alain Delon), who joins Garibaldi’s Red Shirts and marries the daughter (Claudia Cardinale) of an ambitious small-town merchant mayor to secure the family’s place in the new Italy.

Visconti was drawn to the material about fading aristocracy from his own heritage, as he was born to nobility in Milan. He had previously explored his country’s past with another historical adaptation, Senso, in 1954, and that film is also considered a masterwork.

The Leopard won the Palme D’or at the 1963 Cannes Film Festival and has been reissued on several occasions. The film is notable for its rich production design by Mario Garbuglia, cinematography by Giuseppe Rotunno, and Oscar-nominated costume design by Piero Tosi, who won an Honorary Oscar in 2014.

The original release reaped praise from The New York Times’ Bosley Crowther, “a stunning visualization of a mood of melancholy and nostalgia at the passing of an age.” Admiration has grown through the decades, with The London Observer calling it “That rare thing—a great film from a great book.” J. Hoberman in the Village Voice exclaimed, “The greatest film of its kind since World War II.”

Martin Scorsese is one of the film’s champions, placing it on his own personal list of the 12 greatest films ever made, extolling “the deeply measured tone…its use of vast spaces, and also the richness of every detail.” As a lament for a lost world, the film is considered Italy’s Gone With the Wind.

Also starring Terrence Hill (Mario Girotti), Paola Stoppa et al. Music by Nino Rota (La Strada, Romeo and Juliet, The Godfather). Visconti co-wrote the screenplay with Suso Cecchi d’Amico, Pasquale Festa Campanile, Enrico Medioli, and Massimo Franciosca.

The Leopard screens on December 5 at 7:00 PM at the Royal, Town Center, and Pasadena Playhouse.

Joanna Lancaster, daughter of Burt Lancaster, will participate in a pre-screening Q&A moderated by film critic Stephen Farber at the Laemmle Royal in West LA.

Click here for tickets.

Running time: 187 minutes
Italian with English subtitles
Format: Blu-ray

LAEMMLE LIVE presents: Crossroads School Jazz “A” Band December 2 in Santa Monica

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RSVP ON EVENTBRITE
This is a Free Event

LAEMMLE LIVE proudly presents the extraordinary Crossroads School Jazz “A” Band on Sunday, December 2, 2018 performing classic, contemporary and original jazz.

Crossroads School for Arts & Sciences is a K-12, coed college preparatory school in Santa Monica, California. Crossroads was founded upon five basic commitments: to academic excellence; to the arts; to the greater community; to the development of a student population of social, economic and racial diversity; and to the development of each student’s physical well-being and full human potential. One in four students receives financial assistance. The School is highly acclaimed for its programs and is a leader in public/private educational partnerships.

The program will be selected from the following: Inner Space, by Chick Corea, Drum Battle, by Kneedbody, Ridges, by Leo Major, My Foolish Heart, by Washington/Young, Have You Met Miss Jones, by Richard Rodgers, Red Clay, by Freddie Hubbard, Someday My Prince Will Come, by Churchill/Morey, In a Sentimental Mood, by Duke Ellington, 500 Miles High, by Chick Corea, Head in the Clouds, by Lucas Wurman, Isfahan, by Strayhorn/Ellington, Nardis, by Miles Davis, Capricornus, by Austin Peralta, Time After Time, by Cahn/Styne, Footprints, by Wayne Shorter.

Crossroads Jazz “A” Band
Leo Major, alto saxophone
Ethan Avery, trumpet
Will Kissinger, piano
Josh Lipp, guitar
Lucas Wurman, guitar/vocals
Will Royce, bass
Emilio Anamos, drums
Stefan Fayman, drums

This is a Free Event
RSVP ON EVENTBRITE

Sunday, December 2, 2018
11:00 AM
Monica Film Center

 

THE FARM Q&A with Filmmaker Opening Night at the Town Center.

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THE FARM filmmaker Hans Stjernswärd will participate in a Q&A following the 9:55 pm show on Friday, 11/16.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTTMeo5TwkA

FAMILY IN TRANSITION Q&A’s Opening Weekend at the Town Center.

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FAMILY IN TRANSITION filmmaker Ofir Trainin along with Amit and Yuval Tsuk will participate Q&A’s after the 5:20 pm and 9:45 pm shows on Friday, 11/16 and on Saturday, 11/17 after the 1:00 pm and 3:10 pm shows.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsdIAk5oBXQ

THE DIVIDE Q&A Opening Night at the Town Center.

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THE DIVIDE director/star Perry King will participate in a Q&A following the 7:00 pm show on Friday, 11/9.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CH3mZBr-J0E

Eightieth Anniversary Screenings of Jean Renoir’s GRAND ILLUSION on November 14 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, Jean Renoir’s anti-war masterpiece, GRAND ILLUSION. We present this program to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I on November 11, 1918. Renoir’s film is generally regarded as the finest set during the First World War, and it endures as a memorable lament for the loss of an entire generation.

Part of the originality and impact of ‘Grand Illusion’ comes from the fact that it has no battle scenes. Much of it is set in a German prison camp where several French soldiers are under the command of an aristocratic German officer, played by silent film director Erich von Stroheim. The prisoners are portrayed by rising French actors Jean Gabin, Pierre Fresnay, and Marcel Dalio. Their struggle to escape the camp provides the suspense in the film’s second half.

Throughout the picture, Renoir sees the humanity in both captives and captors, and the film is especially notable in its portrayal of Dalio’s character, a wealthy French Jew. Filmed on the eve of the Second World War, Renoir deliberately chose to include a prominent Jewish character at a time when virulent anti-Semitism was on the rise in Europe. Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels called ‘Grand Illusion’ “Cinematic Public Enemy No. 1.”

Elsewhere, the film received nothing but acclaim. In 1937 it won a prize at the Venice Film Festival for Best Artistic Ensemble. When the film opened in the United States in 1938, it became the first foreign language film ever to be nominated by the Academy for Best Picture. (This would not happen again for 30 years, when ‘Z’ received a Best Picture nod in 1969.) Over the years the film was acclaimed by critics and also by other filmmakers. Orson Welles named ‘Grand Illusion’ as one of two films he would take with him to a desert island.

When the film was reissued years later, the New York Times’ Janet Maslin called it “one of the most haunting of all war films… an oasis of subtlety, moral intelligence and deep emotion on the cinematic landscape.” Pauline Kael praised the film as “a triumph of clarity and lucidity; every detail fits simply, easily, and intelligibly.” And Leonard Maltin acclaimed “Renoir’s classic treatise on war, focusing on French prisoners during WWI and their cultured German commandant. Beautiful performances enhance an eloquent script.”

GRAND ILLUSION screens at 7pm on Wednesday, November 14th at the Playhouse 7 in Pasadena, Royal Theatre in West LA, and Town Center 5 in Encino.

Click here to purchase tickets.

Format: DCP

THE WALDHEIM WALTZ Revisits One of the “Masters of Alternative Facts and Populism.”

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We are opening the superb, “brutally relevant” new documentary THE WALDHEIM WALTZ next Friday, November 16 at the Royal and Town Center. “A timely and engagingly personal reminder of recent European history,” the film has enjoyed wide acclaim. It’s a film about truth and lies and how a dishonest man can rise to power.

Filmmaker Ruth Beckermann documents the process of uncovering former UN Secretary General Kurt Waldheim’s wartime past. It shows the swift succession of new allegations by the World Jewish Congress during his Austrian presidential campaign, the denial by the Austrian political class, and the outbreak of anti-Semitism and nationalism, which finally led to his election in 1986. “If it sounds like a dry history lesson, think again. Thanks to her smart narration — clear, impassioned but never polemical — and the astute way she allows exceptional footage to play out to its full extent, “The Waldheim Waltz” has a sense of urgency made more pressing given political developments not just in Austria but Poland and Hungary as well.”

In his recent New York Times review, Bilge Eberi describes the film’s origins and captures its success:

“What does it take to make a nation reconsider its self-image? That’s the question lying at the heart of the Austrian documentarian Ruth Beckermann’s informative and unnerving “The Waldheim Waltz.” Using mostly contemporaneous material — TV reports and news conferences, as well as documentary video footage she shot herself — the filmmaker follows the controversial 1986 presidential campaign of the Austrian politician Kurt Waldheim, whose candidacy was plunged into chaos by new revelations regarding his Nazi past.

“Waldheim had portrayed himself as an honest soldier who had been conscripted into the Wehrmacht during World War II and returned home in 1941 after getting wounded on the Eastern front. While rumors of further Nazi association had bubbled during his term as United Nations secretary general from 1972 to 1981, it wasn’t until Waldheim sought higher domestic office that more damning evidence emerged — particularly of his involvement in the 1942 massacre of Yugoslav partisans in Kozara and the 1943 deportation of Jews from Salonika, the historical name for Thessaloniki, Greece.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oGlG0lu50c

“The candidate claimed he was the victim of an international conspiracy — by American politicians, the World Jewish Congress and others. As unsettling footage Beckermann herself shot at the time proves, many voters not only sided with him, but went even further, openly spouting anti-Semitic vitriol.

“The director views Waldheim’s candidacy as a moment when Austria could no longer see itself as an innocent casualty of Nazi rule. The country had often presented itself, we’re told, as “Hitler’s first victim,” and people like Waldheim as honest soldiers caught on the wrong side. The truth, it seems, was a lot more complicated, and disturbing.

“Beckermann, who narrates, makes no claims to objectivity. She tells us at the outset that she participated in protests against Waldheim. Some of the most fascinating parts of her film show the growth and coalescing of her fellow activists, who became invested in stopping his candidacy. As such, “The Waldheim Waltz” sometimes dances between a brisk, present-tense recounting of political history and a more wandering, personal reflection on the filmmaker’s history.

“But it leans more toward the political. Beckermann wants not so much to contextualize as to invoke — with the hope, perhaps, that placing us in the middle of this debate will create its own context. Indeed, watching Waldheim’s campaign, it’s hard not to think about the present day — from the emergence of old hatreds, to the closure of elite ranks around their own, to the weaponizing of nationalism against the truth. The film may end in 1986, but the darkness it reveals still looms.”

Director Ruth Beckermann made the film because she sees history repeating itself. “When I looked at the material I shot 30 years ago, I was shocked. Had I really forgotten how easily emotions can be stirred up against others and used by populist politicians? In THE WALDHEIM WALTZ I attempt to analyse what was going on back then, things which seem all too familiar in our present day of Trump, Kurz & Strache and other masters of alternative facts and populism.”

LAEMMLE LIVE presents: Project LENS November 18 in Santa Monica

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RSVP ON EVENTBRITE
This is a Free Event

Please join us for a very special event as LAEMMLE LIVE presents Project LENS for their Los Angeles debut event on Sunday, November 18, 2018. The event will be presented by LENS co-founders Ariel Mitnick and Rainer Crosett, with featured guest speaker Hillary Green-Lerman, an expert data scientist from DataCamp, the premier online educational platform for data science learning.

Every Project LENS event features thrilling performances of classical music interwoven with a presentation from a non-musical field. For their LA debut, the LENS team will be revealing the commonalities between doing data science and interpreting works of music. A musician’s aim to tell a story through music by interpreting scores in a specific way is, as they will show, not so different from a data scientist’s mission to make raw data intelligible and meaningful to others, also if that line of work interests you, look into data workshops to gain some traction in the industry. These parallel interpretative journeys often lead to conflicting conclusions among both musicians and data scientists, with disagreements over whether, for example, a work of music is fundamentally humorous or tragic, or whether drinking coffee makes you live longer or shorter. What does an honest interpretation based on deep analysis look like in both cases, and what can go wrong? Join Project LENS for this discussion and live performances of string quartets by Beethoven and Debussy!

Project LENS is a performance collaborative founded in Boston in 2014 with the mission of exploring the many ways in which music is connected to the world around it. Our events weave TED-style talks given by experts in their fields together with classical performance, revealing parallels that cast both subjects in a new light. We believe music can interact meaningfully with virtually any other discipline, and our events have featured topics as diverse as evolution, moral philosophy, neurobiology, visual art, and documentary filmography. Our featured speakers have included world-renowned psychologist Steven Pinker, painter Samuel Bak, and numerous Harvard professors and researchers.

Our musical collaborators have included the GRAMMY Award-winning Parker Quartet, and we have appeared at venues ranging from Harvard’s Paine Hall to the Oberon Theatre, the Harvard Ed Portal, and Boston’s Pucker Gallery. Our three co-founders, Ariel Mitnick, Rainer Crosett, and Alan Toda-Ambaras, met during their studies in the Harvard-New England Conservatory Joint Program, and their combined accolades include prize-winning theses and top academic honors at Harvard College, top prizes at international music competitions, and collaborations with artists such as Yo-Yo Ma.

This is a Free Event
RSVP ON EVENTBRITE
Sunday, November 18, 2018
11:00 AM
Monica Film Center