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ART IN THE ARTHOUSE presents: The Pasadena Art Show 2018 June 13

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Laemmle’s Art in the Arthouse presents THE PASADENA ART SHOW 2018! Please join us as we celebrate our local artists in an intimate theatre setting. Our special event features a slideshow on the big screen, artist talks, and of course refreshments. Meet the artists and stay for the wine, cheese and conversation Art in the Arthouse is known for. Sales benefit the Laemmle Foundation and its support of humanitarian and environmental causes in the Los Angeles region.

About the Exhibit

We continue our tradition of showcasing dynamic, local talent in this fourth edition of our annual Pasadena group exhibit. Produced every year by master impresario Lynn Chang, the process began with an online juried selection culled from over two hundred entries.

Judging criteria included aspects such as color, tone, line, composition, as well as skillful handling and sensitivity to media and materials. The body of work engages, delights, and provokes some intriguing questions: Do artists impose their picture on the world or does the world impose itself upon the artist? How do artists bridge the space between source and creative output? One cannot create and be in doubt at the same time. Just as no two objects occupy the same space, it takes conviction and commitment for the work to find its voice.

The challenge for our artists is how to extend the visual moment through guile and
wonder. Shifting fields of nature, tonal photos, torn paper landscapes, figures gazing in the stillness of a room, and dreamy abstracts reconnect us to the present.

 – Joshua Elias, CURATOR

Artist Reception:

Laemmle Playhouse 7
Wednesday June 13, 7-9pm
Refreshments will be provided

RSVP here
This is a Free Event

 

Ingmar Bergman’s AUTUMN SONATA on Tuesday, May 15 in Encino, Pasadena, and West LA

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Abroad series presents the 40th anniversary of AUTUMN SONATA (1978), as part of the centennial retrospective of the birth of Ingmar Bergman, the great Swedish auteur who has entered the cinematic pantheon. Autumn Sonata represents the last theatrical film for Bergman, whose subsequent work was made for television, and then re-tailored for theatrical release.

For the occasion, Bergman enticed his namesake, legendary actress Ingrid Bergman, to return to her native language and star as a self-centered concert pianist who had favored her career over her children. In the drama of “fraught interpersonal relationships,” (a trademark of the director, as recently noted by Kenneth Turan), Ingrid Bergman’s character of Charlotte is invited by her daughter, Eva (Liv Ullmann) to visit her and her parson husband in their country home. When Eva also brings her handicapped sister, Helena (Lena Nyman) into the reunion, the past erupts on the present with repressed familial furor.

Bergman’s memorable movies of the 1950s and 1960s had been photographed in luminous black and white. In the 1970s he was working in color, and, as noted by Leonard Maltin, the cinematography by long-time Bergman collaborator Sven Nykvist is “peerless,” giving the film visual warmth and intensity.

As to the only collaboration of the two Bergmans, Gary Arnold of the Washington Post said, “Bergman’s casting coup lives up to expectations. Ingrid Bergman and Liv Ullmann invest their roles with undeniable emotional impact.” It was also Ingrid Bergman’s last film role. The three-time Academy Award winner (Gaslight, Anastasia, Murder on the Orient Express) delivers a searing performance that brought her a best actress nomination in 1978, her seventh and final nod overall. Ingmar Bergman’s original screenplay was also nominated, one of his nine career total as writer, producer, and director. Additionally, the movie was named best foreign film by the Hollywood Foreign Press that year.

Autumn Sonata is a story of intense mother-daughter relations, and as part of the Anniversary Abroad series will play two days after Mother’s Day on Tuesday, May 15 at 7:00 PM at three Laemmle locations: Royal, West Los Angeles; Town Center, Encino; Playhouse 7, Pasadena. Format: DCP. Click here for tickets.

Part of the city-wide, two month retrospective, “Ingmar Berman’s Cinema,” at various locations.

For the Anniversary Classics Abroad next attraction, we present another master filmmaker enjoying a retrospective, Milos Forman, with a 50th anniversary screening June 20 of his 1968 Academy Award nominee, The Fireman’s Ball.

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