ArcLight Cinemas has announced the launch of the Arclight DocFest Spring Series, a new documentary screening series debuting on May 13, 2014, at ArcLight Hollywood. Four films will be screening in the inaugural season, which takes place at ArcLight Hollywood on Tuesday evenings at 7:30 p.m. from May 13 through June 3. A Q&A with the filmmaker will follow each of the films as well as an open reception in the upper bar of ArcLight Hollywood. “ArcLight Cinemas is about the celebration of film and we are delighted to be able to bring such exceptional documentaries to a city that has long…
Author: Robin Menken
Robin Menken
Robin Menken Robin Menken lives in Los Angeles. She was the Artistic Director of the Second City Workshops, taught at UC Berkeley, USC, Barcelona\'s Ateneu and the Esalin Institute. She was Roberto Rossellini\'s assistant, and worked with Yevgeny Vevteshenku, Glauber Rocha and Eugene Ionesco. She sold numerous screenplays and wrote the OBIE winning The FTA SHow (touring with Jane Fonda, Donald Sutherland and Ben Vereen.) She was a programming consultant and Special Events co-ordinator for numerous film festivals, including the SF, Rio, Havana and N.Y Film Festivals. Her first news outlet was the historic East Village Other.
The Broad Theatre has offered Puppet-assisted or Puppet Shows before (Basil Twist) and this season it’s audience delighted at Handspring Puppet Co. and Bristol Old Vic’s inventive A Midsummer’s Night Dream.It seems fitting that Shakespeare’s ebullient play about the transformative powers of love should be recreated with post- modern minimalist puppetry. Handspring Puppet Company seems devoted to pre-industrial techniques, many from the 17th century era of automata.The free wheeling found object puppetry and the working class costumes invite us into the make-believe; the actors mesmerize us with their concentration; working their puppets they are like children at play- turning boxes…
Peter Brook’s “The Suit”, based on Cam Thenbe’s short story, is a graceful, distilled piece of pure theatre. Told with the light touch of a bedtime story, its moral fable about jealousy functions as a fun house mirror in which glimpses of society’s oppression, in this case Aparthied, can be glimpsed moving in the background. “The Suit”, a montage-musical developed by Brook, long term collaborator Marie- Hélène Estienne and composer-arranger Franck Krawczyk, is set in the legendary Sofiatown (or Kofifi) the center of jazz, politics and literature in Johannesburg during the 40’s and 50’s. Sof’town, a mix of Black Africans,…
The 6th Annual Hola Mexico Festival returns to downtown LA. Hola Mexico Festival, presented by DishLATINO & Cinelatino, returns to Los Angeles to offer the best of Mexico’s film, music and regional food. Themed ¡Hola Mexico Lucha!, the festival will showcase 13 feature films and four documentaries by Mexican directors and film production companies. The Hola Mexico Film Fest films will screen at Regal Cinemas L.A. Live and all special events will take place at the LA Plaza de Cultura y Arte.The festival kicks off its opening night on May 9 with the LA premiere of the Mexican box-office smash…
Martin Scorsese has curated a selection of landmark Polish films, all newly restored, from some of the country’s most accomplished and lauded filmmakers, such as Andrzej Wajda, Krzysztof Kieślowski, Krzysztof Zanussi, Jerzy Kawalerowicz, and Wojciech Has. Zanussi will appear in person as the Academy launches the series on May 2 with a screening of two of his films: the acidic college comedy “Camouflage” and the stirring drama “The Constant Factor”. The remaining series spans 1957–87 and encompasses the mind-bending absurdism of “The Hourglass Sanatorium”, the noir-tinted existentialism of “Night Train”, the New Wave eccentricities of “Innocent Sorcerers”, the period elegance…
French actress/director Emmanuelle Bercot’s lazy day road movie features the glorious Catherine Deneuve as Bettie, a 60-something one-time Miss Brittany taking a runner behind the wheel as a temporary escape from her small town life and family tangles.Bercot and co-writer Jerome Tonnerre (“The Women on the 6th Floor”) wrote the script with Deneuve in mind, and it’s relaxed story arc let’s all of Deneuve’s considerable craft play out in a nuanced performance. Deneuve (reportedly 69) was nominated for her 12th Cesar for the role. Cohen Media Group picked up the film before it premiered at the 2013 Berlinale.As a young…
Errol Morris is incapable of making a boring documentary. His latest, “The Unknown Known”, based on over thirty hours of interviews with former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is a companion piece to “The Fog of War”, his interview with former Secretary of Defense, Robert S. McNamara. In that film, which won Morris an Oscar in 2005, self-reflective McNamara achieved a certain dignity as the apologist for Kennedy’s real politic. Rumsfeld, who sidesteps reflection, is a different sort of animal.Charming, cagy Rumsfeld manages to obfuscate throughout. “There are known knowns; there are things we know that we know. There are…
Chicago historian John Maloof bought a box of negatives at a auction, hoping to use them for a history project. What he found were a series of riveting street photographs that seemed to him to be worthy of inclusion in the Canon of great Mid-century photographers. Scanning some 200 negatives he posted them on a photo news board and within hours he received enough encouragement to begin what has become his life work, launching the posthumous career of a quirky spinster shooter named Vivian Maier.First he bought back as many of the other auction boxes as he could, then began…
Anthony Russo and Joe Russo’s “Captain America: The Winter Soldier”, a stylish, muscular action film set in the Marvel Universe, is a worthy successor to the World War 11-set, 2011 “Captain America: The First Avenger”. Fast paced plotting interspersed with banter and great fight choreography makes this my favorite Marvel film so far.Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely’s script juggles espionage, thriller elements and action interweave, making this the most interesting Marvel plot; the Russo’s set pieces are riveting.Steve Rogers / Captain America (Chris Evans) has his hands full from the first minute the film rolls. Evans made his Marvel debut…
In March, the American Cinematheque brings film noir back to the big screen in Los Angeles! Co-presented with the Film Noir Foundation, our 16th annual Noir City festival will present three weeks of jaded gumshoes, femmes fatale and menacing heavies in gloriously gritty black-and-white. These evenings round up the form’s usual suspects as well as rarely screened gems, including the Foundation’s new 35mm restoration of TOO LATE FOR TEARS and new 35mm print of SOUTHSIDE 1-1000! Whether you’re a noir novice or well acquainted with this postwar demimonde of crime and (occasionally) punishment, Noir City is well worth a visit.This…