Tag Archives: Billy Wilder Theater

SUSAN SONTAG — FROM THE ARCHIVE

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We felt that this was very exciting. That this film could be something very new. But we couldn’t judge. Because the script didn’t say so much. —Agneta Ekmanner, actor in Duet for Cannibals*

On Friday, two UCLA institutions—the Film and Television Archive and the Library Special Collections—will screen the 2K restoration of Susan Sontag’s directorial debut DUET FOR CANNIBALS and present a selection of the Susan Sontag Papers.

DUET FOR CANNIBALS

Friday, February 7, at 7:30 pm.

Billy Wilder Theater—Hammer Museum

10899 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles.

*Agneta Ekmanner, author’s interview in Benjamin Moser, Sontag: Her Life and Work (New York: Ecco, 2019), 313.

See “Benjamin Moser’s Pulitzer Prize for Biography is a Travesty,” by Nádia Gotlib, Lisa Paddock, Carl Rollyson, and Magdalena Edwards.

From top: Susan Sontag, photograph by Jill Krementz, 1974; Sontag, Duet for Cannibals (1969) (4). Images courtesy and © Jill Krementz, the filmmakers, actors, producers, stills photographers, and Metrograph Pictures.

SHIRLEY CLARKE — THE COOL WORLD

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I know a lot about alienation… I think all women filmmakers are aware of it. It was the subject of a lot of the conversations I had with Maya Deren. We agreed that we were always going to present a united front to the world…

I would not have been able to make THE COOL WORLD had I not been living with Carl Lee at that time. It took Carl three months of going up to Harlem all the time, gathering kids, and bringing them down for us to interview… The “good” kids in school weren’t giving us believable readings… I finally persuaded Carl to try to get to the gangs, [and] it was very exciting because the “real” kids started improvising the script we had written right back to us. — Shirley Clarke

As part of the UCLA Film and Television Archive series American Neorealism, Part One—1948–1984, Clarke’s THE COOL WORLD will screen at the Billy Wilder Theater, Hammer Museum this weekend on a double bill with Michael Roemer’s Nothing But a Man.

Frederick Wiseman produced THE COOL WORLD, and the jazz score is by Mal Waldron, with Dizzy Gillespie on the soundtrack.

THE COOL WORLD

Saturday, January 18, at 7:30 pm.

Billy Wilder Theater—Hammer Museum

10899 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles.

Shirley Clarke, The Cool World (1964). Film stills and (above) photographs of Clarke on set and with composer Mal Waldron. Images courtesy the filmmaker’s estate, the actors, the producers, and the distributors.

BLACK ORPHEUS

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As part part of LA Opera’s Eurydice Found program celebrating the world premiere of Matthew Aucoin and Sarah Ruhl’s opera Eurydice, the Hammer Museum will screen BLACK ORPHEUS, Marcel Camus’ bossa nova take on the myth. (The film’s score is by Antônio Carlos Jobim and Luis Bonfá.)

BLACK ORPHEUS

Wednesday, January 15, at 7:30 pm.

Hammer Museum—Billy Wilder Theater

10899 Wilshire Boulevard.

Marcel Camus, Black Orpheus (1959), from top; Marpessa Dawn as Eurydice and Breno Mello as Orpheus; French poster; Dawn; Black Orpheus carnaval do Brasil scene. Images courtesy and © the actors, photographers, producers.

THE REPORT — SCOTT Z. BURNS IN CONVERSATION

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THE REPORT—written and directed by Scott Z. Burns—will screen during the first week of the MoMA Contenders 2019 series at the Hammer Museum. Burns will be on hand for a Q & A following the screening.

Featuring Adam Driver as a Senate committee investigator and Annette Bening as his boss—senior California Senator Dianne Feinstein—THE REPORT is essential viewing for anyone even remotely curious about how government agencies tasked to protect the country often bungle the job in a morass of startling incompetence, territorial pride, political self-dealing, and ideological zealotry.

Burns’ lucid script and mise-en-scène tell the story of the Bush-Cheney Administration’s illegal, inept torture program following 9/11 and its aftermath—a decade and a half of discovery, investigation, destroyed documents, and thwarted oversight.

Tickets for the MoMA Contenders series are $20 general and $10 for Hammer Museum members.

THE REPORT with Scott Z. Burns

Tuesday, December 3, at 7:30 pm.

Billy Wilder Theater—Hammer Museum

10899 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles.

Scott Z. Burns, The Report (2019), from top: Adam Driver and Linda Powell; Annette Bening, photograph by Atsushi Nishijima, courtesy of the Sundance Institute; American poster; Jon Hamm; Bening and Driver. Images courtesy and © the filmmaker, the actors, the photographers, and Amazon Studios.

HANNAH BLACK AT UCLA

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As part of the UCLA Department of Art ’s Visiting Artist Lecture Series, Hannah Black will give a talk at the Hammer Museum.

Black is the author of Dark Pool Party—”essays, personal texts, and video/performance scripts that reassemble autobiographical fragments to think about the relationship between bodies, labor, and affect”—and the co-author of “The Tear Gas Biennial.”

HANNAH BLACK—UCLA DEPARTMENT OF ART LECTURE

Thursday, October 3, at 7:30 pm.

Billy Wilder Theater, Hammer Museum

10899 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles.

From top: Hannah Black; Black, Dark Pool Party book cover, courtesy and © the artist and Dominica, Inc.; Black (left), Bonaventure, and Ebba Fransén Waldhör, on the occasion of their exhibition ANXIETINA at Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève, 2018, photograph by Charlotte Krieger. Images courtesy and © the artists and the photographers.