Tag Archives: Egyptian Theatre

KIEŚLOWSKI AT THE EGYPTIAN

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Apart from being a distinguished artist, Kieslowski had a striking moral authority. Both in his private and public life, he was known as an honest and straightforward man… He was all opposites: his love for others was covered by an outer harshness. This was because he was afraid of lies in public life: he was very severe and refused to compromise… Everything about his life was “clean”—all was transparent. — Krzysztof Zanussi

The American Cinematheque’s SHORT SERIES ABOUT KRZYSZTOF KIEŚLOWSKI features a pair of double features and a Sunday triple-bill of the director’s valedictory TROIS COULEURS films.

The series opens with A SHORT FILM ABOUT LOVE and A SHORT FILM ABOUT KILLING—both 1988—the full-length versions of two of the filmmaker’s Decalogue episodes.

Friday night features a masterworks double bill: THE DOUBLE LIFE OF VÉRONIQUE (1991)—with Irène Jacob in a dual role—and BLIND CHANCE (1981), starring Bogusław Linda, and presented in its complete original form.

The series wraps on Sunday with the trilogy marathon BLUE (1993), WHITE (1994), and RED (1994), Kieślowski’s final features.

A SHORT FILM ABOUT LOVE and A SHORT FILM ABOUT KILLING

Thursday, September 5, at 7:30 pm.

THE DOUBLE LIFE OF VÉRONIQUE and BLIND CHANCE

Friday, September 6, at 7:30 pm.

BLUE, WHITE, and RED

Sunday, September 8, at 5 pm.

Egyptian Theatre

6712 Hollywood Boulevard, Los Angeles.

Krzysztof Kieślowski, from top: Irène Jacob in The Double Life of Véronique; Grażyna Szapołowska in A Short Film About Love; Mirosław Baka in A Short Film About Killing; Bogusław Linda (left) in Blind Chance; Juliette Binoche in Blue; Julie Delpy in White; Jacob in Red. Images courtesy and © the filmmaker’s estate, the artists, the photographers, and the distributors.

GAINSBOURG’S JE T’AIME MOI NON PLUS

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This week, La Collectionneuse and the American Cinematheque present the 4K restoration of Serge Gainsbourg’s 1976 film JE T’AIME MOI NON PLUS, its first Los Angeles screening in many years. Starring Jane Birkin, Joe Dallesandro, and Hugues Quester, this truck-stop triangle was the first of only two features films Gainsbourg directed.

“Serge is the one who approached me. [Jane and Serge] were great people. Just a great couple that were truly a couple. They were fun to be with. It was really difficult to shoot a film where your love interest is the wife of the man who’s directing it. The film had to be erotic and I had to be very cool. I was doing multiplication tables in my head the whole time. But I loved both of them very much. They were very special people…

“[JE T’AIME MOI NON PLUS] was ahead of its time. I thought the public was gonna be ready for that kind of story. I thought it’d have been a nice success if they’d released it back then. But they weren’t giving Serge the kind of play he wanted.” — Joe Dallesandro

  JE T’AIME MOI NON PLUS

Wednesday, July 24, at 7:30 pm.

Egyptian Theatre

6712 Hollywood Boulevard, Los Angeles.

From top: Jane Birkin and Joe Dallesandro in Je t’aime moi non plus, with Hugues Quester (third from top, right) and director Serge Gainsbourg (fourth from top, center, on raft, and sixth from top, second from right).

LA COLLECTIONNEUSE

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This week in Hollywood, Kalyane Lévy’s La Collectionneuse will screen the film her program is named for.

Co-presented by Women & Film and the American Cinematheque, Éric Rohmer’s LA COLLECTIONNEUSE (1967) is one of his beloved contes moraux, and stars Haydée Politoff, Patrick Bauchau, and Daniel Pommereulle.

Stay for post-screening drinks and music, with a DJ set by DJ Izella.

LA COLLECTIONNEUSE

Friday, June 21, at 7:30 pm.

Egyptian Theatre

6712 Hollywood Boulevard, Los Angeles.

From top: Haydée Politoff and Patrick Bauchau in La Collectionneuse.

HARMONY KORINE IN CONVERSATION

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“I am always thinking about the cinema experience. That’s why I haven’t made television yet. Television is a writer’s medium. Not to say there aren’t good things in it, but television—no matter how good it is—is underwhelming. The size of it, and sitting in your living room. It’s pedestrian, whereas cinema is magic, it’s huge, it envelops you, and there’s something completely sensory when it works.” — Harmony Korine

On the eve of the release of The Beach Bum—his sixth feature—join Korine in Hollywood this week for two nights of double features and between-film conversations.

This American Cinematheque presentation of Korine’s films from the last twenty years includes his masterpiece Spring Breakers. All films will be screened in 35mm.

GUMMO and JULIEN DONKEY-BOY

Tuesday, March 19, at 7:30 pm.

TRASH HUMPERS and SPRING BREAKERS

Wednesday, March 20, at 7:30 pm.

Egyptian Theatre

6712 Hollywood Boulevard, Los Angeles.

From top: Rachel Korine in Spring Breakers; Bunny Boy in Gummo; Ewen Bremner in Julien Donkey-Boy; Trash Humpers. Images courtesy the artist, A24, Warner Bros., and Drag City.

WAR AND PEACE

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In its expression of the epic, cinema has shifted from the battlefield to the computer, generating worlds beyond belief from bits of code. Hollywood—forever wary of the shrinking screen—embraced the live-action epic as a foundational genre, grown spectacular in the 1950s in a thwarted attempt to divert audiences from their newly purchased television sets. Millions of dollars were spent, millions were often lost, and even the masters of the form—Cecil B. DeMille, Stanley Kubrick, Akira Kurosawa, David Lean—were constrained by time, budget, and the whims of their producers.

No such limitations impeded the completion of Sergey Bondarchuk’s WAR AND PEACE (1966), the greatest epic in cinematic history and a Cold War triumph of Soviet filmmaking. This seven-hour retelling of Leo Tolstoy’s work was filmed over the course of five years, cost $100,000,000 (pre-inflation), and employed over 100,000 actors—including regiments of Red Army troops who precisely re-enacted Napoleon’s invasion of Russia.

So, the battles are here—as is the jaw-dropping sacking and burning of Moscow—but so are the day-to-day dramas of Bondarchuk’s three aristocratic protagonists: Prince Andrei (Vyacheslav Tikhonov), Natasha (dancer Ludmila Savelyeva), and Pierre (Bondarchuk himself). For Tolstoy, WAR AND PEACE was more of a philosophical explication than a novel, and Bondarchuk does not neglect the author’s theoretical digressions motivation, will, memory, and regret.

This weekend in Santa Monica, the American Cinematheque presents a screening of a new digital restoration of this four-part masterpiece, with an encore in Hollywood in April.

WAR AND PEACE

Sunday, March 10, at 2 pm.

Aero Theatre

1328 Montana Avenue, Santa Monica.

Saturday, April 27, at 2 pm.

Egyptian Theatre

6712 Hollywood Boulevard, Los Angeles.

War and Peace stills courtesy Mosfilm. From top: firing squad; Ludmila Savelyeva (right) as Natasha at her first society ball; Vyacheslav Tikhonov, as Andrei, on the battlefield (2); religious procession.