Tag Archives: Landmark Theatre

NEVER RARELY SOMETIMES ALWAYS

NEVER RARELY SOMETIMES ALWAYS is Eliza Hittman’s third cinéma vérité feature, starring Sidney Flanigan as a young woman from rural Pennsylvania traveling to New York City for an abortion.

The film screened earlier this month at a Film Independent Presents event in Culver City, and is now playing in Hollywood and on the Westside, opening next week in Pasadena.

The spark for my new film came in 2012, when a woman named Savita Halappanavar died of blood poisoning in a hospital in Galway after being refused a life-saving abortion. Out of devastation, I naively began to research the history of abortion rights in Ireland. In a country where abortion was criminalized, I became fascinated to learn that women who needed abortions were forced to travel from Ireland to England. 
 
I began to read more and more about Ireland’s hidden diaspora and saw a compelling untold narrative about ‘women on the run’ traveling with the unbearable burden of shame. These migratory abortion trails also exist within our own country from rural areas with limited and restrictive access, past state lines and into progressive cities. Through extensive research and interviews over several years I developed this script. After premiering Beach Rats at Sundance in 2017 and following the inauguration of Trump, I felt an urgent need to make this film now. The fate of a woman’s fundamental right to access is at risk. If Roe v. Wade is attacked and abortion made illegal nationwide, how far will we have to travel?
 
Savita Halappanavar’s death revolutionized Ireland. It unified feminist groups throughout the country and galvanized a movement to reverse the cruel Eighth Amendment that recognizes the life of a mother and a fetus as being equal. They were activated because her identity was not anonymous. She had a name, a face, a warm smile that the country could feel and mourn. The abortion ban was historically repealed last May. 
 
 Amidst such a fraught moment in U.S. history, it’s hard not to ask myself how I am doing in my artistic practice can create change. Women’s issues are global issues. By taking a social and political issue and demonstrating its impact on one individual or character, my goal is to find ways to get past our audiences’ defenses against this stigmatized subject and open people up to confronting difficult realities. 
 
 As an extension of my body of work, the film balances realism and lyricism, beauty and horror, fear and hope. It is infused with intimacy, discomfort, tension and truth. It will ignite controversy and conversation. Never Rarely Sometimes Always is ultimately a story about resistance and will perhaps even inspire change.Eliza Hittman

NEVER RARELY SOMETIMES ALWAYS

Now Playing.

Arclight Hollywood

6360 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles.

The Landmark

10850 Pico Boulevard, West Los Angeles.

Eliza Hittman, Never Rarely Sometimes Always (2020), from top: Sidney Flanigan; Flanigan; U.S. poster; Talia Ryder and Théodore Pellerin; Flanigan. Photographs by Angal Field, images courtesy and © the filmmaker, the actors, the photographer, and Focus Features.

CÉLINE SCIAMMA IN CONVERSATION

At the center of the film is this idea that there is no muse, or that it’s a beautiful word for hiding the reality of how women have been collaborating with artists. I wanted to portray the intellectual dialog and not to forget that there are several brains in the room. We see how art history reduces the collaboration between artists and their companions: before, a muse was this fetishized, silent, beautiful woman sitting in the room, whereas we now know that Dora Maar, the “muse” of Picasso, was this great Surrealist photographer. And Gabrièle Buffet-Picabia, the companion of Picabia, was intensely involved in his evolution…

I wanted to portray the reality of that in the process of actually making a film in strong collaboration with my actresses. — Céline Sciamma, writer and director of PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE

Sciamma and her stars—Noémie Merlant and Adèle Haenel—are in town to present a special screening of PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE, followed by a Q & A. Three days later, the writer-director will present an encore screening.

PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE

CÉCILE SCIAMMA, NOÉMIE MERLANT, and ADÈLE HAENEL Q & A

Tuesday, January 7, at 7 pm.

CÉCILE SCIAMMA Q & A

Friday, January 10, at 7 pm.

The Landmark

10850 West Pico Boulevard, West Los Angeles.

Cécile Sciamma, Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019), from top: Adèle Haenel; Haenel (left) and Noémie Merlant; Valeria Golino; Haenel and Golino; Merlant; U.S. film poster; Merlant and Haenel; portrait of Haenel’s character; Merlant and Haenel. Images courtesy and © the filmmaker, the actors, the photographers, and Neon.

MARIANNE AND LEONARD — WORDS OF LOVE

In the 1960s, Hydra was a seemingly magical refuge from the world, a bubble that kept you safe as long as you stayed inside it. But for many who left the Grecian island and returned to what was then referred to as the “rat race,” life away from their sanctuary proved dangerous, and there were many casualties along the way.

Leonard Cohen met an early, essential inspiration for his life’s work on Hydra—Marianne Ihlen, a Norwegian woman who was visiting Greece with her husband and son. This is where MARIANNE & LEONARD—WORDS OF LOVE—the fascinating new documentary by Nick Broomfield—begins. Cohen’s obsessive self-involvement provided its own buttress against straight society:

“A large part of my life was escaping, whatever it was… It was a selfish life, but at the time it felt like survival.”

It was left to Marianne to take what Broomfield—during his Film Independent Presents post-screening interview with artistic director Jacqueline Lyanga—called the “oddly unflattering” role of muse. MARIANNE & LEONARD brings us the lifelong entanglements, the separations and reunions, the breakdowns and break-ups, the round-the-clock use of speed, wine, LSD, and other substances (“They used to call me Captain Mandrax,” explains Cohen in the film, citing the Quaalude-like drug he used to combat paralyzing stage fright)—all told through the eyes and hindsight of a man, Broomfield, who was also on Hydra in the ’60s and also fell in love with Marianne.

The film ends with Cohen reciting the last lines of his poem “Days of Kindness”:

“… What I loved in my old life
I haven’t forgotten
It lives in my spine
Marianne and the child
The days of kindness
It rises in my spine
and it manifests as tears
I pray that loving memory
exists for them too
the precious ones I overthrew
for an education in the world.”

Ihlen and Cohen died less than four months apart. And in the end he did give her what she wanted most, sending her a last message on her death bed: “See you down the road my friend. Endless love and gratitude, your Leonard.”

MARIANNE & LEONARD—WORDS OF LOVE

Now playing:

Playhouse 7

673 East Colorado Boulevard, Pasadena.

Arclight Hollywood

6360 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles

The Landmark

10850 West Pico Boulevard, West Los Angeles.

Black and white photographs: Marianne Ihlen and Leonard Cohen in Marianne & Leonard—Words of Love (2), courtesy and Nick Broomfield and Roadside Attractions. Color photographs: Broomfield (2) and Jacqueline Lyanga at the Film Independent Presents special screening of Marianne & Leonard at the Arclight Hollywood on July 2, 2019. Photograph by Araya Diaz/Getty Images.

RALPH FIENNES‘ NUREYEV

THE WHITE CROW—the story of Rudolf Nureyev‘s student years in Leningrad, his first trip to Paris and performances at Palais Garnier, and his defection at La Bourget airport—was directed by and co-stars Ralph Fiennes, who wrote a filmmaker’s letter for the Landmark about the experience:

“Although I had no great interest in ballet and I didn’t know much about Nureyev, I was gripped by the story of his early life. His youth in Ufa in central Russia in the 1940s, his student years studying dance in Leningrad, now St. Petersburg, and then culminating in his decision to defect to the West in 1961. That story got under my skin… and sat with me as a great possibility for a film. I didn’t really see myself directing it. It was just the idea. It’s so dramatic and is about so many things. It has an interior personal dynamic, the drive to realize himself and the ruthlessness that goes with it. It’s also within the context of the ideological divide between East and West at the height of the Cold War. It was that character, that will of Nureyev’s that made him realize who he was—an artist that really grabbed me.

David Hare was our ideal writer. David writes what I call ‘high-definition,’ provocative characters who have strong contrasting elements that are challenging for an audience. He writes those big spirits and he writes them brilliantly. Also, David is known for writing things that have a strong political and social context. He has an instinctive understanding of the political climate in our story. I feel I have a good connection with David. We batted many ideas back and forth, feeling the temperature and the tone and the shifts of what we wanted to do. It was very inspiring to sit with him and wrangle the challenges of structure and drama. We asked ourselves, ‘What was the essential story we were trying to tell?’ We were clear this was the story of young Rudolf’s defection. I first thought it should be linear. What emerged in our discussion was the three time frame structure: Paris 1961, the Leningrad years from 1955 to 1961, and the childhood years in the late ‘40s. These time frames interweave giving us a portrait of the evolution of this boy and leading us to a point at La Bourget in June ’61. The timeframes come together at this point.

“We employed two casting directors in Russia to do a big sweep which ended up with four or five candidates, and I identified this young Ukrainian dancer, Oleg Ivenko, from the Tartar State Ballet company. I felt he had a latent acting ability and he is a strong ballet dancer who has a physical proximity to Nureyev. When I did the screen tests, I could see that Oleg picked up immediately on direction. If I demonstrated something, he got it very quickly. A couple of times I would say ‘No, this is what I want’ and I would demonstrate an attitude or a feeling and he very quickly got it. There was something about the way he sat in front of the camera, some ‘X factor’ that made me think ‘That could be Rudi.’ I pushed him to understand the best screen acting is rooted in being really present and in the moment. You’re reacting and listening, so the thing to get him to feel is: Don’t show me you’re angry or shy or irritated or whatever; just feel it, be it. Have it inside. If you really have it or are close to having it, it will reveal itself. It sounds quite simple, but it’s hard to be really present and the beauty of his work is that he is very present. It’s an uncluttered performance. He was very generous and allowed me to steer him a bit, but he has a real pure screen acting instinct.” — Ralph Fiennes

The film is based on Nureyev: The Life, by Julie Kavanaugh, who uncovered the importance of Teja Kremke, the East German dancer who triggered Nureyev’s move to the West.

THE WHITE CROW

Now playing

Arclight Hollywood

6360 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles.

Landmark

10850 Pico Boulevard, West Los Angeles.

From top: Oleg Ivenko and Ralph Fiennes on set, The White Crow; Fiennes (left) as ballet master Alexander Pushkin, with Ivenko as Rudolf Nureyev (center); Ivenko, with Louis Hofmann as Teja Kremke; Ivenko, in Paris with Adèle Exarchopoulos as Clara Saint; Ivenko in Paris. Images courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.

CLAIRE DENIS — HIGH LIFE

HIGH LIFE is a space mystery and it’s a new film directed by Claire Denis, which are the only two things you need to know before going to see it.

(But between your first and second viewing, you’ll want to read as much as you can. And remember that one of Denis’ favorite songs is The Beach Boys‘ “In My Room”—which is not in the film.)

HIGH LIFE

Now playing

Arclight Hollywood

6360 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles.

The Landmark

10850 West Pico Boulevard, Los Angeles.

From top: Juliette Binoche and Robert Pattinson in High Life (2018); Binoche, Lars Eidinger, Mia Goth, Pattinson, and Claire Tran; André Benjamin; Jessie Ross and Pattinson. Images courtesy A24.