Dec – Feb 2023 Film Calendar

SPOTLIGHTS

LIMITED SERIES PRESTON STURGES MATINEES FEB 10-12, 2023

Losing Ground Fri, Jan 27 | 7:30pm | TMT

The Palm Beach Story Sun, Feb 12 | 2pm | TMT

In celebration of the release of author Stuart Klawans’s book Crooked, But Never Common: The Films of Preston Sturges —an in-depth appreciation of all ten of the writer-director’s major movies, presenting Sturges as a filmmaker whose work balanced slapstick and social critique—Klawans has selected his personal favorites from Sturges’s body of work to screen in this series. Programmed by Stuart Klawans and Bernardo Rondeau. Notes by Robert Reneau.

and offers a fragmented poetry of detritus. Klahr teaches at the California Institute of the Arts School of Theater and is represented by The Anthony Reynolds Gallery, London. “My latest feature length series of collage films, The Blue Rose of Forgetfulness , is a compilation of six films created between 2015 and 2020. Focused primarily around thematics of love, it is both porous and dense, a cinema of shifting moods and engagements that offers a tactile exploration of elliptical narrative. Like a waking dream, what can be clearly described in words is less significant than what can be felt.” — Lewis Klahr, August 2022 DIRECTED BY: Lewis Klar. 2022. 63 min. USA. Color. Sound. Digital.

Losing Ground @ 40 Fri, Jan 27 | 7:30pm | TMT

One of the first feature-length motion pictures directed by a Black American woman and a National Film Registry inductee, Losing Ground tells the story of a Black female philosophy professor and her abstract painter husband drifting apart as they experience separate creative evolutions. The film won first prize at the Figueroa International Film Festival in Portugal in 1982 but did not receive an official release until it was restored in 2015, long after director Kathleen Collins passed away from breast cancer in 1988. Losing Ground paved the way for Julie Dash to become the first African American woman to have a wide theatrical release of a feature film with Daughters of the Dust (1991). Dash will join Dr. Jacqueline Stewart, Director and President of the Academy Museum, and Dr. Ariel Stevenson, Assistant Professor at USC, in a conversation following the screening. DIRECTED BY: Kathleen Collins. WRITTEN BY: Kathleen Collins. WITH: Seret Scott, Bill Gunn, Duane Jones, Billie Allen. 1982. 86 min. USA. Color. English. 4K DCP. Presented by the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, University of Southern California’s Visions and Voices, and the California African American Museum. Restoration by Yale Film Archive, The Film Foundation, and Milestone Films with supervision by Ronald K. Gray. Funding provided by the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation. Lab: Colorlab. Audio Restoration: Audio Mechanics. Thank you to Nina Collins, Michael Minard, Brian Meacham, AJ Rohner and Michael Lloyd at Colorlab, and Terri Francis. The Blue Rose of Forgetfulness Thu, Feb 9 | 7:30pm | TMT | United States Premiere Lewis Klahr is a Los Angeles-based collage artist who has been making films since the late 1970s. Drawing from a treasure trove of mid-century imagery clipped from the pages of vintage books and magazines, Klahr animates narratives that unravel like nested memories. His latest cycle of films— The Blue Rose of Forgetfulness —lives up to its enigmatic title

The Palm Beach Story with The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek Sun, Feb 12 | 2pm | TMT The Palm Beach Story The archetypal romantic comedy storyline about a divorcing couple who find themselves falling for their mates all over again gets turned upside down and given a good shaking in one of Preston Sturges’s most uproarious farces. Claudette Colbert and Joel McCrea are the loving but financially struggling couple who find themselves tempted by new partners; Rudy Vallee is the millionaire who woos Colbert and Mary Astor is Vallee’s divorced sister who sets her sights on McCrea. From its frenetic main title sequence to its jaw-dropping finale, The Palm Beach Story is Sturges at his most inventive, unpredictable, and inimitable. DIRECTED BY: Preston Sturges. WRITTEN BY: Preston Sturges. WITH: Claudette Colbert, Joel McCrea, Mary Astor, Rudy Vallee. 1942. 90 min. USA. B&W. English. 35mm. New print courtesy of the Academy Film Archive. The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek In Sturges’s most censor-defying farce, Betty Hutton is Trudy Kockenlocker, a small-town policeman’s daughter who attends a farewell dance for WWII soldiers only to later find that she’s become the bride of the now-missing Private Ratzkiwatzki. When her childhood friend Norval Jones (Sturges’s favorite small-town schnook Eddie Bracken) tries to help her out of her predicament, the complications only increase and Trudy unexpectedly falls for her old pal. Sturges was nominated for his Original Screenplay (competing in the category against his own Hail the Conquering Hero , which also starred Bracken). DIRECTED BY: Preston Sturges. WRITTEN BY: Preston Sturges. WITH: Eddie Bracken, Betty Hutton, Diana Lynn, William Demarest. 1944. 101 min. USA. B&W. English. DCP.

The Great McGinty with The Lady Eve Fri, Feb 10 | 2pm | TMT The Great McGinty

Preston Sturges was one of Hollywood’s most in-demand screenwriters when he took the unusual step of selling his latest screenplay to Paramount for only ten dollars—on the condition that he be allowed to make his directorial debut with the project. That screenplay was The Great McGinty , a witty political satire about a homeless man who, with the help of the corrupt system, rises to become governor of the state. Sturges’s script earned him his only Academy Award, and many of the supporting cast would become familiar faces in his films. DIRECTED BY: Preston Sturges. WRITTEN BY: Preston Sturges. WITH: Brian Donlevy, Muriel Angelus, Akim Tamiroff, Allyn Joslyn. 1940. 83 min. USA. B&W. English. DCP. The Lady Eve This screwball masterpiece from Preston Sturges finds Charles Pike (Henry Fonda), a handsome but clueless snake expert who is also the heir to an ale empire, falling helplessly for a beautiful con artist (Barbara Stanwyck). Sturges’s combination of verbal wit, slapstick, and heartfelt romance is unimpeachable, and Stanwyck and Fonda are a pair for the ages. The supporting cast is equally sublime, including Charles Coburn and Eric Blore as fellow con artists, Eugene Pallette as the blustering ale tycoon, and William Demarest as Fonda’s loyal minder Muggsy. Monckton Hoffe earned an Oscar nomination for the film’s original story. DIRECTED BY: Preston Sturges. WRITTEN BY: Preston Sturges. STORY BY: Monckton Hoffe. WITH: Barbara Stanwyck, Henry Fonda, Charles Coburn, Eugene Pallette. 1941. 95 min. USA. B&W. English. 35mm. New print courtesy of the Academy Film Archive.

2 Fast 2 Furious Wed, Feb 22 | 7:30pm | DGT

This smash hit sequel to The Fast and the Furious (2001) takes leave of Dom Toretto and his family to follow Brian O’Conner (Paul Walker), the LA cop who sacrificed his career to help his friend Dom escape justice. Given the chance to wipe his own criminal record clean, Brian teams up with his old friend Roman Pearce (Tyrese Gibson) to infiltrate the organization of ruthless drug lord Carter Verone (Cole Hauser), while falling for undercover customs agent Monica Fuentes (Eva Mendes). This film returned director John Singleton to the action-thriller genre of his 2000 Shaft reboot, and his high-energy sequel—with its mixture of light-hearted banter, increasingly over-the-top action sequences, and twisty plotting—helped set the template for the seven (and counting) sequels that followed. The film also introduced two performers who would become key members of the Furious “family”—Tyrese Gibson as Roman, and Chris “Ludacris” Bridges as race host Tej Parker. DIRECTED BY: John Singleton. WRITTEN BY: Michael Brandt, Derek Haas. STORY BY: Michael Brandt, Derek Haas, Gary Scott Thompson. WITH: Paul Walker, Tyrese Gibson, Eva Mendes, Cole Hauser. 2003. 107 min. USA. Color. Scope. Rated PG-13. 35mm.