‘German Currents’ Film Festival reaches 10-year mark

Film
It’s a decade, this year, for the annual German Currents film festival in Los Angeles, co-sponsored by The Goethe Institute and the American Cinematheque. Fittingly, the program has been expanded to include 10 Los Angeles premieres, peppered with conversations with prolific German directors, writers and actors. Award winning director Wolfgang Becker (“Good Bye Lenin!”) will ...

Maxing out on Jerry Lewis @ the Aero

Film
The king of comedy will appear in person following a screening of his film, “Max Rose” hosted by the American Cinematheque at the Aero Theatre. Professional pianist Max Rose (Jerry Lewis) takes pride in his long career but even greater joy in his marriage to Eva (Claire Bloom). He is devastated when she dies – ...

Princely double-bill at the Aero

Film · Music
PURPLE RAIN 1984, Warner Bros., 111 min, Dir: Albert Magnoli 35mm print with Dolby 4-track Magnetic Audio Prince’s big-screen debut as The Kid, frontman of rock-R&B band The Revolution. Burdened with a troubled home life, The Kid also must contend with a rival bandleader (Morris Day) out to steal both his slot at a Minneapolis ...

“A Ballerina’s Tale” special screening, arts•meme to host q & a

Dance · Film
Just announced by Dance Camera West and The American Cinematheque, a special screening on Tuesday, October 20, at the Aero Cinema in Santa Monica, of “A Ballerina’s Tale,” which will open Friday Oct 23 at Laemmle Theaters. Following the free screening of the documentary, a Q & A film discussion will be conducted by arts•meme‘s ...

Jazz the weekend away @ the Aero

Dance · Film · Music
Jazz on a Spring Day Stormy Weather Jazz’s greatest artists in vintage shorts, digitally restored by the Cohen Film Collection. Includes: “Symphony in Black: A Rhapsody of Negro Life” with Duke Ellington and Billie Holiday; “A Rhapsody in Black and Blue” with Louis Armstrong; “St. Louis Blues” with Bessie Smith; “Cab Calloway’s Hi-De-Ho”; “A Bundle ...

Dance across the Pacific Isles with ‘Cinerama South Seas Adventure’

Dance · Film
A cruise ship wending it way across the South Pacific, with visits to Hawaii, Tahiti, Tonga and Fiji, includes a film crew shooting footage of native culture. Camera-captured in 1958 in “Cinerama South Sea Adventure,” it sounds pretty colorful, doesn’t it? Now a legendary travelogue, “South Sea,” one of the great exercises in wide-screen projection ...

The French named it … let’s see how they do it … film noir

Film
The French coined the term “film noir” (both for dark plot lines and shadow-soaked visuals). In a land that reveres cinema like no other, France has hidden in its oeuvre crime films and dark melodramas that capture the essence of noir. A series spooling at the Aero Theatre this weekend, “The French Had a Name ...

Wim Wenders brings PINA to Aero Theatre Mon Feb 16

Dance · Film
Fresh from the Berlinale festival conferring its Honorary Golden Bear on the 69-year-old filmmaker for lifetime achievement, Wim Wenders, the son of Düsseldorf beloved by the dance world, as well, for his magisterial filming of Pina Bausch’s Tanztheater Wuppertal in PINA, the American Cinematheque has nailed the hot-hot-hotter Wenders (on March 2, the Museum of ...

The gorgeous sound of Godard’s ‘Goodbye to Language’ 1

Film · Ideas & Opinion
The handwritten scrawl below comes from the pen of cinéaste-provocateur Jean-Luc Godard. The influential director, still working in his eighties, shares the scenario for his startling new film, “Goodbye to Language” (“Adieu au langage”), now in an exclusive run at the American Cinematheque’s Aero Theatre through much of next week. Godard’s 43rd film, a ravishing ...

Around the movie world in five days: Golden Globes foreign-film screenings

Film
It’s that time of year. Buck up, buckeroo. Sweat out your holiday cocktailing and get back to business. In Los Angeles, fortunately, “business” takes the form of “pleasure,” as the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and the American Cinematheque buddy up for annual screenings of the nominees for Best Foreign Language Film award in advance of ...