Tag Archives: Chinese Theatre

OUTFEST 2019 ENCORE — LABEL ME

Leave a reply

In LABEL ME, Waseem (Renato Schuch)—a gay-for-pay hustler from Syria—hooks up with German bourgeois Lars (Nikolaus Benda) in the latter’s Cologne apartment. The sex is good, but Lars is after a deeper connection, attempting to purchase through disclosure the one thing Waseem cannot afford to offer—his vulnerability.

This weekend, OUTFEST 2019 presents an encore screening of this immersive debut by Kai Kreuser.

LABEL ME

Sunday, July 28, at 3 pm.

Chinese 6

6801 Hollywood Boulevard, Los Angeles.

Label Me, from top: Renato Schuch; Schuch (left) and Nikolaus Benda; Benda; Schuch. Images courtesy and © the director, the performers, Outfest, and the International Film School, Cologne.

OUTFEST 2019 — VITA & VIRGINIA

Leave a reply

Among other anticipated titles, the closing weekend of OUTFEST 2019 brings the Los Angeles premiere of VITA & VIRGINIA, directed by Chanya Button and co-written by Button and Eileen Atkins.

The great Elizabeth Debicki (The Night Manager, Widows, the forthcoming Burnt Orange Heresy) would seem born to play Virginia Woolf, London modernist and author of the the sex-and-gender-switching novel Orlando (1928).

The inspiration for Orlando was Vita Sackville-West (portrayed by Gemma Arterton in the film), the British poet and aristocrat who contrived to seduce Woolf, an arrangement that threatened Vita’s marriage to bisexual diplomat Harold Nicolson slightly more than Virginia’s to publisher Leonard Woolf—open marriages more common than not among their Bloomsbury set.

VITA & VIRGINIA

Saturday, July 27, at 8:30 pm.

Chinese 6

6801 Hollywood Boulevard, Los Angeles.

From top: Elizabeth Debicki (left) and Gemma Arterton in Vita & Virginia (2); Protagonist Pictures poster; Isabella Rossellini (left) as Lady Sackville, Vita’s mother and Debicki; Debicki and Arterton.

NEVER LOOK AWAY

Leave a reply

Inspired by the youth of a colossus of contemporary art, NEVER LOOK AWAY is Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s fictional take on the early life of Gerhard Richter—who grew up under the Nazis (and in the GDR after the war), studied and practiced Socialist Realism at Dresden’s Art Academy, and escaped to the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf just before the Wall went up.

The film stars Tom Schilling, Paula Beer, Sebastian Koch—who was in Henckel von Donnersmarck’s remarkable debut feature The Lives of Others—and Oliver Masucci plays a character based on Joseph Beuys.

AFI Fest 2018 presents the Los Angeles premiere of NEVER LOOK AWAY this weekend at the Egyptian, with an encore screening on Wednesday at the Chinese. The director will be present on Sunday in Hollywood, as well as at LACMA for a January, 2019 screening.

NEVER LOOK AWAY

Sunday, November 11, at 7:30 pm.

Egyptian Theatre

6712 Hollywood Boulevard, Los Angeles.

Wednesday, November 14, at 2:45 pm.

Chinese Theatre

6925 Hollywood Boulevard, Los Angeles.

Friday, January 18, at 7:30 pm.

Bing Theater, LACMA

5905 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles.

See Dana Goodyear on the Richter-Donnersmarck dynamic, and Morgan Falconer, “Photo-Painting,” in Painting After Pollock (London: Phaidon, 2015), 232–247.

Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, Never Look Away, from top: Tom Schilling (2); Shilling and Paula Beer. Images courtesy and © the filmmaker, the actors, and Sony Pictures Classics.

AFI FEST — KNIFE + HEART

Leave a reply

Each man kills the thing he loves… the coward does it with a kiss, the brave man with a sword. — Oscar Wilde

The black-leather-masked murderer in Yann Gonzalez’s KNIFE + HEART—set in a gay porn milieu in late-1970s Paris—employs both methods.

With dialogue like “Okay, darlings, it’s business time. I want you all naked and stiffer than Giscard,” and a fluffer named Bouche d’or (“Mouth of Gold”), this psychosexual drama is a delicious heir to the camp exploits of John Waters and the thrillers of Brian De Palma.

The film stars Vanessa Paradis, Nicolas Maury, Kate Moran, Jonathan Genet, Khaled Alouach, Thomas Ducasse, Jacques Nolot, Romane Bohringer, Bertrand Mandico, Jules Ritmanic, and Félix Maritaud.

Artist Simon Thiébaut and choreographer Ari de B (plus dancers) are also featured.

The film will premiere tonight in Hollywood at the AFI Fest, with an encore screening early tomorrow afternoon.

KNIFE + HEART

Friday, November 9, at 11:59 pm.

Saturday, November 10, at 12:15 pm.

Chinese Theatre

6950 Hollywood Boulevard, Los Angeles.

Yann Gonzalez, Knife + Heart, from top: Vanessa Paradis; Paradis and Nicolas Maury; Paradis (center); Félix Maritaud (left). Images courtesy and © the filmmaker, the actors, and Memento Films Distribution, France.

LAURENT CANTET’S L’ATELIER

Leave a reply

Are words the only weapons in L’ATELIER / THE WORKSHOP, the new film from Laurent Cantet?

Novelist and writing-workshop teacher Olivia (Marina Foïs) meets a dark adversary in young student Antoine (Matthieu Lucci), who shakes up the class with a massacre-on-a-yacht scenario. Is this a highly imaginative work, or a red-flag warning? L’ATELIER screens twice this week as part of the ongoing AFI Fest.

L’ATELIER / THE WORKSHOP

Tuesday, November 14, at 9 pm; and Wednesday, November 15, at 12:45 pm.

CHINESE SIX-PLEX, 6925 Hollywood Boulevard, Los Angeles.

afifest.afi.com/2017/sections/the-workshop

Matthieu Lucci and Marina Foïs in L’Atelier (2017).

Image

374391.jpg-r_1280_720-f_jpg-q_x-xxyxx