Plenty remains in L.A.’s repertory

posted by Michael Zoldessy on August 31, 2009 at 7:50 am

LOS ANGELES, CA — This article in the Los Angeles Times discusses what’s left of L.A.’s repertory cinema scene.

On a recent weekend in Los Angeles, avid and adventuresome moviegoers had a menu of screening choices that included a 1950s Mexican sci-fi film, a tripped-out 1970s insect documentary, glittery camp and fantasy action-adventure from the 1980s, plus a double bill of lesbian vampire pictures.

Also among those choices was Jean-Pierre Melville’s black-and-white 1961 film “Léon Morin, Priest” starring Jean-Paul Belmondo and Emmanuelle Riva in a heartbreaking, disarmingly steamy yet chaste tale of unrequited romance between a widow and a local priest set against the backdrop of the German occupation of France during WWII. A late showing of the film played to a hundred or so people at the Bing Theater at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, a remarkably diverse crowd of varied ages, income brackets and nationalities. The little-known find, never before released in America, played to about 800 people total in four shows over two nights.

Comments (4)

Chris Utley
Chris Utley on August 31, 2009 at 1:17 pm

The film series at LACMA will continue thanks to grants & sponsors including Time Warner Cable who gave over $150,000 to keep the program running.

HowardBHaas
HowardBHaas on August 31, 2009 at 5:12 pm

I keep posing news articles on that theater’s page but almost nobody comments.
/theaters/21865/

Dublinboyo
Dublinboyo on August 31, 2009 at 5:22 pm

Had not heard that about the LACMA film series being saved. Cheers for posting that very good news. LACMA, along with the New Beverly and Cinemateque must be preserved and supported so that we can see films in the way they were meant to be seen.

monika
monika on August 31, 2009 at 7:54 pm

I hadn’t heard that the film series had been saved, either. What a great bit of news. Hearing it had been indefinitely suspended was a shame.

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