Obit at Real Art Ways

FINAL WEEKEND.
93% Fresh Rating on rottentomatoes.com

It’s a shame no one wants to talk to them at parties, because obituary writers are a surprisingly funny bunch!

Ten hours before newspapers hit neighborhood doorsteps — and these days, ten minutes before news hits the web — an obit writer is racing against deadline to sum up a long and newsworthy life in under 1000 words.

The details of these lives are then deposited into the cultural memory amid the daily beat of war, politics, and football scores.

Obit. is the first documentary to explore the world of these writers and their subjects, focusing on the legendary team at The New York Times, who approach their daily work with journalistic rigor and narrative flair.

Going beyond the byline and into the minds of those chronicling life after death on the freshly inked front lines of history, the film invites some of the most essential questions we ask ourselves about life, memory, and the inevitable passage of time.

What do we choose to remember? What never dies?

Beatrice is a motor-mouthed fantasist, a self-styled billionaire countess who likes to believe she’s on intimate terms with world leaders. Donatella is a tattooed introvert, a fragile young woman locked in her own mystery.

They are both patients at the Villa Biondi, a progressive but secure psychiatric clinic.

Paolo Virzì’s new film tells the story of the unpredictable and moving friendship that develops between the two women as they flee the mental institution in search of love and happiness in the open-air nuthouse –  the world of sane people.

Laura Poitras, Academy Award winning director of CITIZENFOUR, has created her most personal and intimate film to date. Filmed over six years, RISK is a complex and volatile character study that collides with a high stakes election year and its controversial aftermath.

Cornered in a tiny building for half a decade, Julian Assange is undeterred even as the legal jeopardy he faces threatens to undermine the organization he leads and fracture the movement he inspired. Capturing this story with unprecedented access, Poitras finds herself caught between the motives and contradictions of Assange and his inner circle.

In a new world order where a single keystroke can alter history, RISK is a portrait of power, betrayal, truth, and sacrifice. Executive Produced by Sam Esmail, creator of Mr. Robot.

In 2012 Nature published a study led by more than 20 researchers from the top scientific institutions in the world predicting that humankind could disappear between 2040 and 2100. It also said that it could be avoided by drastically changing our way of life and take appropriate measures.

Shortly after giving birth to her first child, French actress and director Mélanie Laurent (Inglorious Basterds) became increasingly aware of the dangers and the state of urgency that her son will face in the future. Along with friend and activist Cyril Dion and their crew, she decided to travel the world in search of solutions that can help save the next generations. The result is Tomorrow, an inspiring documentary that presents concrete solutions implemented throughout the world by hundred of communities.

From the US to the UK and through Finland and India, together they traveled to 10 countries to visit permaculture farms, urban agriculture projects and community-owned renewable initiatives to highlight people making a difference in the fields of food, energy, finance, democracy, and education.

Their common ideas and examples make Tomorrow one of the most essential and unexpectedly inspirational viewing experiences of our time.

TODAY, we sometimes feel powerless in front of the various crises of our times.

TODAY, we know that answers lie in a wide mobilization of the human race. Over the course of a century, our dream of progress commonly called “the American Dream”, fundamentally changed the way we live and continues to inspire many developing countries. We are now aware of the setbacks and limits of such development policies. We urgently need to focus our efforts on changing our dreams before something irreversible happens to our planet.

TODAY, we need a new direction, objective… A new dream! The documentary Tomorrow sets out to showcase alternative and creative ways of viewing agriculture, economics, energy and education. It offers constructive solutions to act on a local level to make a difference on a global level. So far, no other documentary has gone down such an optimistic road…

TOMORROW is not just a film, it is the beginning of a movement seeking to encourage local communities around the world to change the way they live for the sake of our planet.

Start small to grow big, and write a new story for the generations to come.

Tomorrow is also a book: http://www.chelseagreen.com/tomorrow

In 1960 Jane Jacobs’s book The Death and Life of Great American Cities sent shockwaves through the architecture and planning worlds, with its exploration of the consequences of modern planners’ and architects’ reconfiguration of cities.

Jacobs was also an activist, who was involved in many fights in mid-century New York, to stop “master builder” Robert Moses from running roughshod over the city.

This film retraces the battles for the city as personified by Jacobs and Moses, as urbanization moves to the very front of the global agenda.

Many of the clues for formulating solutions to the dizzying array of urban issues can be found in Jacobs’s prescient text, and a close second look at her thinking and writing about cities is very much in order.

This film sets out to examine the city of today though the lens of one of its greatest champions.

SPECIAL EVENT – Tuesday, May 9, after the 6:30 PM screening.

Panel Discussion
“Jane Jacobs Today: Hartford & Beyond”
The panel will explore how/why Hartford’s urban renewal projects have changed and how this affects us today. 

Moderator

Sara Bronin – Thomas F. Gallivan Chair in Real Property Law and Faculty Director, Center for Energy and Environmental Law at the University of Connecticut. Her research examines property, land use, historic preservation, green building, and renewable energy law.

Panel Members

Xiangming Chen – Dean and Director of the Center for Urban and Global Studies Paul E. Raether Distinguished Professor of Global Urban Studies and Sociology at Trinity College

Norman W. Garrick – Associate Professor at University of Connecticut. His research focuses on sustainable transportation, urban planning, transit planning, bicyclist and pedestrian facility design and planning and urban street networks, urban streets and shared spaces.

Tyler Smith, FAIA – urban and historic preservation architect, Managing Principal of Smith Edwards McCoy Architects

Renee Tribert – Project Manager: Making Places: Connecticut Mills Survey at Connecticut Trust for Historic Preservation

Cynthia Nixon delivers a triumphant performance as Emily Dickinson as she personifies the wit, intellectual independence and pathos of the poet whose genius only came to be recognized after her death.

Director Terence Davies (House of Mirth, The Deep Blue Sea) exquisitely evokes Dickinson’s deep attachment to her close knit family along with the manners, mores and spiritual convictions of her time that she struggled with and transcended in her poetry.

NOTE that the Cinema will be closed on Wednesday, May 3 and will reopen on Thursday, May 4.

Set in Germany and France in the immediate aftermath of the First World War, (1914-1918), Frantz recalls the mourning period that follows great national tragedies as seen through the eyes of the war’s “lost generation”: Anna (21 year-old Paula Beer in a breakthrough performance), a bereft young German woman whose fiancé, Frantz, was killed during trench warfare, and Adrien (Pierre Niney, Yves Saint Laurent), a French veteran of the war who shows up mysteriously in her town, placing flowers on Frantz’s grave.

Adrien’s presence is met with resistance by the small community still reeling from Germany’s defeat, yet Anna gradually gets closer to the handsome and melancholy young man, as she learns of his deep friendship with Frantz, conjured up in evocative flashbacks.

What follows is a surprising exploration of how Ozon’s characters’ wrestle with their conflicting feelings – survivor’s guilt, anger at one’s losses, the overriding desire for happiness despite everything that has come before, and the longing for sexual, romantic and familial attachments.

Ozon drew his inspiration from a post-WWI play by Maurice Rostand that inspired the 1932 film adaption by Ernst Lubitsch under the title Broken Lullaby.

On April 4, 2017, almost 90 art house movie theatres across the country in 79 cities and in 34 states, plus one location in Canada, will be participating collectively in a NATIONAL EVENT DAY screening of the 80’s movie 1984 starring John Hurt, who sadly died last month.

This date was chosen because it’s the day George Orwell’s protagonist Winston Smith begins rebelling against his oppressive government by keeping a forbidden diary. These theaters owners also strongly believe in supporting the National Endowment for the Arts and see any attempt to scuttle that program as an attack on free speech and creative expression through entertainment. This event provides a chance for communities around the country to show their unity and have their voices heard.

Orwell’s novel begins with the sentence, “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.” Less than one month into the new presidential administration, theater owners collectively believe the clock is already striking thirteen. Orwell’s portrait of a government that manufactures their own facts, demands total obedience, and demonizes foreign enemies, has never been timelier.

The endeavor encourages theaters to take a stand for our most basic values: freedom of speech, respect for our fellow human beings, and the simple truth that there are no such things as ‘alternative facts.’ By doing what they do best – showing a movie – the goal is that cinemas can initiate a much-needed community conversation at a time when the existence of facts, and basic human rights are under attack.

Through nationwide participation and strength in numbers, these screenings are intended to galvanize people at the crossroads of cinema and community, and bring us together to foster communication and resistance against current efforts to undermine the most basic tenets of our society.

The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band is one of the most influential albums of our time. Rolling Stone described it as “the most important rock & roll album ever made, an unsurpassed adventure in concept, sound, songwriting, cover art and studio technology by the greatest rock & roll group of all time.”

In Deconstructing Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, composer, musician, and Beatles expert Scott Freiman looks at Sgt. Pepper from multiple angles, exploring the history behind the music. Mr. Freiman conducts an educational journey into the creative process of The Beatles performances and recording sessions. You are guaranteed to leave amazed at The Beatles’ innovation in the studio and have a newfound appreciation for the talents of Lennon, McCartney, Harrison, and Starr.

On the Radio
Scott Freiman, along with music critic Steve Metcalf, appeared on the Colin McEnroe Show on WNPR on Tuesday, April 4. They discussed Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Band and its musical and cultural impact. Listen to the show at this link.

2017 Academy Award Nominee, Best Animated Feature

“Zucchini” is befriended by a police officer, Raymond, who accompanies him to his new foster home, filled with other orphans his age.

At first he struggles to find his place in this strange environment. But with Raymond’s help and his newfound friends, Zucchini eventually learns to trust and love, as he searches for a new family of his own.

From its debut in Director’s Fortnight at Cannes to winning audience awards at festivals around the world, this accomplished debut feature from director Claude Barras, based on a script from acclaimed writer/director Céline Sciamma (Girlhood, Tomboy), was nominated for both an Academy Award® and Golden Globe Award® for Best Animated Feature.

Brought to life through memorable character designs and expressive stop-motion animation, the story soars with laughter, sorrow, and joy, and stands as a testament to the resilience of the human heart.

Voices by Will Forte, Nick Offerman, Ellen Page, and Amy Sedaris.

You’re Killing Me Susana centers on Eligio (Gael García Bernal), a narcissistic Mexico City soap actor whose wife Susana (Verónica Echegui) has left him without uttering a word. Discovering she’s enrolled in a writing program at an Iowa university, he decides to go after her and persuade her to return to him, but upon arriving soon discovers she’s already moved on. Eligio soon learns it’s going to take a lot more than his usual boyish charisma and sweet talk to win her back.

Based on the novel Deserted Cities (Ciudades Desiertas) by José Agustín, it’s directed by by Roberto Sneider (Tear This Heart Out) and cowritten by Sneider and Luis Camara. You’re Killing Me Susana also stars Ashley Grace, Jadyn Wong, Björn Hlynur Haraldsson and Adam Hurtig.

2017 Academy Award Nominee for Best Animated Feature Film

Through the story of a man shipwrecked on a tropical island inhabited by turtles, crabs and birds, The Red Turtle recounts the milestones in the life of a human being.