at 7pm: 56 UP (United Kingdom) is the newest installment in the remarkable series of films that have chronicled the lives of a diverse group of British-born individuals over the last 49 years. Guest speaker: director Michael Apted, who has been involved with this series since the very first installment, 7 Up, and whose many other credits include Coal Miner's Daughter, Gorky Park, Gorillas in the Mist and Nell.
at 7pm: THE GATEKEEPERS (Israel). This award-winning documentary features candid interviews with six former directors of the Shin Bet, Israel's top-secret security organization, who have overseen the country's occupation of the West Bank during the past 45 years. Guest speaker: director Dror Moreh.
(No Screening January 21)
at 7pm: NO (Chile). One of the five Oscar nominees for best foreign language film of 2012 is this engrossing political drama about the efforts to unseat the Pinochet military regime in Chile in 1988. Gael García Bernal stars as an ad man who is offered the opportunity to head up the anti-Pinochet campaign on national television. Guest speaker: executive producer Jonathan King, who is also executive vice president of production with Participant Media.
at 7pm: LORE (Australia/Germany). Australia's official entry for the 2012 foreign language Oscar is this story of five German children at the end of World War II. As they struggle to survive on their own after their SS officer father is arrested, they begin to question their parents' Nazi beliefs. Guest speakers: Fareed Majari, Director, Goethe-Institut Los Angeles, and Tom Tugend, contributing editor, The Jewish Journal.
at 7pm: CAESAR MUST DIE (Italy) won the Golden Bear at last year's Berlin Film Festival and was Italy's submission for this year's foreign language Oscar. Acclaimed directors Paolo and Vittorio Taviani filmed in the Rebibbia prison outside Rome, where they enlisted a group of hardened inmates to perform in a production of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. Guest speakers TBA. This screening will be preceded by a screening of the 17-minute Oscar-nominated live action short film, "ASAD," which was shot in Africa with a cast of refugees from war-torn Somalia. Director Bryan Buckley and producer Mino Jarjoura will participate in a brief Q-and-A after the short.
at 7pm: THE THIRD HALF (Macedonia) was Macedonia's submission for the foreign language Oscar and an audience favorite at this year's Palm Springs International Film Festival. Inspired by real events, the film tells the story of a soccer star who falls in love with a beautiful Jewish woman at the start of World War II. But when the Nazis occupy the country, their lives change dramatically. Guest speaker: director Darko Mitrevski.
at 7pm: RENOIR (France) is a beautifully photographed drama set in the south of France during the First World War. Veteran French actor Michel Bouquet stars as the aging Impressionist painter Pierre-August Renoir, Vincent Rottiers plays his son Jean, an aspiring filmmaker, and Christa Theret plays the painter's new model, who enchants father and son. Guest speakers: Janet Bergstrom, professor of film at UCLA, Julie Nack Ngue, professor of French at USC, and Scott Schaefer, senior curator of paintings at the J. Paul Getty Museum.
(All films and speakers
subject to change.)
