A short film written and directed by Ian Ally-Seals and Jules Pitt premiering on September 5th, 2020 at Real Art Ways. Starring Jeff Tingley, Zechara Trinity Powell and Matt Hard.
99% Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes – Starring Awkwafina
In this funny, uplifting tale based on an actual lie, Chinese-born, U.S.-raised Billi (Awkwafina) reluctantly returns to Changchun to find that, although the whole family knows their beloved matriarch, Nai-Nai (grandma), has been given mere weeks to live, everyone has decided not to tell Nai Nai herself.
To assure her happiness, they gather under the joyful guise of an expedited wedding, uniting family members scattered among new homes abroad. As Billi navigates a minefield of family expectations and proprieties, she finds there’s a lot to celebrate: a chance to rediscover the country she left as a child, her grandmother’s wondrous spirit, and the ties that keep on binding even when so much goes unspoken.
With The Farewell, writer/director Lulu Wang has created a heartfelt celebration of both the way we perform family and the way we live it, masterfully interweaving a gently humorous depiction of the good lie in action with a richly moving story of how family can unite and strengthen us, often in spite of ourselves.
When the reclusive Christian (Franz Rogowski, Transit) takes a job working the night shift at a big box store, his new manager, Bruno from the Beverage Department (Peter Kurth, Babylon Berlin), teaches him the lay of the land and the delicacy it takes to operate a forklift. Christian becomes enamored by his charming but mysterious co-worker “Sweets Marion” (Sandra Huller, Toni Erdmann), with whom he begins to share flirtatious break room coffees and conversations. But Marion has secrets of her own and when she suddenly goes on sick leave, Christian is tempted to fall into habits of his dark past. An affecting and bittersweet glimpse into the shared connections of a motley group of workers, In The Aisles quietly celebrates the beauty in the day-to-day and the collective pride we take in our jobs with dark humor and nuance.
Yesterday, everyone knew The Beatles. Today, only Jack remembers their songs. He’s about to become a very big deal. From Academy Award®-winning director Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire, Trainspotting, 28 Days Later) and Richard Curtis, the Oscar-nominated screenwriter of Four Weddings and a Funeral, Love Actually and Notting Hill, comes a rock-n-roll comedy about music, dreams, friendship, and the long and winding road that leads to the love of your life.
Jack Malik (Himesh Patel, BBC’s Eastenders) is a struggling singer-songwriter in a tiny English seaside town whose dreams of fame are rapidly fading, despite the fierce devotion and support of his childhood best friend, Ellie (Lily James, Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again). Then, after a freak bus accident during a mysterious global blackout, Jack wakes up to discover that The Beatles have never existed … and he finds himself with a very complicated problem, indeed.
Performing songs by the greatest band in history to a world that has never heard them, and with a little help from his steel-hearted American agent, Debra (Emmy winner Kate McKinnon), Jack’s fame explodes. But as his star rises, he risks losing Ellie — the one person who always believed in him. With the door between his old life and his new closing, Jack will need to get back to where he once belonged and prove that all you need is love.
Featuring new versions of The Beatles’ most beloved hits, Yesterday is produced by Working Title’s Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner (Love Actually, About A Boy, the Bridget Jones series) alongside Matthew James Wilkinson and Bernie Bellew. Curtis and Boyle also produce. Nick Angel, Lee Brazier and Liza Chasin serve as executive producers.
91% on Rotten Tomatoes – An exuberant documentary spotlighting the special world of gospel music.
One of the most acclaimed music documentaries of all time, Say Amen, Somebody is George Nierenberg’s masterpiece — a joyous, funny, deeply emotional celebration of African American culture, featuring the father of Gospel, Thomas A. Dorsey (“Precious Lord, Take My Hand”); its matron, Mother Willie Mae Ford Smith; and earth-shaking performances by the Barrett Sisters and the O’Neal Twins.
When it was first released in the early 1980s, the film received an overwhelming critical response, garnering rave reviews around the world. Unseen in cinemas for nearly thirty years, Say Amen, Somebody has been gorgeously restored to 4K by Milestone with support from the National Museum of African American History and Culture and the Academy Film Archive. The new restoration features brilliantly restored Dolby Stereo and 5.1 soundtracks.
91% Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes
You thought you knew him. Meet David Crosby now in this portrait of a man with everything but an easy retirement on his mind. With unflinching honesty, self-examination, regret, fear, exuberance and an unshakable belief in family and the transformative nature of music, Crosby shares his often challenging journey.
98% Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes
Nestled in an isolated mountain region deep within the Balkans, Hatidze Muratova lives with her ailing mother in a village without roads, electricity or running water. She’s the last in a long line of Macedonian wild beekeepers, eking out a living farming honey in small batches to be sold in the closest city — a mere four hours’ walk away. Hatidze’s peaceful existence is thrown into upheaval by the arrival of an itinerant family, with their roaring engines, seven rambunctious children and herd of cattle. Hatidze optimistically meets the promise of change with an open heart, offering up her affections, her brandy and her tried-and-true beekeeping advice.
It doesn’t take long however, before Hussein, the itinerant family’s patriarch, senses opportunity and develops an interest in selling his own honey. Hussein has seven young mouths to feed and nowhere to graze his cattle, and he soon casts Hatidze’s advice aside in his hunt for profit. This causes a breach in the natural order that provokes a conflict with Hatidze that exposes the fundamental tension between nature and humanity, harmony and discord, exploitation and sustainability. Even as the family provides a much-needed respite from Hatidze’s isolation and loneliness, her very means of survival are threatened.
In 1961, Secretary General of the UN, Dag Hammarskjöld, died in a plane crash in Northern Rhodesia. He was en route to ceasefire negotiations between non combatant UN forces and troops from the breakaway state of Katanga. He was taking a stance in the fight against colonialism in times of instability and the Cold War.
What started as conspiracy theories have evolved into a growing consensus that Hammarskjöld and 15 other people were shot down, inciting the UN to reopen the case on the suspicion of assassination.
98% Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes
Maiden is the inspirational story of how Tracy Edwards, a 24-year-old cook on charter boats, became the skipper of the first ever all-female crew to enter the Whitbread Round the World Race in 1989. Tracy’s dream was opposed on all sides: her male competitors thought an all-women crew would never make it, the chauvinistic yachting press took bets on her failure, and potential sponsors rejected her, fearing they would die at sea and generate bad publicity. But Tracy refused to give up: she re-mortgaged her home and bought a second-hand boat, putting everything on the line to ensure the team made it to the start line. With the support of her remarkable crew she went on to shock the sport and prove that women are the equal of men.
Brittany Forgler is a hilarious, friendly, hot mess of a New Yorker who always knows how to have a good time, but at 27, her late-night adventures and early-morning walks-of-shame are starting to catch up to her. When she stops by a Yelp-recommended doctor’s office in an attempt to score some Adderall, she finds herself slapped with a prescription she never wanted.
Forced to face reality for the first time in a long time, Brittany laces up her Converse and runs one sweaty block. The next day, she runs two. Soon she runs a mile. Brittany finally has direction–but is she on the right path?
The culminating event of our summer filmmaking program, Eye On Video.
Eye On Video is one of six studios sponsored by the Greater Hartford Arts Council’s Neighborhood Studios. 15 high schoolers from the Greater Hartford area come together to create original short films in just six weeks. They learn about the filmmaking process from inception and screenplay writing to filming and editing. This showcase is their opportunity to share their films with the community at large. This event is free and open to the public. Light refreshments will be served.
For more information about our education programs, contact Tina Parziale at 860.232.1006 x129 or tparziale@realartways.org.
New York Times Critic Pick, 93% Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes
From filmmaker Joe Talbot comes a lyrical and lovingly crafted ode to friendship, family, and the frustrations of living in a rapidly changing San Francisco. Born out of the filmmaker’s childhood friendship with his lead actor and subject, who spent his early childhood living in a sprawling Victorian house, The Last Black Man in San Francisco is a feat of personal storytelling about the meaning and magic of home, the importance of community, and the stories we tell ourselves in order to become who we are. The story of one man trying to reclaim the house he grew up in, Talbot’s feature debut is about finding peace within yourself, no matter where you live.
94% on Rotten Tomatoes
This documentary offers an unflinching look at the legendary reporter, who interrogated the 20th century’s biggest figures in his fifty-plus years on air. His aggressive reporting style and showmanship redefined what America came to expect from broadcasters.
Unearthing decades of never-before-seen footage from the 60 Minutes vault, the film explores what drove and plagued Wallace, whose storied career was entwined with the evolution of journalism itself.
93% Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes
Echo in the Canyon celebrates the explosion of popular music that came out of LA’s Laurel Canyon in the mid-60s as folk went electric and The Byrds, The Beach Boys, Buffalo Springfield and The Mamas and the Papas gave birth to the California Sound.
It was a moment (1965 to 1967) when bands came to LA to emulate The Beatles and Laurel Canyon emerged as a hotbed of creativity and collaboration for a new generation of musicians who would soon put an indelible stamp on the history of American popular music.
Featuring Jakob Dylan, the film explores the beginnings of the Laurel Canyon music scene. Dylan uncovers never-before-heard personal details behind the bands and their songs and how that music continues to inspire today.
Echo in the Canyon contains candid conversations and performances with Brian Wilson, Ringo Starr, Michelle Phillips, Eric Clapton, Stephen Stills, David Crosby, Graham Nash, Roger McGuinn and Jackson Browne as well as contemporary musicians they influenced such as Tom Petty (in his very last film interview), Beck, Fiona Apple, Cat Power, Regina Spektor and Norah Jones.
A New York Times Critic’s Pick
In August 1969, nearly half a million people gathered at a farm in upstate New York to hear music. What happened over the next three days, however, was far more than a concert. It would become a legendary event, one that would define a generation and mark the end of one of the most turbulent decades in modern history.
Occurring just weeks after an American set foot on the moon, the Woodstock music festival took place against a backdrop of a nation in conflict over sexual politics, civil rights and the Vietnam War. A sense of an America in transition – a handoff of the country between generations with far different values and ideals – was tangibly present at what promoters billed as “An Aquarian Exposition: 3 Days of Peace and Music.”
The documentary turns the lens back at the audience, at the swarming, impromptu city that grew up overnight on a few acres of farm land. What took place in that teaming mass of humanity – the rain-soaked, starving, tripping, half-a-million strong throng of young people – was nothing less than a miracle of teamwork, a manifestation of the “peace and love” the festival had touted and a validation of the counter-culture’s promise to the world.
Who were these kids? What experiences and stories did they carry with them to Bethel, New York that weekend, and how were they changed by three days in the muck and mire of Yasgur’s farm?
Two rebellious young women – one fleeing the chaos of secular hedonism for the disciplined comforts of faith; the other desperate to transcend her oppressive religious upbringing for sexual and spiritual freedom – cross paths unexpectedly in Jerusalem, to startling consequences.
On one side is Anat Abadi, an intense young woman who has recently found God, to the horror of her secular tribe. On the other is Sari Alter, a married mother who, having escaped her cloistered religious upbringing for the promise of secular freedom, is chafing under the constraints of her humdrum marriage, feeling she had traded one cage for another.
Both women must confront the tension between self-assertion and tribal affiliation as they negotiate dueling fundamental human desires: to be, and to belong. Along their intersecting journeys they and the characters in their orbit traverse uneasily the landscape of competing faiths, ambitions, and viewpoints.
By the end, it is the power of the human encounter that will change profoundly the way each of them regards both truth and ‘the other.’
From Argentine director Benjamín Naishtat comes a crime drama with a distinctively 1970s look, sound and vibe. 94% on Rotten Tomatoes.
In the mid-seventies, a strange man arrives in a quiet provincial city.
In a restaurant, without any apparent reason, he starts insulting Claudio, a renowned lawyer. The community supports the lawyer and the stranger is humiliated and thrown out of the place.
Later that night the stranger, who is determined to wreak a terrible vengeance, intercepts Claudio and his wife Susana.
The lawyer then takes a path of no return involving death, secrets and silences.
Ends Thursday
Award-winning filmmaker Aviva Kempner (The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg, Rosenwald) tells the real story of Moe Berg, major league baseball player turned spy.
Berg caught and fielded in the major leagues during baseball’s Golden Age in the 1920s and 1930s. But very few people know that Berg also worked for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), spying in Europe and playing a prominent role in America’s efforts to undermine the German atomic bomb program during WWII.
The Spy Behind Home Plate reveals the life of this unknown Jewish hero through rare historical footage and photographs as well as revealing interviews with an All-Star roster of celebrities and other individuals from the worlds of sports, spycraft, and history.
Berg may have had only a .243 batting average during his 15-year major league career, but it was the stats he collected for the OSS that made him a most valuable player to his country during World War II.
Click here to read Don Gonyea’s interview with director Aviva Kempner from NPR’s All Things Considered, Sunday, June 2, 2019.
Ends Thursday
98% Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes
During the summer of 1990 in Chile, a small group of families lives in an isolated community right below the Andes, building a new world away from the urban excesses, with the emerging freedom that followed the recent end of the dictatorship.
In this time of change and reckoning,16-year-old Sofía and Lucas, and 10-year-old Clara, neighbors in this dry land, struggle with parents, first loves, and fears, as they prepare a big party for New Year’s Eve. They may live far from the dangers of the city, but not from those of nature.
Toni Morrison passed away on August 5. We join the world in mourning her passing and thanking her for her work. We had finished our run of this movie. We’re bringing it back again starting Friday, August 16.
