SECRET MOVIE CLUB presents

Part of our DYNAMIC DOCUMENTARY series! Thursday, January 27, 2022

LOCATION: The Secret Movie Club Theater, 1917 Bay Street, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, CA 90021

*Please note entrance/parking is actually in the back of the building. Make a right on Wilson Street, then a right behind the building. We’re the first set of black steps after the big gate. We’ll have staff to help guide/park you.

730pm ARAYA (1959, dir by Margot Benacerrof, Milestone/Kino Lorber, 35mm, 90mns)

930pm THE GLEANERS & I (2000, dir by Agnes Varda, Janus, 82mns)

IMPORTANT NOTES:

***ALL AUDIENCE will be required to show proof of vaccination at the door. PLEASE HAVE YOUR VIRTUAL OR PHYSICAL VACCINATION CARD READY BEFORE ENTERING THE THEATER. If you have an exemption, please have proof of a negative PCR level COVID test within 3 days of the screening.

***ALL GUESTS WILL BE TAKEN THROUGH PROTOCOLS PRIOR TO ENTERING THEATER SO EVERYONE CAN HAVE A FUN AND SAFE TIME.

***EVERYONE WILL STILL BE REQUIRED TO WEAR MASKS INDOORS WHEN NOT EATING/DRINKING CONCESSIONS IN THEIR ASSIGNED SEATS.

HOW TO:

1)PLEASE BRING AND WEAR A PROPER MASK AT ALL TIMES WHEN NOT EATING/DRINKING INSIDE THE THEATER AS A SAFETY PRECAUTION.

2)PRE-ORDER ANY CONCESSIONS OR MOVIE MERCHANDISE you would like from the additional Add-Ons. You can pick up all concessions & merchandise at our tables in our lobby prior to the screening.

We will be able to sell concessions & merchandise at the theater. But it will make everything much quicker and easier if you pre-order!

3)PLEASE BE AWARE THAT ANYONE EXHIBITING COVID OR FLU LIKE SYMPTOMS AT THE DOOR, WILL BE OFFERED COMPLIMENTARY TICKETS TO A FUTURE SHOW AND ASKED TO RETURN WHEN HEALTHY. So please, if you’re feeling sick, just write us at community@secretmovieclub.com and we’ll offer your complimentary tickets to a future screening when you’re healthy. Let’s all do our part to beat this thing so we can go back to the complete movie going experience!

Today we kick off our year-long Dynamic Documentary series with a pair of classics.

Although documentaries have enjoyed a much deserved increased recognition and appreciation in the movie community, they still feel criminally unacknowledged in terms of how much they push forward the cinematic art form.

Often techniques and approaches in documentaries are so original, such great problem solving solutions to age old problems, that narrative filmmakers nick them for their own use.

But beyond that, a steady diet of documentaries can only better one's own filmmaking by seeding one's mind with new ideas, approaches, truth, etc.

So let's journey across 2022 by looking at some (but certainly nowhere near even 1%) of the greatest documentaries ever made. We hope to make this a constant series going forward.

First up is Margot Benacerroff's 1959 stunning cinema essay Araya which films in gorgeous black and white the hard scrabble and hard fought lives of Venezuelan salt farmers who suddenly find their centuries old way of life threatened by a new salt mining plant.

Benacerroff's doc focuses more on the cinematic, visual, and wordless than the talking heads doc approach which would come to dominate some of the form. Here Benacerroff lets the faces, the images, the rhythms tell the story.

Jean Renoir was entranced by this movie and we hope you will be too. It points how documentaries can be both educational AND daringly cinematic at the same time.

We then transition to famed Nouvelle Vague director Agnes Varda's 2000 career changing doc The Gleaners and I. Varda, always a willing experimentalist, grabbed a digital camera and, with her team, developed a style here she refers to as "cinema-writing". In many ways, the handheld, experimental framing we see here is of a piece with the experimentation of the French New Wave in the 1950's and 1960's.

Varda and her team interview many French people "Gleaners" who collect food, crops, trash after farmers have tilled the land. Varda discovered she didn't need to MAKE a statement in the movie because the subjects MADE their own statement simply by their being and their responses.

A truly humble and profound doc approach if ever there was one. The Gleaners and I is now considered a 21st century classic of the form.

Come see two great docs and get inspired!

First, we hope you'll take a chance on

Best always,

Craig Hammill

35mm Secret Movie Club Founder.Programmer

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS FOR OUR IN-DOOR THEATER SCREENINGS

REFUNDS:

We can offer refunds up to 24 hours before showtime. Please request a refund through Eventbrite and we will process ASAP. After that, no refunds. Sorry.

However if something last minute comes up and you can’t make the screening, for whatever reason, just write us at: community@secretmovieclub.com and we’ll offer you complimentary tickets to a future screening.

HELPFUL SECRET MOVIE CLUB (1917 Bay Street, 2nd Floor, LA, CA 90021) THEATER PARKING TIPS:

We recommend that you park just outside our theater. Remember our theater is actually in a beautiful street art alleyway in the back of the 1917 Bay Street building. You get to our entrance by taking a right on Wilson, then a right behind the building. We are the first set of black steps on the right after the big gate.

We will have a staff member on duty to monitor all cars parked in the street-art alleyway at our entrance.

There is also a parking lot at the corner of Mateo and Violet Street, just 2 blocks from our theater, which costs $7 per car.

HOW CAN WE STAY ON TOP OF NEWLY ANNOUNCED 35MM SCREENINGS, EVENTS, ETC?

You can follow us on Facebook: @secretmovieclub35mm or Instagram/Twitter: @secretmovieclub

You can also subscribe to our weekly email newsletter by writing us at community@secretmovieclub.com and using the header “SUBSCRIBE ME TO NEWSLETTER”.

HOW CAN I CONTACT YOU IF I HAVE OTHER QUESTIONS/RECOMMENDATIONS:

You can always email us at community@secretmovieclub.com with any other questions, concerns, thoughts, recommendations.