January 15-17, 2020
Feast of the Epiphany (Dir. Michael Koresky, Jeff Reichert, and Farihah Zaman, 2018)
Time: 4:00pm & 7:30pm daily*
Location: Lumiere Music Hall
Address: 9036 Wilshire Blvd, Beverly Hills, CA. 90211
Los Angeles premiere!
Directors Michael Koresky, Jeff Reichert, and Farihah Zaman in person!
On a weekend day like any other, the simple but lovingly prepared meal a young woman makes for friends takes on unexpected significance. Revelry turns to meditations on mortality, and the tiniest, hard-won gesture of goodness comes from an unexpected party. Night turns to day, and viewers are taken somewhere else entirely―albeit with a lingering dissolve of emotions, ideas, and grace. The first Reverse Shot film production, Feast of the Epiphany is both a formally ingenious docu-fictional diptych and an uncommonly sensitive, unified rumination on the ways people form and choose communities, collaborations, and support groups in the face of hardship, labor, and loss.
In person: Michael Koresky, Jeff Reichert, and Farihah Zaman.
*Schedule/Showtimes
- Wednesday, Jan. 15, 4:00pm
- Wednesday, Jan. 15, 7:30pm—Post-screening Q&A moderated by Carlos Aguilar (The Los Angeles Times)
- Thursday, Jan. 16: 4:00pm
- Thursday, Jan. 16: 7:30pm—Post-screening Q&A moderated by filmmaker Sandi Tan (Shirkers)
- Friday, Jan. 17, 4:00pm
- Friday, Jan. 17, 7:30pm—Post-screening Q&A moderated by Jordan Cronk
All screenings at the Lumiere Music Hall
Feast of the Epiphany requires an openness rarely asked of an audience, and it prescribes a solution to suffocating individualism.
Joshua Encinias, MUBI Notebook
Feast of the Epiphany continually surprises and works to innovate the viewer’s understanding of what 'narrative' cinema can communicate... A conscious, courageous attempt to recalibrate notions of society and belonging.
Ryan Swen, The Film Stage
The particular way the movie moves from its first to second half is so smart and thoughtful that I was momentarily dazed... Feast of the Epiphany interrogates otherwise implicit economic factors normally embedded into narratives with no interest in the larger systemic ramifications.
Vadim Rizov, Filmmaker Magazine
The conceit is entrancing .. The more one spends time in the company of Feast of the Epiphany the more it develops into a tantalizing portrait of both the fascinating realities behind people’s day-to-day existences and of the role food plays in fostering communion with friends, colleagues and the larger natural world.
Nick Schager, Variety
A film whose formal experiments offer the viewer the abundant food for thought promised by the title . . . By pivoting on a seemingly incidental element of everyday life to look at where our food literally comes from, Feast of the Epiphany becomes a political prompt, reminding us to consider the origins of our consumables and the processes and structures that shape them.
Mark Asch, The Village Voice
January 31, 2020
The World Is Full of Secrets (Dir. Graham Swon, 2019)
Time: 8:00pm
Location: Echo Park Film Center
Address: 1200 N Alvarado St, Los Angeles, CA. 90026
Los Angeles premiere!
Director Graham Swon in person!
An old woman's voice recalls a terrible event from her distant past: on a summer night in 1996, five teenage girls meet in a suburban house, absent of parental supervision. To pass the time, they begin to tell morbid stories of the world outside, trying to best one another in a grim competition. As the night becomes darker and their play becomes more serious, their world of fiction is consumed by reality in this feverish Decameron-in-miniature.
In person: Graham Swon
A spoken film, of course, but one where the faces vibrate as much as the voices.
Paola Raiman, Cahiers du Cinema
The World is Full of Secrets is the sheer fascination of scary stories told by the fire. The result is poisonous poetry that leaves you speechless.
Gregory Coutaut, Le Polyester
An offbeat tale of adolescence... as mysterious as its title suggests and among the most beautiful of this year’s [BAMcinemaFest] selections. Like a Miguel Gomes or Pedro Costa, this kind of cinema is possibly further enriched by a brief drift into dreamland.
Kiristen Yoonsoo Kim, Artforum
Rare is the film that looks outward, towards something or someone else. The World Is Full of Secrets does this, not only through its female teenage protagonists, but also through its oral depiction of historical events. The stories the girls tell and the violence they contain are real, impersonal and, in turn, thrillingly uncomfortable.
Gina Telaroli, The Brooklyn Rail
The elegance of the words is complemented by the elegance of the fixed planes of the faces, while the language used evokes a bygone literary tradition that takes the film to a level where the visual construction is closely linked to the narrative... [Swon] remembers Shirin, by Kiarostami, where the careful literary construction was reflected in the faces and reactions of the protagonists.
Aldo Padilla, Desistfilm
February 13-16, 2020
Locarno Festival in Los Angeles 2020
Times: Various
Location: Downtown Independent
Address: 251 S Main St, Los Angeles, CA 90012
Four days, 11 Los Angeles premieres!
An unprecedented collaboration between Acropolis Cinema and the Locarno Film Festival, the fourth annual Locarno Festival in Los Angeles returns in 2020 to the Downtown Independent cinema, home of the festival’s first two editions. Running from February 13-16, the festival will present a special four-day program following three successful editions from 2017-2019. Writing for the Los Angeles Times, film critic Justin Chang describes Locarno in Los Angeles as “a jolting antidote to the mid-spring blockbuster blues, as well as a welcome reminder that cinema isn't just a global medium; at times, it can be downright otherworldly.” Curated by Acropolis founder Jordan Cronk and co-artistic director Robert Koehler, the festival's main program is comprised of a hand-selected group of films from the 72nd Locarno Film Festival’s Competition, Filmmakers of the Present, and Moving Ahead programs. With the generous support of MUBI, the Swiss Consulate General of San Francisco, and the Tadashi Yanai Initiative for Globalizing Japanese Humanities, this year’s showcase titles include Tyler Taormina’s Ham on Rye (Opening Night), an L.A.-shot coming-of-age drama starring over 100 performers, including first-time actors and 90’s Nickelodeon child stars; Kôji Fukada’s eerie suburban thriller A Girl Missing (Spotlight Selection); Elsa Kremser and Levin Peter’s stunning sci-fi docu-fiction Space Dogs (Closing Night); and the highly anticipated Los Angeles premiere of Portuguese master Pedro Costa’s Vitalina Varela, winner of both the Golden Leopard and Best Actress prizes at last summer’s Locarno festival.