Two Theaters, Nonstop Screenings: Inside The Lucas Museum's Film Programming Plans

The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art connected Thursday announced its inaugural movie programming, which will beryllium screened nonstop during depository hours successful 2 dedicated 299-seat theaters. Entry to nan theaters is included pinch each wide admittance ticket, and visitors tin participate and exit astatine immoderate time, creating a free-flowing group of ancillary accumulation spaces pinch a extremity of furthering nan museum’s ngo of exploring storytelling successful its galore forms.

One of nan theaters will play depository co-founder George Lucas’ student films, made betwixt 1965 and 1969, among different uncommon offerings. A schedule of screenings will beryllium provided to visitors arsenic they participate truthful they tin scheme their time astir what they’d for illustration to see, and programming will beryllium changed periodically done nan year. The theaters will besides beryllium utilized for typical events.

“The movie program, for illustration truthful overmuch successful nan museum, is unsocial successful its building and content. It is an open-door programme that runs continuously passim nan day, allowing group to travel and spell astatine their leisure,” Ryan Linkof, elder curator and caput of nan museum’s movie programs, wrote successful an email. The news was first revealed Thursday during a Hall H sheet astatine San Diego Comic-Con. “In this way, it fits wrong nan larger ngo of nan depository to let visitors to take their ain way done nan depository and observe contented astatine their ain pace. It is besides a varied and divers programme that includes everything from nan earliest cinema experiments to avant-garde film, documentaries and animation, providing a level for galore underrecognized and seldom seen films and filmmakers.”

Adjacent to each different connected nan crushed floor, disconnected nan northbound lobby of nan $1-billion museum, nan theaters are named aft 2 giants of movie history: Robert J. Flaherty, whose 1922 silent movie “Nanook of nan North” revolutionized documentary filmmaking; and early Hollywood montagist, cinematic creator and experimental filmmaker Slavko Vorkapich, who besides served arsenic chair of nan USC movie section from 1948 to 1950, much than a decade earlier Lucas enrolled successful nan program.

Two 299-seat theaters will beryllium located connected nan crushed level of nan caller Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, which opens to nan nationalist Sept. 22.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

The Flaherty theatre will beryllium dedicated to documentaries, including those that chronicle nan activity and creator process of galore of nan artists and storytellers featured successful the museum’s opening exhibitions specified arsenic Norman Rockwell, Jim Lee, Charles M. Schulz, Maurice Sendak, Diego Rivera, J.C. Leyendecker and Weegee. The depository will besides surface “Seeing Is Believing: The Story of Narrative Art,” a caller documentary bid it commissioned from Robin Dashwood. It will besides show episodes of nan 2024 tv bid “The Power of Film,” created by Howard Suber and directed by Laura Gabbert, and nan 1988 Ron Mann-directed doc “Comic Book Confidential.”

The acquisition will beryllium much avant-garde successful nan Vorkapich theater, which will incorporate programming “showcasing cinematic invention and imagination done experimental and formally inventive short films that speak to nan principle of cinema: nan magic of seeing still images travel to life,” wrote Linkof.

Offerings see Lucas’ student films, arsenic good arsenic montage sequences by Vorkapich for movies for illustration “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington”; silent films by Georges Méliès, Émile Cohl, W.K.L. Dickson, Edwin S. Porter and more; early animations by Winsor McCay; experimental films created by Man Ray and László Moholy-Nagy; early sound animations by Walt Disney and Fleischer Studios; experimental films by Canadian animator Norman McLaren; Looney Tunes cartoons; absurd “visual music” useful by Mary Ellen Bute, Oskar Fischinger, Jordan Belson and others; excerpts from Busby Berkeley musicals; experimental films from nan 1960s by Stan Brakhage and Kenneth Anger; experimental animation by Vince Collins; “Cowboy Bebop”; and an section of “Star Wars: Visions.”

The Lucas Museum opens Sept. 22. Tickets went connected waste Tuesday and were going briskly, pinch digital hold times reported of much than 4 hours successful queues pinch arsenic galore arsenic 13,000 guests. Museum representatives declined to remark connected really galore sold that first day, noting, “We’re grateful for nan consequence and early enthusiasm from our Founding Member organization and first activity of visitors. We look guardant to welcoming them successful September.”