Director Elia Kazan became, for the first time, writer-director with 1963’s America, America, his big screen adaptation of his own memoir. He earned Oscar® nominations for Best Adapted Screenplay, as well as for Best Picture and Best Director; the film won the Oscar® for Best Cinematography. Kazan cast his autobiographical film with a group of mostly unknown actors including, in his screen debut, the young Stathis Giallelis (it’s said he was cast while working as a janitor), whose performance as Stavros gives the story a sensitive center.

The film tracks Stavros’ journey through Turkey—Kazan ably guiding his protagonist through the vast recesses of lost loves and dashed hopes—as he dreams of making his way to the US. Kazan turned his own family history into the darkest of fables, following young Stavros through a series of traumatic incidents that continually test the young Turk’s stamina, both emotional and physical. America, America, began a new phase of Elia Kazan’s career—the artist mining his own life and travails for drama. None of Kazan’s works after America, America paint as epic an emotional landscape as does this film.

1963/b&w/174 min. | Scr/dir: Elia Kazan; w/ Stathis Giallelis, Frank Wolff, Elena Karam, Lou Antonio, John Marley, Estelle Hemsley, Joanna Frank, Linda Marsh

Preserved by Warner Bros. in association with UCLA Film & Television Archive. Preservation funding provided by Warner Bros., the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, and The Film Foundation.

Ticketing for Classic and Contemporary screenings

$5 for Film Independent and LACMA Film Club members. Member tickets available Thursday, May 16 at 5:00 pm.

This special classic screening, co-presented by The New York Times Film Club, is free to New York Times Film Club members. New York Times Film Club members must RSVP to www.nytfilmclub.com starting at 5:00 pm on Thursday, May 16.

$10 for the general public; $7 for LACMA members, seniors (62+) and students with valid ID. Tickets available Thursday, May 23 at 5:00 pm.

Two ticket limit | Proof of member status is required to reserve tickets during advance reservation period | Tickets: 323.857.6010 or online at lacma.org

PLEASE NOTE: Tickets can be picked up at the Hammer Building Ticket Office at LACMA during museum hours, anytime after purchase, or on the night of the screening any time before the start of the event. Ticketed guests must be in the theater by the published start time of the event; unoccupied seats may be released and distributed to the standby line.

Three young women, two of them new mothers, face years in remote Russian prison camps for performing forty seconds of a satirical song inside a Moscow cathedral. Their bizarre trial and harsh treatment becomes both fodder for national debate and an international scandal. Filmed over the course of six months and featuring never-before-seen footage, HBO Documentary Films’ Pussy Riot—A Punk Prayer tells the story of Nadia, Masha and Katia—the three members of the underground activist group Pussy Riot arrested for the performance in the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. Their band mates remain at large. As do their disparate adversaries—sexism, censorship and the stern hand of President Vladimir Putin. A portrait of the real women behind the colorful balaclavas, as recounted by some of the people that know them best, A Punk Prayer also depicts how these guerilla art provocateurs came, somewhat unwittingly, to test the very limits of their country’s democracy. Winner of the World Documentary Jury Award at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival.

2013/color/86 min. | Scr/dir: Mike Lerner, Maxim Pozdorovkin

Ticketing Information

Tickets are free; limit two tickets per person.

Film Independent, LACMA Film Club and New York Times Film Club members can reserve their tickets starting Thursday, April 18 at 5:00 pm.

LACMA member and general admission tickets can be reserved starting Thursday, April 25 at 5:00 pm.

Proof of member status is required to reserve tickets during advance reservation period. Two ticket limit | Tickets: 323.857.6010 or online at lacma.org.

PLEASE NOTE: Entry to this screening is first-come, first-served. Reservations are required for free events. Reservations for free events do not guarantee entry to the event, even with a ticket in hand. Program subject to change or cancellation without prior notice. Tickets can be picked up at the Hammer Building Ticket Office at LACMA during museum hours, anytime after making a reservation, or on the day of the screening up to 15 minutes before the start of the event. Ticketed guests must be in the theater 15 minutes prior to published start time of the event; unoccupied seats may be released and distributed to the standby line.

Still courtesy HBO.

7:30 pm | Includes a conversation with co-writer/director Zal Batmanglij, co-writer/cast member Brit Marling and cast member Ellen Page

In his second collaboration with writer/actress Brit Marling (their first, which they co-wrote, was the low-fi thriller The Sound of My Voice), writer/director Zal Batmanglij takes another look at the alluring power of outsized personality and again makes this issue the underpinning of a psychological thriller. Their interest is to investigate the loner who finds herself subsumed by the need for family—an appetite that has gone ignored for maybe far too long. Marling (who also authored this script with Batmanglij) plays Sarah, who works for a security firm brought in to shield corporations from being undermined. Her job is to gather information on the shadow organization “The East”, a group whose goal is to carry out activities that Sarah was trained to thwart. Batmanglij and Marling have created a noir about people with similar skills on entirely different missions, asking us to judge not only who’s right, but also who’s righteous. Things are further complicated when Sarah begins asking such questions of herself and her mission as well. And she’s further compromised when she begins to see the allure of the East and its charismatic leader, Benji (Alexander Skarsgård).

2013/color/116 min./Scope | Scr: Zal Batmanglij, Brit Marling; dir: Zal Batmanglij; w/ Brit Marling, Alexander Skarsgård, Ellen Page, Toby Kebbell, Shiloh Fernandez, Patricia Clarkson, Julia Ormond

Ticketing Information

STANDBY LINE ONLY: Tickets for this event are no longer available for reservation in advance. A standby line will form at 6:30 pm at the Hammer Building Ticket Office on the night of this event. Guests in the standby line will be accommodated on a first-come, first-served basis, though unfortunately there is no guarantee of tickets being made available to guests in this line.

PLEASE NOTE: Entry to this screening is first-come, first-served. Reservations are required for free events. Reservations for free events do not guarantee entry to the event, even with a ticket in hand. Program subject to change or cancellation without prior notice. Tickets can be picked up at the Hammer Building Ticket Office at LACMA during museum hours, anytime after making a reservation, or on the day of the screening up to 15 minutes before the start of the event. Ticketed guests must be in the theater 15 minutes prior to published start time of the event; unoccupied seats may be released and distributed to the standby line.

Co-Presented by the New York Times Film Club

7:30 pm | Includes a conversation with co-writer/director Richard Linklater, co-writer/cast member Julie Delpy and co-writer/cast member Ethan Hawke

For Film Independent, LACMA Film Club and The New York Times Film Club members only

Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy and Richard Linklater revisit Jesse and Céline, the couple we first met in 1995’s Before Sunrise. In the previous films—Before Sunrise and its sequel, 2004’s Before Sunset—Jesse (Hawke) and Céline (Delpy) were circling each other at different points in their lives. In each of the films, the possibility of commitment loomed like a drifting cloudbank—as imminent and out of reach as the states of the sun mentioned in the titles. In Midnight, they’re a married couple living in France, tending to their twin daughters and trying to keep a bond intact with Jesse’s son, Hank, who spends most of his time in America with his mom. It’s the departure of Hank for the States that sets this latest installment into motion. Linklater, who wrote the script with Delpy and Hawke, continues with the series’ tradition of being the most present-tense comedies ever made. Like its predecessors, Midnight has the couple laboring to concentrate on the moment at hand, though they can’t help theorizing about the immediate future—endangering their enjoyment of life as it happens.

2013/color/108 min. | Scr: Richard Linklater, Julie Delpy, Ethan Hawke; dir: Richard Linklater; w/ Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy

Ticketing Information

STANDBY LINE ONLY: Tickets for this event are no longer available for reservation in advance. A standby line will form at 6:30 pm at the Hammer Building Ticket Office on the night of this event. Guests in the standby line will be accommodated on a first-come, first-served basis, though unfortunately there is no guarantee of tickets being made available to guests in this line.

PLEASE NOTE: Entry to this screening is first-come, first-served. Reservations are required for free events. Reservations for free events do not guarantee entry to the event, even with a ticket in hand. Program subject to change or cancellation without prior notice. Tickets can be picked up at the Hammer Building Ticket Office at LACMA during museum hours, anytime after making a reservation, or on the day of the screening up to 15 minutes before the start of the event. Ticketed guests must be in the theater 15 minutes prior to published start time of the event; unoccupied seats may be released and distributed to the standby line.