Mobile Navigation
Admission is free. No advance reservations. Your seat will be assigned to you when you pick up your ticket at the box office. Seats are assigned on a first come, first served basis. The box office opens one hour before the event.
Archive Talks pairs leading historians and scholars with screenings of the moving image media that is the focus of their writing and research. Each program will begin with a special talk by the invited scholar that will introduce audiences to new insights, interpretations and contexts for the films and media being screened.
Special thanks to our community partner: UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television.
Daydream Therapy
U.S., 1977
With musical scoring from Nina Simone (“Pirate Jenny”) and Archie Shepp (“Things Have Got to Change”), this short film captures the fantasy life of a hotel worker whose daydreams — and quiet vengeance — provide an escape from workplace strife. An activist-turned-filmmaker, Bernard Nicolas filmed in Burton Chace Park in Marina del Rey. He wrote, directed, produced, shot and edited Daydream Therapy for his first project as an M.F.A. student at the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television.—Beandrea July
DCP, b&w/color, 8 min. Director/Screenwriter: Bernard Nicolas. With: Marva Anderson, Keith Taylor, Gay Abel-Bey, Larry Bell, Jeff Cox.
No Way Out
U.S., 1950
Armed only with limited stage experience (including serving as an understudy in the touring company of Anna Lucasta) and an Army Signal Corps short on his resume, Sidney Poitier answered an atypical open call for 1949: Twentieth Century-Fox was to cast numerous Black actors in key parts for a major motion picture. After several competitive auditions and screen tests, director Joseph L. Mankiewicz personally selected Poitier from a group of finalists. The actor's subsequent feature film debut in No Way Out would prove to be career-defining. His mature performance as a young doctor breaking down racial barriers under hostile circumstances embodies the combination of emotional intensity and grace that would become his hallmark in films such as A Raisin in the Sun (1961) and In the Heat of the Night (1967).
Often cited as opening the door to the social drama film genre that emerged in the 1950s, No Way Out was controversial upon release for its graphic exploration of racial violence and what Mankiewicz described as “the absolute blood and guts of Negro hating.” The film's progressive depiction of an African American community mounting a preemptive strike in the face of attack by a racist mob prompted censors in several states to delete such scenes on the grounds that they were “too provocative” and “might incite violence.” The NAACP, which protested the film's explicit use of racial epithets, condemned the deletion of the self-defense scenes, arguing that with the cuts “the film's original message [was] hopelessly lost.”—Mark Quigley
35mm, b&w, 106 min. Director: Joseph L. Mankiewicz. Screenwriters: Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Lesser Samuels, Philip Yordan. With: Sidney Poitier, Richard Widmark, Stephen McNally, Linda Darnell.
