Upcoming Events
CTCS-467: Television Symposium
August 24, 2021 - December 14, 2021, 7:00 P.M. - 10:00 P.M.
The Ray Stark Family Theatre, SCA 108, George Lucas Building, USC School of Cinematic Arts Complex, 900 W. 34th Street, Los Angeles, CA 90007
This Fall 2021 semester, the School of Cinematic Arts will offer a very special course called CTCS-467: Television Symposium, a four-unit elective class open for enrollment to ALL USC STUDENTS OF ANY MAJOR that brings you face-to-face with the leading television writers, producers, directors and actors working today. Each week, students watch contemporary television programming selected from the best shows on the air, followed by an exclusive Q&A with the creative team behind the show. The class is taught by MARY MCNAMARA, Pulitzer Prize-winning television critic and cultural editor for the Los Angeles Times and meets in person every Tuesday night @ 7:00 P.M. in the Ray Stark Family Theatre, SCA 108.
WOMEN IS LOSERS
November 29, 2021, 7:00 P.M.
Live Online Webinar
In 1960's San Francisco, bright and talented catholic school girl Celina Guerrera (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood's Lorenza Izzo) survives a difficult home life by following the rules. That is until an indiscretion creates a series of devastating consequences. As Celina faces the compounded obstacles of being young and alone, she sets out to rise above the oppression of poverty and invest in a future that sets new precedents for the time. The film is inspired by real women and the Janis Joplin song of the same title.
Career Series @ SDA Webinar: In Conversation with Casting Direction & Producer Sarah Finn
November 29, 2021, 7:30 P.M. PST
Live Online Webinar
Please join us for an insightful and in-depth conversation with Casting Director and Producer Sarah Finn. An ultimate casting voice in film and television, Sarah is responsible for the casting of the BLACK PANTHER, THE AVENGERS, THOR and IRON MAN franchises, and EVERY other film and series in the Marvel Comics Universe — as well as the TV series THE MANDALORIAN, LOKI, AGENTS OF S.H.I.E.L.D. and many, many others. In her decades-long career, her universal love and support of actors has never wavered. Prepare for an inspiring conversation!
RED ROCKET in IMAX
November 30, 2021, 7:00 P.M.
The Michelle and Kevin Douglas IMAX Theatre @ The Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts (RZC), 3131 S. Figueroa Street, Los Angeles, CA 90007
The audacious new film from writer-director Sean Baker (The Florida Project, Tangerine), starring Simon Rex in a magnetic, live-wire performance, Red Rocket is a darkly funny and humane portrait of a uniquely American hustler and a hometown that barely tolerates him.
FLEE
December 1, 2021, 7:00 P.M.
The Ray Stark Family Theatre, SCA 108, George Lucas Building, USC School of Cinematic Arts Complex, 900 W. 34th Street, Los Angeles, CA 90007
Flee tells the story of Amin Nawabi as he grapples with a painful secret he has kept hidden for 20 years, one that threatens to derail the life he has built for himself and his soon to be husband. Recounted mostly through animation to director Jonas Poher Rasmussen, he tells for the first time the story of his extraordinary journey as a child refugee from Afghanistan.
THE TENDER BAR: Special Pre-Release Screening and Q&A with Producer and SDA Alumnus Grant Heslov
December 1, 2021, 7:00 P.M.
Bing Theater
The Tender Bar tells the story of J.R. (Sheridan), a fatherless boy growing up in the glow of a bar where the bartender, his Uncle Charlie (Affleck), is the sharpest and most colorful of an assortment of quirky and demonstrative father figures. As the boy’s determined mother (Rabe) struggles to provide her son with opportunities denied to her — and leave the dilapidated home of her outrageous if begrudgingly supportive father (Christopher Lloyd) — J.R. begins to gamely, if not always gracefully, pursue his romantic and professional dreams — with one foot persistently placed in Uncle Charlie’s bar. The film will hit L.A. and NY theaters in limited release on December 17, opening nationwide on December 22. The film will be available globally for streaming via Amazon Prime Video on January 7.
SIR! NO SIR!
December 2, 2021, 7:00 P.M.
The Ray Stark Family Theatre, SCA 108, George Lucas Building, USC School of Cinematic Arts Complex, 900 W. 34th Street, Los Angeles, CA 90007
In the 1960’s an anti-war movement emerged that altered the course of history. This movement didn’t take place on college campuses, but in barracks and on aircraft carriers. It flourished in army stockades, navy brigs and in the dingy towns that surround military bases. It penetrated elite military colleges like West Point. And it spread throughout the battlefields of Vietnam. It was a movement no one expected, least of all those in it. Hundreds went to prison and thousands into exile. And by 1971 it had, in the words of one colonel, infested the entire armed services. Yet today few people know about the GI movement against the war in Vietnam.
THE PACT
December 5, 2021, 5:00 P.M.
The Ray Stark Family Theatre, SCA 108, George Lucas Building, USC School of Cinematic Arts Complex, 900 W. 34th Street, Los Angeles, CA 90007
Aged 63 Karen Blixen is at the pinnacle of her fame and next in line to win the Nobel Prize for literature. It has been 17 years since she gave up her famous farm in Africa only to return to Denmark with her life in ruins. Devastated by syphilis and having lost the love of her life she has reinvented herself as a literary sensation. She is an isolated genius, however, until the day she meets a talented 30-year-old poet. She promises him literary stardom if he in return will obey her unconditionally even at the cost of him losing everything else in his life…
LOS HERMANOS / THE BROTHERS
December 6, 2021, 6:00 P.M. PST
Live Online Webinar
Ilmar and Aldo López-Gavilán are virtuoso Afro-Cuban musician brothers, born in Havana in the 70s. At 14, Ilmar outgrew his island teachers and was sent to the U.S.S.R. to study violin. He never lived in Cuba again, ultimately landing as a working chamber violinist in the U.S. Younger brother Aldo grew up mentored by Cuba’s impressive jazz and classical pianists, his extraordinary talent achieving renown on the island, but stymied elsewhere by the 60-year-old U.S. embargo. Though they see each other when family finances and visa restrictions allow, they've never had a chance to collaborate musically—something they've longed for all their lives. Tracking their parallel lives, poignant reunion, and momentous first performances together on stages across the U.S., Los Hermanos / The Brothers is a nuanced, intensely moving view of nations long estranged, through the lens of music and family.
BLOOD OF THE FAMILY TREE
December 6, 2021, 7:00 P.M.
The Ray Stark Family Theatre, SCA 108, George Lucas Building, USC School of Cinematic Arts Complex, 900 W. 34th Street, Los Angeles, CA 90007
Blood of the Family Tree is an experimental animated film that explores questions of connections, hidden family history, disease, and our ties to the past. My objective was to create a work of animation that uses complex cinematic structures to tell a personal story, illustrating the connective tissue that binds humanity to history. The film is a struggle to understand the past and its effect on the present. Recent research suggests that trauma is genetically passed down through generations. Issues of inheritance, physical and cultural mores and traumas sited within the body are represented by images of grandmothers, keepers, ancestors, watchers, blood cells, bones, knots, lace, trees, and roots. Can we escape our history? Probably not, but we can recognize it and make peace with it.
SOUAD in IMAX
December 7, 2021, 3:00 P.M.
The Michelle and Kevin Douglas IMAX Theatre @ The Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts (RZC), 3131 S. Figueroa Street, Los Angeles, CA 90007
Zagazig, a small city on the Nile Delta in Egypt. Today. Souad, 19-year-old young woman, leads a double life. While remaining conservative and veiled among her family and society, Souad is obsessed with her image on social media, and goes in several secret virtual relationships with men. She constantly lies about her personal life, projecting wishfully images of a different desired life. Her ambitions are slowly crushed by the invasion of her true reality. A series of small incidents lead to a tragic event, that makes Rabab, her 13-year-old little sister, embarks on a real-life journey looking for answers.
THE NOVICE
December 7, 2021, 7:00 P.M.
The Ray Stark Family Theatre, SCA 108, George Lucas Building, USC School of Cinematic Arts Complex, 900 W. 34th Street, Los Angeles, CA 90007
An obsessive college freshman joins her university’s rowing team and undertakes an extreme physical and psychological journey to make it to the top varsity boat, no matter the cost.
WEST SIDE STORY: Special Advance Screening Followed by Q+A with Producer & SCA Alumnus Kevin McCollum '89
December 8, 2021, 7:00 P.M. PST
The Frank Sinatra Hall at the Eileen Norris Cinema Theatre Complex, 3507 Trousdale Parkway, Los Angeles, CA 90007
Join us for a special advance screening of WEST SIDE STORY. This event will feature a Q+A with Producer and SCA Alumnus Kevin McCollum '89 & Actor Brian d'Arcy James.
THE MITCHELLS VS. THE MACHINES
December 9, 2021, 7:00 P.M.
The Ray Stark Family Theatre, SCA 108, George Lucas Building, USC School of Cinematic Arts Complex, 900 W. 34th Street, Los Angeles, CA 90007
From the humans who brought you the Academy Award-winning Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and The LEGO Movie comes The Mitchells vs. The Machines, where an old school father and his plugged-in, filmmaker daughter struggle to relate as their family embarks on a road trip to her new college. Their drive is interrupted by a machine apocalypse that threatens to tear these unlikely heroes apart unless they can find a way to join forces and save humanity.
THE HAND OF GOD
December 13, 2021, 7:00 P.M.
The Ray Stark Family Theatre, SCA 108, George Lucas Building, USC School of Cinematic Arts Complex, 900 W. 34th Street, Los Angeles, CA 90007
From Academy Award-winning writer and director Paolo Sorrentino (Il Divo, The Great Beauty, The Young Pope) comes the story of a boy, Fabietto Schisa, set in the tumultuous Naples of the 1980s. The Hand of God is a story full of unexpected joys, such as the arrival of football legend Diego Maradona, and an equally unexpected tragedy. Fate plays its part, joy and tragedy intertwine, and Fabietto’s future is set in motion. Sorrentino returns to his hometown to tell his most personal story, a tale of fate and family, sports and cinema, love and loss.
DON'T LOOK UP
December 15, 2021, 7:00 P.M.
The Ray Stark Family Theatre, SCA 108, George Lucas Building, USC School of Cinematic Arts Complex, 900 W. 34th Street, Los Angeles, CA 90007
Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence), an astronomy grad student, and her professor Dr. Randall Mindy (Leonardo DiCaprio) make an astounding discovery of a comet orbiting within the solar system. The problem — it’s on a direct collision course with Earth. The other problem? No one really seems to care. Turns out warning mankind about a planet-killer the size of Mount Everest is an inconvenient fact to navigate. With the help of Dr. Oglethorpe (Rob Morgan), Kate and Randall embark on a media tour that takes them from the office of an indifferent President Orlean (Meryl Streep) and her sycophantic son and Chief of Staff, Jason (Jonah Hill), to the airwaves of The Daily Rip, an upbeat morning show hosted by Brie (Cate Blanchett) and Jack (Tyler Perry). With only six months until the comet makes impact, managing the 24-hour news cycle and gaining the attention of the social media obsessed public before it’s too late proves shockingly comical — what will it take to get the world to just look up?!