Director of Programming Rachel Rosen, Festival Director Rich Raddon and Film Independent [FIND] Executive Director Dawn Hudson have announced a surprise screening and additional events and guests at the Los Angeles Film Festival, which began June 16 and runs through Sunday, June 26.
On Saturday, June 25, the festival’s Family Day on the Santa Monica Pier will feature a celebrity reading by Macy Gray. She will join Nancy Cartwright, the voice of Bart Simpson on The Simpsons, and award-winning children’s author Todd Parr.
Designed to celebrate LA’s creative and cultural diversity, Family Day will kick off at 11 a.m. Also on the day’s agenda are a kiddy red carpet, arts and crafts, dance and yoga classes, karaoke, pony rides, a petting zoo, face painting, magicians, and some of Los Angeles’s hottest bands. It will conclude with a special outdoor screening of the Academy Award-nominated film Babe.
Family Day is sponsored by Target, People magazine, Disney Channel, and the Santa Monica Pier.
The Festival has also added screenings of two films straight from the Cannes Film Festival, including a special screening of Jim Jarmusch’s Broken Flowers, winner of the Grand Prix at Cannes. It will be shown at Laemmle Sunset 5 on Saturday, June 25 at 7:30 p.m.
From Focus Features, Broken Flowers stars Bill Murray, Jeffrey Wright, Sharon Stone, Frances Conroy, Jessica Lange, Tilda Swinton, and Julie Delpy.
Another Festival late entry is an evening with screenwriter Shane Black, “Black’s Noir: Uncovering Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang,” on Friday, June 24, at 9:30 p.m. at the Director’s Guild theater. At Cannes, Black’s Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang was the talk of the Croisette.
Inspired by pulp detective novels and tough guys and dames of the 40s and 50s, Black’s film is an homage to filn noir, In addition to a discussion and clips from Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang, clips that inspired it will also be shown.
The Festival is sponsored by In Style, Target, Pop Secret, the Directors Guild of America, Eastman Kodak Company, and the Los Angeles Times. Special support is provided by the National Endowment of the Arts.Extended coverage of the 2005 Los Angeles Film Festival can be seen on FesTV 24 hours per day on cable channel 75 in Santa Monica and 10 p.m. to 12:00 pm nightly on cable channel LA36 in Los Angeles through June 27.
