Picturehouse 441

Picturehouse 441 and ACE are proud to be partnering on a series of live virtual Q&As as part of our mutual efforts to promote film literacy.
Join us for a Q&A with editor Mark Helfrich, ACE, as he discusses his work on the 1995 erotic drama Showgirls. While Picturehouse 441 is normally dedicated to exploring essential cinema, we wanted to take a night to explore one of cinema’s most beloved cult classics: Showgirls. After the smash-hit success of Basic Instinct, legendary director Paul Verhoeven and enfant terrible screenwriter Joe Eszterhas joined forces again for Showgirls. The film’s ambitions couldn’t have been higher: Saved By the Bell’s Elizabeth Berkeley wanted to use the film to break into serious roles, Verhoeven and Eszterhas aimed to satirize the cutthroat, sleazy world of Sin City strippers, and the film would be the most widely-released NC-17-rated film ever. What actually resulted is one of the most notorious films in modern cinema history - a critically-assailed, Razzie-sweeping box office flop that quickly garnered a huge cult following and record-breaking ($100 million+) video sales for MGM. However, SHOWGIRLS did demonstrate that beneath all of the fabulously over-the-top line readings, insane sex scenes, and nonsensical behavior was typically strong technical craft, exemplified by Mark Helfrich, ACE, and Mark Goldblatt, ACE’s electric editing. This one-of-a-kind event will explore the makings of this wildly entertaining phenomenon through the eyes of one of the veteran editors who was tasked with putting it together. This event will be a Zoom Webinar on Thursday, May 30 at 8PM ET/5PM PT. **ACE members, please check your email for free ticket information.**

Join us on Monday, June 3 for a Q&A with editor Jake Roberts, ACE, as he discusses his work on the 2024 dystopian thriller Civil War. Advertised as an action-packed political thriller, Alex Garland’s latest directorial effort, Civil War, is a far more humane though suitably intense work that stands as a testament to war journalists’ bravery in the face of a new American civil war. As cut by Garland’s longtime editor, Oscar-nominee Jake Roberts, ACE, Civil War is a patiently-paced film spotted with scenes of prolonged tension that are effectively interspersed with still images of the conflict being covered by the film’s characters. Elevated by outstanding work from Kirsten Dunst, Cailee Spaeny, Wagner Moura, and Stephen McKinley Henderson, Civil War marks another distinctive and vital work from Alex Garland who, through Ex Machina, Annihilation, and Men, has established himself as one of the world’s most exciting writer-director double-threats after a remarkable career as a screenwriter. This event will be a Zoom Webinar on Monday, June 3 at 8PM ET/5PM PT. **ACE members, please check your email for free ticket information.**

Tune in on Wednesday, June 5, to watch a Q&A with supervising sound editor Dody Dorn, ACE; sound designer Blake Leyh; cinematographer Mikael Salomon, ASC as they discuss their work on the special edition of the 1989 science fiction film The Abyss. After two smash hits in a row with The Terminator and Aliens, James Cameron took on The Abyss, a characteristically ambitious underwater thriller that became the first commercial disappointment of his career. A few years after the film's theatrical release, Cameron went back to the deep to both further develop characters and properly realize the film's VFX-filled conclusion. The resulting special edition is a visual and aural groundbreaker with its Oscar-winning special effects, Oscar-nominated cinematography, and Oscar-nominated sound that admirably remains grounded due to its marital drama played out powerfully by Ed Harris and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio. Expertly edited by Conrad Buff, ACE, Joel Goodman and Howard E. Smith, ACE, 35 years after its release, this once-maligned film stands tall in the master filmmaker's filmography. This event will be a Zoom Webinar on Wednesday, June 5 at 8PM ET/5PM PT. **ACE members, please check your email for free ticket information.**

Picturehouse 441 and ACE are proud to be partnering on a series of live virtual Q&As as part of our mutual efforts to promote film literacy.
Join us for a Q&A with editor Lisa Fruchtman, as she discusses her work on the epic war film Apocalypse Now. Ending his hot streak in the 1970s with one of the most enigmatic, mesmerizing, and audacious films ever produced, Francis Ford Coppola made his grandest statement with 1979’s Apocalypse Now. A film with a famously troubled production that rivals the finished product for wild drama, this Vietnam War-set descent into madness is a herculean feat of filmmaking, particularly on the part of its four-person team of editors: Lisa Fruchtman; Richard Marks, ACE; Gerald Greenberg, ACE; Walter Murch, ACE. This team cut together well over one million feet of film (230 hours) to form a hallucinatory, haunting vision of the hell of war that, 45 years later, has lost none of its horrifying impact. This event will be a Zoom Webinar on Tuesday, June 25 at 8PM ET/5PM PT. **ACE members, please check your email for free ticket information.**

Picturehouse 441 and ACE are proud to be partnering on a series of live virtual Q&As as part of our mutual efforts to promote film literacy.
Join us for a Q&A with writer/director Stephen Sommers and editor Bob Ducsay, ACE, as they discuss their work on the action-adventure film The Mummy. This 1999 reboot of Universal’s classic monster franchise is both a loving homage to the past and a thrilling leap forward in its use of cutting-edge visual effects. Writer/director Stephen Sommers has an obvious love for classic monster movies and serials as well as Raiders of the Lost Ark (itself an homage to classic serials) which shines through in every frame of this rip-roaring action film about an adventurer and a librarian who go up against an awakened ancient mummy in 1920s Egypt. Everything in The Mummyworks from the groundbreaking visual effects to the game performances of Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz to frequent Sommers collaborator Bob Ducsay’s ace editing. Most importantly, though, The Mummy never forgets what it is at heart: a pure adrenaline-driven piece of entertainment with equal amounts of laughs and thrills. The Mummy’s long afterlife has been well-earned. This event will be a Zoom Webinar on Monday, July 8 at 7PM ET/4PM PT. **ACE members, please check your email for free ticket information.**

Picturehouse 441 and ACE are proud to be partnering on a series of live virtual Q&As as part of our mutual efforts to promote film literacy.
Join us for a Q&A with cinematographer Pawel Pogorzelski, as he discusses his work on the 2018 supernatural horror film Hereditary. Ari Aster’s horrifically disturbing debut feature, Hereditary, is truly chilling, but more importantly, it’s a compelling, astute drama that vividly dissects a family’s cracked psychology. In the lead, Toni Collette gives a detailed, go-for-broke performance, and Alex Wolff goes toe-to-toe with her with as much intensity and confidence. And, as shot by Aster’s frequent cinematographer Pawel Pogorzelski, Hereditary is a visually luminous work that slowly builds dread and mystery through this inventive artist’s work. Edited by Jennifer Lame, ACE, and Lucian Johnston, Hereditary is one of the great family dramas/horror films of the past decade that announced the arrival of a provocative new voice in filmmaking and became a surprise box office hit. This event will be a Zoom Webinar on Monday, July 22 at 9PM ET/6PM PT. **ACE members, please check your email for free ticket information.**

Join us for a Q&A with screenwriter Eric Roth, as he discusses his work on the 1994 comedy-drama film Forrest Gump. Winner of 6 Oscars including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Film Editing for Arthur Schmidt, and Best Adapted Screenplay for Eric Roth, Forrest Gump is a film that is so moving, so sweet, and so expertly-crafted that it’s outlasted most of its contemporaries. Following an Alabamian, Forrest Gump, who finds himself at the center or just to the side of many critical points in mid-20th Century US history, this warm, winsome film is endlessly endearing and full of moments that became cultural touchpoints. In adapting Winston Groom’s 1986 novel for the screen, Eric Roth proved once again why he’s the master of film adaptations (six of his seven Oscar nominations are for Best Adapted Screenplay), as he gave this epic, decades-spanning story both the requisite sweep and a huge heart. Endlessly quotable and with an iconic Tom Hanks at its center, Forrest Gump is a zeitgeist-capturing sensation that found director Robert Zemeckis at the peak of his powers, displaying his mastery of mixing human drama with technical wizardry to great effect. This event will be a Zoom Webinar on Monday, July 29 at 7PM ET/4PM PT. **ACE members, please check your email for free ticket information.**

Picturehouse 441 and ACE are proud to be partnering on a series of live virtual Q&As as part of our mutual efforts to promote film literacy.
Join us for a Q&A with actor Greg Sestero, as he discusses his work in the 2003 unintentionally hilarious cult drama The Room. The Room is this generation's Rocky Horror Picture Show – an I-can't-believe-anyone-made-a-movie-like-this midnight movie sensation courtesy of enigmatic director, producer, writer, star Tommy Wiseau and editor Eric Yalkut Chase. Now billed as a “black comedy”, there’s nothing in this unintentionally hilarious film that indicates it was ever intended to be anything but a drama. Full of now-iconic one-liners – “Oh hai, Mark!” – gratuitous sex scenes, and frequent shots of a spoon painting sitting on a table (at midnight screenings, audience members throw plastic spoons every time the picture appears), The Room is a joy-inducing spectacle. And, to top it all off, co-star and frequent Wiseau conspirator, Greg Sestero, wrote a bestselling book, The Disaster Artist, that chronicles the making of The Room that was itself adapted into an Oscar-nominated film. The Roomis our programmer Joshua Handler’s favorite cult movie that is a passionately-made work which has given the world over 20 years of happiness and nonstop laughter. This event will be a Zoom Webinar on Monday, August 5 at 9PM ET/6PM PT. **ACE members, please check your email for free ticket information.**

Picturehouse 441 and ACE are proud to be partnering on a series of live virtual Q&As as part of our mutual efforts to promote film literacy.
Join us for a Q&A with director/co-writer David Wain, as he discusses his work on the 2001 satirical comedy Wet Hot American Summer. David Wain and Michael Showalter have a very distinct sense of humor – over-the-top, low-brow, and raunchy – and upon release in 2001, few understood the giddy genius of their paean to summer camp movies, Wet Hot American Summer. Starring a group of then-relative unknowns, many of whom would go on to A-list status – Bradley Cooper, Paul Rudd, Elizabeth Banks, and others – and edited by Meg Reticker, this raucous raunchfest quickly found a devoted cult following that has grown by the year. What makes Wet Hot so special is the love and sincerity with which it was made as well as its willingness to go anywhere and do anything. Like so many other great cult movies, Wet Hot American Summer was simply ahead of its time, though luckily the world seems to have caught up with it. This event will be a Zoom Webinar on Monday, August 19 at 9PM ET/6PM PT. **ACE members, please check your email for free ticket information.**

Picturehouse 441 and ACE are proud to be partnering on a series of live virtual Q&As as part of our mutual efforts to promote film literacy. Join us for a Q&A with editor Richard Francis-Bruce, ACE, as he discusses his work on the 1994 prison drama The Shawshank Redemption. Frank Darabont’s directorial debut, The Shawshank Redemption, is itself the ultimate redemption story. Dismissed upon release, The Shawshank Redemption quickly developed a devoted following on TV and home video, earned seven Oscar nominations including Best Picture, and is now hailed as one of the greatest films ever made. All of the deserved praise heaped upon this film belies the fact that, at its heart, it is a small, down-to-earth prison drama about a wrongfully-imprisoned man and his friendship with a fellow inmate. As cut by veteran editor Richard Francis-Bruce, ACE, this methodically-paced drama crescendos to a tremendously powerful climax that makes an already-affecting film ascend to true cinematic transcendence. This event will be a Zoom Webinar on Wednesday, September 4 at 9PM ET/6PM PT. **ACE members, please check your email for free ticket information.**

Picturehouse 441 and ACE are proud to be partnering on a series of live virtual Q&As as part of our mutual efforts to promote film literacy.
Join us for a Q&A with editor Maurissa Horwitz and screenwriter Meg LeFauve, as they discuss their work on the 2024 coming-of-age Inside Out 2. The first Inside Outwas one of Pixar’s most exhilarating triumphs: a complex, profoundly moving, and wickedly funny exploration of a young girl’s emotions. And its sequel, Inside Out 2, is another insightful, surprising work that follows the original five emotions and some new ones as their girl, Riley, navigates being a teenager and the anxiety that comes with it. Paced at a breakneck speed by debuting director Kelsey Mann and editor Maurissa Horwitz and filled with rich vocal performances from its exceptional voice cast, Inside Out 2 is the rare film that has captured both the hearts and especially minds of critics and audiences and shown that the geniuses at Pixar are still operating at the top of their game.

This event will be a Live Zoom Webinar on Wednesday, September 11 at 8PM ET/5PM PT with two encore livestreams to follow on Vimeo.

Encore 1: Wednesday, September 11 at 11PM ET/8PM PT
Encore 2: Thursday, September 12 at 3PM ET/12PM PT

Please RSVP by 3 hours before on the day of your selected event. **ACE members, please check your email for free ticket information.**