Lee Grant Film Festival - Series Pass

550 Winslow Way East,Bainbridge Island WA 98110

17 March, 2023

Description

Women on Trial (1992) and Battered (1989) "Women On Trail" exposes the innate corruption and sexism in the family court system as children are removed from their mothers and given to fathers who often either don't want them, or have been convicted of domestic violence. Lee Grant's acclaimed 1989 investigation of domestic violence in American homes, Battered is the powerful, if harrowing portrait of a life lived in constant fear of the people closest to you. Intimate interviews with the victims and children of the cycle are combined with the eye opening and heart breaking stories of the abusers themselves to take you deeper into every facet of these American lives. Lee Grant Bio: Academy Award-winner Lee Grant was born Lyova Haskell Rosenthal on October 31, 1925 in Manhattan, New York City, to Witia (Haskell), a teacher and actress, and Abraham Rosenthal, an educator and realtor. Her father was of Romanian Jewish descent, and her mother was a Russian Jewish immigrant. Lee made her stage debut at age 4 at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City, playing the abducted princess in "L'Orocolo". After graduating from high school, she won a scholarship to the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre, where she studied acting with Sanford Meisner. When she was a teenager Grant established herself as a formidable Broadway talent when she won The Critics' Circle Award for her portrayal of the shoplifter in "Detective Story". She reprised the role in the film version (Detective Story (1951), a performance that garnered her the Cannes Film Festival Citation for Best Actress as well as her first Academy Award Nomination. Immediately following her screen debut, however, Lee became a victim of the McCarthy-era blacklists in which actors, writers, directors, etc., were persecuted for supposedly "Communist" or "progressive" political beliefs, whether they had them or not. Except for an occasional role, she did not work in film or television for 10 years. In 1966 Lee re-started her acting career in the TV series Peyton Place (1964), for which she won an Emmy Award as Stella Chernak, and she later garnered her first Academy Award for Shampoo (1975), also receiving Academy Award nominations for The Landlord (1970) and Voyage of the Damned (1976). Since 1980 Lee has been concentrating on her directorial career, which began as part of the Women's Project at The Americal Film Institute (AFI); her adaptation of August Strindberg's, "Stronger, The" was consequently selected as one of the 10 best films ever produced for AFI. In 1987 she received an Academy Award for the HBO documentary, Down and Out in America (1986) and directed Nobody's Child (1986) for CBS, for which she received the Directors Guild Award. In 1983 she received the Congressional Arts Caucus Award for Outstanding Achievement in Acting and Independent Filmmaking. Subsequently, Women in Film paid tribute to her in 1989, with its first-ever Lifetime Achievement Award. Both the New York City Council and the County of Los Angeles Board of Supervisors have recognized Ms. Grant for the contribution her films have made to the fight against domestic violence. In addition to starring in many Hollywood films, Oscar winner Lee Grant is also an accomplished documentarian. Her works provide an unflinching view of many of society’s persistent woes: homelessness, substance abuse, domestic violence, incarceration, etc. BIMA presents four of her documentary films, curated by guest programmer Tova Ganana, and featuring interviews with Ms. Grant about her projects. There will be four listings associated with this event, each one describing the day's screenings. The matinee and evening movie screenings for day one get flipped for day two. Individual tickets $10 Members, $12 NonMembers. Series pass for both days: $15 Members, and $17 NonMembers.