August 1-7, 2025

Hello, friends! 

The big day has finally arrived: our new cinema on Grand Avenue officially opens its doors! Please join us this evening at 5:00 pm for a ribbon cutting ceremony, and then we invite you to explore our new space, enjoy some free popcorn, purchase some concessions, check out our bright shiny theaters, and celebrate our shared love of cinema as a community.  We are so grateful to everyone who has been a part of making this big day happen, from those who donated, to those who have put in the many, many hours of labor and love. 

Over on Bay St., the superhero summer hit, Superman, continues for another week, as does the tenderly observational Sorry, Baby, and, then, beginning Saturday, August 2, at the Grand, we have a varied and eclectic line-up of some of the best indie movies of the summer to share with you, with a little something for everyone: Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight, Sunlight, Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore, and Architecton.  

Based on the 2001 memoir of the same name by British-Zimbabwean writer Alexandra Fuller, Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight is the terrific feature film debut from actress Embeth Davidtz. It details Fuller's life as the child of white farmers growing up in Zimbabwe, and it focuses on the year 1980, the election year when Zimbabwe (then, Rhodesia) transitioned through war to independence; it was the year when Fuller herself, nicknamed "Bobo," was 8 years old. 

Drawing on her own girlhood growing up in apartheid South Africa, Davitz as a director evinces a personal closeness to the story that especially shines in the film's point of view, that is, the film is entirely told from the perspective of Bobo. And it's easy to fall in love with Bobo, a spunky, confident girl often left to her own devices by her parents, where baths are mostly optional and where she has the freedom to roam the house and the property unattended. And while Bobo's perspective is necessarily limited as a child--we do not have access to a full picture of the complicated politics and we are mostly denied the perspective of the Black Zimbabweans--Davitz is careful not to sanitize Bobo's point of view. Though she is a young child, we also observe the ways in which Bobo absorbs and mimics the racism of her parents and the other white families, and as much as she loves Sarah, the family's Black housekeeper, who is more motherly to Bobo than Bobo's own mother (played by Davitz), we see the harm, too, that Bobo and her family cause Sarah, whose own love for Bobo puts her in danger. 

What emerges is a complex, if necessarily limited, portrait of a child caught up in the violent outgrowths of colonization and white supremacy, while still retaining at least some of the innocence and openness that children possess and that is lost on their adult counterparts. It is ultimately a deeply compelling film that invites reflection and discussion.

We also have two wonderful and very different documentaries playing this week at the Grand, and the first is Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore. Helmed by director Shoshanna Stern (who is also a Deaf actress), Marlee Matlin is a richly and beautifully told portrait of Matlin, encompassing her career as an actress; her rise-and-fall-and-rise in a fickle Hollywood; her identity as a Deaf person and her advocacy for the Deaf community; and her struggles as they relate to sexual abuse and addiction. 

In a creative choice that creates a poignant sense of intimacy, Stern filmed the interviews with Matlin while they sat together on a couch, drawing on their own long friendship and creating a sense of ease that is rare in documentaries, where most directors remain distant and behind the camera. Stern also beautifully integrates accessibility elements into her film, including closed captioning as well as subtitles for every talking head, showing an awareness not only of Deaf viewers who might be in the audience but also complementing Matlin's work as the trailblazer who used her platform as a rising star following her Oscar win for Children of a Lesser God to convince lawmakers to require closed captioning on television for the first time. 

The film is a joy to watch, a joy to experience, by turns warmly engaging and profoundly moving, and it feels like an especially sweet gift to be able to showcase it during our first week at the Grand.