August is already here, but we’ve got some great programming to help wrap your summer up! Our Segerstrom at The Frida series continues this Thursday with Life of Pi, Ang Lee’s stunning adaptation of the 2002 novel by Yann Martel. Then join LAist’s FilmWeek this Saturday for a special screening of 2001’s The Fast and The Furious, followed by a panel moderated by AirTalk’s Larry Mantle! Coming next week, we’ve got the Final Cut of Francis Ford Coppola’s war epic Apocalypse Now, Robert Altman’s offbeat cult comedy Popeye, and Sean Wang’s new Sundance Film Festival favorite Didi. Coming tomorrow, however, is Donkey Skin, Jacques Demy’s colorful French family film!
The film stars Catherine Deneuve as a princess whose father, the King (Jean Marais), wishes to marry her following the death of his wife. To escape this disturbing situation, the princess seeks the help of her fairy godmother (Delphine Seyrig), who advises her to demand impossible gifts from the King to delay the marriage. Ultimately, she is given the skin of a magical donkey that produces gold, which she uses as a disguise to flee to a neighboring kingdom, where she eventually catches the eye of a charming prince (Jacques Perrin). Winner of the Best Children’s Film prize at Spain’s Cinema Writers Circle Awards, Donkey Skin is a lovingly crafted, wildly eccentric musical adaptation of the classic fairy tale by Charles Perrault.
If you’ve never seen the film before, you can thank Alexis Manrodt, one of our two August Volunteers of the Month, for picking it! See what she likes about the movie as well as her time at The Frida below, and we’ll see you at Donkey Skin this week!
How did you find out about The Frida Cinema?
It was shortly after I moved out here from New York. I was just desperate to find not just a theater that was playing beyond the usual fare – like AMC, Regal, etc. – but also trying to find a like-minded film community that was celebrating a lot of different cinematic traditions and also highlighting exciting new work. And that is one hundred percent The Frida!
What made you want to volunteer here?
Well, the lure of free tickets was pretty irresistible! But yeah, I think just being in a new place and trying to rebuild my world or community, I really wanted to be intentional about it and to make active use of my time. Sohow better to spend that time than at a theater with people who, while we’re working, want to sit around and talk about movies and everything that they’re seeing?
Tell us a little bit about Donkey Skin.
Oh my gosh! It’s one of the most visually surreal, fantastical movies that I’ve ever seen. I feel like a lot of women go through a sort of like mid-60s French cinema period. I certainly did and wanted to consume everything that Catherine Deneuve did. My father’s French so there’s an added element of her being the revered beauty of that country. That’s a little bit on top of it, but I was always attracted to the otherworldliness and reality of Jacques Demy’s work where he could tell, in its essence, the most humble story of love and loss or friendship, but it was treated in this otherworldly way of everything is in these bright colors and there may be a musical interlude song and dance.
I think Donkey Skin is like the hyper, hyper version of that, of all of his impulses cranked to eleven. I also grew up loving fairy tales as well, so reading about this 60s musical movie about this very little known fairy tale starring Catherine Deneuve, it just sort of had everything. It was one of those movies that I sought out, trying to find it for years before finally being able to snag a copy.
What were your other choices for Volunteer Pick of the Month?
This was almost impossible for me. I promised my brother that if I were ever to be named Volunteer of the Month I would ask for Wild at Heart (also a fairy tale in a lot of ways.) And then [Volunteer Coordinator] Jill very kindly took mercy on me because I was having a crisis trying to narrow down on a third pick. I think I had like 24 movies and I narrowed it down to 12 and she was like “Let’s just see if we can make the first one or two work and then if not, you can choose a third.”
What is your favorite Frida memory?
If you could program any movie here, what would you pick?
Donkey Skin screens starting Wednesday, August 8th.
Wednesday, Aug 8 – 3pm, 5:45pm, 8pm
Thursday, Aug 9 – 3pm, 5:30pm
Tickets