Little Art Theatre has announced a new artist-in-residence initiative, debuting this month with Academy Award–winning documentary filmmaker Steven Bognar and artist-filmmaker Anna Chiaretta Lavatelli.
Throughout the month, Bognar and Lavatelli will host a series of documentary films on Thursday evenings, beginning at 7:30 p.m. Each screening will feature a post-film conversation with audience participation, with the intention of offering an intimate look into the craft, impact and social resonance of each film.
Bognar and Lavatelli have selected films that “share ways of acting from the margins to creatively resist systems of conformity and oppression while seeking wholeness and human dignity in all of its manifestations,” according to a press release.
A highlight of the series will be Yellow Springs’ first public screening of “9to5: The Story of a Movement,” completed in 2019 and co-directed by Bognar and Julia Reichert, who died in 2022. Although the film screened at some festivals before its national release on PBS in 2021, the pandemic shutdown limited its wider distribution.
The schedule:
• Jan. 8: “Grey Gardens,” 1975, directed by Ellen Hovde, Albert Maysles, David Maysles and Muffie Meyer
• Jan. 15: “Paris is Burning,” 1990, directed by Jennie Livingston
• Jan. 22: “The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution,” 2015, directed by Stanley Nelson.
• Jan. 29: “9to5: A Story of a Movement,” 2019, directed by Steve Bognar and Julia Reichert.
Looking ahead, the Little Art also plans to expand its residency offerings with a Student-in-Residence Program, launching later this year. This initiative will provide emerging filmmakers with access to the theater’s historic space as a site for experimentation, learning and public engagement.
“Our new residency programs reflect the Little Art’s vision for the future: a place where artists, students and community members come together to experience film as a living, evolving art form,” Executive Director Melissa Heston said in the release.
Ticket and full program details will be announced online at littleart.com and through the theatre’s newsletter.
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