Marlene Logory displays her art in the Cafe through July 23rd

Marlene Logory has been an active watercolorist for more than 10 years. Her works span reality to abstraction. Drawing and painting were childhood loves. They grew to telling stories while drawing to her own children and those at St. Joseph's Villa, on to grandchildren. Her works have been in several local galleries and she has conducted workshops. She feels her works are a latent enthusiastic display of childhood joy.

Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work Opens July 7

"Joan Rivers — where have you been all my life?"—from the NYTimes Review

From the AV Club Interview:

AVC: There’s some conventional wisdom that good comedians tend to come from troubled and angry backgrounds. Do you think this is true across the board?

JR: I think it’s very true across the board. I think anyone who’s perfectly happy isn’t particularly funny. And when you’re very, very happy, you’re not very funny. You’re just happy. I’d rather be damaged and funny because I’ve been laughing for 76 years.

AVC: Some of the funniest jokes in the film are when you’re talking about trying to get out there more often, and not getting the bookings you want.

JR: Again, if it’s a fact of life and you laugh about it, it’s okay. Everything is okay if you laugh about it. And that’s a great weapon. That’s a cliché, but clichés come out of truth. The glass is always half-empty for me, because I say it’s filled with poison. Even now, as everyone is adoring this movie and loving this movie, I keep saying to Ricki, “Yeah, but we’ll see, well see.” But I’m also not stupid. I’m delighted and savoring the moment, too.

AVC: A lot of people are fascinated by the movie, but also wary of seeing it, because they have a very negative image of you going in.

JR: I worked at The Bitter End years ago, owned by a man named Freddie Weintraub, and we all came out of there—Woody [Allen], Bill Cosby, and George Carlin. There was a whole group that was going through there. Peter, Paul & Mary, The Mamas & The Papas; we were all mixed up together. Freddie would stand at the door after the shows and he would listen to the comments, and if people loved the act or hated the act, he brought them back. He said, “That means they have a quality people watch.” When people hate me, that’s good. They know I’m there. You’re not a chorus kid. Remember in A Chorus Line, she’s having trouble and he keeps saying, “You’re standing out,” and she’s trying not to? They hate me? That’s good.

Read the whole interview here.

Exit Through the Gift Shop Sepcial Event-Tues. June 29

The Little Theatre is excited to screen Exit Through the Gift Shop for Rochester audiences beginning on Friday, June 25th. An exclusive talkback event is scheduled for Tuesday, June 29th, following the 6:30 PM screening. Tickets are $8. The film will have a full theatrical run.

Talkback guests include: The Sweet Meat Co., Artist Collective comprised of Sarah Rutherford, St. Monci, Mr. Prvrt, Lea Rizzo, and Erich Lehman. They will also be holding a free, one night artshow in the downstairs lounge of the Little 1.

“We hope to explore some of the conspiracy theories about the flick and people's reactions—there's so much to talk about in this film; the audience I saw it with earlier this year was definitely buzzing afterwards,” said Erich Lehman, owner of 1975 Gallery and talkback discussion moderator.

About Exit Through The Gift Shop
Banksy is a graffiti artist with a global reputation whose work can be seen on walls from post-hurricane New Orleans to the separation barrier on the Palestinian West Bank. Fiercely guarding his anonymity to avoid prosecution, Banksy has so far resisted all attempts to be captured on film. Exit Through the Gift Shop tells the incredible true story of how an eccentric French shop keeper turned documentary maker attempted to locate and befriend Banksy, only to have the artist turn the camera back on its owner. The film contains exclusive footage of Banksy, Shepard Fairey, Invader and many of the world's most infamous graffiti artists at work, on walls and in interview. As Banksy describes it, "It's basically the story of how one man set out to film the un-filmable. And failed."

About the speakers:
Erich Lehman, Owner/Curator, 1975 Gallery
http://www.1975ish.com

Building on over 14 years of art collecting experience, owner/curator Erich Lehman started 1975 as a means of sharing his love of art and helping others learn how to build their own collections while exposing the countless gifted artists he has become friends with over the years to an audience that might otherwise not encounter them.

1975 Gallery
1975 is a mobile gallery living in a semi-permanent space within SURFACE salon in the South Wedge neighborhood in Rochester, NY. We are dedicated to exposing talented artists to a community that might otherwise overlook them and facilitating the would-be collector. 1975 is born of a labor of love. As with all great love, it needs to be shared.

The Sweet Meat Co., Artist Collective
http://www.sweetmeatco.com

The Sweet Meat Co. is an art collective out of Rochester, NY. We have come together, young artists all navigating our ways through our chosen creative paths, dealing with the distractions of everyday life, of the jobs that pay our way, and feed off each other’s struggle, passion and talent. We seek to celebrate the artistic heartbeat of Rochester and expose its beautiful, raw potential. Together, we play off our mutual loves and skills and grow through exposure to each others' unique specialties.

Micmacs-opens Friday-from the director of Amelie!

Whimsical Comedy 'Micmacs' is like Spy Vs. Spy on film

“Jeunet has many talents, including a James Cameron-like knack for intricate devices. But he lacks the gift for laugh-out loud humor. Like Amélie, Micmacs is less a comedy than, say, a charmedy.”

Jeunet begins Micmacs with the kind of somber intensity of imagery that distinguished his World War I movie, A Very Long Engagement. In a bravura wordless opening, a French soldier in Africa steps on a land mine; then, thirty years later, his orphaned son, Bazil (comedian Dany Boon, looking like David Niven on a bender) is a video store clerk. While happily watching The Big Sleep, he is accidentally shot in the head by a criminal on the street.

With the bullet still lodged in his brain, Bazil is eventually released from the hospital to earn his meager living as a street mime. According to Anatole France, “The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread,” but that’s what this little tramp is reduced to. He decides to take revenge on the CEOs of the two weapons manufacturers who ruined his life. Conveniently, their grand offices are located right across the street from each other.

This sounds grim, but the tone of Micmacs rapidly lightens, becoming more Amélie-like. Jeunet tries to resist creeping Amélization by setting much of the film in a junkyard, where Bazil finds refuge with a quirky fellowship of stereotypical Parisian misfits (including a goateed artist, a contortionist, and a human cannonball). Because this is a Jeunet movie, however, it’s a fabulously French-looking junkyard, the dump of Baron Haussmann’s dreams. Bazil conspires—aided by his ex-video clerk’s grasp of plot twists and his new friends’ reconfigured equipment—to bloodlessly goad the two merchants of death into ruining each other. Countless sight gags ensue—all clever, some astonishing—as multinational corporate technology is outfoxed by old-fashioned French miserliness.

Read the full review here.

Beat the heat Card Locations!

Our popular summer discount card is back again! It's wallet-sized and loaded with discounts. Plus, you can use it to earn a free movie ticket.

Pick them up at great places all over town:

Right here at The Little!
Great Harvest Bread Co. (Brighton)
B. Younique
Bagel Land
Great Northern Pizza Kitchens (Brighton)
Eleventh Hour Gift Shop
AE SPA
Play Better Golf
Yarn Boutique
Max Market
Murphy’s Law
Boulder Coffee
MuCcc
Geva
Stereo Shop (Henrietta)
Four Walls Art Gallery
Starry Nites
Orange Glory
Gates Public Library
Pagano’s Visual Perceptions
Veneto
Monroe YMCA
Theresa Zink, LMT
Guido’s Pasta Villa
Matthews
DFC
Fratelli’s
Java’s
Spot Coffee
Rochester Contemporary Art Center
East Ave Deli & Market
Havana Moe's
Java's (on Gibbs St.)
Temple Bar & Grille
Metro Salon
Visit Rochester
Wallace Library (RIT)
Eye Candy
Parkleigh
Jines
Camille's
Color Me Mine
Pontillo's
Pita Pit
Jim's Restaurants
Tru Salon
Aladdin's

Help 4D Films!

Hey everyone, remember 4D4 films that we covered back in January? They are using a crowd-sourcing tool to help finance their next film. Check it out & help them out. Here's the link!

Margaret Lejeune & Jason Flack in the Little Cafe Gallery

About the Cafe Show
The body of the work at the Little is a collaboration with artist Jason Flack (www.jason flack.com). As photographers living in vastly different landscapes, rural vs. urban, we decided to respond to the imagery that we created photographically 1200 miles apart. The result is a variety of diptychs paired thematically based on texture, color, subject or composition.

About Margaret Lejeune
Margaret LeJeune is an image-maker from Rochester, New York. Working predominately in photographic-based mediums, LeJeune explores issues of constructed gender, sexism, power dynamics and stereotypes. Her work has been exhibited at the Griffin Museum of Photography, ARC Gallery, Woman Made Gallery and in numerous national invitational and juried exhibitions. Recently Ms. LeJeune was awarded third prize by Roxana Marcoci (Curator of Photographs, MOMA) in the 2010 Curator’s Choice Award at Center for her series The Modern Day Diana. She currently serves as Assistant Professor of Art and the Director of the Kresge Art Gallery at Lyon College in Batesville, Arkansas.