The Academy Museum, 6067 Wilshire Blvd., celebrates Black History Month and highlights Black filmmakers during it’s “Oscar Sundays” program this month. The ongoing program, held every Sunday evening in the museum’s David Geffen Theater, screens films which have been honored at the Academy Awards.
Admission tickets are only available through advance online reservations. For tickets, visit https://www.academymuseum.org/en/tickets. Tickets for film screenings and public programs are sold separately and do not require general admission to the museum. Film screening tickets are $10 for adults, $7 for seniors (age 62+), $5 for college students, $5 for children (age 17 and younger), and $8 for Museum Members.
On Feb. 13 “Shaft” will be screened at 7:30 p.m. Richard Roundtree is “the man who won’t cop out when there’s danger all about” in this 1971 classic, which helped to establish a new era of African-American-driven cinema and won an Original Song Oscar for the unforgettable title tune by Isaac Hayes, also nominated for his Original Score.
Photographer-turned-filmmaker Gordon Parks directed the lively mystery, in which Shaft hunts for a gangster’s kidnapped daughter in authentically gritty Manhattan locations.
“Sounder,” starring Cicely Tyson, will be screened on Feb. 20. Tyson and Paul Winfield received Oscar nominations for their lead performances as Rebecca and Nathan Lee Morgan, sharecroppers raising their children in 1930s Louisiana, in this family drama from the Newbery Medal-winning novel. Lonne Elder III made Oscar history as the first Black man to be nominated for writing and the first Black person to receive an Adapted Screenplay nomination.
On Feb. 27, “Moonlight” will take the screen. Director Barry Jenkins and playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney adapted McCraney’s theater piece, “In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue” for this story of sensitive Chiron coming of age in Miami’s violent and homophobic drug culture. The movie won the 2016 Best Picture Oscar. Alex Hibbert, Ashton Sanders, and Trevante Rhodes play the protagonist at three stages of his life, and Mahershala Ali won his first Supporting Actor Oscar for his performance as the boy’s unlikely father figure.
The museum will require visitors to follow all current COVID-19 public health guidelines by the state of California and the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health in place at the time of their visit.For more information about Oscar Sundays, visit https://tinyurl.com/5n7xxmbu.
