Director Lee Breuer and actress Maude Mitchell will attend the U.S. premiere of Mabou Mines DollHouse, the film adaptation of their adventurous staging of Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House, at 1:30 p.m. Sunday, April 5, at the Cleveland Museum of Art (11150 East Blvd., 216.421.7340). They will answer questions after the screening. Breuer shot the film, financed by a French company, with Mabou Mines, an avant-garde theater collective he co-founded in 1970. For Mitchell, a 1981 Oberlin grad who'll spend the rest of the year globetrotting with Breuer from Moscow to Mongolia and Shanghai, this hometown stop is an opportunity to discuss her role as Nora in Breuer's re-invention of the classic 1879 play. "What we've done is really embraced Ibsen," she says. "The trend is to try to escape him, and I do think he's misunderstood. It's not a goof on him. The piece does really explore theatricality, gender and power." Tickets: $10.
Now in its sixth year, the Akron Film Festival, running April 2-5, has a new home at the Akron Art Museum's Charles and Jane Lehner Auditorium (1 S. High St., 330.376.9185). "This year, we're doubling the size of the theater," says director of operations Rob Lucas. "Last year, we had to turn a lot of people away. Now we're going to be more accommodating to the size of the crowds." In addition to featuring several new workshops, the festival will include four features and 24 shorts. "We're already talking about 2010 and 2011," says Lucas. "We want to work a little bit more on building a community and bringing people together to network and do a little bit more than just sit in a dark theater." An animated interpretation of the Indian epic Ramayana, Nina Paley's Sita Sings the Blues opens the festival at 7 p.m. Thursday, April 2; it concludes with an awards ceremony at 12:30 p.m. Sunday, April 5. Tickets for each film are $6. Find more information at akronfilmfestival.com.
The Cleveland Cinemas' Cult Film Series continues this weekend with a screening of John Carpenter's monster movie The Thing at 9:30 p.m. and at midnight on Saturday, April 4, at the Cedar Lee Theatre (2163 Lee Rd., 440.321.5411). One (not-so) lucky person at each showing will win a block of ice in honor of the film's arctic setting. Tickets: $5.
