From humble beginnings in a small slate roofed village in Greece to the heyday of America's movie palaces, the Latchis Family built an empire of theatres throughout New England in the hard-scrabble years of the Great Depression. Their story is told through historically accurate footage, photographs and music from the Latchis family, local historical societies and national archives.
Related Movies
Tales from Arab Detroit (1995)
Tales from Arab Detroit is a video documentary offering a fascinating glimpse into the lives and struggles of the Arab American community in the Detroit tri-county area.
Going Attractions: The Definitive Story of the Movie Palace (2019)
Celebrating the splendor and grandeur of the great cinemas of the United States, built when movies were the acme of entertainment and the stories were larger than life, as were the venues designed to show them. The film also tracks the eventual decline of the palaces, through to today’s current preservation efforts. A tribute to America’s great art form and the great monuments created for audiences to enjoy them in.
Scala!!! (2024)
This feature-length big screen documentary tells the riotous inside story of the infamous sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll repertory cinema which inspired a generation during Britain's turbulent Thatcher years.
Home Feeling: Struggle for a Community (1983)
This feature documentary takes us to the heart of the Jane-Finch "Corridor" in the early 1980s. Covering six square blocks in Toronto's North York, the area readily evokes images of vandalism, high-density subsidized housing, racial tension, despair and crime. By focusing on the lives of several of the residents, many of them black or members of other visible minorities, the film provides a powerful view of a community that, contrary to its popular image, is working towards a more positive future.
Gangsterläufer (2011)
A knife in the pocket, adrenaline in the blood and only one dream in mind: to be a gangster - and the biggest one at that. Yehya was 15 years old and close to realizing his dream when he met the filmmaker Christian Stahl in the stairwell. Yehya wasn't just the nice boy from next door, he was also "the Boss of Sonnenallee" - one of the gangster runners of the Berlin borough of Neukölln. And gangster runners want to make it in the gangster world. In the eyes of the authorities, he is an "intensive offender"; in his own eyes, Yehya is "one of the top ten of Neukölln. I got my own prosecutor!"
The Other Side of the Wall (2017)
Honduran immigrants living in Mexico, teenage siblings Rocío and Ale must take over care of their two younger siblings after their mother is sentenced to prison on dubious grounds. Tensions grow between the pair as the decision must be made on whether to stay together in Mexico or split the family up to cross into the US to work.
Shenandoah (2012)
An epic feature documentary about a coal mining town with a fiery immigrant heritage, once pivotal in fueling America’s industrial revolution and today in decline and struggling to survive and retain its identity, soul and values – all of which were dramatically challenged when four of the town’s white, star football players were charged in the beating death of an undocumented Mexican immigrant named Luis Ramirez. Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer David Turnley’s most personal work, SHENANDOAH creates a deeply felt portrait of a working class community, and the American Dream on trial.
Drive-In Movie Memories (2001)
A nostalgic, informative history of drive-in movie theaters, featuring extensive archival photographs and interviews with Leonard Maltin, John Bloom, Samuel Z. Arkoff, Barry Corbin and many others... Drive-In Movie Memories is a film celebration of America's greatest icon of youth, freedom and the automobile. What began as an auto parts owner's business venture to make some easy money accidentally became a magical place where romance, fun and a sense of community flourished. This film chronicles the drive-in's birth and development, its phenomenal popularity with audiences of all ages, its tragic decline, and its inevitable comeback as a classic form of Americana.
Tamara de Lempicka—The Queen of Art Déco (2022)
Hardly anyone knows the artist, but almost everyone knows her paintings: Tamara de Lempicka, icon of the 1920s. Her art deco paintings of women in cars or in evening dress adorn book covers and break auction records. But who was she? The ARTE documentary by Grimme Prize-winning author Sylvie Kürsten ventures a self-portrait of Lempicka, narrated and played by Nicole Heesters.
Jeronimo (2019)
Born to Korean immigrant parents freed from indentured servitude in early twentieth century Mexico, Jerónimo Lim Kim joins the Cuban Revolution with his law school classmate Fidel Castro and becomes an accomplished government official in the Castro regime, until he rediscovers his ethnic roots and dedicates his later life to reconstructing his Korean Cuban identity. After Jerónimo's death, younger Korean Cubans recognize his legacy, but it is not until they are presented with the opportunity to visit South Korea that questions about their mixed identity resurface.
Marqueetown (2024)
Through booms and busts, Delft Theatres and its innovative gem The Nordic endured in Marquette, Michigan for almost 100 years. Bernie Rosendahl’s crusade to restore the historic arthouse to its former glory reveals a hidden cinema empire in the Upper Peninsula.
Displaced Perssons (2013)
Per Persson left Sweden 40 years ago. In Pakistan he fell in love and became the father of two daughters. Trouble starts when the girls grow up and the family decides to emigrate to Sweden. When they end up living in a caravan outside Hässleholm, all their expectations are dashed.
Latvian Coyote (2019)
An absurd game of “finding happiness” is being played by local Latvian coyotes* and illegal immigrants on the Russian and the European Union border. It is a game with no winner – all participants are driven to play by the sense of despair. While one side leaves home and undertakes a perilous journey to the other side of the globe, hoping to spend the rest of their lives in a free country, the other side risks their freedom to earn a chance to stay right where they are, in their homeland. *coyote – someone who smuggles illegal immigrants
The Lure and the Lore (1988)
A collaboration between filmmaker Ayoka Chenzira and performance artist Thomas Pinnock, who performs his "immigrant folktales" using traditional lore of his native Jamaica to dramatize his migration to New York in the 60's.
Florence from Ohio (NaN)
Filmmaker Stephanie Wang-Breal sets out to cross the generational divide, confronting long-simmering tensions with her Chinese immigrant mother by literally becoming her. Dressing in her mom’s iconic St John Knit power suits and re-creating her 1980s local TV cooking show, Stephanie becomes Beta-Florence, a radical reinterpretation of Asian-American identity.
