News briefs: Tara eyes reopening; Kaminsky and Farris at the Breman; ASO film

The new nonprofit, Friends of Tara, has collected over $50,000 to reopen the historic movie house that was unceremoniously closed by Regal Cinemas in November.

Christopher Escobar, who owns the Plaza Theatre and is executive director of the Atlanta Film Society, led a group to acquire the Tara space and took it over in February. They were dismayed to discover that the former owners had stripped the theater of projectors, furniture and concession items. Framed art on the wall was taken down and disposed in a dumpster.

Since taking over the theater, the nonprofit has sold $29,972 in advance gift cards and raised $20,665 in donations. Escobar said in a press release that the reopening date remains in flux pending resolution of operating permits.

“With this initial goal of $50,000 achieved, we established a stretch goal of $75,000 to make additional specific improvements to our historic marquee sign,” said Escobar. “The changes we envision will restore or celebrate the original mid-century look for the ‘now playing’ and ‘coming attractions’ sign facing the intersection of LaVista Road at Cheshire Bridge.”

The theater will use modern digital formats, in addition to historic 35mm and 70mm film projectors to show older movies in their original formats.

The Tara will continue its legacy of showing classic films, art house releases and independent films.

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Poets Ilya Kaminsky and Katie Farris give reading at Breman Museum

Poets Ilya Kaminsky and Katie Farris, two former Atlantans who are married, will give a reading of their work at The Breman Museum April 18 at 7 p.m. in a program that coincides with Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day). 

Kaminsky was the Bourne Chair in Poetry at Georgia Tech before he joined the faculty of Princeton University earlier this year. Farris, who is fighting breast cancer, taught literature at Georgia Tech and now is a visiting associate professor at Princeton.

A native of Ukraine, Kaminsky has emerged as an important voice on the Russian invasion of his homeland. His poem, “We Lived Happily During the War,” went viral after the invasion and the collection it comes from, Deaf Republic, was a finalist for the 2019 National Book Award in poetry.

He was named by the BBC as one of the “12 artists that changed the world” in 2019.

“History is lying there in the middle of the street, behind yellow police tape. Showing us who we are,” Kaminsky told ArtsATL in 2021. “How do I address this, as a lyric poet? Do lyric poets address such things? What is silence? We speak against silence, but it is silence that moves us to speak. I am not a documentary poet; I am a fabulist. And, yet, the world pushes through, the reality is everywhere.”

Farris has a new collection of poetry, Standing in the Forest of Being Alive, and both authors will do a book signing following their reading. The event, which also be live-streamed via Zoom, is free but registration is required.

“On Yom HaShoah, as we remember and mourn the six million European Jews lost amid the horrors of the Holocaust, the Breman will also take measure of contemporary struggles, both political and personal,” Breman Executive Director Leslie Gordon said in a press release. “Poets can help us make sense and, as Ilya Kaminsky has said is his mission, to witness and share ‘lyricism in the whirl of our griefs.’”

The Breman also will help present the 58th annual Yom HaShoah Commemoration at 11 a.m. Sunday at the “Memorial to the Six Million” monument at Greenwood Cemetery. The featured speaker will be Holocaust survivor Ilse Eichner Reiner, who as a child in Czechoslovakia was sent to the ghetto and then Theresienstadt concentration camp. She was one of only 100 of 15,000 child prisoners who survived the camp.

That same day, the Breman Museum’s exhibition “Absence of Humanity: The Holocaust Years, 1933-1945” will be open free to the public from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.

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ASO announces fall Movies in Concert series

The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra will feature Black Panther as one of four films in its fall Movies in Concert series at Symphony Hall.

The series features screenings of the movies on a 40-foot screen with the ASO playing the film scores live.

The fall line-up will be Black Panther September 15-17, Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas October 27-28, Home Alone November 25-26 and The Holiday December 16-17.

Tickets go on sale today.