The Backlight Archive

Notice: To open The Bijou's mini-fest – “Facing Fascism: Time Capsules” – Susan Greenbaum is going to perform live. Before the 6:20 p.m. January 19th screening of “The Great Dictator,” to resonate with the moment, we're delighted to say Susan will sing a most apt song, less than 18 hours before the inauguration of the USA's 45th president. A new president who seems hellbent on shaking things up, to say the least.  The song?  Woody Guthrie's “This Land Is Your Land.” Susan says, “Music has a way of reaching people in ways that no political speech can. People internalize music, and when the lyrics resonate with the times we're facing, the song becomes more powerful than the most raucous political speech, more believable than the most enticing political promise.” So film buffs coping with inauguration day blues, here's your chance to help create a moment we'll remember. Show up. Sing along with Susan and make Pete Seeger's ghost pr

During my nearly 12-year stint as the manager of the Biograph Theatre (1972-83) I spoke with Carole nearly every week, sometimes more than once. She came to the theater regularly to review first-run pictures. She came to see movies she liked on her own time. Plus she was there for various social occasions and a publicity stunt, or two. I n the process, over the years, we got to be friends and learned to trust one another. The genuine enthusiasm and warmth Carole brought to her work as a movie critic/entertainment columnist was uncommon. Those same traits were seen in other things she touched. Whether she was helping out a little independent movie theater with her words in ink, or teaching cinema history to undergraduates at Virginia Commonwealth University, or teaching film production to inmates at the Virginia State Penitentiary, Carole always cared and it showed. Carole understood the power motion pictures have to lift people from the grips of their melancholia and pesky vexa