Quarantine Cat Film Fest

The 1891 Fredonia Opera House Performing Arts Center has added two films that can be streamed online in the Opera House Screening Room.

The Opera House Screening Room provides movies and other digital programming online to its patrons in the wake of COVID-19, as the theatre remains closed. The cost of streaming the films vary, depending on the film. The revenue generated is shared by the Opera House and the film studios.

“Since we have not yet reopened, this is one way of providing our patrons with access to programming, and of generating income for the Opera House to help ensure its survival,” said Rick Davis, Opera House executive director.

Amateur filmmakers filmed their beloved cats during COVID-19 lockdowns to create Quarantine Cat Film Fest – a compilation reel of the cutest, funniest, bravest, and most loving feline friends. Row House Cinema in Pittsburgh mined the best and most adorable cats out of 1200 submitted videos from around the world to create a fun and engaging, professionally edited 70-minute feature. Tickets to view Quarantine Cat Film Fest are $12 per household.

A young widower sidesteps grief, loss, and familial dysfunction when he steals his wife’s ashes and sets off on an impulsive odyssey through America’s heartland in the charming new road trip comedy, Monuments. Ted (David Sullivan) encounters a cast of eccentric characters, who direct and misdirect him on his mission to find something he’d lost long before the death his wife, Laura. As he journeys on a cross-country trek to Chicago, where he hopes to lay her to rest, Ted is followed by Laura’s bickering family – and by visions of Laura herself.

Monuments

Monuments infuses humor and hope into a story of mourning, loss, and marriage to create one of the best feel-good indie films of 2021. Tickets to view Monuments are $12 per household.

Still showing, Duty Free is “a tender love poem from son to mother” (CBS News). After a 75 year-old immigrant mother is fired without cause from her lifelong job as a hotel housekeeper, her son takes her on a bucket-list adventure to reclaim her life. As she struggles to find work, he documents a journey that uncovers the economic insecurity shaping not only her future, but that of an entire generation. Tickets to view Duty Free are $12 per household.

Los Hermanos/The Brothers is “a remarkable film about a family ensnared in geopolitics and two brothers who lead very different lives and yet never lose their instinctual connection” (San Francisco Chronicle). Two Cuban-born brothers, both virtuoso musicians – Aldo and Ilmar Lopez-Gavilan – live on opposite sides of the geopolitical chasm that separates the U.S. and Cuba. Following their parallel lives in New York and Havana, the film offers an amazingly heartfelt – though often startling – view of estranged nations through the lens of music and family. Be sure to keep an eye out for scenes filmed at the Chautauqua Institution! Tickets to view Los Hermanos / The Brothers are $10 per household.

Rockfield is the unlikely tale of how two Welsh farming brothers turned their dairy farm into one of the most successful recording studios of all time, producing four decades of legendary rock music.

Fifty years ago, deep in the Welsh countryside, brothers Kingsley and Charles Ward were starting out in the family dairy farming business. But they yearned to do something different – they wanted to make music. So they built a studio in the attic of their farmhouse and started recording with their friends. Kingsley’s new wife, Ann, left her job in the local bank to do the books, and they continued farming all the while. Animals were kicked out of barns and musicians were moved into Ann’s spare bedroom. Inadvertently, they’d launched the world’s first independent residential recording studio: Rockfield. Tickets to view Rockfield are $10 per household.

Also still available for free is JCC Professor Traci Langworthy’s For The Vote: Two Profiles in Woman’s Courage, which tells of Dunkirk’s Elnora Babcock and Jamestown’s Edith Ainge and the role each played in the long-fought battle for women’s right to vote.

The Opera House Screening Room is found on the Opera House web site at www.fredopera.org Links for each film take the patron to third-party studio sites for ticket purchase. Tickets are per household and patrons are able to view films on nearly any mobile device, smart TV, laptop or computer.