Connectivity: Only in Theaters

Greg Laemmle is the CEO of Laemmle Theatres, a group of family-run arthouse movie theaters in the Los Angeles area. Laemmle Theatres was established in 1938 by Greg’s grandfather and great uncle, Max and Kurt Laemmle, who were German Jews who escaped Nazi Germany and came to California to work for their cousin Carl Laemmle, the founder of Universal Pictures. Max is credited with bringing foreign film to Los Angeles and was awarded the French Legion of Honor for supporting the French New Wave. Greg is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, a rare honor for a theater owner, for his lifelong commitment to supporting the art of filmmaking.

Raphael Sbarge has been a working actor for more than five decades, growing up in New York City. He has performed extensively on stage and appeared in five Broadway shows. He has appeared in many films, including Risky Business, My Science Project, Vision Quest, Pearl Harbor, Independence Day, and The Exorcist: Believer. His recent credits include The History of Sound with Paul Mescal, Friendship with Paul Rudd, and the HBO series Task with Mark Ruffalo. His new projects include a highly anticipated prequel to The Boys, called Vought Rising, as well a new Bosch prequel. Raphael is an Emmy Award-winning, multi-Emmy nominated director, and his feature film Only in Theaters played over a hundred theaters around the country to critical acclaim. Raphael and Greg co-host a filmed podcast called Inside the Arthouse, with almost 500K subscribers and 3.4M views, focused on in-depth conversations with some of the world’s most successful filmmakers.

Ross Melnick is Professor of Film and Media Studies at UC Santa Barbara and Interim Dick Wolf Director of the Carsey-Wolf Center. He was named an Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Film Scholar and a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow for his book Hollywood’s Embassies: How Movie Theaters Projected American Power Around the World (Columbia University Press, 2022). He is the author of American Showman: Samuel ‘Roxy’ Rothafel and the Birth of the Entertainment Industry (CUP, 2012), co-editor of Rediscovering U.S. Newsfilm: Cinema, Television, and the Archive (AFI/Routledge, 2018), and co-author of Cinema Treasures (MBI, 2004). His research has appeared in Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, Film History, The Moving Image, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, and in numerous other journals and edited collections.