A friend who works for a local arts organization (Real Art Ways) is presenting this documentary...may be worth looking in to for your group. (Real Art Ways is an alternative multidisciplinary arts organization that presents and supports contemporary artists and their work, facilitates the creation of new work, and creatively engages, builds, and informs audiences and communities.
Chris and Don (a documentary)
This is one of those legendary but true L.A. stories that confounds the city's cliched Tinseltown image, and "Chris & Don: A Love Story" is well-attuned to this, focusing on the texture and sweetness of a particularly beguiling real-life gay love saga. The 20 year love affair between writer Christopher Isherwood (who wrote the memoir that was the basis of Cabaret) and celebrated American portrait artist Don Bachardy, who Isherwood met (and seduced) when Bachardy was in his teens. Made with gentle grace and sensitivity by Guido Santi and Tina Mascara, the film has a rich supply of archival and home movie material, showing the heady life in Weimar Berlin that drew Isherwood like a moth to a flame, and inspired his classic "Berlin Stories". He fled Germany during the Nazi rise, and landed in Manhattan alongside the brilliant poet and pal W. H. Auden (also seen in rare homemovie glimpses). Isherwood soon moved to Los Angeles, where he met Bachardy, as well as a dazzling cultural circle including Igor Stravinsky and Aldous Huxley. Michael York, who played the Isherwood character in Cabaret, narrates with perfect pitch.
