Plaza Branch Kansas City Public Library

This annual screening-and-discussion series continues in February with more psychological studies of films helmed by female directors. As the women’s top-ranked tennis player, Billie Jean King, and ex-men’s champion and serial hustler Bobby Riggs prepared to play in their made-for-TV extravaganza in 1973, each fought more personal and complex battles. Directed by Valerie Faris and Jonathan Dayton. The post-screening discussion is led by psychoanalyst Mari Hayes and film critic Lonita Cook. (2017, PG-13) Presented in partnership with the Greater Kansas City and Topeka Psychoanalytic…

This annual screening-and-discussion series continues in February with more psychological studies of films helmed by female directors. Inspired by actual events, a group of fame-obsessed teenagers use the internet to track celebrities' whereabouts in order to rob their homes. The post-screening discussion is led by psychoanalyst Marilyn Metzl and film critic Vivian Kane. Presented in partnership with the Greater Kansas City and Topeka Psychoanalytic Center.

French director Florent Vassault’s documentary follows a juror Lindy Lou Isenhood who sentenced a man to death and tries to contend with her decision several decades later. Determined to understand the overwhelming regret that she has been grappling with for years, Lindy takes off on a road trip across Mississippi to track down and learn more about her fellow jurors tasked with deciding the fate of a man’s life all those years earlier. Join MADPMO  and The Kansas City Public Library for…

Join the Refugee & Immigrant Services & Empowerment (RISE) division and the Consulado de México en Kansas City to watch the Oscar-winning film Roma. The movie will be screened in Spanish with English subtitles. From Netflix: "Oscar winner Alfonso Cuarón delivers a vivid, emotional portrait of a domestic worker's journey set against domestic and political turmoil in 1970s Mexico." Doors will open at 5:30 with remarks from the Head Consul, Alfonso Navarro-Bernachi at 6:00. Located in Truman Auditorium

Nightly news cameras trained on the flames, the looting, and the chaos that gripped Baltimore in the wake of the death of Freddie Gray in April 2015. Filmmaker Marilyn Ness sought, and found, more. Her documentary Charm City offers an intimate portrait of those on the front lines of an epidemic of violence. For nearly three years—before, during, and after the rioting sparked by Gray’s fatal spinal injury in the back of a police van—Ness followed residents, community advocates, police, and government…

Displaced from their home in Belarus during World War II, a then-teenage Gitla Doppelt and her family joined a band of forest-dwelling resistance fighters who worked to protect themselves and some 1,000 other Jewish noncombatants from their country’s Nazi occupiers. The group’s story is told in the film Defiance, starring Daniel Craig and Liev Schreiber. The Oscar-nominated movie (2008; R) is screened Monday night. The next night, Doppelt discusses its depiction of the episode and the events that came to define her life.…

For 15 weeks, from the start of their season through the 2016 Alabama state tournament, the wrestlers at Huntsville’s J.O. Johnson High School endured both the demands of their sport and the trials of life in a school and an area where the odds were stacked against them. For a fortunate few, a college scholarship could offer a way out. Filmmakers Suzannah Herbert and Lauren Belfer offer an intimate, empathetic look into their experiences and challenges in the 2018 documentary Wrestle.…

This month we will be celebrating baseball. We will have music before we show clips from baseball shorts.There will be popcorn, snacks, and reminiscing about a wonderful sport we love! For people living with dementia and their care partners. All questions go to Heather Harrison (816-701-3763)

Get out the heat and join us for a great movie! Three young houseflies stow away aboard the Apollo 11 flight to the moon. Rated PG.

CAMPEONES directed by Javier Fesser (2018, Spain). A basketball coach is sentenced to community service, forced to work with a team of intellectually-disabled players that have never touched a ball before. Through their innocence, tenderness and plenty of good humor, they will teach Marco about the things that really matter. They are the true Champions of Life. Spain’s foreign-language Oscar submission at the 91st Academy Awards (it was not nominated). The film won three Goya Awards, including Best Film, Best…

The Library continues its film series showcasing the diverse roles of girls as cinematic storytellers with the acclaimed 1997 emotional drama Eve’s Bayou. Starring a young Jurnee Smollett-Bell and Samuel L. Jackson, it explores the secrets of a Louisiana family through the not-always-understanding eyes of a 10-year-old. The University of Missouri-Kansas City’s Erin Hamer-Beck leads a subsequent discussion. The Girlhood and Cinema series explores how adolescent girls use media to tell their stories and how social influences, technology, audience expectations, consumerism, and historical and cultural…

Facing overwhelming obstacles, Jews and others in occupied Europe resisted Nazi rule in a variety of ways during World War II. Some instigated uprisings. Others worked more quietly to preserve community and create records of their experiences. The Library and the Midwest Center for Holocaust Education explore those different paths in a series of monthly film screenings, beginning with the 2017 documentary Ghetto Uprising: The Untold Story (61 min., Hebrew and English with English subtitles). It spotlights an underrecognized group of fighters in perhaps…

Indie Lens Pop-Up Fifty years ago, Chicago’s Black Panther Party formed an unlikely alliance in one of the most segregated cities in America. Intent on addressing police brutality, substandard housing, and other shared issues, the Panthers enlisted a diverse mix of movements including the Latino-based Young Lords Organization and southern whites’ Young Patriots Organization. The group called itself the Rainbow Coalition. It was short-lived but effective in breaking down barriers between communities, creating a permanent shift in Chicago politics. And…

Searching the Psyche Through Cinema The month’s second Searching the Psyche Through Cinema installment features Francis Ford Coppola’s classic look at life on the outside, The Outsiders (1983; PG; 91 min.). Set in 1950s Tulsa, Oklahoma, it follows the conflict between a group of working-class teens known as the Greasers and the rich-kid Socs (pronounced soches, short for socials). The film is based on the book by S.E. Hinton, written when she was a teen and angry about how the Socs treated greasers in…

Join us for a viewing of Little Shop of Horrors. We will snack as we sing along to songs from this hilarious musical. Plaza director, April Roy, will give us some fun facts and exciting narration. Movies and Memories is a multi-sensory experience for people living with dementia and their care partners. Free Admission

The Library continues this year’s Searching the Psyche Through Cinema series – featuring films adapted from books – with the 2017 drama Disobedience (R, 114 min.). Taken from Naomi Alderman’s novel of the same name, it’s the story of a woman (Rachel Weisz) who returns to the Orthodox Jewish community in London that she fled as a child. An awkward homecoming gets more complicated when she discovers that the former classmate (Rachel McAdams) with whom she had a teenage romance has married a mutual…

Indie Lens Pop-Up A 17-year-old African American is found hanging from a swing set in the middle of an all-white trailer park in North Carolina. Police quickly declare it a suicide—despite doubts by family members and questionable circumstances. Could the 2014 tragedy have been a lynching? Do they remain a modern-day occurrence? Through that case, the 2019 documentary Always in Season (89 min.) sensitively explores the lingering impact of the lynching of African Americans decades ago and connects this form of terrorism…

The Library wraps up this year’s Searching the Psyche Through Cinema series with a final screening and discussion of a film adapted from a book, the quietly powerful drama Boy Erased (2018; R; 115 min.). Based on Boy Erased: A Memoir of Identity, Faith, and Family by Garrard Conley, it follows the son of a Baptist preacher (Lucas Hedges) who is outed as gay to his parents (Russell Crowe and Nicole Kidman) and is forced to participate in a church-supported gay conversion program. Post-screening discussion is…

Dementia-Friendly Kansas City Join us for a viewing of Little Shop of Horrors. We will snack as we sing along to songs from this hilarious musical. Plaza director, April Roy, will give us some fun facts and exciting narration. Movies and Memories is a multi-sensory experience for people living with dementia and their care partners.