Calla Henkel – Max Pitegoff
THEATER
Los Angeles. On the vast Santa Monica Boulevard, bathed under the neon marquees, a woman sets out to assemble a theatre company. With the compensation she receives following an accident, she purchases a fifty-seat venue and moves into it. She is the central figure of the hybrid documentary THEATER by Calla Henkel and Max Pitegoff, portrayed by filmmaker and visual artist Leila Weinraub in a performance that vividly echoes the lives of the creators themselves – the artistic duo who, in reality, renovated a small theatre in Santa Monica and relaunched it as New Theater Hollywood in 2024.
Driven by a desire to connect with a community of like-minded individuals, and by the hope of another life made possible through recognition, the heroine of THEATER wanders through the enigmatic world of theatre – rehearsals, backstage corridors, the stage, the dressing rooms. Around her unfold shifting dynamics of power and exploitation, colliding ambitions, ghosts of the past, and the faint promise of transformation through fame. Outside the theatre’s doors, reality itself seems to foreshadow the decline of the Los Angeles stages and, more broadly, of the American Dream. As she is swept up in love and consumed by the ambitions of those around her, she is forced to confront both her deepest desires and the inherent fragility of collective life – of building, sustaining, and holding a group together.
Shot on 16mm film and unfolding through subtitled text alongside a score by MK Velsorf, THEATER balances delicately between reality and fiction, following a beat of its own. To tell the story of this space, it draws on poetic writing, photography, and documentary elements across five episodes, with a total running time of 95 minutes – rendering the theatre as a microcosm that distorts human relationships both within and beyond its imagined world.
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