Two New Harkham Projects Emerge — Cinefamily Accountability

On December 18, the Los Angeles Times introduced the world to Dan Harkham’s Fairfax Cinema. On that same day, two additional publications got hold of information on two additional Harkham projects—one old and one new.

Following comments to the press this week from Dan and Sammy Harkham disclaiming responsibility for Cinefamily, former Cinefamily staff and volunteers took to social media to express disbelief. Some also reached out to this website to share archival Cinefamily documents, including correspondence, board minutes, and screenshots. (In the coming days and weeks these will be vetted and added to the research section of the website with other primary documents.)

Cinefamily Accountability has gotten a hold of what purports to be a Cinefamily Employee Handbook from April 2013. The whole document is worth a close look (and in a future post we may count its seeming-illegalities), but the section on ‘outside employment’ seemed timely. It reads, in part (emphasis added):

The Company wishes to avoid conflicts of interest and the possible negative effect outside activities may have on an employees [sic] job performance. If you engage in outside work, it must not detract from your job performance, be harmful to the Company’s best interests or present a conflict of interest with your employment here.

Doing a job requires focus and attention, and being distracted by some new shiny object can have profound costs for preexisting responsibilities. This is true for minimum wage workers staffing concessions as well as for founders and board members overseeing organizations.

Which leads to the other news.

Remember that Dan Harkham is primarily a real estate developer. (Sammy Harkham is primarily a cartoonist.) Urbanize LA reported on new development plans Dan Harkham filed with the city this week. He’d previously planned a six-story, 122-room hotel in Pico-Robertson. This week’s revised plans expand the hotel to 136 rooms. (The hotel still must go before the L.A. Planning Commission for approval.)

Was Dan’s attention divided between Fairfax Cinema and his planned hotel expansion? Could that divided attention have cost them the “Uncut Gems” screening? The brothers could probably learn something from the rigor, discipline, and focus they demand of their own low-wage workers.

TL;DR

For the decade of Cinefamily’s existence, and for a certain sort of weirdo, the nonprofit single-screen cinematheque was the best thing about L.A.

In August 2017 we discovered Cinefamily was also a harmful place, especially for workers and for women. Reporting at the time focused on workplace sexual harassment, but when this website investigated we found a deeper rot. Former insiders told us of alleged assault, retaliation, wage theft, and embezzlement—as well as fraud against distributors, taxpayers, and regulators.

Cinefamily’s $2 million annual budget was subsidized by taxpayers and overseen by professionals. If the board of directors had done its job, damage may have been reduced, and Cinefamily might still exist. Instead, evidence indicates some directors were not only aware of problems, but were involved in covering them up.

This website provides original reporting as an ongoing call for institutional responsibility. We seek what the board promised: a credible and comprehensive accounting, victims heard and creditors paid, and a new approach to corporate governance and community accountability.

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