In August 2017, The Cinefamily shut down after nearly ten years of operations at the Silent Movie Theater on Fairfax Avenue in Los Angeles. With an annual budget over $2 million, Cinefamily was larger than about 93 percent of all nonprofits in the U.S. With over 20 employees, Cinefamily was larger than the average American business — of any size. (U.S. Census Bureau, 2019 County Business Patterns.)
As with any wind-down, some parts of the process were handled better than others. Cinefamily’s paying members were promised refunds but not all received them. Unpaid and newly unemployed staff filed wage claims with the California Division of Labor Standards Enforcement. Many of the theater’s contractors, vendors, and suppliers went unpaid; others settled for pennies on the dollar.
Because the organization ceased operations without filing the necessary wind-down paperwork with either the IRS or the state of California, Cinefamily continues to exist as something of a nonprofit zombie. Five years later, there has still been no examination of Cinefamily’s finances, and those left holding the bag are typically owed dollar amounts too small to justify litigation. (This site’s author is owed about $250.)
But Cinefamily was not just any wind-down. Cinefamily staff, volunteers, and members were rocked by an anonymous email alleging organizational leaders engaged in a pattern of abuse and harassment. (Subsequent reporting would bear out these claims.) As staff and volunteers came forward with stories of abuse, the Board of Directors first accepted the resignation of the Executive Director, and promised transparency, an open investigation, and a full accounting. Instead of delivering on these promises, the Board fell silent as the controlling Board member — Cinefamily’s founder, Treasurer, and landlord, Dan Harkham — quietly filed paperwork to create a new theater. The Board then abruptly announced Cinefamily’s closure.
The story, in many ways, ends here, and represents the template of a certain sort of business scandal:
Insiders abuse organizational trust and access, leveraging power relations to prey on vulnerable staffers and/or raid organizational coffers and/or generally act in their own self-interest rather than in the interest of the organization.
Organization fails – who could have guessed! – when theft is discovered and/or a whistleblower comes forward and/or abused staff go on strike.
Insiders express sorrow for the failure of the organization before dramatically turning their pockets inside out and fading away, disappearing with their attorneys and their assets to start their next venture.
And so the press typically moves on, because what else is there to say.
So what are we doing here?
At the top of the page, it says we “report on the unfinished business of Cinefamily, and on the importance of institutional responsibility.” Five years ago, a lot of us learned that some bad shit had been happening. People got hurt and haven’t been made whole. People who were responsible walked away unscathed. Five years on, the depressing ubiquity of the story makes it no less relevant or newsworthy.
So we will periodically scan the landscape. As there are updates, we will report on them. We will generally, you know, try to Keep an Eye on Things. Not out of prurient interest, but to keep advocating for more accountability for Those Who Have Thus Far Escaped Accountability.
Does that mean Hadrian? To some extent, Cinefamily’s Executive Director Hadrian Belove has faced accountability. Barring a name change, he cannot outrun his Google results. He’s been taken to court over (some of) his behavior. He is now a known quantity. Same with Cinefamily Board Member Shadie Elnashai, whose statement of apologia remains online today.
Why did John get a discount?
What about the current theater operators, Brain Dead Studios? While there are indications Brain Dead has inappropriately assumed Cinefamily assets, there is no evidence the company did so knowingly. Brain Dead’s Kyle Ng has repeatedly disclaimed any connection to the Harkhams or other former Cinefamily leadership.
No, when we talk about a failure of accountability, we’re talking about Cinefamily’s Harkham-led Board of Directors. Under California law, Directors owe an affirmative Duty of Care and must exercise oversight in the best interest of the organization. Cinefamily’s Directors specifically committed to “exercise prudent judgment in helping the Board maintain financial stability and effective management of the organization.” (See #5 in nearby commitment letter.) Every single Board Member failed, some by their own admission. How? Why?
We’re not saying that all these people are equally culpable. We’re not even saying that all these people are culpable. Some have spoken with Cinefamily Accountability; others may have good reasons for their silence. What we can say is that all of them had legal and moral obligations to prevent exactly what happened. And most of them still haven’t offered a word of explanation. They owe us that.
These people are:
Michael Bacall
Albert Berger
Louis Black
Liesl Copland
James Andrew Fino
Rob Hackett
Daniel Harkham
Sammy Harkham
Phil Hoelting
Ted Hope
Larry Karaszewski
Phil Lord
Katharine O’Brien
Josh Olson
Simon Ore
Alia Penner
Amy Poncher
Brad Simpson
Bec Smith
Melissa Volpert
Nancy Willen
John Wyatt
In February 2022, Belove expressed some exasperation — and deployed a reasonably apt analogy — in an email to Cinefamily Accountability:
You seem like the paper route kid in Better Off Dead following jon cusack [sic] around grilling him about his "two dollars..." I'm sure you intend well...but it looks petty and mean and pointless from the outside… What do you want? Why are you doing this?
We were promised a healthy and safe organization, and we didn’t get it. We were then promised transparency and accountability and we didn’t get that either. There is value in this history being known and available, there is value in talking about the sort of community we want to see, and there is value in being a persistent pain in the ass.