Fanny Chen

Cinefamily Assets and Fairfax Cinema

March 25, 2018 in original reporting

Cinefamily’s attorney says the board has no money. We talk to insiders who suggest otherwise. What are the Harkhams saying about ongoing Cinefamily responsibilities in the context of a pivot to Fairfax?

Planned 2018 Re-Opening for Cinefamily / Fairfax Cinema

March 25, 2018 in original reporting

Former Cinefamily Program Director Kate Rouhandeh will be Fairfax Cinema’s Director of Programming. She tells film distribution companies that Fairfax is currently being renovated and will open in summer or fall 2018.

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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