Free Republic

February 2013. It was supposed to be a pleasant night out for urbane movie-lovers. Bucharest’s ethnographic hub, the National Museum of the Peasant, was hosting Lisa Cholodenko’s film “The Kids Are All Right”, starring Annette Benning and Julianne Moore as gay parents of troubled teens. This was part of a month-long festival dedicated to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersex (LGBTI) rights, and supported by the American embassy in Bucharest. […] A minute later, around 40 members of the audience, who were draped in the Romanian tricolor flag, jumped from their seats yelling and screaming, and brandishing religious icons over...

Some Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences folks recently went over to Iran to lend their expertise in filmmaking. “I can confirm that a group of Academy members . . . are currently in Iran” on a “completely private initiative for educational and creative exchange and with no political agenda,” Academy Communications Director Leslie Unger told the AFP. According to Unger, the Tinseltown travelers include actresses Annette Bening and Alfre Woodard, screenwriter and film director Frank Pierson (writer of “Dog Day Afternoon,” producer William Horberg (“Cold Mountain”) and former Universal Pictures Chairman Tom Pollock. The team supposedly went to...