TOArts presents the YALA Film Festival

A film plays differently in a room that was built for orchestras. The sound has somewhere to go. Nobody is unwrapping anything. The person two rows up is leaning forward instead of sinking down.

For one evening the Scherr Forum stops being a concert hall and becomes a festival house, with programming chosen by someone who has an actual point of view, which means every title on the schedule is there for a reason rather than because a distributor bought the slot. What you get is the version of moviegoing that reminds you why theaters exist at all: the collective flinch, the laugh that arrives early from one corner of the room, the walk out to the car afterward when nobody is quite ready to start talking about it yet.

The Bank of America Performing Arts Center in Thousand Oaks, one night, seats through the box office.

Send this to whoever you argue with about movies. You already know exactly who that is.