Doors at 7:00... Screening at 7:30
@ The Mini - 1329 Main St.

Young People’s Specials: The Trouble With Mother (1979)

Rare Cincinnati-lensed drama in 16mm

Filmed in Cincinnati with a mostly local cast and crew, The Trouble with Mother was an episode of the long-running series Young People’s Specials, an educational and family-friendly Multimedia Inc. production (then owners of WLWT). Though not as well known as the genre-defining ABC Afterschool Special, in their scrappy style Young People’s Specials competed by employing well-travelled character actors (John Carradine, Molly Picon) and creatively using location shooting to stage their diverse array of dramas (in the episode DzNightmare: The Immigration of Joachim and Racheldz, Lower Price Hill stood in for Nazi-occupied Warsaw).

In The Trouble with Mother the eccentric Academy Award-winning actress Sandy Dennis, fresh off a stint in a local dinner theater production of Two For the Seesaw, portrays a housewife who has to come to terms with her young daughter’s feminist awakening and her compromised ambitions. Extremely difficult to see since its original broadcast on March 23, 1979, this simple understated drama will be shown via a rare 16mm print.

Curator Bio: Adam Williams is a cinéaste and film collector who lives with his cat Sandy in Walnut Hills.