If you’re the Hollywood Women’s Film Institute and you’re looking to kick off your 2019 festival with panache, you can’t do better than to premiere a movie like Why Not Choose Love? A Mary Pickford Manifesto — unless it’s to debut this stirring, stylized biopic of Hollywood’s literal founding mother at the gloriously restored United Artists Theater Pickford founded in the first place. Before she grew up and established UA itself, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, and the general ground rules for the rights of creatives working in the dream factories, Pickford was a young woman with a dream and a self to define. Tonight’s gala also includes a pre-reception and a post-screening discussion. As singer Angela McCluskey describes the experience of playing Mary’s mother Charlotte in the film, “It was mind blowing to realize this was literally the conception of the very first name-in-lights movie star!” This is that story.

Theater at the Ace Hotel, 929 S. Broadway, downtown; Wed., June 12, 7 p.m.; $50. (213) 235-9614, theatre.acehotel.com.

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