On Thursday night, Gustavo Dudamel will stand in front of the Los Angeles Philharmonic for the first of his final four concerts as music and artistic director of that magnificent orchestra. Before he heads east to become artistic director of the New York Philharmonic, Dudamel will lead a Hollywood Bowl concert that includes not only Beethoven’s titanic 9th Symphony, but the world premiere of “Hymns of the Heart” from Michael Giacchino.

And that juxtaposition – a little of the old Ludwig Van and a new work from the film composer best known for his music for “The Incredibles,” “Up,” “Star Trek,” “Jurassic World” and three “Spider-Man” films – encapsulates the wholly remarkable Gustavo Dudamel, a Venezuelan conductor whose vision of music sees no barriers between European concert classics and Hollywood movie music, or between any other kinds of music that can excite and inspire people.

And it helps explain why Los Angeles, and also Hollywood, will miss him so much when he heads to Lincoln Center. “I hope people realize what it’s meant for Los Angeles to have had him for all these years, and what it’s going to mean for New York,” Giacchino told TheWrap this week. “And I hope New York has fun with him, because we certainly did.”

Yes, we did. Over the course of his tenure, the LA Phil cemented its reputation as perhaps the finest and most adventurous major orchestra in the United States; they were already in the thick of that conversation under previous music director Esa-Pekka Salonen, but when Dudamel arrived, still in his 20s, he brought a sense of unbridled joy.

(If you think about it, it’s no wonder that like Thursday’s program, his first Hollywood Bowl concert as music director in 2009 also included Beethoven’s 9th, which ends with the “Ode to Joy.”)

As a regular visitor to the LA Phil’s regular home in Disney Hall, I’ve long felt that the best seats for orchestral concerts conducted by Dudamel are the ones behind the stage, where you can follow his facial expressions. Even in a piece as somber as, say, Mahler’s 9th, there’s a sense of playfulness and delight as he cues an entrance here, a flourish there.

It rarely feels like a performance the way some composers’ histrionics sometimes do; it’s more like a private connection between Dudamel and his musicians as they skillfully navigate music both comfortable and challenging.

It has helped make him one of the most impactful members of a line of LA Phil music directors that includes such notables as Salonen, Otto Klemperer, Zubin Mehta and Carlo Maria Giulini. And he has done it not by sticking to the standard classical repertoire – though he’s a master at that –but by fashioning a boldly inclusive programming philosophy that includes lots of new music, lots of Central and South American music and lots of film music.

During his tenure in Los Angeles, Dudamel conducted on the Oscars, at Coachella and at the FIFA World Cup Final Halftime Show (with the Muppets, no less). His four Hollywood Bowl concerts this week, taking place over consecutive nights from Thursday through Sunday, will include a night in which he and the orchestra will accompany the Foo Fighters and two, including a benefit for Venezuelan earthquake victims, that will find him sharing the stage with an array of Latin American musicians, among them Lila Downs, Los Tigres del Norte,  Natalia Lafourcade and Mariachi Reyna de Los Angeles.

“He doesn’t draw any lines between different types of music,” Giacchino said. “For him, it’s all about embracing the joy that you can find in all music.”

I learned as much the first time I met Dudamel, which came in 2013 at a Beverly Hills restaurant for an awards-season lunch in honor of “The Liberator,” a Venezuelan film that marked Dudamel’s entry into writing film music. When he mentioned that he was going from the restaurant to a rehearsal for concerts at Disney Hall later that week, I asked him what the orchestra was going to be playing. “Pictures at an Exhibition,” he said. “Mussorgsky.”

That piece had been one of my favorite classical compositions when I was a teenager, largely because the English progressive-rock band Emerson, Lake and Palmer had recorded their own bold and rather hamfisted rock ’n’ roll take on Modest Mussorgsky’s work. Of course, I wasn’t going to admit to this international maestro that ELP got me into the magnum opus of a Russian composer, so I just told him that the piece had been one of my favorites back when I was first exploring classical music.

He nodded and leaned forward across the table. “You know who else did a great version of it?” he asked with a grin. “Emerson, Lake and Palmer!”

And that’s Gustavo Dudamel. The man may have shaken up the world of classical music while still in his 20s, and he may have commanded the stages of the most hallowed orchestra halls in the world – but he doesn’t have a pretentious bone in his body, eagerly embracing the way a trio of British rockers bashed away at a late-19th-century Russian suite.

And just as eagerly, he embraced the world of film music so completely that he became only the second LA Phil music director with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. (Zubin Mehta was the first.) John Williams is a close friend and mentor of his, offering advice when Dudamel ventured into writing his own film music. (One piece of Williams’ advice he remembered particularly: Once you get a good melody, you can write lots of variations and use them throughout the score.)

Apart from programming film music, the orchestra was also involved in a three-year collaboration with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, beginning in 2016. The first year, the LA Phil held three AMPAS-sponsored concerts performing the scores to “Rebel Without a Cause,” “On the Waterfront” and “Casablanca.” The next year, they and the Academy presented three riveting concerts devoted to the work of or favorite selections chosen by film composers Hildur Guðnadóttir, Kris Bowers and Nicholas Britell. The third year, Dudamel and the orchestra appeared live on the Oscars show, performing a Williams selection during the In Memoriam.

Later, Dudamel recorded the music for Steven Spielberg’s version of “West Side Story” with both the L.A. and New York Philharmonics. He even led the world premiere of “Marvel’s Infinity Saga Concert Experience” at the Hollywood Bowl, a first-ever event for Marvel that found Dudamel walking onstage wearing the Infinity Gauntlet on his left hand and a conducting with purported Vibranium baton that Marvel chief Kevin Feige presented to him.

Giacchino met Dudamel as they worked on that Marvel event in 2024, and the seeds for Thursday’s concert were planted over dinner after the concert. “He said, ‘I’m going to be leaving in a couple of years, and we’ll be doing a week of farewell concerts at the Bowl. Would you be interested in writing something?’” Giacchino said, and then laughed. “I immediately said, ‘Absolutely!’ And then I got home and thought, ‘What have I gotten myself into?’”   

But the composer found his inspiration in the man who’d commissioned the work. He asked poet Amanda Gorman to write a libretto, brought in the Los Angeles Children’s Chorus and students from Education Through Music and wrote a piece that celebrated the childhood enthusiasm that people are sometimes taught to grow out of.

“He has a sense of fun in everything he does,” Giacchino said. “I wanted to celebrate the idea of how great it is to make noise, because that’s what I see in him.”

We won’t see that as often in these parts with Dudamel’s departure, although he’ll be back (more Beethoven in December, Stravinsky in May!), and incoming music director Daniel Handler will no doubt make a case for himself.  

And in the meantime, we’ve got the music and the memories. I think back to TheWrap’s screening of “The Liberator,” which took place at a theater in Westwood a couple of days after that lunch where Dudamel and I had shared our affection for Emerson, Lake and Palmer.

The conductor-turned-composer was part of a conversation I moderated with seven different people from the film – more than we’d expected, as we’d only set up seven chairs for the panel and moderator. To make room for everybody, I gave up my own seat and stood at one end of the group until an usher showed up with an eighth chair – whereupon Dudamel, at the far end of the group from me, took the new chair from the usher and carried it across the front of the theater to me.

As I said that night, the man is a full-service maestro. Los Angeles – and Hollywood – will miss him.

Have fun, New York.

The Sundance Institute has named the writers involved in its latest Episodic Intensive program.

The institute runs two Episodic programs each year; in May, it named the ten fellows for its 2026 Episodic Lab program that took place in Georgia.

Now, it has ten more fellows for its virtual program, which takes place on August 20 and 21.

They are Christin Campbell Lisa Corn, Daphne Di Cinto, Grant Fortune, Courtney Graham, Caia Lee, Alejandra Lopez, Ssuuna McKitty, Francesco Staluppi and Daud Sumolang.

This year’s creative advisors were Katherine DiSavino (Silo), Tash Gray (Snowfall), Tasha Huo (The Mighty Nein), Don Joh (Sugar), Jeff Melvoin (Killing Eve), Kira Snyder (The Handmaid’s Tale), Brandon Sonnier (Boston Blue), Tatiana Suarez-Pico (Invasion), and Marcie Ulin (The Flight Attendant).

The fellows are working on the projects below:

Christin Campbell with The Visitation: In this Southern mystery with a sci-fi twist, tensions rise in a small Bible Belt community when faced with the appearance of mysterious lights in the sky, the strange disappearance of a local sweetheart, and the possible connection between them.

Lisa Corn with Ugly Sister: Disillusioned by her dead-end job and crushing debt, a truck inspector is lured into the world of interstate smuggling, where the promise of quick money collides with the burden of caring for her addicted, grieving sister.

Daphne Di Cinto with The Moor: When the Medici dynasty remains without a legitimate heir, Alessandro, secret son of the pope and a servant of African descent, becomes their best hope for succession. However, claiming his birthright means surviving the Renaissance’s most ruthless rival — his own family, who refuse to accept him. A true story.

Grant Fortune and Ssuuna McKitty with Heavy is the Crown: When a prominent New Orleans socialite family is thrust into the center of a deadly conspiracy, a decorated Haitian American Olympian and her estranged fashion mogul brother are forced to confront the secrets that fractured their crumbling empire before their family’s legacy — and lives — are destroyed from within.

Courtney Graham with Nobody’s Horses: After 122 wild horses mysteriously die on a military base, a disgraced veterinarian is pulled into an impossible mission: Rescue the remaining herds before the NATO Games. Battling addiction, media scrutiny, and a military cover-up, he risks everything for a shot at redemption.

Caia Lee with Skullcrusher: In early 2000s Los Angeles, a single mother working in Hollywood’s adult entertainment industry searches for her missing friend after police dismiss the case. Her investigation leads to a high-end underground club and a deadly conspiracy linking powerful real estate developers to disappearances across the city.

Alejandra López with The 51st State: In the not-too-distant future, where Puerto Rico has become the 51st U.S. state, we follow the first Puerto Rican senator, tasked with containing a resistance group on the island who have been perpetrating a series of attacks aimed at inciting a revolution and, ultimately, secession.

Francesco Staluppi with With Blades of Iron: After Norse invaders shatter her tribe and butcher her father, an Indigenous huntress leads a war of annihilation to erase them from her homeland, bringing her on a collision course with a merciless Viking shield-maiden equally committed to securing the land for her exiled war band.

Daud Sumolang with Blood and Wax: In 1920s Java, a Chinese Indonesian girl sacrifices herself into marriage to save her family, only to discover that survival in a gilded cage requires her to master the dangerous arts of seduction and betrayal, while revolutionizing the batik trade and guarding a forbidden love that could destroy her.

Despite a passionate Bay Area film culture, San Francisco has been hit hard over the last 15 years by iconic arthouse and first-run movie theater closures. From the Landmark-owned Embarcadero Center complex shuttering in 2023 to AMC taking over the beloved indie Sundance Kabuki in Japantown 10 years ago, venue attrition has empowered newer but more commercial hotspots like the Mission District’s Alamo Drafthouse to thrive. More recently, the once-doomed Castro Theatre finally reopened as a movie palace this year before nearly becoming just another live event space in a historic building.

But as announced on Thursday, a new exhibition hub is set to open in SF’s famed Mission District this fall: The nonprofit, single-screen The Portal Cinema will live at 3293 Mission Street, where it’s currently under construction on a previously vacant commercial lot. The theater will showcase new global releases, repertory works, special programs, and more, and will be equipped to screen archive-only 35mm and 16mm prints, along with digital formats. The Portal Cinema marks the first new movie theater built in San Francisco in more than a decade, according to its backers.

As of writing, a crowdfunding campaign has launched on Kickstarter to ensure the Portal’s opening. With a goal of raising $250,000, the campaign aims to fund an electrical panel upgrade, 35mm projection, and a 5.1 sound system so it can open at full capacity this fall.

The Portal Cinema is the brainchild of founder and SF native Nellie Killian, who returns to the Bay Area after two decades in New York City as a film programmer and curator. Killian has supervised programming at Brooklyn’s BAM and Lower Manhattan’s Metrograph, as well as for the Criterion Channel, British Film Institute, and Queens’ Museum of the Moving Image.

“Over the past decade, the Bay Area has lost many of our most vital independent theaters and alternative arts spaces,” said Killian in a press statement. “The intention of The Portal Cinema is to complement the diverse artistic institutions in San Francisco and offer adventurous programming in an intimate, community-focused space. We want to cultivate an enthusiastic audience that makes every screening feel like a must-see event and uses our lobby as a social space where they can meet other cinema enthusiasts from across the Bay.”

The Portal Cinema will also host industry events, including private press and tastemaker screenings, along with awards-season showings and receptions. The Bay Area, after all, holds the third-largest concentration of Academy members and film professionals in the U.S. after New York and Los Angeles, making the venue a new opportunity to reach Academy voters living in Northern California.

San Francisco is also home to SFFILM, the nonprofit society that brings programming and events regularly to the Bay Area, including the annual San Francisco International Film Festival.

More details on programming will be announced soon. The Portal Cinema is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.