Hidden Figures

Date: Wednesday, June 19th | Doors: 6:00pm | Screening: 7:00pm | $5 Tickets

Meet the women you don’t know, behind the mission you do. Celebrate Juneteenth at the United Palace with this hit 2016 biographical drama that follows the true story of a team of female African-American mathematicians who served a vital role in NASA during the early years of the U.S. space program. Starring Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer, and Janelle Monáe. Directed by Theodore Melfi and written by Allison Schroeder, Theodore Melfi, and Margot Lee Shetterly. The movie is 2 hours and 7 minutes, Rated PG, and will be screened on DCP.

We continue to honor our past as a vaudeville house with live entertainment before or after the main feature on the big screen. This screening of Hidden Figures on Juneteenth will include a special pre-show introduction by Caprice Phillips, visiting scientist at the American Museum of Natural History and vice-president of Black in Astro.

Hidden Figures continues the Movies at the Palace Season of Friendship. We chose that theme after asking ourselves what we need most to get through 2024. Our supporters and fans helped us select the movies in the series, including:  

• Duck Soup (1933): May 19  

• Hidden Figures (2016): June 19 

• Finding Nemo (2003): Date TBD 

• Thelma & Louise (1991): Date TBD 

• The Breakfast Club (1985): Date TBD 

• Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977): Date TBD  

• Little Women (2019): Date TBD 

Please note: The Season of Friendship is a different series than Movies at the Palace with Lin-Manuel Miranda, who is not scheduled to be at this screening. 

CAPRICE PHILLIPS 

Caprice Phillips (she/her/hers) is an Astronomy PhD candidate at The Ohio State University, where she works on understanding the atmospheres of exoplanets and cool worlds under the mentorship of Dr. Jackie Faherty and Dr. Ji Wang. Currently, she is a research analyst at the Flatiron Institute Center for Computational Astrophysics and a visiting scientist at the American Museum of Natural History working. Prior to this, she received her M.A in Astronomy from UT Austin and B.S in Physics from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. She was born and raised in Hot Springs, Arkansas. Encouragement from her mother and watching the moon and stars on trips to her grandparents’ house in rural Arkansas inspired her to pursue astronomy. Alongside research, Caprice is also the vice-president of the grassroots organization, Black In Astro. Founded in the Summer of 2020, Black In Astro is a movement to inspire, celebrate, and amplify Black scientists, engineers and educators in space-related fields. Learn more about Caprice and her work at https://capricephillips.github.io/. 

UNITED PALACE HISTORY 

The ornate United Palace opened in 1930 as the Loew’s 175th Street Theatre, a deluxe movie theatre and vaudeville house, the last of the five Wonder Theatres in New York City and New Jersey. Its first act as a movie theatre ended in April 1969 with a screening of “2001: A Space Odyssey.”

With a groundswell of community support and our good friend, patron, and neighbor Lin-Manuel Miranda, movies returned to the United Palace in 2013. Since then we have screened over 100 feature films, from world premieres (“In the Heights” and “Halftime” as part of the Tribeca Festival) to all-time classics (“It’s A Wonderful Life”), to community favorites (the documentary “Mad Hot Ballroom” about local school children winning a citywide dance contest).

Our goal is to have the cinematic experience come alive for audiences too used to watching movies on their phones or TVs.

One of our highest compliments came from Robert DeNiro who, speaking before a 50th anniversary screening of “The Godfather,” described watching a movie at the United Palace as: “The moviegoing experience doesn’t get any better.”