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Event
Outsiders Observe Los Angeles
Saturday February 4, 2012, 8:00 pm
Los Angeles Filmforum presents
Outsiders Observe Los Angeles
Alternative Projections: Experimental Film in Los Angeles, Screening 16
Echo Park Film Center, 1200 N Alvarado St. (@ Sunset Blvd.) Los Angeles, CA. 90026 | (213) 484 - 8846 | info@echoparkfilmcenter.org
Info: alternativeprojections.com
Tickets: $10 general, $6 students/seniors; free for Filmforum members
Available on Brown Paper Tickets at
Some experimental films draw on traditional notions of documentary and ethnographic film, but manipulate them with an increased emphasis on media specificity and concerns over how media works convey meaning and "truth" in non-fiction. On January 21, we featured a program of films by filmmakers based in Los Angeles. This show, however, will show films looking at Los Angeles by artists who weren't here for the long haul -- visitors to our balmy climes. What truths about the city are these non-Angeleños able to see, and how do they express them? Featuring two longer works, by the late great Robert Nelson and by David Lamelas, and a couple of short works to be announced. A tribute to Robert Nelson as well, whom we lost in January.
Screening (Subject to change):
The Desert People, by David Lamelas (1974, 16mm (to video), color, sound, 48 min.)
David Lamelas describes it as "a study on American film production". The Desert People begins like a classic road-movie. The setting is completely familiar to us: a car crossing the desert with a group of people traveling on board. But as soon as the narration begins, it is interrupted by documentary-style interviews. Passing in this way from one film genre to another, Lamelas manages to blur the boundary between fact and fiction.
The five passengers describe their experience on a North American native Indian reservation. Each member of the group has his or her own perspective on the Papago tribe. One offers an anthropological analysis while another discusses writing a feature article for a women's magazine. They each present their version of the 'truth' about how the Papago live. Whlist they examine the tribe's social behaviour, there is little self-reflection on their own group dynamic.
Born in Argentina, David Lamelas was originally a sculptor, but came to prominence when he represented his country at the Venice Biennale with a piece called Office of Information about the Vietnam war on Three Levels : The Visual Image, Text and Audio. It was here that he met Antwerp-based gallerists from Wide White Space and Marcel Broodthaers, and the contacts he made helped to precipitate his later move to Europe. After Venice he moved to London, where he studied on a sculpture scholarship at St Martins School of Art. It was during his time in England, whilst using photographs and text as material, that Lamelas began working in film. Through a desire to "produce sculptural forms without any physical volume", the core concerns of his work emerged: time, space and language.
During the subsequent years Lamelas has lived and made work across Europe and in America, each location exerting its specific influence on his work. And it is this personal experience of relocation and his efforts to understand and assimilate new cultures, that gives his conceptualist concerns a warmth and humour. For Lamelas, location and place are primary: "space has a reality, it exists". Yet about time he asserts, "Time doesn't exist, our consciousness constructs it. Time is a fiction."
Suite California Stops & Passes Part 1: Tijuana to Hollywood Via Death Valley Directed by Robert Nelson (1972-76/2004, 16mm, b/w & color, sound, 46min.)
"The first of a series of films addressing the California landscape and experience, incorporating diaristic, documentary and fictional material." (Mark Webber)
"...a funky odyssey into both Nelson's personal history and that of his state. It has a quality of playfulness as Nelson experiments with varying juxtapositions of sounds and images. It is a carefully structured, painstaking work of much beauty and emotional impact that reaffirms Robert Nelson's gifts as a very personal, very venturesome filmmaker." (Kevin Thomas)
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Alternative Projections: Experimental Film in Los Angeles, 1945-1980 is part of Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945-1980. This unprecedented collaboration, initiated by the Getty, brings together more than sixty cultural institutions from across Southern California for six months beginning October 2011 to tell the story of the birth of the L.A. art scene. Pacific Standard Time is an initiative of the Getty. The presenting sponsor is Bank of America.
Primary funding for Alternative Projections was provided by the Getty Foundation, with additional support from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. This screening series is supported, in part, by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Arts Commission; the Department of Cultural Affairs, City of Los Angeles; and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Special support provided by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Additional support generously provided by American Cinematheque.
Coming Soon to Los Angeles Filmforum:
Jan 14 Alternative Projections: Industry Town: The Avant-Garde and Hollywood
Jan 18 Alternative Projections: Psychedelic Visions and Expanded Consciousness (at Cinefamily)
Jan 21 Alternative Projections: Los Angeles Observed (at Cinefamily)
Jan 25 & 26 Single Wing Turquoise Bird light show performance with live music, at UCLA EDA, part of the Pacific Standard Time Performance and Public Art Festival!
Jan 28 - Alternative Projections: Visions, Memory, and a Machine (at Cinefamily)
Los Angeles Filmforum is the city's longest-running organization screening experimental and avant-garde film and video art, documentaries, and experimental animation. 2011 is our 36th year
Memberships available, $60 single or $95 dual
Contact us at lafilmforum@yahoo.com. www.lafilmforum.org
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LocationEcho Park Film Center (View)
1200 N Alvarado St. (@ Sunset Blvd.)
Los Angeles, CA 90026
United States
Categories
| Minimum Age: 16 |
| Dog Friendly: No |
| Non-Smoking: Yes! |
| Wheelchair Accessible: Yes! |
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