Los Angeles Filmforum screens a wonderful line-up of short experimental films under the rubric of Alternative Projections: Experimental Film in Los Angeles, 1945-1980. The next chapter of the multipart series happens on October 16 with “Industry Town: The Avant-Garde and Hollywood.”
Alternative Projections is part of Pacific Standard Time: Art in LA 1945 – 1980, an unprecedented collaboration of more than sixty cultural institutions across Southern California, coming together to tell the story of the birth of the L.A. art scene.
So far, PST is an unprecedented numbing cornucopia of stuff … but it strings along for a year, so, slowly, slowly, perhaps we’ll see it.
FilmForum major domo Adam Hyman explains in notes that many experimental works have explicitly played with the dominant film industry (Hollywood and beyond), parodying its forms or structures of manufacture or utilizing images from classic and not-so-classic films as the raw material for new creations.
The program examines the ever evolving approaches to the industry, practice and lifestyle of Hollywood. First up on the 16th is one of the earliest examples of commentary on the Hollywood quest, and perhaps the first made with a expressionist bent, “Los Angeles, Life and Death of 9413: A Hollywood Extra.”
What fun, clever. Can’t wait. Also on the program:
- Puce Moment (Kenneth Anger, 1949)
- Zebra Skin Clutch (Cynthia Maughan, 1977-78) both look at a woman and their relationship to the fabulous styles of starlets, revealing the influence of celebrity and fashion.
- Death of the Gorilla, Peter Mays manipulates footage filmed off late night television to create his own colorful collage of form and wonder.
- George Lucas’s 6-18-67 starts from the position of a standard movie “making of” short and subverts it into a meditation on landscape and beauty.
- John Baldessari’s Title breaks down some of the essential elements of screen plays, language, and acting.
- Based on Romance utilizes storytelling traditions of melodrama but locates the scenes in the art world of the time.
Industry Town: The Avant-Garde & Hollywood | Spielberg Theatre @ Egyptian Theatre | Oct 16
thank you postapocolyticbohemian, for the super liz/monty kiss montage