Filmforum to screen radical-60s-cinema take on black power
Mar
19
2018
Over the course of the year, L.A. Filmforum will present screenings that reflect the the turbulent global events of 1968 from the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr and Robert Kennedy to the Democratic Convention and 1968 presidential election in the US, to the strikes in France in May and the Prague Spring and Soviet ...
Who was Horace Tapscott?
Horace Tapscott (1934–99) was an important but underappreciated jazz musician and community activist blacklisted in the 1960s because of his political affiliations. A poetic new film HORACE TAPSCOTT: MUSICAL GRIOT is a meditation on Black music, art, and activism and the history of Los Angeles. According to the film, during the Watts Rebellion of 1965 ...
Go “South” for the summer
Jun
23
2015
The turn of the calendar page into full-fledged summer has many people hot and bothered. That’s why a fun evening at the Velaslavasay Panorama, part of the Mush! To the Movies! series co-sponsored by Los Angeles Filmforum, is just the thing. Go see South, aka “Endurance,” (UK, 1919, 81 min., restored digital projection), a silent movie ...
Koehler Clips: An Impossible Choice
Like a few of the world’s other major movie-going cities, Los Angeles often presents impossible choices for the exploring cinephile. And tonight, Sunday, provides a doozy. Where to go? To Westwood, to the Billy Wilder Theater, where UCLA Film & Television Archive continues its remarkable “A Century of Chinese Cinema” survey with two exceptionally rare ...
Koehler on Cinema: Clips
A new James Benning movie is enough news in itself and enough for a simple request: Just stop everything and see it. Now, Benning’s “Nightfall” (Los Angeles Filmforum, Spielberg Theatre at the Egyptian, Sun. 7:30 p.m.) isn’t exactly new. It was digitally shot in 2011 in the Sierras, near his property where he built exact ...
Koehler on Cinema: Clips
It may well be, as one Los Angeles cinephile said to me last week, “the year’s most important film series.” UCLA Film Archive’s “A Century of Chinese Cinema,” unlike the archive’s recent survey of contemporary Chinese cinema curated by former archive programmer Cheng-Sim Lim and REDCAT film series co-director Berenice Reynaud, takes a more historical ...
Koehler on Cinema: Clips
A week’s run of the deliriously cataclysmic and violent “Drug War” by Johnnie To is simply not enough. But Cinefamily, bless ‘em, has it through Sept. 26. It’s easily the best of the week’s new releases—and certainly one of the year’s most essential movies. To’s incredible achievement in action mise-en-scene must be seen to be ...
Koehler on Cinema: Clips
Film writer Robert Koehler’s latest feature, “Clips,” offers tips & tidbits for the harried cinephile. Speaking of Criterion’s two-disc DVD/Blu-ray edition of “l’Avventura,” Barnes and Noble is currently offering its semi-annual 50% sale on titles in this most distinguished of video catalogues. Usually, due to the expenses incurred with restorations, research and the considerable background ...
Filmmaker John Smith recovers “Lost Sound” @ L.A. Filmforum
Nov
19
2012
Lost Sound, a short film made between 1998-2001 by John Smith and Graeme Miller — two British artists, respectively film maker and composer — was a highlight of a Smith retrospective by Los Angeles Filmforum this weekend. The wonderful 28-minute gem spooled in the cool screening room of the Echo Park Film Center. The filmmaker, ...
Peter Greenaway’s “Nightwatching” to enjoy Los Angeles premiere
Los Angeles FilmForum hosts the Los Angeles premiere of a Peter Greenaway film, “Nightwatching,” from 2007, at the Egyptian Theater on June 17. It’s the sister film to Greenaway’s “J’Accuse”; one is fictional, the other a documentary interpretation of Rembrandt and the painting “The Night Watch.” “Nightwatching,” Greenaway’s fictional foray into art-history detecting, was made ...