Going! Panorama’s Mexico City screening-series continues with ‘Tivoli’
Sep
15
2024
A legendary vaudeville and burlesque theatre in Mexico City is slated to be torn down by developers, so a troupe of dancers, novelty performers and operators promiscuously mobilize to save their beloved theatre from demolition. That’s the subject of this cool documentary which will be screening Saturday September 28 at the Velaslavasay Panorama in Los ...
Mexico City streetcars at heart of Buñuel film in Saturday screenings 1
Aug
20
2024
It’s a film by Luis Buñuel, minus the eye-slicing; it’s Illusion Travels by Streetcar (1954) by the Spanish cinema master of surrealist films, but this time, a beautifully made neo-realist black-and-white drama of peripatetic ur ban existence rolling the streets of Mexico City. A trio of friends who care for a streetcar soon to be ...
Karel Zeman’s ‘painted cinema’: wondrous, playful, intriguing films @ The Panorama
Oct
2
2023
The Stolen Airship (1966) Live action, special effects, painted backdrops, puppets and animation are all ingeniously combined in the fantastic films of Czech filmmaker Karel Zeman. 50 years after the earliest days of cinema, Zeman returned to the magical techniques of Georges Mélies to create films of unmatched beauty. Now, courtesy of the Velaslavasay Panorama, ...
For the kid in you! Saturdays with Max Fleischer cartoons at The Panorama
May
19
2023
The great Polish-American animator Max Fleischer (1883-1972) and his production studios created iconic animations with characters like Betty Boop, Koko the Clown, Felix the Cat, Popeye the Sailorman, Superman and more. In 1926, Fleischer released the first cartoon with synchronized sound, My Old Kentucky Home. His love of jazz led to cartoons (live action & ...
Love as a one-way street at the Panorama
Jun
6
2022
She won’t stop writing to me — e-mails, letters, texts, cards — but it’s not merely because I hardly know her that I no longer reply. It is the increasingly demanding tone, and the fact that a romance is gaining momentum without my needing to be involved.-Unrequited Love, by Gregory Dart You’ve heard of a ...
Velaslavasay Panorama, at 20, makes electric Chinese connection
The Chinese connection involved here is not really diplomacy; it’s not an economic exchange; nor is it ‘high art.’ But in a way, it encompasses all of that. It’s about culture. And it’s a cultural stretch to step into the wonder-land Sara Velas has created over the past two decades on the grounds of a ...
Let’s rock the glass armonica @ Velaslavasay Panorama
When we last visited the Velaslavasay Panorama, the charming former ‘Union’ movie theater converted into exhibition hall/theatre/gardens, we were shivering on a sojourn to the South Pole at a screening of silent-picture “South” (1919). The ‘polarizing’ event was part of the “Mush to the Movies” series co-sponsored by Los Angeles Filmforum. Coming soon to the ...
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 ...
The Reischtag burns in our collective memory 1
May
4
2010
“It wasn’t really about finding something.” So claim German artists Ulrike Mohr and Susanne Weck recounting their cross-continental trek in search of a lost panorama, “Die Schlacht um den Reichstag,” (“The Battle of Berlin”). The two artist-partners voyaged from Berlin to Moscow at great effort to maybe find the gone-missing circular art work — but ...
Panorama-kan at Velaslavasay 1
The ever-charming Velaslavasay Panorama, located in L.A.’s Pico-Union neighborhood, was the site of media art scholar Machiko Kusahara’s talk, “Panorama-kan of Meiji Japan,” on a recent scholarly Saturday night. Dr. Kusahara discussed the popular entertainment halls — called panorama-kan in Japanese. They were a “craze,” to borrow the lecturer’s expression, from 1890-1910. Dozens of the rotundas sprang up all ...