The Formal Life of Thom Andersen

The Formal Life of Thom Andersen

MARCH 26–29, SATURDAY–TUESDAY AT 7PM

“A little formalism takes us away from life, and a lot of formalism brings us back to it.” —Roland Barthes

If you've attended any film festival or avant-garde film screening in the last ten years, you've almost certainly stumbled across the name Thom Andersen. Often thanked by scores of filmmakers in the contemporary American experimental vanguard, his name is synonymous with films and filmmakers whose work is pushing the boundaries of cinema. Andersen is also one of the preeminent film educators in the United States, teaching at Cal Arts in Los Angeles where he has lived for most of his life. However his own films are largely unknown except for his 2003 award-winning portrait of Los Angeles, Los Angeles Plays Itself, voted best documentary of 2004 in the Village Voice Film Critics’ Poll.

With The Formal Life of Thom Andersen, we’re pleased to share underappreciated works of one of America’s most important filmmakers. In the 1960s, he made short films, including Melting (1965), Olivia’s Place (1966), and --- ------- (1967, with Malcolm Brodwick). In 1974 he completed Eadweard Muybridge, Zoopraxographer, an hour-long documentation of Muybridge’s photographic work. In 1995, with Noël Burch, he completed Red Hollywood, about the film work created by the victims of the Hollywood Blacklist. Their work on the history of the Blacklist also produced a book, Les Communistes de Hollywood: Autre chose que des martyrs, published in 1994. His latest film Get Out of the Car (2010) responds to his award-winning documentary Los Angeles Plays Itself by recording the city's most evanescent signs, memorializing some of its vanished monuments and musical history.

This retrospective—which also features the unusually-named and rarely-screened "--- -------", Andersen's rock 'n roll doc from the mid-60s shot on location on the legendary Sunset Strip, and Olivia's Place, a survey of the diner on Santa Monica's Main Street that inspired The Doors' "Soul Kitchen"—offers a rare opportunity to see the works of one of America's most influential filmmakers and scholars, and one of Los Angeles' most dedicated chroniclers.

March 26 - Eadweard Muybridge, Zoopraxographer with --- -----, Olivia's Place, and Melting
March 27 - Los Angeles Plays Itself
March 28 - Red Hollywood
March 29 - Get Out of the Car followed by Artist lecture
 

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Special support provided by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences 
Support for the project provided in part by the National Endowment for the Arts

 

Eadweard Muybridge, Zoopraxographer (with --- -----, Olivia's Place and Melting)

Director in attendance!

Free for members!  
Preceded by a members-only reception beginning at 5:30pm

Sponsored by King's Inn

Mar 26, 2011

(Thom Andersen, Fay Anderson and Morgan Fisher, Germany, 1974, 16mm, 60 min, plus shorts 1964-74)

This experimental documentary is a brilliant, innovative film about the origins of cinema and its most famed forefather, Eadweard Muybridge. Over the course of ten years, Andersen animated Muybridge's landmark photographic studies of humans and animals in motion. Interpolated with these incredible sequences are biographical sections detailing Muybridge's personal and professional struggles, narrated by Dean Stockwell. Screens with short films Melting (1965), Olivia’s Place (1966/74), and the rarely-screened --- ------- (1967, with Malcolm Brodwick). 

 

“One of the best essay films ever made on a cinematic subject.” —Jonathan Rosenbaum

"An often thrilling look into the experiments that anticipated the invention of moving pictures." —Seattle Post Globe

 

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The Exiles: Screening & Discussion

A Masterclass with filmmaker Thom Andersen

Mar 27, 2011

(Kent Mackenzie, USA, DVD, 1961)

Thom Andersen will screen and discuss The Exiles (1961), Kent Mackenzie's portrait of a Native American community living in downtown Los Angeles. 

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Los Angeles Plays Itself

Director in attendance!

Sponsored by King's Inn

Mar 27, 2011

(Thom Andersen, USA, 2003, video, 169 min)

A video essay depicting the city of Los Angeles through films that used its landscape as a backdrop, Los Angeles Plays Itself is the film that finally heralded Andersen as one of the finest working filmmakers in the world. Carefully weaving together footage from dozens of films made in or about the city, Anderson gradually builds his thesis about how Hollywood has represented—and misrepresented—its hometown. Voted Best Documentary of 2004 by the Village Voice.

"The most rambunctiously entertaining journey through the movies as we are ever likely to embark upon. It also plays like a history of Twentieth Century America as refracted through the movies." —Seattle Post Globe

"SW Pick: Outside of a film school, this is the best lecture—and architectural tour—you’re going to find about a misunderstood city that’s long overdue for its close-up." —Seattle Weekly

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Red Hollywood

Director in attendance!

Sponsored by King's Inn

Mar 28, 2011

(Thom Andersen and Noël Burch, USA, 1996, Beta-SP, 120 min)

Thom Andersen and Noël Burch's provocative documentary looks with fresh eyes at "Red" Hollywood—films by screenwriters and directors who were communists, ex-communists or sympathizers, and who were in some way implicated by the Hollywood investigations of the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Red Hollywood reveals a largely neglected Hollywood legacy: films committed to raising questions regarding class, gender and racism, and films that questioned "the system" itself—whether capitalism or the studio—and were answered with the blacklist.

"A must-see: Offers some invaluable clues about how we might start reconstructing our view of Hollywood movies made since the birth of talkies...Simply by broaching the question of political content in Hollywood movies at all, [Red Hollywood] defies a major taboo in most mainstream writing about current movies." —Jonathan Rosenbaum

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Get Out of the Car

Director in attendance! This film will be followed by a lecture from Thom Andersen.

Sponsored by King's Inn

Mar 29, 2011

(Thom Andersen, USA, 2010, 16mm, 34 min)

This city symphony film is composed from advertising signs, building facades, fragments of music and conversation, and unmarked sites of vanished cultural landmarks. The film is an effort to discover how much of the ambience and history of Los Angeles can be revealed from these fragments.

"The cumulative effect of the film is a realization of what is gone coupled with the anticipation of what is to come, a symphony of a city that is simultaneously unborn and deceased." —Seattle Post Globe

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