Los Angeles Site Seeing: Views of the City and the Academy Film Archive

Los Angeles Site Seeing: Views of the City and the Academy Film Archive

Views of the City from the Academy Film Archive

Los Angeles has made wildly varied appearances in films from the American avant-garde; few seem to tire of the endless expressive opportunities offered by the City of Angels. In a range of kaleidoscopic offerings spanning 75 years of experimental filmmaking, this program will lead us on an unconventional tour around Los Angeles and its vicinity, stretching from the inspiring optimism of the Watts Towers to the urban apocalypse of a Santa Monica supermarket in 1963, with many stops in between.

Drawing exclusively from the holdings of the Academy Film Archive, this program will feature all titles in their original 16mm and 35mm formats, many of them in restorations by the Archive, and featuring some little-known and rarely screened works of Los Angeles experimental filmmaking.

Programmed and note by Academy Film Archive Senior Film Preservationist Mark Toscano.

All films are from the Academy Film Archive and presented courtesy of the filmmakers or their estates.

Towers of Watts; Now, You Can Do Anything; Muscle Beach; Bump City; Shoppers Market; and Now Playing were restored by the Academy Film Archive, and all other films are screening in new prints from the Archive.

Total program runtime: 83 min.

Towers of Watts

DIRECTED BY: Hank Schloss. ca. 1953–54. 5 min. USA. Color. Silent. 16mm.

Now, You Can Do Anything

DIRECTED BY: Chris Langdon, Fred Worden. 1973. 6 min. USA. Color. English. 16mm.

City City

DIRECTED BY: Duane Kubo for Visual Communications. 1974. 12 min. USA. Color. English. 16mm.

Hula

DIRECTED BY: Amy Halpern. 2022. 6 min. USA. Color. Sound. 16mm.

Muscle Beach

DIRECTED BY: Joseph Strick, Irving Lerner. 1948. 9 min. USA. B&W. English. 35mm.

The Changing Same

DIRECTED BY: Cauleen Smith. 2001. 9 min. USA. Color. English. 35mm.

Bump City

DIRECTED BY: Pat O’Neill. 1964. 4 min. USA. Color. Sound. 16mm.

Shoppers Market

DIRECTED BY: John Vicario. 1963. 22 min. USA. Color. English. 16mm.

Now Playing

DIRECTED BY: Susan Rosenfeld. 1983. 7 min. USA. Color. Silent. English. 16mm.

The Wizard of Speed and Time

DIRECTED BY: Mike Jittlov. 1979. 3 min. USA. Color. English. 16mm.

Academy Museum film programming generously funded by the Richard Roth Foundation.

Explore our current quarterly print Film Calendar and browse the archive.

Theater accessibility accommodations available upon request. Learn more about our accessibility initiatives.

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