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