While I don’t expect Woody Allen had any problem when he came opening night to introduce his ensemble roma-romantic comedy “To Rome With Love,” or Steve Carell during last night’s premiere of his apocalypse comedy “Seeking a Friend for the End of the World,” navigating the Los Angeles Film Festival (LAFF) at LA LIVE can be daunting for those not used to a film festival crowd.
But it is worth it. At last year’s festival, the neo noir "Drive" was a highlight that matched its press release promise. Then there was the documentary gem “The Bully Project” entering the festival with no distributor, but made an impact throughout the year. That is the Indie feel you get attending screenings, and somehow fits downtown so well. (Even though foreign and East Coast filmmakers still wish the event was held in Santa Monica).
Hey, being Indie-esque doesn’t mean a day at the beach.
This color photograph of Charlie Chaplin is touring Facebook, and my downtown Los Angeles bias guessed it was taken on the site of the original Chinatown, where Union Station now stands. That was based on all the footage and documentation of "The Kid," filmed in and around the slums of old Chinatown and Olvera Street in 1927.
Brady Westwater, downtown fixture and tour guide of the city's wild west roots, chimed in his theory it's a street on a studio lot: "The proportions of the buildings aren't right, the doors aren't right, the sign is obviously fake, the panes in the windows of the brick building are even more fake, the street is too narrow," and so on, before adding "But if that street was real - it would have been in the old Chinatown section."
Can't argue with the L.A. Cowboy. Taking a look around, I found the orginal color photo was shot by Charles Zoller for George Eastman House on set for "A Dog's Life." That was Chaplin's first film for First National Pictures, and the first film Chaplin shot at his new studio at Sunset and La Brea. Chaplin broke ground in 1917, and the studio opened in January of 1918.
The screen shot and clip from "A Dog's Life," seen after the jump, matches the set with the color photograph.
"The City Dark," a documentary on light pollution, reflects what many Downtowners see at night.
By Helen Ly
Part of the real Downtown living experience is walking to a good surprise. That's what I looked for when picking a random night to see what film was having a short run at the Downtown Independent Theater. "The City Dark" was playing. A personal documentary about one man, filmmaker Ian Cheney, longing for a star-filled sky after too many nights in a lit polluted urban environment.
As a downtown urbanite that looks fondly at the city skyline daily, I was initially hesitant and wondered if this documentary would revolve around one man and his obsession with stars. Not so. "The City Dark" was instantly charming and likable.
Finding room to dance at Grand Performances / VFaL
Grand Performances, the summer concert series that reconnects Los Angeles to its own homegrown culture, and made downtown a stage for World Music, will open its 25th season this weekend with a one-man play, a work-in-progress, and spoken word from East Los Angeles.
On Friday, Cultural Affairs Artists Project offers Ian Ruskin portraying Thomas Pain in a one-man play, "To Begin the World Over Again." Also that evening is a multi-media dance piece-in-progress by Sheetal Gandhi based on "The Giving Tree," a children's book by Shel Silverstein (June 17, 8:30 pm).
Saturday has the first installment of Boyle Heights Project, a series that speaks of the neighborhood's multiethnic fabric through poetry, short fiction, essays, and music (June 18, 8pm).
Sunday brings librettist Terry Wolverton and composer David Ornette Cherry to Watercourt for a concert reading of "Embers," a jazz opera with some part world music and other part hip hop. Michael John Garces directs (June 19, 8pm).
The mix of local and world artists performing in the corporate highlands of California Plaza can be found by date in the Grand Performances brochure (PDF). You can even select which performer to see under themes like Global Block Party, Las Artes en la Ciudad. Boyle Heights The Other L.A.; Woman in the Mix; Celebrating All Things Jewish From Goy to Oy; and City of Angels City of Artists.
And really, where else but at Grand Performances will offer selections like Charles Phoenix guiding you through L.A. with a special show, punk Exene team up with folk Phranc, Yemen Blues, or the athletlic narrative of modern dance company, Diavolo?
While 27 acts are scheduled, you may still want to follow Grand Performances on twitter. They have been known to book a special guest or two during the season. Also, GP veterans recommend that you pack a picnic and enjoy the outdoors before the show to make sure you get good seating, and to take a sweater.
After the video and jump, a look at the season by theme.
Grand Performances I FREE I Opens June 17 I California Plaza I 350 S. Grand I Downtown Los Angeles
Mariachi Mystery Tour will performs with Mariachi Rock-O Fri., Aug 12, at 8pm.
Pictured: Juan Devis “Departures,” with Lydia Hernandez (NYT) A modernization of the art of the mural is profiled in the NYTimes with Cybermural: The Web as the Wall, a series by multimedia artist Juan Devis that combines the traditions of muralism with street photography to tell the story of a changing landscape in Boyle Heights while exploring it's history.
Visually the project seems clearly inflected by European modernism,
starting with Dada and Surrealist photomontage. While editing, Mr.
Devis said, he sought inspiration from Walter Benjamin’s 1928 book
“One-Way Street,” a stream-of-consciousness meditation based on objects
encountered in an imaginary Parisian street.
There is also the influence of film. To Rita Gonzalez, a curator at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art
who works on many of its contemporary Latino art projects, “Departures”
suggests the “city symphony” films of the 1920s, movies that limned the
patterns and rhythms of urban life, like Walther Ruttmann’s 1927
“Berlin: Symphony of a Great City” or “Manhatta,” a 1920 paean to New
York by the painter Charles Sheeler and the photographer Paul Strand.
NYTimes reporter Carol Kino introduces the works as a "twist on the Los Angeles muralism of the 1970s, a movement born from
the Chicano civil rights movement when Mexican-American artists like
Judy Baca, David Rivas Botello and Willie Herrón adapted the Mexican
muralist tradition for their own time."
Combined video and sound to an online exhibit platform does take the craft of the mural to the new level. However, the use of photography for storytelling in the form of Mexican Murals is not that new.
Jules Verne Adventure Festival is in full flight with Key Art showing the Shrine Auditorium and City Hall bathed in mysterious haze and soft light. TV spots are already running for the documentary film festival and the website is up, all to create buzz including some hints that some Historic theatres on Broadway may host some screenings. Jules Verne Adventure Film Festival. December 6 - 10, 2007 Full poster after the jump.
The Los Angeles Times now covers the conflicts with filming in the Historic Core with Downtown L.A. Residents yell "Cut". The article brings up the Bert Green mantra (and now credited to Russell Brown) of not being against filming––just wanting the industry to stop treating Downtown like a backlot with no residents around.
The idea that location managers
consider it a "drastic change" in Downtown seems like tap dancing. It wasn't really that
drastic. The difference is residents and businesses were vocal
together, as they were in the Arts District a few years prior. Also cited was the stand-by
argument of shooting may become so "crimped", other cities that will welcome filming at a moments notice may be considered––leaving the City in a difficult position.
No need to leave, says the locals. Just maintain a
courtesy of preventative disruption common in any other neighborhoods here or in other states, or even countries
that have residents and businesses. Even the Vancover Film Office has a sensitive location list where there are areas in which filming may be "restricted due to neighbourhood concerns."
At the same time, residents with this
new voice may not want to protest every inconvenience. Is the nuisance
no bigger than the blocked streets of October's 2007 LA Weekly's Detour
Festival that had no real opposition from most residents or bloggers?
Downtown's Grand Performances will be part of the LAFilmFest with two events being held this month at California Plaza. "Double G's Concert 9Net" gives film soundtracks a jazz hip hop twist on June 29 at 8 pm. Just that is interesting. The website adds that "Dakah Hip Hop Orchestra, Geoff “Double G” Gallegos, will feature music from films from the 70’s (Psycho, Taxi Driver and Chinatown) and from Disney (Fantasia, Mary Poppins and Pinocchio.)
Free screenings of Chicago Ten will be held Saturday, June 30, 8:30 pm. Again, from the website:
Our 3rd annual film series in partnership with the Los Angeles Film Festival and sponsored by the Downtown Center Business Improvement District continues. Archival footage, animation, and music are used to look back at the eight anti-war protesters who were put on trial following the 1968 Democratic National Convention. A film by Brett Morgan and featuring (voices) Nick Nolte, Mark Ruffalo, Liev Schreiber and Jeffrey Wright.
The Los Angeles Theater gets dressed up for Oscar Night. The sign was looking great at night until half the marquee went dark. As for the Oscars, in 24 hours we will know if it was a Dream or the Year of the Bore.
