Los Angeles Plays Itself on DVD: LA In Life, Not Movies

By Sandy Sanders

A short while ago, by chance, I ran into the filmworks of Thom Andersen, including a 2004 feature length video essay titled "Los Angeles Plays Itself". Andersen's filmworks make personal observations about the movies by sequencing snippets of films to disclose non-obvious content and meaning. Andersen has lived in Los Angeles since 1946 and uses brief cuts from films made in, or about LA, along with first person narrative and city location photographs. The film discusses the differences between the Los Angeles he experienced and the LA as depicted by the movies. The film was initially shown only at limited screenings but officially released by Cinema Guild in 2014 and is available on DVD. 

For anyone who has lived in Los Angeles this film is a must see. For movie aficionados curious about Los Angeles and Hollywood image- crafting, this insider's take on "LA", is equally interesting. It runs 2hrs and 49 minutes with an intermission which allows two viewing periods, for those pressed for time. But the film moves breathlessly through known and lesser known film depictions of Los Angeles as Background, as Character and as Subject, presenting a personal tour of what has made Los Angeles unique. Andersen contends that Hollywood created the acronym of "LA" as a part of generating a mystique-of-place to keep moviegoer's attention. The historic modernist architecture, the hillside mansions, views of the ocean, the mix of urban and rural, the endless suburbs, anonymous streets and ubiquitous freeways, and post-industrial downtown, that make background for film noir, glamour, spectacle or the seedy, of Hollywood movies.

Andersen asks us to see the documentary aspect of films as nearly equal to their fiction. To see film with the "voluntary attention" of a conscious observer instead of the usual suspension of disbelief required of moviegoers. As we begin to see, Los Angeles was first used by Hollywood as a blank slate for their story-telling, then actually affecting the further development or exploitation of the City and surrounding towns to re-image the illusions of the movie industry. The real Los Angeles lies outside the film reel and includes the ordinary realities of a mixed urban culture of Blacks, Latinos, Asians... and Whites creating disparate but unique places and spaces from a dynamic sprawling region that started exploding in the 20's.

Also on track for discovery is the corrupt history of a city that has been run by the rich and powerful, Hollywood and LAPD. "Kiss Me Deadly", "LA Confidential" and "Chinatown" are period pieces explored for their reconfigured depictions of real events sorted differently timewise, to discuss the power, corruption and lies simmering under the surfaces of Los Angeles. Hollywood does tell tales that expose the power brokers and their scams on society, but, as Anderson comments, aren't these just "crocodile tears"? Do Hollywood movies clandestinely disclose nasty truths for citizen action, or do they merely placate guilty souls until the theater lights come on?

For me the most intriguing part of "Los Angeles Plays Itself" is the discovery of a group of neo-realist LA filmmakers quietly working on the fringes that deserve viewing. Kent MacKenzie's "The Exiles" is a 1961 black and white film about a group of Native Americans coping with being outsiders near downtown, that includes unique views of the now lost Bunker Hill area. Billy Woodbury's "Bless Their Little Hearts" (1984) and two other black filmmakers Charles Burnett and Haile Gerima make unique black & white films of black lives struggling in urban Los Angeles.

Another highly recommended Thom Andersen feature is "Red Hollywood", created in a similar method, about the blacklisting period. 

Sandy Sanders creates art and the future at BlueJayWay.net. He is a member of The James Agee Cinema Circle.

Anti-capitalist Ken Loach drama takes top prize at Cannes 2016!

Loach said it was “very strange” to receive the award in such glamorous surroundings, considering the conditions endured by those people who inspired the film. “We must say that another world is possible and necessary.”

Jury member Donald Sutherland praised I, Daniel Blake as “an absolutely terrific movie that resonates in your heart and soul.”

Ken Loach stuns at Cannes 2016 with Palme d'Or win for I, Daniel Blake

The 79-year-old Britain has triumphed at the Cannes film festival for the second time with his welfare state drama, as Andrea Arnold’s American Honey takes…

THEGUARDIAN.COM|BY CATHERINE SHOARD

The Tribeca Diaries

By Liza Béar​

  
TRIBECA DIARY: ​

BUGS
THE BANKSY JOB​
​
April 18, 2016--The day started with an edible insect lunch at the Mexican Miscellanea in the East Village with Andreas Johnsen, BUGS director and his Nordic Lab partner from Copenhagen.

WATCH BUGS FOR LUNCH HERE

This was the first pop-up event for BUGS, one of Tribeca's most exotic documentary premieres.  Enterprising Danish filmmaker Johnsen, who also produced and shot the film, accompanied researchers and scientists from the Nordic Lab in Copenhagen to several countries from Mexico to Uganda for three years as they studied insect-eating habits practiced by 2 billion of the world's population. Today's offering was ant larva tacos cooked in avocado oil with onion and mint. {I ate two small open plan tacos as fortification for cycling from the East Village to the Regal Cinemas in Battery Park). Given Denmark's reputation for Michelin 5-star haute cuisine and its five top international chefs, don't be surprised if insects show up on the menu at the new Grand Central food court and Danish restaurant in the near future. BUGS will be screened again at Tribeca this week at Regal Cinemas, Battery Park (Wednesday, 10:30pm); and at Bow Tie Cinemas in Chelsea (Thursday 2:30 pm).

Then a quick ride down the West Side pear blossom and daffodil-lined bike path to the Regal for another world premiere, THE BANKSY JOB ably co-directed by Ian Roderick Gray and Dylan Harvey. This highly entertaining and well crafted UK movie documents the twists and turns of an art heist engineered by Andy Link, a Hackney, London, self-styled art terrorist AK 47 and, depending on your p.o.v, the successive acquisitions or thefts of Banksy's The Drinker, itself a hollow remake of Auguste Rodin's Le Penseur (The Thinker) adorned with a huge traffic cone/dunce cap on his head--surely a reflection on the artist rather than on Rodin as AK47 thumbs his nose at classic sculpture, its recreation and re-installation on Shaftesbury Ave as The Stinker, and its final disappearance. Silly story, right? But superbly staged, well performed, great production design and super-cynical about the London art world and art authentication, with astute and deadpan commentary by representatives of said art world. The film's dialogue effectively contrasts the posh accents of Brit gallery dealers with the hard-to-decipher Yorkshire brogue of the art "terrorists".

Day continued with a visit to Famous Deaths a surrealist Dutch interactive project at the 50 Varick Street Tribeca HQ. The lounge is adorned with product placements eg IBM's robots: Trendy Bot, Dusty Bot and Shy Bot.

WATCH JUNCTION 48 HERE

TRIBECA DIARY: JUNCTION 48

April 20--Excerpt from the Q & A after today's screening of Junction 48, a narrative film about two striving hip hop artists set in Lyd, a mixed Arab/Jewish town near Tel Aviv. It premiered at the Berlinale this year where it won the Panorama audience award. This is a well-acted, intense and moving film that offers a fresh take on the situation of Arabs living in Israel, fraught as it is with tragedy, co-written by Tamer Nafar (who also stars as Kareem) and based on his own experiences as a hip hop artist, surmounting daily crises. The story is as dramatic as it is realistic. Co-star Samar Qupty, a filmmaking graduate from Tel Aviv University, is a knock-out. Video:  Director Udi Aloni expresses his views on the role of art in the Palestinian resistance, going way beyond ideological clichés to claim that for oppressed people, achieving quality in art, music, theatre is in itself a form of resistance.

TRIBECA DIARY: COURTED

April 23 2016--Christian Vincent's COURTED (L'Hermine) has its last Tribeca screening today Saturday at 6:15, Regal Cinemas, Battery Park. This is a thoroughly engaging milieu film set in a provincial Assize Court in Saint Omer, northwest France, the only court in France to have a jury trial. Leads are topnotch

French actor Fabrice Luchini as the aptly-named Michel Racine, the supercilious presiding judge with impeccable diction but a bad case of the flu and Sidse Babett Knudsen as Ditte Lorensen-Coteret, a juror on whom Racine had a crush in the past; she was the anesthetist who brought him out of a coma after an accident. Knudsen is apparently known as the prime minister in Borgen to viewers familiar with the Danish TV series (I'm not). Here she plays a single mother with a sharp-tongued 17-year-old daughter who buts in on one of judge and juror's rare coffee breaks and attempts to suss out their relationship.

Its emphases as distant from formulaic courtroom drama as you can get, COURTED unfolds with pointed anecdotal detail in the course of a felony trial for the death of a seven-month old girl. The notoriously uncooperative father has been accused of having kicked her to death, a charge which he vehemently denies. Tragedy and comedy go hand in hand. Facts and contradictions emerge--but in both situations, the trial and the not-quite romance, is the full truth ever known? Whether the combat boots the defendant wears throughout the trial are relevant to the charge is never determined. The film's great strengths lie in its nimble script whose subtle observation of human interactions contrasts with the formality of courtroom procedure, and superb performances by both professional and non-professional actors. Winner of Best Screenplay and Best Actor at Venice Biennale this year. Film stills courtesy Tribeca Film Festival.

Liza Bear is a member of the James Agee Cinema Circle. Check out her other videos and interviews on her Youtube channel, nothingofficial, HERE

PAUL ROBESON

Today in History, Paul Robeson Was Born - Which of These 3 Announced Films on His Life Will Be Made First?

By Tambay A. Obenson | Shadow and ActApril 9, 2016 at 12:11PM

 

 

Paul Robeson

On this day in history, April 9, 1898, Paul Robeson was born in Princeton, NJ. He would've been 118 years old this year were he still alive (he died in 1976). Sidney Poitier gets much of the ink, so to speak, and rightfully so, but Robeson laid the groundwork, coming more than 2 decades before Poitier starred in his first feature film ("No Way Out" in 1950). Robeson made his big screen debut appearance in a film directed by another of cinema's historical treasures, Oscar Micheaux's "Body and Soul" in 1925. In fact, Robeson's film acting career pretty much ended in the late 1940s (the fact that he was blacklisted and isolate politically by the House Un-American Activities Committee certainly didn't help) before Poitier ever stepped in front of a film camera, with around 12 credits on his resume - his performance in "The Emperor Jones" in 1933 likely his crowning achievement; on film anyway.

One key opportunity (among many) that was missed which may not be widely-known (and given some of our recent conversations on this blog about films on anti-slavery and anti-colonial insurrection) is that Robeson was reportedly to star in a film on Toussaint-Louverture, which was to be made in the 1930s, with Soviet-era directing legend Sergei Eisenstein attached to helm. It obviously never happened.

But Robeson wasn't just a film actor. He also had a successful stage career, was a singer and activist. But those are a mere words that simply can't fully capture the dynamic human being and incredible presence that he was.

And with all the apparent interest in biopics on black public figures (see my most recent list here), I'd say that a Paul Robeson biopic is long overdue, given the man and his accomplishments - frankly, far more-so than many of the biopics we've seen in recent years.

As of this posting, we are aware of 3 previously announced films on the life of Robeson, although it's not clear where each one stands today - whether they're still alive and in development, shelved for good, or in Limbo.

The first: Announced in 2012, Michael Jai White said during an interview while doing press for a documentary ("Generation Iron") he was involved in, that he intended to bring the life story of Robeson to the big screen, playing Robeson himself. He lamented the fact that Robeson's legacy seemed to have been forgotten, and argued that he hasn't been given the proper recognition he deserves, given what he accomplished, calling him a personal as well as a national hero. White insisted that he is/was the person to play Robeson, adding that it was a part that he could definitely do justice to. He went on to say that the project was in the works, and that it was a personal quest for him to see that it got made. That was almost 4 years ago; no word on whether it's still a passion project for him at this point.

The second: Announced in 2013, British actor David Harewood was attached to play Robeson in what was said to be more of an indie production, with Sydney Tamiia Poitier (daughter of Sidney Poitier) as Paul Robeson’s wife, Eslanda ("Essie") Goode Robeson. South African director Darrell Roodt ("Winnie") was initially attached to helm. Months later, Vondie Curtis-Hall reportedly took over, replacing Roodt in the director's chair. The project hailed from Four Stars International, and was to be produced by Greg Carter, and executive produced by Richard Akel, with a script penned by Akel and Terry Bisson, with promises of a film that's worthy of its subject. Also of note, Louis Gossett Jr. was to portray W.E.B. Du Bois in the film which was expected to be a traditional biopic, showing Robeson's rise (along with his wife, who was also his business manager) into his 60s. The goal was to shoot the film in August of 2013, in Toronto and Montreal; but it doesn't appear that photography actually happened, or if the project is even still in the works. It's not listed on any of the above names' IMDB pages.

And the third: Announced in 2014, Steve McQueen revealed, via the Guardian(UK), that he was planning to direct a feature film based on the life of Robeson, saying that it would indeed be his next feature directorial effort after "12 Years a Slave." It wasn't clear to me whether McQueen's project was something entirely new, or if he was in fact taking over the existing project that his fellow Brit, David Harewood, was already attached to star in. According to the Guardian piece, directing a film on Robeson was McQueen's dream project: "His life and legacy was the film I wanted to make the second after Hunger [...]  But I didn’t have the power, I didn’t have the juice," McQueen said. With an Oscar-winning film on his resume, and the attention of the film world, he certainly had "the juice" after "12 Years." But 2 years later, it's not clear whether it's still a dream project for him. Harry Belafonte is involved in the project, although we don't yet know in what capacity exactly. I'd guess as a producer/consultant, given that Belafonte and Robeson were pals. McQueen added: "We’re very fortunate that we’re on a roll together to make this dream a reality. Miracles do happen. With Paul Robeson and Harry Belafonte, things have come full circle." He didn't share what actors he may have been eyeing for the part. But assuming it's still a project in the works, but is just taking some time to come together (as is often the case in the business of movie-making), depending on when the film is released, and given that it would very likely be high-profile enough, it could very well be another Steve McQueen film that will find itself in Awards season conversations, for whatever year that is.

Given the long life that he lived, the events he lived through, the other historically-significant public figures he knew, interacted and worked with (like Oscar Micheaux), his on-screen and off-screen accomplishments, his activism that would lead to his black-listing, and so much more, there's a lot of great history here in this one, single life. And a big screen account of that life is one that's definitely warranted. Or maybe a miniseries, his story unfolding over several episodes, that one of the premium cable TV networks picks up, so that we get a more comprehensive portrait of the man and his life, instead of squeezing it all into a 2-hour feature film.

Which project will get to the finish line first is anyone's guess. I imagine that there's a matter of life rights to be considered here, with the Robeson Estate controlling them. So there could be some behind-the-scenes conflicts that may not have been made public yet. We'll certainly find out soon enough.

But no matter; I'm just encouraged that there's actual new interest in bringing Robeson's life to the screen.

In the meantime, one of my favorite clips of the renaissance man; dateline 1959, talking Shakespeare (he portrayed Othello early in his career - 1943). It's a rare treat to find footage of Paul Robeson as Paul Robeson. 

PAUL ROBESON DISCUSSES OTHELLO

Moonwalkers: Tarantino On Acid Subversive Sixties Stoner Satire

Moonwalkers may be a sixties cold war comedy about US media machinations to make it to the moon first, but its combo ballsy big screen intersection of politics, publicity and propaganda couldn't be more provocatively in the here and now. As a competitive moon landing operation in heated rivalry with the Soviet Union back then shrewdly bids to even out the odd over at the Pentagon, by substituting for perseverance the predetermined, conveniently scripted scenario skills over in Hollywood.

A psychedelically laden satirical banquet bashing a discredited US media as manipulative when it comes to fact versus fantasy as the storytelling machinations on any movie set, Moonwalkers opts for a hand wringing CIA in stealthy ops mode. And bent on tapping already spaced out on screen director Stanley Kubrick to stage an Apollo 11 makeshift moon landing well, just in case. Reluctantly called to duty for this daffy quest is PTSD damaged Viet vet CIA operative Kidman (Ron Perlman), who has massive anger mismanagement fantasy issues of his own, inside his perpetually restaged Nam freakout flashback head.

Which lands the seriously disoriented Kidman in the UK packing a suitcase full of CIA secretive cash in a search for the elusive Kubrick. And pursuing in the course of an extensive menu of period detail mindblowing mishaps, an array of individuals none of whom are the directing legend but claim they could be. Chiefly among them is failed rock musician Jonny (Rupert Grint) - more Harry Pothead here than anything else. And who may not be Kubrick, but is motivated enough by the money to possibly conjure a marijuana fueled make believe moon landing anyway. 

Move over millennials, who may be too out of touch with the sixties stoners thing you wouldn't understand. But just how far we've come a long way baby, from truth in movies and the media if there ever really was any, couldn't be more subversively served up in Moonwalkers - whether high on controlled substances for the duration or not.

Prairie Miller
Critical Women On Film

Liza Bear: Best Films, Released And Unreleased In The US

            Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief

--Court
--Timbuktu
--Taxi
--Mustang
--The New Girl-Friend
--The Assassin
--Spotlight
--Carol
--Going Clear
--The Connection

 --Sworn Virgin
--Stranger in Canton
--The Measure of Man
--Mia Madre
--Human Capital
--Treasure
--Arabian NIghts
--Peace Tolls in Our Dreams
--No Home Movie
--Listen to Me Marlon

Liza Bear
Bomb Magazine

Court: A Conversation With Indian Filmmaker Chaitanya Tamhane

By Liza Bear

'...The film is outstanding in its acute observation of courtroom protocols and procedures, arcane colonial-era laws and judicial peccadilloes that serve to create a theater of the absurd. But the story’s originality surges when it steps outside the courtroom between the sessions, which are constantly adjourned on inane pretexts, to follow the daily lives of the principal players—defense attorney Vinay Vora (Vivek Gomber, who’s also the film’s producer), public prosecutor Nutan (Geetanjali Kulkarni), and Judge Sadavarte (Pradeep Joshi), adding texture and layers of unpredictability to their characters. Their domestic and social routines challenge the conventional affiliations between class and professional role—the cold-hearted public prosecutor, for instance, is from a working class background, while the defense attorney is from the upper echelons of social privilege.'

CONTINUE TO READ THE ARTICLE HERE


Liza Bear produces Cherchez La Femme on Youtube. She also writes for Bomb Magazine. Liza is a member of The James Age Cinema Circle.  

Arts Express: The Most Dangerous Man In America. A Conversation With Director Woodie King Jr.

“I have been despised for so long for being Black, that to tell me you will despise me because now I declare myself officially Red, does not faze me in the least.”
W.E.B. Dubois

**Black Lives Matter: Past, Present, Future.
Most Dangerous Man in America: A conversation with the director, Woodie King and excerpts read by the playwright, the late Amiri Baraka. This is a dramatic reflection of one of the most traumatic events in the terrible period of McCarthyism. W.E.B DuBois, a co-founder of the NAACP, a scholar and political activist, known and recognized throughout the world, was indicted in 1951 by the US government at the age of 82 as "an agent of a foreign power." In the play, the focus moves back and forth between the Harlem community and their opinions, the witnesses' testimony and the courtroom battles. This is Amiri Baraka's last play written just before his death, and never before performed on stage until now.

LISTEN TO THE SHOW HERE

**Churchill, The Play. Commentary and excerpts.
It is 1946. In the past year, Winston Churchill has led Britain and the Allies to WW II victory in Europe. He has also shockingly been defeated for re-election as Prime Minister. Sitting in forced retirement with his wife Clementine at their Chartwell home, he shares his life in flashback and storytelling. In Churchill, the Nobel Prize laureate discusses his failures, successes, politics, and his obsession with art, liquor and women.

Arts Express, Airing On WBAI/The Pacifica National Radio Network and Affiliate Stations on May 14th, 2015.

Tribeca 2015: Jimmy's Hall Illuminates Occupy Movement A Century Ago

Some movies are miracles simply for existing, warts and all. And Jimmy's Hall is certainly among them, in excavating a past that those who control the world with money and military might, would rather be forgotten.

Directed by Ken Loach, this biopic dramatically recounts the suppression and politically motivated persecution of Irish communist activist Jimmy Gralton, however ideologically timid and vague, during the suffering and uprisings of the Great Depression years. And the only person ever deported and driven into exile for his ideology, by Ireland. And yes, you probably never heard of him, whether in Ireland or this country. Buried history alert.

And apparently the Red Scare persecutions, with left activists imprisoned or driven to suicide or into exile, wasn't only taking place in the United States back then. With Gralton targeted in Ireland by the landed gentry in league with the Catholic Church. Gralton emigrated to the United States in 1909, but returned to Ireland to fight in the Irish War of Independence and again in 1932. Where he led the Revolutionary Workers Group in Leitrim, a predecessor of the Communist Party of Ireland.

Gralton originally departed from Ireland for the United States, an itinerant docker, sailor, and miner engaged in the mass struggles against joblessness and poverty in New York City where he becomes a US citizen. Though this key inspiration and political education in Gralton's life is unfortunately missing in action from the film.

Barry Ward as Gralton returns to Ireland to reestablish on his family's small farm land, the cultural and educational hall of the title. Which soon leads to butting heads with the priests and landlords alike, known angrily among the rural Irish population there as 'the masters and the pastors.'

There are inspiring socio-political episodes throughout Jimmy's Hall, as relevant today as back then pertaining to popular struggle everywhere.  - though with too much emphasis proportionately on romantic and local entertainment interludes - of an occupy movement that was apparently in full swing in rural Ireland a century before Occupy Wall Street. As the poor were routinely evicted and driven from their homes and farms by the landed gentry supported by the Church - and these reactionary forces of oppression confronted vividly in the film, by a mass re-occupy land recovery movement.

Following Gralton's deportation, he was never allowed to return to Ireland. But he continued to struggle in mass movements in the US, never giving up hope in the triumph of the people, until he died in Bellevue in 1945.

Jimmy's Hall is a feature of the Tribeca Film Festival, and will open theatrically in July. More information about the Tribeca FF is online at: Tribecafilm.com.

Prairie Miller

Tribeca 2015: Stranded In Canton

 By Liza Bear

New York, April 24--looks like Denmark picked off a lot of awards at Tribeca....I missed both Bridgend and Virgin Mountain.. one Virgin film was enough for one festival...and I've read "Killing Williamsburg", black humor novel about fictitious suicide epidemic ...and seen Virgin Suicides.......
but I did watch every frame of STRANDED IN CANTON, directed by Mans Mansson, a laid-back and wryly humorous film, not an award winner so far but should be, not Danish but Swedish...bittersweet...not clichéed...v open-ended ending....light, but stays with you

A mélange of fiction and real life situations, the story's about Lebrun, a Congolese farmer..."j'ai ma porcherie, mes poulaillers, ma pisciculture...je ne suis pas un businessman...." whom Mansson had met in Kinchasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, when he played a whole season there as a member of a football team. All the other players were Congolese. After his football career, Mansson went to art school in Stockholm and started making films. A modest grant from CPH: DOX, a Danish organization, in Copenhagen to make a film in China inspired Mansson to cast Lebrun as his lead.

In the film Lebrun is trying to extract himself from an impossible predicament in Canton (Guangzhou), where's he stuck with a whale load of bright yellow Joseph Kabila presidential election T-shirts, which haven't been delivered to the Congo and are now worthless because the election is over. Wassim, the Lebanese warehouse manager wants a a large payment for months of container storage. Like many of the roles in the film, Wassim plays himself and, according to Mansson reached by phone upstate, pretty much invited himself into the production when he saw the two-person crew shooting. on the street. ie the director doubling up as cinematographer and his sound person.

That's the whole deceptively simple story, how Lebrun passes the time, trying to get out of this predicament, raise the dough to pay off Wassim. He has a buddy, Frank, (Frank No)) with terrible marketing ideas; No was hired as production translator from Mandarin and Cantonese, and doubles up as a main actor. There's a non-romantic interest, a Beyonce-like but Platonic Cameroonian girl-friend, who is the common sense anchor of the film and acts as a sounding board for Lebrun's delusions of savoir-faire.

The acting's very good, unaffected and subtle...my face cracks up as I write this because in a way it's such a ridiculous story, but so emblematic of false hopes of fast fortunes...not only of the Congolese and sub-Saharan African diaspora in Guangzhou, China's highly polluted manufacturing hub, but of expatriates everywhere, who are escaping the economic destitution of countries ravaged by exploitation, war and government corruption,,,,,Text by Liza Béar

PS Mansson says script was not prewritten , but developed during production. Screenplay credits go to Mansson, Li Hongqi and George Cragg. The film is a succinct 79 minutes in Cantonese, English, French, Lingala and Mandarin, With Lebrun Iko Isibangi , Nana Nya Sylvie, WAssim Hasbini, Frank No playing versions of themselves.

Liza Bear produces Cherchez La Femme on Youtube. She also writes for Bomb Magazine. Liza is a member of The James Age Cinema Circle.