For student and CalArts faculty and staff discounts,
please call the REDCAT box office at 213-237-2800.
Schedule:
Thu Mar 8 | 8:00 pm
Chantal Akerman: Là-bas (Down There)
France/Belgium/Israel, 2006, 78 min., Betacam SP
Los Angeles premiere
Grand Prix, International Competition, FID Marseille
“It is a film about the relationship of somebody from the Diaspora to Israel — an imaginary Israel, maybe… A film both within the world and cut off the world — in which one can guess the faint outline of a Jewish family’s past. It suggests what it means not to belong — and what the illusion of belonging would be… Can one have a non-dichotomic perception of Israel? Are some images possible? Can they be captured live, or do they have to go through a screen? Which screen? And how? ” Chantal Akerman
“As History is roaring behind banal yet superb images, something breaks within this modern dialectic of insignificance of which Chantal Akerman is one of the greatest exponents.” Cahiers du cinema
Fri Mar 9 | 8:00 pm
Barbara Loden: Wanda
USA, 1970, 102 min., 35mm
FIPRESCI Prize, Venise Film Festival
In person: Marco Joachim, Barbara Loden’s son
A Hollywood and Broadway actress married to Elia Kazan, Barbara Loden had to overcome many obstacles to complete Wanda — one of the first “US indies” — which she wrote, produced, and directed. She also gives a moving, harrowing performance as the divorced wife of a Pennsylvania coal miner drifting off in a depressed landscape. For the critics, a director was born. The box-office did not follow. Long unavailable, Wanda, is currently enjoying an overdue revival.
“A small, forgotten masterpiece.” Raymond Carney
“Assured and unwavering in its bleak but human vision, Wanda drops us into the middle of strip-mined, strip-mall America with the soul-crushing density of a black hole.” LA Weekly
Sat Mar 10 | 6:30 pm
Anna Biller: Viva
USA, 2006, 120 min., 35mm
Los Angeles premiere
In person: Anna Biller
Fresh from its world premiere at the Rotterdam International Film Festival, Viva is “reworking vintage sexploitation movies from the 1960s and early 70s from a woman’s point of view. Such films interest me because they revolve around fantasies of a woman’s power over the male. I wanted to make a movie that offered up all the spectacle and lurid promises of the genre, while at the same time talking about what women really go through, their fantasies and sexual trials. ” Anna Biller
“An endearing camp travesty musical. Sweet, funny, with marvelous costumes and sets designed and constructed by Biller, a kind of innocent homage to Maria Montez with color and décor worthy of Kenneth Anger. ” Kevin Thomas
Sat Mar 10 | 9:30 pm
Nina Menkes: Phantom Love USA, 2007, 85 min., HD, b/w
Los Angeles premiere
In person: Nina Menkes
Critically hailed at the Sundance International Film Festival, this long-awaited new feature by award-winning experimental filmmaker Nina Menkes “strikingly puts a woman's subconscious thoughts and dreams onscreen in ways more radical and beautiful than in her past visually stunning semi-narrative films”Variety. Located primarily in Los Angeles (with a few breathtaking visions of India), the film’s fragmented narrative structure combines a dreamlike atmosphere with a hyper-real, almost documentary style.
“Stanley Kubrick's confident statement “If it can be written or thought, it can be filmed” receives stunning confirmation in Phantom Love… Not since Bela Tarr's Werckmeister Harmonies has black-and-white looked so stunning and mesmerizing.” Robert Koehler, Variety
“Menkes’s achievement in deploying the qualities of Maya Deren’s vision of the personal film in feature length is without parallel. ” David E. James, The Most Typical Avant-Garde
Read the Los Angeles Times review here
Phantom Love myspace page
Sun Mar 11 | 5:00 pm
Emily Tang (Tang Xiaobai): Conjugation (Dong Ci Bian Wei) China, 2001, 97 min., 35mm
Special Jury Prize, Locarno Film Festival
FIPRESCI Prize, Hong Kong Film Festival
“Emily Tang draws a subtle yet harrowing picture of the despair that struck her generation after Tiananmen Square. Focusing on small gestures, mundane situations and the fragile pursuit of personal happiness, she constructs her masterfully directed first feature around the unbearable silence of repression, occasionally broken by drunken laughter or confused poetry. In the winter of 1989, the memory of a student “still missing” haunts a young couple in love and their friends. ” UCLA Film & Television Archive
“A missing poet, a love affair gone stale, a passion for things Parisian and five idealists get lost in the shadows of Tiananmen Square. ” Asian Week
Sun Mar 11 | 7:30 pm
Zeinabu irene Davis: Trumpetistically, Clora Bryant USA, 2007, 55 min., DVcam
Preceded by: Cycles
USA, 1989, 17 min, 16mm, b/w – music played by Clora Bryant
In person: Zeinabu irene Davis and Clora Bryant
The odds were stacked against Clora Bryant: she was a woman; she was black; and she was playing a “man’s instrument” - the trumpet. Yet she paved her way onto the Los Angeles jazz scene during the 1940s and 50s, and became known as a skilled trumpet player, performing with Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday and Josephine Baker. A multi-faceted cinematic portrait, the film pays homage to the career of a courageous woman.
“Zeinabu irene Davis’s films explore and celebrate the black female body and female experiences not treated by mainstream cinema. ” Literature Film Quarterly
Program curated by Bérénice Reynaud with input from the faculty of CalArts School of Film/Video. Special thanks to Connie Butler, Cory Peipon, Aandrea Stang and Christine Wertheim.
