The UCLA Film And Television’s ambitious series “Hollywood Exiles in Europe” features six films by exiled Noir master of mood and mise-en-scène Joseph Losey; two films each by Jules Dassein and Cy Enfeld and some wonderful rarities by Philip Leacock, Bernard Vorhaus, Carl Foreman and John Berry.UCLA Film & Television Archive and the Hugh M. Hefner Classic American Film Program present Hollywood Exiles in EuropeJuly 25, 2014 – August 17, 2014, Billy Wilder TheaterIn-person: Norma Barzman, Rebecca Prime (7/25); Alan K. Rode (8/1).Read Archive director Jan-Christopher Horak’s blog.In the late 1940s in the wake of political persecution and the Hollywood…
Author: Robin Menken
Robin Menken
Robin Menken Robin Menken lives in Los Angeles. She was the Artistic Director of the Second City Workshops, taught at UC Berkeley, USC, Barcelona\'s Ateneu and the Esalin Institute. She was Roberto Rossellini\'s assistant, and worked with Yevgeny Vevteshenku, Glauber Rocha and Eugene Ionesco. She sold numerous screenplays and wrote the OBIE winning The FTA SHow (touring with Jane Fonda, Donald Sutherland and Ben Vereen.) She was a programming consultant and Special Events co-ordinator for numerous film festivals, including the SF, Rio, Havana and N.Y Film Festivals. Her first news outlet was the historic East Village Other.
According to most film historians, film noir developed during World War II, when Hollywood, in contrast to the rigid moral values of its pre-1940 films, began producing stories with morally ambiguous characters; murky, unstable plots; and indistinct markers between good and evil. War shortages also forced studio cameramen to improvise, using chiaroscuro lighting to hide inadequacies of the sets. Critics have also agreed that film noir emerged from an alliance between the hard-boiled school of American detective fiction (Chandler, Cain, Woolrich) and German expressionist cinema, imported by German-speaking émigrés in Hollywood. Having lost everything when they were exiled from Nazi…
On the occasion of MOCA’s ongoing historic exhibition Mike Kelley (which continues at the Geffin and MOCA Grand through July 28), Los Angeles Filmforum is delighted to co-present a screening and panel discussion of Mobile Homestead, a video series documenting Mike Kelley’s large-scale public art project on Saturday, July 12, 2014 from 11 a.m. – 5 p.m. in the College’s Hillside Campus Ahmanson Auditorium, 1700 Lida Street in Pasadena.This event is free and open to the public. Free parking is available in the campus student lot. For more information, please call 626.396.4222 or visit https://www.facebook.com/events/1421096791509480/ <file://localhost/events/1421096791509480> Screening of Mike Kelley’s…
The UCLA Film And Television Archive is presenting a landmark survey of the best of Brazilian documentaries. Besides offering powerful films by Leon Hirszman, João Moreira Salles and Walter Salles, the series will present four films from Brazilian master Eduardo Coutinho, (“Twenty Years Later;”Cabra marcado para morrer”, “Playing (Jogo de cena”,”The End and the Beginning” (O fim e o princípio) tragically murdered earlier this year.Also featured is the remarkable hybrid road movie “Iracema, uma transa amazônica”) by Jorge Bodanzky and Orlando Senna, as well as a night of music documentaries (“Tropicália” (Dir Marcelo Machado-2012) and “A Night in 67” (Uma…
Jan Ole Gerster’s debut feature, “A Coffee in Berlin” (originally titled “Oh Boy”) is another unbe-coming of age flic. Gerster’s thesis project for the German Film and Television Academy, swept the 2013 German Film Awards (unusual for a modest black and white slacker film.It’s not my sort of film, I found Noah Baumbach’s “Frances Ha” unbearably twee. Nor am I entranced by Gerster’s obvious muses: Jarmush and Allen. I’m bored by Jarmush, (his latest, “Only Lovers Left Alive”, was filled with coy literary and filmic references) and Woody Allen’s post-Doumanian films leave me cold.The theme of entitled narcissists, unable to…
Documentarian Steve James (“Hoop Dreams,” “The Interrupters”) was championed by Roger Ebert. He collaborated with Ebert and wife Chaz to tell the story of his incredible life. It’s a truthful and unflinching as Ebert’s memoir of the same name.Ebert, who loved encouraging tyro filmmakers, called “Hoop Dreams ” one of the great movie going experiences of his lifetime.The film began as a collaboration between film critic Roger Ebert, his wife Chaz and director Steve James (”Hoop Dreams”), made to showcase both Ebert’s life as he completed a series of treatments for cancer, Ebert’s died during production.The film is suffused with…
The Los Angeles Film Festival celebrates its 20th anniversary June 11-19 at L.A. LIVE in downtown Los Angeles, with a diverse slate of nearly 200 features, shorts and music videos from 40 countries.Joining Film Independent’s diverse slate of nearly 200 features, shorts and music videos from 40 countries is the new special section – LA muse, featuring films inspired by and shot in Los Angeles.Recommended: Writer-director Benedikt Erlingsson’s startling “Of Horses and Men”, Iceland’s official Oscar submission, celebrates an inventive cinema debut.Erlungsson’s wry dramedy, set in an isolated smallholder community in rural Iceland, is the most original first film by…
LAGFF, founded by filmmakers Ersi Danou and Angeliki Giannakopoulos, showcases new films from Greek filmmakers worldwide. For seven years it has promoted Greek cinema and cultural exchange while bridging the gap between Greek filmmakers and Hollywood.This year LAGFF adds a sidebar to showcase the work of up and coming Greek filmmakers.The New Greek Cinema movement has been described as edgy, bold and risk-taking. “As Greece is still grappling with the aftermath of an unprecedented crisis, the upheaval of Greek society is represented in much of the current Greek Cinema, leading its artists beyond the known and the safe. This year’s…
Honoring the 35th anniversary of Sino-American diplomatic relations, the Shanghai Municipal Administration of Culture, Radio, Film and Television is bringing a new and innovative film to the United States as part of an exchange and presentation of Chinese culture. “Farewell My Concubine: The Beijing Opera,” directed by Junjie Teng, is the first film made by a Chinese filmmaker to utilize native 3D photography to capture the art of Beijing Opera. The film represents a pioneering step in combining the traditional Chinese culture with modern 3D technology. In conjunction with the Shanghai Municipal Administration of Culture, Radio, Film and Television and…
Los Angeles Filmforum is thrilled to present the feature-length first entry in George Kuchar’s monumental Weather Diary series, which eventually spanned six parts and a slew of related supplementary works. Like much of Kuchar’s diaristic work, Weather Diary 1 is an utterly characteristic and deeply entertaining mix of the observational, the naked, the poetic, the uncomfortable, and the hilarious. Shot almost entirely in camera on Kuchar’s visit to Oklahoma in search of dramatic weather phenomenon, the video ultimately functions as a probing, idiosyncratic document of the humor, morbidity, and humanity of a “Bronx boy’s friendly, if somewhat freaky, foray into…