Event

Los Angeles Plays Itself

(Thom Andersen, USA, 2003, video, 169 min)

Director in attendance!

Sunday, Mar 27 at 07:00PM

A video essay depicting the city of Los Angeles through films that used its landscape as a backdrop, Los Angeles Plays Itself is the film that finally heralded Andersen as one of the finest working filmmakers in the world. Carefully weaving together footage from dozens of films made in or about the city, Anderson gradually builds his thesis about how Hollywood has representedand misrepresentedits hometown. Surveying both well known (Chinatown, Blade Runner) and underappreciated (Haile Gerima's Bush Mama, Charles Burnett's Killer of Sheep) Los Angeles-set movies, Andersen employs his keen understanding of cinema and his native city to expand their definitionsand entertain his audience. Voted Best Documentary of 2004 by the Village Voice.

"Andersen's film frees images from the yoke of instrumentality, revealing the city for what it is and allowing us to see what we otherwise cannot. It is at once theory and practice; not content to simply describe the new cinema, it embodies it It teaches us how to see." Bright Lights Film Journal