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Dir. Thom Andersen; 2004; USA, 2h 49m
Presented in collaboration with the New York Review of Architecture
Thom Andersen’s seminal essay film asks: what is Los Angeles without the movies, and what are the movies without Los Angeles? Is the experience of the City of Angels inherently cinematic, or has Hollywood — there’s that cutesy, faux-bucolic metonym — dedicated its existence to cynically peddling dishonest images of the city that bear, at best, a glancing resemblance to its essence? Andersen wears his judgments on his sleeve, reserving a special ire for willful distortions of LA’s geography — as well as to people calling it “LA.”
Calling Los Angeles Plays Itself “seminal” is more than a cliché: Andersen pioneered the supercut archival doc with erudite, highly opinionated, quasi-academic narration, a format that has been developed and broadened by countless video essayists since. What his many imitators have often reached for but rarely attained is the rich and deeply ambivalent familiarity he has with his subject. Neither a love letter nor a jeremiad, Los Angeles Plays Itself is more akin to a settling of accounts with a complicated family member, an earnest — yet delightfully acerbic — attempt to come to terms with as messy, often enraging, and occasionally sublime a place as Los Angeles.
-CB
All sales are final; no refunds or exchanges. Five minutes after the listed showtime, any unused tickets will be considered no-shows and released to standby customers.
Dir. Thom Andersen; 2004; USA, 2h 49m
Presented in collaboration with the New York Review of Architecture
Thom Andersen’s seminal essay film asks: what is Los Angeles without the movies, and what are the movies without Los Angeles? Is the experience of the City of Angels inherently cinematic, or has Hollywood — there’s that cutesy, faux-bucolic metonym — dedicated its existence to cynically peddling dishonest images of the city that bear, at best, a glancing resemblance to its essence? Andersen wears his judgments on his sleeve, reserving a special ire for willful distortions of LA’s geography — as well as to people calling it “LA.”
Calling Los Angeles Plays Itself “seminal” is more than a cliché: Andersen pioneered the supercut archival doc with erudite, highly opinionated, quasi-academic narration, a format that has been developed and broadened by countless video essayists since. What his many imitators have often reached for but rarely attained is the rich and deeply ambivalent familiarity he has with his subject. Neither a love letter nor a jeremiad, Los Angeles Plays Itself is more akin to a settling of accounts with a complicated family member, an earnest — yet delightfully acerbic — attempt to come to terms with as messy, often enraging, and occasionally sublime a place as Los Angeles.
-CB
All sales are final; no refunds or exchanges. Five minutes after the listed showtime, any unused tickets will be considered no-shows and released to standby customers.