Three CalArts filmmakers—alumnus Peter Bo Rappmund (Film/Video MFA 10) and faculty members Thom Andersen and Nina Menkes—screen their films for LA audiences at two different venues this week.
Tonight as part of the program Rock & Roll: Three Los Angeles Films, UCLA Melnitz Movies presents Andersen’s Get Out of the Car and Rappmund’s Psychohydrography along with the 1975 short film Hand Held Day by LA-based filmmaker Gary Beydler (1944-2010).
Get Out of the Car is a “city symphony film in 16mm composed from advertising signs, building facades, fragments of music and conversation, and unmarked sites of vanished cultural landmarks.” The music of Richard Berry, Johnny Otis, Leiber and Stoller, and Los Tigres del Norte is featured prominently in the film.
Rappmund’s 2010 film (his CalArts thesis) receives its LA premiere tonight. Psychohydrography analyzes the flow of water from mountain to aqueduct, city to sea. The HD video constructed entirely from single frame photography includes shots from the Eastern Sierra Nevada, Owens Valley, Los Angeles Aqueduct, Los Angeles River and Pacific Ocean. Both CalArtian filmmakers will be in attendance at tonight’s screening.
Starting on Wednesday and running through June 7, the Downtown Independent Theater in Los Angeles screens two films by Nina Menkes: Dissolution (2010) and Phantom Love (2007). Shot in Israel, Dissolution (Hitparkut) is inspired by Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment and it won Best Drama in Israeli Cinema at last year’s Jerusalem International Film Festival.
Set in Los Angeles and Rishikesh, India, Phantom Love is a surreal drama about a woman trapped within an enmeshed family, and her slow process of inner transformation and personal liberation.
Menkes will be in attendance for a Q&A session after the Saturday, June 4, Dissolution screening.
Phantom Love trailer:
Rock & Roll: Three Los Angeles Films
UCLA Melnitz Movies/James Bridges Theater
Tonight (Tuesday, May 31)
7:30 pm
Free
Two films by Nina Menkes: Dissolution (2010) and Phantom Love (2007)
At the Downtown Independent Theater
251 South Main St., Los Angeles
June 1-7
Dissolution tickets are $10 / Double feature Saturday and Sunday, tickets are $15