LA Cinema Calendar - October 2018*clockwise from top left: SLEEP HAS HER HOUSE (Scott Barley, 2017), ORSON WELLES, SALAAM BOMBAY (Mira Nair, 1988), LONG DAY'S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT (Bi Gan, 2018)
October Highlights:10/7 - Beyond Fest sounds cool and all, but it's the west side of the American Cinematheque's calendar this month that has us truly excited. First off is a 35mm showing of the legendary film essayist Chris Marker's rarely-screened
A GRIN WITHOUT A CAT (1977) at the Aero Theatre, which examines the rise and fall of international leftist movements throughout the 60s and 70s.
10/7 - 10/9 - The experimental filmmaker Ken Jacobs will be in attendance at REDCAT on the 8th to perform his latest show,
Metropolis Looms And The Bad Maria Is Tuned Up - according to the program notes, he uses “a homemade projector, hand-manipulated elements, and no film or video, to create mesmerizing hallucinatory effects. Each performance is unique, combining swirling abstract textures with hints of mysterious and inexplicable objects—all in a 3D that can be apprehended with a single eye.” Certainly sounds like a must-see live cinema event. Ken will also be showing up at LACMA on the 7th for a talk and screening of selected clips entitled
Ken Jacobs: A Swim Through Open Space, as well as the Los Angeles Filmforum's screening of his 2013 3D film
THE GUESTS on the 9th at the Downtown Independent.
10/11 - SLEEP HAS HER HOUSE (2017) is the highly-praised debut feature of British filmmaker Scott Barley, comprised of static shots that combine footage and stills captured on an iPhone with hand-drawn images to create moving paintings that have been described as "haunting," "intoxicating," "hypnotic," and "profound." Just look up some images from this to get excited about getting to see it at the Echo Park Film Center this month.
10/11 - 10/16 - Next up at the Aero-- in celebration of the master auteur's final film being edited and released into theaters courtesy of Netflix, the American Cinematheque is priming Angelenos with a mostly-complete retrospective of Orson Welles double features. Props for including under-screened films like
MR. ARKADIN (1955) and
THE IMMORTAL STORY (1968) (though we're trying to forgive them for excluding The Trial, one of Welles' best), and it all culminates in free screenings of the new feature-length documentary
THEY'LL LOVE ME WHEN I'M DEAD (2018) and the aforementioned final film,
THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND (2018).10/12 - 10/14 - The local programming group Women & Film has been doing fantastic work for a while now with monthly screenings that highlight female artists and filmmakers, and they've really pulled out all the stops for this October's
Female Filmmakers Festival, a three-day weekend event hosted at the Downtown Independent that is positively jam-packed with excellent screenings of classic and contemporary films, Q&As, and panel discussions. Some highlights: a free screening of Mira Nair's
SALAAM BOMBAY (1988), a showing of
AMERICAN PSYCHO (2000) followed by a Q&A with screenwriter Guinevere Turner, and a 35mm print of Lucrecia Matel's
THE HEADLESS WOMAN (2008), plus so, so much more.
10/19 - As part of their 4th "China Onscreen Biennial," the UCLA Film & TV Archive will be showcasing some exciting new Chinese films over the next few months, but the one we're most excited for is Bi Gan's
LONG DAY'S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT (2018), a film we've been dying to see since its premiere at this year's Cannes. We'll let UCLA's official write-up hype it up better than we could: “A mysterious drifter searches for a long-lost lover but as she proves materially elusive, he retreats into the past through fragmentary flashbacks and enigmatic reveries. This pure cinema rhapsody culminates in a bravura 60-minute single-take shot presented in 3D. The film’s epic oneiric design earned writer-director Bi Gan comparisons at Cannes to Wong Kar-wai, Andrei Tarkovsky, Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Max Ophuls.”
10/23 - Queer programming platform Dirty Looks will be hosting a selection of politically subversive and hysterical shorts by trans organizer/artist/activist
CHRIS E. VARGAS, founder of the Museum of Transgender History and Art, at the Downtown Independent.
10/25 - One more from the Aero-- the excellent South Korean director Lee Chang-Dong is in town to discuss a double feature of his most recent film
BURNING (2018), which set the Cannes Film Festival on fire earlier this year (sorry), and his highly-regarded 2007 film
SECRET SUNSHINE.10/26 - Internationally renowned experimental filmmaker Robert Beavers will be in attendance at REDCAT for the program
Recent Films by Robert Beavers: The Poetry of Living Space which will include five of his recent 16mm works, including
PITCHER OF COLORED LIGHT (2007), cited as the second best experimental film of the 2000s in Film Comment’s poll of international critics.
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