Los Angeles Plays Itself
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Los Angeles Plays Itself
''Los Angeles Plays Itself'' is a video essay by Thom Andersen, finished in 2003, exploring the way Los Angeles has been presented in movies. Consisting almost entirely of clips from other films with narration, the film was not initially released commercially as it was only seen in screenings presented by Andersen, occasional presentations at American Cinematheque and copies distributed via filesharing and other person-to-person methods. In 2014, it was announced that the film would finally be released officially by Cinema Guild. Inspiration Andersen stated that the film idea occurred to him after a lecture he gave at the California Institute of the Arts, where he talked about his objections to ''L.A. Confidential'', the 1997 Curtis Hanson film adapted from James Ellroy's novel. Synopsis In the film, Andersen argues that the influence of Hollywood overshadows Los Angeles and is one of the reasons the city's name is frequently abbreviated. He makes the case that directors have a ...
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Thom Andersen
Thom Andersen (born 1943 in Chicago) is an American filmmaker, film critic, and teacher best known for his works of experimental film, including his 1975 film ''Eadweard Muybridge, Zoopraxographer'' and the 2003 essay film ''Los Angeles Plays Itself''. Biography Andersen attended the University of California, Berkeley in the early 1960s and then returned to his hometown of Los Angeles to attend USC School of Cinematic Arts, where he studied with Arthur Knight and eventually assisted on Knight's project ''The History of Sex in Cinema''. While at USC, Andersen met long-time friend and collaborator Morgan Fisher, who assisted on Andersen's student film ''Melting'', a portrait of a sundae. He regularly attended local screening series including shows by the Trak Film Group and Movies Round Midnight and famously wrote about an unpopular screening of Andy Warhol's ''Sleep''. After USC, Andersen attended UCLA and completed his experimental documentaries ''Olivia's Place ''and ''Eadweard M ...
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National Film Board Of Canada
The National Film Board of Canada (NFB; french: Office national du film du Canada (ONF)) is Canada's public film and digital media producer and distributor. An agency of the Government of Canada, the NFB produces and distributes documentary films, animation, web documentaries, and alternative dramas. In total, the NFB has produced over 13,000 productions since its inception, which have won over 5,000 awards. The NFB reports to the Parliament of Canada through the Minister of Canadian Heritage. It has bilingual production programs and branches in English and French, including multicultural-related documentaries. History Canadian Government Motion Picture Bureau The Exhibits and Publicity Bureau was founded on 19 September 1918, and was reorganized into the Canadian Government Motion Picture Bureau in 1923. The organization's budget stagnated and declined during the Great Depression. Frank Badgley, who served as the bureau's director from 1927 to 1941, stated that the bure ...
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Essays About Film
An essay is, generally, a piece of writing that gives the author's own argument, but the definition is vague, overlapping with those of a letter, a paper, an article, a pamphlet, and a short story. Essays have been sub-classified as formal and informal: formal essays are characterized by "serious purpose, dignity, logical organization, length," whereas the informal essay is characterized by "the personal element (self-revelation, individual tastes and experiences, confidential manner), humor, graceful style, rambling structure, unconventionality or novelty of theme," etc. Essays are commonly used as literary criticism, political manifestos, learned arguments, observations of daily life, recollections, and reflections of the author. Almost all modern essays are written in prose, but works in verse have been dubbed essays (e.g., Alexander Pope's ''An Essay on Criticism'' and ''An Essay on Man''). While brevity usually defines an essay, voluminous works like John Locke's ''A ...
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Collage Film
Collage film is a style of film created by juxtaposing found footage from disparate sources. The term has also been applied to the physical collaging of materials onto film stock. Surrealist roots The surrealist movement played a critical role in the creation of the collage film form. In 1936, the American artist Joseph Cornell produced one of the earliest collage films with his reassembly of ''East of Borneo'' (1931), combined with pieces of other films, into a new work he titled ''Rose Hobart'' after the leading actress.Rony, Fatimah Tobing. The Quick and the Dead: Surrealism and the Found Ethnographic Footage Films of Bontoc Eulogy and Mother Dao: The Turtlelike. Camera Obscura. January 2003, Vol. 18 Issue 52 When Salvador Dalí saw the film, he was famously enraged, believing Cornell had stolen the idea from his thoughts. But Adrian Brunel made, twelve years before, ''Crossing the Great Sagrada'' (1924) and Henri Storck conceived, four years earlier, ''Story of the Unknow ...
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Films Directed By Thom Andersen
A film also called a movie, motion picture, moving picture, picture, photoplay or (slang) flick is a work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, feelings, beauty, or atmosphere through the use of moving images. These images are generally accompanied by sound and, more rarely, other sensory stimulations. The word "cinema", short for cinematography, is often used to refer to filmmaking and the film industry, and to the art form that is the result of it. Recording and transmission of film The moving images of a film are created by photographing actual scenes with a motion-picture camera, by photographing drawings or miniature models using traditional animation techniques, by means of CGI and computer animation, or by a combination of some or all of these techniques, and other visual effects. Before the introduction of digital production, series of still images were recorded on a strip of chemically sensitiz ...
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American Documentary Films
American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, people who self-identify their ancestry as "American" ** American English, the set of varieties of the English language native to the United States ** Native Americans in the United States, indigenous peoples of the United States * American, something of, from, or related to the Americas, also known as "America" ** Indigenous peoples of the Americas * American (word), for analysis and history of the meanings in various contexts Organizations * American Airlines, U.S.-based airline headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas * American Athletic Conference, an American college athletic conference * American Recordings (record label), a record label previously known as Def American * American University, in Washington, D.C. Sports teams Soccer * ...
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2003 Films
The year 2003 in film involved some significant events. Highest-grossing films The top 10 films released in 2003 by worldwide gross are as follows: '' The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King'' grossed more than $1.14  billion, making it the highest-grossing film in 2003 worldwide and in North America and the second-highest-grossing film up to that time. It was also the second film to surpass the billion-dollar milestone after ''Titanic'' in 1997. '' Finding Nemo'' was the highest-grossing animated movie of all time until being overtaken by ''Shrek 2'' in 2004. Events * February 24: '' The Pianist'', directed by Roman Polanski, wins 7 César Awards: Best Film, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Sound, Best Production Design, Best Music and Best Cinematography. * June 12: Gregory Peck dies of bronchopneumonia. * June 29: Katharine Hepburn dies of cardiac arrest. * November 17: Arnold Schwarzenegger sworn in as Governor of California. * December 22: Both of the m ...
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Vancouver International Film Festival
The Vancouver International Film Festival (VIFF) is an annual film festival held in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, for two weeks in late September and early October. The festival is operated by the Greater Vancouver International Film Festival Society, a provincially-registered non-profit and federally-registered charitable organization, which also runs the year-round programming of the Vancity Theatre and Studio Theatre at the VIFF Centre. Both in terms of admissions and number of films screened (133,000 and 324 respectively in 2016), VIFF is among the five largest film festivals in North America. The festival screens films annually from approximately 73 countries on 10 screens. The festival has three main programming platforms: East Asian film, Canadian film, and nonfiction films. Besides films from around the world, VIFF also includes talks, workshops, performances, and other special events related to cinema. History The festival was first launched in 1958; however, f ...
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The Hollywood Reporter
''The Hollywood Reporter'' (''THR'') is an American digital and print magazine which focuses on the Cinema of the United States, Hollywood film industry, film, television, and entertainment industries. It was founded in 1930 as a daily trade paper, and in 2010 switched to a weekly Wide-format printer, large-format print magazine with a revamped website. As of 2020, the day-to-day operations of the company are handled by Penske Media Corporation through a joint venture with Eldridge Industries. History Early years; 1930–1987 ''The Hollywood Reporter'' was founded in 1930 by William R. Wilkerson, William R. "Billy" Wilkerson (1890–1962) as Hollywood's first daily entertainment trade newspaper. The first edition appeared on September 3, 1930, and featured Wilkerson's front-page "Tradeviews" column, which became influential. The newspaper appeared Monday-to-Saturday for the first 10 years, except for a brief period, then Monday-to-Friday from 1940. Wilkerson used caustic articles ...
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Deborah Stratman
Deborah Stratman (born 1967) is a Chicago-based artist and filmmaker who explores landscapes and systems. Her body of work spans multiple media, including public sculpture, photography, drawing and audio. Biography Stratman's work has been exhibited internationally at venues including the 2004 Whitney Biennial, Museum of Modern Art, the Centre Georges Pompidou, Hammer Museum, Witte de With, Walker Art Center, Yerba Buena Center, ICA London, MCA Chicago, Walker Art Center, Wexner Center for the Arts, Museum of the Moving Image NY, Robert Flaherty Film Seminar, Anthology Film Archives, Pacific Film Archives, Los Angeles Film Forum, San Francisco Cinemateque, REDCAT Los Angeles, Gene Siskel Film Center, Harvard Film Archives, Her work has screened extensively at Film Festivals such as Rotterdam Int’l Film Festival, Oberhausen Short Film Festival, Ann Arbor Film Festival, Images Festival, Toronto Int’l Film Festival, New York Film Festival, and the Sundance Film Festival, and many ...
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