Tag Archives: Downtown Independent cinema

DANCE CAMERA WEST 2020

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DANCE CAMERA WEST 2020 is here.

Join founder Kelly Hargraves at Redcat and the Downtown Independent Cinema for a long weekend of extraordinary artistry, resilience, and performance on film.

Opening night will feature a Q & A with special guests Katrina McPherson and Édouard Lock following a screening of the CalArts School of Dance film ONE ANOTHER.

On Friday evening there are two programs of shorts, and Saturday’s programs include the features THREE DANCES (directed by Glória Halász), FROM KNEE TO HEART (a portrait of Sol Picó directed by Susanna Barranco), and KREATUR (featuring members of the dance company Sasha Waltz and Guests).

The first three days are at Redcat before moving to the Downtown Independent for Sunday’s free matinee program. See links below for full schedule.

DANCE CAMERA WEST 2020

Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, January 9, 10, and 11.

Redcat

631 West 2nd Street, downtown Los Angeles.

Sunday, January 12, from noon.

Downtown Independent Cinema

251 South Main Street, Los Angeles.

From top: Sasha Waltz and Guests, Kreatur(2); Susanna Barranco, From Knee to Heart; Juan Medellín (left) and dancer in Andrew Houchens, Juan of the Witches; Will Johnston, Cielo; Janique Robillard, From There to Here; Teddy Tedholm, Don’t Miss It; Sofia Castro, Maids; Kelly Hargraves; Antoine Panier, Making Men; Glória Halász, Three Dances; Roseanna Anderson and Joshua Ben-Tovim, The Ballet of the Nations (2). Images courtesy and © the artists, dancers, photographers, producers, Dance Camera West, L.A. Dance Chronicle, and Kelly Hargraves.

ALICE GUY-BLACHÉ

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If Agnès Varda was the mother of the nouvelle vague, Alice Guy-Blaché (1873–1968) was the mother of cinema, period. She was an early viewer of the Lumière brothers shorts and was one of the first filmmakers of either gender to explore the narrative possibilities of the medium—influencing the work of Eisenstein and Hitchcock, to name just two. In addition to directing and producing, she founded and ran Solax Studio out of Fort Lee, New Jersey.

Not that anyone would know these things, considering how her male colleagues in the fledgling industry erased her contributions. Her husband, Herbert Blaché, took credit for Solax, and her boss, Léon Gaumont, failed to acknowledge her in the studio records. Male film historians hardly picked up the slack during Guy-Blaché’s life or since her death.

The new documentary BE NATURAL—THE UNTOLD STORY OF ALICE GUY-BLACHÉ—directed by Pamela B. Green and narrated by Jodie Foster—goes a long way toward righting these wrongs, and is screening in downtown Los Angeles through Thursday.

BE NATURAL—THE UNTOLD STORY OF ALICE GUY-BLACHÉ

Through May 23.

Downtown Independent

251 South Main Street, Los Angeles.

From top: Alice Guy-Blaché directing Bessie Love in Great Adventure (1918); Guy-Blaché directing My Madonna, with Olga Petrova and John Hass; Alice Guy-Blaché, A Fool and his Money (still), one of the first narrative films to feature an African-American cast; Alice Guy-Blaché, Scarlet Woman (still); Guy-Blaché directing My Madonna; Love (left) and Guy-Blaché. Images courtesy and © Pamela B. Green and Kino Lorber.

I AM CUBA — SASHA CALZATTI IN CONVERSATION

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I AM CUBA—now playing at the Downtown Independent in a beautiful 4K restoration—is the landmark Cuban-Soviet one-off directed by Mikhail Kalatozov in the early 1960s.

On the closing evening of the run, the film’s camera operator Alexander “Sasha” Calzatti will participate in a post-screening Q & A.

I AM CUBA

Through April 21.

SASHA CALZATTI post-screening Q & A

Sunday, April 21, at 5:30 pm.

Downtown Independent

251 South Main Street, Los Angeles.

I Am Cuba images courtesy of Milestone Films.

MULHOLLAND DR.

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Is David Lynch’s MULHOLLAND DR. one of the greatest puzzles in cinematic history? Or a sphinx without a riddle?

Revisit the great L.A. noir this week at the Downtown Independent.

MULHOLLAND DR.

Friday, February 22, at 8 pm.

Downtown Independent

251 South Main Street, Los Angeles.

From top: Naomi Watts as Betty/Diane Selwyn and Laura Harring as Rita/Camilla Rhodes in Mulholland Dr.(2001); David Lynch directing Justin Theroux directing a musical number; Melissa George; Watts and Mark Pellegrino. Image credit: Universal Pictures.

LUISE DONSCHEN’S CASANOVAGEN

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“I was drawn to the idea of female infidelity being merely an unintended byproduct of male infidelity, which they claim has some evolutionary use. While this implicit disadvantaging of the female sex obviously reveals a way of thinking I don’t approve of, what I did like is the idea of female infidelity being pointless, that it resists having any sort of economic parameters applied to it.

“And that was the starting point [for CASANOVAGEN], a way of talking about desire, a form of discourse I found modern precisely because it actually isn’t modern at all.” — Luise Donschen

Don’t miss the Los Angeles premiere of CASANOVAGEN—Donschen’s debut feature—screening on the closing night of the UCLA Film and Television Archive series Art of the Real—Los Angeles.

The film stars Wolfgang Forstmeier, John Malkovich, Elija Pott, Undine de Rivière, Lumi Lausas, Zacharias Zitouni, and Donschen, and will screen in downtown Los Angeles.

CASANOVAGEN

Thursday, January 17, at 8 pm.

Downtown Independent

251 South Main Street, Los Angeles.

Scenes from Casanovagen (2018) courtesy Luise Donschen.