Rock & Roll: Three Los Angeles Films

Event Date: May 31, 2011 - 7:30pm

Location: James Bridges Theater, Melnitz Hall, UCLA

Directors Peter Bo Rappmund and Thom Andersen in person!

The final Melnitz Movies screening of the 2010-2011 series showcases three exceptional works by Los Angeles filmmakers.

HAND HELD DAY (1975)
Director: Gary Beydler
6 minutes, 16mm

Beydler's magical HAND HELD DAY is his most unabashedly beautiful film, but it's no less complex than his other works. The filming approach is simple, yet incredibly rich with possibilities, as Beydler collapses the time and space of a full day in the Arizona desert via time-lapse photography and a carefully hand-held mirror reflecting the view behind his camera.

Over the course of two Kodachrome camera rolls, we simultaneously witness eastward and westward views of the surrounding landscape as the skies, shadows, colors, and light change dramatically. Beydler's hand, holding the mirror carefully in front of the camera, quivers and vibrates, suggesting the relatively minuscule scale of humanity in the face of a monumental landscape and its dramatic transformations. Yet the use of the mirror also projects an idealized human desire to frame and understand what we see around us, without destroying or changing any of its inherent fascination and beauty. (Mark Toscano)

GET OUT OF THE CAR (2010)
Director: Thom Andersen
34 minutes, 16mm

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 (including El Monte Legion Stadium and the Barrelhouse in Watts). The musical fragments compose an impressionistic survey of popular music made in Los Angeles (and a few other places) from 1941 to 1999, with an emphasis on rhythm’n’blues and jazz from the 1950s and corridos from the 1990s. The music of Richard Berry, Johnny Otis, Leiber and Stoller, and Los Tigres del Norte is featured prominently.

PSYCHOHYDROGRAPHY (2010) - Los Angeles premiere!
Director: Peter Bo Rappmund
63 minutes, Blu-ray

An analysis of the flow of water from mountain to aqueduct, city to sea. Shot at and around the Eastern Sierra Nevada, Owens Valley, Los Angeles Aqueduct, Los Angeles River and Pacific Ocean. HD video constructed entirely from single frame photography.

PSYCHOHYDROGRAPHY preview 720P from Peter Bo Rappmund on Vimeo.