PLEASE NOTE
This page can only be used to pay for a copy of Slow Writing: Thom Andersen on Cinema purchased at the CalArts book launch.
Please follow the “Buy Now” link below to pay by Credit Card or PayPal and show the “payment completed” screen before collecting your book.
Los Angeles Plays Itself
Thom Andersen, Los Angeles Plays Itself, 2003, 169 min
Introduced by María Palacios Cruz
As every autumn, Tabakalera hones in on architecture through different programmes. Our contribution from the cinema department begins with a series of questions: What has been cinema’s contribution to the creation of the collective imaginary of cities? Why do we get the sensation of being “in a film” when we see or travel to a landscape similar to that of Los Angeles?
If cinema has indeed shown us how to look at some cities, can that route be travelled in reverse? Can architecture and urbanism show us how to see films? To begin to answer these questions, we are screening a contemporary classic, one of those films that directly addresses this question of correspondence between cinematographic imaginary and urbanism, a film-essay that looks back on how cinema has represented the city of Los Angles throughout history: Los Angeles Plays Itself, by filmmaker and Professor of the School of the California Institute of Arts, Thom Andersen.
María Palacios Cruz of The Visible Press will introduce the screening and discuss the book Slow Writing: Thom Andersen on Cinema.
18:00 Presentation of the book Slow Writing: Thom Andersen on Cinema, 45 min
19:00 Los Angeles Plays Itself, (Primera parte), Thom Andersen, USA, 2003, 90 min
22:00 Los Angeles Plays Itself, (Segunda parte), Thom Andersen, USA, 2003, 80 min
Presented by Tabakera within the context of The International Biennial MUGAK.
The Visible Press are pleased to announce the newly available paperback edition of Film as Film: The Collected Writings of Gregory J. Markopoulos.
The 2014 publication of Gregory Markopoulos’ writings was greeted with widespread acclaim and celebration. As the original hardback edition falls out of print, we felt that it was necessary to keep these important texts available.
The new paperback has a slightly smaller page size (8 x 5 inches) and is 544 pages long. This edition is printed throughout in black and white, and does not contain the 16 pages of colour images that were in the original, but it does benefit from minor corrections and a revised filmography. All of the original texts are intact.
Gregory J. Markopoulos (1928-1992) is a unique figure in film history. As a contemporary of Kenneth Anger, Stan Brakhage and Andy Warhol, he was at the forefront of a movement that established a truly independent form of cinema. Later in life, the filmmaker pursued his ideal of Temenos, an archive and screening space to be located at a remote site in the Peloponnese where his epic work ENIAIOS could be viewed in harmony with the Greek landscape. The publication of Film as Film brought to light some ninety out-of-print or previously unavailable articles written between the mid-1950s and 1992.
Film as Film: The Collected Writings of Gregory J. Markopoulos can be ordered direct from The Visible Press, and should also be available through your local Amazon site. It is also being stocked by some of our partner shops.
The paperback edition is being printed digitally. The Visible Press maintains copies on hand for mail order and retail, but the book may be printed on demand if you purchase from other online sources.
Whilst we are very happy with the quality of this digital production, rest assured that we remain committed to producing new books with the same high quality and production values as our first three titles.
A handful of copies of the first edition hardback are still available. The book is now becoming collectable so we have increased the price to £50 to raise additional funds for Temenos and to support the continuation of The Visible Press. To purchase, please select “Hardback” from the pop-up menu on the order page.
The vital statistics for the paperback are as follows :-
Film as Film: The Collected Writings of Gregory J. Markopoulos
Edited by Mark Webber, with a foreword by P. Adams Sitney
The Visible Press, December 2014
ISBN: 978-0-9928377-3-0
203 x 127 x 35 mm
544 pages, black and white, with Revised filmography
For more details, or to place an order, visit The Visible Press shop.
Los Angeles Plays Itself
Thom Andersen, Los Angeles Plays Itself, 2003, 170 min
Thom Andersen will sign copies of his book Slow Writing: Thom Andersen on Cinema in the theatre lobby from 6:30 p.m., and will participate in a discussion after the screening.
Los Angeles Plays Itself
Southern California practically bleeds celluloid; virtually everywhere you turn, you’ll see a location that has doubled as a film set. Director Thom Andersen plays private eye in this sardonic video essay, revisiting the scenes of cinematic crimes and triumphs and unraveling the tangled relationship between the movies and our metropolis. Both Los Angeles history buffs and cinema enthusiasts will marvel at the hundreds of archival and film clips revealing an almost secret history of the City of Angels. A Cinematheque favorite!
In the Los Angeles Times, Kenneth Turan called Los Angeles Plays Itself “the best documentary ever made about Los Angeles.” On the occasion of the 10th anniversary of its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, Thom Andersen’s sardonic video essay about the tangled relationship between the movies and our metropolis was remastered and re-edited. It’s funnier, sharper and bigger, and it’s now really a double feature. No matter how many times you’ve seen it before, you will be blown away by the new version on the big screen!
Book signing hosted by legendary Hollywood emporium Larry Edmunds Bookshop, with thanks to Jeff Mantor. Slow Writing: Thom Andersen on Cinema will be available at their store following this screening. Big thanks also to Lacy Soto at Artbook LA.
Walden presents: Peter Gidal
Peter Gidal, Portrait Subject Object, 1967, 10 min
Peter Gidal, Still Andy, 1968, 4 min
Peter Gidal, Untitled, 1978, 9 min
Peter Gidal, Epilogue, 1978, 9 min
Peter Gidal, Kopenhagen 1930, 1977, 40 min
Peter Gidal, not far at all, 2013, 15 min
“The question of making things difficult for the spectator in my films is absolutely crucial and historically so, because that is where the break always comes. In the cinema, more than any other art form, the question of difficulty is always raised. With other things there are conventions: for example, it’s okay to spend until two o’clock in the morning checking a difficult footnote in a book; difficult paintings are okay because you can walk past them in seconds. But film has an authoritarian structure built into its mechanism in terms of time, being held there for a period of time, which is why most film goes out of its way to avoid precisely that as an issue, whereas my work goes out of its way to raise it as one.”
Peter Gidal föddes 1946 och växte upp i Schweiz. Efter att ha studerat psykologi och tysk litteratur vid Brandeis University och universitetet i München började han på Royal College of Art i London. Det var också här han på allvar började med film. På 1960-talet visades hans filmer på New Arts Lab i Drury Lane och London Film Makers’ Co-op, som han också hjälpte till att etablera. Peter Gidals filmer tillhör en formalistisk och materiellt utforskande tradition inom experimentfilmen, där aspekter som den fotokemiska filmens kornighet, och materialets varaktighet, tempo och redigeringsstrukturer intar en central roll. Han har även varit flitig som polemisk filmteoretiker med böcker som Structural Film Anthology (1974), Materialist Film (1989) och en bok om Samuel Beckett (1986). Flertalet av hans mest centrala texter samlades i volymen Flare Out: Aesthetics 1966–2016, som gavs ut av The Visible Press 2016.
Alla filmer visas på 16 mm. Tack till Lux och Visible Press.
Copies of Peter Gidal’s book “Flare Out: Aesthetics 1966–2016” will be available at the screening.