Filmmaker Thom Andersen in person for Q&A on April 13!

Thom Andersen's concise essay film on the famous proto-cinema experiments of Eadweard Muybridge combines a biographical overview of its subject with philosophical considerations of what Muybridge’s work might represent ontologically and anthropologically. Assisted by filmmaker Morgan Fisher, Andersen re-photographed and then animated more than 3,000 of Muybridge's sequential images, giving new life to the experiments in recording motion while analyzing their aesthetic value and their impact on science and the creation of cinema. Narrated by Dean Stockwell, with a wide-ranging intellectual curiosity that brings together art history, sociology, and psychoanalysis, Andersen's documentary is that rare feat of filmmaking as film criticism, a thoroughgoing investigation into cinema’s primordial years that connects the medium’s invention to the broader history of Western representation.

Screening with:

Olivia’s Place
Thom Andersen | USA | 1966/74 | 16mm | 6m
A heartfelt portrait of the patrons, workers, and objects in a beloved Santa Monica diner, which closed a few years after Andersen shot this contemplative footage.

Hey, Asshole!
Thom Andersen | USA | 2014 | Digital Projection | 6m
Andersen continues his exploration of ignored urban spaces with a look at the Los Angeles strip club—made entirely of footage from The Takeover, a straight-to-video gangster movie complete with gun violence and glowing neon.