ASHES AND EMBERS, 1982, Haile Gerima. Film Still, 120 min.

Los Angeles is the film capital of the world. There is no arguing that: it’s a fact! It’s been the home of many filmmakers and actors and artists surrounding the world of film since the twenties. Much of “the biz” gets washed away in entertainment and stripped of art, which begs the question of where film fits into the art community and Pacific Standard Time. One show that highlights this perfectly is UCLA Film & Television Archive’s L.A. Rebellion: Creating a New Black Cinema.

The exhibition is a series of screenings of films that are the product of African American students who studied at the UCLA School of Theater, Film, And Television between the late sixties and early eighties. This group of students are, in a way, their own sub-genre of artists and filmmakers, a collective that created cinema pieces that were “responsive to the lives and concerns of African and African American communities and the African diaspora.” This group is referred to as the L.A. Rebellion, a group who created film art responding to the Civil Rights Movement locally (namely to the Watts Uprising, not to mention the Vietnam War). Artist filmmakers like Larry Clark, Ben Caldwell, Allie Sharon Larkin, Charles Burnett, and many others came and went through the system, mentoring each other and incoming students, keeping the movement going and extending the canon of films to approximately forty works.

Of course, with modern technology and the Internet, many of the films in L.A. Rebellion can be found bit by bit online. Films like To Sleep With Anger, Cutting Horse, Daughters Of The Dust, The Rosa Parks Story, and a few others can be rented and tracked down by scouring eBay and Google. However, the majority of them are very rare and have never received a theatrical release which is why the showing of films is so important. Moreover, each screening features a talk with filmmakers on their films.

Three very rare films are actually being streamed on UCLA Film & Television Archive’s website. These include: Bernard Nicolas’ Daydream Therapy, an eight minute fantasy film of a “hotel worker’s escape from workplace” set to Nina Simone’s “Pirate Jenny”; Jacqueline Frazier’s 1977 Hidden Memories, which is ten minutes long and deals with teen pregnancy and abortion; and Alile Sharon Larkin’s The Kitchen, a silent film that explores a mental ward as a prison for females of color.

L.A. Rebellion concludes December 17 but, between now and then, there will be eight screenings (which include 15 films being shown). For more information and a listing of the films, check out L.A. Rebellion‘s listing on UCLA Film & Television Archive.

Photography and history go hand in hand. Out of all of the artforms, photography is the only one you can really say is tied to time. Of course painting and drawing can do this and, of course, film as well–but they aren’t the same. Painting and drawing are representations of real moments instead of actually being the real moments. Of course, films do capture real moments in time but, even today, the ability and knowledge of filming is inaccessible to many and requires great skill. Photography finds itself in the middle of these three artforms. California State University, Northridge currently has an exhibit on a very specific moment in photography: African American post-war photography in Los Angeles, entitled Identity And Affirmation: Post War African American Photography.

Through great curation (by Professor Emeritus Kent Kirkton), the exhibit showcases approximately 125 photos “produced by Los Angeles African-American photographers during the post-war years 1945 – 1980.” They showcase everything from art to fashion to documentary, giving a glimpse into the day-to-day life of post-war African Americans in this city. Very similar to the National Gallery’s The Art Of The American Snapshot in 2007, Identity takes a look at a hyper specific group whose story is told through the photos they took.

As you can imagine, the photos in the exhibit were taken from a very, very large pool of photos: the 125 selected for exhibition came from the Institute for Arts & Media at CSUN’s collection of over 750,000 photos. The ones selected are the best representative of the shaping of the African American community in Los Angeles. The exhibit includes work from photographers such as Roland Charles, Guy Crowder, Jack Davis, Bob Douglas, Joe Flowers, Maxie Floyd, Calvin Hicks, Bob Moore, and Charles Williams.

Identity And Affirmation is on view at CSUN through December 10. The gallery is open Monday through Saturday from 12PM to 4PM and Thursdays from 12PM to 8PM. They are closed on Sundays.

This weekend is the Orange County and Long Beach Pacific Standard Time Focus Weekend. For many Angelenos reading, Orange County and Long Beach sound like a foreign country that take hours and hours to get to. There’s lots of great things happening down there, yes, but it just can be a bit much to handle. That is why you should go this weekend for the Pacific Standard Time Orange County and Long Beach Focus Weekend!

If you are familiar with the Focus Weekends, this may not be news to you. However, what may be news to you are some restaurants and other cool places we think you should schedule around your trekking down South. We’ve broken them down by the OC day, the night in between the two days (in case you will just be camping out down there), and the Long Beach day. Be sure to check them out while you are down there!

The Orange County day is Saturday, which will be a full day of art. Starting at 10:30AM and spanning from Chapman University to the Orange County Museum of Art to Laguna Art Museum, there are five (well, six) participating shows, which you can travel by bus to (thank you South Coast Plaza for donating them!!). Continue reading →

You don’t really think of Los Angeles as a hub for experimental music and noise rock, do you? Well, sure, you could call Health, No Age, and Black Flag two big bands in that field coming from Los Angeles, but do you know about bands like Smegma? What about Le Forte Four? Extended Organ? Do you know who Tom Recchion is? These people are a part of the “experimental-music” anarchists that are the Los Angeles Free Music Society.

The influential collective has been around for the past forty (plus) years and can be attributed with much of the creation of the West coast experimental music scene. The groups all had great overlap and championed a free form, anti-music-but-music experimentation that was what the LAFMS stood for. This Saturday, as a part of Pacific Standard Time, The Getty is welcoming Extended Organ, Le Forte Four, Smegma, and Tom Recchion to perform.

This event is also a great time to swing by the Getty for a one-two punch of both music and art, as The Getty has some great Pacific Standard Time happenings going on. You have to check out (in between sets, perhaps) Bruce Nauman’s Four Corner Piece, a camera/television installation where you can watch yourself and others…watch yourself; From Start to Finish: De Wain Valentine’s Gray Column, a look at the construction of Valentine’s Gray Column (which is also on display for the first time ever); Greetings from L.A.: Artists and Publics 1945-1980, a comprehensive historical context and tracing of Los Angeles art; and Pacific Standard Time: Crosscurrents In LA Painting And Sculpture, 1950 – 1970, the “thesis” show of sorts for the citywide show. Continue reading →

The housewife is kind of a dated concept. Even the word itself is dated when you think about it, because, well, they don’t exist anymore. In an age where feminism and modernism have collided in (mostly) equal opportunities for all, the “housewife” is now just wife and terms like “househusband” are now a thing: the times have changed. Back then, though? Not so much. Artist Barbara T. Smith had something to say about it, which resulted in her 1981 performance of Birthdaze at Santa Monica’s Tortue Gallery, the subject of Pacific Standard Time’s The Radicalization Of A ‘50s Housewife exhibit.

Up at University Art Gallery on UCI’s campus, the show explores Birthdaze and Barbara T. Smith as a moment in California performance art and feminism that is most important because, well, no one else had done anything as vulnerable and personal as she had. Of course, this period in Los Angeles was a heyday of performance art and, most notably, female performance art. As we’ve spoken about with Three Weeks In May and Doin’ It In Public, two other Pacific Standard Time shows centered around feminism, art, and performance art, Birthdaze is unique in that it is a somewhat autobiographical performance piece that breaks down Smith’s life into three roles (“housewife, rebel, spiritualist”).

These roles are essentially what trapped her, freed her, and brought her where she is today. Birthdaze was performed on her fiftieth birthday, a significant birthday for anyone. Smith describes the performance as such:

“The performance was structured in three parts: Continue reading →

So, your family is coming to town or is already in town and you didn’t plan anything for them to do. You planned a wonderful Thanksgiving meal and you already took them to the Auto Show and everyone is on a tight budget and has something to complain about and excuses, excuses, excuses. Well, one thing you must do is take everyone to an art museum, to get them culturally preoccupied, quiet for a few hours, and knowing just how much taste you have. We’ve selected five great exhibits that are affordable and geared toward “certain family members.”

FOR EVERYONE IN YOUR FAMILY TO UNDERSTAND: Proof at Norton Simon Museum
Proof: The Rise of Printmaking In Southern California is something the whole family can enjoy and, better yet, not be intimidated by. On view at Pasadena’s beautiful Norton Simon Museum, the show details LA’s Tamarind Lithography Workshop in the 1960s, which aimed to create “a pool of master artisan-printers.” The show features works by powerhouse familiar artists like Ed Ruscha, Robert Rauschenberg, John Altoon, Louise Nevelson, and many others. After the show, take them around Colorado Blvd for some shopping and a bite at Intelligentsia, perhaps.

FOR YOUR RICH RELATIVE YOU WANT TO GIVE YOU MONEY: Eames Designs at A+D and Indoor Ecologies at Eames House Foundation
If there’s one thing most of us all need this time of year, it’s a little more $$$$ in our pockets. And, if there is one thing we all definitely need every day of our lives, it’s Eames furniture and designs in our houses/apartments/residences. Continue reading →