Los Angeles Filmforum at MOCA presents
Danny Lyon: Wanderer
Thursday, January 16, 2020, 7:00pm
At MOCA Ahmanson Auditorium, 250 S. Grand Ave., Los Angeles
LA premieres!
Q&A with Danny Lyon by Skype (schedule permitting)
Filmforum at MOCA hosts the Los Angeles premieres of two films by renowned photographer and filmmaker Danny Lyon, followed by a conversation with Lyon by Skype. The evening is highlighted by the Los Angeles premieres of two more recent works. Both Nothing and Wanderer draw on spaces, objects, lives, and passings in the American Southwest, where Lyon lives. Nothing opens with a group viewing an annular solar eclipse, where the resulting “ring of fire” defines a circle in the sky, but shifts to austere observations of things passed and left behind – metal fragments, toys, and a grave. Wanderer sees Lyon revisiting members of the Sanchez and Jaramillo families, whom he has filmed and photographed going back to the 1970s. It most notably follows up his feature film Willie, as we learn the fate of Willie, Ferny, and others, of people living in and out of prison and poverty, with violence often lurking. We’ll precede these with Lyon’s older film Dear Mark, a portrait of sculptor Mark di Suvero, at a time where his monumental work “Declaration” on Venice Beach since 2001, will soon be dismantled and relocated unless the city or a patron choose to purchase it.
Danny Lyon was born in 1942 in Brooklyn, New York. He is an American photographer, writer, and filmmaker. All of Lyon’s publications work in the style of photographic New Journalism. He is the founding member of the publishing group Bleak Beauty. After being accepted as the photographer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) Lyon was present at almost all of the major historical events during the Civil Rights Movement. Lyon’s films and videos include Los Niños Abandonados , Born to Film , Willie , and Murderers . He has recently published Burn Zone, The Story of Sam, and the non-fiction book Like a Thief’s Dream.
Lyon recently completed Wanderer, the sequel to his film Willie. The first comprehensive retrospective of his career – Danny Lyon: Message to the Future – premiered at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, exhibited at the De Young in San Francisco, and at C/O Berlin. His latest publication is Burn Zone, an attack on climate change deniers.
He has had solo exhibits at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Menil Collection, the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum in San Francisco, and the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona. Lyon twice received a Guggenheim Fellowship, as well as a Rockefeller Fellowship, the Missouri Honor Medal for Distinguished Service in Journalism, and a Lucie Award. http://bleakbeauty.com
Tickets: : $15 general; $10 for seniors; $8 for students with ID; free for Filmforum and MOCA members. Available in advance from Brown Paper Tickets at https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/4476271 or at the door
For more information: https://www.moca.org/program/los-angeles-filmforum-at-moca-presents-danny-lyon
, www.lafilmforum.org or 323-377-7238, or education@moca.org
Screening:
Dear Mark
1981, New York & France, 16mm transferred to digital and restored, color & b&w, sound, 15 min.
“A comedy in whcih the artist’s voice has been replaced by Gene Autry’s”
Trailer: https://vimeo.com/226199193
Lyon’s homage to his friend, sculptor Mark di Suvero, from footage shot in 1965 and 1975.
“DEAR MARK centers on the erection of an heroic, skeletal abstract sculpture by Mark di Suvero in Paris. It is Dadaistic light comedy, with its Gene Autry sound track, its interjection of Roman busts and medieval armor, and close-ups that emphasize the sculpture’s pelvic attributes alternating with scenes of a couple lying on the grass… a distinct movie charged with vitalism” – Thomas Albright, San Francisco Chronicle
“. . the ‘heroic’ image of the artist at work is ironically undercut by the soundtrack of a Gene Autry radio episode in which that cowboy ‘hero’ smokes out illegal Mexican aliens.”
Pamela Allara, Pictures From Films/Films From Pictures
Nothing
2012, digital, color, sound, 9:50
Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYpcG5twSCM
Los Angeles premiere!
An existential look at himself, the nature of his work and the vast emptiness of his home, the American South West.
Wanderer
2017, digital, color & b&w, sound, 48:15
Los Angeles premiere!
Wanderer is the fourth in a series of films that began in 1971. It takes place in the town of Bernalillo, New Mexico, and updates the stories of members of the Sanchez and Jaramillo families, many of whom have also been photographed by Lyon over the decades.
In 2016 Lyon returned to Bernalillo to make a film. Using a small digital video camera that weighed a pound, he re-visited the Jaramillo family, focusing on Willie’s little brother Ferney, his sister Gloria, and his niece Janice. A neighbor, Dennis Baca lights the candles at the Lady of Sorrows Cemetery where Willie and Johnnie Sanchez are buried. Lyon’s dog Trip, an Australian Shepard appears alone, wandering through a gigantic auto junk yard, swimming the San Juan River, and eventually arriving at the New Mexico State Fair. Ferny and Dennis meet there, and as the carny photographer makes their portrait she asks “Are you two brothers?” Wanderer, done in the age of global warming, is a dark portrait of a small town done in a desert that is eternal.
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Los Angeles Filmforum at MOCA furthers MOCA’s mission to question and adapt to the changing definitions of art and to care for the urgency of contemporary expression with bimonthly screenings of film and video organized and co-presented by Los Angeles Filmforum—the city’s longest-running organization dedicated to weekly screenings of experimental film, video, documentary, and animation.
Education Programs at MOCA, including Contemporary Art Start and Sunday Studio, and the MOCA Teen Program, are generously supported by The Hearst Foundations, Banc of California, MOCA Projects Council, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Arts Commission, City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, The Capital Group Companies Charitable Foundation, Edison International, Joseph Drown Foundation, The Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Foundation, Satterberg Foundation, Dwight Stuart Youth Fund, Michael Asher Foundation, The Kenneth T. and Eileen L. Norris Foundation, The Rhonda S. Zinner Foundation, The Winnick Family Foundation, and Pazia Bermudez-Silverman.
For more on Los Angeles Filmforum, visit lafilmforum.org, or email lafilmforum@yahoo.com.
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Los Angeles Filmforum is the city’s longest-running organization dedicated to weekly screenings of experimental film, documentaries, video art, and experimental animation. 2020 is our 45th year.
Coming Soon to Los Angeles Filmforum:
Jan 12, 2020 – The 57th Ann Arbor Film Festival Touring Program #1
Jan 16, 2020 – Los Angeles Filmforum at MOCA presents Danny Lyon: Wanderer
Jan 19, 2020 – Highlights from the Oberhausen Film Festival
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