The first conspiracy theory I got swept up in had to do with a movie that a few of us caught on television in eighth grade. After the summer of 1968, it felt like big changes were afoot. The movie that captured our imaginations was the story of a pandemic that caused...
The Feel-Good Pandemic
SCARLET’S SCREENINGS Summer Film Picks
A slew of movies has been pent up during the pandemic, either from delayed productions or distribution plans, or both. Now the floodgates are opening, and some of the films are very good. In this new column, I’m going to make recommendations for your movie-viewing...
Hungarian Rhapsodies Bunker Vision
Early success in any of the arts comes with a certain peril. This is especially true for artists whose art is rebelling against something like an authoritarian government. Filmmakers tend to require a lot of resources, so they are especially prone to censorship by...
PICK OF THE WEEK: Sophia Stevenson Roski School of Art and Design
Love lingers in memories of past embraces, in y(our) shared moments of agony and affection. The pains of past love form bruises–tender and swollen kinks that excite and sting. Sophia Stevenson’s MFA thesis exhibition is personal, as is our relationship (she is a...
The Digital Mob Bunker Vision
It’s a familiar story these days: somebody is killed in broad daylight in front of witnesses. After the lawyers (and judges) perform their machinations, the killer walks. A new round of comments and editorials appear about how there are two justice systems. The...
Leila Weefur’s Hymns for Other Voices Uncomfortable Questions
Explorations of gender identity are central to the work of Oakland-based artist and curator Leila Weefur, how they felt that their identity was suppressed by belonging to the Christian Church is at the crux of their latest project, “Prey†Play.” Presented in two...
TALLY HO! Bunker Vision
A friend who made his name in the world of queer underground theater often quipped that “Film is forever.” When he landed a featured role in a late Paul Morrissey film, he was confident that something he had done would outlast him. That film turned 40 years old last...
Top Films of 2021
What a year, and what a year for films—many of them delayed in production or distribution due to COVID, but roaring back as the theaters reopened. Below is my list of top theatrically released films of 2021; films I have had a chance to see thus far. I’m struck by how...
Shoptalk: LA Art News New Director at MOCA, Academy Museum reopens, and more.
MOCA Madness Good news, the art world is revving up! We have art fairs taking place In Real Life, galleries setting regular opening hours and museums flinging open their doors. Of course, we’re not completely out of the COVID woods—many venues require proof of vax...
Before Bechdel Bunker Vision
If you are interviewing somebody who gets interviewed a lot, and they compliment you on the quality of your questions, you are probably doing something right. This happened on multiple occasions to Delphine Seyrig during her 1981 documentary Be Pretty and Shut Up!...
Matt Warren Makes Movie Posters For Your Consideration
As any Angeleno knows, every awards season, from about September - February Hollywood studios buy up billboards to promote their films as award-worthy works of art; it’s like LA’s version of leaves changing color in Fall. Unlike normal ads for new releases, each of...
GALLERY ROUNDS: Lygia Pape Hauser & Wirth, Los Angeles
Red is the color of extremes, especially the Cadmium Red Deep of Lygia Pape’s posthumous show “Tupinambá” up at Hauser & Wirth, Los Angeles. The same red as both Valentine’s Day ornamentation and oxidized blood—red represents birth, seduction, war, death and a...
Back in the U.S.S.R. Bunker Vision
If you’re under 40 years old, it might be hard to understand the passion some boomers have about the evils of socialism. Scandinavia seems like a cool place to live. For all of its socialism, Cuba has a higher life expectancy than the United States, and even attracts...
Jennifer West
Fragmentary castoffs and debris from the LA River texturize Jennifer West's current show, "Future Forgetting," whose title was inspired by Norman Klein's 1997 book The History of Forgetting: Los Angeles and the Erasure of Memory, a treatise on how Los Angeles...
FILM: Haunted Screens at Lacma
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art continues to set a high bar for film exhibitions with their latest, “Haunted Screens: German Cinema in the 1920s.” The striking exhibition design by architects Amy Murphy and Michael Maltzan has it “interrupted” by three...
Victoria Fu
A special place exists within those fleeting moments transitioning from slumber into an awakened state. In those few seconds when dreamscape combines with reality, both a mild confusion and an eerie comfort sets in. Our mind sifts, sorts and makes sense of what is...
Christine Lang and Constanze Ruhm
German filmmakers Christine Lang and Constanze Ruhm have thrown movie-making ingredients intelligently into a blender. After 15 minutes of imbibing this concoction, questions as to whether your taste agrees with it, and a curiosity about what specific elements are in...
FILM: SECOND ACTS
While sagas of personal transformation are a staple of recent nonfiction filmmaking—from U.N. peacekeeper Roméo Dallaire’s inexorable drift into despair (and back) in the CBC’s Rwanda documentary Shake Hands With the Devil, to crack-mom Kirk White’s unexpected ascent...