Kategorie: Hier kommt alles rein!

Walking down Kottbusser Damm direction Andec (the one and only Super 8 processor in my neighborhood!) to bring them my last exposed film rolls (Californian desert inside 😉 I realize I’m transparent! I look into people’s eyes and they don’t look back! Is it the creeping autumn cold that’s coming too soon this year or is it in our collective Berlin genes? Has LA spoiled me? Did I wander around over there with my mood so high that they couldn’t help but HAD to smile back and normally they’d ignore me?
Who cares. I try to sustain my wabisabish state and the laidbackness I brought with me over the seven seas. LA was therapy!

Lisa, Paolo and Dagie say goodnite, farewell, super8 forever, love and take care to all friends and readers!

I had a strange dream last night and I think it was in black & white: I was driving an oldfashioned car, a convertible, along a dusty straight empty road. The image was like from a time a hundred years ago. I could see all the way straight to the horizon. And then the name came into my mind: La Cienega.

Hahaa! Maybe I was here before 🙂

I am packing my things and fly home to Berlin. But I’ll be back, I know.

 

Apart From That … is a film that was shown today in the Film Center. It kind of blew me away. I can’t really express why, but it was one of the best I’ve ever seen. Different threads, everybody lost and a little lonely and wacky. It felt so real. Good actors, were they actors? I need another drink … break … sick America? No home? Who loves me? Good soundtrack, mannomann, respect! Go try to see it somewhere.
Good night – see the moon?!

 

Shauna celebrated her 25th birthday at the Film Center tonight, small intimate private party.
Good luck, dear, with everything!
On my way there, psst, yummy secret: every (?) night on Alvarado in front of the VONS parking lot: The Tacobus!!

 

The last week of my residency in the Echo Park Film Center has begun … I enjoy every single day, no other than the 4 weeks before. The classes are over, I’m still finishing some short films (I love riding the bus! One film will be called „704“ about my favourite bus from Echo Park direct to Santa Monica Beach. I admire the drivers, did I mention this? Today we got stuck in a traffic jam and crept reeeealy slow. But the driver stayed cool and friendly and announced the next stations (normally a tape is running) plus extra information about connecting buses and a good afternoon & take care to all leaving passengers.  I loved that guy!

Normally I don’t really like tourist attraction but Santa Monica Pier is different. Well, you can of course have your name written on a rice grain and buy t-shirts and ice cream and lose it to the brave seagulls …

… but you also encounter … music. I took a break there at the very end of the pier and listened to the guitar player. Even felt like buying a CD – support your local musicians – and had a nice chat with him about the unbeatable weather and good places for musicians. His name is Stephen Wild.

Back in Echo Park my feet got itchy and whispered: „we need cowboy boots! Now!“ So I stumbled across „American Vintage“ on 1707 Sunset. And I found a pair! I tried them on and they were just perfect. They found me.

Next whisperer (stomach) signaled: hungry! I found a little quesadilla stand on the street (Sunset / Echo Park Ave) run by two women and their children. Delicious! They prepare quesadillas in their pans and you can add anything you like (cactus pieces!). I very much recommend them. One quesadilla 3 $.

Good night everybody and sunny vibes!!!!

Find the (horizontally flipped) 6!

 

I had my film screening at the Echoparkfilmcenter tonight! Showed some old short films (happy 20th anniversary, Barbie Dolls!), some fresh ones edited only yesterday on Super 8, and my brand new 32 minutes long Ode To June which I finished in Berlin before I came here (world premiere!!).
There was a quiet moment when we set up the room, the projector, the food & drinks … and while we did so we listened to Mr Obamas speech as the probable new president live on the radio … which was interesting for me as a foreigner … he promised a lot of things like the chance of good education for all and solar and other renewable energy … good luck and keep your promises!!!

And by the way thank you dear audience for singing with me and Paolo & Lisa the Palm Tree Song Line film!!!!! Great performance! There’s music in the city …I’ll be back.

 

A Super 8 film cassette contains 15 m of film. 50 feet. At the end of a roll the very last images sometimes fade away when being processed. And that’s what I love: pure beauty accidents 🙂

 

It is so incredible … once you started to give attention to things lying on the ground they start to … appear … 

Paolo offers this workshop a couple of times a year and this time he asked me to participate as teacher (for 10 adults): the 5 hours marathon of the history of super 8, learning camera, techniques and tricks, first steps with colour and black-and-white film shooting outside (in the park again!), processing two rolls in the cellar lab (one like pirate punk processing in buckets, one in a russian tank) and then projecting! The product was extraordinary: looked like ancient old film, scratches and dust here and there, some parts underdeveloped/negative (where film parts stuck together and the chemicals couldn’t really react)
– all in all: great special workshop! Beautiful piece of art!!

And by the way: The Sunset Junction Street Festival sucks.I asked some people at the bus station (I wanted to go there after the workshop) because I saw they had not only a blue wristband (like me) but a second pink one. Yes, second day another 20 $. That’s too much, die haben ja den Arsch offen we Germans would say 😉   

It’s Sunset Junction Street Festival. Today and tomorrow. In Silverlake. As they say: THE BIGGEST CELEBRATION OF DIVERSITY, WITH THREE ON GOING STAGES, GAMES & RIDES, ARTS & FOOD AND NON-PROFIT OUTREACH. It used to be free in the beginning, now you have to pay 20 $ entrance fee and the locals are quite pissed.Whatever … I payed, got a blue wristband, wandered around, got a sunburn, had some delicious strawberry lemonade, discovered the spookiest merry-go-round I’ve ever seen, quite old though, but more like a squeetching queeky rattling horror-go-round-shaker.

There were 3 stages, all different sorts of bands, stumbled into a soulish-bluesy southern jazz band with an amazing guitarplayer and singer, old and black with fancy violet pants and a genius on his guitar, must have been Arthur Adams I found out later.

And then, sunset on Sunset, expensive beer in my hand (I KNEW it would happen: they asked me for my ID to prove that I was older than 21 heeeehaaahaaaaaaaahoohooo and then I got a BEER stamp on my arm that allowed me to buy a beer ticket that allowed me to buy beer) … er … one of my favourite bands: BROKEN SOCIAL SCENE! Mmh, great. Bearded Canadians (mostly) with fire in their hearts. I love them.

Oh, before sunset, I almost forgot: It’s not only sunny but also shady and there was killerradio on Sanborn inviting me for some chatting and food on the front porch (this one is for Khani) and Paul and I talked about Fahrvergnuegen and inspiration and the things that I take home from here. Colors! Laidbackness!

Later the evening after Broken Social Scene I took the 4 bus home to Echo Park, I stepped inside and someone said, watch out, vomit on the ground! And the bus driver, realizing it, said: aaaaalllll out! Have to stop the bus! Take the next! … which was just coming, luckily.One good night beer in the Machine Project gallery next to the Film Center who celebrated the opening of BLACK CLOUD CITIZEN SCIENTIST LEAGUE … sensor boxes, universes in boxes designed by children/students, a pollution monster … something mysterious about a black cloud that wouldn’t move. Have to check it out a little closer next time I’m there ….

It was just a little meeting … an intimate party, a lovely celebration of the students, Paolo & Lisa of the Film Center, me, 2 mothers 🙂 and a tiny bunch of film friends and neighbors. We watched all the films they / we made during the last 2 weeks (what a short time!!) and then we watched them all over again … I am glad and a little sad 😉 and very proud of them and the wabi sabi in Super 8 that is almost unexplainable but they all understood and felt it and worked with it. The special personal beautiful spirit that separates Super 8 from video. The subtle beauty that exists in the imperfect, in every day things. They got it.  Carla making a backwards bow and the fly on the lens is crawling in the same direction simultaneously!! 

Hooo, I’m quite late … I wanted to tell you about yesterday evening … There was an exciting film show at the Film Center, Best of The Attack of the 50 Foot Reel – Super 8 films entirely edited in camera, 3 minutes long, the subject was documentary. Saw some amazing films about a cat living on the Empire State Building, men dedicated to trains, animals under a microscope, ducks designing fancy dresses, and many more … Check them out!! 

Funny, the more I walk, the more beautiful things I find lying on the ground …     

Super 8 Workshop Day 5: We watched the films that my students made at home over the weekend … oh! Whow! Great! So beautiful to see!
And then we made music. A spontaneous soundtrack for the park animation film from Monday. And for more … because once we started we couldn’t really stop … music flow, you know 😉 (make a sound sample later and put it on my blog).

Paolo and I rushed to Venice Beach then, to the Dudley 7 Cinema at Sponto Gallery to show some of my films. Some short ones and then my very very new 32 min long „Ode to June“ … it was fun to show it there (I only showed it to the kids before as a world premiere 🙂 ) – not many people, rather my age, I think they enjoyed it … and we had some good discussions after the film. About cats, America, experimental films, influences, music …

And it was also weird because when I first came to Los Angeles in March 2004 with Khani starting our south states trip we wanted to spend our first night close to the ocean and found a quite cheap hotel on the internet – the Cadillac Hotel just opposite the Sponto. So we had our first American beers in the evening breeze at the open window and watched people go in and out the Sponto with no idea what that place could be. Full circle. Here I am 4 years later presenting my films there … Thank you Jerry for inviting me.

I keep telling my students to walk around with antennas up … to see things that you’d normally not give attention to. So do I if I have the time and here & now I have: just walked down the street to buy milk and water I looked up and found balloons, I looked down and found a Y. Hello Sesame Street ;-D

I just saw the freshly renovated black and white film THE EXILES from Kent Mackenzie from 1961 –  www.exilesfilm.com – a documentary about „one night in the lives of young Native American men and women living in the Bunker Hill district of Los Angeles.“
„Bunker Hill, where most of THE EXILES is set, was once the glory of downtown L.A. – a haven for wealthy Los Angelenos set on a steep hill with a magnificent view. But by 1960, the area was a run-down neighborhood of decayed Victorian mansions and skid-row apartment buildings. The seedy charms of Bunker Hill have been celebrated in the novels of John Fante, Raymond Chandler and Charles Bukowski. For the men and women featured in THE EXILES, the neighborhood is an escape from the monotony of life „back home.“ The guys spend their night barhopping and gambling while the women try to hold their homes together and go to the movies to dream.“

parking lot under the cinema

My friend and neighbor Frauke sent me a picture that she and another neighbor, Renè, took: it’s on the roof of our house – the falcons (?) are coming into the city! Hello wildlife!!

PS: Frauke found out it’s not a falcon but a Habicht, a hawk (Accipter gentilis) im Jugendkleid (diesjährig) / juvenile plumage, born this year.