Dagies Blog

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.

Every Thursday the Echoparkfilmcenter shows a collection of inspiring films.
Today: 20 independent music videos from mostly Canada. www.imvf.com. click!!
I recommend Tricot Machine – a beautiful knitting machine animation film! The song is – uhm – but the animation amazing. Look here!!
And I liked The Masfaldas from Mexico for their freshness! click!!
And the Beangrowers for their animation style. click!!
And the Static of the Gods for the voice and the animated clouds and animals 😉 click!!

Earlier this day. I tried to find the big Goodwill thrift store on Hollywood Blvd. But I got the number wrong. So I landed between Armenia and Thailand. Even better! I walked and walked, got hungry, spied into a window of a small restaurant and saw Thai and Mexican people sitting there and 2 policemen. I can’t go wrong, I thought, went inside and tried the Yellow Curry and the Thai Tea from their special lunch menue. One of the best I ever had! Mmmh!
Thai Patio, 5273 Hollywood Blvd.

Later this night. Paolo and Thea and I wanted a glass of wine to say goodbye to this beautiful night and to one another. We went just around the corner into this old French restaurant (built in the twenties, they told me) that has a kind of lounge for smaller dishes and drinks and live music. The singer sang Summer Time And The Living Is Easy and the day made a perfect circle.

One of the many reasons that I’m here for is giving workshops in (experimental) super 8 film making. Today was the first meeting of my class – 10 people from 13 to 20 years old.I think I was more excited than they were 🙂 and I can say I am sure that we will have a good time together, they are just cool! I have a lot to give and I know that we will produce wonderful films during the 2 weeks sessions!

I walk in the afternoon heat … I look in the sky in the blue and I film things that hang there like sneakers (3 pairs on 3 different wires on one day. Is that some kind of secret sign?) or that simply stand or fly or sit there like lamp posts, signs, birds, moon, planes … I think my next film is going to be called „Blue Sky and Things in it“. 

And then I found a kind of mini comic art fair in a yard on Sunset Paolo told me about. Just some stands with some comic artists behind selling their stuff. I don’t know why exactly that one but I bought a very small booklet called The Monster that ate Stars for 4 $ and I just read it and looked at it at home – simply beautiful. www.southersalazar.net 🙂 

This friendly Souther shared the desk with a woman who gave me a postcard with a mermaid with red hands on it and I just found her on the internet … – her name is Gwenaëlle.

Whow! Great artists!  

 And now the magic hanging sneakers again. What would I do without Wiki? Look here!!

What a date … other people marry or kill themselves … I felt more like making a Super 8 film. 8 seconds long of course. Just in front of the film center – Paolo filmed, I was the actress making that symbolic secret gesture >>> infinity turns to Super 8 <<< with beautiful LA traffic in the background – first coproduction Dagie-Echoparkfilmcenter, hooray!

They hold it 4 times a year. Tonight was like the reopening after summer break, everybody’s welcome to bring their own films and show them. All formats: Super 8, 16 mm, DVD, miniDV … Interesting mix! Where’s the border between private stuff and art, between boredom and give-it-a-chance and fresh beauty. I saw amazing scenes – cool animals in the LA Zoo, oldfashioned girls parading butterflies on leashes, flickering pieces of crispy color portraits on 16 mm, weird taxidermy trailers, snow sliding children … and much more … all embedded in Paolos welcoming way of presenting everybody … and food and drinks! And my Heisenberg-Pasta-Salad … (if you want the recipe, mail me). I enjoyed it. Californians are crazy. Feels like home. I have no fear walking home in the soft summer night. I’m inspired. Tomorrow’s a new day and I’m ready for the next episode.

Only frozen Northeuropeans do that: walk around in the midday heat! I love it! I have to! I walk up and down the steep streets of Echo Park, feeling more and more at home. Familiar. Taking a break to say hello to the Lady of the Lake. Super8filming ducks and fountain water drops. Claiming my surroundings., walking, walking, watching.

Paolo took me for a wonderful bikeride through the city tonight: first stop just around the corner on a roof of a building, full 360 sight of the city – my beloved (musical!) palm tree line to the south, gigantic i-pod-ad to the east, lots of helicopters and some stars above us, downtown lights to the west, and north I don’t know because the band was starting, i-pod-generation unplugged, three guys/girls with weird electronic instruments (one we detected as an asian kind of tiny harp with metal tongues), inviting the audience to join and to touch stones and to move them over magical mysteries (like Theremin!), synapses connected, touching hands, feeling vibes, producing music. Very beautiful and melodic! Short and selfconscious. Their name is The Lucky Dragon.
What a ride in a warm night! Speeding down almost traffic-empty streets, heading Chinatown, ending up in a small club in the middle of small Chinatownroads smelling yummy fish from the day before (correct me Paolo if I get anything wrong:-) and finding ourselves there together with a quiet audience listening to a young singer with a banjo, dressed in an unfavorable scottish kilt, but good voice! What an unbeatible courage! Then came a solo drummer who drummed solo on his kit, he looked like Joerg Heitmann in his younger age but that image comes from organic beer that Paolo bought in a chinese shop just before the gig so I close down this blog for the night and leave you all with a heart full of warmth and variety.Love, Dagie   

now finally i got a computer at home and i am going to update my LA-blog every day, promised!My youth class workshop starts on Monday so I have plenty of time to stroll around my new neighborhood – Echo Park – and I already found mysterious things hidden in the sight of those tall palm trees that are so typical for LA and that I love so much … more info later, I can only say now, watch out for my new movie called „the palm tree song line“!!

sorry for the delay :-)I landed!I had quite an interesting trip, 24 hours on the clouds, from Berlin to Los Angeles via Newark where we could not land because of bad weather condition so we made some funny circles around montreal only to hear 1 hour later that we had to land in syracuse, ny. Oh not to forget … the lung-man-story! There was an elder man seated in the row next to me who started to make funny noises shortly after take-off. The stewardess came to see whats happening and he asked for oxygene but he was denied „they are not allowed to give him his needed oxygene-bottle once in the air“ – o god i thought, please no emergency landing in glasgow now, i must go to la!! And then they asked, like they do in the movies:“is there a doctor on the plane specialized in lung problems?“ And like in the movies – there was. Long story, short typing: the man got his oxygen, everyone was smiling and i thought i love people, i love sky, i love earth.

Hi friends!
I’m packing my things, burning my films – read me again next week in the city of angels 🙂
l o v e
Dagie