December 14 – Susan Mogul’s Driving Men Return Engagement

Sunday December 14, 2008, 7:00 pm

At the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood

Los Angeles Filmforum presents
Susan Mogul’s Driving Men
Susan Mogul in attendance!

NEWLY POSTED:

The screening of Susan Mogul’s “Driving Men” on Sunday is fully booked
(overbooked, actually) just by reservations. We won’t be able to take
any more reservations. If you choose to come without a reservation,
in case there are no shows, please be aware that you may very well not
get in.

If you do have a reservation, please arrive by 6:45 to get your
tickets. We will drop all reservations at 6:45 and sell the available
tickets to those who are present. We will not sell any tickets to
people without reservations until after 6:45. If the line is moving
slowly, we will take care of everyone in the line with reservations
first before selling tickets to anyone without reservations.

Our apologies. We will look into adding another show.  Thank you for your enthusiasm for this great film!

best regards,

Los Angeles Filmforum

Filmforum is delighted to host a return screening of world-renowned video artist Susan Mogul’s latest work Driving Men (2008, 68 min) after our sold out screening in August.

Driving Men, Mogul’s hilarious and heartfelt feature length film, is a multi-layered story that explores universal themes: fathers and daughters, men and women and the choice not to have children; it also strives to become a mirror for others. The world premiere of Driving Men was at the Nyon International Film Festival in Switzerland and screened in the prestigious International Competition.

Sassy, iconoclastic, and never-married, Los Angeles filmmaker Susan Mogul rides shotgun with ex-lovers, almost lovers, and her Dad, in a road movie turned inside out. Conversations with each driving man- a pornographer, tuba player, TV critic, long haul truck driver, and more – are catalysts to reflect upon the past and comment about the present.

The point of departure for her journey is a car accident when Mogul lost her first love in 1969. This tragedy haunts the film. Yet, as this multi-layered story about her relationships unfold, it is clear that Mogul’s loss, at the age of twenty, was the inspiration for her long time love affair with the camera.

Raucous anecdotes about her contentious relationship with Dad, the protagonist, and, her provocative video art from the past, are woven through this episodic and experimental film. The pieces of Mogul’s life accumulate and merge into the tale of a woman who, at the age of 58, comes to terms with her father, and, to her amazement finds love and intimacy in the course of filming Driving Men.

The film features a variety of men who have been prominent in the Los Angeles art and music scenes for many years, including Bill Roper, tuba player extraordinaire; artists Pierre Picot and Barry Markowitz; Eric Martin, retired professor from Calarts; former Los Angeles Times Television critic Howard Rosenberg; and historian David N. Myers.

“Mogul looks at the men in her life, starting with her tragic first love and ending with a road trip with a new boyfriend forty years later. The often funny video tackles sex, desire, loss, family and the twisted threads of identity, as Mogul ponders being single and fifty. As with all her work, though, Driving Men is very much about a woman with a video camera…Mogul does this with insight, humor and a willingness to stand naked-literally and metaphorically – so that rather than merely being a diary, Driving Men is finally about the challenge of crafting a life.” – Holly Willis, LA Weekly

“Brash and funny and sexy and a bit wistfully intense. Mogul’s men, lovers or friends or relatives, are a wild bunch. From the tragically lost Larry, to Ed the porn prince, to Ray, who had met his father in San Quentin and vanished, to Eric, the handsome aloof older man, to the charming blues freak Ron…I loved the collage of Jewish identity and feminism, intellectual ponderings and let-the-chips-fall-where-they-may sexuality. It’s a great way to (not) write a memoir.” – Lucy Lippard, Writer and Activist

December 7 – The Films of Walter Ungerer

Sunday December 7, 2008, 7:00 pm

At the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood

Los Angeles Filmforum presents
The Films of Walter Ungerer
Walter Ungerer in attendance!

Walter Ungerer is a longtime filmmaker and artist of international reputation, beginning with the underground film scene of New York City in the early 1960s, continuing through to his own experimental short films and features in Vermont and Maine. In the 1990s he moved to video in his explorations of light, space and technology. In the last few years Ungerer has begun to use an inexpensive digital still camera to create his projects; today he remains a prominent figure in the experimental media scene.

Despite all of this, Ungerer is still all too little known here on the West Coast. Join us as we catch up with his work from the past decade. Filmforum is delighted to host him on his first visit to LA since 1981, when we screened his film The House Without Steps! This evening will also mark the West Coast premieres of his new newest from 2008:

The Salt Shaker and the Moon (2008, 13 mins)
Inalienable (2008, 7:45 mins) The political climate in the United States and how the public perceives our government is reflected on the bumper stickers that decorate our cars and trucks. The material for this film, stills of bumper stickers, was shot over a two-year period throughout the Northeast, then edited just before the recent national presidential election.
Such as it Is (2007, 11:47 mins) The film is divided into four parts and four themes: the underground; city and glass; field of silkweeds; fog and the ocean. Each theme has its separate identity, yet they are not separate. Much like the essential elements of Ancient Greece, air, earth, fire and water, were joined in the universe, so too, these four themes are unified through computer manipulation and abstraction of imagery.
Syracuse International Film & Video Festival 2007

91 Le Grand (2005, 19 mins) 91 Le Grand is a four months study of the movement of light through a space in Ungerer’s home in Maine. The camera simply records, programmed to take still pictures between intervals of being shut down. More than anything else, it is a meditation in time, space and place.

The Awakening (2002, 9:45 mins) The film parallels the short treatise The Awakening of Faith by Asvaghosha which provides a comprehensive summary of the essentials of Mahayana Buddhism. That treatise discusses the question of how man can transcend his finite state and participate in the life of the infinite while still remaining in the midst of the phenome.

Kingsbury Beach (1996, 6:21 mins) Digital stills and video footage of a child on a beach in Cape Cod, Massachusetts are manipulated and obscured to create a nostalgic atmosphere of remembrances. The Amiga computer has now been replaced by the Macintosh. The editing program is the Media 100.

The Window (1996, 3:13 mins) An interior space is described as a cell of confinement from the outside world. Only a window offers escape. This is an Amiga computer generated film.

WALTER UNGERER:
Ungerer was born in Harlem, New York City in 1935 of German immigrants. He studied art and architecture at Pratt Institute, receiving a BFA degree in 1958. He then went on to Columbia University, where he received an MA and PD in 1964. In 2005 Ungerer received a PhD in Media Arts from Sacramento University. Simultaneously, with his educational studies, Ungerer worked as a freelance cameraperson and editor. He turned to independent personal filmmaking in 1964, after returning from Nigeria, where he was the cinematographer for a television “special”. Between 1964 and 1969 he produced five films: The Tasmanian Devil (1964), Meet Me, Jesus (1966), A Lion’s Tale (1968), Introduction To Oobieland (1969), and Ubi Est Terram Oobiae? (1969). In ‘69 he moved to Vermont and a teaching position at Goddard College. He had been teaching film production at Columbia University. In 1976 he formed Dark Horse Films, Inc. a Montpelier, Vermont non-profit company under which he produced four features: The Animal (1976), The House Without Steps (1979), The Winter There Was Very Little Snow (1982), and Leaving The Harbor (1992).