April 6-13: Heinz Emigholz: Photography and Beyond

April 6 and April 13, 2008, 7:00 pm

At the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood

Los Angeles Filmforum presents
Heinz Emigholz: Photography and Beyond

Filmforum is hosting the Opening Night and Closing Night screenings of a Week-Long City-Wide Screening Series with Emigholz in Person

For the past 15 years, the idiosyncratic Berlin filmmaker Heinz Emigholz has created a series of films documenting the work of certain 20th-century architects for whom he feels a special affinity. For the first time, five different venues in Los Angeles are joining together to present a week of events centered around this remarkable filmmaker and his Photography and Beyond series. Over the week, nine films from Photography and Beyond will be screened with Emigholz in attendance at Los Angeles Filmforum at the Egyptian Theatre, REDCAT, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the UCLA Film & Television Archive. Emigholz will also be featured in conversation with filmmaker and teacher Thom Andersen and architect, author and Schindler expert Judith Sheine at the MAK Center for Art and Architecture. Tonight we’ll be screening three earlier films from the series: Basis of Make-Up II, Miscellanea I, and Miscellanea II.

Since 1984, Emigholz has been working on the acclaimed series, Photography and Beyond, which consists of formally rigorous, revelatory films that examine artistic creativity – in particular the work of architects. It is a series of twenty-five films about art and design – “projections” that become visible as writings, drawings, photography, architecture and sculpture. In these films, Emigholz states, he “look[s] at architectural spaces that I believe have been sorely neglected by ‘architectural history’.” What attracts him particularly is the complex organization of interior spaces and the spatial relations between a building and its immediate surroundings.

The films presented in the Los Angeles film series trace a history of direct influences: Rudolph M. Schindler (1887–1953) studied with Adolf Loos, who was influenced by Louis H. Sullivan. Emigholz’s cinematic “archives” of these architects’ existing buildings, with minimal commentary, provide a rare opportunity for careful contemplation and study of the space, light, and materials of architecture. “I believe that everyone perceives space differently and that art and structure arise out of the perception of these nuances,” Emigholz says. “The world reveals itself to us, and we show each other the world—not just different facets, but our different views. During peacetime, this is an endless process that deserves to be loved.”

[Notes expanded from a text by Kathy Geritz, Pacific Film Archive].

Coordinated by Adam Hyman, Executive Director, Los Angeles Filmforum, the Heinz Emigholz screening series takes place in Los Angeles April 6-13, 2008, at the following venues: Los Angeles Filmforum (April 6 & April 13), REDCAT (April 7) LACMA (April 10), MAK Center (April 11) and UCLA Film & Television Archive (April 12). This series represents an unprecedented cooperation among leading alternative venues in this dispersed city, allowing filmgoers to attend events wherever it is convenient.

Program made possible with the support of the Austrian Consulate General Los Angeles:

Born in 1948 near Bremen, Heinz Emigholz studied drawing in Hamburg. Since 1973, he has worked as a freelance filmmaker, artist, cameraman, actor, author, publisher and producer in Germany and the United States. He has published a number of books, given lectures and has had many exhibitions and retrospectives. In 1974 he started working on the encyclopedic drawing series The Basis of Make-up. In 1978, he founded his own production company, Pym Films. Since 1993, he has been teaching experimental film directing at the Berlin College of Arts. His most recent film, Loos Ornamental, premiered at the Berlinale in February 2008. A major exhibition of his series The Basis of Make-Up recently appeared at the Hamburger Bahnhof, Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin, Germany, from December 2007 to February 2008. Complete details on his art and films can be found here.

April 6 show at Filmforum (full details)

April 13 show at Filmforum (full details)

Information on non-Filmforum shows in this series: REDCAT, LACMA, MAK CENTER, and UCLA FILM AND TELEVISION ARCHIVE.

FOR MORE ON THE OTHER SCREENINGS IN THE HEINZ EMIGHOLZ PHOTOGRAPHY AND BEYOND FILM SERIES, CLICK “KEEP READING” BELOW.

Mon Apr 7 – REDCAT – 8 pm

Schindler’s Houses (Photography and Beyond 12) (Germany, 2007, 99 min., 35mm, color)
West Coast premiere
THIS SCREENING IS ALREADY SOLD OUT. Schindler’s Houses is screening again on April 12 at the UCLA Film & Television Archive. See below.

Jack H. Skirball Screening Series

This encounter with the “space architecture” of fellow maverick Rudolph Schindler (1887–1953), who practiced in Los Angeles from 1922 to 1953, seems not only natural but almost inevitable, and Schindler’s Houses has become the most popular of Emigholz’s architecture films, even as his rejection of all the clichés and conventions of architectural photography has sparked controversy. Schindler’s Houses is also a witty and incisive portrait of Los Angeles, perhaps the best documentary about the city ever made.

“Schindler’s Houses” shows forty buildings by the Austro-American architect Rudolph Schindler from the years 1931 to 1952. Schindler’s pioneering work in Southern California is the cornerstone of “California stye” residential architecture. All the material for the film was shot in May 2006. The film is thus also an up-to-date portrait of urban life in Los Angeles that has never been documented in this form before. More on the film at http://www.rudolph-schindler-film.com/

”Architecture projects space into this world. Cinemaphotography translates that space into pictures projected in time. Cinema then is used in a completely new way: as a space to meditate on buildings.“ —
–Heinz Emigholz
REDCAT is located in downtown Los Angeles at the corner of W. 2nd St. and S. Hope St., inside the Walt Disney Concert Hall complex.

Tickets are $9 for the general public, $7 for students with valid ID. Tickets may be purchased by calling 213.237.2800 or at http://www.redcat.org or in person at the REDCAT Box Office on the corner of 2nd and Hope Streets (30 minutes free parking with validation).
The Jack H. Skirball Screening Series is curated by Steve Anker and Bérénice Reynaud

Thursday April 10 – LACMA – 7:30 pm

Los Angeles Premiere
Goff in The Desert (Photography and Beyond 7) (2002/03, 35mm, color, 110 min.)
A look at the work of Kansas-born architect Bruce Goff, who used brick, wood, glass, and stone to create surprising patterns and take buildings in radical directions. The film shows 62 buildings – from small petrol stations to representative museums – designed by the American architect Bruce Goff (1904-1982). As such, it is the first comprehensive filmic catalogue of nearly all his surviving creations. Bruce Goff is the great unknown of an original American form of architecture. His constructions and designs run contrary to the ideals of the by contrast well-known International Style movement. Bruce Goff’s work sparked legendary controversies during his lifetime. Nearly all his buildings stood like a shock in the landscape, paving the way for new, as yet unimaginable avenues in architecture. Includes the Japanese Pavilion at LACMA. More on the film at http://www.bruce-goff-film.com/en/english.html

Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Leo S. Bing Theatre, 5905 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90036
Admission to the screening is FREE, but tickets are required and can be picked up at the box office from noon on the day of the screening. Information: (323) 857-6010

Friday, April 11 – MAK Center – 7:00 pm

Reception for Heinz Emigholz at R.M. Schindler’s landmark Kings Road House/Studio (1921- 22). The evening will include a conversation between Heinz Emigholz, noted experimental filmmaker Thom Andersen, and architect, author and Schindler expert Judith Sheine. In addition to enjoying the exchange between Emigholz, Andersen, and Sheine, visitors will be able to tour the house and grounds of Schindler’s signature creation.

MAK Center for Art and Architecture
The Schindler House, 835 North Kings Road, West Hollywood CA 90069, 323-651-1510
Open to the public, $7 admission, free for Friends of the Schindler House

Saturday April 12 – UCLA Film & Television Archive – 7:00 pm
North American Premiere
Loos Ornamental (Photography and Beyond 13) (2008, 35mm, color, 72 min.)

Emigholz’s latest film meticulously reveals the architecture of a pioneer of European Modernism, Adolf Loos (1870–1933). A mentor to both Schindler and Richard Neutra, Loos helped launch modern architecture with his foundational text decrying decorative building, fittingly titled Ornament and Crime, in 1908. Loos Ornamental shows 28 still-existing buildings and interiors by the Viennese architect in the order of their construction. Loos’s vehement turn against ornamentation on buildings triggered a controversy in architectural theory while the “spatial plan” he developed launched a new way of thinking about built space. His houses, furniture for shops and apartments, facades, and monuments were built between 1899 and 1931. They were filmed in 2006 in Vienna, Lower Austria, Prague, Brno, Pilsen, Nachod, and Paris. More on the film here.

Saturday April 12 – UCLA Film & Television Archive – 8:45 pm (Separate admission)
Schindler’s Houses (Photography and Beyond 12) (2007, 35mm, color, 99 min.)
Emigholz depicts 40 buildings by architect Rudolph Schindler, revealing Schindler’s singular vision, his acute attention to spatial relations and to the natural environment, and his captivating and idiosyncratic architectural vocabulary. For full film notes, see April 7 above.

UCLA Film & Television Archive
Billy Wilder Theater, located on the courtyard level of the Hammer Museum, 10899 Wilshire Blvd., at the northeast corner of the intersection of Wilshire and Westwood Blvds., just east of the 405.
$9 general; $8 Cineclub members/students/seniors; $7 Cineclub members who are seniors/students. $10 advance tickets; purchase online at http://www.cinema.ucla.edu. Separate admission for each show.
Parking: $3 in the lot under the theater. Enter from Westwood Blvd., just north of Wilshire