Sam Slovick made this 2008 documentary on skid row in downtown Los Angeles. The area is home to approximately 9,000 homeless people who deal with life on the streets, drugs, crime and serious physical and mental health issues. The film was made just prior to the massive economic collapse of 2008 when the numbers of homeless began to rapidly increase.
Parts 3 through 5 follow the jump.
I went down to the demonstration to make a film. I liked the people there. They were very focused and happy. They were talking, explaining, arguing, educating, dancing, singing, playing, making signs, painting, photographing. Some of them made speeches at the microphone. Some read poems. There were lots of cameras.
The music and words in this film are by Tom Morello (http://nightwatchmanmusic.com), former Rage Against the Machine guitarist. He sings his own ‘Maximum Firepower’ and Woody Guthrie’s ‘This Land is Your Land.’
The mood at City Hall was high energy and cheerful. The underlying anger and frustration of the movement seemed to be moving through a positive channel. It was exciting but also comfortable there because of the people and their open attitudes.
The Los Angeles police headquarters is directly across the street from the protest grounds. That’s where I began shooting my film – right into the windows of police headquarters. Several squad cars drove up First Street, but there was not a single cop anywhere near the protest area. The crowd is organized and respectful, but also very serious about its messages which are various and multifaceted.
The city has taken a protective stance over its protesters. I’m very proud of Los Angeles for this.
Occupy Los Angeles is one of the spreading protests coming out of the Occupy Wall Street protest in New York. Hopefully, the incredible momentum of the movement will continue and be heard very clearly across the country and the world.
The simple messages that I get from the protests are that government cannot function while it is under the control and influence of corporations. The economy cannot function properly while corporations and their extremely wealthy owners are allowed to operate without oversight and control. The country cannot pave its roads or build its schools or house its people while corporations and the wealthy play with money that is nearly tax-free, removing it entirely from the real world economy. The country cannot function as a democracy while its politicians and Supreme Court justices are working for corporations. The country cannot be free while racism and bigotry are increasingly seen as legitimate reactions to change. The country cannot be secure while corporations are given the power to run wars and people’s basic privacy rights are removed.
That’s what I see in the Occupy movement.
If every city in the U.S. could have as fine an Occupy movement as Los Angeles, they would be very lucky indeed.
Pacific Standard Time, the roaringly cheerful celebration by Southern California of its own art from the late 40s through the early 80s is releasing short videos to pump everyone up for its brand of art. I should be horrified by this silly video, but I’m not. I kind of like Baldessari’s big ass head on the wall. It works all the way up until he says ‘Art should be fun.’ Yeah, really? I dunno. Sounds like the kind of thing you say to an idiot.
But whatever. I’m going to see a lot of the exhibitions that are part of this festival. Should be really great.
Extraordinary and crystal clear film of L.A.’s old Bunker Hill neighborhood. The entire area up the hill was blown out completely and basically strip-mined to make way for L.A.’s skyscraper district. On the one hand, it is a damn good thing the city isolated the destruction to the hill and left much of old downtown intact. But neighborhoods are always better than corporate complexes because people can actually do things in them. You can’t do anything in a corporate complex except hold a fake job that nobody needs anyway. You can’t even go for a walk on Bunker Hill anymore. Not really. You may think you can but you’re really just sneaking along next to a cement wall that’s meant to keep you out. Watching this film also makes it clear just how right they got 1948 Los Angeles in the recent L.A. Noir game.
George Pocari made this film of Los Angeles in 1978. It’s beautiful and it shows the things one sees every day without really noticing. Films like this one turn out to be incredibly valuable glimpses of the past. It’s funny how home movies end up getting closer to art films as they age. But this one actually started off as a kind of art film. It’s very well made.
Don’t let anyone ever tell you that it doesn’t matter where you are when you make art. It matters very much. You have to know who’s buried in the ground that you’re dancing on. You have to know what’s in the air. You have to know who walked where you are walking now. If you don’t know those things, you might as well be working via modem from an igloo in the antarctic. This Pacific Standard Time thing is a bunch of galleries in Southern California working under the general umbrella of the Getty Center to put on exhibits of post World War II through 1980 art by Southern California artists. Los Angeles is the only great American city that hasn’t been entirely bombed by corporations yet. New York has been a dead zone since 1980. I lived there for almost ten years. Every footstep taken in that city was like a death march for me. The oppression of mind that goes on in New York is akin to being trapped inside some sort of giant grinding machine that keeps on working even though all its parts are broken. Coming to Los Angeles was like seeing the horizon for the first time. The city opens out and spreads with a psychotically unhinged freedom and chaos that is the very essence of creativity. It is the perfect antidote to the black death of New York. This is apparently the first art exhibition of its kind ever. An entire region is presenting its art and imagination for all the world to see. There are going to be roughly sixty different shows happening over the six months of this thing.
Pacific Standard Time is a collaboration of more than sixty cultural institutions across Southern California, coming together for six months beginning in October 2011 to tell the story of the birth of the Los Angeles art scene and how it became a major new force in the art world. Each institution will make its own contribution to this grand-scale story of artistic innovation and social change, told through a multitude of simultaneous exhibitions and programs. Exploring and celebrating the significance of the crucial post-World War II years through the tumultuous period of the 1960s and 70s, Pacific Standard Time encompasses developments from L.A. Pop to post-minimalism; from modernist architecture and design to multi-media installations; from the films of the African American L.A. Rebellion to the feminist activities of the Woman’s Building; from ceramics to Chicano performance art; and from Japanese American design to the pioneering work of artists’ collectives. Initiated through $10 million in grants from the Getty Foundation, Pacific Standard Time involves cultural institutions of every size and character across Southern California, from Greater Los Angeles to San Diego and Santa Barbara to Palm Springs.