LOS ANGELES PLAYS ITSELF

Year: 2003
UK: ICA Projects
Cast: Thom Andersen (narrator)
Director: Thom Andersen
Country: USA
UK: 169 mins
UK Release Date: 10 December 2004 (Limited Release - London)

Synopsis

Addictive and absorbing, Thom Andersen's love letter to Los Angeles explores the city's representation in the cinema through a montage of film clips and archive footage. Deconstructing the Western centre of the film industry's movie-dream of itself, this film-essay/visual-lecture is divided into chapters that treat Los Angeles as background, character and subject. Andersen's obsessive odyssey locates crucial landmarks (the steps up which Laurel & Hardy attempted to manoeuvre a piano in THE MUSIC BOX) and explores famous buildings (the Spanish Revival house in DOUBLE INDEMNITY, the cavernous Bradbury Building made famous by BLADE RUNNER) while charting the city's real and 'secret' histories.