Los Angeles Plays Itself

Los Angeles has been filmed for a hundred years but is rarely called by its name; it plays other cities, other futures and nowhere at all. This film gathers those images and asks for the city back. A narrating voice lines up excerpts from films; whose house a house was in which picture, how many times a bridge has been blown up, how a neighbourhood was described. As it goes the subject moves out of film history and into the history of a city: water, freeways, demolished neighbourhoods and how public transport disappeared. Thom Andersen directed and wrote it; Encke King narrates. The film was finished in 2003 and runs about a hundred and seventy minutes. It is an American production. It is built entirely from footage taken from other films; there is almost nothing shot for it. The narrative is divided in three; the city as background, the city as character and the city as subject. The film won the best documentary award at the 2003 Vancouver Film Festival and was voted documentary of the year in the 2004 Village Voice critics' poll. The matter it treats is representation; the films that shoot the city mostly do not show the city the people there see. The narrator's tone is sardonic and judging; the film does not try to be neutral. While it criticises the large productions it brings forward independent and little known films. The film is long and there is no room to breathe between its sections. The ending declares no conclusion; it proposes a way of looking. Its limit is duration; the narrative is very long, the commentary dense, and it is heavy going without some knowledge of film. Who it is for: viewers who like film history and writing about cities. Who it is not for: it is long, talkative, and the ending tiring.