DURING THE WEEK LEADING UP TO THE 2004 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, THE ROY AND EDNA DISNEY/CALARTS THEATER (REDCAT) WILL EXPLORE THE POLITICS OF PROTEST WITH THE FILM PROGRAM WAR! PROTEST IN AMERICA, 1965-2004.

From Sixty Cameras Against the War
Julie Talen, 2004
photograph by Sabin Portillo

WAR! PROTEST IN AMERICA, 1965-2004


October 26-31, 2004

View the event

President's Ideas and Dialogues:
Tuesday, October 26, 8:30 p.m.
round table discussion with special screening of Sixty Cameras Against the War
General admission: $8, Students, CalArts staff/faculty, and Alumni Affinity Card holders: $5, CalaArts students: free

Daily Screenings:
Tuesday, October 26 through Sunday, October 31, 12 p.m. to 6 p.m. Screenings will take place in the lobby and will be shown on DVD. Admission is free.

Evening Program:
Sunday, October 31, 6 p.m. Screenings and discussion will take place in the theater. Films will be shown in original format whenever possible.
General admission: $8, Students, CalArts staff/faculty, and Alumni Affinity Card holders: $5, CalArts students: free

Los Angeles, October 1- The Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater (REDCAT) explores the politics of protest. During the week leading up to election day, REDCAT will present a series of seldom-seen anti-war films, titled WAR! Protest in America, 1965-2004. On October 26, the President's Dialogues and Ideas roundtable will launch the series with a discussion and screening of Julie Talen's Sixty Cameras Against the War. From Tuesday, October 26 through Sunday, October 31 there will be continuous daily screenings in REDCAT's lobby. On Sunday, October 31, rare experimental protest films will be shown in the theater. WAR! was curated by CalArts faculty member Sam Durant and Chrissie Iles from the Whitney Museum of American Art. A version of the program was also presented at the Whitney Museum. Descriptions of the films and a schedule of screenings follow this release.

For the President's Dialogues and Ideas, California Institute of the Arts' (CalArts) President Steven D. Lavine will host a discussion on war, civil liberties and the arts with artist and CalArts faculty member Sam Durant, political and social theorist Martin Plot and Stephen Rohde, former president of the Southern California branch of the ACLU. The evening's video, Sixty Cameras Against the War, features footage from the New York march against the Iraq war on February 15, 2003.

WAR! Protest in America, 1965-2004 brings together documentary and experimental films motivated by the political and social turbulence of the past 40 years -- films engaged with civil rights, black power, personal liberation and political action. They range from seminal Vietnam era works to contemporary responses to the war in Iraq. The series includes works by Third World Newsreel, Jean-Luc Godard, D. A. Pennebaker, Paul Sharits, Carolee Schneemann and Julie Talen. Co-curators Durant and Iles will be in discussion as part of the evening program on October 31.

Durant said, "I was interested in making a mix from the 1960s and early 1970s to very contemporary work. It is important to look at history to understand what's going on today. I think the series is particularly timely in light of this Presidential campaign in which the two candidate are debating the Vietnam War all over again."

The series includes a rare screening of the legendary One P.M., a film made from footage generated in a failed late 1960s collaboration between Jean-Luc Godard, Richard Leacock and DA Pennebaker. Other highlights include America, a Third World Newsreel film expressing the frustration of Vietnam era America to a rock soundtrack and Iraq: War Against the People, a powerful video from 1991 documenting the effects of the U.S. military conflict in the Persian Gulf.

WAR! PROTEST IN AMERICA 1965 - 2004

Daily screenings in the lobby: Tuesday, October 26 - Sunday, October 31, 12 p.m. to 6 p.m., Free Admission

President's Ideas and Dialogues with special screening: Tuesday, October 26, 8:30 p.m.,

General admission: $8, Students, CalArts staff/faculty, and Alumni Affinity Card holders: $5, CalaArts students: free
Evening Progam in the theater: Sunday, October 31, 6 p.m.

General admission: $8, Students, CalArts staff/faculty, and Alumni Affinity Card holders: $5, CalaArts students: free

Click Here for schedule and information or call 213 237 2800.

REDCAT is located at the corner of 2nd and Hope Streets in the Walt Disney Concert Hall complex in downtown Los Angeles.

DAILY SCREENINGS
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 26 - SUNDAY, OCTOBER 31
In the lobby

Please note that daily screenings will run continuously beginning at 12:00 p.m. until approximately 6:00 p.m. The screenings are free and will take place in the lobby. All films will be shown on DVD.

12:00 p.m.
Third World Newsreel, America, 1969. 16mm film, black-and-white, sound; 31:30 min.
Clips of teenagers, Vietnam veterans, and black militants expressing frustration with the escalating war in Vietnam are interwoven with footage of police brutality at home and war abroad, set to a background of 1960s rock classics, including the lyric "America, where are you now?"

Brigitte Cornand, Not in Our Name, 2003. Video, color, sound; 62 min.
Cornand interviews artists Edouard Glissant, Leon Golub, Jonas Mekas, Martha Rosler, Richard Serra, Rob Storr, and Lawrence Weiner on the eve of America's war in Iraq.

Third World Newsreel, Resist?-with Noam Chomsky, 1968. 16mm film, black-and-white, sound; 6:30 min.
This recently discovered film shows Noam Chomsky in the late 1960s as he speaks candidly about the war in Vietnam.

Third World Newsreel, No Game, 1968. 16mm film, black-and-white, sound; 16:30 min.
In October 1967, 100,000 people marched on Washington demanding an end to the Vietnam War. Several filmmakers pooled their footage to produce this documentation of the peaceful march, which ended in the occupation of the grounds of the Pentagon.

2:00 p.m.
Third World Newsreel, Only the Beginning, 1971. 16mm film, color, sound; 17:30 min.
In April 1971, thousands of GIs came to Washington, DC, to protest the Vietnam War and, in a powerful symbolic gesture, stood in front of the Capitol and threw away their medals. Told from their point of view, the film examines some of the conditions that led many decorated but disillusioned veterans to their dramatic action.

Larry Everest, Iraq: War Against the People, 1991, Video, color, sound; 29 min.
This powerful video documents the effects of the U.S. military assault in the Gulf. Traveling through Iraq in the Summer of 1991, Larry Everest interviewed Iraqi people about the war, the bombings and their life afterwards. This video brings us those voices, along with sights from Iraqi hospitals, refugee camps and bombed cities.

Jake Leed, Mary Leed, Pat Myers, Richard Myers, Carla Olrich, Robert Olrich, Mel Someroski, and Mike Tarr, Confrontation at Kent State, 1970. 16mm film, black-and-white, sound; 43 min.
On May 4, 1970, the National Guard fired on student protesters at Kent State University, killing four and wounding others. This film, made by members of the faculty and the student body, documents this confrontation, including interviews with students, people in the town of Kent, and a member of the National Guard.

Richard Myers, Allison, 1970. 16mm film, black-and-white, sound; 10 min.
A portrait of Allison Krause, one of the four students killed at Kent State by the Ohio National Guard, assembled from footage Myers and others had unknowingly filmed of Krause during previous student demonstrations.

4:00 p.m.
Julie Talen, Sixty Cameras Against the War, 2004. Video, color, sound; 115 min.
Raw footage independently shot by sixty protesters during the New York march against the war in Iraq on February 15, 2003, is woven by Talen into a kaleidoscopic portrait of a protest fractured by barricades.

EVENING PROGRAM
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 31
In the theater

Screenings in this program will take place in the theater and will be shown in its original format whenever possible.

6:00 p.m.
Norman Yonemoto, Second Campaign, 1969. 16mm, black-and-white, color, sound; 20 min.
This seminal film by the eminent West Coast artist and filmmaker chronicles events during the People's Park demonstrations in Berkeley.

Paul Sharits, Piece Mandala/End War, 1966. 16mm film, black-and-white and color, sound; 5 min.

Stan Vanderbeek, Poem Field no. 7, 1966/1969. 16mm film, color, sound; 9 min.

Storm De Hirsch, Trap Dance, 1968. 16mm film, black-and-white, sound; 1:30 min.
End War flashes out of Paul Sharits's violently pulsating mandala; Stan Vanderbeek's computer patterns animate activist A.J. Muste's statement "There is no way to peace. Peace is the way," to a soundtrack by John Cage; Storm De Hirsch creates a protest film of black and white gestural marks.

Carolee Schneemann, Viet-Flakes, 1966. 16mm film, black-and-white, sound; 11 min.
Sound collage by James Tenney
Composed of Vietnam atrocity photographs culled from newspapers and magazines, Schneemann's disturbing collage film was a central element of Snows (1966), her kinetic theater piece expressing moral outrage at the war's seemingly endless destruction.

7:00 p.m.
Discussion with artist Sam Durant and Whitney Museum's Chrissie Iles, co-curators of WAR! PROTEST IN AMERICA, 1965-2004.

8:30 p.m.
Jean-Luc Godard, Richard Leacock, and DA Pennebaker, One PM, 1972. 16mm film, color, sound; 95 min.
In 1968 in Chicago, on the eve of what he predicted would be a revolution in the United States, Jean-Luc Godard embarked on a collaborative project with American documentarists Leacock and Pennebaker. After Godard abandoned the project, the footage was edited by Leacock and Pennebaker into One PM ("One Perfect Movie"), in which Jefferson Airplane, Rip Torn, Eldridge Cleaver, and others articulate the attitude of a young generation toward the political system in America at the end of the 1960s.

Descriptions of Newsreel films are adapted from the Third World Newsreel catalogue.



From Sixty Cameras Against the War
Julie Talen, 2004
Photograph by Sabin Portillo

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