In this program, innovative new shorts explore the boundaries between cultures and countries, documentary and fiction, art and cinema, language and music, night and day.

firepussy, directed by Laurel Almerinda. 2002, 20 min., color, sound, 35 mm. The journey of a Mexican-American woman obsessed with fire and guilt to the land of her forgotten native language, Yucatan.

Downtown LA, directed by Roberto S. Oregel. 2003, 13 min., color, sound, DVD. Mixing documentary and video effects, a portrait of the "invisible" downtown residents. World premiere

Toy, directed by Abraham Lim. 2002, 12 min., b/w, sound, Sony HD Cam. An impressionist, subtle rendering of the small moments that compose the lives of young Asian women trapped in sexual slavery to pay for their immigration debts. Los Angeles premiere

Los Motivos de Cain, directed by Mariana Botey. 2002, 30 min., b/w, sound, Beta SP. An elegant piece about borders, otherness and identity inspired by Jose Revueltas's novel about a Mexican-American sergeant deserting the U.S. army during the Korean War. Theatrical premiere

Proposal for The Side of the Mountain, an opera by Michael Webster and Simon Leung. 2003, 23 min., color, sound, DVD. A sexual encounter between a baritone and a tenor in Griffith Park as the night falls-or public sex as a metaphor for the ethical spatialization of an encounter with the Other. World premiere of single channel version

A collaborative project by Rich Bott and Jim Fetterley, Animal Charm has performed nationally and internationally at major museums and film festivals, as well as at scores of underground clubs. Assuming a deconstructive take on propriety, the duo began creating videos as an act of electronic civil disobedience. Sifting through countless hours of industrial, documentary, and corporate video footage taken from the dumpsters of production companies, Animal Charm scramble media codes and create a kind of tic-ridden, convulsive babble as their disruptive gestures often invest conventional forms with subversive meanings. At REDCAT, a selection of Animal Charm's early shorts will warm the screen for a live, improvised, four-channel audio/video mix, "recombining some of the more beautiful, disgusting and disturbing detritus left over from the practical excesses of the mass media machine," according to the duo. "Whatever you call it, tonight's performance is gonna be a barn burner."

"A pesty spectacle that comes across like channel surfing in a suburb of Hell. Animal Charm has exchanged resurrection for deconstruction."-Pacific Film Archive

"Animal Charm's tapes are mind-bendingly inventive experiments in uncanny, surreal montage that defy logical analysis."-New York Video Festival

Directed by Blue Hadaegh and Grover Babcock

2003, 70 min., color, sound, Beta SP. Special Jury Prize, Sundance Film Festival, 2003. Best Documentary, Atlanta Film Festival, 2003. Los Angeles Premiere

"Unblinking and unsettling, the film lays bare the mysterious process happening around us all the time: People die with no next of kin. If no one claims the body, where do they take the personal items? A wallet? A photograph? Is it possible to be that alone in the world? What happens to the remains? Following the county workers who deal with this phenomenon every day, this extraordinary film, equally meditative and fascinating, uses a precise, unaffected camerawork capturing the mundaneness of death."-Sundance Film Festival

Preceded by:

The Lonelys
Directed by Henry Barrial

1999, 31 min., color, sound, Beta SP. Golden Spire Award, San Francisco International Film Festival, 1999.

A film to rediscover: dense, unsettling fiction following a day in the life of three mentally ill men living in a Los Angeles board and care home. They attempt to escape into the world of the "normal" but their trip may take them no further than San Diego-or the nearest municipal ambulance.

Directed by Billy Woodberry, Written by Charles Burnett

1984, 80 min., b/w, sound, 16 mm. Otto Dibelius Award, Berlin International Film Festival, 1984. New print

Billy Woodberry's Bless Their Little Hearts, a powerful drama dealing with an African American family in crisis, is one of the classics of the "L.A. School" of black independent film that also includes Charles Burnett's Killer of Sheep. "[W]hat matters to Woodberry is not the images of urban misery, but the physical presence of human beings: how, for example, sweetness, anger or fatigue are inscribed in the man's powerful body. What matters is how time passes in the act of filming itself and the intensity brought by the way small moments accumulate within the space of a shot. In the crispness of its b/w images, and the loving, respectful and sensitive gaze it casts on the protagonists, Woodberry's film is as beautiful as the blues music that permeates its soundtrack."-Cahiers du Cinéma

Preceded by:

When It Rains, directed by Charles Burnett. 1995, 12 min., color, sound, 16 mm. A serendipitous look at the urban space that generates the blues, the film follows a man looking for ways to help a "sistah" pay her rent.

Dr. Indassa Holland, directed by Charles Burnett. 2000, 16 min., color and b/w, sound, 16 mm. The life and work of an exceptional woman.

Directed by Damon Packard

2002, 138 min., color, sound, video. Ground-Breaker Award, Fant-Asia Film Festival, 2003. Los Angeles premiere

"George Kuchar overdosing on sugar meets George Romero. Reflections of Evil is about the indignities of being overweight, socially irrelevant, a mama's boy, and a pedestrian to boot-about watching too much TV, having paranoid neighbors and seeing Steven Spielberg's career unfold from the exploitation of horror to the exploitation of the Holocaust. A collage of dizzying impressions of Los Angeles, found footage and parodies of pop culture images, the film pays homage to these cheap exploitation films of the seventies we hated to love-yet upstages them by being even cheaper, sleazier, more disjointed and having more body matters splattered on the sidewalk. It is also acutely more ambitious in its unflinching critique of contemporary media culture. Good night-and if you find yourself on the Universal Boardwalk, it is because you're already dead."-Bérénice Reynaud

The Politics of Fur
Directed by Laura Nix

2002, 76 min., color, sound, Beta SP. Outstanding American Narrative Feature and Outstanding Actress in a Feature Film, L.A.OutFest, 2002.

"Laura Nix's debut delivers a swift kick in the face of queer cinema, brazenly updating Fassbinder's fashionista-tantrum classic The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant. Less savage but potentially more trenchant for its cultural familiarity, Nix's remake is an unexpectedly sharp examination of romantic vanities, collapsing co-dependency and the iconography of new millennium lifestyle chic. Katy Selverstone stands out in the uniformly nimble cast, in a performance that's as convincing in its parody of media elite brassiness as it is in the climactic depths of slobbering despair."-Film Comment

Preceded by:

A Small Domain
Directed by Britta Sjögren

1995, 15 min., color, sound, 16 mm. Short Filmmaking Award, Sundance Film Festival, 1996. Competition Award, South by Southwest Film Festival, 1997.

This small gem of independent cinema follows the wanderings of a senior citizen through the mean but familiar streets of Los Angeles. Escaping the loneliness of her domestic ritual, the old lady engages in shoplifting and then kidnapping...

This program celebrates new experimental and independent animation from Los Angeles, where art and commerce meet, sometimes converging together and sometimes repelling each other. "When Worlds Collide" includes Destino, a work begun by Walt Disney and Salvador Dali more than 50 years ago and completed only earlier this year, as well as an animation by contemporary émigré talent Ukrainian Igor Kovalyov. Also featured is a spoof of reality TV; a combination of film-noir effects with comic book images; works inspired by music; and new applications of computer technology. At the experimental end, there is an abstract gestural work by Pat O'Neill and two collages at the edges of narrative by Janie Geiser and Lewis Klahr.

The program features: Destino, by Salvador Dali and Walt Disney, 1946, completed by Dominic Monfery, 2003; Flying Nansen, by Igor Kovalyov, 2000; Clops, by Corky Quakenbush, 1997; Crimenals, by Greg Araya, 2003; Mixter Delixx-6, by Dave Foss, 2003; Basin Street Blues, by Monkmus, 2003; Away, by Monkmus, 2001; Singing Sticks, by Christine Panushka, 2003; Son of Satan, by Jean-Jacques Villard, 2003; Coreopsis , by Pat O'Neill, 1998; Ultima Thule, by Janie Geiser, 2002; and Daylight Moon by Lewis Klahr, 2002.

Program by Irene Kotlarz

CalArts and the animation community lost a deeply loved artist and teacher this September. During an illustrious career of more than 60 years, Jules Engel worked on Disney classics such as Fantasia and Bambi and groundbreaking UPA cartoons like Gerald McBoing Boing and Mister Magoo. Yet it was his work as an independent abstract filmmaker that left the most significant mark on the history of animated film. First begun in the 1960s, his visionary animations blended painterly concerns and rhythmic sophistication into a new form of kinetic art. On its closing night, "Independent Los Angeles" is proud to present a program of newly restored films by Engel, now resplendent with brilliant colors and crisp forms.

The program includes: Coaraze, 1965, Accident, 1973; Train Landscape, 1974; Rumble, 1975; Wet Paint, 1977; Play Pen, 1986, Times Square, 1988; and others.

Except Coaraze, all titles: color, sound. Coaraze, a live-action film, is b/w.

Co-produced by Cal Arts and The Jules Engel Preservation Project of The Center for Visual Music.

PROGRAMS SUBJECT TO CHANGE

Special Thanks: Thom Andersen, James Bond, Mimi Brody, Theresa Chavez, Cindy Keefer, Kip Kibler, Norman Klein, Cheng-Sim Lim, Stephen Salmons, Joel Shepard, James Wiltgen, Dorna Khazeni, Gordon Kurowski and Craig Smith

The Film and Video Series at REDCAT is funded by Wendy Keyes and Donald A. Pels.

REDCAT is located in the heart of downtown Los Angeles at the corner of W. 2nd St. and S. Hope St., inside the Walt Disney Concert Hall complex. For directions and parking information, click here.

General admission is $8 for each program except the two opening night programs, ALICE'S WONDERLAND and GOD BLESS AMERICANA, which are $10 each. Students and seniors receive a 50% discount with valid ID. Tickets can be purchased through on this page or by calling 213 237-2800, or in person at the REDCAT Box Office.