Please note that all Laughtears.com events are listed on the calendar on our website https://www.laughtears.com/ - the opening page. This is the best source for the most updated information.

We welcome your participation in our  monthly film series 7 DUDLEY CINEMA meets regularly at Beyond Baroque. Free street parking. Fourth SUNDAYS from 7-10pm (also Subversive Cinema on select Sundays)

ALSO our monthly discussion group - every Third Wednesday for MOM - Mediations on Media discussion group, 7-10pm, free (McLuhan Or Marx, Metaphors On Methods, Massage Or Medium, etc) http://www.venicewake.org/Events/current.html


2015 May

Thank you,
Gerry Fialka pfsuzy@aol.com 310-306-7330,
https://www.laughtears.com/ and http://www.venicewake.org/
Fialka bio: https://www.laughtears.com/bio.html
Lectures-Screenings https://www.laughtears.com/workshops4.html

for immediate release contact: Gerry Fialka 310-306-7330 PFSuzy@aol.com


 
7 Dudley Cinema &  Beyond Baroque EVENTS - Fourth Sundays at Beyond Baroque 7-10pm at 681 venice  blvd venice ca 90291 310-822-3006, free,   LAUGHTEARS.com , 310-306-7330     
 
 
Sunday, May 17 - DANCE THE LIGHT FANTASTIC  Rag'n'Bones perform live dance, music, and poetry, with rare film clips (from Martha Graham to Merce Cunningham) to revolutionize spontaneous dancification rituals. Can we tell the dance from the dancer? Local dancers engage the audience in participation. If you can't say it, sing it -- if you can't sing it, dance it.
Revolutionize spontaneous dancification rituals. Can we tell the  dance from  the dancer? Laughtears.com Free, donations appreciated. 7pm  https://www.facebook.com/events/1422495631400162/
 
 
Sunday, May 24 - 7 Dudley Cinema - Folk Music FILMS & Discussion   - Bob says:  “Don’t ever tell anyone everything you know” and "“I didn't create Bob Dylan . Bob Dylan has always been here .” and  Bob Dylan said he is not a poet, he is an escape artist. With rare film clips and live music..   Free, donations appreciated. 7pm
https://www.facebook.com/events/1580719092175911/
 
Sunday, June 28 - 5th ANNUAL  LIT SHOW Film Festival - Gerry Fialka screens rare literature films to celebrate THE LIT SHOW on July 18th, starring LA's Diva Deluxe SUZY WILLIAMS & Brad Kay, who perform songs based on words by Kurt Vonnegut, Edna St Vincent Millay, J.D. Salinger, Samuel Beckett, Raymond Chandler, Truman Capote, Vladimir Nabokov, Rudyard Kipling and more. You've read the book, now hear the songs. NOW SEE THE FILM. 7pm free  https://www.facebook.com/events/821809101222676/
 

July 5, SUN 7:30pm ROBERT & MICHAEL ALTMAN FILMS – Robert’s son Michael (in person) screens rare films: Robert Altman’s Jazz ’34 at 7:45pm (1997, 72m) was shot entirely on set in the film’s “Hey Hey Club” during the filming of his 1997 film “KANSAS CITY”. Narrated by Harry Belafonte this film features jazz and jams from the cast of the film comprised of the worlds best of the best musicians including Ron Carter, Jesse Davis, David “Fathead” Newman, Don Byron, Russell Malone, Mark Whitfield, Christian McBride, Tyrone Clark, James Carter, Don Byron …. just to name a few. One of the highlights of the film includes a stunning “Battle of the Saxes” featuring Craig Handy and Joshua Redman recreating an actual event which took place some 60+ years earlier between Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young that will leave you breathless and awestruck. Jazzual bliss. Michael Altman’s internationally acclaimed and awarded film (over 20 Festival wins around the world in 2012), AMERICAN SONGWRITER at 9pm (2012, 55min) is a kaleidoscopic musical road trip down a million mile highway of poetry, philosophy and life featuring Nashville hit songwriter Danny Darst.  Altman’s American Songwriter traverses the bedrock and backbone of Darst’s gritty lay it on the line storytelling style as one of Americana’s most talented songsmiths. Danny Darst, longtime confidant and friend of Altman’s late father Robert Altman takes us f rom sea to shining sea through his songs and stories. Travel with us through sixty years of boot leather and worn out steering wheels as American Songwriter draws you into Darst’s struggles growing up poor, how he discovered who he was and found redemption through the love of a good woman. It is the tale of an authentic American man. Followed by discussion and a live Danny Durst performance.  Pot au Feu at 7:30pm (1965, 9m) Robert Altman’s parody short film on the lore and glories of smoking Mother Nature’s herbal panacea “Pot”. Written, produced, directed and shot by Robert Altman in his backyard and “around town” in 1965. This rarely seen short film by one of Marijuana’s biggest and best known advocates from the early 60’s until his death in 2006. LIVE MUSIC with  Danny Darst  and discussion at 10pm

SAT, July 18 - SUZY WILLIAMS - THE LIT SHOW is the 10th annual celebration of song and literature starring LA's Diva Deluxe & Brad Kay, who perform songs based on words by Hafitz, Kurt Vonnegut, Edna St Vincent Millay, J.D. Salinger, Raymond Chandler, Truman Capote, Vladimir Nabokov, Rudyard Kipling and more. Dorothy Parker wrote a song that Billie Holiday sang. Tennessee Williams wrote a song that Marlon Brando sang as a rambling troubadour in The Fugitive Kind. Lonely House was written by Kurt Weill and Langston Hughes. Jack Kerouac & Allen Ginsberg wrote Pull My Daisy with David Amram. You've read the book, now hear the song. "Suzy's voice is vibrant and lusty...great gusto and bold emotion." - Nat Hentoff. Admission $15. 8pm   https://www.facebook.com/events/661591090641619/


SUN, July 26, 7pm - The Source Family (2012, 98 minutes) is an engaging documentary film directed by Jodi Wille and Maria Demopoulos that recounts the story of Father Yod, Ya Ho Wa 13 and the Source Family, which was a radical experiment in '70s utopian living. Their outlandish style, popular health food restaurant, rock band, and beautiful women made them the darlings of Hollywood’s Sunset Strip; but their outsider ideals and the unconventional behavior of their spiritual leader, Father Yod, caused controversy with local authorities. They fled to Hawaii, leading to their dramatic demise. Years later, former family members surface and the rock band reforms, revealing how their time with Father Yod shaped their lives in the most unexpected ways. Special guests in discussion after the film. Free, donations appreciated.

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Aug 23 SUN - I'LL LITE YOUR PYRE - Exorcising The Jim Morrisn - Will Erokan & Gerry Fialka's psychedelic multi-media party probes the 50th anniversary of The Doors' birth in Venice.  Live experimental cinema, music, poetry and dance reimagine the Menippean satirized influence of Jim Morrison on Rockers, Nomads, Punks and the Boardwalk's Crusties. As spect-actors in the Global Theater, hack your own doors of perception. We welcome your rewordings of song lines like: "LA woman's coming after you" into "LAPD's coming after you," and "I woke up this morning & got myself a beer" into  "I woke up this morning & cut off my left ear."

Immerse yourself into deconstructing the motives and consequences of power, fame, drugs, rock star worship, public nudity and the Gulf of Tonkin, which Morrison's dad orchestrated. Explore Antonin Artaud's theories in Theatre and Its Double, which influenced Morrison. Uncover the subliminal social and psychic effects of loud music, poetry, and  "exorcism," which comes from the Greek word "exorkismos" meaning "binding by oath" and from the French "exorciser" meaning "to invoke spirits."

The title I’LL LITE YOUR PYRE is from Finnegans Wake, which was written by James Joyce, who said, "It is a curious thing how your mind is supersaturated with the religion in which you say you disbelieve." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMbx1f43Y9A

“Is everybody in? The ceremony is about to begin…To feel on the verge of an exorcism...” – Jim Morrison.

"The urgent effort of the poets to gain a hearing for their intuitions is always lost on the public." - McLuhan, whose book Understanding Media is seen in Oliver Stone's The Doors. "All bad poetry springs from genuine feelings" - Oscar Wilde. 

The Doors took their name from the title of Aldous Huxley’s book The Doors of Perception, which was derived from a line in William Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell: “If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is: infinite.”

Free, donations appreciated. 7pm Transcendentally reinvent rock! This is not a classic rock sing-along.

 
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Aug 30 SUN Films TBA

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Sunday, Sept 27, AN EVENING WITH PABLO FRASCONI – Interview=7pm, Films=8:30.  Since 1969, Pablo Frasconi has made films about the U.S. bicentennial, gentrification, childhood literacy, public art, creativity, civil liberties and poetry, including, Towards the Memory of a Revolution ('76, 53m), The Woodcuts of Antonio Frasconi ('87, 25m), Survival of a Small City ('86, 57m), broadcast nationally on PBS, and, The Longing ('08,15m) They have screened world-wide. He has received many grants. He is currently Professor of Practice in the Production Division at the School of Cinematic Arts at USC where he teaches Editing; Creating Poetic Cinema; Nature, Design and Media (in the new Media Arts + Practice Division); The Global Exchange Workshop at the Communication University of China in Beijing & USC; mentors advanced graduate projects, and coordinates the first year of the graduate M.F.A. production program. He recently designed and taught the USC-YouTube Creator Institute; a workshop at the USC Center for Excellence in Teaching on Contemplative Pedagogies; and a seminar in Transmedia and Political Engagement.

FILMS at 8:30pm (followed by Q and A with Pablo)  THE LIGHT AT WALDEN ('14, 39m) is a meditation    shot at Walden Pond, Concord, Massachusetts, interweaving pieces of Henry David Thoreau’s texts and a war resister’s personal
journey on a wilderness island in Canada. The filmmaker, as a young man during the U.S. / Vietnam War, attempts to follow Thoreau’s principles: building a cabin and living sustainably in the woods, “to front only the essential facts of
life.” This is one story among the nearly 125,000 war resisters in Canada. Music composed by John Luther Adams, John Cage, Lou Harrison, Charles Ives, Arvo Part, Karen Tanaka and others. With two shorts by Frasconi: THE SONG OF THE SOUL ('99, 6m), an adaptation of Walt Whitman's Children of Adam: From Pent-up Aching Rivers, and,    LOOK OUT    ('06, 8m), an adaptation of Wendell Berry's poem. Free, donations appreciated

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SUN, Oct 18 - MADNESS AS MUSIC –  Gerry Fialka & Brad Kay probe sanity and the creative process. Charles "Buddy" Bolden (1877-1931), the man credited with pioneering jazz, had schizophrenia and could not properly read music because of impaired motor function. His lateral, freewheeling approach may have been the roots of the very essence of jazz – improvisation. http://www.apa.org/monitor/oct01/melody.aspx  "You can't prove you are sane, unless you have discharge papers from a mental hospital." - McLuhan. “You’re driving me sane” – Peter Lorre. Chogyam Trungpa says "If there is no sense of rejoicing and magical practice, you find yourself simply driving into the high wall of insanity." Delve deep into Oliver Sacks, Thelonius Monk, shamanism and more. With live music, films, discussion and Insane Crazy Blues.

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Oct 25, Nov 22, Dec 27 - TBA

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Sunday, Jan 24, 2016- 13th Annual VENICE FILM FEST - Colorful history of films made in Venice California, and celebration of the otherwordly happenings at the legendary Venice West Gallery (birthplace of the Beats), aka Sponto Gallery with live performances. Experience the essence of Spontofication Rituals in art, music, poetry and the freedom of creativity. RARE clips include -  noted English architectural critic Reyner Banham on VENICE and more.

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Sat, Feb 6, 2016 - 6th annual POETRY OF VENICE PHOTOGRAPHY - 2-4pm: panel discussion , 4-6pm: Opening for PHOTO SHOW in Gallery, free admission Paramedia ecologist Gerry Fialka hosts a panel discussion of award-winning Venice photographers, who explore landscapes of the human psyche and push pictorial representation beyond! Examine the trance-inducing transforming power of cameras in our community by way of McLuhan. With B MEADE, KRISTY CAMPBELL, MARGARET MOLLOY, Dave Healey http://www.davidhealeyphotography.com/ (Time Magazine, NY & LA Times), Todd Von Hoffmann, Larry Brownstein, TRISH ELLEBRACHT and more

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“Poets and artists live on frontiers. They have no feedback, only feedforward. They have no identities. They are probes.” – McLuhan, Culture is Our Business (1970) 
         
ARCHIVE- \

7 Dudley Cinema - 4th sundays at 7pm, free- Curator Gerry Fialka Laughtears.com screens films as antennae of the race, broadcasting the hidden effects of what we have invented. From experimental films to political activist cinema to lit, art, music flix to avant garde documentaries, this series provokes new questions and features fiery discussions. "Gerry Fialka is Los Angeles' preeminent underground film curator." - CinemaWithoutBorders.com
Free Films - 7 DUDLEY CINEMA at Beyond Baroque, 681 Venice Blvd, Venice CA 90291, 310-822-3006, free admission, 7-10pm Info: 310-306-7330 Fourth Sundays https://www.laughtears.com/ and http://www.beyondbaroque.org/calendar.html


SUNDAY, Feb 23, 2015 - CHILDREN OF THE STARS at 8:30pm  http://www.childrenofthestarsfilm.com Perrine's engaging documentary tells the strange but true story of a UFO contactee group who relive their past lives on other planets by making their own science fiction films. In 1973, Ruth Norman, a 73 year old widow and self described cosmic visionary purchased 67 acres of land in the mountains east of San Diego, California as a landing site for the Space Brothers, emissaries from the Intergalactic Confederation. Nearly 40 years later, a group of dedicated followers still await their arrival. At the Unarius Academy of Science death does not exist, Nicola Tesla was a Space Brother, Satan drove a Cadillac and science fiction is real. To relive their pasts the students film their own sci-fi extravaganzas with the increasingly extravagant Ruth Norman as the star and the lines between fantasy and reality dissolve. Using spectacular footage from original Unarius films and Hollywood Sci-Fi flicks to illustrate, comment upon, and subvert interviews with the remaining Unarius students, “Children of the Stars” covers millions of years, hundreds of galaxies and dozens of B movies to present a sympathetic look at faith and how people justify it in different ways. 7pm preshow LIVE MUSIC and POETRY & Experimental films with Rag'n'Bones 
SUN, March 23 -  NATASHA MAIDOFF LIVE CINEMA - 8pm - Venice artist Maidoff's work-in-progress The Sleepwalker magically merges live dance and video projection performance to expand the viewing experience. Also, Curator Lance Richter screens rare experimental films at 7pm
 Sun, April 27 - KENT HAYWARD FILMS (in person) – 7-10pm. SUNSET TO SUNSET (’10, 3m) A stop-motion walk across Los Angeles, in which the filmmaker comes face to face with the city instead of watching it blur by through a windshield.  Screened at over 25 film festivals, including Dances with Films, DocuWest, New Filmmakers and Film Independent's Cinema Lounge.  AUGUST (’13, 10m) Stolen moments, both real and imagined, from a return to rural Michigan.  STANDBY… (’93, 3m) Vintage raw footage of a series of interviews with all of the “content” cut out.  A playful look at what people do before "action" and after "cut."  SEDIMENTATION  (’96, 5m) An experimental short film exploring a condemned structure creaking over Castaic Lake.  PORTRAITS (’95-present, 6m) Excerpts from an ongoing collection of character studies.  HOMESTEAD ARTIFACT (’00, 49m) A personal documentary about the filmmaker’s family rediscovering their lost homestead in rural New Mexico and the pieces of history buried there. Los Angeles Times’ Kevin Thomas: “Deeply affecting… Hayward has succeeded beautifully.” LA Weekly: “An affecting rumination on the importance of memories.” Hayward teaches film classes at Cal State Long Beach, Loyola Marymount University and El Camino College and has worked in the entertainment industry on many film and television productions, including The Aviator, Eureka!, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines and The Dark Knight Rises. 
Sunday May 25 - PSYBERNETIC DREAMING with RIA LIVE CINEMA (RIAPD) - Social engineers Will Erokan & Gerry Fialka's post-hypnotic triggering and hyper-maximum multi-media "live cinema" event reinvents McLuhan's Menippean satirized Gesamtkunstwerk and breaks the Finnegans Wake code: "what can't be coded can be decorded if an ear aye seize what no eye ere grieved fore." Turn your eyes into ears. Poets, dancers & live music conjure the hidden psychic effects of "mediaphyillia autisticus." "It is based upon individual thinking, scientific know-how, quick exchange of facts, high-tech ingenuity, and practical, front-line creativity." "We call the free-agent who thinks for him/herself 'cybernetic' from the Greek word for pilot. The word 'psychedelic' means ecstatic or mind-opening. 'Psybernetic' refers to psychedelic experience expressed in electronic form." RIA is "composed of quick-thinking, open-minded, change-oriented, innovative individuals who are adept in communicating via the new cyber-electronic technologies." These quotes inspired by Timothy Leary. This media yoga session enables participants to meta-analyze the dualities of form and content. Embrace contradictions. Examine electronic interdependence, all-at-onceness, effects preceding causes, sense-ratio-shifting, metaphor and abstraction. Discern patterns that emerge in perceiving perception itself ! Percept plunder for the recent future. The Ecstatic Beats of the 1950s, the Blissed Out Students of the 1960s, the Anarchist Yippies of the 1970s, the Cyberpunks of the 1980s, and the Hackers & Ravers of the 1990s, the Post Information Hipsters & ParaMediaEcologists of the 2000s, and the Occupiers & Millennial Matrix Dot Commies of the 2010s continue to fabricate the Cyber Culture.https://laughtears.com/iwantmyRIA.html 
Sunday, June 22 - 4th ANNUAL LIT SHOW Film Festival - Gerry Fialka screens rare literature films to celebrate THE LIT SHOW on July 19th, starring LA's Diva Deluxe SUZY WILLIAMS & Brad Kay, who perform songs based on words by Kurt Vonnegut, Edna St Vincent Millay, J.D. Salinger, Samuel Beckett, Raymond Chandler, Truman Capote, Vladimir Nabokov, Rudyard Kipling and more. Dorothy Parker wrote a song that Billie Holiday sang. Tennessee Williams wrote a song that Marlon Brando sang as a rambling troubadour in The Fugitive Kind. Lonely House was written by Kurt Weill and Langston Hughes. Jack Kerouac & Allen Ginsberg wrote Pull My Daisy with David Amram. You've read the book, now hear the songs. NOW SEE THE FILM. This year we explore McLuhan as Finnegans Wake. In 2014, book readers across the world celebrate the publications of two books: James Joyce's Finnegans Wake (75th year) and Marshall McLuhan's Understanding Media (50th year).
Sunday July 27 - AVERAGEMAN (2012, 78 minutes) Rush Riddle's (in person) fun feature film captures the spirit of underground Los Angeles flipping into the over ground. Directed by Steve Hanft. Starring Richard Edson with Gwen Casella, Dick Rude, Zander Schloss, Carole Citrone, Eddy Ruscha, and Paloma Parfrey. Space aliens have come to earth to save the human genome, which they fear is doomed to a pending nuclear holocaust. Their “ORB” tells them to look for George Clooney, then after it breaks and is repaired says to look for Greg Classen. Greg is a sad-sack, continually mugged in inner city L.A.  There is deja vu and people reappearing as if in a Vonnegut karass. It’s a cerebral type of comedy with great instrumental music by Double Naught Spy Car and others. The Mental Blocks play Body Surfin’ to Waikiki live in the movie at Shady Hills Mental Resort.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfXRUGJIen8 and http://averagemanthemovie.com/index.html Film at 7pm, Discussion at 8:30pm. Live music at 9pm by Treehouse (Rush, Carey Fosse, Pat Hoed & Andy Sykora)
Sunday, Aug 24 - Avant-Garde Rock Films
Sunday Sept 28 - OF TWO MINDS (2013, 89 min) Take your best day and your darkest moment...and multiply by a million.  Award-winning filmmakers Doug Blush and Lisa Klein (in person) reveal the intimate lives of extraordinary people living with bipolar disorder, including Los Angeles artist Carlton Davis and more.  Variety says "fascinating...intelligent...and compassionate" and NPR says "provocative, intimate, gritty filmmaking".  Winner of both the 2013 VOICE and PRISM awards for Best Documentary and Grand Jury and Audience Award at the Los Angeles United Film Festival.   
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TWO SPECIAL Laughtears.com Beyond Baroque Events - FREE
SAT, July 19 - SUZY WILLIAMS - THE LIT SHOW is the 9th annual celebration of song and literature starring LA's Diva Deluxe & Brad Kay, who perform songs based on words by Hafitz, Kurt Vonnegut, Edna St Vincent Millay, J.D. Salinger, Raymond Chandler, Truman Capote, Vladimir Nabokov, Rudyard Kipling and more. Dorothy Parker wrote a song that Billie Holiday sang. Tennessee Williams wrote a song that Marlon Brando sang as a rambling troubadour in The Fugitive Kind. Lonely House was written by Kurt Weill and Langston Hughes. Jack Kerouac & Allen Ginsberg wrote Pull My Daisy with David Amram. You've read the book, now hear the song. "Suzy's voice is vibrant and lusty...great gusto and bold emotion." - Nat Hentoff. Admission $15. 8pm
SUN, Oct 5 - LET'S AX LIKE WHITE PEOPLE - HOLD MY JAMMIE WHILE I GO PEE? - Mackdaddy founder of avant-funksters Black Shoe Polish, Gerry Fialka and Brad Kay, music historian and jazz pianist supreme probe the motives and consequences of the Minstrel Show, voluntary Negritude, Afrofuturism (Sun Ra, Jimi Hendrix), the relationship of Duke Ellington & Marshal McLuhan, and Lenny Bruce & Frank Zappa, who said, “ I'm not black, but there's a whole lots a times I wish I could say I'm not white.” Why do whites emulate blacks? Shoe fly in da buttermilk. Trading dozens. If ya can't dazzle'em wif yer brilliance, baffle wif yer bullshit. Gwine up to Hebbin. Louie Armstrong's white pot dealer Mezz Mezzrow writes that from the moment he heard jazz he "was going to be a Negro musician, hipping [teaching] the world about the blues the way only Negroes can." "I'm playing dark history. It's beyond black. I'm dealing with the dark things of the cosmos." - Sun Ra. "We just play Black, We play what the day recommends." - Miles Davis. "In my kosmos, there will be no feeva of dischord." - Krazy Kat. "I've got a move that tells me what to do." - James Brown. Get deep in the swamp muck with live music and rare film clips. 7pm, free admission.
  
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Free film screenings with fiery discussions at 3 different venues: Beyond Baroque, Unurban, Talking Stick  310-306-7330 Laughtears.com
"Gerry Fialka is Los Angeles' preeminent underground film curator." - Robin Menken, CinemaWithoutBorders.com

Documental - Select Mondays at Unurban 6-10pm https://www.laughtears.com/documental.html at 3301 pico blvd santa monica ca 90401 310-315-0056  free

7 Dudley Cinema - 4th SUNDAYS 7-10pm https://www.laughtears.com/7dudleycinema.html at 681 venice blvd venice ca 90291 310-822-3006 , free

To screen your film, contact: Gerry Fialka pfsuzy@aol.com, 310-306-7330 , laughtears.com

  "The atmosphere is wildly eclectic and the programming excitingly nonjudgmental: High, low, old, new, obscure, pop, the good, the bad, and the ugly...The place is open to everything and bursting with ideas." - Village Voice on Anthology Film Archives in NY - much like we provide.

Fialka's new book project - AVANT GARDE FILM & The ANN ARBOR FILM FESTIVAL HISTORY BOOK
https://www.laughtears.com/Ann%20Arbor%20Film%20Festival.html

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Archive 2013
March 7, Thurs - HARRY's HIP HOP FILM NITE - Extraordinaire dancer Harry Weston's pops. locks, breaks & b-boys street dance history with rare film clips & live demonstration: West African, Gene Kelly, Michael Jackson, Pina Bausch & James Brown - Get up offa that thing, dance 'till you feel better, Try to release that pressure. Free 730pm
April 4, Thurs RIA LIVE CINEMA https://laughtears.com/RIA.html 7:30pm (aka OUR EYE AYE = RIA = Resonant Interval Algorythmns) Video artists-Social engineers Will Erokan, Gerry Fialka, John Cannizzaro & poets, dancers, musicians = LIVE CINEMA probing the filmed close-up on the human eye, as seen in Un Chien Andalou, Man With The Movie Camera, Frank Zappa's 200 Motels, and Blade Runner. Delve deep into the reel motives and consequences of the Ludovico treatment from A Clockwork Orange, which originated in the novel by Anthony Burgess, who was directly influenced by James Joyce's Finnegans Wake. The Wake turns the eye into an ear via Finneganese (language about language): "Television kills telephony in Brothers’ broil. Our eyes demand their turn. Let them be seen." and "what can't be coded can be decorded if an ear aye seize what no eye ere grieved fore." Experience the RIA "live cinema" immersion into post-hypnotic hyper-maximum stimulation triggering McLuhan's Menippean satirized Gesamtkunstwerk. Peter Greenaway presaged the complex clairvoyance of Erokan's birth on September 30, 1983 by declaring "Cinema's death date was 31 September 1983, when the remote-control zapper was introduced to the living room, because now cinema has to be interactive, multi-media art." The retrocausality of this non-existent date renders an effects-precede-causes half- truth. "A half truth is still alot of a truth" – McLuhan. Explore & re-explore the sensory simultaneity of integral awareness (IA being the flip of AI - artificial intelligence) in passing through the vanishing point when seeing oneself both as oneself and as the other. It may be the death and rebirth of agraRIAn, AlgeRIA, antiquaRIAn, appropRIAtion, AquaRIAn, barbaRIAn, & AbdeRIAn laughter, which comes from rustic simpletons who would laugh at anything or anyone they did not understand. RIA is a drowned river valley that remains open to the sea. This evokes the Wake and Frank Zappa's "The ocean is the ultimate solution." "But that the white eye-lid of the screen reflect its proper light, the Universe would go up in flames" - Luis Bunuel. (ALSO *** RIA LIVE CINEMA screens April 6, Sat, 8pm at EchoParkFilmCenter.org N Alvarado St. @ Sunset Blvd. LA 90026 213-484-8846 $5)
+++April 7, Sunday IG NITE - Iggy Pop Celebration at beyond baroque 681 venice blvd venice ca 90291 310-822-3006 free WITH LIVE MUSIC including the amazing Raw Power Rangers & PANEL DISCUSSION with REVEREND DAN of MusicForNimrods and RARE FILM CLIPS 7pm
SUNDAY, May 26, 7pm MATT McCORMICK FILMS - experimental documentaries focusing on the sublime decay of contemporary culture and the landscape both urban & rural. LA Premier of The Great Northwest . http://www.rodeofilmco.com/ Matt McCormick is a Portland, Oregon based artist, award winning filmmaker and noted video installation artist. His work extends documentary and experimental filmmaking, focusing on the sublime decay of contemporary culture and the landscape both urban and rural. His work spans mediums and defies genre distinctions to fashion witty, abstract observations of contemporary culture and the urban landscape. His project Future So Bright maps and catalogs the abandoned spaces in the American West, while American Nutria "examines the plight of an imported species while chastising capitalism’s tendency to create its own disasters." The Subconscious Art of Graffiti Removal makes the observation that the process of destroying one art form unwittingly creates another, while his installation piece Ride a Wave To Tomorrow’s Sunset reflects on society’s need for ‘synthetic meditation’. The Great Northwest (2012, 70 minutes) Matt McCormick's engaging experimental documentary based on the re-creation of a 3,200 mile road-trip made in 1958 by four Seattle women who thoroughly documented their journey in an elaborate scrapbook…Fifty years later, Portland filmmaker Matt McCormick found that scrapbook in a thrift store, and in 2010 set out on the road, following their route as precisely as possible and searching out every stop in which the ladies had documented.In 1958, Bev, Berta, Sissie and Clarice packed into a Plymouth and hit the road. Visiting tourist attractions and national parks in Washington, Idaho, Montana, and Oregon, they explored the Pacific Northwest just months before the construction of dams and the Interstate Highway System would drastically change the landscape. Along the way they took photographs, kept notes, and collected menus, brochures, post-cards and receipts, all of which the organized into a crafty scrapbook.Patiently shot with an observational and voyeuristic approach, The Great Northwest is a lyrical time-capsule that explores the fragility of history while documenting the present. Using only location sound recordings and void of any narration or music, the film paints a portrait of the region while exploring how the visual landscape of the region has changed over the past 50 years. While documenting transformations in culture, architecture, and land-use, the film explores the region’s relationship to natural resources, looks at the history of roads, and considers the impact of tourism on the history and development of the American West.The Great Northwest has shown at venues including The Museum of Modern Art, The Rotterdam International Film Festival, and the Tacoma Art Museum. http://www.rodeofilmco.com/2011/the-great-northwest-2/ and The Subconscious Art of Graffiti Removal - Emerging from the human psyche and showing characteristics of abstract expressionism, minimalism and Russian constructivism, graffiti removal has secured its place in the history of modern art while being created by artists who are unconscious of their artistic achievements.
+++ (third sunday) Sunday June 16 - 730pm - 3rd ANNUAL LIT SHOW Film Festival - Gerry Fialka screens rare literature films to celebrate THE LIT SHOW on July 20th, starring LA's Diva Deluxe SUZY WILLIAMS & Brad Kay, who perform songs based on words by Kurt Vonnegut, Edna St Vincent Millay, J.D. Salinger, Samuel Beckett, Raymond Chandler, Truman Capote, Vladimir Nabokov, Rudyard Kipling and more. Dorothy Parker wrote a song that Billie Holiday sang. Tennessee Williams wrote a song that Marlon Brando sang as a rambling troubadour in The Fugitive Kind. Lonely House was written by Kurt Weill and Langston Hughes. Jack Kerouac & Allen Ginsberg wrote Pull My Daisy with David Amram. You've read the book, now hear the songs. NOW SEE THE FILM.
+++SAT, July 20, 2013 - 730pm SUZY WILLIAMS - THE LIT SHOW is the 8th annual celebration of song and literature starring LA's Diva Deluxe & Brad Kay, who perform songs based on words by Hafitz, Kurt Vonnegut, Edna St Vincent Millay, J.D. Salinger, Samuel Beckett, Raymond Chandler, Truman Capote, Vladimir Nabokov, Rudyard Kipling and more. Admission $15 Dorothy Parker wrote a song that Billie Holiday sang. Tennessee Williams wrote a song that Marlon Brando sang as a rambling troubadour in The Fugitive Kind. Lonely House was written by Kurt Weill and Langston Hughes. Jack Kerouac & Allen Ginsberg wrote Pull My Daisy with David Amram. You've read the book, now hear the song. "Suzy's voice is vibrant and lusty...great gusto and bold emotion." - Nat Hentoff.
SUNDAY, July 28, 7pm HIPPIE REVOLUTION FILMS – Tune in, turn on and drop out ! Rare films on music, and politics. The hippies were heirs to a long line of bohemians that includes William Blake, Walt Whitman, Emerson, Thoreau, Hesse, Rimbaud, Oscar Wilde, Huxley and utopian movements like the Rosicrucians and the Theosophists, and most direcly the Beats.
7 Dudley Cinema = 8-25, 9-22, 10-27, 11-24, 12-22-13
AND ANOTHER SPECIAL EVENT on Oct 19, 2013 - tba 
Sunday, July 28: HIPPIE REVOLUTION FILMS – Tune in, turn on and drop out ! Rare films on music, and politics. The hippies were heirs to a long line of bohemians that includes William Blake, Walt Whitman, Emerson, Thoreau, Hesse, Rimbaud, Oscar Wilde, Huxley and utopian movements like the Rosicrucians and the Theosophists, and most directly the Beats.
Sunday Aug 25: AVANT GARDE ADVERTISING FILMS - "Ads are the cave art of the twentieth century." - Marshall McLuhan
Sunday, Sept 22: BAROFF & CLARK FILMS - Michael Baroff Films at 7pm (45 minutes, 2010-12) Baroff (in person) uses the camera much like a sketchbook to serendipitously record what attracts his attention while in public environments. These unscripted visual scenes, ambient sounds and overheard talk, in which he does not overtly intervene, are then minimally edited or montaged, to create a sense of context, meaning and affect. The individual videos can be viewed from a range of stylistic perspectives including abstract, scenic, narrative, meditative, or social commentary.
Jon Clark Films at 8pm: Clark's (in person) SPECTRUM HUNTER (2012, 32m) - Discover a collection of haunted media, a benevolent tribe of new wave witches, a Goth teenager with real magic powers, a bizarre cult that inhabits abandoned malls, & much more. Trailer: http://vimeo.com/33506063 Clark's work deals with childhood, memory, the uncanny, and the obscure corners of popular culture. Referencing an early 90s aesthetic, influenced by laserdiscs, pogs, and dark allure of arcades, this film captures the ineffable fantasy in the mind of kids that dedicated their lives to these things. Also: Clark-directed animations and music videos (2008 3m).
Sunday, Oct 27: MAXWELL STREET REVISITED - Jazz historian Sherwin Dunner (in person) host an evening of inspired music films. Bargains and blues could be found on any Sunday at the biggest, brassiest open air street market in America which thrived for over 100 years before it was paved over for the University of Illinois at Chicago expansion in 1994. We'll be showing AND THIS IS FREE (1963, 50 minutes), the groundbreaking cinema verite film which captures Chicago's Maxwell Street market in full glory on a typical Sunday – a vibrant mix of blues and gospel singers, hustlers, pitchmen, pushcart vendors and preachers. Shoppers could find great deals, but also were prime for fleecing. With a sly wink, one of the stores even chose the name “Cheat You Fair.” We'll also see MAXWELL STREET - A LIVING MEMORY ( 2002, 30m) on Maxwell Street from the perspective of the Jewish merchants who worked there, found footage and a photo slide show. Plus live blues music.
Sunday, Nov 24: POP ART FILMS  "The very first Pop Art exhibit or artifact named by the noted critic Harold Rosenberg was Marshall McLuhan's book THE MECHANICAL BRIDE, which came out in 1951." - Robert Dobbs. "Art is anything you can get anyway with" - McLuhan
SPECIAL EVENT - Thursday Dec 19, 7:30pm, free: METAPHOR AS MEMORY - Gerry Fialka probes McLuhan and Chris Marker, who said "I remember the images I filmed. They have substituted themselves for my memory. They are my memory - the act of remembering is not the opposite of forgetting." "All active media are metaphors in their power to translate experience into new forms...what is a meta phor?" - McLuhan. "Remember to forget" - James Joyce.  (SPECIAL Laughtears.com events+++)
Sunday, Dec 22: GOSPEL MUSIC FILMS traces the evolution of Gospel through its many musical styles - the spirituals and early hymns, the four-part harmony-based quartets, the integration of blues and swing into Gospel, the emergence of Soul, and the blending of Rap and Hip Hop elements. Gospel music also walked in step with the story of African-American culture - slavery, hardscrabble rural existence and plantation work, the exodus to major cities, the Depression, World War II, civil rights and empowerment.
Sunday, Jan 26, 2014- Eleventh Annual VENICE FILM FEST - Colorful history of films made in Venice California, and celebration of the otherwordly happenings at the legendary Venice West Gallery (birthplace of the Beats), aka Sponto Gallery with live performances. Experience the essence of Spontofication Rituals in art, music, poetry and the freedom of creativity.  
Sat, Feb 1, 2014 - 4th annual POETRY OF VENICE PHOTOGRAPHY - 2-4pm: panel discussion , 4-6pm: Opening for PHOTO SHOW in Gallery, free admission Paramedia ecologist Gerry Fialka hosts a panel discussion of award-winning Venice photographers, who explore landscapes of the human psyche and push pictorial representation beyond! Examine the trance-inducing transforming power of cameras in our community by way of McLuhan. With KRISTY CAMPBELL, MARGARET MOLLOY, SARAH SEELINGER. Photo show also includes:
Dave Healey http://www.davidhealeyphotography.com/ (Time Magazine, NY & LA Times), Alfred Benjamin (Holocaust survivor who shot Hitler in his teens http://photo.net/leica-rangefinders-forum/00JFeb), Leland Auslender (also shot experimental films of Venice West Cafe over 4 decades ago), Ned Sloane, Todd Von Hoffmann, Don Beswick.
 (SPECIAL Laughtears.com events+++)

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