Category: Commentary

The campaign to restore classic and international cinema programming at LACMA continues. Some readers may have heard about the $150,000 donation accepted last week in the wake of our Save Film at LACMA protest. But as reported in yesterday’s New York Times, big questions remain regarding the content of the program. Will it be a continuation of the much beloved series of the past 41 years, or will it entail a new vision described in ambiguous terms by LACMA’s CEO Michael Govan? The Times reports:

. . . Mr. Govan acknowledged that his choice of words ‘was maybe a

The Los Angeles Times is reporting that “In the wake of the chorus of disapproval that greeted last week’s announcement that he was red-lighting the 40-year-old weekend film series at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, museum Director Michael Govan has some good news: Potential donors have stepped up, interested in helping underwrite the series.”

It is indeed good news, but until we’re assured that the film program is staying in place, Save Film at LACMA will continue collecting signatures on our petition (with nearly 1,350 signatories at the moment) and build our protest on Facebook.

I want …

“Who knows the wrath of a film community scorned?” writes David Ng for the Los Angeles Times. “The Los Angeles County Museum of Art does. In a little more than a week, the controversy over LACMA’s decision to ax its 40-year-old film program has grown into a full-blown online debate . . . in response to an aggressive Facebook campaign and online petition . . . ”

Last weekend, a LACMA regular commended me for my previous blog entry protesting the cancelation of the museum’s film program, but she added, “What’s the next step? Are there any precedents for …

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art–the largest art museum in the western United States–announced yesterday that it will be shutting down its roughly 40-year-old film program this fall. Along with the UCLA Film and Television Archive and the much more eclectic Cinefamily and REDCAT theaters, LACMA is one of the few venues in Los Angeles to regularly screen world cinema features. (It used to be that the American Cinematheque figured prominently in this quartet, but ever since the 2005 departure of Dennis Bartok, it has increasingly emphasized genre and cult programming.)

I moved here eight years ago, and my …

The good news is that blogger extraordinaire David Hudson has returned, and to the home of one of the best websites for world cinema, no less:

The Auteurs Daily

The bad news . . . upcoming in the next post (although if you’re a cinephile living in Los Angeles, you already know).…