The Nobody Drives in LA Guide to CicLAvia — The Valley

Pendersleigh & Sons Cartography's Map of the San Fernando Valley (available on merchandise from Cal31 and art prints from 1650 Gallery)

Tomorrow, 22 March, from 9am and 4pm, a stretch of Lankershim and Ventura boulevards will be closed to motorized traffic for CicLAvia - The Valley. At just 8.85 kilometers, it’s a short one… but considering this past Tuesday it took me 45 minutes on the 134 to get from Studio City to Burbank, it’ll still be a glimpse of what the Valley looks like without gridlock.

CicLAvias are free, open streets events that briefly close off streets to motorized traffic —although I have seen people on mobility scooters and battery powered toy cars so the events aren’t completely free of motorists. There will be organized activities and food trucks but for me the real fun is seeing these communities without fear of being harried, harassed, or harmed by cars.

Without a preceding definite article, “Valley” refers to the San Gabriel Valley in the names of many a business along Valley Boulevard. However, add that all-important “the” and “The Valley” is nearly always understood by Angelenos to refer to the San Fernando Valley. The choice of streets, Lankershim and Ventura, is interesting. Lankershim has long been an important thoroughfare, connecting as it does the Valley with the Los Angeles Basin below via Cahuenga Pass. Coldwater Canyon Boulevard, at the route’s western terminus, is another connection to the basin (in this case to Beverly Hills). The northern terminus, Chandler Boulevard, is named after Harry Chandler — the controversial publisher of the Los Angeles Times who also developed much of the San Fernando Valley. The main stretch of the route is Ventura Boulevard.

Ventura is the Valley’s “main street.” A section of it in Encino is billed as “The Valley’s Miracle Mile,” a reference to the museum-lined stretch of Los Angeles’s main street, Wilshire Boulevard. Today the Miracle Mile is rightly celebrated for its cultural institutions but was developed as a sort of linear, automobile-oriented commercial corridor. Ventura isn’t known for it’s high culture, although there is culture to be found in its restaurants, mid-century architecture, and long history. Ventura was used by Native Americans and later, after the Spanish Conquest, was developed as part of El Camino Real. Much later it was part of US 101 but although no longer a highway would (like Wilshire) benefit greatly from the addition of a rail line and without one remains stalled in the car-dependent 20th Century. Open streets events like CicLAvia — The Valley will hopefully inspire Valley-ites and visionaries to move things forward.

Mission San Fernando Rey de España

The first people to have lived in the Valley were likely the ancestors of the Chumash, who arrived in the Los Angles area at least 13,000 years ago. Some 3,500 years ago the Tataviam and Tongva/Kizh arrived, the presence of the latter still much in evidence in place names like “Cahuenga,” “Topanga,” and “Tujunga.” The Spanish built Mission San Fernando Rey de España in the Valley in 1797 and enslaved the locals whom they renamed “Fernandeños.” In 1821, Mexico gained independence from Spain and in 1833 the missions’ holdings were secularized. The land was again conquered by the US, who signed a peace treaty with Mexico near Universal City/Studio City Train Station. Rail arrived to the Valley in 1874 and early towns like Burbank, Owensmouth, San Fernando, and Van Nuys sprang up. Most of the Valley was annexed by Los Angeles in 1915.

One year earlier, German-American filmmaker Carl Laemmle began construction on the Valley's first permanent movie-making facility, Oak Ridge Ranch, which later became Universal City. Although tourists still follow their noses to Hollywood, beginning in the 1920s, most of that district’s movie studios, prop shops, and production houses moved over the Santa Monica Mountains to the Valley. Later the Valley would be famous for producing it’s own studios, although Vivid and Wicked are unlikely to show up on any movie tours or lists of the Valley’s cultural contributions, which also include Gelson’s Markets, Du-par’s Restaurants, and (my favorite), the Los Angeles River.

Map of the San Fernando Valley in 1880

The Los Angeles River begins in Canoga Park at the confluence of Arroyo Calabasas and Bell Creek. It’s joined by Browns Canyon Wash in Winnetka and Aliso Creek in Reseda before it enters Sepulveda Basin where it’s additionally joined by Bull, Encino, Haskell, and Woodley creeks. After it flows out of the basin, in Sherman Oaks, its course takes it nearer Ventura Boulevard but after meeting the Tujunga Wash, it again strays from Ventura, flowing around Griffith Park and continuing its 82 kilometer course to the San Pedro Bay. A watershed moment came for the concretized river in 2010, when it’s navigability was demonstrated by kayakers and paving the way for its un-pavement. For those who prefer to explore without getting wet (or giardia) there are river trails including the North Valleyheart Riverwalk and The Los Angeles River Bike Path, which in 2016 are scheduled to be joined by a section known as the Zev Yaroslavsky LA River Greenway Trail.

The Valley in the car-dependent-but-not-yet-traffic-choked 1960s

During the early years of the Cold War, the Valley emerged as an important center of aerospace and defense and most of it was covered with suburban development. In the 1980s, it still had the reputation as Los Angeles’s suburb, and the suburban valley girl was lampooned in Frank Zappa’s 1982 single, "Valley Girl" and celebrated in Martha Coolidge’s 1983 film, Valley Girl. Preserved by music and film the stereotype never changed although the Valley itself did.

Even as valley girls were influencing the way young people talked around the country, the Valley was undergoing significant Latinization and urbanization. Today the Valley includes clusters of high-rises in Burbank, Encino, Studio City, Universal City, and the “Century City of the Valley,” Warner Center and Anglos are outnumbered by Latinos. The Valley is diverse too — with significant numbers of Armenians, English, Filipinos, Germans, Irish, Italians, Jews, Koreans, Palestinians, Persians, and Russians.

Pendersleigh & Sons Cartography's map of North Hollywood

It’s important to remind readers and participants that open streets events are not races. There are no start or finish lines. If ciclovias sometimes resemble marathons it is because they take place on streets and are thus linear. However, they’re most rewarding when explored at a measured pace and with an adventuresome spirit. I’m starting in North Hollywood rather than at the other end because that terminus is a major public transit hub, served by Metro’s Orange and Red lines as well as Metro Local 152, 154, 156, 162, 183, 224, 353, and 656 lines; the Bob Hope Airport Shuttle; Burbank Bus’s NoHo-Media District and NoHo-Empire lines; California Shuttle Bus’s San Francisco/San Jose line; City of Santa Clarita Transit’s 757 line; and LADOT Commuter Express’s 549 line. It’s also located near the eastern end of the Metro Orange Line bicycle path.

North Hollywood Station

The subway station opened in 2000, near the site of the old and recently-renovated Toluca Southern Pacific Depot, a train station built in 1896 that was built by Southern Pacific and additionally served by the inter-urban Pacific Electric Railway until 1952. Today it is one of the few remaining 19th century buildings in the Valley.

NoHo 14

Also near the station is NoHo 14, the tallest residential highrise in the Valley. One of the first high-rises in the Valley was the Mid-Century modern Commonwealth Savings Building, built in 1961 but sadly demolished in 2013. Older and still standing not far from the ciclovia route is Valley Plaza Tower (12160 Victory Boulevard), a ten-story Corporate International-style building completed in 1960 and designed by prominent local architects Douglas Honnold and John Rex.

In 1979 the Community Redevelopment Agency adopted a part of North Hollywood for redevelopment most of which was designated the NoHo Arts District in 1992. The NoHo Arts District today is undoubtedly the cultural capital of the San Fernando Valley. The area, along with the Hollywood Studio District, is one of Los Angeles’s major concentrations of live theater. It’s also home to a large number of art galleries, dance studios, and café.

Masonic Lodge

Other North Hollywood sites worth a gander include North Hollywood Park (established in 1927 and which hosts the Dave Potell Memorial Rink, the North Hollywood Skate Plaza, a swimming pool, and the North Hollywood Regional Library), the iconic Circus Liquor sign (as seen in Murder Was the Case and Clueless), the North Hollywood Post Office (constructed in 1936), the Television Academy (whose collection of sculptures including Bea Arthur, Bob Newhart, and Gene Roddenberry is far more interesting than Hollywood’s Walk of Fame), the El Portal Theatre (built in 1926), Eddie Brandt's Saturday Matinee (a great video rental place — including VHS), the Iliad Bookshop, the Federal Bar, the California Institute of Abnormal Arts (a bizarre freakshow/performance venue), the restored Idle Hour (a whiskey barrel-shaped bit of programmatic architecture which opened in 1941), the North Hollywood Masonic Lodge (designed by Mayan Revivalist British architect Robert Stacy-Judd), Le Petit Chateau, the St.Charles Borromeo Church (which although built in 1938 obtained a nice J. Earl Trudeau-designed Churrigueresque façade in 1959), Weddington Park, Phil’s Diner (built to look like a train car and not currently in operation), the Lankershim Arts Center (designed by S. Charles Lee in 1939 for the Los Angeles Department of Water & Power), and North Hollywood Toyota (a Streamline Modern car dealership from 1940).

El Portal Theatre

If Encino Commons is the Valley’s Miracle Mile, Toluca Lake is the Valley’s Yugoslavia. In a region known for neighborhoods renaming themselves and redrawing their borders, Toluca Lake takes the balkan cake, chopped up into the small communities of Toluca Lake, Toluca Terrace, Toluca Woods, and West Toluca Lake. They all have roots in the historic Toluca Ranch, a portion of which is now located within the city of Burbank. As for the titular lake, it’s private and protected by the Toluca Lake Property Owners Association, who are the Valley’s Securitate so don’t attempt to visit. Aside from the popular eatery, Little Toni’s, I’m not aware of much that would warrant leaving the ciclovia’s course.

Universal City

Do consider Universal City, although isn’t a city in any recognizable sense since it’s not incorporated and has no permanent residents. Like a proper city, it does have a couple of tall buildings, the tallest being the 36-story 10 Universal City Plaza (completed in 1984) and the rest including Hilton Universal City & Towers (1989), Sheraton Universal Hotel (1969), and Universal Studios Tower. It also has the illusion of a downtown, the mall-like simulacra that is Universal CityWalk. For tourists its probably best known for being the home of Universal Studios Hollywood, a theme park that is, of course, not located in Hollywood. If you like theme parks — and it’s fun to tour the backlot — it’s worth a visit.

Located between Universal City and Studio City is Universal City/Studio City Station. When it opened it was the first subway station in the Valley. During its construction, the foundation of the  late 18th century Campo de Cahuenga Adobe (where the Treaty of Cahuenga/Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed) was uncovered just 15 centimeters beneath a sidewalk along Lankershim where it had been since it was demolished in 1900. A recreation was built nearby in 1951.

Like Universal City, Studio City also began with a film studio, in this case Mack Sennett’s Studioland, which began operation in what was then known as Laurelwood in 1927. Also like Universal City, Studio City is a city in name only although it does have residents and is part of the city of Los Angeles. In 1933, Studioland became Mascot Studios which in 1935 became Republic Studios. In 1967 it became CBS Studio Center and was used to film Gilligan’s Island and Yes, Dear.

Other Studio City sites worth a look include the J. Barry Moffitt-designed Waxman House (built in 1964), R.M. Schindler’s Lingenbrink Shops (a 1942 strip mall with additions from 1946), Schindler’s Laurelwood Apartments (a courtyard complex built in 1949), Oil Can Harry’s (a gay bar which opened in 1968), Du-Par’s Restaurant, the historic Fox Studio City Theatre (built in 1939 and currently home to a Barnes & Noble), the Studio City Hand Car Wash (which has a large, helpfully-illustrative hand sculpture), Art's Delicatessen (in operation since 1957), a Late Modern style Ralph’s (formerly a Hughe’s and designed by Tarzana-based R. Leon Edgar in 1972), a former Denny’s (designed by Armet & Davis, the duo responsible for Googie style Norm’s on La Cienega and Pann’s on La Tijera), St. Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church (a 1962 Mid-Century Modern church designed by A. Quincy Jones and Frederick Emmons), The Fox and Hounds (a British Pub), Pinz Bowling Center (formerly Kirkwood Bowl, a 1956 bowling alley), and the Sportmen's Lodge, a natural area which gradually was developed into the Studio City landmark that it is today.

MORE RESOURCES

If you want more guides, Andrea Richards, Daniel Larusso, and the Militant Angeleno have published their own.  Also worth checking out are Lindsay William-Ross’s Neighborhood Project: NoHo Arts District, Colin Marshall’s A Los Angeles Primer: Universal City, and my own California Fool’s Gold — Exploring North Hollywood, The Gateway to the Valley.

Female Experimental Filmmakers: A Noncomprehensive A-Z

FEMALE EXPERIMENTAL FILMMAKERS: A NONCOMPREHENSIVE A-Z or...

50 OR SO FILMMAKERS YOU DON'T KNOW, WHO WILL SHOCK YOU, AND WHO HOLLYWOOD IS SCARED TO DEATH OF!

There are almost as many types of experimental films as there are experimental filmmakers. Many of them come to film from different directions than conventional filmmakers -- weaving together psychology, painting, dance, poetry, literature, theater, sculpture, and other fields. This being Women's History Month, I thought I'd have a crack at compiling a list of some of the names with which I'm familiar. If you have additions you'd like me to insert, let me know in the comments.



AMY GREENFIELD

Amy Greenfield was born 8 July, 1950 in Boston. She is an originator of the cine-dance genre, her namefor her artistic intersection of experimental film and dance. In addition to film she's created holographic moving sculptures, live multimedia pieces, poetry, and video installations.



BADY MINCK

Bady Minck was born in Ettelbruck, Luxembourg. She studied sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts and experimental film at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. Her debut, 1988's Der Mensch mit den modernen Nerven, was screened at the Cannes Film Festival in 1989. Minck today divides her time between Luxembourg and Vienna.



BARBARA HAMMER

Barbara Hammer's Dyketactics (1974) -- NSFW

Barbara Hammer was born 15 May 1939 in Los Angeles. She graduated from University of California at Los Angeles with a degree in psychology and later earned degrees in English literature and film at San Francisco State University. Today she is a professor at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland.



BETH BILLINGSLEY

Beth Billingsley studied art at the School of Visual Arts. She married sculptor Scott Billingsley and the two formed the filmmaking duo Scott B and Beth B who were seminal figures of the No Wave scene. Their first film was G-Man (1978). Beth Billingsley began making films outside Scott B and Beth B in 1987.



BETZY BROMBERG

Betzy Bromberg studied film at California Institute of the Arts in the 1970s. She began making experimental films in 1976 and her early films included Petit Mal (1977) and Ciao Bella (1978). Today she serves as the Director of the Program in Film and Video at that same school.



CHIAKI WATANABE

Chiaki Watanabe's muX

Chiaki Watanabe (also known as CHIAKI) studied at School of Visual Arts. Today she divides her time between New York and Copenhagen.



COLEEN FITZGIBBON

Coleen Fitzgibbon's Land of Nod (1992/2013)

Coleen Fitzgibbon was born in 1950. She studied structuralist cinema at the Art Institute of Chicago and with the Whitney Independent Study Program. In 1976 she co-founded the collaborative X&Y with Robin Winters. In the late 1970s she was associated with New York's No Wave scene and today she divides her time between New York and Montana.



DINORAH DE JESUS RODRIGUEZ

Dinorah de Jesus Rodriguez's Elixir (2004)

Dinorah de Jesus Rodriguez was born 28 April, 1957 in Placetas, Cuba. At the age of six she emigrated with her family to the US via Spain. She developed an interest in filmmaking whilst studying journalism at Boston University in 1975. In 1978 Rodriguez moved to California but today she lives in Miami.



EILEEN MAXSON 

Eileen Maxson was born 1980 in New York. Maxson received degrees from Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Houston.



ELAINE SUMMERS

Elaine Summers's Tumble Dance (1965)

Lillian Elaine Summers was born 20 February 1925, in Perth, Australia. She grew up in Boston and first studied art education at the Massachusetts College of Art. She was a founding member of the group from which the Judson Dance Theater would coalesce. She died after a fall at her home at New York's Bellevue Hospital on 27 December, 2014.



G. B. JONES

G. B. Jones was born in Bowmanville, Ontario. Her synthpunk band, Bunny and the Lakers, released their only album, Numbers in 1979. She went on to co-found the post-punk band, Fifth Column. Jones also made experimental Super 8 mm films, often in collaboration with Bruce LaBruce.



GERMAINE DULAC

Germaine Dulac's Étude cinégraphique sur une arabesque (1929)

Germaine Dulac was born Charlotte Elisabeth Germaine Saisset-Schneider on 17 November 1882, in Amiens, France. After initially working as a journalist she became interested in film through her friend, actress Stacia Napierkowska in 1914. Dulac and writer Irene Hillel-Erlanger then founded DH Films and produced a series of films from 1915-1920. Dulac died in Paris on 20 July 1942.



JAN MILLSAPPS

Jan Millsapps was born 26 February 1950 in Concord, North Carolina. She rose to prominence as an independent experimental animator and her film, Parthenogenesis, was awarded at the North Carolina Film Festival in 1976. She was a professor of cinema at San Francisco State University from 1987 and from 1991 to 1995 she served as chair of the cinema department at the school.



JANIS CRYSTAL LIPZIN

Janis Crystal Lipzin was born in 1945 in Colorado Springs. She studied painting and photography at Ohio University and New York University, and film at the San Francisco Art Institute. She made numerous Super 8 mm and 16 mm films begining in the mid-1970s. She directed the film/photo program at Antioch College and taught film and Interdisciplinary studies at the San Francisco Art Institute from 1978 to 2009.



JEANNE LIOTTA

Jeanne Liotta was born in 1960 in Brooklyn. She studied theater at New York University where she collaborated with Gargoyle Mechanique, The Living Theatre, and the Alchemical Theatre Company. From the 1985-1995 she collaborated on films and other artwork with Bradley Eros. In 1993 she founded the Firefly Cinema, which operated until 2010. She is also currently a professor of film studies at the University of Colorado Boulder and the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College.



JOYCE WIELAND 

Joyce Wieland's Sailboat (1967)

Joyce Wieland was born 30 June 1931, in Toronto. She studied commercial art and graphic design at Toronto's Central Technical School and began making experimental films in the 1950s. In 1962, Wieland and her husband filmmaker Michael Snow moved to New York where they lived until 1970. She died from Alzheimer's disease on 27 June 1998.



LARUA MULVEY

Laura Mulvey was born 15 August, 1941. She was educated at St Hilda's College, Oxford. Mulvey arose as a prominent experimental filmmaker in the 1970s, co-writing and co-directing films with her husband, Peter Wollen. Today she is professor of film and media studies at Birkbeck, University of London.



LEAH GILLIAM

Leah Gilliam was born in 1967 in Washington, DC. She studied modern culture and media at Brown University, film and twentieth century studies at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, and interactive communication at New York University. She began making experimental films with 1992's Now Pretend.



LESLIE THORNTON

Leslie Thornton was born in 1951 in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. She grew up in Cincinnati. She attended the State University of New York at Buffalo and later at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Thornton began as a painter in the early 1970s and began filmmaking with Face (1974). She currently a professor of modern culture and media at Brown University and divides her time between Providence and New York City.



LYNNE SACHS

Lynne Sachs was born 10 August, 1961 in Memphis, Tennessee. She attended Brown University where she majored in history and developed an interest in experimental documentary filmmaking. In 1985 she moved to San Francisco where she attended San Francisco State University and later the San Francisco Art Institute. In 1989 she made a long format experimental documentary, Sermons and Sacred Pictures. She currently teaches experimental film and video at New York University and lives in Brooklyn.



MAMA BAER

Mama Baer was born Andrea Katharina Ingeborg Gothling in 1981. She began as a post-industrial and noise musician in 1999 and began making experimental films in the 2000s. She currently lives in Flensburg, Germany where she often collaborates with her husband Kommissar Hjuler as "Kommissar Hjuler und Frau."



MARIE EPSTEIN

Marie Epstein (née Marie-Antonine Epstein) was born 14 August 1899 in Warsaw. She collaborated with her brother Jean Epstein, director Jean Benoit-Lévy, and later worked as a film preservationist at Cinémathèque francaise. She died 24 April 1995 in Paris.



MARIE MENKEN

Marie Menken's Lights (1964-1966)

Marie Menken (née Marie Menkevicius) was born 25 May 1909 in Brooklyn. She studied painting at the New York School of Fine and Industrial Arts and the Art Students League of New York. Menken and her husband Willard Maas co-founded the avant-garde Gryphon Group in the mid-1940s. She died 29 December 1970 in Brooklyn.



MARJORIE KELLER

Marjorie Keller was born in 1950 in Yorktown, New York. She enrolled at Tufts University but transferred to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She began making films in 1972 and earned a degree in cinema studies at New York University in 1975. She was working on a book on experimental female filmmakers at the time of her death in 1994.



MARTHA COLBURN

Martha Colburn was born in 1972 and grew up in the country between Gettysburg and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. In 1990 she enrolled at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore. She began making films in 1994 and around the same time formed The Dramatics (not to be confused with the famous Motown group of the same name) who scored many of Colburn's films.



MARY ELLEN BUTE

Mary Ellen Bute's Synchromy No. 4: Escape (1938)

Mary Ellen Bute was born 21 November 1906 in Houston, Texas. She studied stage lighting at Yale University. Bute's her abstract animated films were widely screened in cinemas before features in from in the 1930s until 1953, and she categorized them as "visual music" and later named the Seeing Sound series. She died of heart failure at New York City's Cabrini Medical Center on 17 October 1983.



MARY HALLOCK-GREENWALT

Mary Elizabeth Hallock-Greenewalt was born in 1871 in Beirut. She studied piano at the Philadelphia Conservatory of Music and with Theodor Leschetizky in Vienna. Although best known as a pianist, she was also an inventor and pioneered visual music with an invention she called Nourathar which synchronized film to musical recordings and she hand-painted films films as well. She died in 1951.



MAYA DEREN 

Maya Deren was born Eleanora Derenkowskaia (Элеоно́ра Деренко́вская) on 29 April 1917 in Ukraine. In 1922, her family emigrated to Syracuse, New York, where her father shortened their family name to Deren. In 1930, Eleanora Deren enrolled at the League of Nations International School of Geneva. She graduated from New York University with a degree in literature. She adopted the surname Maya in 1943, after she moved to Los Angeles. Her experimental collaboration with Alexander Hammid, Meshes of the Afternoon (1943), is one of the most influential avant-garde films in history. She died on 13 October 1961 from a brain hemorrhage brought on by extreme malnutrition.



MIDI ONODERA

Midi Onodera was born in Toronto. She began making experimental films in the late 1970s. In 1979 she made Untitled, Contemplation, and Reality-Illusion.



NANCY SAVOCA

Nancy Laura Savoca was born 23 July 1959 in the Bronx. In 1980 she married to writer and producer Richard Guay. She graduated from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts in 1982 where she made two shorts, Renata and Bad Timing.



PEGGY AHWESH

Margaret "Peggy" Ahwesh was born 1954 in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania. She earned a degree from Antioch College. She began her film career in 1983, with the Super 8 work Pittsburgh Trilogy. She began teaching film and electronic arts at Bard College in 1990.



REBECCA HORN

Rebecca Horn's Berlin (1974)

Rebecca Horn was born 24 March 1944, in Michelstadt, Germany. In 1963 she enrolled at the Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg but withdrew the following year after contracting lung poisoning. She currently divides her time between Berlin and Paris.



SADAF FOROUGHI

Sadaf Foroughi (صدف فروغی) was born 27 July 1976 in Tehran. She studied French literature and philosophy at the University of Provence in Aix-en-Provence, France. She began making film with 2004's Une Impression.



SADIE BENNING

Sadie Benning was born 11 April 1973 in Milwaukee. She began experimenting with film as a child with a Fisher-Price Pixelvision PXL-2000 toy camera. In 1998, Benning co-founded Le Tigre with Kathleen Hanna and Johanna Fateman. Benning left the band in 2000.


SHARON LOCKHART

Filmmaker and photographer Sharon Lockhart was born in 1964 in Norwood, Massachusetts. She received degrees from San Francisco Art institute and the Art Center College of Design. She is currently an associate professor at the University of Southern California's Roski School of Fine Arts, and lives in Los Angeles.



SHIRLEY CLARKE 

Shirley Clarke's Bridges-Go-Round (1958)

Shirley Clarke (née Shirley Brimberg) was born in New York City on 2 October 1919. She studied dance at Stephens College, Johns Hopkins University, Bennington College, and University of North Carolina. She began to show interest in filmmaking in the 1950s, completing Dance in the Sun in 1953. She died after a stroke in Boston on 23 September 1997.



STEPHANIE BARBER

Stephanie Barber was born in Riverhead, New York and grew up in Long Island. She studied film and poetry at Binghamton University. She is currently a resident artist in the multidisciplinary MFA program at Baltimore's Mt. Royal School of Interdisciplinary Art.



SU FRIEDRICH

Su Friedrich was born 12 December 1954 in New Haven, Connecticut. She studied art and art history at Oberlin College. She made her first film, Hot Water, in 1978. Since 1998, has taught at the Center for the Creative and Performing Arts at Princeton University. Today she lives in Brooklyn.



SUZAN PITT

Suzan Pitt produces experimental animated films. She was studying painting when began experimenting with 16mm film, creating Bowl, Theatre, Garden, Marble Game in 1970. She currently teaches with the experimental animation program at California Institute of the Arts.



TRACEY MOFFATT

Tracey Moffatt was born 12 November, 1960 in Brisbane, Australia. She graduated from the Queensland College of Art in 1982 when she filmed the documentary, Guniwaya Ngigu. She's primarily known for her photography, but has made several experimental films.



TRINH T. MINH-HA

Trinh T. Minh-ha's Reassemblage (1983)

Trinh T. Minh-ha was born in Hanoi and raised in South Vietnam during the war. She studied piano and music composition at the National Conservatory of Music and Theater in Saigon before emigrating to the US in 1970. Her first 16mm film, Reassemblage, was filmed in Senegal and released in 1983.



VAGINAL DAVIS

Vaginal Davis was born in Los Angeles. Davis's band The Afro Sisters released their first seven-inch EP Indigo, Sassafras & Molasses, on Amoeba Records in 1978 and later opened for The Smiths and Happy Mondays on both of their first American tours. She began making experimental films with 1994's Designy Living. She currently lives in Berlin.



VENA KAVA

Vena Kava was born 2 November 1986, in Zakopane, Poland. When seven years old, her family emigrated to the US. Kava studied experimental filmmaking at Emerson College in Boston and later the San Francisco Art Institute. Kava currently lives in Montreal.



VIVIAN OSTROVSKY

Vivian Ostrovsky was born 17 November 1945, in New York and spent most of her childhood in Rio de Janeiro. She studied psychology at Paris's Institut de Psychologie and later film at the Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle and by Henri Langlois and Eric Rohmer. In the 1970s, Ostrovsky and Rosine Grange co-founded Ciné-Femmes International.



VIVIENNE DICK

Vivienne Dick was born 1950 in Donegal, Ireland. She attended school there before emigrating to the US in the 1970s where she became associated with the No Wave scene. In 1982 Dick moved back to Ireland and today she teaches filmmaking at Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology.



ZEINABU IRENE DAVIS

Zeinabu irene Davis was born in Philadelphia and began making film at Brown University. She later received an MFA in motion picture/television production at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is also a professor of the Department of Communication at the University of California, San Diego.

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FURTHER READING

Chick Flicks: Theories and Memories of the Feminist Film Movement (by B. Ruby Rich, 1998) Women and Experimental Filmmaking (edited by Jean Petrolle and Virginia Wright Wexman, 2005)
Women's Experimental Cinema : Critical Frameworks (by Robin Blaetz, 2007)

If you're in Los Angeles, check out the Los Angeles Film Forum, the "longest-running organization in Southern California dedicated exclusively to the ongoing, non-commercial exhibition of independent, experimental, and progressive media art."

*****

Follow me at ericbrightwell.com

Southland Parks — Visiting Los Angeles High Memorial Park

Parks comprise more than 14% of Los Angeles’s landscape and the city is home to hundreds of these cherished public spaces. From the largest park within any American city (Topanga State Park) to the smallest pocket parks and parklets, I hope to showcase them one park at a time, in the series Southland Parks.

*****

Memorial Branch Library

Yesterday, whilst looking for a public library, I came across the charming, Tudor-style Memorial Branch Library, situated at the back of an equally attractive park, Los Angeles High Memorial Park. Both turned out to have an interesting story worth sharing.

Los Angeles High Memorial Park

Los Angeles High Memorial Park is a small (one hectare), unstaffed park that hosts a large jungle gym and a nice assortment of stately trees. It’s located across Olympic (at 4625 West Olympic Boulevard) from Los Angeles High School in the southeastern corner of Midtown’s Brookside neighborhood.

The land one which the park is located was annexed by the city in 1915. In 1920, the Rimpau Estate Co. subdivided the land, formerly part of Francisco Avila's Rancho Las Cienegas, as Windsor Crest. Housing deeds expressly excluded non-whites but as with so much of Los Angeles, whites now only account for a small minority (15%) whereas most of the residents near the park are either black or Korean.

At some point the neighborhood became known as Brookside, a reference to the Río del Jardín de las Flores, which begins in the Santa Monica Mountains and then flows (mostly underground today) to Ballona Creek which then flows west and empties into Santa Monica Bay.

Across the street from the Los Angeles High Memorial Park is Los Angeles High School. The school was established in Downtown Los Angeles in 1873 and moved to the current site in 1917. The 1971 San Fernando Earthquake caused extensive damage to the beautiful buildings and preservationists mobilized to rehabilitate it until one of those mysterious fires finished it off and it was replaced with the current schoolhouse.

LA High Memorial Park Welcomes You

Los Angeles High Memorial Park was born when a group of students from the school purchased a parcel across the street in 1922 to dedicate to the memory of twenty students who’d died during the Great War (1914 - 1918).

Inside the Memorial Branch Library

In 1923, an adjacent parcel was procured by students and alumni and in 1929 the city granted the Los Angeles Public Library the right to there build a library designed by the architectural firm of Austin & Ashley (John C. Austin and Frederick M. Ashley), who’d previously designed the high school.

Judson's stained-glass memorial

Stained-Glass Windows In the Sky

The beautiful stained glass windows were crafted by the Garvanza-based Judson Art Studio. The library opened on 29 April, 1930.

Many of the trees are quite mature and seem likely to date back to the time of the park’s dedication. They represent several species and the roots of the one at the library’s southwest corners appear to be pressing quite strongly against its bricks. In the western side of the park is a large jungle gym, dedicated in 2013. This being the Council District 4 of Tom LaBonge, I have little doubt that ribbon was cut and a vociferous speech was made… perhaps even the Blue Angels made an appearance overhead.

Los Angeles Library sign that used to be at the Central location

When I visited the gym and the rest of the park were being enjoyed by a healthy number of people of all ages and diverse backgrounds. They were engaged in a variety of activities; playing, hop-scotching, light petting, tic-tac-toeing, reading, picnicking, and lining up for a bite at About Time, a South Park-based taco truck.

Sidewalk fun

About Time taco truck

In the days of old, Los Angeles High Memorial Park was the last stop on the Los Angeles Railway’s L Line but the last of the yellow cars came this way in 1940, when it was replaced by bus service. Today the nearest train station is Wilshire/Western Station, a not-too-distant/not-too-close 2.75 kilometers to the east, but the park is also served by Metro’s 28 and Rapid 728 lines.

*****

Eric Brightwell is an adventurer, writer, rambler, explorer, cartographer, and guerrilla gardener who is always seeking writing, speaking, traveling, and art opportunities. He is not interested in writing advertorials, clickbait, or listicles and jobs must pay more than slave wages as he would rather write for pleasure than for peanuts. Brightwell’s written work has appeared in Amoeblog, diaCRITICS, and KCET Departures. His work has been featured by the American Institute of Architects, the Architecture & Design Museum, the Craft & Folk Art Museum, Form Follows Function, Los Angeles County Store, Skid Row Housing Trust, and 1650 Gallery. Brightwell has been featured in the Los Angeles Times, Huffington Post, Los Angeles Magazine, LAist, Eastsider LA, Boing Boing, Los Angeles, I’m Yours, and on Notebook on Cities and Culture. He has been a guest speaker on KCRW‘s Which Way, LA? and at Emerson College. Art prints of his maps are available from 1650 Gallery and on other products from Cal31. He is currently writing a book about Los Angeles and you can follow him on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.