To Its Logical Conclusion: Films on Decay, Debris, and Demolition

Trojan by Vanessa Renwick

Filmmakers Jason Byrne and Laska Jimsen in person!

Implicit in the reality of decay, debris, and demolition is the idea of what came before, what no longer exists, and what now only lives in memory and experience. Our encounters with landscapes, buildings, and objects are deeply subjective and vividly personal, but the connective potential of those experiences and the inherent poignancy their ephemerality brings, are perhaps uniquely suited to motion pictures as a vehicle of expression. This program features five works which look at decay and demolition, transformation and transubstantiation, as embodied in the landscapes and spaces that surround us.

Los Angeles Filmforum has for some time been eager to screen Jason Byrne’s remarkable SCRAP VESSEL, in which the filmmaker’s journey on a freighter destined for the scrapheap becomes an exploration of space which collapses history, time, and memory in a beautifully rendered, multilayered, audiovisual portrait. Screening with SCRAP VESSEL is Laska Jimsen’s sharp, strangely touching examination of a Christmas tree processing facility, BEAVER CREEK YARD, and Vanessa Renwick’s trio of PORTRAIT films, which examine three different structures in the Pacific Northwest that represent a varied, open-ended conflict within their surroundings.

TRT: 79min.

For more event information:
www.lafilmforum.org, or 323-377-7238

Tickets: $10 general, $6 students/seniors; free for Filmforum members.
Available by credit card in advance from Brown Paper Tickets at:
http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/603924
or at the door.

Beaver Creek Yard

by Laska Jimsen (2013, digital, color, sound, 5:30)
Beaver Creek Yard is about a place, a Christmas tree processing facility on Beaver Creek Road, and also about the human impulse to control, exploit, and profit from the natural world. – Laska Jimsen

Portrait #1: Cascadia Terminal

by Vanessa Renwick (2005, digital (shot on 16mm), color, sound, 5:45)

The Portrait Series is part of an ongoing series of filmed places, stories and histories of Cascadia with scores by musicians living in the Pacific Northwest.

A mesmerizing stare with a hypnotic score at the most efficient grain terminal at the port of Vancouver, B.C. The terminal is serviced by the Canadian Pacific Railway and can unload up to 300 cars in 24 hours which is equal to approximately 25,800 tons of prairie grain.
Cascadia Terminal...this place, a grain elevator in Vancouver,B.C....a place where many kids used to hang out and get high and make out, a ruin of sorts, even though it is still operating. A large industrial space within the city, on the water, giving one the feeling of space, of being maybe further out in the country. There even used to be a squat there in an industrial bldg. near the property for a bit.
Since shooting this film Cascadia Terminal has become tied up with “homeland security” type port issues, and it is not possible to go and hang out there anymore. – Vanessa Renwick

Portrait #2: Trojan

by Vanessa Renwick (2006, digital (shot on 35mm), color, sound, 5:00)

“The astonishing five-minute color film was shot in 35mm and transferred to video, sporting a perfectly synched musical score by Quasi’s Sam Coomes. No narrative, just a picturesque haunting reminder of our lives under the totem of a nuclear state. Long defunct, the monumental tower was imploded earlier this year and Renwick decided to capture the haunting silhouette that has simply stood there menacingly for years. She calmly documents its demise, which is very much an anti-climax. The short film adores its subject, the towering cement structure. Over a varying course of time, with lapse and stills we view a building painted in pastel light, stark at night, at dawn and dusk. Its inevitable course in its history would be told through a moment in time when it was no more. In essence, the very moment of implosion infers the ultimate destructive potential of its former chilling power. The film, shot by veteran cameraman Eric Alan Edwards (Kids, Even Cowgirls Get The Blues,My Own Private Idaho), is stunning to watch, and perfectly blunt.” – TJ Norris

Portrait #3: House of Sound

by Vanessa Renwick (2009, digital (shot on 35mm), b/w, sound, 11:20)

“Circling the empty corner where a historic Portland record store once stood among a strip of black jazz clubs, Portrait #3: House of Sound is a testimonial to a community and cultural space recently demolished. The beautiful black and white 35mm footage, subtly tinged with loneliness, both juxtaposes and compliments the rich, vibrant voices sampled from a radio broadcast tribute to the record shop. The film moves between laughter, fond memories, melancholy and finally, conviction that despite physical destruction, the House of Sound will never die.” – MIXFEST

Scrap Vessel

by Jason Byrne (2009, digital (shot on 16mm & video), b/w & color, sound, 51:00)

"A meditation on the maritime and memory, documenting the last days and multiple lives of a freighter ship as it sails on its final voyage from China to Bangladesh. Known to its most recent Chinese crew as the Hupohai, the vessel is a veritable archive itself, bearing the traces of voyages through Northern Europe and China. As a new Indian crew sails through the South China seas and the Bay of Bengal, the ship’s past is revealed through objects left behind: in the captain’s desk are 35mm negatives of the Chinese crew posing at ports of call, while near the engine room are cases of 16mm films that once entertained them. With a modicum of words, these scraps of history, along with images of the sea’s endless expanse and the ship’s majestic turbines, motors and decks, to create a portrait of an object intricately entwined in the forces of global capital." – Chi-hui Yang, SF International Asian American Film Festival