Edward Ruscha

Several lost-soul night-owls, including a nightclub owner, a talk radio relationship counselor, and an itinerant stranger have encounters that expose their contradictions and anxieties about love and acceptance.

A series of interviews with artists, photographers and Factory superstars who worked and socialized with Andy Warhol.

Quand Frank Gehry, un des architectes les plus ingénieux de notre époque demande à son ami, par ailleurs grande pointure du cinéma, de réaliser un long-métrage sur sa vie et son Œuvre, on obtient un doux mélange de didactisme et d’intimisme. Sydney Pollack, cinéaste néophyte en documentaire et en architecture, tente de nous livrer les clefs des œuvres et du processus de création de Frank Gehry dans une atmosphère décontractée. Il choisit les esquisses de l’architecte comme point de départ de ce documentaire. Sous l’œil effaré du spectateur, des gribouillis plus qu’abstraits se transforment en bricolage en carton puis en immenses bâtiments qui s’érigent dans les paysages urbains des quatre coins du monde.

Deconstructing the myth of Oedipus within the framework of an ancient Japanese folk story, the Yonemotos craft a highly charged discourse of loss and desire. Quoting from Bunuel, Freud, pop media and art, they place the symbology of Western psychosexual analytical theory into a cross-cultural context, juxtaposing the Oedipal and Kappa myths in a delirious collusion of form and content. The Kappa, a malevolent Japanese water imp, is played with eerie intensity by artist Mike Kelley; actress Mary Woronov plays Jocasta as a vamp from a Hollywood exploitation film. Steeped in perversions and violent longings, both the Kappa and Oedipus legends are presented in highly stylized, purposefully "degraded" forms, reflecting their media-exploitative cultural contexts. In this ironic yet oddly poignant essay of psychosexual compulsion and catharsis, the Yonemotos demonstrate that even in debased forms, cultural archetypes hold the power to move and manipulate.

With his signature circular glasses and mustache, Michael Chow is an exuberant force at the crossroads between eccentricity and sophistication. The famed restaurateur defined “The Moment” with the openings of Mr. Chow, the bustling upscale Chinese eateries that attracted the glitterati of Swingin’ London, 70s Hollywood, and post Studio 54 New York.

A short film which debuted in a secret location in London to coincide with the release of the NikeCraft x Tom Sachs Mars Yard Overshoe

Commissioned by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles on the occasion of their 2016 Gala event, 'Ed Ruscha: Buildings and Words' traces two recurring themes in the artist's 60-year oeuvre.

Ed Ruscha made his very first art in his native Oklahoma, but soon became attracted to Los Angeles . Curator Margit Rowell has examined his extensive body of work and created a brilliant exhibition of his seldom seen drawings. Rowell visits Ruscha in his studio, looking at new paintings with the artist, discussing his progress over the decades and asking him to comment on the many milestones in his large retrospective exhibition at MoCA in Los Angeles.

Commissioned by The Getty Museum on the occasion of their 2019 Getty Medal to the painter, draftsman, photographer, and bookmaker, Ed Ruscha. Utilizing The Getty Research Institute's preservation and digitization of over a million images from Ed's Streets of Los Angeles photo series, and excerpts from Jack Kerouac's "On The Road," this film puts together two of Ed's major inspirations: Kerouac's text and the city of Los Angeles.

The inevitable fat cigar between his fingers, the American actor, director and fine artist Dennis Hopper (1936) self-mockingly looks back on his chequered life and career, at the request of Dutch director, photographer and fine artist Thom Hoffman. The latter sifted through the turbulent life story of Hopper, who is primarily known from the cult film Easy Rider (1969). Hopper went through as many high as low points. In conveniently arranged chapters, Hoffman shows the decisive moments in Hopper's life and asks colleagues like Wim Wenders, David Lynch, Sean Penn and Julian Schnabel to comment on them. The documentary is richly illustrated with film excerpts, photos, newspaper articles and anecdotes. The main reason for this film was the retrospective of Dennis Hopper's art work in the Amsterdam Stedelijk Museum in 2001.

A documentary chronicling the filmmaking career of Dennis Hopper.

In this 1972 BBC Films production, architectural historian Reyner Banham takes the viewer on a tour of what he describes as the “four ecologies” of the city of Los Angeles: Surfurbia, Foothills, The Plains of Id, and Autopia (beach, basin, foothills, freeways). Noted for his seminal book of essays, Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies, published the year before, Banham had a love affair with the City of Angels and its bold typologies. (Open Source Cities)

Portrait de l’un des plus grands artistes français du début du XXe siècle depuis ses débuts où il publiait des dessins humoristiques dans la presse jusqu'à sa reconnaissance lorsqu'il s’est installé aux Etats-Unis. Inventeur des «ready-mades», objets usuels promus œuvres d'art, le peintre, plasticien et dessinateur Marcel Duchamp s’est inspiré des sciences et notamment des mathématiques pour réaliser ses créations à l’image de «Trois stoppages étalon». Sa composition «Nu descendant un escalier» (1912) provoqua un scandale retentissant à Paris et à New York. Ce tableau fut même refusé au Salon des indépendants à Paris.

Pierre Bismuth hires a private detective and a duo of screenwriters to investigate on an enigmatic artwork.

Los Angeles-based artist Ed Ruscha’s 1975 short film Miracle centers on a day in the life of an auto mechanic (played by artist Jim Ganzer), who has a transformative experience while working on the engine of a Ford Mustang. Actress and singer Michelle Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas plays his love interest. Since the 1960s, Ruscha has received extensive critical acclaim for his paintings, photographs, drawings, and books exploring the commercial vernacular of Los Angeles—its graphic signage, architecture, and even parking lots. In effect, his work subtly comments on America’s cultural and socioeconomic evolution in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Miracle is one of only two films made by the artist in the 1970s. – Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis by Kelly Shindler, Associate Curator

This rare foray into filmmaking by the iconic California visual artist opens with Mason Williams, the composer of "Classical Gas" solemnly making himself a drink on a hillside patio at dusk as if performing an incantation. Heavy reverb on the soundtrack amplifies every sound until he sits down to read through a stack of Ruscha's photography books, Twentysix Gas Stations, Some Los Angeles Apartments, Every Building on the Sunset Strip, etc. In an over-the-shoulder shot, we see each page of each book as Mason flips through them, briefly contemplating what he sees and reading any available text as a kind distanced recitation. Mason punctuates this seeming solemnity with moments of irreverence, manhandling, at times, these limited edition art objects as if they were toss away shopping catalogs as he presses on with his appointed task

"L.A. Restaurants" opens with a panned shot recorded while driving past Cole's P.E. Buffet in downtown Los Angeles, which was founded in 1908 and claims to be the oldest restaurant and bar in the city. In a manner reminiscent of the typological catalogues of gas stations and buildings on the Sunset Strip first explored in his seminal artist's books of the 1960s, Ruscha documents sixty-four restaurants emblematic of "Old Hollywood" across the LA region. This visual perambulation moves in a spiral formation, from the outer limits of the San Fernando Valley along Ventura Boulevard to the centrally located restaurants near Culver City.

A man enjoys the salad days.

Iconoclasts is a Sundance Channel show. Each episode pairs two "creative visionaries" who discuss their lives, influences, and art, most of whom are longtime friends with the other person featured in the episode. The series premiered on November 17, 2005, and has had six six-episode seasons.