Reality Frictions / Bontoc Eulogy

A filmmaker and the current Associate Dean of Academic Affairs at the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture, Steve F. Anderson grew up in Los Angeles watching images filmed in the city on television. Seeing images of where you live on screen as well as out your window can generate a desire to always decipher what is “real” and what isn’t. As filmmaker Thom Andersen notes in Los Angeles Plays Itself, Angelenos can quickly be taken out of a movie’s car chase scene when their geographical map of Los Angeles doesn’t correspond with the street directions on screen. Steve F. Anderson sought to explore this “intersection of fact and fiction on the screens of Hollywood” with his latest essay feature film, Reality Frictions, which we are pleased to debut in Los Angeles in partnership with Los Angeles Filmforum. One of the films referenced in Anderson’s work is Marlon Fuentes’ Bontoc Eulogy, which explores the performative images taken at the St. Louis World Fair in 1904 of displaced and coerced indigenous Filipino communities. A screening of Reality Frictions and Q&A with Steve F. Anderson will be followed by Bontoc Eulogy.—Programming Coordinator Nicole Ucedo

Programmed by Los Angeles Filmforum Executive and Artistic Director Adam Hyman and Archive Programming Coordinator Nicole Ucedo.