L.A. Stories
So often we see Los Angeles and its surrounds masquerading on screen as other places, but the films in this decades-spanning collection, going from Raymond Chandler to Gregg Araki and beyond, root themselves in the sun-drenched, smoggy sprawl of this most postmodern city—home not just to movie folk but also conspiracy theorists and bronzed burn-outs, rebel punk rockers and world-weary detectives.
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Totally F***ed Up
Directed by Gregg Araki | 79 mins | 1993
The first film of Araki’s “Teenage Apocalypse” trilogy, which the director once described as a “cross between avant-garde experimental cinema and a queer John Hughes flick,” "Totally F***ed Up" focuses on six gay adolescents who, rejected by their families... -
The Living End
Directed by Gregg Araki | 85 mins | 1992
A raw, raucous, and at times brutally violent road movie, in which the reckless drifter Luke (mixed martial artist Mike Dytri) links up with cynical film critic Jon (Craig Gilmore), and the duo—both HIV positive, and both in kamikaze mode—hit the road to b... -
The Exiles
Directed by Kent Mackenzie | 72 mins | 1961
The result of an extended collaboration between MacKenzie and his subjects, young Native Americans living in the crumbling slums of Bunker Hill, The Exiles seems to unfold over the course of one bibulous night, by turns melancholy, angry, and ecstatic, ... -
Los Angeles Plays Itself
Directed by Thom Andersen | 173 mins | 2003
Los Angeles, so the story goes, became the nation’s movie capital in part because of its proximity to a variety of different landscapes, easily re-cast as other, far-flung places. But how has the city represented itself on screen? Thom Anderson’s semina... -
Spa Night
Directed by Andrew Ahn | 97 mins | 2016
Andrew Ahn’s remarkably assured debut feature is a portrait of forbidden sexual awakening set in the nocturnal world of spas and karaoke bars in Los Angeles' Koreatown. David Cho (Joe Seo, who won the Special Jury Award at Sundance for his breakthrough perf... -
In the Air Tonight
Directed by Andrew Norman Wilson | 11 mins | 2020
An atmospheric standout of the Sundance and the New York Film Festival shorts programs, Andrew Norman Wilson’s "In the Air Tonight" unfurls a ghost story beneath the night skies of Michael Mann’s Los Angeles. The film recounts the apocryphal tale ... -
Actress
Directed by Sebastian Pardo | 11 mins | 2015
An aspiring actress moves to Los Angeles to pursue her dream, and finds herself orbiting the periphery of show business, while everyday life muddies what exactly her path might be. Ana Coto, star of horror blockbuster "OUIJA", leads Sebastian Pardo’s n... -
Assault on Precinct 13
Directed by John Carpenter | 91 mins | 1976
As lean and brooding as its skeletal synth theme music, possessed from the first frame with an inimitable sense of ambient menace, Carpenter’s second feature is a marvel of action filmmaking economy. Its siege-on-an-LA-police-station plotline is inspire... -
Farewell, My Lovely
Directed by Dick Richards | 95 mins | 1975
In this handsome adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s 1940 novel, noir icon Robert Mitchum meets one of the genre’s quintessential figures, Detective Philip Marlowe. The search for a missing girlfriend and a stolen jade necklace brings him into contact with ... -
Rock 'n' Roll High School
Directed by Allan Arkush and Joe Dante | 93 mins | 1979
The moptop Ramones liberate a school from killjoy Principal Togar (Mary Woronov) in this sweetly rambunctious romp starring P.J. Soles (Halloween) as lead rebel of the student body. The innocent music-fueled anarchy (directed by a veteran of... -
DROGA!
Directed by Miko Revereza | 8 mins | 2014
The debut work of Manila-born filmmaker Miko Revereza, whose features "No Data Plan" (2019) and "Nowhere Near" (2023) reflect on his experience as an undocumented resident in the United States, this 8mm short—comprising a repeated shot of a singer and a c...
