While its location in the Kinross Building just north of Wilshire isn’t the focal point of the UCLA campus, the UCLA World Arts and Cultures Department hopes to make its presence felt through UCLArts.
The WAC department takes an interdisciplinary approach to learning about different cultures through expressive mediums such as dance or film, and incorporates anthropology and art.
The World Arts and Cultures Department hosts a free screening of the films “Venice: Where the Sidewalk Ends” created by WAC students last spring and “Oh, What a Blow that Phantom Gave Me” by faculty member John Bishop for free at the Kinross Building today.
The film, “Venice: Where the Sidewalk Ends”, a documentary about street performers at Venice Beach was filmed by John Bishop’s video production class last year. Students took several cameras in different groups, each shooting their own footage, and edited everything together for the final product – all within the span of one quarter.
Venice Beach is one of many places (Santa Monica Pier, Third Street Promenade) where street performers flaunt their talents for a buck or two.
“I know they see themselves as artists but they are in a position where the audience members are tourists watching them with that gaze of ‘the freaks on Venice,’” said Danielle van Dobben, a WAC graduate student and teaching assistant for the class last quarter. “They have a lot to overcome and at the same time, this is their business.”
Instead of documenting the Venice street performers as a tourist attraction, Bishop’s students wanted to capture their value as artists on film.
“The underlying premise that we discussed and decided on was that these were accomplished performers in their own right and that they deserved to be treated respectfully in media,” Bishop said.
“The people had a lot to say about their work,” said Athena Radomski, a senior WAC student. “We learned so much. You get a whole big picture of the Venice Beach culture.”
The second film the WAC department will be screening tonight is a portrait of anthropologist Edmund Carpenter. “Oh, What a Blow that Phantom Gave Me” documents Carpenter’s work and ideas in the field of anthropology and media. Carpenter was one of the first to bring together the worlds of anthropology and art and he oversaw the inception of the anthropology department at Cal State Northridge.
“He developed a lot of ideas of how media worked,” Bishop said. “The main one was that media creates its own environment. It’s not about things and it’s not about technology and it’s not a flow of information that actually creates a different reality and changes the world in which we live.”
Carpenter’s work is pertinent to studies in the WAC department, including the fields of ethnographic and anthropologic film seen in “Venice: Where the Sidewalk Ends.” For this reason, film is necessary as a tool for the documenting of world cultures at the center of WAC’s mission.
“Working in choreography or dancing, folklore or anthropology, there is no way you can afford a professional film crew,” Bishop said. “But if you have some training and some sense of the conceptual structure, you can make films in your field at a low cost.”