Get out of the car
Director Thom Andersen
Countries United States
Duration 35 min
Synopsis
Thom Andersen's latest film is a city symphony in 16mm, composed from advertising signs, building facades, fragments of music and conversations, and unmarked sites of vanished cultural landmarks. The musical fragments compose an impressionistic survey of popular music made in Los Angeles (almost all of it). "'Get Out of the Car' could be characterized as a nostalgic film. It is a celebration of artisanal culture and termite art (...). But I would claim it’s not a useless and reactionary feeling of nostalgia, but rather a militant nostalgia. Change the past, it needs it. Remember the words of Walter Benjamin I quote in the film: even the dead will not be safe. Restore what can be restored, like the Watts Towers. Rebuild what must be rebuilt. Re-abolish capital punishment. Remember the injustices done to Chinese, Japanese, blacks, gays, Mexicans, Chicanos, and make it right. Put Richard Berry, Maxwell Davis, Hunter Hancock, Art Laboe, and Big Jay McNeely in the Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame. Bring back South Central Farm. Only when these struggles are fought and won can we begin to create the future." (Thom Andersen)
Thom Andersen's latest film is a city symphony in 16mm, composed from advertising signs, building facades, fragments of music and conversations, and unmarked sites of vanished cultural landmarks. The musical fragments compose an impressionistic survey of popular music made in Los Angeles (almost all of it). "'Get Out of the Car' could be characterized as a nostalgic film. It is a celebration of artisanal culture and termite art (...). But I would claim it’s not a useless and reactionary feeling of nostalgia, but rather a militant nostalgia. Change the past, it needs it. Remember the words of Walter Benjamin I quote in the film: even the dead will not be safe. Restore what can be restored, like the Watts Towers. Rebuild what must be rebuilt. Re-abolish capital punishment. Remember the injustices done to Chinese, Japanese, blacks, gays, Mexicans, Chicanos, and make it right. Put Richard Berry, Maxwell Davis, Hunter Hancock, Art Laboe, and Big Jay McNeely in the Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame. Bring back South Central Farm. Only when these struggles are fought and won can we begin to create the future." (Thom Andersen)