LA Film Festival
There are few places where the idea of an outdoor movie feels simultaneously perfect and faintly implausible, but Los Angeles manages it with confidence. Here is a city built on cinema, sunshine, and the firm belief that if you add a screen, people will come. In that spirit, Open Air Cinema was pleased to produce the outdoor screenings at the LA Film Festival, where audiences turned up in gratifying numbers to sit outside and watch films—something humans have been doing for over a century, though rarely with such reliable weather.
The lineup itself had a pleasingly democratic range. Viewers could take in The Filth and the Fury, a documentary about The Sex Pistols that is not, by most definitions, relaxing; West Side Story, which is; and The Incredibles, which manages to be both loud and wholesome at the same time. Audiences packed the open-air venues and watched attentively, proving once again that people will happily sit shoulder to shoulder outdoors if the screen is large enough and the movie worth it.
One venue offered an instructive lesson in modern efficiency. The night before one of Open Air Cinema’s productions, a different outdoor screen was installed. It required six staff members and two and a half hours to erect a 30-foot-wide screen—an achievement that was no doubt satisfying, but also physically demanding. The following night, Open Air Cinema got involved. Two staff members installed, set up, and secured a 40-foot-wide inflatable screen in under 30 minutes. At that point, comparisons became unnecessary. In screen terms, there was no looking back. Inflatable screens, it turns out, really are the best solution.
For those who like context with their cinema, the Los Angeles Film Festival is held annually for ten days in June and showcases the best of American and international film. With attendance exceeding 60,000, the festival screens more than 175 narrative features, documentaries, shorts, and music videos. Now in its twelfth year, it has grown into a world-class event, bringing together new filmmakers, critics, scholars, film masters, and large numbers of people who simply enjoy sitting in the dark watching stories unfold—occasionally under the stars.