NYU Shanghai freshman Louise Jones, from the Netherlands, always wanted to visit Los Angeles and was able to do so recently through watching Thom Anderson’s movie Los Angeles Plays Itself.
The 2003 film was shown in the IMA Screening room by NYU Shanghai’s Interactive Media Arts Foundation coordinator and assistant arts professor, Gottfried Haider.
“I always had this sense of Los Angeles, but I never knew what it was about,” Louise said. “So, I was curious, because this movie looked like it could give me a new perspective.”
“I think the [cinema] atmosphere definitely helped because if it was in a classroom or something it would be very different. This actually made you get into the movie and zone out of the world,” she said.
The three-hour long documentary discusses how Los Angeles is portrayed as the main character in a lot of movies.
Narrator Encke King tells the story of Los Angeles being well known all around the world as a giant movie set. The film consists of numerous old time movie clips relating to L.A.s big role in the entertainment industry.
“It’s the first semester that we had access to the screening room,” Gottfried Haider said.
“A lot of the faculty came from many different art schools or art universities where there’s a tradition of faculty sharing films,” he said.
“So, for this semester we thought that faculty can show some films they’re excited about, or they feel might benefit the students.”
The IMA department hopes to offer students more knowledge of film and plans to continue emphasizing the importance of faculty expressing their movie passions to students.
Louise Jones is now inspired to go to Los Angeles, California, one day to embrace the ambience of the movie in real life.
