Everyone Who Is Here Is Here: The 2013 Los Angeles Pan African Film Festival

by Steve Light

Naoko Haruta, Life #133: 'Africa #3', acrylic on canvas, 43" x 67" (110cm x 170cm)

The 2nd Century Greek Neo-Platonic philosopher, Plotinus, wrote that the project of thinking, which is to say the project of philosophy, must always reflect to timiotaton (the most important). The 20th Century Russian philosopher Lev Shestov and the 20th Century French philosopher Vladimir Jankelevitch were able to make this kind of substantiality, this most important, resonate at the center of supreme philosophical and ethico-philosophical adventures. Every year at the Los Angeles Pan African Film Festival this to timiotaton, this most important, can be found if not in abundance then certainly more than in any other film festival. It is to this kind of superlative declaration to which I inevitably, necessarily, and happily give myself at the conclusion each year of this festival!  Cannes, Sundance, New York, Berlin, Venice, Los Angeles...but then our epoch is one in which the film festival, like the biennale in the world of art, has become de rigeur for every city but, precisely, in the constricting context of reified globalism, prestige, self-promotion, and Capital, which is to say precisely in the context where the most important will not be found.

The Zealot's Guide to Jurassic Park

by Andrew E. Colarusso & Katie Smither

It doesn't take a scholar to deduce that Steven Spielberg was one of the last great movie makers of the 20th century. Ask anybody, especially children raised through the nineties, what their favorite Spielberg film is and you'll likely hear the words "Jurassic Park". In many ways it was the perfect film to inaugurate the election of Bill Clinton, baby boomer extraordinaire. Like the Clinton Administration, Jurassic Park offered excess, escape, dramatic returns, and above all, spectacle. High art may have its devoted audience, but spectacle is universal. Jurassic Park is one of the highest grossing films of all time, and continues to earn income as a successful franchise long after its 1993 debut. In fact, a fourth film in the franchise is due for theatrical debut next year (2015)

Alas, Jurassic Park, the original film, is short on plot continuity. So distracted by the spectacle, and then panic, of dinosaurs set loose in an anthropocenic world, the audience neglects to remember or even notice certain character realities. This is where the film begins to really signify. But how?