One of the best LA films ever made is premiering in theaters starting this week--only 47 years after it was made.
The Exiles, by Kent McKenzie is a story about Native American exiles living in Los Angeles, filmed like an Italian neo-realist film (the actors are not professionals and are largely playing themselves). McKenzie was a USC film student when he made a documentary about Bunker Hill in Downtown Los Angeles that was threatened with demolition for urban renewal. He went back and made The Exiles, a fiction film but one that documents what the area was like before the row houses and liquor stores were torn down to make skyscrapers. It's also a beautiful, haunting portrait of Native Americans in urban America.
If you saw Thom Anderson's Los Angeles Plays Itself, you may remember some shots from the Exiles. I was lucky enough to see it on a beat-up VHS in college, and now the UCLA archive has restored it, and it's getting a limited release. Go see this--you will not be disappointed.
The Exiles, by Kent McKenzie is a story about Native American exiles living in Los Angeles, filmed like an Italian neo-realist film (the actors are not professionals and are largely playing themselves). McKenzie was a USC film student when he made a documentary about Bunker Hill in Downtown Los Angeles that was threatened with demolition for urban renewal. He went back and made The Exiles, a fiction film but one that documents what the area was like before the row houses and liquor stores were torn down to make skyscrapers. It's also a beautiful, haunting portrait of Native Americans in urban America.
If you saw Thom Anderson's Los Angeles Plays Itself, you may remember some shots from the Exiles. I was lucky enough to see it on a beat-up VHS in college, and now the UCLA archive has restored it, and it's getting a limited release. Go see this--you will not be disappointed.