While its location in the Kinross Building just north of
Wilshire isn’t the focal point of the UCLA campus, the UCLA
World Arts and Cultures Department hopes to make its presence felt
through UCLArts.
The WAC department takes an interdisciplinary approach to
learning about different cultures through expressive mediums such
as dance or film, and incorporates anthropology and art.
The World Arts and Cultures Department hosts a free screening of
the films “Venice: Where the Sidewalk Ends” created by
WAC students last spring and “Oh, What a Blow that Phantom
Gave Me” by faculty member John Bishop for free at the
Kinross Building today.
The film, “Venice: Where the Sidewalk Ends”, a
documentary about street performers at Venice Beach was filmed by
John Bishop’s video production class last year. Students took
several cameras in different groups, each shooting their own
footage, and edited everything together for the final product
““ all within the span of one quarter.
Venice Beach is one of many places (Santa Monica Pier, Third
Street Promenade) where street performers flaunt their talents for
a buck or two.
“I know they see themselves as artists but they are in a
position where the audience members are tourists watching them with
that gaze of “˜the freaks on Venice,'” said
Danielle van Dobben, a WAC graduate student and teaching assistant
for the class last quarter. “They have a lot to overcome and
at the same time, this is their business.”
Instead of documenting the Venice street performers as a tourist
attraction, Bishop’s students wanted to capture their value
as artists on film.
“The underlying premise that we discussed and decided on
was that these were accomplished performers in their own right and
that they deserved to be treated respectfully in media,”
Bishop said.
“The people had a lot to say about their work,” said
Athena Radomski, a senior WAC student. “We learned so much.
You get a whole big picture of the Venice Beach culture.”
The second film the WAC department will be screening tonight is
a portrait of anthropologist Edmund Carpenter. “Oh, What a
Blow that Phantom Gave Me” documents Carpenter’s work
and ideas in the field of anthropology and media. Carpenter was one
of the first to bring together the worlds of anthropology and art
and he oversaw the inception of the anthropology department at Cal
State Northridge.
“He developed a lot of ideas of how media worked,”
Bishop said. “The main one was that media creates its own
environment. It’s not about things and it’s not about
technology and it’s not a flow of information that actually
creates a different reality and changes the world in which we
live.”
Carpenter’s work is pertinent to studies in the WAC
department, including the fields of ethnographic and anthropologic
film seen in “Venice: Where the Sidewalk Ends.” For
this reason, film is necessary as a tool for the documenting of
world cultures at the center of WAC’s mission.
“Working in choreography or dancing, folklore or
anthropology, there is no way you can afford a professional film
crew,” Bishop said. “But if you have some training and
some sense of the conceptual structure, you can make films in your
field at a low cost.”