Toronto, Berlin, New York — several great cities have great film festivals. Now this week, the Los Angeles Festival of Movies begins, featuring brand new movies, world premieres, older independent films that organizers say deserve a second look, and titles that haven’t played within the circuit yet.
The festival’s name is also purposeful: using “movies” and not “film.” Co-organizer Sarah Winshall explains, “It's a little bit tongue in cheek. We're trying to make sure that people know that we're not taking ourselves too seriously. A film festival has a pre-existing reputation — we think we know, already, what those are. The Los Angeles Festival of Movies is similar to a Festival of Books or a festival of music. We're trying to present movies to an audience. We're not trying to be a more traditional film festival.”
Co-organizer Micah Gottlieb points out that the commercial film industry tends to define LA, thus sidelining or forgetting about independent and arthouse cinemas.
“Cities like New York, you'd have institutions like Lincoln Center, MoMA, Anthology Film Archives that have been devoted to independent arthouse cinema in the broadest sense, and sometimes feel a bit more connected to the international film and art landscape than to Hollywood. And by contrast, the landscape of LA has felt more scattered and heterogeneous.”
However, he acknowledges that new venues and initiatives have launched since the COVID pandemic, including Vidiots in Eagle Rock, the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, and the renovated Egyptian theater.
“LA now is [at] a point where there's a great movie to see every night all over the city,” Gottlieb says. “For us, this felt like the ideal moment to launch a festival for movies that are outside of the commercial mainstream.”