“No film this year has given me more pleasure than Thom Andersen's Los Angeles Plays Itself, a 169-minute documentary on the way LA has been represented in the movies using clips from more than 100 films ranging from the very familiar Double Indemnity to the (to me unknown) gay porno classic also called Los Angeles Plays Itself”
--Philip French, The Observer

We present a rare chance to watch this modern classic by critic and experimental filmmaker Thom Andersen, an epic dive into the onscreen life of the City of Angels.

Composed of more than 200 film extracts, from Insurance on Death to LA Confidential via Chinatown or Blade Runner, Los Angeles Plays Itself brilliantly dissects the often mythologized representation of the American megalopolis in the seventh art.

Thom Andersen, a major figure in contemporary documentary cinema, designs a critical work which explains how his city was exploited, formed and distorted by the Hollywood fantasy machine, to the point of shaping, through a multiplicity of essential images, the imagination of movie buffs. 

If you want to watch the gay porn masterwork that gave Andersen's film its title, please join us for a screening of 1972's L.A. Plays Itself on Tuesday 20th May at 7.30pm. Please be warned, this classic from the Golden Age of Porn is explicit... extremely so! 

"Watching this film is like spending an evening with a prickly, opinionated, thoughtful cineaste friend -- one who has a vast stock of DVDs at the ready."
--Moira MacDonald, Seattle Times

"Andersen traces the falsification of the city’s geography and history in Hollywood movies to the shoddy narrative and ideological conventions in run-of-the-mill productions; even the habitual display of architectural landmarks and styles comes in for scathing analysis. He gets beneath the surfaces of dramas to reveal the realities that they reflect—including racial prejudice, police brutality, real-estate depredations, and economic inequities—spotlighting their insidious endorsement of such political perversions."
--Richard Brody, The New Yorker

Doors open 30 minutes before advertised start time. All film screenings are ad-free and 18+ unless otherwise stated, and start with no more than a 10 min selection of trailers. 

The Cube is a membership venue, please remember to bring your card. You can join on the door for £1.