The Exiles chronicles one night in the lives of young Native American men and women living in the Bunker Hill district of Los Angeles. Based entirely on interviews with the participants and their friends, the film follows a group of exiles — transplants from Southwest reservations — as they flirt, drink, party, fight, and dance.

Filmmaker Kent Mackenzie first conceived of The Exiles during the making of his short film Bunker Hill—1956 while a student at the University of Southern California. In July 1957, Mackenzie began to hang around with some of the young Indians in downtown Los Angeles. After a couple of months, he broached the subject of making a film that would present a realistic portrayal of Indian life in the community.

Mackenzie spent long hours making friends and earning the confidence of these Indians who finally agreed to re—enact a scenes from their lives for this picture. All of the actors, some of whom were recruited on the spur of the moment during the shooting, play themselves in the film.

The Exiles was directed and photographed by a group of young filmmakers — Mackenzie’s college mates, fellow employees, and friends holding down a variety of day—to—day jobs in the motion picture industry. Much of the picture was shot on “short ends,” the leftovers of 1,000—foot rolls (varying from 100 to 300 feet of stock) discarded by major film producers.

In collaboration with cinematographers John Morrill, Erik Daarstad, and Robert Kaufman, the shooting of The Exiles began in January 1958 and the first trial composite print was privately screened in April 1961. Premiering in the Venice Film Festival that year, the film received acclaim from many critics but tragically never found commercial distribution.

It was Thom Andersen’s compilation documentary Los Angeles Plays Itself which kicked off the rediscovery of this lost masterwork. Andersen contacted the daughters of Mackenzie to receive permission to use footage to illustrate the lost neighborhood of Bunker Hill. Although the original negative and fine—grain (interpositive) existed for the film, it was decided that a theatrical distribution of the film could put the materials at risk. So Milestone, in cooperation with USC’s film archivist Valarie Schwan, brought the film to preservationist Ross Lipman and the UCLA Film & Television Archive.

Milestone who distributed last year’s critical and box office hit, Charles Burnett’s Killer of Sheep, is releasing the restored version of The Exiles, will be playing at UCLA through Saturday (8/23).

Thank you Stephen

After several weeks of preparation with Harsh and 9 straight days of intense/hard work by our students at CalArts (and our Teachers Assistant Diego), we are finished with Practicum! For our Practicum (Textfield Workshop), we had the students make their own book/mag/zine. In order to make a magazine in such a short period, Harsh and I selected 2 formats for them to work with, developed a Content Library and a limited Type Library. Students paired themselves into groups of 2 — each group was responsible for selecting a topic and compiling, editing and laying out their own 16-page Signature (112 pages total). We couldn’t have been more excited with the results.

Special thanks goes to our Teachers Assistant Diego Padilla, who went above and beyond to make sure the students kept on top of their work and contributed so much to the critiques, really outstanding — Also Stacey Hauge Printing in Valencia, who did an amazing job of folding, trimming and binding our Project. Dennis (owner), Bryan and their staff, spent over 3 hours working closely with us and (unexpectedly) did our job Pro Bono — we cannot thank you enough for your time, experience and generosity.

Dennis has 8 adopted German Shepherds — please visit the German Shepherd Rescue website for more information.

Textfield Publication Workshop
24 January — 1 February 2008
Instructors Jonathan Maghen and Harsh Patel

Profile of Tony Wilson (RIP) on C4 TV in 1984.

and then a reunion?

Gift t-shirt is in the new issue of Fantastic Man.

The thing I hate the most about advertising is that it attracts all the bright, creative and ambitious young people, leaving us mainly with the slow and self-obsessed to become our artists..

I’m doing a blog called One Question Interview, a series of interviews asking people one question that is my mind at the moment. Recently I interviewed Nikola Tosic and Claude Closky, check it out on www.onequestioninterview.com.

This is a video interview with Shoe (Niel Meulman), a graffiti artist/ graphic designer/ calligrapher from Amsterdam. This friday his exhibition Calligraffiti opens at the Bottom floor of the Post CS building. Unfortunately I am not in town but please go there and let me know how it was.
Shoe’s website: www.nielsshoemeulman.com
Website of the exhibition: www.calligraffiti.nl

Interview by Charlie Rose with the Co-founders of YouTube…they seem very nervous…

The Mayfair Set (1999) is a fascinating documentary series directed by Adam Curtis.Through four stories focusing on the capitalists Colonel David Stirling, Jim Slater, James Goldsmith, and Tiny Rowland, he investigates the scandalous and wretched stories of money and the free market economy in Great Britian. It’s made me admire London in a whole new way.

Napoleon Hill (October 26, 1883–November 8, 1970) was an American author who was one of the earliest producers of the modern genre of personal-success literature. His most famous work, Think and Grow Rich, is one of the best-selling books of all time.

Werner Herzog in South America during the making of Fitzcarraldo.