Thom Andersen's Los Angeles Plays Itself Essays Released Online for 2026 Screening

Key facts

• Thom Andersen's Los Angeles Plays Itself was first shown at the 2003 Vancouver International Film Festival, where it won Best Documentary.
• The film is almost 3 hours long and has a built-in intermission.
• Due to permissions questions, it was not commercially released and for 10 years existed as a high-quality video master shown only in specialist screenings with Andersen present.
• Cinema Guild remastered and re-released the film as a DVD in 2014.
• The 2014 DVD version will be screened at Human Resources in 2026.
• The DVD package contains a booklet of essays being made available online and via QR code at Human Resources as part of the Second Life collection.
• The film critiques Hollywood's use of Los Angeles modernist architecture—by Frank Lloyd Wright, Richard Neutra, and John Lautner—as signs of evil, contrary to the architects' intent.
• Andersen began thinking about the film after being irritated by L.A. Confidential (1997) using Neutra's Lovell Health House as the villain's headquarters.
• The voice-over is narrated by documentary filmmaker Encke King.
• The film highlights social realist documentaries from the '60s and '70s by Kent MacKenzie, Charles Burnett, and Billy Woodberry.