This film was made over the course of several months from 2013-2014 in an alley way behind the building I used to live in in downtown Los Angeles. The back entrance to the building was through this alley, and as an interstitial space it was both a relaxing break from the street to the domicile. It had its familiar rhythms, with some variations, and on a number of occasions the alley was used as location for film and television production. The juxtaposition between cinematic reality and experiential reality has interested me since my days of working in the industry. I am interested in the idea of intimate mediation versus mediation-at-a-distance, the difference between a home video and a “professional” production, and how in Los Angeles there is a tension between what is visible, and what is seen.
This film is an attempt at capturing the rhythms of the alley as I perceived them, and I find also an interesting metaphor for our own selective perceptions in the automatic exposure and focus functions of our smartphone cameras.
THE LUDIC GESTURE 