Tonight in the Bing Theater LACMA and Film Independent present the U.S. premiere of Korean filmmaker Kang Je-gyu’s World War II epic My Way, about two young men, one Japanese and one Korean, who grow up to fight for the Japanese Imperial Army.
This weekend you can see any of the eight exhibitions we currently have on view, including Ellsworth Kelly: Prints and Paintings (which closes next week), In Wonderland (closing May 6), Fracture: Daido Moriyama, Robert Adams, and more. A few smaller installations have also just opened: Whistler’s Etchings: An Art of Suggestion, which gathers twenty-five works on paper by James McNeill Whistler; Russian Avant-Garde, which presents works by Aleksander Rodchenko, El Lissitsky, and others; finally, an installation of Panamanian textiles opens on Sunday.
James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Nocturne: Palaces, 1879/1880, From the Second Venice Set, 1886, The Julius L. and Anita Zelman Collection
One more exhibition of note is the recently opened Children of the Plumed Serpent: The Legacy of Quetzalcoatl in Ancient Mexico. On Saturday afternoon, exhibition co-curator John Pohl gives a free talk on the Nahua, Mixtec, and Zapotec civilizations in southern Mexico.
Children of the Plumed Serpent, installation view
Our Adventures in Wonderland film series, held in conjunction with our In Wonderland exhibition, concludes on Saturday with an Alice in Wonderland double feature. First up is the 1951 Disney classic we all know and love—how many chances do you get to see it on the big screen?—followed by the little-seen 1948 adaptation, blending live action with stop-motion animation. The film was ostensibly suppressed at the time of its release due to competition with the Disney version that was already in production. The version we are screening is a 35mm print, newly restored by the Museum of Modern Art.
One more film note, though not at LACMA: the Indian Film Festival is happening all weekend at the ArcLight Hollywood. On Sunday, LACMA's Southern Asian Art Council presents the L.A. premiere of Mangesh Hadawale's Watch Indian Circus. See the trailer, or get more details on tickets and other films in the festival.
Sunday evening, see Chamber Ensembles from the Colburn School perform for a free concert in our Sundays Live series.
Scott Tennent