SCREENING: The Wyvernwood Chronicles, Part 1

SCREENING: The Wyvernwood Chronicles, Part 1

⌚️2023-06-12 05:30:00 – 2023-06-12 07:30:00
🏢2220 Beverly Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90057, USA

Los Angeles Filmforum present *The Wyvernwood Chronicles: Part 1*. In person: filmmaker Diego Robles, Wyvernwood resident Roberto Mojica, and programmer Jorge Ravelo.

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Filmforum welcomes local filmmaker Diego Robles with two of the films he has made with the residents of the Wyvernwood Garden Apartment Complex in East Los Angeles. The Wyvernwood Chronicles is a series of short films and one feature-length film that engage in provoking both agency and patience. The films center around a group of residents and community homes located just east of the Los Angeles River, in Boyle Heights between the years 2007-2015, where many attempts by the city to displace the residents were challenged by its residents.

If *We Are Wyvernwood* acts as a plea to those outside of the community to save their neighborhood, *Wyvernwood: the Garden City* acts as a self-contained reflection on passing time with a living community in their everyday lives, blossoming into a profound rumination about what it means to participate in and be part of a community. Robles quietly but firmly asks the viewer if they can “show up” to the discomfort of the colloquial, creating a portal into the very real experiences of people in Los Angeles living outside of the culture of individualism.

This is the first screening in a two-part series of films about Wyvernwood. The second screening will feature a collection of shorts from Diego and other collaborators, with a focus on members within the Wyvernwood Community.

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Program:

*We Are Wyvernwood* (2011, color, sound, 7:31) is a short documentary video that was made with the collaboration of a local media art collective named ‘LA CoMedia’ (Los Angeles Collective Media), and a Boyle Heights neighborhood community group dedicated to saving the ‘Wyvernwood Garden Apartment Complex named ‘Comite de la Esperanza’ (Committee of Hope). The film reflects on the current dangers of demolition, gentrification, and massive displacement, while also surveying the architectural significance, cultural richness, and historic nature of the Wyvernwood Garden apartments & residents.

*Wyvernwood: The Garden City* (2019, color, sound 69:45) is a documentary film that, through portraits of families, couples, and individuals highlights the everyday happenings of a tight-knit community fighting for their existence amid an ever-encroaching corporate real-estate power that threatens their future. The film simultaneously explores religious events, holidays, and resident-organizations that serve the greater Wyvernwood Garden apartments with cultural, communal, and spiritual empowerment amidst an imminent uncertainty.

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Note: *Masks are still required at Filmforum shows – N95 or KN95.*

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