I was recently having a conversation with an LA 3-D Club member, and we began discussing the many events and activities that the club has been participating in lately. It got me thinking about just how busy 2011 was for the club, and I decided to take a look back at everything we did last year.
Of course there were the monthly member meetings at the wonderful Armory Center for the Arts in Pasadena, featuring our photography competitions, mini-workshops on a number of topics, and a year’s worth of excellent projected programs from all over the world. Our projected images looked particularly fantastic in 2011, thanks to the generous donation of a new silver screen by member company Strong/MDI Screen Systems. The meetings continued to grow in attendance, with a lot of new faces joining the membership ranks.
But beyond the monthly meetings, the LA 3-D Club did quite a LOT of other activities:
We began the year with a 3-D photography presentation at the Museum of Neon Art, and we hosted a screening of 3-D films at the Graphation Film Festival in Los Angeles. January was also the first of our “3-DIY: Open Screen” shows at the Downtown Independent theater which give anyone with 3-D content an opportunity to see their work projected on the big screen.
In February, the club offered a public workshop on Shooting and Producing 3-D Images at the Armory Center for the Arts, and also welcomed the public to attend the judging selection for the 53rd Hollywood International Stereo Exhibition at the Downtown Independent.
March saw the club team up with the Echo Park Film Center for a class on shooting 16mm 3-D movies with vintage 1950s Bolex cameras and lenses. We also presented a special screening of “Orlok The Vampire,” the 3-D conversion of the silent film classic “Nosferatu”.
In April we held another Open Screen, followed by a very busy month of May, starting with a screening of 3-D short films for ProjectFresh, and highlighted by the LA 3-D Club’s 8th Annual LA 3-D Movie Festival, which over two days presented an amazing program of international 3-D shorts, panels, and a special showing of the feature “Coraline”. The LA 3-D club once again curated the “3-D Village” and was a presenter at the annual Maker Faire in San Mateo, CA.
In June, we celebrated World Ocean Day with the Los Angeles premiere of the documentary “Ocean Voyagers 3D” at the Downtown Independent. We also hosted an outing to the California Science Center’s IMAX theater for a large screen 3-D double feature of “Arabia” and “Born to be Wild”.
We invited USC’s stereoscopic research unit S3D@USC, The Levis Film Workshop, and the Museum of Contemporary Art to present an exciting panel on “The Future of 3-D Filmmaking” in July, and we teamed up with the LA Film Forum to present a very rare afternoon with avant garde filmmaker Ken Jacobs in August. August also saw a club outing to the Santa Monica Museum of Art to experience the highly praised Marco Brambilla exhibit, “The Dark Lining”. We had fun joining up with the Echo Park Film Center’s Filmmobile to screen the 1950s classic turkey “Robot Monster” in the Hollywood Hills at Bronson Cave (the location where the picture was filmed). And we finished out the month by participating in the Topanga Film Festival’s 3-D Day.
In September, for the fifth year in a row, the LA 3-D Club was invited to the Big Bear Lake International Film Festival, where we presented a block of films and exhibited a 3-D Art and Photography Showcase at the Big Bear Lake Performing Arts Center. We also presented a screening of the Australian 3-D documentary “Cane Toads: The Conquest” here in LA. And our friends at Strong/MDI invited us to exhibit with them at the 3D Summit conference in Hollywood.
In October, the LA 3-D Club was at INDIECADE, the International Festival of Independent Games in Culver City, to present a History of Stereoscopic Video Games. We also went on an outing to the Nethercutt Museum to photograph their collection of vintage automobiles, train cars, and to enjoy some projected silent film comedies (sadly in 2-D). And we celebrated Halloween with the premiere screening and panel discussion of the indie feature “A Haunting in Salem”.
November brought another Open Screen to the Downtown Independent (along with “3-D Trailer Park” - an assortment of 3-D movie trailers) and an outing to see the 3-D conversion of the Korean blockbuster “The Host” at the CGV Cinema in LA’s Koreatown. And we closed out 2011 last month with the presentation of a selection of cinema legend Harold Lloyd’s stereo photos at the Larry Edmunds Bookshop in Hollywood, and with our Holiday Pizza Party featuring a show of works by Robert Bloomberg on the big screen at the Downtown Independent.
2011 Was quite a year for the LA 3-D Club!
