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Private Notes
In the late 1970s, two Chinese restaurants became the unlikely epicenter of L.A.’s burgeoning punk scene. The emerging music form featured fast-paced songs and hard-edged melodies with anti-capitalist messaging. As told through interviews with John Doe (X), Alice Bag (The Bags), Keith Morris (Circle Jerks, Black Flag, OFF!), and Martin Wong (Save Music in Chinatown).
Mexican social realist painter David Alfaro Siqueiros created Olvera Street’s popular “América Tropical” mural introducing an innovative and unprecedented technique to muralism that required revolutionary techniques and materials. “America Tropical” is considered the most studied, white-washed mural in the United States, and in fact has inspired many contemporary muralists working today.
Following the Watts Uprising, UCLA’s School of Theater, Film and Television enacted affirmative action policies to increase enrollment of students of color in its film program—a group historically underrepresented in the student population. The “ethno-communications” initiative to recruit students from Black, Asian, Chicano and Native American communities became a movement known as "LA Rebellion."
Artists-In-Residence programs provide opportunities to artists like Céline Brunko, Christine Lee and Carol Zou to have time and space to create new work, engage with different communities and cultures while growing as artists and people. This film explores the meaning, value and experience of artist-in-residence programs, as seen through the first-person perspectives of three disparate artists.
Angel City Press has been a publisher of distinctly high-quality nonfiction books about Southern California for over 30 years. Founded in 1992 by wife-and-husband team Paddy Calistro and Scott McAuley, they shaped and influenced the public’s understanding and appreciation of Los Angeles, publishing award-winning books advocating for the region’s arts, architecture, food, music, and sports.
East West Players theatre company has been a home for Asian American artists such as George Takei, John Cho, Daniel Dae Kim, James Hong and many others featured in this documentary. Through candid conversations about the creative process, the film chronicles the 58-year history of the longest running ethnic theatre in the United States, founded 1965 by a group of rebellious Asian American actors.
