Like Gloria Swanson at the end of 1950’s “Sunset Blvd.,” the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures is finally ready for its close up. Years in the making, the Academy Museum’s world premiere was Sept. 30. According to Bill Kramer, President of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences – you know, those fine folks who give the annual Academy Awards – this cinematic sanctuary “is a new home for the art of film in Los Angeles, the world capital of moviemaking.”
At the same Sept. 21 press event Kramer addressed, architect Renzo Piano whimsically likened the edifice’s futuristic spheric design to “a soap bubble. Don’t call it the ‘Death Star.’ Call it a zeppelin or a spaceship.” This 250,000-plus square foot repository of cinema is adjacent to what had been the May Company (now the Saban) Building, famed for its gold-tiled cylindrical section that resembled a lipstick tube, located at the “Miracle Mile” in Mid-City L.A. Inside, visitors can experience movie magic and see some of the screen’s most iconic artifacts.
The jaw-dropping displays include the “Jaws” shark, hanging over an escalator. “Citizen Kane’s” Rosebud sled is enshrined behind glass, as are Dorothy’s ruby slippers in a gallery devoted to the beloved 1939 musical “The Wizard of Oz.” The “Backdrop: An Invisible Art” exhibition visible on levels 2 and 3 in the Museum’s Hurd Gallery, features the colossal 34-foot-high painted backdrop of Mt. Rushmore that scenic designers created for the climactic scenes of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1959 thriller “North by Northwest.”
“The Path to Cinema” gallery displays devices, optical toys and objects such as magic lanterns, Indonesian shadow puppets, peep shows and zoetropes that were used to project and move images the invention of movies per se circa 1895. Next door on the third level is the kitschy The Oscars Experience, wherein museumgoers are recorded winning an Academy Award.
Naturally, the Academy Museum boasts two screening spaces, the 1,000-seat David Geffen Theater (where the Sept. 21 press conference introduced by Oscar-nommed actress Anna Kendrick was held) and the 288-seat Ted Mann Theater. These reliquaries of reels have ambitious film series lined up, kicked off Sept. 30 with a live orchestra accompanying Judy Garland in a screening of – what else? – “The Wizard of Oz.” Starting Oct. 3, to honor Halloween, 13 spooky movies that were nominated for or won Oscars were presented, including 1935’s “Bride of Frankenstein,” Hitchcock’s 1960 “Psycho,” 1973’s “The Exorcist” and 2017’s “Get Out.”
At a Sept. 25 star-studded fundraising gala, the first Vantage Award was bestowed upon Ethiopian director Haile Gerima, for, according to a press release, “his work … help[ing] to contextualize and challenge dominant narratives around cinema.” A retrospective of Gerima’s oeuvre, including his 1993 feature about the trans-Atlantic slave trade, “Sankofa,” is being mounted at the Geffen Theater. After that screening on Oct. 2, the African filmmaker participated in a panel discussion moderated by Ava DuVernay, whose 2014 Civil Rights epic “Selma” will be shown Oct. 20 at the Geffen as part of the Gerima’s Comrades series.
Along with these and other screenings, the Academy Museum also features exhibits tackling the thorny issues of Hollywood’s celluloid stereotypes, ethnic misrepresentation and cultural misappropriation. This seems to be a sincere response to attacks on the Academy in recent years for its alleged “#OscarsSoWhite” exclusionary policies, ranging from who wins (and votes for) the annual Academy Awards, to the industry association’s overwhelmingly 60ish-year-old white, male, membership. So how is the new Academy Museum dealing with diversity and representation?
At the Sept. 21 press event in the Geffen Theater, speakers included Chief Artistic and Programming Officer Jacqueline Stewart, an African American academic who serves on the Museum’s Inclusion Advisory Committee and as a Turner Classic Movies host. Korea’s Mie Kyung Lee, Vice Chair of the Museum’s Board of Trustees, gushed that she’s “truly proud of the Academy Museum’s international view of movies and moviemaking.”
The proof, as Brecht noted, is of course in the eating of the pudding. The fact is that amidst the razzle-dazzle of movie magic and Hollywood hoopla, much of the Academy Museum exhibits, displays, film clips and series zoom out from the conventional realm of predominantly-White La La Land tropes. The Sidney Poitier Grand Lobby honors the first Black winner of the Best Actor Oscar. Spike Lee and his work are featured in the “Director’s Inspiration” gallery, with objects from the auteur’s personal collection and a soundtrack playing the “Wake up!” dialogue from Lee’s 1988 “School Daze.”
Another gallery is dedicated to the silent era’s pioneering African-American filmmaker, Oscar Micheaux, and the racist history of minstrelsy is explained. “Real Women Have Curves,” a 2002 feature about contemporary Hispanics in East L.A., based on Josefina Lopez’s play, co-starring Lupe Ontiveros, George Lopez and America Ferrera, is highlighted (and will be screened Nov. 11 at the Ted Mann Theater).
An excerpt from the documentary “Reel Injun” is shown on a screen inside a display case, spotlighting Hollywood’s mistreatment of Natives in Westerns, as well as the emergence of indigenous cinema, from North American tribes to Australian Aborigines and New Zealand’s Maoris. On Nov. 15 Zacharias Kunuk’s 2001 Inuit feature “The Fast Runner” is being shown at the Mann, where the Polynesian-themed “Moana” is scheduled for Nov. 13 and 27.
Bruce Lee is honored in the “Significant Movies and Moviemakers” gallery. Most of the fourth floor is devoted to a major exhibition about Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki, with huge reproductions of his artwork and big screens showing vignettes from his enchanting classics, such as 1997’s “Princess Mononoke.”
Upcoming Museum theatrical screenings include a special 70mm presentation of “Malcolm X” with Spike Lee and Denzel Washington in attendance; and the film series “Beyond the Icon: Anna May Wong.” The 2022 exhibition “Regeneration: Black Cinema 1898-1971” will put African American filmmakers in the limelight (Regeneration: Black Cinema 1898–1971 (academymuseum.org)), with Jacqueline Stewart serving on the curatorial advisory committee for this upcoming retrospective.
However, not everybody is completely satisfied that the Academy is embracing inclusion. Janelle Zara, a young Filipina journalist, noted in Artnet that the directors highlighted – Miyazaki, Spike Lee and Spaniard Pedro Almodóvar – are all male, writing: “the museum has no solo exhibition on a woman director.” And I myself wonder how this citadel of cinema will deal with the 75th anniversary of the Hollywood Blacklist in 2022, plus other assorted sordid Tinseltown scandals?
Be that as it may, the Motion Picture Academy’s latest creation is walking a tightrope, mixing showbiz pizzazz with world cinema and a reflectiveness on the medium’s origins and power. The envelope please: I predict that the “Best Movie Museum” Oscar will be awarded to the Academy Museum!
The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures opened Sept. 30 at 6067 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90036, For info: see (academymuseum.org); phone (323) 930-3000.
L.A.-based film historian/critic Ed Rampell is the author/co-author of four film histories, including “The Hawaii Movie and Television Book” and appears in the 2005 Australian documentary “Hula Girls: Imagining Paradise” and the 2017 French documentary “Red in Blue.” A version of this appeared at HollywoodProgressive.com.
From The Progressive Populist, November 1, 2021
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