For its second screening of 2025, Cinédoc's ciné-club, dedicated this season to the work of experimental film cooperatives created from the 1960s onwards, will be travelling to the cinema Le Grand Action, on Monday March 24 at 8pm, for an exceptional screening of the ExperimentL.A. cycle initiated in 2023. The March program is conceived in solidarity with the experimental filmmaking community in Los Angeles, following the fires that ravaged the region earlier this year.

Between 1976 and 1981, the Los Angeles Independent Film Oasis served as the ultimate “oasis in the desert” of the American cinema landscape. Founded and run collectively by local artists affiliated with Cal Arts and the Otis Arts Institute, including Morgan Fisher, Roberta Friedman, Amy Halpern, Beverly O'Neill, Pat O'Neill, Grahame Weinbren, David Wilson and Diana Wilson, the organization aimed to showcase experimental film works rarely seen in a territory dominated by the film industry. Many of the members of the Oasis group also worked on the outskirts of Hollywood, while resisting the idea of confining themselves to a single style in their more experimental work. The first part of this program offers an overview of the diversity of films made by some of the Oasis founders; in the second part, we'll have the opportunity to (re)discover a later work by one of the collective's members, Pat O'Neill's Water and Power, a poignant meditation on industrialization centered on Los Angeles, “the city that changed land into desert”.

Screening introduced by Grahame Weinbren.

Thanks to: Grahame Weinbren, Roberta Friedman, Pat O'Neill, Martha Colburn

Screening : 

Opus I: Three preparations / A Glance / Peach Landscape
Amy Halpern
1972-73, 16mm, colour, silent, 11’

Bertha’s Children
Roberta Friedman et Grahame Weinbren
1976, 16mm (dig.), b&w, sound, 7’

Pasadena Freeway Stills
Gary Beydler
1974, 16mm, colour, silent, 6’ 

Bump City
Pat O’Neill
1963, 16mm (dig.), colour, sound, 4’

Water and Power
Pat O’Neill
1979-89, 16mm (dig.), colour, sound, 55’