LA Freewaves Presents Their 9th Biennial Festival of Film, Video and New Media

LA Freewaves Presents Their 9th Biennial Festival of Film, Video and New Media "How Can You Resist?" 4 venues ~ 4 weekends ~ from 5 continents November 5, 2004 – November 27, 2004 Los Angeles, CA LA Freewaves presents How Can You Resist? its 9th biennial festival of film, video and new media. The festival will present both provocative and evocative works exploring the struggles between protest and desire from the Americas, Southeast Asia, Africa, China and the Middle East. This year's festival occurs weekends during the month of November starting on Friday, November 5, 2004 and wrapping up on Saturday, November 27, 2004. Each weekend's programming will take place at a different location in downtown Los Angeles: Nov. 5 - 7 - MOCA Geffen Contemporary 152 N Central Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90012 (in Little Tokyo) Fri. – Sun. 11:00am – 5:00pm, opening reception Friday 8:00pm – 11:00pm Nov. 12 - 14 - REDCAT Theater at the Walt Disney Concert Hall 631 W 2nd Street at Hope St, Los Angeles, CA 90012, (at the Walt Disney Concert Hall) Box Office: 213.237.2800, www.redcat.org, /day Fri. - Sun. 7:30 & 9:30pm plus Sat. 3:00pm & 5:00pm and Sun. 5:00pm Nov. 20 – Strategic Actions for a Just Economy 152 W 32nd St, Los Angeles, CA 90007 (at Hill Street) SAJE, a non-profit, community-development organization in the Figueroa Corridor Sat. night 6:00pm – 11:00pm Nov. 27 – Galleries, bars and cafés in Chinatown’s Central Plaza & Chung King Road Chinatown: 900 blocks of N. Hill and N. Broadway, Los Angeles, CA 90012 Sat. night 7:00pm – 11:00pm Late show w/ Animal Charm 11:00pm – 2:00am As in previous years, Freewaves will also sponsor billboard works, located on the Sunset Strip and Wilshire Boulevard, and several television programs. Selections from the festival can also be viewed on the Freewaves web site, www.freewaves.org. Most exhibits and installations are free, please visit LA Freewaves' site for current information, schedules and directions. After viewing over 1,500 works and soliciting entire programs from all five continents, 13 international and regional media curators created four wildly diverse weekends with 150 works traversing sexuality, economics, politics, consumerism and media, blurring the scan lines of subjectivity and objectivity, journalism and art. LA Freewaves' founder and festival director Anne Bray talks about this year's theme, "Resistance has many incarnations in this festival. Some of the works take us on an intimate journey through addiction, sexuality, and suffering; while others challenge us to consider such politically-charged issues as security, paranoia, and moral culpability in a time of war." During the first weekend at the MOCA Geffen Contemporary, Freewaves will present 30 video installations and projections, many arriving from Africa and India, creating a kaleidoscope of ideas and images from the world's most adventuresome media artists. For the second weekend, 68 works of film and video have been organized into nine thematic programs, which will be screened at the REDCAT Theater at the Walt Disney Concert Hall. The third weekend will be held at Strategic Actions for a Just Economy, a non-profit, community-development organization in the Figueroa Corridor, featuring live Blues music, food, break-dancing, MCs, and activist documentaries entitled Globalize This! During the fourth and final Saturday night over Thanksgiving weekend, interactive new media works, artists' karaoke, digital graffiti and video games stretch the boundaries of technology and veracity in galleries and cafés around Chinatown's Central Plaza and Chung King Road. Since 1989, LA Freewaves has been presenting these large-scale festivals all over Los Angeles at a rate of about one every two years. Past festivals have exhibited throughout the LA four-county area. This year, Freewaves hopes to bring those diverse communities together in downtown LA to experience a focal point of disparate international media art in the world's media capital. Organizers also wanted to participate in downtown's revival as the city's cultural center, as well as draw attention to the complex issues surrounding the gentrification of downtown neighborhoods. Bray hopes that Freewaves can help people recognize the interconnectedness of struggles taking place throughout the world. "As many of the festival's works demonstrate, it has become impossible to discuss political injustice without addressing economic issues as well," Bray says. "Even the language of resistance has been appropriated by advertisers – as in ‘how can you resist this shampoo, or chocolate bar, or cleavage'– and artists and activists alike need to update their tactics in order to be heard in our society."