IN SMOG AND THUNDER
Sean Meredith
USA 2002, 47 min.
www.insmogandthunder.com

Remember the war? Y’know, the one between Los Angeles and San Francisco? Though many have forgotten, In Smog and Thunder: The Great War of the Californias, brings those terrible days back to life. Taking Ken Burns as his model, Sean Meredith presents the epic history of this great civil war, in which “Californians killed each other from Los Angeles theme parks to San Francisco poetry bars.” Armies of unemployed actors clutching headshots battled amateur web designers with iBooks in their backpacks. Strangely, Meredith was unable to secure any actual footage of the war, and so, like Burns, he illustrates the conflagration with still images, a collage of the sounds of the war, and contemporary interviews with historians. The spectacularly droll script, by Sandow Birk and Paul Zaloom, tracks the war from its obscure origins (was it over immigration, or anger over the crappy movies that Hollywood was producing?) to its final, equally indefinable end. The film, though, ultimately belongs to Sandow Birk, whose brilliant, intricately detailed paintings and drawings create a magnificent panorama and a stirring tribute to the many Californians who lost their lives in what is now known as “What War?”

-Tod Booth

WITH:

AFTER WEGMAN
Anne McGuire, 2003, USA, 3 min
info@vdb.org

WHAT IS ART?
Dylan Griffith, 2003, Canada, 8 min
yellosno99@hotmail.com

THE SHOW
Cruz Angeles, 2003, USA, 8 min
maria@rollindeep.com

MAGNUM CLONES: The Trailer
Worls Premiere
Shark/Stayne, 2003, USA, 4 min
sharkb@cox.net

MY NAME IS BRADLEE
Andrew Dickson, 2003, USA, 7 min
andrewdickson@earthlink.net

MAKING THINGS MEANINGFUL
Paul Tarrago, 2003, UK, 8 min
amovie@earthlink.net