Claire Read's PENN F---ING STATION (2024) + Susan Mogul's EVERYDAY ECHO STREET (1993)
Two vérité nonfiction shorts that sharply and humorously depict the social and civic lives of neighborhoods in New York and Los Angeles, with filmmakers Claire Read and Susan Mogul in person.
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Jan 07, 2025, 8:00 PM
2220 Arts + Archives, 2220 Beverly Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90057, USA
Penn F---ing Station + Everyday Echo Street: A Summer Diary
We present a double bill of two vérité nonfiction shorts that sharply and humorously depict the social and civic lives of neighborhoods in New York and Los Angeles.
With filmmakers Claire Read and Susan Mogul in person for a Q&A
doors: 7:30
film: 8:00
Penn F---ing Station
directed by Claire Read
2024, U.S., 30m, DCP
West Coast premiere with filmmaker Claire Read in person
Documentary filmmaker and producer Claire Read (named a 2024 25 New Faces of Film in Filmmaker Magazine) shapes this warm, lyrical and idiosyncratic portrait of the ongoing renovation of New York’s famed transit hub, with a keen eye for both the intricacies of municipal governance and the life of individual citizens. Read intersperses colorful interviews of average commuters while following a local community board leader’s campaign for State Assembly, working against a corporate project to demolish the station’s surrounding buildings, potentially displacing thousands of people and closing beloved landmarks.
“With a fine sense of timing, and a Wiseman-esque instinct for idiosyncrasy, Read assembles indelible portraits of the people who live around, above, and inside the beleaguered station… Often moving, often funny, and often tinged by tragedy, Read’s film is strongest in [its] moments of provocative elegy, as well as in its cheeky interviews with passersby, and striking interludes in the caverns of Penn.” -Michael Shorris, The Brooklyn Rail
Everyday Echo Street: A Summer Diary
directed by Susan Mogul
1993, U.S., 32m, DCP
With Susan Mogul in person
In this hysterically funny and touching first-person diary film, L.A.-based artist and filmmaker Susan Mogul documents her everyday life in and around her Highland Park apartment complex, chronicling both the spaces she frequents and the neighbors she’s come to know—including postal workers, restaurant servers, close friends, and potential lovers. The film serves as both an autobiographical reflection of an unmarried woman in a developing world, and “an insider’s view of how home and neighborhood are constructed in everyday relations” (Video Data Bank).
“The entire world, immanently, glimpsed by a woman in a window in Highland Park, Los Angeles.” -Wexner Center for the Arts
"Loads of fun... A highly personalized film threaded by the filmmaker's self-effacing wit and candid introspection about her life." -Los Angeles Times
Program runtime: 62 minutes + Q&A
Special thanks to Video Data Bank, Becca Rieckmann, Courtney Stephens, and Nick Plett.