Summer at the movies, LA neighborhood by LA neighborhood

Temps are rising in Los Angeles, making it the perfect time to duck into a dark, air-conditioned movie theater. And over at the Academy Museum on Miracle Mile, you can also get a bit of a tour of L.A. The museum’s “Summer in the City: Los Angeles Block by Block” series has been showcasing films about — and set in — different neighborhoods of L.A. The series lasts through August 31st.

Inspired by the 2003 epic documentary, Los Angeles Plays Itself, the programming team selected 41 films that each highlight a different neighborhood, or point of view, on L.A.

That’s including anything from the 90s valley girl vibes of Clueless to the dystopian future of Escape from L.A. Black and white films, international directors, contemporary classics, 80s flicks — there’s something for everyone and almost every L.A. neighborhood on the slate.

“Oftentimes when people think about Los Angeles films, they think about the Hollywood sign or the Sunset Strip,” says Patrick Lowry, a life-long Angeleno and manager in the film program department at the museum.

We spoke with Lowry and the rest of the programming team at the museum that put this list together to find out what they think makes an L.A. movie, what was in the running that didn’t make it into this year’s screening and their favorite L.A. spot to see on film.

Read on to hear from programmers Hyesung ii, Patrick Lowry, Sari Navarro, K.J. Relth-Miller, and Robert Reneau.

Not just the Hollywood sign

“Summer in the City” hopes to shed light on the lesser known histories and locales of L.A. “Thinking about Devil in a Blue Dress,” says film programs coordinator Sari Navarro, “I had no idea until I saw that film that Central Avenue was like, our jazz space.”

With an aim to highlight as much of L.A. as they could in the series, the five team members participated in a huge brainstorm. “We must have had over a hundred titles that we were considering,” says director of film programs K.J. Relth-Miller. That means that not every L.A. classic is on the list.

Films that screen in the city frequently or are too much about the film industry (think Die Hard or The Player) were cut in favor of films that could almost be used to make a map of L.A.

Relth-Miller says, “it was really thinking about trying to get as granular in detail with the different neighborhoods that represent the whole of Los Angeles as we possibly could.”

That included highlighting not only local filmmakers turning the camera on places where they grew up, but folding in the way “outsiders” see L.A. That includes French director Jacques Demy’s Model Shop and Japanese director Takeshi Kitano’s Brother.

“It is a way to view my city through different eyes that I really appreciate,” says Relth-Miller.

Neighborhood spotlights

For Sari Navarro, that meant selecting films like Quinceñera, a 2006 film set in Echo Park that lovingly depicts the neighborhood while also looking at the beginnings of its gentrification. As a life-long Angeleno, “I grew up within the areas of Silver Lake and Echo Park around the time that that film came out,” Navarro says. “That really made it L.A to me.”

Hyesung ii, associate director of film programs, has been in the city since 2009. Not being from L.A, ii says she had to “build some kind of space and sense of belonging” for herself. Movies like Valley Girl, an 80s retelling of Romeo and Juliet, trigger her “soft spot,” she says.

“My very initial experience of L.A. was the valley,” says ii. “It has a very very distinctive culture to me as an outsider.”

Patrick Lowry admits his answer is also personal. “Having grown up around Hollywood and Miracle Mile area, I've just always loved seeing my local neighborhood on screen,” he says about the upcoming 35mm screening of Miracle Mile. “I guess I had never seen a disaster movie filmed in L.A. before,” Lowry says. It’s a film shot on location across the street from the Academy Museum, that highlights more idiosyncratic landmarks like Johnie’s Coffee Shop and the La Brea Tar Pits.

Academy Museum of Motion Pictures on March 18, 2024.

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Julie Leopo

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LAist

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Robert Reneau, specialist in the film programs department, has now lived in L.A. for more than 40 years. His favorite spot to see on screen is also his favorite spot in L.A., period. That’s the Los Angeles Theatre in DTLA, a historic and lavish movie palace. “It’s just extraordinary how many films and TV episodes this location shows up in,” Renau says. While the films he names (Everything Everywhere All At Once, Hail Cesar, and Babylon) aren’t part of “Summer in the City,” Reneau says “[the theatre] is like a microcosm of Hollywood…it’s an amazing thing in and of itself, but it can substitute for places all around the world.”

LA through the years

To K.J. Relth-Miller, the most exciting examples of L.A. movies are those that capture neighborhoods the way they were before a major change. “The perfect example of that is Bunker Hill,” says Relth-Miller, “this neighborhood that was historically kind of targeted as a location of blight and basically demolished.” The Exiles, which screened earlier this month, is situated in a vibrant DTLA with indigenous residents living in and moving through Bunker Hill.

“That film in particular is just such a special view into not just a culture,” Relth-Miller says, “but also a neighborhood that truly is unrecognizable from what it is today.”

Speaking of L.A. eras and the changing city, Lowry mentions the series closer, Escape From L.A. You can come see what L.A. looked like in the 50s, the 90s, and “you'll get to see a dystopian future vision of what Los Angeles may end up looking like at some point.”

Who knows what L.A. landmarks and hidden histories will make it onto our screens in the next few decades?

“Summer in the City: Los Angeles, Block by Block” is running at the Academy Museum through August 31st. Find the full list of screenings here.