2nd Annual Venice Heritage Museum

Film Festival 

Saturday, October 7, 2023 from 7:00-10:00 pm

at Main Street Design Center in Venice

The Venice Heritage Museum (VHM) presents the 2nd Annual Venice Heritage Museum Film Festival. The one day, outdoor festival takes place on Saturday, October 7th from 7-10 pm at Main Street Design Center (228 Main Street, Venice, CA 90291).  This will be the public’s first introduction to the brick-and-mortar location of the museum gallery opening this winter. Tickets on sale HERE:  https://tinyurl.com/vhmfilm.

Together with the Academy Film Archive, Christopher Merritt, David Kornfield, Laughtears Productions, and others, the VHM team has curated a selection of short films celebrating the city's historic, artistic, and cultural legacy. The festival will also debut clips from the recently launched VHM Oral History Project.

  

All proceeds from the VHM Film Festival directly benefit the Venice Heritage Museum project, which is raising money to open and maintain the first-ever museum to promote the cultural heritage and history of internationally renowned Venice, California. The museum gallery is opening this winter in the Main Street Design Center located at 228 Main St. #5. 

FILM FESTIVAL PROGRAM

THE ACADEMY FILM ARCHIVE

• Vintage Venice films from the past 100 years

VENICE HERITAGE MUSEUM - ORAL HISTORY PROJECT SHORTS

• Featuring interviews with: James Rusty Smith; No Reaction! Band; Oakwood native, Mark Libow, co-owner, Elco Welding, raised on Ocean Front Walk; and Mary Nomura, nonagenarian known as "The Songbird of Manzanar."

"OF ALL THE GIN JOINTS" (2023) | SNEAK PREVIEW OF THE NEW FEATURE-LENGTH DOCUMENTARY BY DIRECTOR, DAVID KORNFIELD 

• Of all the Gin Joints tells the story of Casablanca, a one of a kind Mexican restaurant themed after the classic film of the same name, and the three generations of men who created and managed it for the past forty years. As COVID-19 puts Casablanca and the Haro family’s very way of life in jeopardy, our film examines the unique relationship between this special restaurant and the Venice, California community it serves.   

GERRY FIALKA OF LAUGHTEARS PRODUCTIONS 

• Local Beat historian and film expert, Gerry Fialka, probes Venice West Cafe (the legendary Beat hang-out from 1958-66 at 7 Dudley Ave. aka Sponto Gallery from 1984-2008), the Venice underground celebrating the liberation of creativity with rare film clips. 

"PACIFIC OCEAN PARK: THE RISE AND FALL OF LOS ANGELES' SPACE AGE NAUTICAL PLEASURE PIER" w/ CHRISTOPHER MERRITT

• Pacific Ocean Park — or as it was commonly known in Los Angeles from the '50s through the '70s, P.O.P. — was extraordinary in both its glamorous rise and spectacular fall. As a family-oriented attraction in the '50s with modernist-styled rides designed by Hollywood's best, P.O.P.'s attendance briefly surpassed that of Disneyland. Author and expert historian, Christopher Merritt, narrates a film presentation about P.O.P., located at the dividing line between Santa Monica and Venice, the only spot during Prohibition-era Los Angeles where residents were allowed to dance in a carnival-like atmosphere, and home to the infamous "Dogtown" of the '70s in which surfers took advantage of big waves that rolled through P.O.P.'s rotting piers.