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UCLA Short Films and Beyond

Hats Off to Hollywood
January 30, 2016 - 7:30 pm
Billy Wilder Theater
In-person: 
Penelope Spheeris; Mark Toscano, Academy Film Archive.

UCLA Film & Television Archive is pleased to partner with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for this special presentation of short films directed by Penelope Spheeris while she was studying film at UCLA—and a later short documentary portrait of her mother, No Use Walkin’ When You Can Stroll (1998).  Restored by the Academy Film Archive, Spheeris’ shorts reveal a filmmaker confidently, gleefully subverting cinematic rules in search of a visual language to match the rebellious, anarchic spirit of her subjects.

Film notes written by Mark Toscano, Film Preservationist, Academy Film Archive.

Synthesis  (1968)


Synthesis is director Penelope Spheeris' first film, made in 8mm Kodachrome while she was a student at UCLA.  In a seemingly near-future control room devoid of people, various readouts and calculations suggest that humankind is not altogether compatible with the grand scheme of the universe.

Digital Video, color, 8 min.  Director: Penelope Spheeris.

Preserved by the Academy Film Archive

Bath  (1969)


Made in an environment and at a time when frequent and gratuitous images of nude women permeated the work of her male counterparts, director Penelope Spheeris produced this intimate and sensual observation of a woman bathing.  The appearance of Spheeris’ credit at the beginning of the film seems to ask the question: how does voyeurism change when we know the voyeur is actually a voyeuse?

16mm, b/w, 6 min.  Director: Penelope Spheeris.

Preserved by the Academy Film Archive

Shit  (1969)


Never completely finished during its original production, this snarky comic piece was rediscovered in director Penelope Spheeris’ vaults in 2010 and preserved “as is.”  The titular substance plays a key role in determining an outmoded man’s role in a changing society.

16mm, color, 4 min.  Director: Penelope Spheeris.

Preserved by the Academy Film Archive

The National Rehabilitation Center


Two years before Peter Watkins’ Punishment Park (1971), director Penelope Spheeris takes the McCarran Act to its inevitable next step and shows us—via an early use of mockumentary—what the U.S. might be like if potential subversives were simply locked up en masse before they had a chance to subvert anything.

16mm, color, 12 min.  Director: Penelope Spheeris.

Preserved by the Academy Film Archive

I Don't Know  (1970)


A truly major work, I Don’t Know (1970) observes the relationship between a lesbian and a transgender man who prefers to identify somewhere in between male and female, in an expression of personal ambiguity suggested by the film’s title.  This nonfiction film—an unusual, partly staged work of semi-verité—is the first of director Spheeris’ films to fully embrace what would become her characteristic documentary style: probing, intimate, uncompromising and deeply meaningful.

16mm, color, 20 min.  Director: Penelope Spheeris.

Preserved by the Academy Film Archive

Hats Off to Hollywood  (1972)


Picking up the story first presented in I Don’t Know (1970), Hats Off to Hollywood (1972) brazenly and brilliantly mixes documentary reality with fully staged recreations/reimaginings of episodes in the lives of Jimmy/Jennifer and Dana, a loving, bickering couple who challenge the notion of homonormativity.  Drugs, poverty, disease, bigotry and prostitution all figure into this disarmingly candid and often hilarious film, a remarkable work that is the apotheosis of director Spheeris’ early work, and a luminous signpost leading directly to The Decline of Western Civilization (1979-1997).

16mm, color, 22 min.  Director: Penelope Spheeris.

Preserved by the Academy Film Archive

No Use Walkin' When You Can Stroll  (1998)


One-time carny, bartender, and married 10 times, director Penelope Spheeris’ mother was an uncommon woman.  In this sweet, funny, and moving video portrait, Spheeris gives us a vivid glimpse into the richness of her mother’s life and character.

35mm, color, 11 min.  Director: Penelope Spheeris.

Part of: 
A Tribute to Penelope Spheeris