SMIBE is pleased to announce a film screening of last year’s “Story about a Place” competition winning film shorts and a screening of the feature length documentary “The Cool School” directed by Morgan Neville.

The location for the screenings will be the MAK Center in Los Angeles. The event is free with paid admission to the Schindler House ($7 general admission and $6 for students & seniors.)

Date: Thursday October 22 @ 6pm

Address: 835 North Kings Road, West Hollywood, CA 90069.

At the event we will be launching the 2010 film competition “Places that Matter.” The 2010 competition is made possible by a grant from the Graham Foundation for the Fine Arts.

SMIBE Competition Shorts

The 2009 film competition called for moving image stories (under 6 minutes) that investigate, explore, and entertain our communities about social, environmental, political, technological, and economic issues that designers of the built world should be discussing. In our inaugural competition we received over 90 entries from 13 countries. There were four general category and four student category submissions selected as finalists. Selections from these 8 shorts will be screened at this event.

The Cool School: Story of the Ferus Art Gallery

THE COOL SCHOOL is an abject lesson in how to build an art scene from scratch and what to avoid in the process. The film focuses on the seminal Ferus Gallery, which groomed the LA art scene from a loose band of idealistic beatniks into a coterie of competitive, often brilliant artists, including Ed Kienholz, Ed Ruscha, Craig Kauffman, Wallace Berman, Ed Moses and Robert Irwin. The Ferus also served as launching point for New York imports, Andy Warhol (hosting his first Soup Can show), Jasper Johns, and Roy Lichtenstein, as well as leading to the first Pop Art show and Marcel Duchamp’s first retrospective. What was lost and gained is tied up in a complex web of egos, passions, money, and art. This is how LA came of age. Read a review of the film here.

• Sarah Lorenzen