Los Angeles Filmforum and Brain Dead present
Experimentations: Imag(in)ing Knowledge in Film, Program 11
Our Heavenly Bodies: Indexicality in Astronomy I
Friday January 10, 2025, 7:30pm
At Brain Dead Studios, 611 N. Fairfax Ave., Los Angeles CA 90036
Live music by Dave Harrington and Friends
Introduced by Jane de Almeida
Tickets: $20 GA, $5 for Filmforum members

Our Heavenly Bodies: Indexicality in Astronomy 

Three silent films from the 1920s demonstrate the state-of-the-art of the time.  Two educational films from 1920, “If We Lived on the Moon” by Max Fleischer, later of Betty Boop and Superman cartoon fame, and “Tides and the Moon” show basic illustrative educational films of the time.  By the time of Our Heavenly Bodies, released in 1925, the cinematic possibilities had advanced greatly.  Partly a summary of what was known about the solar system, and partly a sci-fi journey on a ship to those planets, Our Heavenly Bodies was a tremendous success in its time.

This is the first of two programs that consider the question of indexicality in astronomical imagery and visions of space. Indexicality is the idea that traces of the physical world are present in images – photographic or cinematic; questioning it allows viewers to consider how we see and derive meaning from images. On Sunday, program 2, Indexicality in Astronomy: Images of Broken Light, will take us through works such as Soviet work in the 1950s, Charles and Ray Eames’s Powers of Ten, Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, and contemporary work to see how the visualization of astronomical phenomena has evolved.

Curated by Jane de Almeida, Jheanelle Brown, Adam Hyman.

Experimentations: Imag(in)ing Knowledge in Film is Filmforum’s expansive film series and upcoming publication that investigates the ways that experimental and scientific films produce and question the visualization of the world.  Combining artist films utilizing scientific imagery, science and natural history films, and films of indigenous and traditional knowledge, the series examines how science, nature, and technology films shape our understanding of humans, nature, gender, knowledge, and progress.  The series includes eighteen screenings between September 2024 and February 2025.

Names of filmmakers, musicians

Hanns Walter Kornblum (Our Heavenly Bodies, 1925)

Max Fleischer (If We Lived on the Moon, 1920)

F. Lyle Goldman (Tides and the Moon, 1920)

Live musical accompaniment – Dave Harrington & Friends