Norman M. Klein

Alfred Roch, member of the Palestinian National League, is a politician with a bohemian panache. In 1942, at the height of WWII, he throws what will turn out to be the last masquerade in Palestine. Inspired by an archival photograph, A Sketch of Manners (Alfred Roch’s Last Masquerade) recreates an unconventional bon vivant aspect of Palestinian urban life before 1948. Posing silently for a group photo, the unmasked and melancholic pierrots accidentally personify the premonition of an uncertain future.

A multimedia documentary that focuses on the day-to-day life of Molly, the protagonist of the story. She lives in Downtown Los Angeles, in the Bunker Hill area and witnesses the transformations of the place over the years. From Molly's story the project zooms out and excavates the history and legends about the area of Los Angeles, building on a rich collection of archival materials, interviews, and re-photography. Navigating through this database the viewer can trace the events, people and places Molly never noticed, engaging with the ethnically complex reality of the area and its fictionalization in countless Hollywood movies. Bleeding Through - Layers of Los Angeles is an allegory of the process in which memory emerges as a distorted hybrid produced by historic documents, personal recollection, and imagination.

With high invention into Los Angeles urban studies, filmmaker Paul Forrer chases the puzzle of theory and conjecture behind Norman M. Klein's fascinating book on a social imaginary which spirits myth into Los Angeles.