Frank Romero (USA, 1941)
Pleasantville Color Cartoon, 2024
Digital archival print on Moab Entrada Bright White 320gsm. 100% cotton, matte, archival
Paper: 16.5 x 38 inches
Image: 13.5 x 35 inches
Join us for a very special screening of the 1998 film, Pleasantville, an American teen fantasy comedy-drama film written, co-produced, and directed by Gary Ross staring Tobey Maguire, Jeff Daniels, Joan Allen, William H. Macy, J. T. Walsh, and Reese Witherspoon. Panel with renown Chicano muralist Frank Romero and special guests. Food and cocktails for purchase.
Panel Discussion:
Frank Romero
A pioneer of the Chicana/o art movement, Frank Romero (b. 1941, Los Angeles) is counted among the earliest and most influential of its participants. Romero’s visual explorations of Chicanidad have gone on to become cornerstones of this period in art history that arose from El Movimiento, the social and political civil rights movement that began in the early 1970s. With a career spanning seven decades, Romero uses various mediums, such as paintings, murals, neon, and sculptures, to explore themes that relate to the Chicano experience, his Latin American heritage, and popular culture, creating works that are reflective of the multiculturalism that is East Los Angeles.
Jeannine Oppewall by Mika Manninen
Jeannine Oppewall, Production Designer “Pleasantville”
Jeannine Oppewall grew up near Boston and moved to Los Angeles after college to work with the Office of Charles and Ray Eames; at that time the Eames Office was the pre-eminent design team of the United States, known for furniture, exhibitions and their many small personal films. Jeannine learned design at the feet of the master, so to speak.
After leaving the Eames Office, she worked briefly producing radio documentaries and doing some freelance writing, eventually finding a place in the art department of the motion picture business, working for production designers Paul Sylbert and Ferdinando Scarfiotti.
The first film Jeannine designed was Tender Mercies (1983), starring Robert Duval and directed by Bruce Beresford. She has received Academy Award nominations for L.A. Confidential (1997), directed by Curtis Hansen; Pleasantville (1998) and Seabiscuit (2003), both directed by Gary Ross, and The Good Shepherd (2006), directed by Bob DeNiro. Other films for which she is known are Catch Me If You Can (2002), directed by Steven Spielberg, for which she received an Art Directors Guild award in 2003; The Bridges of Madison County (1995), directed by Clint Eastwood; and The Music Box (1989), directed by Costa Gavras.
She spent 9 years on the Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and many more years serving on various AMPAS committees, among them the Foreign Language Film Committee and the Design Branch Executive Committee.
In 2014 she received the Camerimage award given to a production designer “with unique visual sensitivity,” and in 2019 a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Art Directors Guild.
Jeannine has given numerous lectures over the years at such institutions as the Hong Kong Academy of Performing Arts, The University of Southern California School of Cinema-Television, and the International Film and Television School in Havana, Cuba.
Rafael Barrientos Martínez, is currently an independent curator, having held positions at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), the Kimbell Art Museum, the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, the Nasher Sculpture Center, and The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. His recent exhibitions include Carlos Almaraz: Los Angeles, Marc Selwyn Fine Art; De aqui y de alla: Frank Romero a Survey at Ruiz Healy Art, New York, and San Antonio; Patrick Martinez: Histories at the Dallas Contemporary; Joey Terrill: Still Here, Marc Selwyn Fine Art; and Carlos and Elsa, a look at the artistic relationship between the husband and wife duo Carlos Almaraz and Elsa Flores at Ortuzar Projects, New York. Barrientos Martinez has recently been named the Director of the Carlos Almaraz Estate.
Michael Ordoña, Moderator
He is a veteran pop culture journalist. He has covered film, television, and music for The Los Angeles Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, and The Wrap. He's a member of the Los Angeles Film Critics Assn. and the Critics Choice Assn. Michael is a lifelong Bay Area sports fan, so he and his family would appreciate their privacy in this difficult time.