Los Angeles (AFP)
Long overdue, the Los Angeles Film Museum will open its doors this year and will include a tribute to the late Kirk Douglas, announced the Academy of Oscars, which carries the project.
It took almost a century for the idea of a museum dedicated to the 7th art to see the light of day and the building designed by the Italian architect Renzo Piano, which was supposed to open in 2017, lagged behind.
It was before the 92nd edition of the Oscars that the Academy finally organized a site visit for the press on Friday, which is not located in Hollywood but a few kilometers further south.
A gigantic sphere of glass, steel and concrete stands on the side of the museum, seeming to float above the ground to embody "the magic of the movies". Connected by walkways to the main building, it houses a 1,000-seat cinema room equipped with the latest technology.
The museum's mission will be to retrace the history of cinema, its innovations, and to show visitors the techniques used to make a film.
Side curiosities, we will find in the windows the famous red pumps of Judy Garland in "The Wizard of Oz", the doors of the fictional "Rick's American Café" frequented by Humphrey Bogart in "Casablanca", or the cape of Dracula worn by Bela Lugosi in the 1931 film.
There will also be in good place memories of Kirk Douglas, Hollywood legend who died Wednesday at the age of 103 years. "We are close to the Douglas family. We have objects related to Kirk, his story will be told in the museum," director of the premises Bill Kramer told AFP.
When movie stars disappear, the museum "is a place that should help tell their story, this is the mission we have set for ourselves," he adds.
Most of the building is completed and more than 3,600 m2 of galleries and exhibition halls are being developed.
For its official opening, the museum will organize a retrospective dedicated to Hayao Miyazaki, whose animation masterpieces from the Ghibli studio ("My neighbor Totoro", "Princess Mononoke", etc.) have often been selected for the Oscars, which rewarded him in 2003 for "Le Voyage de Chihiro".
The retrospective will be followed by an exhibition on the history of black American directors and their contribution to the cinema of their country.
The Oscars were again criticized this year for their lack of ethnic and cultural diversity. Except for the Briton Cynthia Erivo ("Harriet"), all the actors and actresses in the running are white and no woman has been selected from the directors.
The cinema museum wants to contribute to change "by telling the whole history" of cinema, "in its great diversity", insisted Mr. Kramer.
© 2020 AFP