ICONICITY
A VOYAGE TO THE FRONTIER OF ARTISTIC EXPRESSION
DOCUTAH
FILM FESTIVAL
2020
PALM SPRINGS
FILM FESTIVAL
2020
TOKYO LIFT-OFF
FILM FESTIVAL
2020
BUENOS AIRES
FILM FESTIVAL
2020
DOCS WITHOUT
BORDERS
2020
BERKSHIRE
FILM FESTIVAL
2020
THE FINE ARTS
FILM FESTIVAL
2020
SAN FRANCISCO
DOCFEST
2020
MADRID ART
FILM FESTIVAL
2020
NOHO CINE
FEST
2020
A FILM BY LEO ZAHN
SYNOPSIS
ICONICITY is a voyage into a surprising frontier for creative expression: the Southern California Deserts.
Fringe communities of artists and radicals thrive amidst the wide open, lawless spaces of North America’s driest desert. In a brutal land of dust, rust, and concrete, some explore new worlds while others delve into their own darkness, drawing seemingly limitless inspiration from their surroundings. This road trip takes us beyond the reaches of civilization to places that exist out of time. We are treated to in-depth looks at work as diverse as Leonard Knight’s “Salvation Mountain” in the squatter outpost of Slab City, Noah Purifoy’s political assemblages in Joshua Tree, gripping installations by Desert X in the Coachella Valley, and Ricardo Breceda’s gargantuan metal sculptures in Borrego Springs. The film concludes with the Bombay Beach Biennale, a renegade festival of art and music founded in 2016. Set against the Salton Sea’s dying shoreline, artists transform abandoned housing and vacant lots to reveal the beauty in decay.
A kaleidoscope of history, art, and personal experience, Iconicity serves as a complex examination of the mark we leave on our environment and the mark it leaves on us.
Featuring Randy Polumbo, Bobby Furst, Tao Ruspoli, Stefan Ashkenazy, Bill Ammon, Ricardo Breceda, James Ostrer, Greg Haberny and many others.
REVIEWS
“Iconicity” is visually stunning and the film’s sweeping cinematography gives the audience an opportunity to experience something unique rather than just watch it.
A love letter to artistic achievement. The movie succeeds in creating a desire to
learn more about the artists and their work.
The film is worth seeing alone for the closing scene with its mad-desert-circus
procession toward the setting sun...the cinematography is all saturated colors,
sweeping aerial vistas, turquoise skies, shimmering mountains, landscapes that by day tend toward burned-out lunar and velvet night.
Iconicity luxuriates in the vast visual energy of the desert, generously shot to allow the landscape to beguile the audience as another character itself.