The Book of Paradise Has No Author, with Ross Lipman

The Book of Paradise Has No Author

American Cinematheque and Los Angeles Filmforum present

The Book of Paradise Has No Author

Saturday July 19, 2025, 7:00 pm (book signing at 6:30 pm!)
At the Los Feliz Theatre, 1822 N Vermont Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90027

https://www.americancinematheque.com/now-showing/the-book-of-paradise-has-no-author-7-19-25/

Tickets: $15 general, $10 members at https://www.americancinematheque.com/now-showing/the-book-of-paradise-has-no-author-7-19-25/

Ticket prices include a $2.00 online booking fee.

Introduction & Q&A with archivist, author and filmmaker Ross Lipman. Moderated by David Marriott.

Book signing with archivist, author and filmmaker Ross Lipman for his new book The Archival Impermanence Project prior to the screening at 6:30pm at the Los Feliz 3, in partnership with Skylight Books.

Ross Lipman is an independent filmmaker, archivist, and essayist. His films have screened throughout the world and been collected by museums and institutions including the Academy Film Archive, Anthology Film Archives, Northeast Historic Film, the Oberhausen Kurzfilm Archive, Budapest's Balazs Bela Studios, and Munich's Sammlung Goetz. His feature documentary Notfilm was named one of the 10 best films of the year by ARTFORUM, SLATE, and many others.

Formerly Senior Film Restorationist at the UCLA Film & Television Archive, his many restorations include Barbara Loden's Wanda, Kent Mackenzie's The Exiles, the Academy Award-winning documentary The Times of Harvey Milk, and works by Charlie Chaplin, Orson Welles, Shirley Clarke, Charles Burnett, Kenneth Anger, Lourdes Portillo, Robert Altman, and John Cassavetes. He was a 2008 recipient of Anthology Film Archives' Preservation Honors, and is a three-time winner of the National Society of Film Critics' Heritage Award. His writings on film history, technology, and aesthetics have been published in Artforum, Sight and Sound, and numerous academic books and journals.

David Marriott is a Co-Founder of Arbelos Films, a distribution label based in Los Angeles dedicated to releasing canon-expanding art house cinema. Founded in 2017, Arbelos has worked on Bela Tarr’s acclaimed magnum opus Satantango (1994), Nina Menkes’ pathbreaking filmography, Dennis Hopper’s mythic, long-suppressed The Last Movie (1971), Marcell Jankovics’ psychedelic animation Son of the White Mare (1981), Toshio Matsumoto’s Japanese New Wave masterpiece Funeral Parade of Roses (1969), Wendell B. Harris Jr.’s Sundance-winner Chameleon Street (1990), Wayne Wang’s genre-bending Life is Cheap… But Toilet Paper is Expensive (1989) and many more.

David is also a Co-Founder of Canadian International Pictures (CIP), a distribution label devoted to resurrecting vital, distinctive, and overlooked triumphs of Canadian cinema in new restorations. Founded in 2020, CIP has released films from Atom Egoyan, Alanis Obomsawin, Denys Arcand, Lynne Fernie, Allan Moyle, Gerald Potterton, Mireille Dansereau and many more.

The Book of Paradise Has No Author

Directed by Ross Lipman

2025, 82 min.

In this eclectic spin on the concert film, Ross Lipman transforms footage of one of his celebrated live documentary performances into a new video essay that’s at once an archeological dig and a riveting history. Its underlying subject is the origin of civilization – as comprised entirely of media clips. In the summer of 1971 Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos announced the discovery of a tribe of primitive cave dwellers who had lived in complete isolation for thousands of years in the rainforest of Mindanao. The Tasaday indigenous group represented a chance to witness firsthand the roots of our culture, and to explore the very essence of humanity. They also—as we learn—offered Marcos and his cronies a unique political opportunity.

THE BOOK OF PARADISE HAS NO AUTHOR presents this stunning story entirely through its portrayal in differing accounts by western media, integrating rare ethnographic footage, vintage television broadcasts, recordings, and still photographs. Reflecting on each other like shards of broken glass, these third-party depictions reveal as much about the telling as the tale –at once detailing the events, and retaining the mystery of our haunting encounter with the Tasaday.

FORMAT: DCP