A Venice journey

WHEN tobacco mogul and real estate entrepreneur Abbott Kinney purchased a swath of swampland on the Southern California coast in the early 1900s, he was looking to build a world that sprang directly from his own colorful imagination. Kinney’s Venice would be a New Italy by the sea, a canal-crisscrossed cultural center with the added flash of American glitz, a romantic vision of upper-class European decadence democratized for the new U.S. working middle class. The result of his vision was a resort-town utopia replete with gondolas, palazzos, an amusement pier and a meandering miniature railway.

Early Venice Beach was host to thousands of tourists from around the world and became a favorite location for the burgeoning film industry. Eventually Kinney’s vision included year-round residents, with displaced Midwesterners and East Coast expatriates making his dream into their home.

Over the years the town evolved and what Venice once was and what it became is in many ways a direct reflection of the past century’s turmoil and the burden of rapid urban expansion. In his first film, “Venice: Lost and Found,” documentarian Brad Bemis attempts to capture the strange evolution of this one-of-a-kind community.

“I knew I wanted to do a documentary and it just seemed right that I do it on my own town,” explains Bemis from his home in Venice. “I live here and I love it and it seemed like such a rich topic. And the more I researched, the more interesting it became.”

A resident of the area for the past 12 years, Bemis initially was inspired by his desire to find a creative alternative to his harried career as a location manager. “I was working on really unsatisfying stuff at the time,” says Bemis, “I was helping sell dog food and potato chips and that sort of thing” in TV commercials. “I decided it was time I did something I liked and hopefully other people would end up liking it as well.”

For “Lost and Found” Bemis delved deep into the area’s past, mining archival photos and films, soliciting interviews and logging more than 60 hours of video footage.

“There were so many issues, so many artists, you could film in Venice forever and still not cover everything,” says the filmmaker. “ It’s that vibrant and diverse a community. ... the gang violence, the gentrification, the fight for affordable housing. I know the film inevitably leaves the viewers wanting more, but I think that’s a good thing.”

Bemis managed to condense a century’s worth of history into one jam-packed hour. The film’s narrative moves from the town’s early notoriety as an amusement metropolis to its eventual inception as artist bohemia, establishing a tradition of self-expression that still resonates today.

“It’s sort of an anthropological look at the history of community and where it came from and where it’s going,” explains Bemis. “It began as an amusement village and you can still feel that in the creative freedom here, and that bleeds into the atmosphere. You can sense it in the city.”

Bemis enlisted an impressive cross-section of Venice’s diverse population to participate in the project, and the film’s interview segments include everything from labyrinthine diatribes by boardwalk denizens to deconstructions from city historians, to colorful memories from celebrities who have made the area their home.

Dancer Gregory Hines shares his Venice recollections, actor-director Dennis Hopper waxes poetic on the early days of the town’s art scene and Doors keyboardist Ray Manzarek gives an animated tour of the area’s ‘60s psychedelic highlights.

“I wanted to try to make something positive about the community,” says Bemis. “So I tracked down people I thought would be interesting and who were a big part of the community.”

It’s Bemis’ own connection with the area that may prove the most poignant. His passion resulted in a die-hard commitment and a stubborn persistence that fueled the project through five years of production.

“I wanted to make a film which reflected why I like Venice,” explains Bemis, who grew up in Lakewood. “I like the artistic flavor, I like the architecture and I like the funky walking streets and the little bungalows. I wanted the water, too.... It’s an amazing place.”

Still, Bemis’ “city,” which was deeded to Los Angeles in the ‘40s, is changing quickly. “I wanted to capture it before the gentrification got out of control,” says Bemis, “The real-estate prices are already skyrocketing, the rich are moving in and I wanted to try to show the way it is now because there’s no telling what will happen in the next few years.”

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‘Venice: Lost and Found’

When: Next Thursday through Dec. 26.

Where: Monica 4-Plex, 1332 2nd St., Santa Monica

Info: (310) 394-9741