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Cercle founder and creative director Derek Barbolla teamed up with Neels Castillon, a film director who bridges storytelling and the human connection to nature, to direct and shoot an art film loosely inspired by Homer’s “Odyssey.”

It’s a deeply personal piece, vulnerable and confessional, and also an unapologetic art film, deploying poetry, abstract imagery, dramatic monologues, on-screen text, voice-overs, and repetitive montage to create a mosaic of words and ideas that would prove a lightning rod for controversy when it aired on PBS in 1991.

The evening was cloudy, but the stars came out anyway, parading in front of Chris Burden’s “Urban Light” sculpture before heading into the controlled chaos of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s 13th Art + Film Gala.

“This is a beautiful evening to celebrate art film and culture,” Kohshin Finley said.

From “A Separate Peace” to “Mean Girls: The Musical,” that teetering cusp between childhood and adulthood has fueled more modern literature, music, art, film and television than any four-year period save, perhaps, the world wars.