We have been steadily working on digitizing items from the FIlmforum archives for many years, which we are now making available through the website for use by researchers, scholars, historians and anyone else interested in our history.  These materials - program notes, brochures, flyers, photos and more - are a testament to the history of not only experimental film history in Los Angeles, but also contain a lot of primary resource material on films that may be canonical OR very rare.  Since Filmforum’s mission is to foreground the work of those underrepresented artists who have little opportunity of having their films seen by a wide audience, it follows that our archives will contain some of the only evidence of these films’ existence.

Furthermore, another reason this project has ramped up recently is because of the research and planning grant that was awarded to Filmforum by the Getty Foundation in 2008, as part of their Pacific Standard Time: Art in LA 1945 - 1980 initiative.  The project is entitled Alternative Projections: Experimental FIlm in LA 1945 - 1980, and it will culminate in a series of 16 - 25 screenings in the 2011-2012 season.  Please visit the Alternative Projections section of our website to keep up to date on the progress of this project.