Historic Archival materials

Sat, 5 May 2012 14:31:03 -0400

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.

Guests of Filmforum

Thu, 3 May 2012 22:44:10 -0400

Filmforum has hosted hundreds of filmmakers and curators since we were formed in 1975. Click on the below slideshow to view a sample set of photos of our various guests over the years, or visit our Guests of Filmforum collection on Flickr.

THIS AREA IS STILL IN PROGRESS. LOOK FOR UPDATES AND MORE PHOTOS AND SLIDESHOWS TO BE POSTED HERE VERY SOON!

Left: Paul Sharits at Filmforum, November 7, 1977
Photo by Mark Takeuchi

Videos of Q&A Sessions with Guests

Tue, 1 May 2012 18:55:23 -0400

Over the past year we’ve made it a priority to digitize and upload these videos to YouTube. Special thanks to Filmforum intern Norbert Shieh for starting this project and establishing a workflow for us!

For now, click here to access our YouTube channel. We’ll work on embedding these on the site very soon!

Fall 2011 Season (September - December)

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 20:01:58 -0400

In the Fall of 2011, Filmforum held a total of 14 screenings, and launched the biggest series in its 30+ year history, Alternative Projections: Experimental Film in LA 1945 - 1980. Click here to see the full lineup with links to individual show pages.

Winter-Summer 2011 Season (January - August)

Mon, 23 Apr 2012 19:45:35 -0400

In the first eight months of 2011, Filmforum held a total of 28 screenings - 11 in Winter, 7 in the Spring, and 10 in the summer. Click here to see the full lineup with links to individual show pages.

Fall 2010 Season (Sept - Dec)

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 18:46:05 -0400

In Fall, Filmforum held 14 screenings and held a major three-day symposium at USC as part of our Alternative Projections project. Click here to see the full lineup with links to individual show pages, and click here to view the symposium website.

Spring-Summer 2010 Season (April - August)

Sun, 30 Aug 2009 18:44:57 -0400

In Spring and Summer, Filmforum held 17 screenings. Click here to see the full lineup with links to individual show pages.

Winter 2010 Season (Jan - Mar)

Sat, 29 Aug 2009 15:57:30 -0400

In Winter, Filmforum held 14 screenings. Click here to see the full lineup with links to individual show pages.

Fall 2009 Season (Sept - Dec)

Fri, 28 Aug 2009 13:24:24 -0400

In Fall 2009, Filmforum held 14 screenings. Click here to see the full lineup with links to individual show pages.

Spring 2009 Season (Apr - July)

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 18:53:50 -0400

Spring 2009 was one of our most eventful seasons in our 35-year history, especially coming from our very successful Winter 09 season! We even bled into the summer, during which we normally go on hiatus, to bring you shows in late June and July. Our regular season kicked off with two screenings of Animated Documentaries (a series we plant to continue into the future); a screening of four films curated by Thom Andersen called Common Ground; a screening featuring highlights - on film - from the NFPF DVD box set Treasures from the Avant-Garde; a screening with three documentaries about family entitled Descent: Three Stories of Family; the premiere of Owen Land’s newest film Dialogues with Land in person; our first Festival of (In)appropriation, featuring highlights of contemporary found-footage filmmaking, and the LA premiere of British filmmaker Sarah Pucill’s new film Taken By the Frame.

As if that wasn’t enough, we also coordinated a symposium in March called Orphans West, the first incarnation of the popular symposium typically held on the east coast and organized by founder Dan Streible of NYU’s Moving Image Archiving and Preservation (MIAP) program. The symposium was held May 2-3 at the Silent Movie Theater, in conjunction with MIAP and Cinefamily.

Lastly, we partnered with the UCLA Film and Television Archive and the Hammer Museum to co-present two SOLD OUT screenings at the Billy Wilder Theater in Westwood, featuring newly restored films from the LA avant-garde. Academy Film Archive preservation (and Filmforum board member) Mark Toscano curated and moderated two evenings of films, panels and intense discussion about the LA tradition of avant-garde filmmaking and curatorship. These screenings were a prequel of sorts to the types of screenings that will be presented as part of our 2011 exhibition series Alternative Projections: Experimental Film in Los Angeles 1945 - 1980; a Getty-funded project as part of their Pacific Standard Time initiative. Check out our Alternative Projections page to read more!

Click here to view the full Spring 2009 list of screenings and films

Click here to see our Flickr set for Spring 2009

The Orphans West Film Symposium website

Pictures from Orphans West on Flickr

Pictures from the LA Avant Garde screenings on Flickr

Winter 2009 Season (Jan - Mar)

Thu, 1 Jan 2009 17:39:57 -0500

Winter 2009 was jam packed with collaborative efforts with other LA institutions. In January we co-presented two series with our programming partner Cinefamily at the Silent Movie Theater, The Artist and the Archives and Avant-Garde Silent Films. For our regular programming at the Egyptian, we presented Marilyn Brakhage introducing Films by Stan Brakhage; the premiere of David Modigliani’s documentary Crawford; New Media Art from the Nodar Artist Residency Center in Portugal; a massive, multi-venue Taka Iimura retrospective organized by Filmforum with assistance from a Japan Foundation grant; films by Adele Horne, Rebecca Baron and Doug Goodwin; films by UK filmmaker Ben Rivers; and the Los Angeles Premiere of Ken Jacobs’s Razzle Dazzle the Lost World.

Click here to view the full Winter 2009 list of screenings and films

Click here to see our Flickr set for Winter 2009

Fall 2008 Season (Sept - Dec)

Sun, 30 Nov 2008 18:28:21 -0500

We held twelve screenings the Fall 2008 season, including two screenings of the best of Ann Arbor Film Festival; Craig Baldwin’s Mock Up On Mu; a stop motion animation show at the Echo Park Film Center; Holly Would If She Could: Artists’ Responses to Hollywood in conjunction with LA Freewaves; films by Ted Lyman and John Cannizzaro; Lynne Sachs and Mark Street with selections from the XY Chromosome Project; experimental animation by Stephanie Maxwell in conjunction with iotaCenter; Robert Breer Animation, films by Coleen Fitzgibbon and Walter Ungerer; and finally, an encore performance of Susan Mogul’s Driving Men, which completely sold out the first two shows.

Click here to view the full Fall 2008 list of screenings and films

Click here to see our Flickr set for Fall 2008