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Los Angeles Filmforum is the longest-running organization in Southern California dedicated exclusively to the ongoing, non-commercial exhibition of independent, experimental, and progressive media art.

Filmforum is proud to be in the center of the cultural programming of a city with a rich history of avant-garde filmmaking and programming. Now in our 48th year, we celebrate personal, hand-crafted and non-commercial work. Read more about our various programs, purchase tickets for upcoming screenings, explore our archives, or learn more about volunteering or making a tax-deductible donation on our website! 

Newt Leaders Still

Newt Leaders, by Amy Halpern

Upcoming Screenings

  • Do You Believe.2

    Do You Believe? (Central Newsreel & Documentary Film Studio, China, 1980)

    Experimentations 6: The Uncanny in 1980s Chinese Films

    Date: Oct 27, 2024 7:30PM
    Location: 2220 Arts + Archives

    Experimentations: Imag(in)ing Knowledge in Film, program 6.  Showcasing three short films made by the Chinese state in the 1980s, this program ventures into the uncanny field between documentary and science fiction. As the socialist country stumbled into capitalism, nonfiction films gave forms to alternative epistemologies that reconfigure bodies, medicine, military, and education. The boundaries between documentary, science education film and fiction genres were constantly shifted according to specific political campaigns, resulting in hybrid and often experimental practices and the construction of a new national subjectivity that transcended modern western science. 

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  • A Gente Rio Still 5 smaller

    A Gente Rio (We River) (2016) By Carolina Caycedo, Iimage courtesy of the artist.

    Experimentations 7: Carolina Caycedo: The Lives of Rivers

    Date: Nov 3, 2024 7:00PM
    Location: 2220 Arts + Archives

    Experimentations: Imag(in)ing Knowledge in Film, Program 7.  Filmforum hosts Carolina Caycedo in conjunction with We Place Life at the Center / Situamos la vida en el centro,the an art and environmental justice exhibition at the Vincent Price Art Museum.  This film program showcases Caycedo’s film and video work, emphasizing the artist’s commitment to promoting the teachings of reciprocity with nature and personifying rivers, watersheds, plants, and other non-human beings as political agents.

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  • hammer sanctus 6

    "Studies in Diagnostic Cinefluorography," By Dr. James Sibley Watson, and 'Sanctus," by Barbara Hammer

    Experimentations 8: Beautiful Science

    Date: Nov 10, 2024 7:30PM
    Location: 2220 Arts + Archives

    Experimentations: Imag(in)ing Knowledge in Film, Program 8.  The utilization of prior footage, recontextualized, is a common practice in experimental filmmaking.  This program highlights two supreme examples, both drawing on earlier “science” films utilizing remarkable photographic techniques to create new art, one utilizes cine-radiography to examine the interior of the human body in action; the other a meditative tribute to one of the primary pioneers of microscopic and time-lapse photography.  Featuring "sanctus" by Barbara Hammer and Minute Bodies: The Intimate World of F. Percy Smith, by Stuart A. Staples of the band tindersticks, along with rarely screened source films for both.

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  • Save The green Planet crop copy

    Save the Green Planet!

    Seeing Is Not Believing: Tribulation 99 / Save the Green Planet!

    Date: Nov 15, 2024 7:30PM
    Location: Billy Wilder Theater at the Hammer Museum

    Science Fiction Against the Margins showcases filmmakers who occupy the “margins” of mainstream cinema in order to challenge and subvert the science fiction genre. Hollywood’s ubiquitous sci-fi story structure functions within the conventions of action-driven melodrama, resolving social issues in private, emotional and moral terms that reinforce the status quo. Science Fiction Against the Margins reimagines the relationship between science and art by challenging and sometimes finding new inspiration in old cinematic traditions.  Filmforum is a community partner for this program which includes Craig Baldwin's Tribulation 99, which we screened long ago, and Jang Joon-hwan's Save the Green Planet! along with three short films.

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  • 4. Looking for Siraya 02

    Looking for Siraya 尋找木柵女 (2013), by Li-Ming CHENG

    Then<·>Now: Taiwan Experimental Film and Video Arts, Part 1

    Start Date: Nov 17, 2024 7:30PM
    End Date: Nov 17, 2024 9:45PM
    Location: 2220 Arts + Archives

    Experimental films in Taiwan started around 1960 or even earlier. Many people found a connection with Dadaism or Surrealism, which opened a ray of hope for young students who had been oppressed by political history for a long time. Four filmmakers will join us for a Zoom Q&A from Taiwan after the screening: Chun-Hui Tony Wu, Ya-Li Huang, Tzu-An Wu, and Tsen-Chu Hsu. Moderated by Cherlyn Hsing-Hsin Liu. Translated by Sonny Shieh. This is a unique opportunity for us to screen these works together. Many of the works have never been shown in the United States, or at least this is their West Coast or Los Angeles premiere.

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