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!

Upcoming Screenings

The Wolf House

The Wolf House / La Casa Lobo

Date: Oct 20, 2024 7:30PM
Location: 2220 Arts + Archives

These three films explore the fragile intersection of motion, memory, and material, with decay etched into every layer. Creation and destruction blend as each frame clings to echoes of the past, constantly shifting but never fully wiped clean. Employing a range of non-traditional materials, from soot and charcoal to natural elements and glitter, these films construct worlds in which transformation is perpetual, and deterioration reveals deeper truths.

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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 (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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"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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