Summer-Fall 2023
-
Flaming Creatures, by Jack Smith
Flaming Creatures: Jack Smith, Barbara Rubin and the Cinematic Orgiastic, program 1
Date: Jul 15, 2023 7:30PM
Location: UCLA Film & Television Archive Billy Wilder Theater, Hammer MuseumOn April 29, 1963, Jack Smith’s Flaming Creatures (1962) had its theatrical premiere on a double bill with Ken Jacobs’ Blonde Cobra (1963) as part of Jonas Mekas’ screening series at the Bleecker Street Cinema in New York. The screening would prove to be a milestone in both the development of the American avant-garde and the cause of artistic freedom. This program marks the 60th anniversary of that original double bill followed by an evening of works inspired by Flaming Creatures in which images and bodies slide over one another in a tumult of freedom and feeling. Tonight: Blonde Cobra by Ken Jacobs, and Flaming Creatures by Jack Smith
-
Christmas on Earth, by Barbara Rubin
Flaming Creatures: Jack Smith, Barbara Rubin and the Cinematic Orgiastic, program 2
Date: Jul 16, 2023 7:00PM
Location: Billy Wilder Theater at the Hammer MuseumOn April 29, 1963, Jack Smith’s Flaming Creatures (1962) had its theatrical premiere on a double bill with Ken Jacobs’ Blonde Cobra (1963) as part of Jonas Mekas’ screening series at the Bleecker Street Cinema in New York. The screening would prove to be a milestone in both the development of the American avant-garde and the cause of artistic freedom. This program marks the 60th anniversary of that original double bill followed by an evening of works inspired by Flaming Creatures in which images and bodies slide over one another in a tumult of freedom and feeling. Tonight: Chumlum, by Ron Rice, Kusama's Self-Obliteration, by Jud Yalkut, and Christmas on Earth, by Barbara Rubin
-
For the Time Being, by Deborah Stratman
Deborah Stratman: Framed Views: The Illinois Parables and more
Date: Jul 20, 2023 7:30PM
Location: 2220 Arts + ArchivesArtist and filmmaker Deborah Stratman makes work that investigates issues of power, control and belief, exploring how places, ideas, and society are intertwined. She regards sound as the ultimate multi-tool and time to be supernatural. Tonight we feature her fabulous film The Illinois Parables, winner of the Douglas Edwards Independent/Experimental Film/Video Prize from the 42nd LA Film Critics Association Awards, along with three short films: "Optimism" (2019, LA Premiere), "For the Time Being" (2021, LA Premiere), and Nancy Holt & Robert Smithson's "Mono Lake"(1968-2204), with which "For the Time Being" is partly in conversation.
-
Long Haulers, by Amy Reid
Long Haulers, by Amy Reid
Date: Jul 30, 2023 7:30PM
Location: 2220 Arts + Archives"All truckers are either running away or running to something.” In Long Haulers, through experimentation, direct observational filmmaking, and performative play, filmmaker Amy Reid rides and films with women truckers who have fled domestic violence, the stigmas of being formerly incarcerated, and mental health issues. Weaving together the stories of three truckers, Sandi, Lori, and Tracy, Long Haulers shares how each woman started trucking and what keeps them trucking.
-
Stages of Mourning, by Sarah Pucill
5973 Miles Away: Women’s Exorcisms of Loss
Date: Aug 6, 2023 7:30PM
Location: 2220 Arts + ArchivesThese women filmmakers have attempted to find corollaries in filmic spaces, ways of exorcizing some elements of the profound grief each has faced. These works invite us to the deep space of the body where emotional understanding is prioritized over intellectual thinking. In person: Xiao Zhang, abbi page, and curator Seok-Young Yang
-
The Wyvernwood Chronicles: Part 2
Date: Aug 19, 2023 2:00PM
Location: 2220 Arts + ArchivesFilmforum continues local filmmaker Diego Robles' series The Wyvernwood Chronicles: Part 2, an eclectic collection of short films ranging from resident-made PSA’s (Public Service Announcements), to meditative experimental documentary pieces, to youth workshop animations. The films center around a group of residents and community homes located just east of the Los Angeles River, in Boyle Heights between the years 2007-2015, where many attempts by the city to displace the residents were challenged by its residents. In person: filmmakers Diego Robles & Bertha Aguilar, Wyvernwood resident Gumaro Oviedo Flores, and programmer Jorge Ravelo
-
Ginko Yellow
Verge: New Films by Amy Halpern
Date: Sep 16, 2023 7:00PM
Location: The Zorthian Ranchin 2022 we lost our great and good friend, filmmaker Amy Halpern. Tonight we host a special outdoor screening at the amazing Zorthian Ranch in the hills above Altadena, with 16mm prints of her new films, previously shown spread apart in three shows earlier this year. Outdoors, bring a mask and a light jacket.
-
Orbit Diapason (2021)
Tabita Rezaire: Connectivity and Farming for the Future
Date: Sep 17, 2023 1:00PM
Location: 2220 Arts + ArchivesWe’re delighted to present works by Tabita Rezaire, including the theatrical world premiere of Orbit Diapson, supported by a commission from Los Angeles Filmforum. Based in French Guyana (a province of France in South America, still remaining from colonial days), and frequently making work in Africa, Rezaire is a healer, artist, and farmer whose multi-faceted practice has revolved around concerns of the internet as a colonial technology, the possibilities of digital interfaces for spiritual and ancestral information, African spirituality, ecological collapse, untold histories of Black womxn, decolonizing uses of technology, and the power of the womb.
-
Something to Touch That Is Not Corruption Or Ashes Or Dust
Collision Center: Movies by Mike Stoltz
Date: Sep 24, 2023 7:30PM
Location:Artist, filmmaker, curator, educator, musician, all-around sound and image maker Mike Stoltz has been an integral presence in the Los Angeles film community and the international experimental film landscape for over a decade now. Stoltz’s films challenge our relationship to urban and domestic landscapes, politicizing them on a formal and material level, underscoring and heightening our empathetic response and conceptual consciousness.
-
Narcisa Hirsch
Narcisa Hirsch transgenérico
Date: Oct 1, 2023 7:30PM
Location: 2220 Arts + ArchivesA pioneer of Argentinian experimental cinema, Narcisa Hirsch has referred to herself as una famosa cineasta desconocida (a famous unknown filmmaker). Her low-budget projects allowed her radical freedom to experiment with the medium of film, always in dialogue with other artists and art forms ranging from filmmaker Michael Snow to composer Steve Reich, fiction writer Jorge Luis Borges to musician Nina Simone. This program features various genres—or anti-genres—of Hirsch’s decades-long career (documented happenings, structural and lyrical films), as well as recently scanned films from her personal archive (workshop collaborations and cine-cartas or film-letters).
-
Double Vision
Janie Geiser: Double Vision and The Fourth Watch
Date: Oct 8, 2023 7:30PM
Location: 2220 Arts + ArchivesWe welcome back the wonderful filmmaker Janie Geiser with the first Los Angeles screening of her full Double Vision series of 8 films, and the LA premiere of newly restored print of The Fourth Watch. Geiser's oeuvre is a mesmerizing testament to the power of film as art. Each frame in her films is a canvas, each figure a character, collectively painting an evocative portrait of the human psyche. As audiences journey through her landscapes, they find themselves enveloped in an experience beyond traditional cinema, embracing mystery and staying pensively lost in its fog.
-
A String of Pearls
A String of Pearls: The Films of Camille Billops and James Hatch, part 1
Date: Oct 12, 2023 7:30PM
Location: Billy Wilder Theater, Hammer MuseumCamille Billops and James Hatch were partners in life and work. Together, they created inventive, playful and expansive ways to tell personal and provocative stories about race, gender, class and the human experience and much of their work has been difficult to access. This two-night program will feature their complete body of work — shorts, mid-lengths and a feature film — as beautiful new restorations.
-
James Hatch and Camille Billops
A String of Pearls: The Films of Camille Billops and James Hatch, part 2
Date: Oct 13, 2023 7:30PM
Location: Billy Wilder Theater, Hammer MuseumCamille Billops and James Hatch were partners in life and work. Together, they created inventive, playful and expansive ways to tell personal and provocative stories about race, gender, class and the human experience and much of their work has been difficult to access. This two-night program will feature their complete body of work — shorts, mid-lengths and a feature film — as beautiful new restorations.
-
L’Inferno (1911), with live score by Montopolis
Date: Oct 16, 2023 7:30PM
Location: Secret Movie CLubAustin, Texas band Montopolis will perform a live score to the silent film L'Inferno (1911)! L’Inferno is the first feature length horror film ever released. An adaptation of Dante’s journey through hell, this cinematic masterpiece employs elaborate costumes, special effects, and set design to create an awe-inspiring and ethereal world.
-
Tribute to Bérénice Reynaud
Date: Nov 5, 2023 1:00PM
Location: REDCATA Memorial for Bérénice Reynaud, with Remembrances and Reception, at REDCAT
-
La Région Centrale
La Région Centrale, by Michael Snow
Date: Nov 5, 2023 7:00PM
Location: The Billy Wilder Theater at the Hammer MuseumThe late avant-garde master Michael Snow’s work explores the nature of perception, consciousness, participation, and in many ways is uncategorizable but relation to time is evident. La Région Centrale is a three-hour-long film that calls attention to the mechanics of filmmaking, using a computer-programmed, motorized tripod that rotates the camera 360 degrees in any direction, repeatedly, without dialogue or any other subject beyond the landscape, over the course of a day.
-
Melisa Aller
Melisa Aller: Las instancias del fuego
Date: Nov 12, 2023 7:30PM
Location: 2220 Arts + ArchivesMelisa Aller, visiting from Argentina with a feature-length super 8mm film! Details to come.
-
Manu: A Visual Album
Manu: A Visual Album
Date: Nov 29, 2023 7:30PM
Location: 2220 Arts + ArchivesManu, A Visual Album is an experimental documentary by Alexandra Cuesta born as an accompanying piece for the record Manu by composer Bryan Senti. Senti's record is a self-voyage that searches and explores his Latin American ancestry through the complexities of weaving Indigenous sounds with Western Classical influences. A meditation on landscape, the film is also constructed as a voyage, visually inhabiting the diverse geographies of the Ecuadorian territory: coast, highlands, and Amazon, the director's country of origin.
-
Harry Smith
Abstraction and Eviction: Films by (and about) Harry Smith with live score
Date: Nov 30, 2023 8:00PM
Location: 2220 Arts + ArchivesWe’re in the midst of a revival of attention being paid to Harry Smith, polymath, experimental filmmaker, painter, ethnomusicologist, mystic, expert on the occult, creator of the Anthology of American Folk Music, paper airplane and string figure collector, and more. Here’s an opportunity to view his Early Abstractions and more on a big screen, with live musical accompaniment by Will Epstein, Dave Harrington, and Photay. In addition, we’re including the Los Angeles premiere of the last completed film by famed photographer and filmmaker Robert Frank, a portrait of Smith being evicted from the Breslin Hotel in 1984.
-
Palestine in the Eye (1971) by Mustafa Abu Ali
So Much I Want To Say: A Glimpse Into Palestinian Erasure
Date: Dec 3, 2023 7:30PM
Location: Human ResourcesCurator Zaina Bseios takes us through the Palestinian Film Unit and beyond, screening films and excerpts from the Unit and others. Interviews, films, photos and texts will unearth the climate under which Palestinian cinema emerged while revisiting acts of solidarity via the Tokyo Reels, Jean Mohr, and Jean Genet, among others.
-
Cowboy and “Indian” Film
Raphael Montañez Ortiz: Chopping Up the Classics
Date: Dec 8, 2023 7:30PM
Location: Billy Wilder TheaterRaphael Montañez Ortiz’s film, music and video art represent a missing link in the history of experimental media in the post-WWII era that helped redefine the idea of modern art after Abstract Expressionism. These recycled films are concurrent with similar work by Bruce Conner and other avant-garde filmmakers around the world, but they signal a distinct alternative to traditionally modernist work relying on classical music composition and “diagnostic” editing as a critique of media culture. The first of two nights.
-
489 Years, by Hayoun Kwon (2016)
Hayoun Kwon: Virtually Real
Date: Dec 10, 2023 7:30PM
Location: 2220 Arts + ArchivesFilmforum is thrilled to welcome internationally acclaimed media artist Hayoun Kwon to present her immersive digital animation work in her first solo screening in Southern California. Originally from South Korea, Paris-based Kwon employs numerous tools – including first-person game engines, VR, and various forms of CG – to conjure worlds both real and imagined in a startling documentary mode that blurs the lines between evidence and speculation.
-
The Game (1973)
So Much I Want To Say: A Glimpse Into Palestinian Erasure
Date: Dec 18, 2023 7:30PM
Location: Human ResourcesRepeat screening! RSVP required. Curator Zaina Bseios takes us through the Palestinian Film Unit and beyond, screening films and excerpts from the Unit and others. Interviews, films, photos and texts will unearth the climate under which Palestinian cinema emerged while revisiting acts of solidarity via the Tokyo Reels, Jean Mohr, and Jean Genet, among others.