Spring-Summer 2025
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Palestine Blues
Date: Apr 26, 2025 7:30PM
Location: Billy Wilder Theater at the Hammer MuseumThis urgent, poetic documentary captures the resistance of Palestinian farmers in the village of Jayyous as Israel’s separation wall threatens their survival. Director Nida Sinnokrot in person. Free screening.
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Vatican to Vegas: Director's Cut
Vatican to Vegas: Director’s Cut - A live presentation by Norman Klein
Start Date: Apr 27, 2025 3:00PM
End Date: Apr 27, 2025 5:15PM
Location: 2220 Arts + ArchivesCritic, urban and media historian and novelist Norman Klein excavates cinema’s architecturally engineered illusions, historic CGI effects. Norman Klein’s live narrative mines the links between techno illusion and power within Hollywood's dark noir and blockbuster classics such as scenes from the 1995 BBC-TV special The Mall, Killer of Sheep, Kiss Me Deadly, The Crowd, Ko-Ko’s Earth Control, Punch and Judy, and many more. Followed by a conversation between Klein and Tom Leeser.
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Pasadena Freeway Stills, by Gary Beydler
Memory, FX, and the City
Date: Apr 27, 2025 7:00PM
Location: 2220 Arts + ArchivesThis series of shorts is a meditation on Baroque optics today, in how evacuated memory resembles special effects. The series even captures how we misremember history. More precisely, these films highlight various psychic layers of the city, where distorted memory, and the decay of our nation state, are extremely evident. In person discussion following the screening with Norman Klein, Courtney Stephens, Chris Peters, moderated by SeeVa Kitslis.
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Voices of Our Mothers: Transcending Time and Distance (2016)
FORMATIONS: Selected Works by Francis Almendárez, 2013-2025
Date: May 4, 2025 7:00PM
Location: 2220 Arts + ArchivesThese selected works by Francis Almendárez delve into the everyday in distinct ways, displaying a Los Angeles hardly ever seen. Intimate and personal, yet abstract and poetic - Almendárez toggles between showing us reflections of his lived reality, and embodying the images and sounds of the lived reality as it is shown. Including the World Theatrical Premieres of six videos!
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How to Have an American Baby. Leslie Tai
How to Have an American Baby
Date: May 10, 2025 1:00PM
Location: 2220 Arts + ArchivesHOW TO HAVE AN AMERICAN BABY is a kaleidoscopic voyage into the once-booming shadow economy catering to Chinese tourists who travel to the U.S. to give birth in order to obtain American citizenship for their babies. Director Leslie Tai and professor Michael Berry in conversation after the film!
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Sarah Maldoror
Sarah Maldoror: Through a Lens of Resistance and Rebellion
Date: May 10, 2025 7:30PM
Location: Billy Wilder Theater at the Hammer MuseumOn April 13, 2020, 90-year-old filmmaker, theater artist and mother Sarah Maldoror passed away due to complications from the coronavirus. The Archive is honored to screen three of Sarah Maldoror’s markedly distinct works created for cinema and broadcast television. Presented in dialogue with each other, the three works construct a nuanced portrait of Maldoror’s unique formal, social and political concerns.
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Sanctuary Station
Sanctuary Station, by Brigid McCaffrey
Date: May 22, 2025 7:30PM
Location: 2220 Arts + ArchivesSanctuary Station traces a series of encounters with women and youth who have cultivated intrinsic attachments to the various life forms inhabiting the redwood forests and remote terrains of northwestern California. In person discussion following the screening with director Brigid McCaffrey.
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Nam June Paik
Nam June Paik's Satellite Spectaculars
Date: May 25, 2025 7:00PM
Location: Philosophical Research Society7th House and Los Angeles Filmforum are proud to co-present an evening of video art pioneer and avant-garde visionary Nam June Paik’s rarely screened, groundbreaking satellite link-up installations – elaborate internationally produced video spectaculars that were recorded, edited, and broadcast live around the world, featuring performances by David Bowie, Laurie Anderson, Merce Cunningham, Allen Ginsberg, Peter Gabriel, Ryuichi Sakamoto and many more!
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Turang
Turang, by Bachtiar Siagian - U.S. Premiere!
Date: Jun 1, 2025 7:00PM
Location: 2220 Arts + ArchivesDiscover a landmark of Indonesian cinema, recently restored and screened at the Rotterdam Film Festival and the Barbican in London. In 1958, Turang screened to wide acclaim at the Afro-Asian Film Festival—a space created to foster cinematic collaboration among newly independent and decolonizing nations across Africa and Asia. Tragically, just a few years later, it was destroyed during the wave of anti-communist violence that swept through Indonesia, erasing a vital piece of the country’s cinematic memory. Today, we are privileged to witness its restoration—as a powerful act of narrative reclamation. US Premiere of a classic film from 1958 (as far as we can tell)!
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Gate of the Sun (Bab El Shams)
Gate of the Sun (Bab El Shams)
Date: Jun 8, 2025 1:00PM
Location: 2220 Arts & ArchivesDon’t miss this rare screening of the poignant Palestinian epic as it chronicles a history of many dimensions through captivating character and layered narratives. Rather than focusing on the suffering, Gate of the Sun (Bab El Shams) reflects the absurdity of life under the harshest conditions, recounting days not unfamiliar to the ones we are currently witnessing.
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Skin, Inscribed: Contemporary Brazilian Hand-Processed Film
Date: Jun 14, 2025 8:00PM
Location: Whammy! AnalogJoin us for Skin, inscribed - contemporary Brazilian hand-processed films, curated by visiting artist Tetsuya Maruyama, co-presented by TAPE LA and LA Filmforum. This group of works, far from commercial “movies", emerge from the personal interests of each artist without expecting anything in return.
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Water and Power
Pat O’Neill’s WATER & POWER + Gary Beydler’s VENICE PIER
Date: Jun 15, 2025 7:00PM
Location: Philosophical Research SocietyThe Philosophical Research Society and Los Angeles Filmforum present Pat O’Neill’s masterpiece — a complex, avant garde LA city symphony, alongside an underseen experimental gem, Venice Pier, both presented on 16mm! Pat O' Neill in person!
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Los Angeles Plays Itself
Thom Andersen's LOS ANGELES PLAYS ITSELF
Date: Jun 22, 2025 6:00PM
Location: Philosophical Research SocietyPerhaps the most essential exploration of our city's mythos, examining the tangled relationship between the movies and their fabled hometown. Thom Andersen in person!
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Flaherty LA Finale: Program VI, Surprises in Time
Date: Jun 29, 2025 7:00PM
Location: The Ray Stark Family Theatre, SCA 108, George Lucas BuildingEntering its 70th year, the Flaherty Film Seminar is revered as one of the most significant convenings around non-fiction cinema. Each year filmmakers, scholars, students, curators, critics, archivists, and cinephiles gather for an immersive, week-long program of film screenings, in-depth discussions, artist talks, installations, and/or performances around a theme. Held in collaboration with Los Angeles Filmforum, for this program, Flaherty LA opens the seminar experience to the wider public. Curated by CEMA’s Stephanie Spray and SCA’s Michael Renov (Flaherty curator, 2005), with special guests James Benning, Rebecca Baron, and more.