Fabrice Ziolkowski's L.A.X. (1980)
L.A.X.
7th House at the Philosophical Research Society and Los Angeles Filmforum present
Fabrice Ziolkowski's L.A.X. (1980)
Friday, July 17, 2026, 7:30 pm
At the Philosophical Research Society, 3910 Los Feliz Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90027
Please email events@prs.org or phone 323-663-2167 with any questions.
NOTE THE CHANGE IN DAY AND LOCATION
Tickets: $10 general, plus fees, free for Filmforum members.
A Hypnotic City Symphony of Bygone LA
A rare screening of a landmark of Los Angeles avant garde cinema, a hypnotically drifting afternoon-to-evening cruise through a bygone LA
As part of PRS's YesterdayLA 2026 series—a month-long exploration of the people, places, and works of art that have become part of the fabric of Los Angeles history—7th House and Los Angeles Filmforum are proud to co-present Fabrice Ziolkowski's L.A.X. (1980), a landmark of the Los Angeles avant-garde and a profound influence on subsequent works ranging from Pat O'Neill's brilliant Water and Power to Thom Andersen's beloved Los Angeles Plays Itself. Returning to Los Angeles screens for the first time in a decade, this seldom-seen work stands today as both an exquisite portrait of Los Angeles in 1980 and an inadvertent future artifact: a patient, immersive record of a city that has continued to erase, reinvent, and transform itself in the years since.
A true city film and a singular avant-garde entry in the city symphony tradition—from Walter Ruttmann's Berlin: Symphony of a Great City and Dziga Vertov's Man with a Movie Camera to Chantal Akerman's News from Home and Wim Wenders' Tokyo-Ga—L.A.X. follows Los Angeles by car and on foot through long, hypnotic tracking shots and patient observations of its streets, landmarks, and overlooked corners. Created by French-American filmmaker Fabrice Ziolkowski, whose perspective seems suspended between Europe's deeper sense of historical continuity and America's restless appetite for reinvention, L.A.X. brings to Los Angeles an outsider's eye akin to that of cinematic visitors like Agnès Varda, Jacques Demy, Wim Wenders, and John Boorman, rendering even its most familiar landscapes strange, improbable, and newly visible.
Progressing from sweeping aerial vistas bathed in Southern California's hard, honeyed daylight to the seamier nocturnal realities of street-level Hollywood, L.A.X. traces a gradual descent from sunlit mythology into the noir realities and hidden histories that lie beneath. Accompanied by a richly layered soundtrack of ambient sounds, historical and literary texts, and songs ranging from Canned Heat to Robert Johnson, the film reveals a metropolis haunted as much by what is absent as by what remains—its displaced communities, vanished landscapes, and forgotten histories lingering just beyond the edges of the frame.
The years have transformed what was once a portrait of the contemporary city into a kind of time-traveling road movie and urban séance, conjuring the vanished landscapes and past-lived realities of Los Angeles and inviting viewers to spend an evening drifting through them.
Fabrice Ziolkowski is a French-American writer, screenwriter, filmmaker, translator and photographer.
His work has moved across film, television, animation, documentary, translation, criticism and photography, often returning to figures and places at the edge of official narratives: workers, musicians, exiles, prisoners, vanished communities and myth-haunted landscapes. He wrote the screenplay for the Oscar-nominated animated feature The Secret of Kells and is currently developing several literary projects, including The 12 Labors of Nathan Kowak, a darkly comic American novel-in-stories.
ABOUT YesterdayLA 2026
This July, the Philosophical Research Society celebrates our beloved city’s rich and diverse past with YesterdayLA 2026, our second annual month-long exploration of unique stories and works of art that have become part of the fabric of Los Angeles history. The landscape of our city is changing faster than ever before. By examining the LA of yesterday, we invite Angelenos to gather together to not only look back but forward to the possibilities of our great city’s tomorrow.
Throughout its 90+ year history The Philosophical Research Society has stood as a sanctuary for those seeking truth and enlightenment, with its doors open to Angelenos who have created great works of art and innovation, political movements, and spiritual evolutions across the eras. YesterdayLA will explore the fascinating stories of our city’s past with the continued spirit of curiosity that has stood as the pillar of PRS’s mission.
L.A.X.
L.A.X.
Dir. Fabrice Ziolkowski
1980, United States, English/French, Unrated, Digital, 88 min.