Filmforum 50, Program 17: Floribunda, an outdoor garden screening

Petal to the Metal, by Emily Pelstring

Los Angeles Filmforum, Arlington Garden, and Livonian Cinema present

Filmforum 50, Program 17: Floribunda, an outdoor garden screening

Saturday August 8, 2026, Doors at 7:30, screening at 8:30 pm

At Arlington Garden, 275 Arlington Dr, Pasadena, CA 91105 ((between Pasadena Ave and Orange Grove)

Map

See below for directions, parking, access for Arlington Garden

Tickets: $15 general, $10 students/seniors/neighbors of Arlington Garden, free for Filmforum members

At https://buytickets.at/losangelesfilmforum/2321726

If you live within a block of the Garden, please email info@arlingtongardenpasadena.org for the discount code

Please bring blankets, low chairs, refreshments. Some chairs will be available on site, but probably not enough. Probably some wine will be available for purchase, and we plan to have popcorn for free. Doors at 7:30 for the screening area, but the garden will be open all day until dark, and is well worth exploring in the hour or two before the show.

gardens as places to gather

gardens as places of perceptual shifts

gardens as colonial imagination

gardens as fantasy

gardens as sites of labor and care

gardens as collections

gardens as sensory wonderlands

gardens as places of solitude and contemplation

Contemplative, whimsical, analytical, reverential, materialist, political or diaristic - the garden has been the colorful source for a bounty of cinematic approaches. A garden can be seen to parallel a film: from small moments and separate bits of life, combined with intention and labor, grows a work that invites one in, allowing distraction or absorption. The idea of a garden itself carries realms of history and meaning: the notion of taming wilderness, mixing flora that might not normally grow together, the labor involved in creating and tending, the use and consumption of natural resources, the mix of science and aesthetics, labels of native and invasive plants, colonial reach and tranquil beauty.

In this outdoor summer screening, we have chosen to share a range of contemporary short experimental films all looking closely at the life and realms of gardens. As one might expect, flowers receive a great deal of close attention, their colors and layers, cataloguing and growth, but we do not ignore the broader implications of landscapes, community, light, consumption, and the act of tending a garden.

We hope you might see this program as a garden.

Filmforum returns to Pasadena for this lovely set of films set in the beautiful space of Arlington Garden. Filmforum was started by Terry Cannon, then 21 years old, with its first full season, January-March 1976, held at the Neighborhood Church, just 1.8 miles from Arlington Garden up Orange Grove. Pasadena Filmforum used several locations in the city over the following eight years, then relocated to Los Angeles in 1984.

Curated by Kate Lain and Adam Hyman.

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Arlington Garden in Pasadena is a climate appropriate habitat garden offering learning, inspiration, and enjoyment for all. Located in a residential neighborhood, it is a 2.5 acre host to climate-appropriate plants, trees, fungi, root systems, animals, birds, bees, bugs, and people. Founded over 20 years ago on land that was owned by Caltrans for the proposed 710 freeway, its vision is a transformed urban landscape where healthy gardens connect people and combat climate change. The garden is open, free of charge, during daylight hours 365 days a year. https://www.arlingtongardenpasadena.org/

The Livonian Cinema is a traveling movie theater that collaborates with artists, communities, and organizations in Southern California. https://livoniancinema.org/

Livnonian Cinema logo

Los Angeles Filmforum is the city’s longest-running organization dedicated to weekly screenings of experimental film, documentaries, video art, and experimental animation. 2026 is our 51st year. www.lafilmforum.org

Parking / General Information / Accessibility:

Getting There: The garden is in a quiet residential neighborhood with limited street parking. We encourage carpooling, public transit, rideshare, walking, and/or bike if possible. It is located a 15 minute walk or roll from the Metro Fillmore Station! Dedicated event parking is available.

Parking: Please park in a lot at the corner of Orange Grove Blvd. and State St., Pasadena, CA 91105, at Westridge School (do not use school address). The lot will be open from the start until the end of the program. It is a 9 minute walk from the lot to Arlington Garden’s main entrance. Please see the map and blue path below.

Garden Entrance: Enter the event at the west (main) entrance with the archway! There are 3 small steps and a no-step entrance to the right. Sidewalk curb cuts are adjacent to the main entrance on the west side of the garden on Arlington Drive (apartment driveway). Please note that some areas of the garden have uneven (loose) ground. Sturdy closed toe footwear is recommended. Visitors with mobility considerations may disembark in the red curb area immediately in front of the entrance. The formal outdoor Olive Allée, where the event is taking place, has a smoother ground surface and is generally accessible via a short walk or roll.

Event Start Area: A garden map is here. The event will take place in the area numbered 2.

Bathroom and Facilities: The onsite bathroom is a standard port-a-potty with one step up. The event is entirely outdoors. Bring a drinking bottle for water.

Filmforum Film

By Craig Rice

1980, 16mm, b&w, sound, 4 min.

The evening begins with Filmforum Film, which gives a taste of the organization in 1980, when it was based at the back of the Aarnun Gallery, 99 E. Colorado Blvd., at the northwest corner of Colorado and Arroyo Parkway. A train ran through Old Town Pasadena, and the organization would wait for the 8pm train, let it flatten a penny on the tracks to give to the filmmaker, and then start the show. Terry Cannon said that it was made as their report for the NEA for a grant received.

Discoveries on the Forest Floor 1-3

By Charlotte Pryce

16mm, hand processed. 2007 (SD transfer), color, silent, 4 min.

Three Miniature, Illuminated, Heliographic studies of plants, observed and imagined.

The individual titles of the films are:

Burnt Umber/ pale ochre/ Burnt Umber

The Talk of Lichen on a Lonely Day

Those Whose Attachment to the Earth is but Tentative

diario de verano

By anivides (Cristal Buemi and Francisca Duran

2025, 16mm transferred to digital, color, sound, 3:41. Los Angeles premiere

diario de verano is an exploration of neighborhood flora in Tkaronto, focusing on Kensington Market, Parkdale and Wallace – Emmerson, areas we live and move through. Experimentation with abstract movement and the physical, compositional properties of foraged materials, strengthened our community/kinship to the land and each other. Artistic practices were explored and shared through gathering rituals, stop motion animation and phytograms, creating complex layers of ourselves intertwined through our latinx identities in this short film.

Petal to the Metal

By Emily Pelstring

2021, 16mm trans to digital, color, sound, 3 min.

This hand-processed 16mm film reflects on botanical animism. It is a song written for night-crawlers, compost, and shadows, inspired by human flower-lust. Water, fire, earth and air are interwoven with the garden's creature crew. The work draws a parallel between the photographic alchemy of cinematic experiments and the photosynthetic processes of plants.

On Hannah Fields

By Lewis Heriz

2024, digital, color, sound, 3.5 min. Supported by Animate Projects UK. Los Angeles premiere.

On Hannah Fields is a short animated documentary by Lewis Heriz, responding to a community garden in Littleover - a suburb of Derby - in the middle of England.

The film follows the trajectory of recovery, of both the land itself and the people who frequent it and tend to it. It is a representation of the cyclical and symbiotic approach to care, in contrast to the institutionalised system that the founder - an ex-NHS Psychiatric nurse - had experienced burnout within.

Lewis' film includes black and white celluloid film, hand-processed in nettles which were weeded from Hannah Fields, and phytograms – images made through a chemical reaction between plants, photographic emulsion and the sun – made as part of a workshop with the garden's users and collaborators. The soundtrack comprises voices from members of the Hannah Fields community and sounds from the environments within the space.

Expanding on the drawn animation technique, Lewis says:

"Much of the animation was created with just water, painted on 'magic paper' (originally used for Chinese calligraphy practice). You create a brief, dark line, which disappears quickly as it evaporates. I would photograph the image at different stages as I add to it, and as other elements naturally disappear... As well as being a metaphor for the transience of life, it's a gesture towards leaving no trace, and of not contributing to the unnecessary accumulation of stuff in the world."

Herbaria x Pelicula: Field Portfolio

By Derek Jenkins

2021, 16mm trans to digital, color, silent, 11 min.

This “Field Portfolio” is a single channel version of the multichannel installation “Herbaria × pelicula.” A consideration of collection as both archive and act, “Herbaria × pelicula” examines the work that takes place at the HAM Herbarium of Royal Botanical Gardens (Canada), located in Burlington ON along the edges of Cootes Paradise wetland, traditional territory of the Mississauga and Haudenosaunee peoples. The herbarium collection, which houses over 60,000 holdings, comprises specimens from around the world but is made up primarily of local vascular plant types gathered by the scientific community and educated hobbyists. Combining documentary footage of the herbarium space, code-generated database animations of digitized specimen sheets, and images of plantlife processed in plant material, the film work positions the specific labour of botanical gathering and collection as an image-making practice in addition to a mode of knowledge production.

The Tree

By Henry Tyson

Costa Rica, 2020, digital, color, sound, 1 minute, Los Angeles premiere

A microdocumentary about a beloved mandarina criolla tree (Citrus reticulata complex) in the garden of my partner’s childhood home.

Twelve Bagatelles for Janis Crystal Lipzin

By Dicky Bahto

2015, dual super 8mm transferred to digital, color and b&w, silent, 5.5 min.
A suite of twelve short canons for two voices that was originally commissioned by the Huntington, this film is grounded in the colors and textures of plants found in their Desert Garden Conservatory in conversation with other artists’ representations of plants, found in works in the collection of the institution ranging from medieval Books of Hours to Severin Roesen’s “Still Life with Flowers and Bird’s Nest.” This film is dedicated to Janis Crystal Lipzin—dear friend, mentor, artist, and gardener.

Fly Trap

By Chloe Reyes

2014, dual super 8mm transferred to digital, color, silent, 4 min.
A portrait of the late Native Plant Garden that was located in the Los Angeles State Historic Park just north of Downtown Los Angeles. Using a photogram technique, the petals and leaves of amaranth, marigold, ceanothus, salt bush, and other plants were placed directly onto the film and exposed to light.

Markings 1-3

By Eva Kolcze

29011, 16mm and HD, color, sound, 7 min.

A tactile journey in three parts. Markings 1-3 is an attempt to connect with nature through the surface of 16mm celluloid film, using such techniques as tinting, toning, painting and scratching.

This film was shot and hand-processed at the Independent Imaging Retreat (The Film Farm) in Mount Forest Ontario.

Garden of Earthly Delights

By Stan Brakhage

1981, 16mm, color, silent, 2 min.

This film (related to MOTHLIGHT) is a collage composed entirely of montane zone vegetation. As the title suggests it is an homage to (but also argument with) Hieronymous Bosch. It pays tribute as well, and more naturally, to "The Tangled Garden" of J.E.H. MacDonald and the flower paintings of Emil Nolde.

Posthaste Perennial Pattern

By Jodie Mack

2010, 16mm, color, sound, 3:38

Rapid-fire florals and morning bird songs bridge interior and exterior, design and nature.

Spring Songs

By Robert Todd

2017, 16mm, color, silent, 14 min.

CAST: Spring, Boston

entering...

and exiting

a season.

This is the Fourth of Five rolls through Spring.

- RT