Yoko Ono’s film “RAPE” with a talk by Jennifer Doyle

Los Angeles Filmforum presents

Yoko Ono’s film “RAPE” with a talk by Jennifer Doyle

Sunday July 12, 2026, 7:00 pm

At 2220 Arts + Archives, 2220 Beverly Blvd. Los Angeles CA 90057

Note the slightly earlier start time

Tickets: $15 general, $10 students/seniors, free for Filmforum members. 

https://link.dice.fm/Efa0e109464d

In conjunction with The Broad’s exhibition Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind, Filmforum presents her rarely screened film “RAPE” followed by a talk on the film by writer and educator Jennifer Doyle.  The film is not included in the exhibition, so this is your only chance to see it currently.

Note that there is no sex or nudity or conventional physical violence in the film, but it is an intense presentation of stalking.

Yoko Ono’s score for Film No. 5 RAPE (or CHASE) (1968) begins with the instruction: “A cameraman will chase a girl on a street with a camera persistently until he corners her in an alley, and, if possible, until she is in a falling position.’ 

“In one sense, Rape is a particularly brutal dramatization of the Warholian discovery that the camera‘s implacable stare disrupts ‘ordinary’ behavior to enforce its own regime. In another, the film is a graphic metaphor for the ruthless surveillance that can theoretically attach itself to any citizen of the modern world.” – J. Hoberman, “John Lennon/Yoko Ono. Film No 5. RAPE (or CHASE) (Clip)”, in Rhetoric of Surveillance from Bentham to Big Brother, Thomas Y. Levin, Ursula Frohne, Peter Weibel (eds), ZKM, Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe, 2002, p. 406f.

Jennifer Doyle is a writer, curator, and scholar. She has published books about harassment dynamics (Shadow of My Shadow, 2024) and difficulty in contemporary art (Hold It Against Me, 2013). She lives in Los Angeles and teaches at UC Riverside.

Yoko Ono (b. 1933, Tokyo) is an artist, musician, and activist whose work has shaped contemporary art and culture for more than seven decades.

After moving to New York in the 1950s, Ono established herself within New York's artistic and musical communities. During the 1960s, she lived and worked in New York, Tokyo, and London, creating works including Cut Piece (1964) and her foundational book of instructions Grapefruit (1964).

In 1969, she married John Lennon, with whom she collaborated extensively in art, music, film, and peace activism. She has also released numerous solo and collaborative recordings, including the 1981 Grammy Award-winning Album of the Year, Double Fantasy. 

In 2009, she received the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Biennale. Her work has been the subject of major solo exhibitions at institutions including MoMA, Tate Modern, Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, and The Broad, and continues to be exhibited internationally.

Special Thanks to Ed Patuto, The Broad, Connor Monahan, Yoko Ono’s studi

Screening:

“RAPE”

UK/USA, 1969, 16mm trans to digital, color, sound, 59 min.

Film by Yoko Ono

Directed by Yoko Ono and John Lennon

With Eva Majlath; Camera: Nicholas D. Knowland

In English, German, Italian with no subtitles

“In the film, [camera operator Nic] Knowland and his crew encounter a woman in the Highgate cemetery and begin to film her, tracking her relentlessly through Lindon’s streets and finally forcing their way into the flat she shares with her sister.  Unable to speak English, the woman, as the Pacific Film Archive program notes, ‘can neither understand why she is being filmed [her German and Italian inquiries elicit no response from the crew], nor make her stalkers go away.’  By the end of the film, she is huddled in one corner of the flat and appears completely victimized and frantic.” – Joan Hawkins, Cutting Edge: Art-Horror and the Horrific Avant-Garde (Univ, of Minnesota Press, 2000), p. 121.