Eve-Lauryn LaFountain: Conversation Pieces

They Told Me "Apikaan" Means Braid

Los Angeles Filmforum presents

Eve-Lauryn LaFountain: Conversation Pieces

Sunday March 1, 2026, 7:30 pm

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

In person: Eve-Lauryn LaFountain

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

With camera in hand, Eve-Lauryn LaFountain's Experimental Films extinguish mythical ideals of history in the American Southwest, while engaging a troth of interrelated dynamics between the land and those who hear its beauty and history. The films often bind together the very layered and enchanting awareness(es) between place and space, while concomitantly living life and critiquing stereotypical media representations of Native people and cultures. At other times, the films exhibit imagery symbolizing a liberated consciousness, free from a contaminated imagination suppressing the textures and colors of our everyday experience of land and landscapes. Eve memorializes the strained and distant relationship contemporary life has to a directly connected spirit to nature. Simultaneously she heightens the reading we have of existence through audiovisual blessings and cleansings, from legacies of colonialism(s), and cycles of ecological collision and collapse. The films leaf through dynamics of heritage and generational knowledge, juxtaposing meditations on tradition(s), with, as Eve says, a "braiding" and "resurrecting", an ascending, and descending, into and beneath time, and its reality. - Diego Robles, programmer

Eve-Lauryn Little Shell LaFountain is an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa. She was born into a family of artists in Santa Fe, New Mexico where she is currently based. She is a multimedia artist, filmmaker, and educator. Her work explores identity, history, Indigenous Futurism, feminism, ghosts, magic, and her mixed Native American and Jewish heritage through lens based media and installations. She is a Mandel Institute Cultural Leadership Fellow, and has received support for her work from the Sundance Institute, Mike Kelley Foundation, Andy Warhol Foundation, COUSIN Collective, Echo Park Film Center and more. She has exhibited her work in venues and festivals around the world. She holds a BA from Hampshire College, and a dual MFA in Film & Video and Photography & Media from CalArts.

Smudge Series and Conversation Pieces will screen on 16mm!

In the Ghost Land

2010, 16mm hand processed film transferred to digital, black & white, sound, 6 min - US Premiere!

Hand processed black and white 16mm film transferred to video. The camera explores what seems to be a ghost town in the old Wild West. But these towns were made to portray the “wild west” on screen. These are movie ranches used as film and television sets. They exist on the outskirts of Santa Fe, New Mexico and were created to perpetuate the mythical ideals of history that maybe never was. Edited from parts of It’s Never Too Late to be a Cowgirl, a multimedia installation about the west creating the mythology of itself on screen integrating film, photography and book arts. Shot at Bonanza Creek and Eave’s Movie Ranch film locations. Premiered at the ImagineNATIVE Film and Media Arts Festival in Toronto.

Smudge Series

2013, trilogy of 16mm films, color, sound, 7 mins.

Indabaabasaan (I Smudge It, I Cleanse It),

Soda Lake,

Boozhoo Jiibayag (Hello Ghosts)

This trilogy of 16mm films combined together into one piece explores living indigenous histories in southern California. In Indabaabasaan (I Smudge It, I Cleanse It), the artist cleanses the city and sets the tone for the following pieces. Soda Lake bends the sky, earth and air. Boozhoo Jiibayag (Hello Ghosts) shows the spirits that come out to play when darkness settles over the desert. The Ojibwe titles come from the artist’s traditional tribal language. Sound for all three pieces by Jon Almaraz.

They Told Me "Apikaan" Means Braid

2013, uncut 8mm film installation documentation video, black & white, sound, 3 mins

An uncut 8mm film loop installation by Eve-Lauryn LaFountain. Someone told her they liked her hair in braids because it made her “look more Indian”. LaFountain, who often uses her films to critique the stereotypes made and perpetuated by the medium, performed the braiding for the camera. When 8mm film isn’t split down the middle it creates a quad screen when projected through a 16mm projector. But in half of the screen the film runs backwards, unbraiding her hair as fast as she can braid it. This film was originally shown as a physical film loop sculpture across the length of the gallery, creating a never ending cycle of braiding and unbraiding, breaking the stereotypes and falling back into them at the same time. Eventually the film broke and the cycle ended. Cinematography by Rick Bahto, sound recorded in the original gallery installation.

Conversation Pieces: A Swan Song

2014, 16mm, color, sound, 28 mins.

A 16mm documentary film about one family’s transitions from the great love stories of World War II, followed by the next generation's tradition breaking inter-racial marriage, leading to the child of mixed heritage who walks a fine line blending her Native American and Jewish cultures. Conversations between three generations of women are voice-overs as portraits are made of them through the homes they’ve created for themselves, and the placement of objects like still lifes. The filmmaker focuses on her maternal grandmother’s move from living on her own and follows the downsizing of her lifetime’s collections of art and antiques as they move onto the next generations. The granddaughter’s camera travels with the objects from coast to coast as she collects her family’s stories. This film served as LaFountain's MFA thesis for the Program in Film/Video at the California Institute of the Arts.

We Are the Explorers

2016, Super 8 film transferred to digital, black & white, sound, 13 mins

Super 8 film was a format created for home movies. Eve-Lauryn LaFountain uses her super 8 films to juxtapose her own personal experiences with each other and with history. This film was mostly shot during a trip home to New Mexico and also features a trip to Joshua Tree on the first day of 2015 with the Echo Park Film Center Famiglia. There are undercurrents of the legacy of colonialism and missionaries while showing the 90th annual celebration of the burning of Zozobra, and an ascent to an ancient Kiva. Clues of place and history appear in the sound collage of her field recordings. There's mention of cutting off Juan de Oñate's foot, drones, and an Ojibwe burial song recorded at LaFountain's grandmother's funeral and used as a blessing for the ancestral people of Bandelier National Monument. Her use of montage creates a collage of the artist's life.

Giizis Mooka'am Giiwe (Sun and Moon Rise She Goes Home)

2018, 16mm transferred to digital, color, sound, 12:30 - Los Angeles Premiere

This film is a meditation. Using a 16mm intervalometer camera that takes a few frames every few minutes, the artist spent several years tracing the cycles of our sky collapsing time so hours go by in minutes. This view shows all the cycles of the city, weather, clouds, planets, planes, and stars. In Ojibwe “giizis” means sun, moon, and month, “Mooka'am” rise, “Giiwe” s/he goes home. Pieces of this film have been used in physical 16mm film loop installations. This single screen version traces the movements and rhythms of celestial, sacred, and human cycles. Shot in Los Angeles and Santa Fe. Sound by Jon Almaraz.

Dear Dad

2025, MiniDV and digital, color, sound, 13 mins - World Premiere!

A search through the archive to resurrect memories of the artist’s father, also an artist, on his first birthday after dying.