Los Angeles Filmforum is the longest-running organization in Southern California dedicated exclusively to the ongoing, non-commercial exhibition of independent, experimental, and progressive media art.

Filmforum is proud to be in the center of the cultural programming of a city with a rich history of avant-garde filmmaking and programming. Now in our 48th year, we celebrate personal, hand-crafted and non-commercial work. Read more about our various programs, purchase tickets for upcoming screenings, explore our archives, or learn more about volunteering or making a tax-deductible donation on our website!

Upcoming Screenings

Dzata Backpack Courtesy of Knoetze Hlongwane and Wilson 2 smaller

DZATA: The Institute of Technological Consciousness (2022) Courtesy of Knoetze, Hlongwane and Wilson

Experimentations 5: Ritualizing Knowledge Systems

Date: Oct 6, 2024 7:30PM
Location: 2220 Arts + Archives

Experimentations: Imag(in)ing Knowledge in Film, Program 5. This program of short experimental films and videos expands on the process of ritualizing bodies of knowledge, highlighting the role film plays as a cultural interface that engages sacred reflections and revelations informing the performance of rituals for cultural inheritance. Films from Russel Hlongwane, Francois Knoetze & Amy Wilson, Jim Chuchu, Philippa Ndisi Herrmann, Adebukola Bodunrin & Ezra Clayton Daniels, and anaïs extend the limits of its artistic form to include divergent worldviews.

Details Buy Tickets

The Wolf House

Date: Oct 20, 2024 7:00PM
Location: 2220 Arts + Archives

These three films explore the fragile intersection of motion, memory, and material, with decay etched into every layer. Creation and destruction blend as each frame clings to echoes of the past, constantly shifting but never fully wiped clean. Employing a range of non-traditional materials, from soot and charcoal to natural elements and glitter, these films construct worlds in which transformation is perpetual, and deterioration reveals deeper truths.

Details Buy Tickets

Do You Believe? (Central Newsreel & Documentary Film Studio, China, 1980)

Experimentations 6: The Uncanny in 1980s Chinese State-Sponsored Films

Date: Oct 27, 2024 7:30PM
Location: 2220 Arts + Archives

Experimentations: Imag(In)ing Knowledge in Film, program 6. Showcasing three short films made by the Chinese state in the 1980s, this program ventures into the uncanny field between documentary and science fiction. As the socialist country stumbled into capitalism, nonfiction films gave forms to alternative epistemologies that reconfigure bodies, medicine, military, and education. The boundaries between documentary, science education film and fiction genres were constantly shifted according to specific political campaigns, resulting in hybrid and often experimental practices and the construction of a new national subjectivity that transcended modern western science.

Details Buy Tickets

A Gente Rio (We River) (2016) By Carolina Caycedo, Iimage courtesy of the artist.

Experimentations 7: Carolina Caycedo: The Lives of Rivers

Date: Nov 3, 2024 7:00PM
Location: 2220 Arts + Archives

Experimentations: Imag(in)ing Knowledge in Film, Program 7. Filmforum hosts Carolina Caycedo in conjunction with We Place Life at the Center / Situamos la vida en el centro,the an art and environmental justice exhibition at the Vincent Price Art Museum. This film program showcases Caycedo’s film and video work, emphasizing the artist’s commitment to promoting the teachings of reciprocity with nature and personifying rivers, watersheds, plants, and other non-human beings as political agents.

Details Buy Tickets