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

Proteus: A Nineteenth Century Vision

Experimentations 8.33: David Lebrun: Proteus

Date: Nov 24, 2024 3:00PM
Location: Billy Wilder Theater at the Hammer Museum

Experimentations: Imag(in)ing Knowledge in Film, Program 8.33. Filmforum is community partner for two screenings of works by David Lebrun at UCLA that also fit in our series Experimentations: Imag(in)ing Knowledge in Film. From the hippie counterculture of the 1960s to Tibetan and Mayan mythologies, Lebrun seeks cinematic forms that draw out the radical specificity of his subjects while simultaneously revealing their interconnectedness across time and place. Proteus centers on the fascinating life and career of 19th century German naturalist Ernst Haeckel and his obsession with radiolarians, a species of microscopic marine protozoa.

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Transfigurations

Experimentations 8.67: David Lebrun: Transfigurations: Reanimating the Past

Date: Nov 24, 2024 7:00PM
Location: Billy Wilder Theater at the Hammer Museum

Experimentations: Imag(in)ing Knowledge in Film, Program 8.67. David Lebrun’s latest project is a large-scale, multi-year work in progress to create a transformative encounter between the present and the past through an immersive experience with change itself. Beginning with high-resolution images of artifacts, art objects and architectural details from different eras and photographed at various sites around the world, including museums, churches and temples, Lebrun animates the changes in their forms across millennia. The results are an awe-inspiring tour of human ingenuity, imagination, belief and craft as it expressed itself from the Paleolithic period through the Middle Ages, and from Mesoamerica to Europe, the Middle East and Indian Asia.

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The Tree House

Earthly Visions: The Tree House

Date: Dec 6, 2024 7:30PM
Location: The Billy Wilder Theater at the Hammer Museum

Part of Science Fiction Against the Margins. This program’s films are documents of the Earth at its current stage mixed with dystopian speculations on the future. Moving through green spaces, caves and mountains, they remind us of the fragile rock that houses us, and that we must tend to in order to avoid catastrophic consequences.

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Photo by Robert Mearns Yerkes of one of his experimental subjects

Experimentations 9: Should We Look at Animals?

Date: Dec 8, 2024 3:00PM
Location: 2220 Arts + Archives

Experimentations: Imag(in)ing Knowledge in Film, Program 9. Should We Look at Animals?: The Perils and Pleasures of Nonfiction Animal Films. Comparisons between humans and animals are foundational to the experimental branches of medicine and psychology. Often treated as purely transparent scientific recordings, the films produced out of animal research are in fact deeply formalist works that tested what film could capture through the image of an animal—variously proposing that they could visualize pure thought, the processes of history and culture, and the influence of the environment on an organism. With special guest Benjamin Schultz-Figueroa from Seattle.

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Last Things, by Deborah Stratman

Experimentations 10: The Crystalline Entities

Date: Dec 8, 2024 7:00PM
Location:

Experimentations: Imag(in)ing Knowledge in Film, Program 10. Crystals are inherently beautiful. They form our world; they are part of chemical-based photography that images it. They take innumerable forms, their growth is hypnotic, the light they scatter creates amazing colors. Many filmmakers have looked at crystals in myriad ways, and this program strives to capture an element of how the filmic investigation of one subject results in a brilliant array of filmic forms. From a well-crafted educational film from the 1950s to a mysterious experimental film and one that positions crystals in a post-humanist world, the program highlights the range of scientific visions and the experimental reuse or repositioning of those visions.

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