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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! 

Newt Leaders Still

Newt Leaders, by Amy Halpern

Upcoming Screenings

  • From the Belly of the Earth saber tooth tiger skeleton smaller

    From the Belly of the Earth (Uit den schoot der aarde) (1919)

    Experimentations 14: Old Nature: Natural History Films from the Silent Era

    Date: Jan 19, 2025 7:30PM
    Location: Brain Dead Studios

    Experimentations: Imag(in)ing Knowledge in Film, Program 14.  This screening of archival natural history films from the 1910s and 1920s reveals how animals, science, industry, and geography were visualized by motion pictures one hundred years ago. Beautifully preserved by the EYE Film Museum Amsterdam, most of these films feature applied color processes such as tinting, toning, or stencil coloring. Strikingly different from today's nature documentaries, these films celebrate hunting, logging, mining, and other forms of resource extraction. It is precisely the disorienting perspective of the Anthropocene viewing condition that revitalizes these century-old natural history films films with new meaning. A live performance of ambient electronic music will open access points for the audience to more fully draw out these complexities and others through the experience of public spectatorship. 

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  • Space and India T1

    Space and India, by Vijay B Chandra (1971) Courtesy of Films Division of India

    Experimentations 15: This Bit of That India

    Date: Jan 26, 2025 7:30PM
    Location: 2220 Arts + Archives

    Experimentations: Imag(in)ing Knowledge in Film, program 15.  The history of experimental film in India is tied to the history of India’s quest for modernity and is particularly visible in the experimental films on science and technology produced by the Films Division of India during the cultural revolution of the late 60’s and early 70’s. This program will showcase a selection of these avant-garde state supported films that reflect the radical values, perspectives and ideas that shaped the vision of Indian democracy. 

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  • MONISME still 2 smaller

    Monisme, by Riar Rizaldi

    Experimentations 16: Unstable Ground: Science, Extraction, and Belief in Monisme

    Date: Feb 2, 2025 3:00PM
    Location: 2220 Arts + Archives

    Experimentations: Imag(in)ing Knowledge in Film, Program 16. Many things collide in Riar Rizaldi’s Monisme: magic, science, indigenous knowledge systems, violence, and a tenuous boundary between the past and the future, fact and fiction. These all collide around Mount Merapi, one of the most active stratovolcano in the world, located in Java, Indonesia. Monisme’s multiple collisions ultimately illuminate the various modalities of relation between humans and nature. The screening will be followed by a panel with Riar Rizaldi, Fern Silva, and Jheanelle Brown and by a free dinner.

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  • Rock Bottom Riser 6 smaller

    Rock Bottom Riser

    Experimentations 17: Resisting Western Science’s Colonial Mandate: Rock Bottom Riser

    Date: Feb 2, 2025 7:00PM
    Location: 2220 Arts + Archives

    Experimentations: Imag(in)ing Knowledge in Film, Program 17.  Rock Bottom Riser is an essential document and an exhilarating tour-de-force, a palimpsest that traverses geology, ethnography and astronomy. Silva's feature is preceded by Telengut’s short which expands on the West’s concept of indigeneity while also putting forth the indigenous Mongolian and Siberian belief in animism as a way to nourish our world.

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  • Violence Civ 5 smaller

    The Violence of a Civilization without Secrets, By Adam Khalil, Zack Khalil, and Jackson Polys

    Experimentations 18: Science of the Word

    Date: Feb 16, 2025 7:30PM
    Location: 2220 Arts + Archives

    Experimentations: Imag(in)ing Knowledge in Film, Program 18.  Aimé Césaire, the late writer, politician, and co-founder of the Négritude movement, proposed a new hybrid science in 1946 — a science of the Word. He argued that the study of the Word (mythoi, a poetics of knowledge) will condition the study of nature (bios). Philosopher Sylvia Wynter, inspired by Césaire’s idea, stated that humans must now collectively undertake a rewriting of knowledge as we have known and understood it. Can science deal with and make sense of the human predicament, as Wynter calls it? How can scholars, artists, scientists, and the general public reconcile the tension between scientific and technological advancement, the earth-centered mandate of indigenous wisdom, and righting historical legacies colonial violence? 

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