LA Film Forum Logo

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 50th 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

  • Edge of Alchemy, by Stacey Steers

    Stacey Steers: Alchemical Collages

    Date: Apr 14, 2026 7:30PM
    Location: 2220 Arts + Archives

    Animator Stacey Steers joins us in person!  Weaving together archetype, allegory, and wonder, Steers’ films create a mythos all their own. Her heroines, lifted from early 20th-century silent films, ebb toward eternity, inky waves alight in their swell.

  • Conical Intersect (1975), courtesy of the Estate of Gordon Matta-Clark

    The Films of Gordon Matta-Clark

    Date: Apr 19, 2026 1:00PM
    Location: 2220 Arts + Archives

    Gordon Matta-Clark, the artist, urban explorer, and “anarchitect” most famous for the “building cuts” he performed on various decomposing structures in the 1970s, made 18 short films before his untimely death from cancer in 1978.  This program collects six of his films shot between 1972 and 1976, documenting four building cuts, one formal experiment, and one car crash. Special guests Jessamyn Fiore, Director of the Estate of Gordon Matta-Clark, and critic Dylan Adamson.

  • Harry Smith (ca. 1965), photo by John Palmer

    Harry Smith & the Alchemy of Abstraction Featuring Devandra Banhart & Friends Live!

    Date: Apr 25, 2026 7:30PM
    Location: Philosophical Research Society

    Join us for the opening night of The Philosophical Research Society and the Harry Smith Archive’s long-awaited series, THE COSMIC COLLAGE OF HARRY SMITH with HARRY SMITH & THE ALCHEMY OF ABSTRACTION—a one-night event offering an immersive, in-depth journey into the work of one of the most singular figures of the American avant-garde, culminating in a live performance by the acclaimed, genre-defying musician and visual artist Devendra Banhart and friends. 

  • Filmforum 50, program 11: Flaming Creatures: The Films of Jack Smith

    Date: Apr 26, 2026 7:30PM
    Location: 2220 Arts + Archives

    Jack Smith (1932–1989) was a New York-based filmmaker, photographer, and actor known for his pioneering influence in experimental filmmaking and performance art. We hosted a more complete retrospective of his work in the late 1990s.  Flaming Creatures, his most well-known film, often targeted for banning, is still rarely screening.  Come to this rare opprtunity to see it and more on 16mm!

  • Simca Vega Cricket, ©Kevin Jerome Everson; courtesy the artist; trilobite-arts DAC; Picture Palace Pictures

    Watching the Way You Move: An Evening with Kevin Jerome Everson

    Date: May 12, 2026 7:30PM
    Location: 2220 Arts + Archives

    Filmforum welcomes back Kevin Jerome Everson with a compelling array of recent work (and one from 2016), ranging from observations of bird-watchers to a powerful examination of the Ohio State Reformatory in Mansfield, to a short tribute to Gail Fisher, the first Black woman to win an Emmy.