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!

Upcoming Screenings

Simca Vega Cricket film still Kevin Jerome Everson courtesy the artist trilobite arts DAC Picture Palace Pictures smaller

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.

Details Buy Tickets

The Sun Quartet I (2017), by Los Ingrávidos

Cosmic Rage

Date: May 17, 2026 2:00PM
Location: 2220 Arts + Archives

A Fundraiser for the LA Tenants Union (LATU) & Community Self-Defense Coalition Los Angeles (CSDCLA). COSMIC RAGE is a program that presents formally subversive explorations of migration, empire, ritual and revolt. The films will be followed by a live performance with Jazmin Romero and a DJ set by gh0sttaste.

Details Buy Tickets

Adam Green Explains Harry Smith + Heaven & Earth Magic

Date: May 21, 2026 7:30PM
Location: Philosophical Research Society

A lecture by artist, musician, and Harry Smith Enthusiast Adam Green in person plus screening of Smith's renowned film, Heaven and Earth Magic! This event is part of the series THE COSMIC COLLAGE OF HARRY SMITH (April 25-May 31), co-presented by The Philosophical Research and Harry Smith Archives.

Details Buy Tickets

It’s Coming Up (1997) by Raphael Montañez Ortiz

The Computer-Laser-Videos of Raphael Montañez Ortiz

Date: May 30, 2026 10:55PM
Location: Billy Wilder Theater, Hammer Museum

Part of the 2026 UCLA Festival of Preservation. Introduction by UCLA Distinguished Professor Chon Noriega, School of Theater, Film and Television, and Processing Conservator Yesenia Perez. "A key figure in the Destruction in Art movement of the 1960s, Ortiz is best known for his object-based work and performance art, most notably his piano destruction concerts. However, his expansive oeuvre of time-based media art also merits revisiting. Ortiz experimented with film starting in the late 1950s, creating found-footage films that deconstruct/reconstruct conventional Hollywood, newsreel and instructional films as a means of combating the xenophobia, classism and repression manifested within them." - Yesenia Perez

Details Buy Tickets

Filmforum 50, program 12: Harry Smith’s Film #18: Mahagonny

Date: May 31, 2026 4:00PM
Location: 2220 Arts + Archives

The closing night of The Cosmic Collage of Harry Smith: Smith’s final film, the epic four-screen projection Mahagonny. Based on Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s opera Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, it is an allegory of contemporary life; it explores the needs and desires of man amid the rituals of daily life in New York City. Smith’s New York, like Mahagonny, is a place where everything is permitted and the only sin is not having enough money. Much of the film takes place within the Chelsea Hotel. The film contains invaluable cameos of important avant-garde figures such as Allen Ginsberg, Patti Smith, and Jonas Mekas, intercut with installation pieces from Robert Mapplethorpe’s studio, New York City landmarks of the era, and Smith’s visionary animation.

Details Buy Tickets