Charles Schnee won an Oscar for his original screenplay about a talented but manipulative film producer (Kirk Douglas) and his relationships with a star (Lana Turner), a screenwriter (Dick Powell), and a director (Barry Sullivan).

The Bad and the Beautiful

Academy Museum

Brain Dead Studios and Whammy! co-host a screening of,  _Omar and Cedric: If This Ever Gets Weird_ (2023)

Since their explosive breakout album in 2000, At the Drive-In— and then as their next incarnation, The Mars Volta— have fearlessly redefined the progressive rock genre. Fronted by Omar Rodríguez-López and Cedric Bixler-Zavala, two outsiders from El Paso, their unique style seamlessly fused jazz, punk rock, latin influences and experimental sounds into something utterly electrifying. 

But their immense artistic success gave way to deep personal fissures that ended their musical partnership in 2013, and inflicted wounds that would take more than a decade to heal. 

Culled from hundreds of hours of footage filmed by Omar over the past 40 years, OMAR AND CEDRIC: IF THIS EVER GETS WEIRD charts the duo’s intense and profound journey as they navigate success, addiction, tragedy, betrayal, forgiveness and, ultimately, redemption.

With introduction by Jessica G.Z. of Whammy!

“Unlike any music documentary I’ve seen.”

—ROGER EBERT

“A great rock doc”

—FILM THREAT

“A tale of a beautiful, unbreakable friendship.”

—AUSTRALIAN MUSICIAN MAGAZINE

“An experience that has left me longing for repeat viewings.”

—GLASSTIRE

Omar and Cedric: If This Ever Gets Weird

Brain Dead Studios

BLACK RAIN

RATATOUILLE

Los Feliz Theatre

Sweet Bird of Youth / Summer and Smoke

New Beverly Cinema

he Philosophical Research Society, in collaboration with Los Angeles Filmforum, is very proud to present the first Los Angeles retrospective of the works of one of the most distinctive American video artists of the past four decades – the inimitable Cecelia Condit!


This very special program features seven of Condit’s singular films, including her first five shot-on-video shorts spanning 1981 to 1996, as well as two more recent works, and will be co-hosted by LA based video artist Jennifer Juniper (JJ) Stratford – a huge fan of Condit’s who will join the filmmaker (beaming in via Zoom) in conversation for a post-screening Q&A!


Perhaps best known for her delectably dark and askew 1983 horror musical Possibly in Michigan (which has had a pleasantly surprising viral moment recently), Condit’s videos have – since 1981 – "created heroines whose lives swing between beauty and the grotesque, innocence and cruelty, youth and fragility. Her work puts a subversive spin on the traditional mythology of women in film and the psychology of sexuality and violence. Exploring the dark side of female subjectivity, her “feminist fairy tales” focus on friendships, age, and the natural world."


Artist Statement:

“I consider myself a storyteller working within the psychological landscape of contemporary fairy tales, dreams and poetry. I explore archetypal themes where my characters are often shaped by violence, basic cold-heartedness and trauma. The last few years, I find myself leaning towards creating works that consider the frailty of an environmentally vulnerable world and our place in it. This world might be located in a small county park, a home, a rock or deserted housing project.”


JJ Stratford on Cecelia Condit:

“Cecelia Condit is a truly unique and incredible video artist. She builds worlds that vacillate between themes of aging and fragility, beauty and the grotesque, innocence and cruelty while keeping the viewer both amused and deeply understood. Her techniques follow a slightly slanted version of shot-on-tape movie-making traditions and are mixed with soundtracks and inner dialogues that completely immerse us in Cecelia’s world. She’s been making work since 1981 and long overdue for a retrospective, yet her work seems more relevant than ever. An event not to be missed!”




PROGRAM:

Beneath the Skin (1981) 10:00

Beneath the Skin is a true story about a woman's unknowing involvement in the murder of her boyfriend’s other girlfriend


Possibly in Michigan (1983) 11:45

Possibly in Michigan is a musical about two women who are stalked by a masked man named Arthur, who follows them home. There the victims become the aggressors.

Music performed by Karen Skladany. The song Animal/Cannibal was written, and performed by Karen Skladany for PiM.


Not A Jealous Bone (1987) 10:24

An old woman finds a magic bone that she believes will let her live forever. She shoes looking for her mother, hoping to share it with her,

Music by Stephen Vogel


Suburbs of Eden (1996) 15:00

Suburbs of Eden is a portrait of a woman who cannot see her way out of a relationship that devastates her.

Music by Stephen Vogel


Oh, Rapunzel [with Dick Blau] (1996/2008) 17:00

Set in a decaying estate in Philadelphia, Oh Rapunzel recasts the life of the artist's mother, Annie Lloyd Condit, through the beloved fairy tale.

Music by Stephen Vogel


Pulling Up Roots (2015) 7:30

Filmed in an abandoned housing project in Western Ireland, a woman confronts the lies that have "taken root" in her. In the end, she moves through the ruin of her life into an unknown landscape that holds the possibility of laughter and happiness.

Music by Renato Umali


AI and I (2021) 7 minutes

Forming a relationship with her AI device, Alexa, a woman ponders the nature of consciousness, as she walks through the woods, dragging electrical cords behind her like breadcrumbs.

Music by Kirsten Stuck



Dir. Cecelia Condit, 1981-2021, program runtime 90mins, Unrated, U.S.A., English, Color, Digital.


Special thanks to the filmmaker, Adam Hyman of Los Angeles Filmforum, Astral Eyez, and Jennifer Juniper Stratford.



TICKETS: $10 | FREE w/ code to Los Angeles Filmforum Members (In Person Event Only)

 Co-hosted by LA based video artist Jennifer Juniper (JJ) Stratford – a huge fan of Condit’s who will join the filmmaker (beaming in via Zoom) in conversation for a post-screening Q&A!

SUBURBS OF EDEN: THE FILMS OF CECELIA CONDIT – co-presented by Los Angeles Filmforum

Philosophical Research Society

Sullivan's Travels

Heretic

Vista Theatre

Lightstruck presents: *Betzy Bromberg: A 3-show 16mm Retrospective*

November 21: Program 3 – Divinity Gratis (1989-1996)

Betzy Bromberg in person

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Lightstruck is overjoyed to present its first ever artist-in-person retrospective, with three different programs – November 7, 14, and 21 – of all-16mm work by one of our favorite filmmakers, the truly singular Betzy Bromberg. Unparalleled film artist, inspiring educator, and even erstwhile optical effects wizard, Bromberg has been making work almost exclusively on 16mm since the mid-1970s, first in New York and then in her adoptive home of Los Angeles. In recent years, we’ve thrilled at her rapturously expressive abstract feature-length films, and this three-program retrospective aims in part to chart the genesis of those works by focusing on Bromberg’s rich spectrum of filmmaking between 1977-1996. ~

Program 3 of 3: Bromberg’s first feature-length work *Divinity Gratis* concludes the retrospective, with so many of her interests, passions, and obsessions in filmic and thematic expression coming to their apotheosis. Seven years in the making, *Divinity Gratis* tackles no less than the cosmic history of human existence through a funhouse mirror of prismatic associations, vividly tinted by the hopes and fears of the atomic age. Audiovisually daring and unabashedly sensual, *Divinity Gratis* is both a culmination of Bromberg’s earlier explorations and a thrilling gateway to the elemental mysticism of her current cinematic journey.

All three evenings will feature a conversation following the films with Betzy Bromberg in person! This trio of programs also offers a rare opportunity to follow the thrilling trajectory of her early body of work as she defined an evolving sensibility through her revelatory and intensely creative engagement with the 16mm film medium. We think the sum experience of all three programs will reaffirm Bromberg’s status as a film artist of exquisite sensorial ingenuity, uncommon empathic intimacy, and as one of the great alchemist-poets of the medium.

Screening length = approximately 60 minutes.

Lightstruck: Betzy Bromberg program 3 (1989-1996)

2220 Arts + Archives

Douglas Fairbanks—who portrays a nobleman posing as the “Black Pirate” to seek justice for his father’s death—took a daring and adventurous route by designing the production for color cinematography in the 1920s.

The Black Pirate in 4K

BIRD

DELICATESSEN

Mystery of the Wax Museum / Doctor X


Tokyo Reels
Subversive Film Collective
2022, 60m

JOAN presents a selection of works from Subversive Film Collective's 2022 project titled Tokyo Reels, a collection of twenty inventories of 16mm film reels that constitute a collection kept and safeguarded by members of a Japanese Palestine solidarity group in Tokyo. The program will open with an introduction by researcher and writer Kristine Khouri. 

Tokyo Reels is a multi-faceted archival project that explores the production of images and narratives in the framework of international solidarity between Japan and Palestine from the 1960s to the 1980s. The collection includes the film reels, as well as tens of Umatic tapes, dozens of posters, and more. The first output of the project is focused on an essay film and several publications. Based on extensive interviews and archival research, the films from the collection become juxtaposed with other archival images from Japan, reclaiming the imaginary of an international solidarity movement.

Subversive Film is a cinema research and production collective founded by Reem Shilleh and Mohanad Yaqubi. The collective aims to cast new light upon historic works related to Palestine and the region, to engender support for film preservation, and to investigate archival practices. Their long-term and ongoing projects explore this cine-historic field including digitally reissuing previously overlooked films, curating rare film screening cycles, subtitling rediscovered films, producing publications, and devising other forms of interventions. Formed in 2011, Subversive Film is based between Ramallah and Brussels.

Over the years, the films produced through and by Subversive Film have been screened at Toronto International Film Festival; Berlinale; International Film Festival Rotterdam; Carthage Film Festival, Tunis; Museum of the Moving Image, New York; and Viennale, Vienna, among others.

The program includes the following films:
The Road to a Palestinian State (Overseas Reporting: Middle East Today | Episode 1)
NHK (The Japan Broadcasting Corporation)
1974, 29 min, Japan

The first episode of the Japan Broadcasting Corporation’s Middle East Today television mini-series (December 1974 –February 1975), The Road to a Palestine State reports on the future of a Palestinian state following the international recognition of the PLO as the sole representative of the Palestinian people. The episode opens with Yasser Arafat’s speech at the UN in 1974. Throughout the film, the reporter meets and speaks to a Palestinian doctor, a community organizer and members of political factions, particularly from the leftist PFLP and DFLP, to show the disagreements within the internal politics of the PLO. We see shots from the streets of Beirut, the city and refugee camps, to relay the sense of the everyday life of Palestinians following the international recognition of the PLO.
Cowboy
Sami Al-Salamoni
1973, 15min, Egypt

Cowboy begins from American cinema, as an exposure of the country’s settler-colonial structure and its ability to depict genocidal acts through camera framing. The film, directed by the renowned Egyptian film critic Sami Al-Salamoni, reflects his theoretical critique of Hollywood through heavily edited scenes and shots from mainstream motion pictures. Al-Salamoni manages to take the audience through the history of commercialized image production toward a transnational solidarity image production as a response.
Scene of the Occupation from Gaza
Mustafa Abu Ali
1973, 13 min, (from exile in) Lebanon

A rare film by the legendary filmmaker Mustafa Abu Ali, one of the founders of the Palestine Film Unit, the first filmic arm of the Palestinian revolution. Shot by a French news team, the footage was edited by Mustafa in Lebanon to produce one of the earliest films on the occupied territory in Gaza. Scenes of the Occupation from Gaza employs experimental editing techniques to produce a cinematically and politically subversive film.


Tokyo Reels Presented with JOAN Los Angeles

Now Instant Image Hall

Playland

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night

Vidiots

Hollywood Story/Caught

Without Orders/Danger Patrol

Charlie Brown and his dog Snoopy cope with life and new romances in this charming animated comedy, the first feature based on Charles M. Schulz’s Peanuts comic strip since 1980. 

The Peanuts Movie

Typical of director Robert Altman’s immersive style of ensemble filmmaking, and boasting a jam-packed cast of international stars, this underrated fashion world satire plunges deep into the dizzying hustle of Paris Fashion Week.

Ready to Wear (Prêt-à-porter) in 35mm

THELMA / NEBRASKA

Aero Theatre

Almost a decade has elapsed since glam-rock superstar Brian Slade escaped the spotlight of the London scene. Now, investigative journalist Arthur Stuart is on assignment to uncover the truth behind the enigmatic Slade. Stuart, himself forged by the music of the 1970s, explores the larger-than-life stars who were once his idols and what has become of them since the turn of the new decade.

Velvet Goldmine

Veronica is a white-bread beauty searching for a good man in Los Angeles. While slam dancing at a Halloween rave, she meets Abel, a sensitive poet. Then she meets Zed, a supersexy tattooed drummer with incredible biceps. Who will she choose? Does she go for true love or cheap sex? She can’t decide so she chooses both. But after managing to nurture a picture-perfect threesome, along comes Ernest, a rich movie director with deep baby blues that sweep Veronica off her feet. What’s a girl to do now?

Splendor

THE PRESTIGE

DAISIES

Batman Returns

Kiki’s Delivery Service  / The Secret of NIMH

Naked Lunch

The Shop Around the Corner

Gremlins

Old Town Music Hall

“The weirdest, wooziest, wackiest screen comedy ... a slapstick poem, an intellectual hellzapoppin, a gloriously fresh experiment and experience in the cinema of the absurd, the first cubistic comedy of the new world cinema." – Time Magazine

“Imagine a combination of Huckleberry Finn, Pull My Daisy, the Marx Brothers, and the complete works of Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, D. W. Griffith, and you've got it. What have you got? A film which is both deliriously funny and ravishingly lyrical…A satire on the American way of life, and at the same time a hymn to the joys of youth and friendship." - Richard Roud, The Guardian



It’s time to get wintry and wacky as we warm up with a rarified screening of Adolfas Mekas’ (brother of Jonas) exuberant, experimental, pioneering HALLELUJAH THE HILLS (1963) – on glorious 16mm film, thanks to The Film-Makers' Cooperative!


An irreverent burst of anarchic energy that wowed attendees of the 1963 New York Film Festival, HALLELUJAH THE HILLS is a landmark film of the New American Cinema. Directed with improvisatorial flair by Adolfas Mekas, a co-founder of Film Culture magazine with his brother Jonas (WALDEN), HALLELUJAH… follows two wildly impulsive young men who are in love with the same woman (played by two different actresses). A slapstick love letter to cinema and wild spoof on art movies, this fiercely independent wonder laid the groundwork for all the free-spirited filmmakers to follow.


“The story, or what one can make of it, concerns two men, Jack and Leo, who are in love with Vera. For seven winters they camp near her Vermont house…Most of the film, however, is taken up with the highlights of the two boys in the snow-covered and beautifully photographed woods. The slapstick is as outrageous as the continuity is nonexistent,” wrote The Guardian’s Richard Roud.


Lensed in crisp black and white by underground experimental luminary Ed Emschwiller, upon its premiere the film was a breakout hit with audiences and critics alike – even those who detested experimental/art films! "Even avowed enemies of the New American Cinema, so called, were impressed by the film's lack of pretentions and its unexpected lyricism and Zen serenity in the midst of nervous parody," wrote Village Voice critic Andrew Sarris in his review.


A major hit at the ‘63 Cannes Film Festival, Jean Luc Godard – whose 1964 BAND OF OUTSIDERS was said to have been inspired by Mekas’ romp, wrote in Cahiers du Cinéma that Adolfas was “a master in the field of pure invention, that is to say, in working dangerously – ‘without a net.’ His film, made according to the good old principle – one idea for each shot – has the lovely scent of fresh ingenuity and crafty sweetness (with) physical efforts and intellectual gags boldly put together.”


A cinematic exclamation as joyous as its title, relentlessly goofy, and an utter thrill on beautiful 16mm film – join us for this rare screening as we sing HALLELUJAH THE HILLS!


Dir. Adolfas Mekas, 1963, 82 mins, USA, Unrated (Suggested PG), English, B&W, 16mm.


Very special thanks to Robert Schneider and The Film-Makers' Cooperative

Special thanks to Mikey Aguirre of See It On 16mm for projection


ABOUT ADOLFAS MEKAS

Adolfas Mekas was a Lithuanian-born filmmaker, writer, director, editor, actor and educator. With his brother Jonas Mekas, he founded the magazine Film Culture, as well as the Film-Makers Cooperative and was associated with George Maciunas and the Fluxus art movement at its beginning. He made several short films, culminating in the feature Hallelujah the Hills in 1963, which was played at the Cannes Film Festival of that year and is now considered a classic of American film.


ABOUT THE FILM-MAKERS' COOPERATIVE

The Film-Makers’ Cooperative is the first non-profit art organization devoted to the collection and dissemination of experimental film and media art. Founded in New York City in 1961 by a group of twenty-two pathbreaking experimental filmmakers and artists, the FMC supports, distributes, preserves, and exhibits artists and artworks from our collection spanning the history of the moving image. Numbering nearly 6,000 works (by 2,500 artists), FMC’s collection is one of the largest repositories of film and media art in the world.




Adolfas Mekas' HALLELUJAH THE HILLS (1963) on 16mm!

Fly Away Home

The Maltese Falcon

The Birdcage

Misery

The Fortune Cookie

Queer

John Howard Triple Feature

Moonraker

In Alfred Hitchcock’s Oscar-nominated drama, a group of survivors from a torpedoed ship must endure both the unpredictability of the sea and one another. 

Lifeboat in 4K

It’s a story ripped from the headlines: in 1969, a young couple kidnapped a police officer after being flagged for a minor traffic infraction and drove for hundreds of miles across East Texas. 

The Sugarland Express in Dolby Vision

Enjoy live music, photo moments, and holiday-inspired drinks and hors d'oeuvres during a festive evening at the Academy Museum.

Shop and Sip: Member Appreciation Day

Stanley Kramer’s heavy drama The Defiant Ones follows two escaped prisoners—a white man named John “Joker” Jackson (Tony Curtis) and a Black man named Noah Cullen (Sidney Poitier)—trying to avoid capture while chained together.

The Defiant Ones in 35mm

An allegory about the religious hypocrisy of colonial society, The Last Supper is a masterpiece from beginning to end. 

The Last Supper (La última cena) in 4K

MEMENTO

Meet Me in St. Louis

Cinderella

The Wind Rises – English Dubbed

Titanic on 35mm

The classic Filipino social drama Bona is a collaboration between two greats of Filipino cinema, director Lino Brocka and singer Nora Aunor

Bona in 4K

Cinematic Void Presents ROBOCOP

Old Cartographies (Anew They Shall Be) presents four films that engage with maps, lands, borders, and the colonial histories behind them. Razan AlSalah foregrounds her identity as a diasporic Palestinian unable to return to her ancestral lands in her embodied communing with unceded indigenous land in Canada, which bears similarities with the titular Canada Park. Udval Altangerel’s reconnection with her ancestral homeland in the Gobi Desert reveals a slow intimacy. Riar Rizaldi’s speculative non-fiction work pierces the notion of history and centralizes Indigenous belief systems. Anoushka Mirchandani, Mireya Martinez, and Alisha Tejpal blend a complex discussion of the archive with familial remembrance. Taken together, these films hold space for remembrance beyond violence and a reverence for memory and return. Presented in English, Indonesian, Mongolian with English subtitles. 

…Tellurian Drama is a sustained feat of world-building that explores tropical sci-fi visions inspired by indigenous belief systems. 
—

Adeline Chia, ArtReview

The program includes a post-screening conversation with the filmmakers of Landscapes of Longing, moderated by film programmer Jheanelle Brown.

 Old Cartographies (Anew They Shall Be) Razan AlSalah, Udval Altangerel, Riar Rizaldi, Anoushka Mirchandani, Alisha Tejpal, Mireya Martinez

Redcat

Female Trouble

Rotations presents *Notes on Displacement* by Khaled Jarrar, and *Moonscape* by Mona Benyamin. A Q&A with Khaled Jarrar and Crystal Murphy follows the films.

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*Notes on Displacement.* Khaled Jarrar. Palestine, Germany, Qatar, 2022. 74 min.

*Notes on Displacement* follows a single Palestinian family on a grueling journey: destination Germany. Nadira has been a refugee since the age of 12. Now she has to evacuate Damascus, too. She and her daughter Mona feared for their lives there, but the idea of a safe existence elsewhere is a distant dream. Filmmaker Khaled Jarrar receives unsettling videos and voice messages as they cross to the Greek island of Lesbos. He joins them there, on the long road to a new life. Jarrar has personal reasons for going through this experience—can he shore up, through his own images, the distance so dominant in Western media coverage? Jarrar gets lost in the night with his group, discovers how dangerous language barriers can be, and wanders the dehumanizing camps. And in a sense he—alongside the viewer—becomes a true member of this family.

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*Moonscape*. Mona Benyamin. Palestine, 2020. 17 min. In Arabic with English subtitles.

*Moonscape* takes the form of a music video for a middle-of-the-road ballad, a duet in Arabic. The song traces the story of Dennis M. Hope, who claimed ownership of the moon and founded the Lunar Embassy, a company that sells land on celestial bodies. We find a connection between his story and that of the director—a young Palestinian woman living under the Israeli occupation, longing to end the misery of her people.

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Q&A moderated by Crystal Murphy, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Chapman University. Dr. Murphy is affiliated with the Peace Studies Department, is Director of the MA in International Studies program, and co-Director of the Chapman Olive Tree Initiative chapter. Her research focuses on conflict, humanitarianism and development, and advocates qualitative methods for policy oriented scholarship.

More information at: rotations-la.net

Rotations: Films by Khaled Jarrar + Mona Benyamin

F MARRY KILL

Adam Green’s ALADDIN — Adam Green In Person!


The acclaimed songwriter and filmmaker’s singular, subversive, and immersive modern cult classic!

Adam Green’s ALADDIN — Adam Green In Person!

Nightbitch

**Homegrown** (2024), Documentary, Los Angeles Premiere Screening followed by Q&A with Director **Michael Premo.**

**HOMEGROWN** is an unflinching chronicle of Americans at war with each other. Three right-wing activists—a newly politicized father-to-be in New Jersey, an Air Force veteran organizing conservatives in New York City, and a charismatic activist from Texas—crisscross the country in the summer of 2020, campaigning for Donald Trump and building a movement they hope will outlast him. When they become convinced that the election is stolen, they take their fight to the streets. The result is a chilling portrait of a growing movement pushing American democracy to the brink.

*"Premo’s documentary refuses to sensationalise its timely material, which only makes the picture that much more troubling.”* Tim Grierson, Screen Daily

*"A compelling portrait of people usually demonized and dismissed by the mainstream media."* Leslie Felperin, The Hollywood Reporter

*“illuminating, gripping”* - Xan Brooks, The Guardian

For more information visit: https://homegrown.film/

Homegrown, Documentary Film, Los Angeles Premiere

Bram Stoker's Dracula in 4K

Off-site: The Color of Pomegranates

Hammer Museum

THE COLOR OF POMEGRANATES

Alien

ORPHEUS (1950), Presented by T.A.P.E. LA

WHAMMY!

Harry Dodge and Silas Howard describe their directorial debut as a "butch and trans buddy film." The story follows Shy (Howard) and Valentine (Dodge), two gender outlaws living by any means necessary in San Francisco during the Bush years.

By Hook or by Crook

“Goodbye Horses: The Many Lives of Q Lazzarus” is a feature documentary about the life and music of singer-songwriter Diane Luckey, also known as Q Lazzarus. Q sang the hit song “Goodbye Horses” which appeared in the Jonathan Demme films Married to the Mob and Silence of the Lambs, and had a brief moment of fame in the late 1980s/early 1990s before mysteriously disappearing for 30 years.

Goodbye Horses: The Many Lives of Q Lazzarus LA Premiere + Q&A

The MOCA Artist Film Series, presented by The Edward F. Limato Foundation, is an active and dynamic platform for the presentation of artist films. Inspired by film and video works in MOCA’s renowned collection, these programs explore the critical issues of our time and place and focus on experiments in long-form, narrative, and feature-length films. With ongoing presentations in the Ahmanson Auditorium, all screenings feature artists in dialogue with fellow artists, historians, and critics.

Artist Edgar Calel found himself in São Paulo, Brazil, during the isolating COVID-19 lockdown of 2020. Inspired by vivid dreams, he penned a poem that became the script for his video Xar – Sueño de obsidiana. A haunting scene features Calel partially covered by a jaguar hide, traversing the empty expanse of the emblematic Ciccillo Matarazzo Pavilion, designed in 1954 by modernist architect Oscar Niemeyer for the São Paulo Biennial. This program will showcase Xar – Sueño de obsidiana, a video made in collaboration with Fernando Pereira dos Santos, alongside two of Calel's recent video works.

Calel will be present for a post-screening conversation with artist Beatriz Cortez, Associate Professor of Art at the University of California-Davis.

Edgar Calel (b. 1987, Chi Xot (San Juan Comalapa), Guatemala) studied at the Escuela Nacional de Arte Rafael Rodríguez Padilla. His recent solo exhibitions include Kaqchikitkit pa Copán at Desanexo Desapê, São Paulo (2023), B’alab’äj (Jaguar Stone) at SculptureCenter (2023), and Pa Ru Tun Che´ (From a Tree Top) at Proyectos Ultravioleta, Guatemala City. Calel’s works have been featured in group exhibitions including Choreographies of the Impossible (Coreografías de lo imposible) at the 35th São Paulo Biennial, São Paulo (2023), Plural Perspectives (Perspectival plurales) at Soft Power, Berlin (2023), uMoya: The Sacred Return of Lost Things (uMoya: El sagrado retorno de los objetos perdidos) at the 12th Liverpool Biennial, Liverpool (2023), A Parábola do Progresso at SESC Pompéia, São Paulo (2022), Is It Morning for You Yet? (Ya es de día para ti?) at the 58th Carnegie International, Pittsburgh (2022), Virginia Pérez-Ratton. Centroamérica: deseo de lugar at MUAC, Mexico City (2019), and Transvisible: entro lo ya no y él aún no at the XIX Bienal de Arte Paiz, Guatemala City, Guatemala.

Beatriz Cortez is a multidisciplinary artist born in El Salvador and based in Los Angeles and Davis. Her work explores simultaneity, multiple temporalities, the untimely, and speculative imaginaries. She has exhibited her work nationally and internationally, including recent solo exhibitions at Storm King Art Center (2023); Williams College Museum of Art (2023-2024); Commonwealth and Council (2022); Pitzer College Art Galleries (2022); and Craft Contemporary (2019). Her work has been exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2017); Ballroom Marfa, Texas (2018 and 2019); Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2018); Socrates Sculpture Park, New York (2019); TEOR/éTica, San José, Costa Rica (2019); Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá, Colombia (2019); Henry Art Gallery, Seattle (2019); Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco (2020); 18th Street Arts Center, Santa Monica, CA (2020); Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Panamá (2021); MSU Broad Art Museum, East Lansing, MI (2021); Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (2021 and 2016); Institute of Contemporary Art, San Diego (2021), among others. Cortez is the recipient of the Latinx Artist Fellowship (2023), Borderlands Fellowship (2022-24), Artadia Los Angeles Award (2020), and California Community Foundation Fellowship for Visual Artists (2016), among many others. Her work is represented in several collections including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Institute of Contemporary Art, San Diego; Michigan State University Broad Art Museum, East Lansing; El Paso Museum of Art; Ford Foundation, New York, and the Getty Research Institute. Cortez received an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts and a PhD in Latin American Literature from Arizona State University. She teaches sculpture and contemporary theory at the University of California, Davis.

MOCA Artist Film Series is organized by José Luis Blondet, Senior Curator with Alitzah Oros, Public Programming Associate, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.

MOCA Artist Film Series is presented by The Edward F. Limato Foundation.

Calel will be present for a post-screening conversation with artist Beatriz Cortez, Associate Professor of Art at the University of California-Davis. 

 MOCA Artist Film Series: Edgar Calel

MOCA Grand Avenue

Earthly Visions: The Tree House

The Wind Rises – In Japanese with Subtitles

Acropolis Cinema celebrates the publication of Laura Paul's *Film Elegy*, a poetic reflection on celluloid and the work of the late Amy Halpern. This event will feature a book signing by Paul, followed by a screening of Halpern's *Falling Lessons* (1992) on 16mm and the 2K restoration of Nina Menkes' *The Great Sadness of Zohara* (1983), as well as a Q&A with Paul and Menkes.

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About the book:

Laura Paul's *Film Elegy* is a document of personal loss and the decline of celluloid. Modified from 16mm and formatted to fit the page, Paul’s book asks to be viewed as much as read. Punctuation evokes flickering light, sprocket holes, and cutaway shots, layering photochemical processes as rhapsodic undertones.

Framed by Paul’s friendship and apprenticeship with the late filmmaker Amy Halpern (1953–2022), the book speaks to the communities and legacies of screen culture. It honors the encounters between spectators and films as well as the attachments formed between them—what Godard calls “the relation with me looking at it dreaming up a relation.” As our dreams of the screen flicker, *Film Elegy* projects words in silver gelatin.

Laura Paul Book Launch, Films by Amy Halpern + Nina Menkes

Hiccup (voiced by Jay Baruchel) becomes the leader of his Viking community, whose dragon population is imperiled by a ruthless hunter, and his companion, Toothless, finds an unexpected love that may lead to a secret land of dragons

How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World in 3D

A witty science-fiction classic starring Charlton Heston as a cynical astronaut who finds himself marooned on a planet where humans are the inferior species. 

Planet of the Apes in 4K

Parajanov: The Last Spring

"Incident"

The Bishop's Wife

I'll Be Seeing You

The Journey of Natty Gann

Rope

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

Los Angeles Filmforum presents *Experimentations: Imag(in)ing Knowledge in Film, Program 9 – Should We Look at Animals?: The Perils and Pleasures of Nonfiction Animal Films*.

Curated by Benjamin Schultz-Figueroa.

A $20 ticket will admit the buyer to both the 3pm and 7pm programs. A free dinner will be available between the 3 pm and 7 pm programs.

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Comparisons between humans and animals are foundational to the experimental branches of medicine and psychology. Yet converting the bafflingly complex bodies and behaviors of nonhuman animals into scientific models is not a straightforward process. From testing apparatuses to spreadsheets of findings, from textbooks on animal handling to published journal articles, such a transformation requires an intricate system of interlocking media. Film has been an essential, yet largely overlooked, element within this process. 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. In this capacity, scientific filmmakers often advanced their own theories of media and their relationship to living organisms, theories which overlapped with and influenced figures like Marshall McLuhan.

Full program lineup at: https://www.lafilmforum.org/

LA Filmforum: Nonfiction Animal Films

Los Angeles Filmforum presents *Los Angeles Filmforum presents Experimentations: Imag(in)ing Knowledge in Film, Program 10 – The Crystalline Entities.*

A $20 ticket will admit the buyer to both the 3pm and 7pm programs. A free dinner will be available between the 3 pm and 7 pm programs.

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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.

Films include *Crystals* (Elwood Decker, 1951), *Crystal Growth Morphologies* (Kenneth Jackson and Charlie Miller, Bell Labs, 1974), *Crystals* (Richard Leacock, 1958), *The Arctic* (Wenting Zhu, 2019), *The Vibrancy* (Wenting Zhu, 2020), *Instant Life* (Andrew Kim and Ojoboca, 2022), *Last Things* (Deborah Stratman, 2023).

Curated by Adam Hyman. Full program notes at: https://www.lafilmforum.org/

LA Filmforum: The Crystalline Entities

Andriesh / The First Lad

RACETRACK

A TRAVELER'S NEEDS

National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation

Love Actually

Cinema Eye Shorts – Program 1

Spartacus

Cinema Eye Shorts – Program 2

Waiting to Exhale on 35mm

Cinema Eye Shorts – Program 3

Cinematic Void Presents BLACK EYED SUSAN



Eula Love was killed by LAPD officers 45 years ago in January of 1979. In June of that year, a group of Black women staged a mock funeral in her memory in front of the LAPD headquarters in downtown Los Angeles. The archival news footage of the protest is quiet, unassuming, and straightforward, belying deep sadness, resistance, and collective action. Eulogies for Eula is a program of film and video works centering on Black grief, celebration, and memorializing in the context of death and transition. These documentary, narrative, experimental, and hybrid works represent a variety of filmic and artistic practices, all undergirded by the endlessly important action of bearing witness. The program presents a variety of work by multidisciplinary artists Lishan AZ, Tony Cokes, and Jacolby Satterwhite, along with filmmakers Miryam Charles and Keisha Rae Witherspoon.

 

Presented in English and French with English subtitles. 

Please note: Eulogies for Eula contains nudity and mature content. 

 

In Black Celebration (1988) … Cokes’s technical background in analogue videography and documentary photography, his scepticism of either’s claim to truth, is conspicuous. 
—

Shiv Kotecha, Frieze


 Eulogies for Eula Lishan AZ, Miryam Charles, Tony Cokes, Jacolby Satterwhite, Keisha Rae Witherspoon

Five-time Academy Award-nominated actress Annette Bening joins us to share her relationship with The More the Merrier before the screening, presented in a beautiful 4K restoration

The George Stevens Lecture on Directing presents The More the Merrier in 4K

THE WILD ROBOT / HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON

Anaïs is twelve and bears the weight of the world on her shoulders. She watches her older sister, Elena, whom she both loves and hates. Elena is fifteen and devilishly beautiful. Neither more futile, nor more stupid than her younger sister, she cannot understand that she is merely an object of desire. And, as such, she can only be taken. Or had. Indeed, this is the subject: a girl’s loss of virginity. And, that summer, it opens a door to tragedy.

Fat Girl

Gay, alienated Los Angeles teens have a hard time as their parents kick them out of their homes, they don’t have money, their lovers cheat, and they are harassed by gay-bashers.

Totally F***ed Up

PROJECT X

Egyptian Theatre

Q&A with filmmaker Danis Goulet moderated by author and UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television Professor Kathleen McHugh.

Dystopian Futures: Night Raiders

CASINO ROYALE

THE FOOD OF THE GODS

Lost Highway

Inglourious Basterds


Dahomey
Mati Diop
2024, 68m

A poetic and immersive documentary that delves into real perspectives on far-reaching issues surrounding appropriation, self-determination and restitution. Set in November 2021, the film charts 26 royal treasures from the Kingdom of Dahomey that are due to leave Paris and return to their country of origin: the present-day Republic of Benin. Using multiple perspectives, Diop questions how these artifacts should be received in a country that has reinvented itself in their absence.


Dahomey

Christopher Morris' A YEAR IN A FIELD – US Premiere of Acclaimed Documentary

The US Premiere of the gorgeous, acclaimed documentary which invites us to to immerse ourselves in the quiet, direct-action of stillness

Christopher Morris' A YEAR IN A FIELD – US Premiere of Acclaimed Documentary

Emilia Pérez

Horse Feathers/Coconauts

Bad Girl/Remember Last Night?

A Star Is Born

Women in Cages

Steel

VIDEOCYBERNOIRVEMBER: LES SAIGNANTES (2005)

"It's Not Me"

Who is Michael Jang?

Off-site: The Legend of Suram Fortress

THE LEGEND OF SURAM FORTRESS

Shogun Assassin

Lightstruck presents: *Bogdan Dziworski - Sensational Truths*

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With their wildly adventurous cinematography, editing, and sound, the short documentaries of Polish film virtuoso Bogdan Dziworski create a thrillingly immersive space for an intensely engaged, experiential approach to their subject matter, decades before Harvard’s Sensory Ethnography Lab films would seek to do something quite similar. Graduating from the famed Łódź film school in 1965, Dziworski pioneered a revelatory language of observational nonfiction filmmaking that eschewed all claims to fly-on-the-wall realism and instead transparently engaged in an often surrealist and unequivocally stylized film language, seeking to enhance his subjects with a heightened, eccentric sensoriality that only cinema can offer.

While Dziworski’s editing is sculptural and kinetic, and his cinematography operatic and daring, his sound work is particularly extensive, using unconventional cutting and mixing techniques, and an elaborate approach to foley that guides our engagement just as powerfully as the visuals. These are documentaries unlike any others: deeply empathetic, uncommonly strange constructions that are exhilaratingly, unapologetically cinematic.

In recent years, we fell in love with Dziworski’s fantastic films, and are very excited to present a selection of four of our favorites as part of Lightstruck. The program includes: Skiing Scenes with Franz Klammer (1980), his hilarious and visually outrageous collaboration with Zbig Rybczyński and Gerald Kargl (Angst); Classical Biathlon (1978), one of his most expressive and immersive athletic films; A Few Stories About a Man (1983), a remarkable portrait of Jerzy Orłowski, armless graphic artist, in various typical and atypical sequences; and Szapito (1984), a moving and exquisitely sensitive film in which a retired circus troupe assembles to recreate some of their long ago routines. We hope you'll join us to experience these intricate, artful, and – quite frankly – massively entertaining films, still incredibly fresh and cinematically adventurous 40+ years after their making.

Program by Zena Grey and Mark Toscano. Notes by Mark Toscano. Thanks to Marek Pelski at WFO Film Studio for providing the films.

Lightstruck: Bogdan Dziworski - Sensational Truths

Ukrainian Rhapsody + short films

Point Break

An Evening With Larissa Sansour

DEAF

Rob Richards and Alex-Zsolt "An Old Town Christmas"

Hook

Field of Dreams

Friday Foster on 35mm

Bleeding Audio

THE STORE

My Octopus Teacher

The Flower on the Stone + short films

A Christmas Story

Home Alone

Cinematic Void Presents THE TERMINATOR



Manthia Diawara’s latest essay film, AI: African Intelligence explores the contact zones between African rituals of possession among traditional fishing villages of the Atlantic coast of Senegal and the emergence of new technology frontiers known as artificial intelligence. Considering the confluence of tradition and modernity, Diawara questions how we could move from disembodied machines toward a more humane and spiritual control of algorithms. Could Africa be the context of emergence of such improbable algorithms?

 
AI: African Intelligence is part of the performance program for All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace, and curated by Daniela Lieja Quintanar with Talia Heiman.  
 
All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace is among more than 60 exhibitions and programs presented as part of PST ART. Returning in September 2024 with its latest edition, PST ART: Art & Science Collide, this landmark regional event explores the intersections of art and science, both past and present. PST ART is presented by Getty. For more information about PST ART: Art & Science Collide, please visit pst.art

 

Presented in English, Wolof, and French with English subtitles. 

 

[Manthia Diawara] opens up to astonishing reflections about culture and knowledge.
—

Dieter Wieczorek, Modern Times Review
pst


 AI: African Intelligence Manthia Diawara

A Holly Jolly Dollython – Presented by Museum of Home Video

BLIND

After Hours

Off-site: Ashik Kerib

ASHIK KERIB

Poet, actor, filmmaker and traveler, Taylor Mead was a fixture of postwar America’s art and counterculture scenes, gleefully bridging the Beat movement and New York’s downtown scene. Born December 31, 1924, to a Michigan family of means, Mead left behind a job as a Merrill Lynch broker in Detroit to hitch-hike across America in the 50s, beginning a journey that would ultimately take him out of the mainstream for good. Hooking up with filmmaker Ron Rice in San Francisco, Mead starred in the instant classic The Flower Thief (1960). Spurred by the improvisational abandon of Robert Frank’s Pull My Daisy (1957), Rice’s free-wheeling picaresque follows the adventures and mishaps of Mead’s feral innocent through the streets of North Beach. Hailed by experimental cinema scholar P. Adams Sitney as “the purest expression of the Beat sensibility in cinema”, Rice’s film led the Village Voice’s J. Hoberman to hail Mead as “the first underground movie star.”


Relocating to New York, Mead won an Obie Award for his performance in Frank O'Hara’s The General Returns from One Place to Another in 1963 and continued acting in film, eventually racking up 130 screen credits. Mead would go on to appear in 11 films for Andy Warhol and also act for other underground luminaries such as Adolfas Mekas, Robert Downey Sr., John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Gregory Markopoulos and Robert Frank.


An uninhibited screen comedian and queer icon, Mead’s centennial will be celebrated tonight with a screening of The Flower Thief as well as some of his own, rarely screened 16mm “home movies” shot throughout his 60s journeys, plus a few other surprises from across his cinematic wanders.


Program compiled by Bernardo Rondeau.

The First Underground Movie Star: Taylor Mead at 100

Happiest Season

Join us for Eyeworks Experimental Animation Series 2024. This year's LA festival features three programs, and the 2024 Eyeworks guest is Yoriko Mizushiri, with a retrospective screening at 3pm. At 5:30pm and 8pm, we follow with two shorts programs.

Check the festival website for details on the full festival lineup:

https://www.eyeworksfestival.com/

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The Eyeworks Experimental Animation Screening Series is an annual event focusing on experimental animation, with screening events in Chicago, LA, and NY each fall. Eyeworks spotlights works made by individual artists, drawing on the tradition of classic cartoon animation and the lineages of avant-garde and underground cinema. The aim of Eyeworks, founded in 2010, is to present works that engage the enormous potential inherent in the artform of animation, and to show pieces that use animation as part of distinctly personal, conceptual, exploratory, and critical practices. Past festival guests with retrospective screenings have included David OReilly, Lori Damiano, Nancy Andrews, Caleb Wood, Takeshi Murata, Martin Arnold, Jacolby Satterwhite, Naoyuki Tsuji, Janie Geiser, Laura Harrison, Barry Doupé, and Al Jarnow. The 2024 Eyeworks guest is Yoriko Mizushiri, with a retrospective screening at 2220 Arts + Archives in Los Angeles. Eyeworks is curated by Alexander Stewart and Lilli Carré, and is presented by Pioneer Works.

Eyeworks Festival of Experimental Animation

Gonzo is contacted by aliens from his home planet. Kermit, Miss Piggy, and Gonzo’s other loyal friends must rescue him from the clutches of the top secret government agency C.O.V.N.E.T. so he can reunite with his long-lost relatives. 

Wednesday, 11/20

Academy Museum

The Bad and the Beautiful

7:30 PM

⭐

Brain Dead Studios

Omar and Cedric: If This Ever Gets Weird

8:00 PM

⭐

Los Feliz Theatre

BLACK RAIN

6:30 PM

⭐

RATATOUILLE

10:00 PM

⭐

New Beverly Cinema

Sweet Bird of Youth

Summer and Smoke