Los Angeles Filmforum

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Los Angeles Filmforum Los Angeles Filmforum is a nonprofit cinematic screening series and curatorial organization based in Los Angeles, California, known for presenting experimental film, avant-garde cinema, and artist-driven media. Founded amid the late 20th-century expansion of alternative film exhibition, it has intersected with institutions, festivals, and artists associated with American Film Institute, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, UCLA Film & Television Archive, Hammer Museum, and Anthology Film Archives. The series has influenced programming practices at venues connected to Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Getty Research Institute, New York Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival, and Sundance Film Festival.

History

The Filmforum emerged during the 1970s and 1980s as part of a broader network that included New American Cinema Group, Cinema 16, London Film-makers' Co-operative, Electronic Arts Intermix, and Film-Makers' Cooperative. Early organizers engaged with figures from Fluxus, Black Mountain College, and the West Coast avant-garde, hosting works by filmmakers linked to Kenneth Anger, Stan Brakhage, Maya Deren, Bruce Conner, and Hollis Frampton. The Filmforum's chronology traces connections to programming experiments at Los Angeles Free Press spaces, collaborations with CalArts, and exchanges with international venues such as Centre Pompidou, Berliner Festspiele, and International Short Film Festival Oberhausen. Institutional relationships evolved alongside archives like British Film Institute, Cinémathèque Française, National Film Board of Canada, and academic departments at University of Southern California and California Institute of the Arts.

The organization's mission emphasizes preservation and presentation of artist-made moving image work, aligning with curatorial approaches practiced at Museum of Modern Art, Tate Modern, and Whitney Museum of American Art. Program strands often juxtapose historical prints by artists associated with John Cage, Allan Kaprow, Yvonne Rainer, Ernie Gehr, and James Benning with contemporary commissions by practitioners from the Chicago Underground Film Festival, Ann Arbor Film Festival, Rotterdam International Film Festival, and Viennale. Educational initiatives have involved partnerships with departments at California State University, Long Beach, Occidental College, Harvard Film Archive, and Smithsonian Institution. The Filmforum's curators have staged retrospectives, thematic series, and restorations that resonate with discourses from Film Comment, Sight & Sound, Journal of Film Preservation, and Artforum.

The series has presented premieres and rediscoveries connected to landmark works screened alongside programs from 2001: A Space Odyssey retrospectives, restorations by The Film Foundation, and archive-driven sequences referencing D.W. Griffith, Luis Buñuel, Sergei Eisenstein, and Jean-Luc Godard. Festivals and special events have tied the Filmforum to LA Film Festival, Outfest, AFI Fest, Pacific Film Archive, and New Directors/New Films. Guest filmmakers and visiting artists have included participants associated with Pedro Costa, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Chantal Akerman, Andrei Tarkovsky, and Abbas Kiarostami. Collaborative festival projects have intersected with organizations like Los Angeles Film Critics Association, Independent Feature Project, International Documentary Association, and Sundance Institute.

Critical framing around programs has appeared in periodicals such as Los Angeles Times, LA Weekly, Village Voice, The New Yorker, and academic journals tied to Film Quarterly, Screen, and Cinema Journal. The Filmforum has produced program guides, catalogs, and pamphlets in collaboration with publishers like University of California Press, Routledge, and MIT Press, and editors linked to Susan Sontag, Walter Benjamin, Andre Bazin, and Gilles Deleuze have influenced commentary on its screenings. Scholarly essays and liner notes have engaged historians affiliated with BAMPFA, Harvard Film Archive, Yale University Press, and Oxford University Press.

Leadership has often comprised curators and directors drawn from the Los Angeles art and academic scene, with ties to staff from Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Getty Conservation Institute, UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television, and CalArts faculty. Advisory boards have included scholars and practitioners connected to Jonas Mekas, P. Adams Sitney, Leenhardt, Annette Michelson, and critics from Cahiers du Cinéma and Sight & Sound. Funding and support have come through grants and partnerships with entities such as National Endowment for the Arts, California Arts Council, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, and Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

Screenings have taken place at venues across Los Angeles including spaces affiliated with UCLA Film & Television Archive, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Beyond Baroque, and alternative spaces linked to LA Makerspace, Kino-Vision, and Redcat. The Filmforum has collaborated with international archives and festivals including Cinémathèque Québécoise, Filmoteca Española, EYE Filmmuseum, National Film Archive of India, and Deutsche Kinemathek. Cross-disciplinary events have engaged institutions such as CalArts performance programs, studios at Skidmore College, and symposia hosted at Getty Research Institute.

Category:Film societies in the United States Category:Film organizations in Los Angeles