Fall Film at BAMPFA

Did you know that Berkeley is home to one of the leading film archives on the West Coast? Less than a day’s drive north of Hollywood, you’ll find the real center of California film culture: the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA), a museum and repertory cinematheque located right in the heart of downtown Berkeley.

The premier art and film space for UC Berkeley, BAMPFA welcomes visitors not just from the university but the wider world as well—and its upcoming fall season of film programs has something for everyone to enjoy, from diehard cinephiles to first-time visitors. Here’s a snapshot of coming attractions:

Cities and Cinema: Los Angeles (Sept 6 thru Oct 3)

A celebration of the City of Angels as depicted onscreen, in films both iconic (Chinatown, La La Land) and newly available after decades of obscurity, like the moody 1960s psychodrama Smog.

Alternative Visions (Sept 11 thru Nov 20)

A kaleidoscopic tour through the outer regions of the experimental and avant-garde, ranging from early short films by the Surrealist pioneer Man Ray to recent work by the Abounaddara arts collective out of war-torn Syria.

Silent Cinema Pioneers: From Alice Guy-Blaché to Lois Weber (Sept 14 thru 25)

A rare opportunity to discover some of the most groundbreaking works of cinema’s earliest years, with a special focus on women directors who broke the glass ceiling of the silent film industry.

Gregg Araki’s Teen Apocalypse Trilogy (Sept 28 and 29)

A thrilling triptych of films by one of the most incendiary auteurs of the New Queer Cinema movement, these roiling cocktails of sex, drugs, and teen angst will screen at BAMPFA alongside live appearances by their leading man, indie icon James Duval.

Movie Matinees for All Ages (Sept 28 thru Nov 30)

A very different trio of youth-friendly films—including the perennial family favorite The Wizard of Oz—will hit BAMPFA screens this fall, when the museum brings back its beloved family matinee series for the first time since 2020.

Hong Kong Cinema with Paul Fonoroff (Oct 17 thru 27)

A selection of crowd-pleasing classics of Hong Kong cinema of the 1980s and ’90s, introduced by one of the world’s leading scholars and advocates for this celebrated national filmmaking tradition.

Cuban Cinema Without Borders (Oct 23 thru Nov 16)

A glimpse into the tantalizing cinematic currents of a different island nation, offering audiences an extremely rare opportunity to see new work by an emerging generation of Cuban filmmakers on the big screen.

Sergei Parajanov: Centennial Celebration (Nov 1 thru 22)

The iconoclastic Armenian poet-filmmaker—best known for his Scorsese-praised masterwork The Color of Pomegranates—finally gets his due with this centennial survey of his greatest films.

Jia Zhangke: Filmmaker in Residence (Nov 7 thru 30)

Rounding out BAMPFA’s fall season is a major residency by China’s most important living filmmaker, who will spend a week in Berkeley in conjunction with a retrospective of his internationally acclaimed oeuvre.

About BAMPFA

BAMPFA has been uniquely dedicated to art and film since 1970, with international programming that is locally connected and globally relevant. It holds more than 25,000 artworks and 18,000 films and videos in its collection, with particular strengths in modern and contemporary art and historical Chinese painting, as well as the world’s largest collection of African American quilts. As part of the University of California, Berkeley, BAMPFA is committed to artistic diversity through its robust slate of art exhibitions, film screenings, artist talks, live performances, and educational programs that shed new light on the art of the past and connect our audiences with leading filmmakers and artists of our time.

BAMPFA is located at 2155 Center Street in Downtown Berkeley, and is open Wednesdays through Sundays, 11 to 7.