To help slow the spread of COVID-19, all of BAMPFA’s programs are paused and our building is temporarily closed. We miss our visitors and look forward to welcoming you back as soon as it’s safe to reopen our doors. In the meantime, if you don’t already follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, now is the time to connect. We’re joining in the nationwide #MuseumFromHome effort to keep on sharing the art, culture, and community we all crave right now.
While BAMPFA is temporarily closed, we are proud to offer newly released films from our streaming partners. Enjoy features selected by our curators, now available in your own home. When you rent a screening through our website, you're supporting both filmmakers and BAMPFA during an especially challenging time for independent cinema.
Three award-winning, recently restored films by Hungarian master István Szabó: Confidence, Mephisto, and Colonel Redl, parables of life under political oppression and individual morality in the face of momentous events.
In Nostalgia for the Light, The Pearl Button, and The Cordillera of Dreams, Chilean filmmaker Patricio Guzmán explores his country’s traumatic history through cinematic meditations on landscape, geography, and time.
Three documentaries by boundary-breaking filmmaker Madeline Anderson—Integration Report 1, A Tribute to Malcolm X, and I Am Somebody—deliver on-the-ground reports from the front lines of the civil rights movement and the labor struggles of the sixties.
A four-film sampler of twenty-first-century Romanian cinema: Cristi Puiu’s slacker thriller Stuff and Dough, Radu Muntean’s chronicle of revolutionary chaos The Paper Will Be Blue, Alexandru Solomon’s sardonic meta-movie The Great Communist Bank Robbery, and Lucian Pintilie’s family tragicomedy Niki and Flo.
We’re grateful to our members for standing with BAMPFA during our temporary closure. To show our appreciation, we’re offering a series of free streaming films just for members!
Cheryl Haines, Gina Leibrecht, 2019
Sparked by artist and activist Ai Weiwei’s 2014 project on Alcatraz Island, this “very absorbing and valuable documentary . . . movingly puts Ai’s work into personal context” (The Guardian).
Ina Weisse, 2019
An uncompromising high school violin teacher (Nina Hoss) becomes obsessed with a talented student in this slow-burning psychological drama. “Hoss is absolutely magnificent” (Cinema Scope).
Jean-Luc Godard, 1964
Closing July 19
Anna Karina gets involved with a pair of would-be burglars in one of Godard’s most accessible and affecting films. “Like a reverie of a gangster movie” (Pauline Kael).
Kantemir Balagov, 2019
For two women ex-soldiers in Leningrad in 1945, one trauma leads to another. “A brilliantly told, deeply moving story about love—in all its manifestations, perversity and obstinacy” (New York Times).
Halina Dyrschka, 2019
This documentary illuminates the story of visionary painter Hilma af Klint, the unsung modernist of the early twentieth century. “Refreshes the eyes and the mind” (New York Times).
Ron Mann, 2018
In the heart of Greenwich Village, one artisanal guitar shop remains resilient amidst encroaching gentrification. “A gentle, warm, immensely satisfying portrait” (Rolling Stone).
Rosine Mbakam, 2018
A Brussels hair salon catering to West African immigrant women is at the center of this warmhearted documentary. “A must-see” (Indiewire).
Les Blank
Available July 22
Swing along with Lydia Mendoza, Flaco Jiménez, and other greats of Mexican American music in Les Blank’s bouncy 1970s tributes to Chicano culture and pride, now digitally remastered in 4K.
Claude Sautet, 1960
Lino Ventura and Jean-Paul Belmondo star in “a tough and touching exploration of honor and friendship among thieves” (New York Times).
Lee Grant, 1986
An unflinching look at a cross-section of Americans whose financial security evaporated under the Reagan administration’s “trickle-down economics.” “A powerful, bracing, mournful film” (New Yorker).
Mathilde Damoisel, Sylvie Jézéquel, 2016
This fascinating documentary offers an overview of the Ottoman Empire and its decline, the essential backstory of our world today.
Phillip Borsos, 1982
After decades in prison, stagecoach robber Richard Farnsworth emerges in 1901 without a place in twentieth-century society—until he gets inspired by The Great Train Robbery.
Brett Story, 2019
This snapshot of New York City and its inhabitants in the summer of 2017 is “a first-rate city symphony, and a rare look at Gotham from the ground up” (Rolling Stone).
Bruno Dumont, 2019
French cinema provocateur Bruno Dumont (Hadewijch, L’humanité) conjures up a mystical, austere, brilliantly eccentric vision of Joan of Arc, “equal parts Brecht, Bresson, and Busby Berkeley” (Screen).
Dawn Porter, 2020
This essential documentary chronicles the life and career of civil rights activist and politician John Lewis from Alabama cotton fields to Congress.
Jules Dassin, 1955
Closing July 19
A band of tough guys pulls off an ingenious robbery of a Parisian jewelry store in this definitive heist movie. “The best film noir I’ve ever seen” (François Truffaut).
Matt Wolf, 2020
Closing July 16
Environmental activism, scientific study, and artistic creativity battle against business demands and media disdain in this absorbing look at the backstory of 1991’s Biosphere 2 experiment.
Daniel Traub, 2020
This new documentary takes viewers behind the scenes as artist Ursula von Rydingsvard works on her monumental sculptures, revealing the loving labor behind their mysterious, expressive forms.
Rob Garver, 2018
Closing July 19
This portrait of the brilliant, contentious Pauline Kael is “an exquisitely crafted documentary about the woman who was arguably the greatest movie critic who ever lived” (Variety).
Wrap yourself in the vibrant colors and forms of Rosie Lee Tompkins’s quilts with a virtual tour and slideshow and get insight into her practice from our recent colloquium.
Browse through a selection of Nagle’s small sculptures in this slideshow, then watch the artist's conversation with tattoo artist Don Ed Hardy, as well as a gallery talk by Oakland artist and former pupil Steuart Pittman.
Join Uttara Chaudhuri, a UC Berkeley graduate student who helped organize the exhibition, for an insightful and comprehensive virtual tour.
See legendary warriors and fantastical creatures come to life in the daring prints of Taiso Yoshitoshi, one of the last great ukiyo-e artists of Meiji Japan.
View artworks from South Asia and the Himalayan region that celebrate the beauty, wisdom, power, and compassion of women.
Hear artist Edie Fake talk about his mural envisioning affordable housing for trans elders, and read his interview about the project.
Read the student curators’ reflections on selected works in this exhibition mapping California’s many contradictions.
Videos by five cohabitating couples, who are also musical collaborators, created during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Hear some of our favorite participants in BAMPFA’s long-running poetry reading series share works that speak to our current moment.
A guide for families to explore the art of Rosie Lee Tompkins, with prompts for observation and hands-on art activities!
Critic Max Goldberg profiles filmmaker Warren Sonbert, whose works are among the many avant-garde gems in the BAMPFA collection.
Read Steve Seid’s essay on The Brink, a Bay Area film poem recently restored by BAMPFA.
This new audio series is designed to bring you closer to the individual people behind BAMPFA and individual works from our art and film collections.
Check out vintage recordings of David Lynch, Ousmane Sembene, and Pauline Kael from our audiocassette archive.
Trace the great New Yorker critic’s Berkeley connections through archival materials from the BAMPFA Film Library & Study Center.