Film Series

Past Film Series
  • Infinite Horizons: The Films of Werner Herzog

    November 9, 2023–February 28, 2024

    German filmmaker Werner Herzog joins us November 9–12 for the launch of this major retrospective, which continues into 2024. Herzog’s great facility for storytelling (he writes nearly all of his screenplays) and his fascination with eccentric characters, whose lives and endeavors he observes, allow him to illuminate the human condition in his narrative and nonfiction films.

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  • Yasujiro Ozu: The Elegance of Simplicity

    December 3, 2023–February 25, 2024

    One of Japan's greatest filmmakers, Yasujiro Ozu was born in 1903 and died in 1963. To mark the 120th anniversary of his birth and the 60th anniversary of his death, archives around the world are celebrating his work. BAMPFA presents a selected retrospective spanning the course of the director’s career from the silent era to his six crowning films made in color.

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  • Special Screenings

    Ongoing

    Recent releases, restored classics, and special guests grace the Barbro Osher Theater.

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  • Masc: Trans Men, Butch Dykes, and Gender Nonconforming Heroes in Cinema

    January 19–February 25, 2024

    Masc is a cinematic celebration giving recognition and dignity to the courageous queer, gender nonconforming visionaries who have blazed these trails and who continue to show the way forward and inspire us all.

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  • In Focus: Werner Herzog and the Documentary Form

    Lecture & Screening Series

    January 24–February 28, 2024

    This lecture & screening series focuses on six nonfiction works spanning Werner Herzog’s iconoclastic career. We are delighted to welcome film critic and journalist Michael Fox, who will offer a short lecture before each film and lead the post-screening discussions.

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  • Skip Norman Here and There

    January 25–February 29, 2024

    Bringing together Skip Norman’s work as a cinematographer and a filmmaker, from his collaborations with his DFFB cohort to films made in the United States, Skip Norman Here and There is a rare opportunity to reconsider the work of a groundbreaking Black filmmaker.

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  • Preservation Spotlight: David Schickele’s Bushman

    February 3–24, 2024

    BAMPFA presents the Bay Area premiere of the recently completed restoration of Bushman (US, 1971), directed by Bay Area independent filmmaker David Schickele (1937–1999).We will be joined by special guests, including Schickele’s family, who have been instrumental to the preservation of Bushman, as well as original members of the cast and crew and the preservation team.

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  • Documentary Voices 2024

    February 7–April 24, 2024

    Our annual series features an international array of recent and historical documentaries and nonfiction films.

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  • Cauleen Smith—In Space, In Time

    February 8–11, 2024

    BAMPFA presents three nights of work by Los Angeles–based Cauleen Smith, including two programs of rarely shown short films and a screening of her seminal, recently restored feature Drylongso

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