Noted Tibetan artist Tsherin Sherpa presents BAMPFA’s 2023 endowed Lijin Lecture in conjunction with the exhibition Endless Knot: Struggle and Healing in the Buddhist World. He focuses on present-day Himalayan art and its connections with traditional arts. Followed by Above and Below, a documentary by Sheri Brenner about Sherpa's life and career.

Tours of Amalia Mesa-Bains: Archaeology of Memory are led by UC Berkeley graduate students in history of art, Chicanx/Latinx studies, and theater, dance, and performance studies.

Rob Epstein’s powerful record of the beloved San Francisco activist/politician Harvey Milk’s inspirational life and work, from his improbable, heroic rise to his horrific murder. With shorts by Barbara Hammer (I Was/I Am) and Arthur J. Bressan Jr. (Coming Out).

Tours of Amalia Mesa-Bains: Archaeology of Memory are led by UC Berkeley graduate students in history of art, Chicanx/Latinx studies, and theater, dance, and performance studies.

Marlon Riggs’s riveting combination of interviews, performance, stock footage, autobiography, poetry, and dance reveals the revolutionary potential of Black men loving Black men. With shorts by Todd Haynes (Dottie Gets Spanked), Michael Wallin (Decodings), Kenneth Anger (Fireworks), and Mike Kuchar (Seascape).

Tours of Amalia Mesa-Bains: Archaeology of Memory are led by UC Berkeley graduate students in history of art, Chicanx/Latinx studies, and theater, dance, and performance studies.

When we see people read in works from BAMPFA’s collection, however, the fact of communication—from intimate to public—is very clear: beautiful women reading love letters and romances abound in Japanese woodblock prints by Kikukawa Eizan, Isoda Koryusai, Utagawa Kunisada, and Kitagawa Utamaro; a Civil War carte de visite  shows freed slaves reading and opines “Lerning [sic] is Wealth”; hieroglyphics on tomb walls state their case for immortality in nineteenth-century photographs of Egypt by Antonio Beato; and more.

Swindlers and eccentric faded aristocrats populate the crumbling Odessa of Kira Muratova’s berserk satire on Russia’s old and nouveau riche. A screwball 1930s comedy filtered through an almost assaultive theatrical style. “Like being trapped in an elevator with a psychotic” (Village Voice).

Set in Colombia and starring Tilda Swinton, Weerasethakul’s first feature film made outside of Thailand covers familiar thematic terrain for the veteran director in its exploration of the blurred boundaries between the natural world and spirit realm, and the way that collective traumas reemerge as memories and dreams.

BAMPFA will close early today for the Art + Film Benefit event. Please plan accordingly.