MOCA announces the MOCA Artist Film Series, a program of monthly screenings and conversations inspired by contemporary film and video works in MOCA’s collection. MOCA Artist Film Series will offer engaging and notable evenings with MOCA collection artists, as well as other contemporary artists who are making exceptional and innovative work in moving image mediums.
MOCA Artist Film Series Spring/Summer 2023 Schedule
Martine Syms
The African Desperate, 2022, 97 min.
Ahmanson Auditorium, MOCA Grand Avenue
Thursday, March 16, 2023
6pm
MOCA presents a screening of The African Desperate followed by a conversation with artist Martine Syms and writer and curator Essence Harden.
The electrifying feature debut from renowned artist and MOCA collection artist Martine Syms, The African Desperate brings her razor-sharp satire and vivid aesthetic invention to a riotous coming-of-age comedy. The film tracks one very long day for Palace Bryant (an expertly deadpan Diamond Stingily), a newly minted MFA grad whose final 24 hours in art school become a real trip.
Sky Hopinka
Selection of recent films
Ahmanson Auditorium, MOCA Grand Avenue
Thursday, March 30, 2023
6pm
MOCA presents a screening of Sunflower Siege Engine, Kicking the Clouds, Mnemonics of Shape and Reason, Lore, and When you’re lost in the rain. followed by a conversation with artist Sky Hopinka and art critic Jonathan Griffin.
Alison O'Daniel
The Tuba Thieves, 2023, 92 min.
Los Angeles premiere
Ahmanson Auditorium, MOCA Grand Avenue
Thursday, April 27, 2023
6pm
MOCA presents a screening of The Tuba Thieves followed by a conversation with artists Alison O’Daniel and Charles Gaines.
From 2011 to 2013, tubas were stolen from twelves high schools in Southern California. When reporters told the story, they focused on the thieves and asked the same questions: Who is doing this? Why? What is happening to the tubas? They did not seem curious about what a marching band sounds like without the lowest sound. They did not wonder what the tuba players were now doing in class. No one asked what happens when sound is stolen or lost, owned or delegated.
Clarissa Tossin
Mojo’q che b’ixan ri ixkanulab’ / Antes de que los volcanes canten / Before the Volcanoes Sing, 2022, 64 min.
West Coast premiere
Ahmanson Auditorium, MOCA Grand Avenue
Thursday, May 18, 2023
6pm
MOCA presents a screening of Mojo’q che b’ixan ri ixkanulab’ / Antes de que los volcanes canten / Before the Volcanoes Sing followed by a conversation with artists Clarissa Tossin and Tohil Fidel Brito Bernal.
The film undertakes a richly sensory journey across moments, languages, and music, roaming through architectural spaces that are variously imagined and real, cosmological and colonized. Commissioned by EMPAC in 2019 and developed through a series of on-site and remote residencies taken by the artist, the moving image work centers on the capacity of Maya cultural belongings, and wind instruments in particular, to give voice to Indigenous systems of knowledge.
An evening with Paul Pfeiffer
Ahmanson Auditorium, MOCA Grand Avenue
Thursday, June 29, 2023
6pm
For this special program at MOCA, Pfeiffer will present clips from his earliest video works such as Fragment of a Crucifixion (1998) and Pure Products Go Crazy (1998). The screening will also include excerpts from his new audio-visual installation Red Green Blue which premiered in New York in 2022. The title refers to the image display system based on the human perception of color. The film considers how multiple channels of sensory information are brought into alignment by presenting the Georgia Bulldogs stadium as a broadcast studio.
Tuan Andrew Nguyen
The Unburied Sounds of a Troubled Horizon, 2022, 60 min.
West Coast premiere
Ahmanson Auditorium, MOCA Grand Avenue
Thursday, July 6, 2023
6pm
MOCA presents a screening of The Unburied Sounds of a Troubled Horizon followed by a post-screening conversation with artist Tuan Andrew Nguyen.
The Unburied Sounds of a Troubled Horizon explores the ways in which material contains memory and holds potential for transformation, reincarnation, and healing. The project is inspired by the people of Quang Tri, on the North Central Coast of Vietnam, which was one of the most heavily bombed areas in the history of modern warfare.
Bruce and Norman Yonemoto
Garage Sale, 1976, 75 min.
Ahmanson Auditorium, MOCA Grand Avenue
Thursday, July 27, 2023
6pm
MOCA presents a screening of Bruce and Norman Yonemoto’s Garage Sale (1976) followed by a conversation with artist Bruce Yonemoto and film director Kirby Dick.
Garage Sale is a campy X-rated feature film centered on a story of marital upheaval between drag queen Goldie Glitters and her fair-haired husband Hero. A one-time member of San Francisco’s legendary Cockettes theater troupe, Goldie was famously crowned Santa Monica College’s 1975 Homecoming Queen, captured in Bruce Yonemoto’s documentary Homecoming (1975).
MOCA Artist Film Series is organized by Clara Kim, Chief Curator & Director of Curatorial Affairs, with Brian Dang, Programming Coordinator, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.
MOCA Artist Film Series is presented by The Edward F. Limato Foundation.