The MOCA Artist Film Series returns to the Ahmanson Auditorium at MOCA Grand Avenue on August 17 and runs through November 30, 2023. Inspired by film and video works in MOCA’s renowned collection and centered in the cinema capital of the world, the series offers engaging and notable screenings and features artists in dialogue with fellow artists, historians, and critics.

MOCA Artist Film Series Fall/Winter 2023 Schedule

Ulysses Jenkins
Remnants of the Watts Festival, 1972-73, 1980, 60 min.
Ahmanson Auditorium, MOCA Grand Avenue
Thursday, August 17, 2023
6pm
MOCA presents a screening of Remnants of the Watts Festival, 1972-73 followed by a conversation with artist Ulysses Jenkins and artist Amitis Motevalli.

In 1972 and 1973, Ulysses Jenkins and the collective from Venice, California, known as Video Venice News documented the Watts Summer Festival—a major Black cultural event established in 1966 to commemorate the Watts Rebellion that jolted the Los Angeles community the year before. In addition to capturing an electrifying performance by the funk band War, this historically important tape examines the issue of covert surveillance that has long defined the relationship between the state and the Black community in America.

Diane Severin Nguyen
Tyrant Star, 2009, 16 min.
IF REVOLUTION IS A SICKNESS, 2021, 19 min.
Ahmanson Auditorium, MOCA Grand Avenue
Thursday, September 7, 2023
6pm
MOCA presents a screening of Tyrant Star and IF REVOLUTION IS A SICKNESS, followed by a conversation with artist DIane Severin Nguyen and MOCA Curator Anna Katz.

Ai Weiwei
Chang’an Boulevard, 2004, 10 hr. 13 min.
Ahmanson Auditorium, MOCA Grand Avenue
Thursday, September 21, 2023
6pm
MOCA presents a continuous screening of Chang'an Boulevard during regular museum hours from Thursday, September 21 until Friday, September 22. Ai Weiwei will be present for an in-conversation on Thursday, September 21 at 6pm, followed by a book signing of 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows: A Memoir (2021).

An epic moving image work, Chang’an Boulevard traces the forty-five kilometer long thoroughfare that extends east to west, bisecting the megalopolis of Beijing. Dividing the distance into intervals, the artist recorded a single frame for one minute. The entire film is composed of 608 one-minute segments, running over 10 hours long in duration. Beijing, the capital of China for over 600 years, has a clear architectonic order in its urban planning. The film records the city through the transformation of the urban landscape, capturing the rhythms of the city, its social structure, cityscape, planned economy, political center, commercial buildings, and industrial units–revealing the quotidian and everyday of China’s seat of government and power.

Park Chan-kyong and Park Chan-wook
KT iPhone Project NIGHT FISHING, 2011, 33 min. 12 sec.
Ahmanson Auditorium, MOCA Grand Avenue
Thursday, October 26, 2023
6pm
MOCA presents a screening of KT iPhone Project NIGHT FISHING followed by a conversation with acclaimed film director Park Chan-wook and artist, filmmaker and critic Park Chan-kyong.

KT iPhone Project NIGHT FISHING is a production of PARKing CHANce Films–a collaboration between the two brothers–shot entirely on an iPhone 4 camera. It was first presented at the 61st Berlinale International Film Festival in 2011 where it received the prestigious Golden Bear Award. The film is described as ‘a fairy tale about death and reincarnation, transmigration and the sounds of music.’

Zineb Sedira
Dreams Have No Titles, 2022
Ahmanson Auditorium, MOCA Grand Avenue
Thursday, November 30, 2023
6pm
MOCA presents a screening of Dreams Have No Titles followed by a conversation with artist Zineb Sedira.

Using autobiographical narrative, fiction and documentary, Zineb Sedira’s Dreams Have No Titles–her sprawling, award-winning contribution for the French Pavilion at the 2022 Venice Biennale–addresses history of cultural, intellectual and avant-garde film production of the 1960s and beyond through the history of filmmaking and its impact on postcolonial movements and liberation struggles. In the film, Sedira mines Algeria’s cinema heritage through the archives of the Algerian Cinémathèque, touching upon post-independence cinema in France, Italy and Algeria and the so-called “Third-World” values and aesthetics they adhered to.

General admission to MOCA is free courtesy of Carolyn Clark Powers.

Together Thursdays courtesy of Cliff and Mandy Einstein.

All screenings are free with advance reservations. Tickets for each screening will be released on a rolling basis and become available up to 21 days in advance. MOCA Members enjoy early access to ticketing reservations.

The MOCA Artist Film Series is organized by Clara Kim, Chief Curator & Director of Curatorial Affairs, with Alitzah Oros, Public Programming Associate, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.

MOCA Artist Film Series is presented by The Edward F. Limato Foundation.

Additional support is provided by and