Give the Gift of Cinema!
35mm, 70mm, nitrate, state-of-the-art digital. Q&As, retrospectives, double-features, triple-features, marathons. We’re a year-round film festival. There’s something for everyone in our programming lineup.
Everything we do is rooted in the collective, communal experience of the movies and bringing people together around the cinematic arts. Your membership ensures access to that experience is available to everyone and includes a number of personal benefits.
The American Cinematheque is a member-donor-volunteer supported 501(c)(3) non-profit arts organization whose mission is to celebrate the experience of cinema.
40 years of American Cinematheque film programming….and counting. Dive into the AC Vault to discover past Q&As and clips from our vast and newly digitized archives, old calendars and programs, new podcasts, conversations and much more.
Since it began screening films to the public in 1985, the American Cinematheque has provided diverse film programming and immersive in-person discussions and events with thousands of filmmakers and luminaries, presenting new and repertory cinema to Los Angeles.
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The American Cinematheque believes that cinema is a communal experience with the power to entertain, enlighten and inspire. We build a diverse and engaged film community through immersive film curation, conversation, and presentation. We bridge the filmmaker to the audience and film history to its future.
The American Cinematheque grew out of the legendary Filmex (The Los Angeles International Film Exposition) which ran from 1971 through 1983.
In 1984, after an inspiring trip to the Cinémathèque Française in Paris, Filmmaker Sydney Pollack joined forces with Gary Abrahams & Gary Essert, the team behind the legendary Filmex (The Los Angeles International Film Exposition) to develop a year-round film festival for the city of Los Angeles where cinephiles and filmmakers could discover, engage with and discuss the seventh art.
True to the hope and intent of Sydney Pollack, the American Cinematheque is a place where both the public and members of the film industry come together as a community with the common language of film.
We believe that showcasing film with the best quality of picture and sound preserves the awe-inspiring power of cinema for those experiencing it. We screen in 35mm, 70mm, nitrate as well as state-of-the-art digital – with an expert team of union projectionists in the booths.
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