On View

exhibitions
film series
event series

  • Touch Bass

    Performances

    Ongoing

    Music, dance, and other creative actions to inspire you at home.

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  • Lines of Thought

    January 5–July 3, 2022

    Gestural Abstraction in the BAMPFA Collection

    This collection-based exhibition of gestural paintings from the 1950s to the present features works by key international figures who have continued to explore artistic possibilities within or in dialogue with gestural abstraction

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  • F. W. Murnau: Voyages into the Imaginary

    January 8–February 27, 2022

    This series, featuring the lyrical cinema of one of the most admired and influential directors of the silent era, F. W. Murnau, showcases restored versions of his extant work with live piano accompaniment.

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  • Spiritual Mountains: The Art of Wesley Tongson

    January 12–June 12, 2022

    This exhibition debuts a recent gift of eleven Tongson paintings and pairs them with historic paintings from BAMPFA’s extensive Chinese painting collection, demonstrating the relationship between his genius and that of past masters.

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  • Ball of Fire: Barbara Stanwyck

    January 14–February 26, 2022

    Barbara Stanwyck was the screen archetype of the independent woman, with her wits about her, alert, and often on the make. This spotlight showcases many of her best roles and demonstrates her remarkable talent.

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  • Djibril Diop Mambéty

    January 21–February 20, 2022

    Djibril Diop Mambéty’s debut, Touki Bouki, was “unlike anything in the history of African cinema” (N. Frank Ukadike). Made nearly twenty years later, Hyenas and Le franc likewise showcase “his signature mix of wild narrative style” and “impeccable political commitment,” which,... View

  • Documentary Voices 2022

    January 26–April 20, 2022

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

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  • Animation! Speaking with the Makers

    January 29–February 26, 2022

    In this hybrid series, shown in-theater and via BAMPFA’s streaming platform, we interview filmmakers who specialize in animation and ask them to discuss how they develop their stylistic approaches, and how they distill time, gesture, and mood, frame by frame, into the basic unit... View

  • Streaming: Animation! Speaking with the Makers

    January 29–March 13, 2022

    In this hybrid series, shown in-theater and via BAMPFA’s streaming platform, we interview filmmakers who specialize in animation and ask them to discuss how they develop their stylistic approaches, and how they distill time, gesture, and mood, frame by frame, into the basic unit... View

  • Arts + Design Fridays @ BAMPFA

    February 4–April 29, 2022

    Perseverance, Renewal, and Reflection in a Changing World

    Join us every Friday afternoon to explore cutting-edge thinking and making on topics of current interest to UC Berkeley’s creative faculty.

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  • Recent Films of Nathaniel Dorsky

    February 5–6, 2022

    We are delighted to present eight recent additions to our film collection: new silent 16mm films by local filmmaker Nathaniel Dorsky, most made during the COVID-19 pandemic, photographed in San Francisco across different seasons.

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  • Contemporary Indigenous Media

    February 10–April 14, 2022

    In our first series to explore the breadth of Indigenous media currently being made in the Americas, we place works in relation to one another across geographies and stylistic approaches, with filmmakers from South and North America in conversation.

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  • Recent Acquisitions from the BAMPFA Collection

    March 2–April 24, 2022

    This exhibition of recent acquisitions by the museum demonstrates BAMPFA’s ongoing work to expand the global art historical canon through the art of lesser known makers and marginalized groups. 

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  • Federico Fellini 100

    March 4–May 14, 2022

    Romantic. Elegant. Fantastical. We welcome back to the BAMPFA screen one of the greats, Federico Fellini, a “larger-than-life maestro who created an inimitable cinematic style combining surreal carnival with incisive social critique” (Criterion).

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  • Chinese Portraits

    March 5–17, 2022

    A collection of narrative and documentary works on artists, writers, and ordinary citizens in China, presented in conjunction with the Townsend Center’s In Dialogue with China: Art, Culture, Politics.

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  • Limited Engagements & Special Screenings 2022

    Ongoing

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

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  • Wayne Wang in Person

    March 11–April 17, 2022

    From defining Asian American identity on-screen in Chan Is Missing and The Joy Luck Club to adapting the writing of Paul Auster and working with Jennifer Lopez, Wayne Wang is a filmmaking original. This series features new restorations of his work.

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  • The Artist’s Eye: Tammy Rae Carland, David Huffman, Lava Thomas, John...

    March 19–July 17, 2022

    Curated by four established Bay Area artists, this exhibition centers their respective artistic visions and engages the space where the artist—as curator, collector, and maker—meets the museum.

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  • Streaming: Free Films for Members

    Ongoing

    Our ongoing series of free films for members.

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  • Souleymane Cissé

    March 31–April 17, 2022

    An overdue tribute to one of the giants of world cinema, Malian director Souleymane Cissé, a former projectionist, jailed dissident, and fiercely antiauthoritarian, proudly African filmmaker whose work includes Brightness, The Wind, Baara, and The Young Girl.

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  • A Cool Million

    On the Hour: A Cool Million

    April 18–22, 2022

    This Earth Week, BAMPFA is proud to be participating in this public initiative for climate awareness led by artists and institutions to expand environmental arts programming and support the conservation of land central to the California hydrological cycle.

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  • 65th San Francisco International Film Festival at BAMPFA

    April 22–May 1, 2022

    BAMPFA is proud to partner with the SFFILM Festival, an extraordinary showcase of cinematic discovery and a major cultural event in the Bay Area.

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  • Art Wall: Caroline Kent

    April 27–October 30, 2022

    BAMPFA commissioned Chicago-based artist Caroline Kent to present The Sounds Among Us, a large-scale, self-reflective yet otherworldly meditation on the museum as a site of intimate performance and public engagement.

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  • The Films of Márta Mészáros

    June 3–July 20, 2022

    “Since my first film I have attempted in a very deliberate and stubborn way to portray women capable of making independent decisions,” wrote acclaimed Hungarian filmmaker Márta Mészáros, who at age ninety is the subject of this major retrospective featuring new digital... View

  • The 52nd Annual UC Berkeley Master of Fine Arts Graduate Exhibition

    May 13–July 24, 2022

     BAMPFA and the UC Berkeley Department of Art Practice host an exhibition of works by the Master of Fine Arts class of 2022: Erica Deeman, Edgar Fabián Frías, Kavena Hambira, Hala Kaddoura, Ahn Lee, and Rivka Valérie Louissaint.

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  • Film Preservation: Celebrating The Film Foundation

    June 4–August 27, 2022

    This series showcases an impressive range of world cinema that has been preserved thanks to a concerted effort by The Film Foundation and the World Cinema Project over more than thirty years.

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  • Indelible Moments: May I Have This Dance

    June 12–August 25, 2022

    A selection of films in which a dance scene crystallizes the experience of the movie, a moment leaving its imprint more than the plotline or even the characters.

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  • Forever Kinuyo Tanaka

    July 8–August 28, 2022

    Celebrated for her performances in films by iconic directors, Tanaka also made a significant contribution to the golden age of Japanese cinema as a director. This series features new restorations of all six of Tanaka’s films, along with works representative of the scope of her... View

  • Women of different racial backgrounds and skin tone appear in separate photographs, capturing a moment where they are engaged in a primal scream.

    Whitney Bradshaw: OUTCRY

    July 13–December 3, 2022

    This large-scale presentation of Bradshaw's photographic project features one hundred women engaging in unbridled self-expression as an act of defiance against patriarchal oppression. Running three times daily on the outdoor screen.

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  • by Alison Knowles: A Retrospective (1960–2022)

    July 20, 2022–February 12, 2023

    Best known as a core member of Fluxus, the first comprehensive exhibition of Knowles's work, spanning the entire breadth of her still-active career, from her intermedia works of the 1960s to participatory and relational art from the 2000s. 

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  • Fluxus Reverb: Events, Scores, Boxes & More

    July 20, 2022–February 12, 2023

    An international movement of the 1960s and 1970s of artists working across disciplines and in a decidedly anti-commercial manner, this exhibition offers an opportunity to see Fluxus materials and many artworks in the form of a box, including numerous Fluxkits by a wide variety of... View

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