About Film Programs
A place to explore cinema from every film-producing country in the world, the Pacific Film Archive reaches out through the art of cinema to the many cultures that make up the lively Bay Area community. With daily screenings—over 600 different programs are offered each year—PFA presents rare and rediscovered prints of movie classics, new and historic works by the world's great film directors, restored silent films with live musical accompaniment, thematic retrospectives, and exciting experiments by today's film and video artists, including provocative, independently made fiction and documentary films. PFA is an inspiring cultural environment for students and the general public; screenings are often enlivened by in-person appearances by filmmakers, authors, critics, and scholars, who engage in discussion with audiences. Past series have included Pop and Circumstance: America in the '60s; Women Screenwriters in Hollywood; The Banned and the Beautiful: Czech Cinema; Blaxploitation's Back!; Red Hollywood; neo-eiga: New Japanese Cinema; and major retrospectives of the work of Buster Keaton, Satyajit Ray, Ida Lupino, Robert Bresson, Michelangelo Antonioni, Nagisa Oshima, R. W. Fassbinder, Stan Brakhage, Bill Viola, Frederick Wiseman, Nicholas Ray, and numerous others.
