UCLA Film & Television Archive

06/16/2026

UCLA Celebration of Iranian Cinema: “Oh, What Happy Days” (2025)
Saturday, June 20, 7:30 p.m.

Family secrets and betrayals explode in the most riveting video call you’ve ever seen. Writer-director Homayoun Ghanizadeh transforms the familiar stacked boxes of talking heads into a dazzling, high-wire act of storytelling when an Iranian family is confronted by the son of a former family servant over the fate of the stately family home back in Iran. The all-star ensemble delivers an acting tour de force that transcends the bounds of the film’s form.

Free admission! Limited registrations available.
Details: ucla.in/4oCERvU

Program generously funded by Farhang Foundation.

06/16/2026

The UCLA Film & Television Archive’s public programs are taking a summer intermission 🎬 After July 12, our screenings will be on pause until early October, when we’ll be back at the Billy Wilder Theater at the Hammer Museum with an exciting lineup of programs and special guests.

We’ll miss you, but in the meantime, we hope that you’ll join us for some of our upcoming screenings!

Sat. June 20: Iranian Cinema: “Oh, What Happy Days” (2025)
Sun. June 21: Iranian Cinema: “Woman and Child” (2025)
Fri. June 26: Food and Film: “Like Water for Chocolate” (1992)
Sat. June 27: “60th Anniversary Screening: ABC-TV’s Dark Shadows”
Sun. June 28: Family Flicks: “Ernest & Celestine” (2012)
Sun. June 28: “Legacy” (1974)
Sun. July 12: Family Flicks: “The Secret World of Arrietty” (2010)

Screening details: cinema.ucla.edu/events

Image credit: “Intermission,” ca. 1912. Photograph. From the Library of Congress: https://www.loc.gov/item/2012645960/

06/15/2026

65 years ago, in 1961, Adolf Eichmann’s trial was among the first in history to be internationally televised. One of the chief logistical architects of the Holocaust, Eichmann had fled Germany for Argentina, where he lived for a decade before he was abducted by Israeli Mossad agents and extradited to Jerusalem.

On our blog, recent UCLA M.L.I.S. Media Archival Studies graduate and Programming Assistant Noah Brockman examines newsreel footage of the trial that is held in our Hearst Metrotone News Collection.

“This transnational transmedia event was perhaps the last opportunity to mold public conceptions of guilt and justice in a postwar world full of newly baby-boomed children who held no memory of the Nuremberg trials,” writes Brockman.

This newsreel footage is viewable online courtesy of the Archive and The Packard Humanities Institute.

Learn more:

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06/14/2026

Food and Film: “Like Water for Chocolate” (Mexico, 1992)
Friday, June 26, 7:30 p.m.

In person: Introduction by chef and restaurateur Alice Waters. Q&A with Emilia Arau, producer and daughter of director Alfonso Arau, and actor Yareli Arizmendi.

35mm! Directed by Alfonso Arua and based on Laura Esquivel’s novel, this tale of forbidden love unfolds in early 20th-century Mexico when Tita is bound by family tradition to remain unmarried to care for her mother. Prevented from acting on her love for the handsome Pedro, she pours her passion and heartbreak into her cooking which has a magical, intoxicating effect.

Free admission! Details: ucla.in/4v51BH6

Co-presented by the Hammer Museum.

Special thanks to our community partners: El Cine, UCLA Rothman Family Institute for Food Studies

06/13/2026

60th Anniversary Screening: ABC-TV’s “Dark Shadows”
Saturday, June 27, 7:30 p.m.

Guest speakers: Introduction by actor Kathryn Leigh Scott (via video). In-person Q&A with actor David Selby and historian Jim Pierson, editor of “Dark Shadows Noir: Classic Black and White Photography From the Dan Curtis Productions Archive.” Book signing with Pierson before the screening.

Join us for a celebration of “Dark Shadows,” exactly 60 years to the day of its premiere, with a free screening of a trio of episodes — including two helmed by pioneering director Lela Swift — and rare archival footage!

Created by horror-maestro Dan Curtis (“The Night Stalker,” “Trilogy of Terror”), the innovative soap opera “Dark Shadows” (1966–71) expanded greatly in popularity in its second year with the addition of a 175-year-old charismatic vampire named Barnabas Collins (Jonathan Frid). As the eerily atmospheric series evolved to fuse gothic supernatural elements and romance into complex storylines, it became a pop culture phenomenon. The beloved original series ran for over 1,200 episodes and, since then, the aura surrounding “Dark Shadows” has only intensified, with the program enjoying reruns in syndication, luring new viewers into the mysterious world of the wealthy Collins family.

Admission is free and first come, first served. Details: ucla.in/4xrxlYC

Special thanks to our community partner: Women In Media

06/12/2026

UCLA Celebration of Iranian Cinema — more RSVPs now available!
Sunday, June 14, 7 p.m.
📽 “Checkpoint” (U.S., 1987) + “Dead End” (Iran, 1977)

“Checkpoint” (1987)
35mm! During the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis, a busload of Iranian college students returning to the U.S. after a field trip in Canada are thrown into political and legal limbo when they’re refused entry at the border. A ripped-from-the-headlines urgency drives writer-director Parviz Sayyad’s film as the students split along factional lines in their struggle to reclaim their rights and dignity.

“Dead End” (1977)
Parviz Sayyad’s provocative film stars Mary Apick as a woman who is drawn to a mysterious suitor haunting the dead-end street where she lives, only to discover that he is not what he seems and she and her family may be in danger. Based on a story by Anton Chekhov, “Dead End” plays with themes of voyeurism and surveillance in a society on the verge of radical transformation.

In person: Q&A with director Parviz Sayyad and actor Mary Apick, moderated by Sara Seyed.

Free admission! Register: ucla.in/4uvFs3u
Program generously funded by Farhang Foundation.

06/12/2026

06/11/2026

“By Hook or By Crook” (2001) — 25th anniversary 4K restoration release!

Still fiercely innovative today, “By Hook or By Crook” is a trans and butch buddy film that chronicles three weeks in the lives of two freaky grifters who join forces in an anti-authoritarian tale of friendship, trust and redemption. Written and directed by and starring Harry Dodge and Silas Howard.

Digitally restored in 4K by the Academy Film Archive and UCLA Film & Television Archive in conjunction with Frameline, Outfest, Steakhaus Productions, Inc., and the Sundance Institute.

Screening theatrically in New York City (Anthology Film Archives, June 12-18) and Los Angeles (Vidiots, June 16), and expanding to additional cities throughout the summer. Home video release to follow in late summer 2026.

Released by Altered Innocence — visit their website to learn more! alteredinnocence.net/film/hook

06/10/2026

UCLA Celebration of Iranian Cinema — more RSVPs now available!
Sunday, June 14, 3 p.m.
📽 Cinema-ye Azad: Behnam Jafari

Cinema-ye Azad, or Free Cinema, was an underground movement of filmmakers in Iran that began in 1969 with the aim of creating a fully independent cinema. This screening highlights the 1970s short and feature-length films of Behnam Jafari, a key figure of Cinema-ye Azad. In his feature “MirNasir and the Ill-Fated Genie” (1974), Jafari uses stark visuals and provocative metaphors to explore the impossibility of relying on traditional myths in the face of a new world.

In person: curator Arta Barzanji

Program curated by Arta Barzanji and Shaghayegh Raoufi with research and archival support from Hadi Alipanah.

Free admission! Register: ucla.in/4usSajI

Program generously funded by Farhang Foundation.

06/09/2026

Cinema-ye Azad (Free Cinema) was an underground film movement in Iran, founded in 1969 by Basir Nasibi as a critical response to Iran’s commercial and state‑controlled film industry.

Nasibi envisioned an independent, collective approach to filmmaking that centered the 8mm film camera, newly introduced to the Iranian market, as a tool to train aspiring filmmakers.

On our blog, journalist, film critic and researcher Hadi Alipanah discusses this movement that spread across the country.

“Cinema-ye Azad trained more than 300 filmmakers, established over 20 offices across Iran, organized numerous regional, national and international festivals [...] and produced more than 1,000 short films and five feature films,” writes Alipanah. But the movement came to an end after the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

To save this history, Alipanah has contacted more than 170 individuals associated with Cinema-ye Azad and collected and digitized over 300 films.

A selection of Cinema-ye Azad films will screen for free this Saturday and Sunday, with Q&As with curators Alipanah (via video) and Arta Barzanji.

Visit our blog to learn more: cinema.ucla.edu/blog/cinema-ye-azad-movement-in-iran

Images provided by Hadi Alipanah