Even as most of Berkeley’s iconic movie theaters have shuttered, the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive is enjoying some of its highest film attendance in years, drawing audiences to a program of vibrant world cinema.

Spring film season at BAMPFA, 2155 Center St., March 1-May 10.  See website for schedule and related activities.

Even a recent New York Times Magazine article called out BAMPFA as a prime example of the growing number of resurgent independent movie theaters that are bucking the post-COVID home-viewing trend. BAMPFA, it noted, “has seen its screenings grow more crowded every year since the pandemic.”

That energy is on full display in BAMPFA’s spring film season, a globe-spanning lineup that has just been unveiled online.

Running from early March to mid-May, BAMPFA’s spring season encompasses seven diverse and wide-ranging film series, from a trippy cinematic journey into altered consciousness to the perennially popular African Film Festival.

Here’s a deeper look at what’s in store:

Psychedelia & Cinema (March 1-May 10)

The season kicks off with a cinematic head trip that explores films about expanded consciousness — and films that produce it through image, sound, rhythm and narrative experimentation. BAMPFA has joined forces with UC Berkeley’s Center for the Science of Psychedelics to assemble more than a dozen classics in the psychedelic film canon, ranging from the beloved masterpiece “2001: A Space Odyssey” to the cult favorite“The Holy Mountain” and local legend “Space is the Place” — an Afrofuturist space opera inspired by onetime UC Berkeley professor Sun Ra.

“Space is the Place” is an Afrofuturist space opera showing at BAMPFA March 21. Courtesy of BAMPFA

Fassbinder and the New German Cinema (March 6-May 17)

Taking its inspiration from the rebellious spirit of its titular auteur, “Fassbinder and the New German Cinema” showcases films from the country’s distinctive film movement in the 1960s and 1970s — a time when a fierce young generation of filmmakers brought new energy to German movies. In addition to Fassbinder — German cinema’s enfant terrible, who directed more than 40 feature films before his untimely death at the age of 37 — the series includes important work by trailblazing filmmakers, including Werner Herzog, Wim Wenders and Volker Schlöndorff.

Iranian Cinema: From Aesthetics to Politics (March 7-April 23)

Against the backdrop of fraught geopolitics, BAMPFA offers a clarifying glimpse into the world of Iranian filmmaking — a cinematic tradition that has flourished despite an oppressive government regime. The series includes 4K restorations of seminal Iranian films like “The Postman” and “Bashu, the Little Stranger,” as well as a guest appearance by the influential Iranian filmmaker and screenwriter Rakhshan Banietemad, who will present her films “Under the Skin of the City” and “Gilaneh.”

The Iranian film “Bashu, the Little Stranger” airs at BAMPFA March 29. Courtesy of BAMPFA

African Film Festival (March 8-May 9)

Each spring, BAMPFA offers a survey of the most exciting contemporary moviemaking happening on the African continent and its worldwide diaspora. The 2026 installment of the African Film Festival centers on coming-of-age stories and portraits of urban life, including movies from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, French Guiana, Kenya, Mali, Morocco, Nigeria and the United States.

Impulses and Abstractions: Sound and Music in 1960s French Cinema (March 14-29)

This short series zooms in on a moment in French film history when filmmakers and composers treated sound as a vital aesthetic complement — rather than just an accompaniment — to the images onscreen. Drawing inspiration from the French New Wave, the series includes Alain Resnais’ “Last Year at Marienbad,” Agnès Varda’s “Cléo from 5 to 7,” and Jacques Rivette’s “Paris Belongs to Us,” plus a program of shorts that illustrates how radical “classic” cinema can feel when you watch (and listen) closely.

Sentimental Education: Theresa Hak Kyung Cha at the Pacific Film Archive (April 2-19)

Designed as a complement to BAMPFA’s exhibition of Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s work as a gallery artist, this film series highlights her identity as both a filmmaker and a cinephile — a practice that began at BAMPFA, where the young artist worked as a film usher during her years as a UC Berkeley undergraduate. The series highlights key touchstones of world cinema that Cha absorbed at the Pacific Film Archive — among them, “The Passion of Joan of Arc” and “Floating Weeds” — as well as a survey of the artist’s own moving-image work.

Lucrecia Martel: Un destino común (April 4-19)

Perhaps the most acclaimed auteur of contemporary South American cinema, Lucrecia Martel makes provocative films about class, complicity, colonialism and the stories societies tell themselves to maintain the status quo. Her films return to BAMPFA following a celebrated survey of her work in 2018, this time with the new work “Our Land/Nuestra Tierra” — her first-ever documentary — that explores the struggles of Indigenous life in 21st-century Argentina. Martel will appear in person for this and a range of screenings that showcase the luminous artist’s remarkable body of work.

Tickets for BAMPFA’s spring season are now on sale and can be purchased at bampfa.org/film.

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