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AFI FEST presented by Canva is a world class film festival taking place October 23 - October 27, 2024 at TCL Chinese Theater in Hollywood. With an innovative slate of programming, the five-day festival features both master filmmakers and new cinematic voices to showcase the best films from across the globe.

AFI FEST is offering an exclusive discount for Amoeba customers! Take 20% off tickets for a curated slate of films chosen just for music lovers and culture vultures like you. Check out the films below and enter discount code AmoebaAFI24 at checkout. Limited to 4 tickets per person and subject to availability.

DEVO
October 23 at Chinese 6
Feat. Q&A w/ director Chris Smith, Mark Mothersbaugh, Gerald Casale and Robert Mothersbaugh

Chris Smith’s fascinating documentary about legendary new wave provocateurs Devo will delight not only longtime “spuds” – but also those who missed the heyday of the band’s singularly strange career. Smith presents a wealth of rare archival performance and interview footage, making DEVO a must-see. Live Q&A to follow! 

Soundtrack To A Coup D'Etat
October 25 at Chinese 3
Feat. Q&A with director and writer Johan Grimonprez

Jazz and colonial politics collide in a forgotten chapter of Cold War history in Johan Grimonprez’s electrifying essay film. The music of Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, Nina Simone and other jazz legends infuse the soundscape of decolonization movements rippling through the African continent in the 1960s, and in turn, the insidious plotting of Western powers. Featuring excerpts from My Country, Africa by Andrée Blouin, Congo Inc. by In Koli Jean Bofane, To Katanga and Back by Conor Cruise O’Brien and audio memoirs by Nikita Khrushchev, Soundtrack To A Coup D'Etat interweaves montage, typography and music to meticulously retrace a detailed historical account that led to musicians Abbey Lincoln and Max Roach’s 1961 protest of the United Nations Security Council over the murder of Congolese prime minister Patrice Lumumba. Winner of the World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, Grimonprez’s striking indictment of postcolonial ramifications is as pertinent as ever. Live Q&A to follow!

Songs From The Hole
October 26 at Chinese 3
Feat. Q&A with director/producer Contessa Gayles, JJ’88 & Richie Reseda moderated by filmmaker D’Lo Louis.

Documentary filmmaker and Emmy®-nominated producer Contessa Gayles (The Feminist on Cellblock Y) peers inside the creative mind and emotional world of James “JJ‘88” Jacobs, a man who has been incarcerated since he was 15 years old. Twenty years after taking a life and subsequently losing his brother to gang violence, Jacobs collaborates with Gayles from behind the bars of California State Prison to record his deeply personal, original music. Songs From The Hole is an innovative, singular blend of documentary and visual album that deservedly won the Visions Audience Award at SXSW earlier this year. Live Q&A to follow!

Gloria!
October 26 at Chinese 3
 

 Tradition and the nouveau clash in this poppy feminist romp about a quartet of renegade musicians. With a singer-songwriter background, first-time director Margherita Vicario crafts an energetic, unapologetic musical set to remixed beats of Vivaldi, charting the boldly reimagined lost history of women composers and artists. Winner of Best Original Score and Best First Feature at the Italian Golden Globes, Gloria! will have you clapping and swaying to its catchy tunes.

De-Evolution is Real: The Restored Films of Devo
October 26 at Chinese 1
Feat. Q&A with preservationist Peter Conheim, Mark Mothersbaugh and Gerald Casale

To mark the 50th anniversary of DEVO, a deep restoration and remastering project of the band’s film, video and audio archives has been undertaken, with a selection presented in celebration of the documentary DEVO, also featured at AFI FEST. Filmmaking and music were intertwined from the beginning, resulting in canonical short films, including In The Beginning Was The End: The Truth About De-Evolution, Satisfaction, The Day My Baby Gave Me A Surprize, and the infamous Whip Tease AKA Whip It, in collaboration with co-director Chuck Statler. This program features new restorations and reconstructions, along with restored versions of music videos, such as "Girl U Want," "Freedom of Choice," and the devolved Hendrix cover, "RU Experienced," restored from its original 35mm negative. Also included is a brand-new 4K restoration of Bruce Conner’s Mongoloid, never-before-seen 16mm footage from DEVO’s breakthrough appearance at New York City’s Max’s Kansas City, the saga of long-suffering record label boss Rod Rooter and much more. Film and video restoration are by Peter Conheim and the Cinema Preservation Alliance, from the archives of DEVO, Inc. Mongoloid restoration is courtesy of the Bruce Conner Trust. Additional archival footage was provided by Daphne Shaw. Live Q&A to follow!

Cheech & Chong's Last Movie
October 27 at Chinese 1
Feat. Q&A with director and producer David Bushell, Cheech Marin, and Tommy Chong.

The stoner comedy duo Cheech & Chong enjoyed enormous success in the ‘70s and ‘80s, performing to packed sports arenas, winning a Grammy® for best comedy album and starring in a string of low-budget, hugely profitable movies. In Cheech & Chong's Last Movie, director David Bushell reels in the duo’s many strange-but-true stories, while the two senior citizen stoners take a desert road trip befitting the misadventures of their hazy, halcyon past. Live Q&A to follow!

Teaches of Peaches
October 27 at Chinese 3

Winner of the Teddy Award for Best Documentary at this year’s Berlin Film Festival and named for the infamous turn of the millennium album by iconic Canadian musician, producer, director and performance artist Peaches (née Merrill Nisker), Philipp Fussenegger and Judy Landkammer’s rousing and rollicking documentary was shot during “The Teaches of Peaches Anniversary Tour” in 2022. This inspirational and supremely hopeful deep dive into the life and ethos of a counter cultural, LGBTQIA+ icon is a must for fans and soon-to-be-fans alike.

Pavements
October 24 at Chinese 1
Feat. Q&A with director and writer Alex Ross Perry

Alex Ross Perry’s imaginative documentary about the ‘90s-era indie rock band Pavement follows a dreamlike logic: this band should have been bigger back in the day, so why not create a world where they were, with a museum show, biopic and a jukebox musical too? Perry’s three-sided record of a film glides between documentary, mockumentary and dream world, an elaborate inside joke that says come on in to the viewer. It’s slanted and enchanting. Live Q&A to follow!

Check out their full lineup here. Connect with AFI’s film festival at Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.