BAM Film

07/14/2026

"Nigerian-British filmmaker Ngozi Onwurah’s name and work rarely factor into lists and reappraisals of the best films of the 1990s. Her rarely seen, radically Afrofuturist groundbreaker “Welcome II the Terrordome” is a key entry point into her textured screen reflections on her Black Diasporic experience — and it was the first feature by a Black British woman to receive a U.K. theatrical release."

Ngozi Onwurah's Afrofuturist dystopia 'Welcome II the Terrordome' speaks even more to 2026 than it did to 1994. Watch the 2K restoration trailer.

07/13/2026

"Some titles you might know chapter and verse; others, I think, have not played in New York for at least the decade I’ve lived here. I was glad to speak with BAM’s Yasmina Tawil about Electronica, but what follows is really a discussion of programming in its finer points: when to screen and why; when you can’t screen but really want to; what attracts an audience, and how you attract the audience with something they don’t necessarily want; and how this is seemingly the one realm of cinema where people reject monetary offers."

🗞️ https://thefilmstage.com/yasmina-tawil-on-progamming-hou-hsiao-hsien-david-fincher-tom-tykwer-more-for-bams-electronica-series/
🎟️ https://tr.ee/XUc3B0

Like the old song goes: summer’s here and the time is right for dancing in the street. While the theater has its benefits as a restrictive space, and we do not encourage interrupting those to your immediate left and right with heavy movement, one appreciates, at times, the excuse to tap your feet....

07/10/2026

Contemporary Arab Cinema

"This series is a labor of love—born from a simple, urgent belief that Arab filmmakers must be the ones telling our own stories. In a moment when so much feels misread or misunderstood, these films insist on being heard in their own voice. They don’t try to explain the region as much as invite you to feel its contradictions and its quiet resilience. This year’s selection—marking the series’ 14th year and 7th at BAM—travels from Morocco to Lebanon, Egypt to Saudi Arabia, Palestine to Iraq, moving between the intimate and the expansive, the fragile and the defiant. Together, they offer something rare: a space where we can see ourselves, and be seen, on our own terms."
—Series programmer Lina Matta

Co-presented with the Jacob Burns Film Center.

🗓️ Jul 15—23
🎟️ https://tr.ee/VHCDn4
📽️:
El Sett
Cotton Queen
The President's Cake
Calle Málaga
A Matter of Life and Death
Do You Love Me
The Stories
Happy Birthday
Bouchra
Hijra
The Voice of Hind Rajab
A Sad and Beautiful World

07/10/2026

Decoder | A government agent (Bill Rice) tasked with suppressing dissent finds his efforts disrupted when a musician (F.M. Einheit of Einstürzende Neubauten) discovers that replacing the calming background music at a burger shop with abrasive industrial music can spark riots in this undersung surrealist thriller by German punk guitarist turned director Muscha. Co-starring Beat icon William S. Burroughs, Genesis P-Orridge, and Christiane Felscherinow—the actress and musician whose memoir of teenage drug use inspired the film Christiane F.—this moody feature blends New Wave visuals, industrial aesthetics, fast-food satire, real-life protest chaos, a sci-fi mindset worthy of Philip K. Dick, vaporwavey liminal space, and moments of shocking violence.

Screenings followed by a pre-recorded Q&A with writer/producer Klaus Maeck.

🗓️ Sat, Jul 11 at 6:30PM & Tue, Jul 14 at 5PM
🎟️ bam.org/film/2026/electronica-decoder

07/08/2026

A visceral investigative essay documentary from director Valerie Veatch (The Zoo, Love Child), Ghost in the Machine explores how emerging technologies reshape identity, culture, and global power. Based on conversations with 36 leading AI experts (and over 100 hours of conversation), Veatch unearths the buried history of artificial intelligence: one rooted not in neutral algorithms, but in racism, misogyny, eugenics, and entrenched systems of power that shaped the technology long before it entered our daily lives. By revealing the origins and ideologies embedded in AI’s foundations, the film confronts viewers with questions that feel not just timely, but essential.

Screening followed by a panel discussion with Angela Saini, Jessie Daniels and Mutale Nkonde, moderated by Annie Dorsen.

🗓️ Mon, Jul 13 at 7PM
🎟️ https://tr.ee/Lx6eXH

07/08/2026

Electronica ⚡ 💻 🎧 Jul 10—14

Foot-tapping, heart-pounding soundtracks anchor this series, an amalgam of films from across the globe boasting electronic-heavy soundtracks. Revel in the ecstatic techno of Run Lola Run, the gritty industrial cacophony of Fight Club, or the ‘80s synth-pop muzak of Decoder. This collection of Y2K and Cyberpunk films overflowing with dance-club debauchery and the criminal underground will surely get your heart—and mind—racing.

🎥
Run Lola Run
Go
Kontroll
Human Traffic
Millennium Mambo
Decoder
Fight Club

07/07/2026

This July at BAM 🎥 🍿 🥤

Electronica: Jul 10—14
Contemporary Arab Cinema: Jul 15—23
The Odyssey: opens Jul 17 in 35MM
Tidal Memory: Jul 24—30
Welcome II the Terrordome: Jul 31—Aug 6

🎟️ at bam.org/

06/26/2026

In conjunction with The Baffler‘s new issue “Global Texas,” BAM presents a quartet of films interrogating the forbidding terrain and complex history of America’s biggest (and perhaps most American) state. The series kicks off with a rare 35mm presentation of Saba, Texas-born Tommy Lee Jones’ directorial debut The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (2006), an unsparing interrogation of border violence and 21st century Manifest Destiny. Martin Ritt’s elegiac masterpiece Hud (1963) starring Paul Newman digs into changing generational attitudes towards agriculture, the ranching industry, and how to conduct business. John Sayles’ indie hit Lone Star (1996) invites viewers to “forget the Alamo” in a sordid tale of corruption and historical amnesia. And the late leftist maverick Robert M. Young’s turn-of-the-century thriller The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez (1982) expands an old folk song (or corrido) about the struggle of a Mexican-American farmer (Edward James Olmos) to clear his name after he’s wrongfully accused of the death of a sheriff's brother.

🗓️ Jun 30
📽️ The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada & Hud

🗓️ Jul 8
📽️ Lone Star & The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez

🎟️ https://www.bam.org/film/2026/the-baffler

06/24/2026

Calling all witchy alt kids of the 80s & 90s for this series.

👻 👹 🩸 Spectres, Devils, and Bad Blood in the Old America
🗓️ Jul 1—9
🎟️ https://www.bam.org/film/2026/spectres

America is a haunted place. Born out of the horrors of colonial genocide and chattel slavery, the brutal reality of this country’s history has manifested itself through legends, witches, demons, and hidden places. Filmmakers like Ryan Coogler (Sinners), Julie Dash (Daughters of the Dust), Charles Laughton (The Night of the Hunter), Oscar Micheaux (Body and Soul), Nicholas Ray (Wind Across the Everglades), and more have cinematically responded to this uncanny, supernatural, and eerie nature of Old America—our pre-modern reckoning with the past. From devilish preachers to psychic visions and beyond, the ghosts of our history are always present.

📽️
Eve’s Bayou
Moonrise
All That Money Can Buy (AKA The Devil and Daniel Webster)
Candyman
Abraham Lincoln
To Sleep With Anger
The Night of the Hunter
Body and Soul
Daughters of the Dust
Sinners
The Blair Witch Project
Wind Across the Everglades
Freaks

06/23/2026

Tomorrow, BAM & ArteEast present: My Father and Qaddafi.

My Father and Qaddafi takes the audience on a raw and reflective journey as Jihan pieces together a father she barely remembers, while discovering the troubled history and politics of Libya. Her journey starts from fading personal memories, leading to encounters with family members, her father’s peers, and historical archive footage.

Hoping at first to uncover the truth, Jihan instead transforms the mystery into a curiosity that brings her closer to her father and her Libyan identity. She approaches politics not as a distant subject, but as a lived experience that penetrates into every human relationship—even between a little girl and her father.

The screening is followed by a conversation with Anas El Gomati and Laila Sharif, ArteEast's NAACC fellow.

Anas El Gomati is a British-Libyan writer, political analyst, and founder of the Sadeq Institute, an independent human rights centred think tank covering Libya and the wider Middle East and North Africa. His work explores power, political violence, disappearance, and the afterlives of conflict across the region, moving between longform narrative, political analysis, and film.

Having lived and worked across cities including Tripoli, Beirut, Istanbul, Rome, Paris, and London, his writing draws on years of engagement with the political and cultural transformations that have shaped the region. His work has appeared in The Guardian, Foreign Policy, and Al Jazeera, and he has advised on film and television set in the region, including for Netflix.

Tickets available now: bam.org/film/2026/my-father-and-qaddafi