Masks and vaccinations are recommended. Plan your visit
Established in 1983, Cinema Arts at the Exploratorium has defied expectations by focusing on artist-made and independent cinema at the crossroads of art and science.
Throughout 2023, the Exploratorium will present a special series of curated screenings, public events, and immersive filmmaking experiences celebrating the 40th Anniversary of Cinema Arts. The series will acknowledge Cinema Arts’ history, pay tribute to the accomplished filmmakers who over the decades helped ferment the program’s innovative direction, and showcase and amplify the voices and visions of a new generation of curators and emerging interdisciplinary/media artists.
Approaching movies as an active experience, Cinema Arts sees the projection screen as a portal to investigation. We engage with filmmakers who create works that inspire the imagination and instigate conversation. Animation, documentary, poetic observations, and abstract visuals serve a broad spectrum of curious audiences while blending the methods and aesthetics of artists and scientists. Through our programming, we create a space for deep observation and provide an opportunity for visitors to explore compelling people, places, and ideas that extend through the museum and beyond.
Help us celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Exploratorium’s groundbreaking Cinema Arts program.
Our collection of films and events offer a rich resource for public audiences, and also provide an important research collection for both our teaching programs and exhibit development teams.
Thursday, April 6, 2023 • 6:00–10:00 p.m.
Spring is in swing and new life is popping up everywhere. Tonight, be inspired by flora in our ¡Plantásticas! exhibition and enjoy a life-giving cabaret of art and science with the Gold Beams Social Club.
Saturday, April 8, 2023 • 1:00 and 3:00 p.m. Screenings | 2:00 p.m. Plant Printmaking Workshop
Enter a whimsical world of flowers brought to life through the cinematic lens. In between screenings, get hands on with plants by creating a plant print using screen-printing techniques.
Thursday, April 20, 2023 • 6:00–10:00 p.m.
Celebrate Earth Day as we honor our landscape’s original care keepers and explore the complex bonds that Indigenous communities have with the land that gave birth to them.
Thursday, March 9, 2023 • 6:00–10:00 p.m.
Where do the boundaries between the built and natural worlds blur? Explore how we can meaningfully integrate them into one ecology, and enjoy a special screening of the Oscar-nominated documentary All That Breathes.
Thursday, March 2, 2023 • 6:00–10:00 p.m.
The passive act of watching turns to listening, peering, touching, and interacting as Exploratorium Cinema Arts takes over museum spaces to provide experiences created by artists and filmmakers from the Bay Area and beyond.
Saturday, January 28, 2023 • 1:00 and 3:00 p.m.
Animated and abstract short films shimmer in the theater’s darkness to conjure luminous worlds, both kinetic and contemplative.
Saturday, January 14, 2023 • 1:00 and 3:00 p.m.
Animated and abstract short films shimmer in the theater’s darkness to conjure luminous worlds, both kinetic and contemplative.
Saturday, December 10, 2022 • 1:00 and 3:00 p.m.
Animated and abstract short films shimmer in the theater’s darkness to conjure luminous worlds, both kinetic and contemplative.
Saturday, December 3, 2022 • 1:00 and 3:00 p.m.
Animated and abstract short films shimmer in the theater’s darkness to conjure luminous worlds, both kinetic and contemplative.
Saturday, November 19, 2022 • 1:00 and 3:00 p.m.
Animated and abstract short films shimmer in the theater’s darkness to conjure luminous worlds, both kinetic and contemplative.
Thursday, November 17, 2022–Sunday, January 29, 2023
The dimmed atmosphere of the microcinema sets the perfect scene to luxuriate in these abstract, transportive, and luminescent motion pictures.
Saturday, September 3, 2022 • 1:00 and 3:00 p.m.
An array of animated and kinetic short films explore the inventive ways that amateurs, artists, and tinkerers manipulate the moving image in surprising and/or captivating ways.
Tuesday, August 9–Sunday, August 14, 2022
Create your own form of live cinema in an installation designed by Emmy Award–winning Manual Cinema.
Saturday, July 30, 2022 • 11:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m.
Sunday, July 31, 2022 • 2:00 p.m.
Join us for the premiere of Facing West Shadows: Phantasmagoria, a live, multimedia, shadow-theater opera inspired by the Brothers Grimm fairy tale “The Robber Bridegroom.”
Saturday, July 16, 2022 • 1:00 p.m. PT
In celebration of our summer exhibition The Art of Tinkering, we are pleased to be joined by filmmaker Mark Decena for the Bay Area theatrical premiere Me & My Robot, which documents the 2018 World Robot Olympiad in Thailand.