Los Angeles County Museum of Art cancels its weekend film program

For four decades, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art has fed film aficionados a steady diet of movie classics -- retrospectives that included works from Roman Polanski, Cary Grant, Ernst Lubitsch and, in a current series, James Mason. But the museum's weekend film program was losing both money and its audience, and LACMA said Tuesday that it was pulling the plug on its cinematic centerpiece.

Before there were local film festivals nearly every week and mass merchants such as Target stocking art-house hits like "A Room With a View" and "Gosford Park" on their DVD shelves, LACMA's series was one of the few places area movie lovers could find Hollywood classics and foreign-language standouts.

Screenings often included appearances by and conversations with distinguished filmmakers and legendary actors and actresses.

The museum said that it was not abandoning its commitment to films and filmmakers but instead wanted to rethink its approach to the art form, and would look for potential donors to underwrite an unspecified future film program that is curated like any other part of the museum's exhibits.

"It's not that people don't love film here, but it's hard," said Michael Govan, the museum's director. "We are getting diminishing audiences. This is a good time, since we are shrinking, to spend time thinking and rethinking. We do have to stem our losses."

Govan did not say when the museum's revamped film programming would debut but suggested there could be some next spring. The last weekend screening, "The Classic Films of Alain Resnais," will be held Oct. 2 to 17.

Govan said that during the interim, LACMA's film offerings would be limited to "special programs related to exhibitions."

LACMA's action comes while movies aimed at discriminating audiences are struggling. At the same time, theaters presumably dedicated to highbrow productions are exhibiting popcorn titles instead.

In its Aero Theatre in Santa Monica and Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood, the American Cinematheque is showing a scant handful of movie masterpieces ("The Graduate," "Breathless") alongside a flood of B-movies and vintage blockbusters; the August schedule includes "Beavis and Butt-Head Do America."

"It comes as a real shock," Shannon Kelley, the head of programming at UCLA's Film and Television Archive, said of LACMA's decision. "I've lived in Los Angeles for 20 years and part of the constellation of film culture has been LACMA with its film program. They have been a real leader in terms of framing film in the film community as modern art and a global art."