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Los Angeles Filmforum presents Teddy Bears and Little Friends: The films of “Nanny" Lynn Ochberg

An internet mystery solved at last.

Thirty years ago, VHS tapes containing striking Commodore Amiga animations started showing up at parties, micro cinemas, and living rooms across the country. Each copy was made to satisfy the audience's thirst for more of these narratively diverse films showcasing fairy tales, dinosaurs, consumption, play, politics, and even the Bosnian War. Those holding their tapes were left hungry in their pursuit of figuring out the true identity of its creator, Nanny Lynn. In the late 2010s, renewed interest led to the discovery of Lynn Ochberg, an Octogenarian Grandmother living in Florida whose oeuvre of animated wonders was created for her grandchildren.

Ochberg's work contains a legato sincerity with a patient narration of the artist herself grounding each work. Her films evoke being wrapped in the crock of her arms, worlds unfolding with hums, both human and analog. Ochberg's films featured her grandchildren, rendered in her surreal, digital realism, alongside figures from her family's life, including neighbors, doctors, and close friends. She is cited as a direct inspiration by a generation of animators including Paperrad. While the films themselves were never meant for widespread consumption, Lynn is delighted by the recent interest and ongoing restoration of her work.

Filmforum is excited to showcase a program of Lynn Ochberg's animated films. Following the program, there will be a Q&A with Ochberg and animator James Thacher. Thacher was instrumental in discovering Nanny Lynn's true identity and works with Ochberg to preserve and distribute her work.

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Flyer by Victoria Vincent

Los Angeles Filmforum presents Nothing bad will ever happen again: the films of Victoria Vincent

2200 Arts & Archives, Los Angeles, California

A fever dream stitched together from hyperpop absurdism, DIY grit, and existential dread, Victoria Vincent’s films paint a world where the distant horizon line never gets any closer, and the only certainty is drinking alone at a curved bar. Dogs wear masks, but so does everyone else. Twins blur into one another, mirroring our fractured digital selves, caught between internet personas and the crushing weight of reality. Soundscapes swing between punchy sardonic humor and smooth, radio-friendly yacht rock, a disorienting mix of self-aware irony and sincerity. Jazz scores breakdown, Kafkaesque systems loom. Everything cycles, everything repeats. Rough-edged animation and MP4-era editing create an unsettling intimacy—like watching something on Live Leak right before the feed cuts. Yet, in the haze of self-harm, drug use, and agoraphobia, there’s a flicker of connection—friendship, however messy, however fleeting. And maybe, just maybe, hope.

Victoria Vincent, known online as Vewn, has been animating and posting for over a decade, drawing over 1.5 million subscribers into her ever-evolving distortions. Though digital, her work carries the earthy luster of the hand-drawn, with tablet-hewn crosshatches that feel like visible thumbprints on the screen. The edges aren’t just present—they’re highlighted, both visually and thematically. Her worlds are layered with blink-and-you’ll-miss-it background jokes, where every flyer, sign, and screengrab is weighted with intent. Anxiety pulses through every jittery, shifting line, her signature boils keeping characters in a state of perpetual unease—always trembling, always on the edge of implosion. Echoing the raw instability of Danny Antonucci, Brendon Small, and Pritt Pärn, her boiling lines keep every frame restless, as if the world itself is nervously exhaling, seconds from collapse.

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Los Angeles Filmforum presents Smears, Tears, and Thumbprints: Queer Coming of Age

2200 Arts & Archives, Los Angeles, California

What does it mean to have a body? Why does the concrete feel so soft under my fingers? Animation is uniquely positioned to examine the intangible and constructed. From here, above the peg bar, artists sketch a pysche imagined and a world redeemed.

The films in this programs contains a colorful, earnest languidity through a queer lens exploring family, the body, and the ebbings of the afternoon tide.

Utilizing the inherent reflexivity of animation, these films create spaces to inhabit both comfort and consolation. Featuring a variety of animation techniques, these films each live in different sections of the mind and body united in their explorations of comfort, hope, and satisfaction. 

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Los Angeles Filmforum presents Wraiths and Reveries

2200 Arts & Archives, Los Angeles, California

The thickness of late summer melts everything. Thawing colors, forms, and textures coalesce into one. Even our minds feel hazy and everything is harder to parse out. To dream, to be certain. An unsteady foot crosses a mountain, a dimly lit doll sits in an alcove, and a wall of rock seems to have sprung up around you. Wraiths linger in the quiet corners of our reveries, where we become kings in lands of endless possibilities.

Showcasing a variety of techniques, this program features films that feel like an oddly familiar hand slipping into yours. Seeping impasto fog meets ragged digital edges, creating a visual symphony that is both jarring and comforting. These films explore the boundaries of the erotic, the mundane, and the sacred, weaving them together into a tapestry of sensory experiences. Each piece invites you to lose yourself in its dreamlike narrative, where the line between reality and imagination fades, and you are left to navigate the shifting landscapes of your own perception.

Join us for a cinematic journey through the melting pot of late summer's essence, where the familiar becomes strange and the strange becomes familiar. Embrace the blur, the uncertainty, and the beauty of these films as we melt together.

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Los Angeles Filmforum presents Comfort Behavior

Digital

A sunburn across the bridge of your nose. A warm belly on a cold rock. Do you remember what it was like to run so fast that you can hear your heart beating in your head? An examination of texture, the internal, and the floating bits on the tops of your eyes. These films showcase the idea of play, pain, and the memory of an outside world materially experienced, not unlike dairy cows experiencing grass for the first time in a year.

Sunning is considered a comfort behavior in many animals. A tactile experience of facing the sun to warm oneself raises body temperature and reduces heart rate. After a prolonged period of languid gestures, we need to bask to remember. This program showcases films that warm up our bodies, hearts, and minds slowly re-acclimatizing to the world from outside. Using light, animation, and emotional memories, these filmmakers explore the tangible possibilities of a world best experienced through touch.

This program presents the work of filmmakers and artists Anouk De Clercq and Tom Callemin, Elena Duque, Anu-Laura Tuttelberg, Timoteo Guillem, Josh Cloud, and Nazlı Dinçel.

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