DTLAFF Information

Downtown Film Festival Los Angeles - DTLAFF - is nonprofit organization dedicated to showcasing the best in independent cinema in the heart of the world’s Entertainment & Arts Capital. Our programming reflects downtown L.A.’s vibrant new urbanism, the unique ethnic and cultural diversity of its communities and neighborhoods, and its seminal role in the early days of American cinema. Set against the historic backdrop of City Center, DFFLA serves as a beacon for movie fans and industry professionals throughout Southern California. Downtown Film Fest L.A. expands to 8 days this year and moves to the Regal Cinemas 14 multiplex at L.A. LIVE, the $2.5 billion entertainment and sports complex located in the heart of DTLA’s burgeoning South Park District. L.A. LIVE is adjacent to the L.A. Convention Center and the world-famous sports stadium Staples Center (go Clipper and Lakers), and includes the Microsoft Theater for performing arts, 20 restaurants, clubs and lounges, 5 hotels and the Grammy Museum of Music (which the Festival uses annually for its music doc screenings). Downtown Film Festival L.A. is only the major film event in DTLA. So, we thought we’d take a quick romp down memory lane to recall why the place is so special now … and then. Before there was even a place called Hollywood, downtown Los Angeles — now, “DTLA” — was the bustling center of the American film industry on the West Coast in the first two decades of the 20th c. Early movie moguls built palaces on the city’s main thoroughfare, Broadway Avenue, which today contains the largest group of vintage film theaters in the world. Later, DTLA became a back lot for the major motion picture studios in L.A., its early 20th c. architecture filling in for films set in other cities, notably New York.