DOC LA    Los Angeles Documentary Film Festival

DOC LA — Los Angeles Documentary Film Festival — organized by the esteemed Parajanov-Vartanov Institute, will screen and award outstanding films by students, emerging filmmakers, and established masters of American and World cinema. DOC LA furthers the mission of the Parajanov-Vartanov Institute Awards established in 2010.

​

While the festival's focus is documentary cinema, we program films of any genre (including Animation, Experimental, and Music Videos). We are also enthusiastic about strange and unclassifiable films since the institute that presents the festival is named after the renowned nonconformists Sergei Parajanov (1924-1990) and Mikhail Vartanov (1937-2009) who overcame censorship, persecution and low budgets, and earned praise for their daring point of view from many of cinema’s greatest luminaries, such as Godard, Coppola and Tarkovsky, and inspired the likes of Madonna and Lady Gaga.

​

DOC LA programmer is their disciple and UCLA alum Martiros M. Vartanov who served as a juror and curator at festivals in Los Angeles, Amsterdam and Busan, and worked on the restoration of the masterpiece The Color of Pomegranates selected for Festival de Cannes. The institute's and the festival's awardees include Oscar ® winners Martin Scorsese, Emma Thompson, Cate Blanchett, and Jeff Bridges, Pulitzer Prize-winning author William Saroyan, French cinema icon Jean Vigo, as well as Usher, Angela Bassett, Emilio Rivera, Mark Ruffalo, Werner Herzog, and Grammy-winning rock band System Of A Down.