Stage & Screen
Presenting an exciting selection of filmed performances ranging from one-of-a-kind concerts to stage productions from the National Theatre.
Upcoming engagements will be announced on an ongoing basis.
AFI Silver After Dark
All tickets just $8!
Join us for a monthly late-night series showcasing classic, soon-to-be classic and should-be-classic horror, sci-fi, action, fantasy and cross-genre gems hand-picked by the AFI Silver programming team. We promise deep cuts — sometimes literally — underrated classics, sneak peeks, new restorations and all-time favorites up on the big screen, the way late-night movies are meant to be seen!
Monthly selections will be announced on an ongoing basis.
NEW: Pick up our new After Dark Punch Card at the Silver Box Office! Catch six After Dark flicks and your next one is on us.
Recent Restorations
April 24–July 9
This series rounds up a wide range of recent digital restorations of screen classics. Here is your chance to see them back on the big screen and looking better than they have in years, thanks to the efforts of dedicated film archivists and specialty distributors.
Rob Reiner Remembered
April 24–July 9
A beloved actor, writer, director, producer and activist, Rob Reiner (1947–2025) broke the Hollywood mold, deftly navigating the transition from television actor to acclaimed studio filmmaker with an enviable track record of iconic hits. Beginning with his riotous debut, THIS IS SPINAL TAP, his films would go on to define entire genres, from the now-often-imitated mockumentary to the modern romantic comedy with WHEN HARRY MET SALLY… Reiner dominated the cinematic landscape of the ‘80s with quintessential classics STAND BY ME and THE PRINCESS BRIDE before turning to more politically minded fare in the ‘90s with A FEW GOOD MEN and THE AMERICAN PRESIDENT. Even as he focused on directing and producing via his company Castle Rock, he still lit up the screen as an actor, with a standout being his performance as Leonardo DiCaprio’s beleaguered father in Martin Scorsese’s THE WOLF OF WALL STREET. With this series, the AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center pays tribute to the legendary filmmaker and actor whose impact on our global cinematic vocabulary “goes to 11."
Andrzej Wajda Centennial
April 24–June 29
To mark the centennial of Polish filmmaker Andrzej Wajda (1926–2016) — and the “Year of Andrzej Wajda” in Poland — AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center celebrates his visionary work with a selection of nine films from across his more than six-decade career. Over the course of more than 40 features, Wajda became one of cinema’s most vital chroniclers of Polish history, while also exploring universal themes — political repression, resistance and the role of artists in speaking truth to power — that saw the impact of his work expand beyond Poland to influence filmmakers like Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese. Wajda captured audiences across the globe, receiving a Palme d’Or and honorary awards from the Oscars®, the Venice Film Festival and the Berlinale. Beginning with Wajda’s landmark War Trilogy — A GENERATION (1955), KANAL (1957) and ASHES AND DIAMONDS (1958) — this series also includes the incisive critiques of state power MAN OF MARBLE (1977) and MAN OF IRON (1981), as well as lesser-known gems, such as the Nouvelle Vague-inspired INNOCENT SORCERERS (1960), and later works, including KORCZAK (1990) and AFTERIMAGE (2016), his final film. Additional films will be presented at the National Gallery of Art later this year.
Presented in collaboration with the Embassy of the Republic of Poland in Washington, DC, the Wajda Film Center and the National Gallery of Art.
Special thanks to DI Factory, Jędrzej Sabliński and Jessica Rosner.
Pride on Screen
May 29–June 30
As Pride celebrations in Washington, DC, enter their 51st year, the AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center proudly presents a series of 10 films in recognition and acceptance of the LGBTQ+ community. Pride on Screen offers a globe-spanning tour of LGBTQ+ history, from recent releases like A USEFUL GHOST, a Thai romance about a haunted vacuum cleaner, and S&M biker romantic drama PILLION to a new restoration of radical Brazilian drag-queen crime film THE DEVIL QUEEN and anniversary celebrations of THE HANDMAIDEN, Park Chan-wook’s effortlessly cool lesbian thriller, and Barry Jenkins’ Best Picture–winning MOONLIGHT. Notable presentations include a screening of FUCKTOYS with filmmaker and star Annapurna Sriram and AFI Silver After Dark shows of THE SERPENT’S SKIN.
Raiders of the Lost Art: Posters of Drew Struzan
July 3–September 3
Drew Struzan (1947–2025) was a renowned artist known for designing some of the most iconic movie posters of all time, from THE MUPPET MOVIE to THE THING, the first four Indiana Jones films, BLADE RUNNER, COMING TO AMERICA and over 150 more. Struzan’s easily distinguishable illustrations act as windows into other worlds, capturing the magic evoked by the films. Steven Spielberg, a frequent collaborator, remarked, “His posters made many of our movies into destinations…and the memory of those movies and the age we were when we saw them always comes flashing back just by glancing at his iconic photorealistic imagery. In his own invented style, nobody drew like Drew.” With this series, AFI Silver celebrates this inimitable artist whose work was recognized by numerous awards — a Saturn Award, Inkpot Award, Saul Bass Award and more — but also adorns the shelves and walls of countless film fans around the world.
Play Ball! The American Pastime
July 3–16
“Baseball is our game: the American game. I connect it with our national character,” said poet Walt Whitman about a sport one just cannot help but romanticize. “[It] belongs as much to our institutions, fits into them as significantly, as our constitutions, laws: is just as important in the sum total of our historic life.” With 2026 marking three anniversaries — the 125th of the American League, the 150th of the National League and the 250th of the United States of America itself — AFI Silver presents these four films that capture the magic and history of the great American pastime.
That's Not All, Folks: Looney Tunes Rediscovered
July 10–September 15
All tickets $8!
Back by popular demand: another selection of Warner Bros.’ classic LOONEY TUNES cartoons, including many never before screened at AFI Silver. Bugs Bunny will be joined by the whole Looney Tunes gang, including Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Sylvester, Tweety, Foghorn Leghorn, the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote, plus a variety of rare and one-shot characters. Enjoy these animation masterpieces on the big screen, back where they started.
To Infinity and Beyond: 40 Years of Pixar
July 10–November 1
$5 tickets for children 12 and under!
Over the past 40 years, animation studio Pixar has redefined the limits of computer-animated films through a combination of technical wizardry and artistic prowess. Its humble origins date back even further, to 1979, where it began as a division of Lucasfilm known as the Graphics Group, led by computer scientists Edwin Catmull and Alvy Ray Smith, before being purchased by Steve Jobs and spun off as its own entity in 1986. Armed with RenderMan — the innovative, proprietary 3D rendering software that powers all the studio’s films — and a troupe of animators that has included John Lasseter, Pete Docter, Brad Bird and Andrew Stanton, Pixar would go on to conquer Hollywood, winning 23 Academy Awards®, 11 Grammys® and numerous other accolades while earning over $17 billion at the box office. But the biggest praise this incredible studio has received is the love shown by fans young and old alike for the treasure trove of characters it has created: from lifelike toys Woody and Buzz Lightyear; cocky stock car Lightning McQueen; chef Remy the rat; forgetful fish Dory; cinephile trash compactor WALL-E; and so, so many more. AFI Silver celebrates 40 years of Pixar with a retrospective of the groundbreaking, moving and entertaining films that comprise their extraordinary legacy.
AFI Life Achievement Award: Eddie Murphy
July 10–September 14
Eddie Murphy has spent the entirety of his 45-plus-year career making audiences laugh. In 1980, at the tender age of 19, he joined the cast of SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE, revitalizing the struggling sketch show and becoming a household name in the process. Murphy soon unleashed his comic persona onto the big screen, starring in a slew of 1980s hits that include 48 HRS. (his debut), TRADING PLACES, BEVERLY HILLS COP, COMING TO AMERICA and EDDIE MURPHY RAW, the highest-grossing stand-up comedy film of all time. In later decades, Murphy would prove himself a talented children’s entertainer, notably as the voice of Mushu in MULAN and Donkey in the landmark computer-animated film SHREK. All this success has led Murphy to become one of the most commercially successful African American actors in the history of the motion-picture business and one of the industry’s top box-office performers overall. He has also received multiple accolades, including a Grammy®, an Emmy®, an Academy Award® nomination (for DREAMGIRLS), the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor and the Cecil B. DeMille Award. In celebration of his latest achievement — becoming the 51st AFI Life Achievement Award honoree — AFI Silver pays tribute to a trailblazing force in the art form of film, television and stand-up comedy with this retrospective featuring his most hilarious and acclaimed work.
Additional titles to be announced.
The Many Faces of Tatsuya Nakadai
July 10–September 9
In a career that spanned seven decades, Tatsuya Nakadai (1932–2025) worked with an elite cadre of Japanese filmmakers, including Akira Kurosawa, Masaki Kobayashi and Kinuyo Tanaka. Time and time again they called upon his versatility and depth to play a variety of characters, from naïve pacifist to furious samurai, measured detective or persecuted lover. Combine those talents with a matinée-idol face adorned with a pair of luminous eyes and it is no wonder that Nakadai become one of Japan’s greatest actors, matched only by Toshirō Mifune, whom he faced in several chanbara films such as YOJIMBO and THE SWORD OF DOOM. Nakadai’s performances were influenced by Shingeki, the Japanese “new drama” style in which he was trained, which eschewed traditional Noh and Kabuki theater and embraced Western “realism,” though later he would look to Noh for his performance as the aging Ichimonji Hidetora in Kurosawa’s RAN. To honor Nakadai’s passing, AFI Silver presents 15 films — a sliver of the over 150 credits to his name — that represent the most cherished and acclaimed roles of this Japanese titan who left in an indelible mark in the annals of cinema.
Inspired by Hollywood’s innovative CinemaScope format, Japanese studios introduced their own proprietary widescreen formats, used in several Nakadai films, including HIGH AND LOW, LOVE UNDER THE CRUCIFIX and SAMURAI REBELLION, among others.
CinemaScope Summer
July 11–Sept. 17
Introduced in 1953 by 20th Century–Fox, CinemaScope was Hollywood’s biggest bid to ensure theatrical entertainment held sway over broadcast television, which had grown rapidly since its commercial expansion in the late ‘40s. Utilizing anamorphic lenses developed by inventor Henri Chrétien that captured a wider image than previous formats, CinemaScope ensured that the motion-picture image would have a scale no tiny screen could compete with — and stories to match. As the pioneers of the format, 20th Century–Fox were the most invested in it, but in time all major American studios would make films in some version of the format (originally a 2.55:1 ratio, later standardized at 2.35:1 to include sound-on-film soundtracks). In Hollywood, the medium was utilized for spectacular genres like ancient-world epics, musicals and wide-horizon westerns, but innovative CinemaScope films also came from overseas in Italy, France, the USSR and Japan. (See our Tatsuya Nakadai restrospective for some examples.)
See more CinemaScope films in our Marilyn Monroe centennial series.
CinemaScope Summer is also part of Big Screen Summer, co-curated by AFI Silver, the National Gallery of Art, the National Museum of Asian Art and film scholar Lalitha Gopalan.
All About Marilyn: A Centennial Celebration
July 24–September 15
Born on June 1, 1926 as Norma Jeane Mortensen, Marilyn Monroe was an outsized pop culture figure whose glamorous life — onscreen and off — is the stuff of legend. Unlike the sexy, dim-witted blondes she portrayed in many of her movies, in reality Monroe was a smart, shrewd actress who took her craft seriously, founding her own production company and studying method acting under Lee Strasberg. She was an artist through and through, and although her career lasted just under 15 years, Monroe left an unforgettable mark on Hollywood that still has not faded 100 years after her birth. To celebrate the motion picture legacy of this inimitable screen icon, AFI Silver presents a selection of her best films, tracing her rise from scene-stealing bit player to full-fledged star.
20th Century–Fox introduced CinemaScope, an innovative widescreen format, in 1953 at the height of Monroe’s career, and it was utilized in HOW TO MARRY A MILLIONARE, RIVER OF NO RETURN, THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH and BUS STOP. See our CinemaScope Summer series for additional titles shot in this format.
Mel Brooks: The 100 Year Old Man
July 24–September 10
This year, legendary comedian Mel Brooks — recipient of the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2013 — turns a whopping 100 years old, and we are celebrating with a selection of his uproarious satires and spoofs. Brooks’ influential career has spanned more than 70 years and multiple mediums. He has written for television, including for Sid Caesar on YOUR SHOW OF SHOWS and CAESAR’S HOUR — where his co-writers included Carl Reiner, Larry Gelbart, Neil Simon and Woody Allen — and on GET SMART, which Brooks created with Buck Henry. He has acted on stage and screen, as well as directed and produced films (both his own work and that of strikingly different filmmakers, such as David Lynch’s THE ELEPHANT MAN). With the enormous success of the 2001 Broadway adaptation of his film THE PRODUCERS, Brooks won three Tonys® to go with his previous awards for his work in television, film and comedy, joining an elite company of artists who have earned the top award in each of four different entertainment arts — the “EGOT” (Emmy®, Grammy®, Oscar® and Tony®).
