The Brief

The Los Feliz 3, a vintage triplex movie theater in the heart of the L.A. neighborhood, feels like a time machine. Just below Griffith Park, tucked away near the indie bookstore Skylight Books, the old Hollywood bar The Dresden, and the classic diner House of Pies, it’s an almost idyllic conception of a classic moviegoing experience.

As Sarah Winshall, independent film producer and co-founder of the L.A. Festival of Movies puts it: “This is nice. This is L.A.”

It’s the kind of outing that feels rare in a time when movie theaters of all sizes are struggling nationwide. And the theater itself is an experience. Of the three darling screens inside — one a red velvet shoebox, one with a groovy '70s pastel mural of shooting stars —it's Cinema 1, modern black with green lighting that holds the regular, popular screenings of the American Cinematheque.

The Los Feliz 3 was once an art house theater run by the Laemmle family (yes, that Laemmle) and now it's owned by Vintage Cinemas. It, like all theaters, struggled during the pandemic, but it was able to bounce back with some outside help.

Three theaters, 1,500 screenings

In 2021, the Los Feliz 3 marquee lit back up on Vermont Avenue, featuring the black and yellow logo of the American Cinematheque.

The marquee of the Los Feliz 3 in 2021 after the American Cinematheque began screening there.

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Jared Cowan

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The American Cinematheque, or AC, is a nonprofit organization founded in the 1980s by filmmaker Sydney Pollack alongside Gart Essert and Gary Abrams as a “year round film festival.” With a monumental 1,500 screenings a year and programming ranging from director retrospectives, Y2K favorites and art-house classics alongside special guests and Q&As, the AC has certainly lived up to that promise over the last 40 years. (Yes, this year is the 40th anniversary of the AC’s founding.)

In addition to the Los Feliz 3, the AC also screens films in two other iconic venues that are crucial parts of L.A.’s history: The Aero in Santa Monica and The Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood.

As artistic director Grant Moninger puts it: “We like to think of all of our theaters as different auditoriums and the roads and streets and freeways are lobbies.” He says, “You can go to each auditorium and experience the American Cinematheque rather than it happening all in one building.”

The Egyptian

For years, the AC didn’t have a permanent home, screening films in various theaters and studios around town, until damage from the Northridge earthquake left a historic venue empty and created an opportunity.

The Egyptian Theatre Hollywood post-renovation.

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Kevin Estrada

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Netflix

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In 1996, “the city of Los Angeles sold the Egyptian Theatre to the American Cinematheque for $1,” says Moninger, ushering in the next era of the AC. While Netflix currently owns the Egyptian, the AC has a 100-year lease to screen in the building on weekends.

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#281: Revival House says goodbye for now with a look at one of the biggest programming groups in town, the American Cinematheque. Celebrating their 40th anniversary this year, screening 1,500 movies a year in three iconic theaters across Los Angeles, the American Cinematheque has a movie for everybody, every night of the week. Check out our deep dive into the Egyptian Theatre's history and reopening here.

Revival House: American Cinematheque's Year-Round Film Fest

#281: Revival House says goodbye for now with a look at one of the biggest programming groups in town, the American Cinematheque. Celebrating their 40th anniversary this year, screening 1,500 movies a year in three iconic theaters across Los Angeles, the American Cinematheque has a movie for everybody, every night of the week. Check out our deep dive into the Egyptian Theatre's history and reopening here.

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The Aero

Over in Santa Monica, the AC has leased the Aero Theatre since the early 2000s. The Aero, so named for its aircraft industry ties, has been operating as a movie theater since WWII.

Initially opened as part of the development from the Douglas Aircraft Company in Santa Monica, The Aero ran films late into the night for factory workers, according to professor and historian Ross Melnick. “When you would come off of your shift at 4 a.m. and you were too wired to go to sleep, you could go to the movies."

As the aircraft industry faded, the business of movies picked up, and Santa Monica’s demographics started shifting. It wasn’t a surprise that by the early 2000s, people wanted a movie theater that “mimicked some of the love the Egyptian was getting on the other side of town,” says Melnick.

The Aero’s become a great space on the west side for events and director Q&As without having to “drive all the way from Santa Monica to Hollywood at 6 o'clock at night,” because according to Melnick, “it’d be easier if you go to the moon.”

The Criterion Closet takes discs of the distributor's classic film collection to fans.

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Screenshot, The Criterion Collection

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After a million-dollar renovation by the AC, the Aero reopened in 2005 and often sells out special events and Q&As in “about 14 seconds,” Melnick says. Now with three great venues under their belt, Moninger says the AC is “looking for more.”

The programmers

Like other theaters and programming groups, the AC shut down during the pandemic. Having just sold the Egyptian to Netflix and with the new revenue and time to build out the brand, Moninger says “we decided we were going to come out of the pandemic really hard.”

That meant setting goals like screening 1,000 movies a year and convincing the board to lease the Los Feliz 3 screen. And achieving those goals meant working with a crack team of film programmers.

Moninger says the key was asking, “What if we had a lot of great young programmers with tons of interests that are super dynamic, that can bring in new films, but that know and have a passion about all kinds of films?”

The American Cinematheque hired Imani Davis and Cindy Flores, who joined senior film programmer Chris Lemaire. Together, their work across all three theaters — running new film series alongside regular programming and events like Beyond Fest — has blown the AC's initial 1,000 screenings a year goal out of the water.

Grant Moninger and Michael Giacchino speak onstage at the Beyond Fest Special Screening of Marvel Studios' "Werewolf by Night" on Oct. 5, 2022 in Santa Monica.

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Charley Gallay

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Getty Images

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In addition to loving early 2000s films, Davis says she finds herself focusing on up and coming filmmakers. “I keep an eye out for directorial debuts, and then short filmmakers and local filmmakers,” she says.

It was a focus she knew she wanted to bring to the AC and, last year, she launched PROOF, a proof of concept short film festival that’s coming back for its second year.

“There was a want to do more with short films and emerging talent," she says, "so that’s been special, to have this place where we can uplift and give a platform to people who are up and coming."

Cindy Flores’ love of nonfiction brought a nine-day documentary takeover of all three theaters to the AC. This Is Not A Fiction meant that, as Flores says, “you are gonna go see a documentary and you’re gonna look at this lineup and there is gonna be something in there for you.”

Imani Davis describes the three theaters as each having their own distinct vibe — “there’s something classic” about a film at the Aero, and The Egyptian lets people see a film on “the biggest screen possible” — and that also leads to opportunities for subversion, like screening Jackass in a 100-year-old movie palace during a documentary film fest.

Lemaire heads up the annual festival Bleak Week (that’s a week of films chock-full of despair and bleak storylines, chased with Paddington and Paddington 2), which this year is expanding to the East Coast with showings at the Paris in New York City. Lemaire says the three L.A. venues really allow for an “eclectic idea about what film programming can be.”

But at the end of the day, AC screenings are about an audience and an experience.

“It's cinema. It's the big screen. It's a communal experience that should be shared,” Moninger says. “Art films and commercial films should all succeed next to each other and people should go to the movies and have a great time.”

Check out Bleak Week at the American Cinematheque starting on June 1. You can find the American Cinematheque's whole programming calendar here.

California clocked its second-worst snowpack on record Wednesday, a potentially troubling signal ahead for fire season.

It’s an alarming end to a winter that saw abnormally dry conditions briefly wiped from California’s drought map in January, for the first time in a quarter-century.

Though precipitation to date has been near average, much of it fell as rain rather than snow. Then March’s record-breaking heat melted most of the snow that remains. The state’s major reservoirs are nevertheless brimming above historic averages and are flirting with capacity, and a smattering of snow, rain and thunderstorms are dousing last month’s heat wave.

But experts now warn that California’s case of the missing snowpack could herald an early fire season in the mountains.

On Wednesday, state engineers conducting the symbolic April 1 snowpack measurement at Phillips Station south of Lake Tahoe found no measurable snow in patches of white dotting the grassy field.

“I want to welcome you call to probably one of the quickest snow surveys we’ve had — maybe one where people could actually use an umbrella,” joked Karla Nemeth, director of the California Department of Water Resources. “We’re getting a lot of questions about are we heading into a hydrologic drought? The answer is, I don’t know.”

State data reports that California’s snowpack is closing out the season at an alarming 18% of average statewide, and an even more abysmal 6% of average in the northern mountains that feed California’s major reservoirs.

Only the extreme drought year of 2015 beat this year’s snowpack for the worst on record, measuring in at just 5% of average on April 1st, when the snow historically is at its deepest.

“I think everyone's anticipating that it will be a long, busy fire season,” said Lenya Quinn-Davidson, director of the UC Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources Fire Network.

“Without a snowpack, and with an early spring, it just means that there’s much more time for something like that to happen.”

‘It’s pretty bizarre up here’ 

In the city of South Lake Tahoe, which survived the massive Caldor Fire in the fall of 2021 without losing any structures, fire chief Jim Drennan said his department is already ramping up prevention efforts.

“It's pretty bizarre up here right now. It really seems like June conditions more than March,” Drennan said. “People are already turning the sprinklers on for their lawns.”

Without more precipitation, an early spring may complicate prescribed burning efforts. But Drennan said fire agencies in the Tahoe basin can start mechanically clearing fuels from forest areas earlier than usual.

“That means we can get more work done,” he said.

It also means homeowners need to start hardening their homes now, said Martin Goldberg, battalion chief and fuels management officer for the Lake Valley Fire Protection District, which protects unincorporated communities in the Lake Tahoe Basin’s south shore.

Goldberg urges residents to scour their yards for burnable materials, create defensible space and reach out to local fire departments with questions. The risks are widespread — from firewood, wooden fences, gas cans, plants, pine needles — even lawn furniture stacked against a house.

“In years past, I wouldn't even think of raking and clearing until May,” Goldberg said. “But my yard's completely cleared of snowpack, and it has been for a couple weeks now.”

‘A haystack fire’

Battalion chief David Acuña, a spokesperson for Cal Fire, said fire season is shaped by more than just one year’s snowpack.

Climate change has been remaking California’s fire seasons into fire years. And California’s recent average to abundant water years have fueled what Acuña called “bumper crops of vegetation and brush.”

“Most of California is like a haystack. And if you’ve ever seen a haystack fire, they burn very intensely because there's layers of fuel,” Acuña said.

Like Quinn-Davidson, Acuña wasn’t ready to make specific predictions about fires to come.

But John Abatzoglou, a professor of climatology at UC Merced, said the temperatures and snowpack conditions this year offer a glimpse of California in the latter decades of this century, as fossil fuel use continues to drive global temperatures higher.

How this year’s fires will play out will depend on when, where and how wind, heat, fuel and ignitions combine. But it foreshadows the consequences of a warmer California for water and fire under climate change.

“This,” Abatzoglou said, “is yet another stress test for the future in the state.”

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

Thousands of immigrants who are lawfully in California are set to lose their food assistance benefits, known as CalFresh, starting this month.

The new restrictions stem from H.R. 1 — also known as the “Big Beautiful Bill” — which Congress passed last year.

The changes remove eligibility for certain noncitizens, including people with refugee status and victims of trafficking. It also applies to immigrants from Iraq and Afghanistan who have special immigrant visas for helping the U.S. government overseas.

 ”These are folks … many of whom have large families that we have a commitment to as a country because we welcomed them and invited them here to find a place of refuge,” said Cambria Tortorelli, president of the International Institute of Los Angeles, a refugee resettlement agency. “They’re authorized to work and they’ve been brought here by the U.S. government.”

The federal spending bill, H.R. 1, made sweeping cuts to social safety net programs, including food assistance and Medicaid. In signing the bill, President Donald Trump said the changes were delivering on his campaign promises of “America first.”

Officials estimate 23,000 people in Los Angeles County will be affected. The state estimates about 72,000 immigrants with lawful presence will be affected across California.

CalFresh is the state’s version of the federally funded Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. Undocumented immigrants have not been eligible to receive CalFresh benefits.

State officials say noncitizens who are currently receiving benefits will continue to get them until it’s time to renew their benefits — adding that people might be able to receive benefits again if their legal status changes to lawful permanent residents.

Who the changes apply to:

• Asylees
• Refugees
• Parolees (unless they are Cuban and Haitian entrants)
• Individuals with deportation or removal withheld
• Conditional entrants
• Victims of trafficking
• Battered noncitizens
• Iraqi or Afghan with special immigrant visas (SIV) who are not lawful permanent residents (LPR)
• Certain Afghan Nationals granted parole between July 31, 2021, and Sept. 30, 2023
• Certain Ukrainian Nationals granted parole between Feb. 24, 2022, and Sep. 30, 2024

Nearly every student in the California State University system has used artificial intelligence tools, but most don’t trust the results, are worried about how AI will affect their future job security and want more say in systemwide AI policy.

That’s according to results of a 2025 survey of more than 80,000 students enrolled at CSU’s 22 campuses, plus faculty and staff — the largest and most comprehensive study of how higher education students and instructors perceive artificial intelligence.

Nationwide, university faculty struggle to reconcile the learning benefits of AI — hailed as a “transformative tool” for providing tutoring and personalized support to students — and the risks that students will depend on AI agents to do their thinking for them and, very possibly, get the wrong information. Educators want a say in how and which AI tools are used. Students across the CSU system want to be included in those discussions.

Some professors teach students how to use AI and encourage students to use it, while others forbid its use in the classroom, said Katie Karroum, vice president of systemwide affairs for the Cal State Student Association, representing more than 470,000 students.

“Both of these things are allowed to coexist right now without a policy,” she said.

Karroum said that faculty practices are too varied and that what students need are consistent and transparent rules developed in collaboration with students. “There are going to be students who are graduating with AI literacy and some that graduate without AI literacy.”

In February 2025, the CSU system announced an initiative to adopt AI technologies and an agreement with OpenAI to make ChatGPT available throughout the system. The system-wide survey released Wednesday confirms that ChatGPT is the most used AI tool across CSUs. The system will also work with Adobe, Google, IBM, Intel, LinkedIn, Microsoft and NVIDIA.

Campus leaders say the survey and accompanying dashboard provide much needed data on how the system continues to integrate AI into instruction and assessment.

“We need to have data to make data-informed decisions instead of just going by anecdote,” said Elisa Sobo, a professor of anthropology at San Diego State who was involved in interpreting the survey’s findings. “We have data that show high use, but we also have high levels of concern, very valid concern, to help people be responsible when they use it.”

Faculty at San Diego State designed the survey, which received more than 94,000 responses from students, faculty and staff. Among all responding CSU students, 95% reported using an AI tool; 84% said they used ChatGPT and 82% worry that AI will negatively impact their future job security. Others worry that they won’t be competitive if they don’t understand AI well enough.

“Even though I don’t want to use it, I HAVE TO!” wrote a computer science major. “Because if I don’t, then I’ll be left behind, and that is the last thing someone would want in this stupid job market.”

Faculty are divided about the impact of AI on teaching and research. Just over 55% reported a positive benefit, while 52% said AI has had a negative impact so far.

San Diego State conducted its first campuswide survey in 2023 in response to complaints from students about inconsistent rules about AI use in courses, said James Frazee, vice president for information technology at the campus.

“Students are facing this patchwork of expectations even within the same course taught by different instructors,” Frazee said. In one introductory course, the professor might encourage students to use AI, but another professor teaching the same course might forbid it, he said. “It was a hot mess.”

In that 2023 survey, one student made this request: “Please just tell us what to do and be clear about it.”

Following that survey, the San Diego State Academic Senate approved guidelines for the use of generative AI in instruction and assessments. In 2025, the Senate made it mandatory that faculty include language about AI use in course syllabi.

“It doesn’t say what your disposition has to be, whether it’s pro or con,” Frazee said. “It just says you have to be clear about your expectations. Without the 2023 survey data, that never would have happened.”

According to the 2025 systemwide survey, only 68% of teaching faculty include language about AI use in their syllabi.

Sobo and other faculty who helped develop the 2025 survey hope other CSU campuses will find the data helpful in informing policies about AI use. The dashboard allows users to search for specific campus and discipline data and view student responses by demographic group.

The 2025 survey shows that first-generation students are more interested in formal AI training and that Black, Hispanic and Latino students are more interested than white students. At San Diego State, students are required to earn a micro-credential in AI use during their first year — another change that was made after the 2023 survey.

Students in this year’s survey said they want training that will be relevant to their careers. “I want to learn AI tools that are actually used in my industry, not just generic chatbots,” a mechanical engineering student responded. “Show me what engineers are actually doing with AI on the job.”

The California Faculty Association, which represents about 29,000 educators in the CSU system, said in a February statement that faculty should be included in future systemwide decisions about AI, including whether the contract with OpenAI should be renewed in July.

“CFA members continue to advocate for ethical and enforceable safeguards governing the use of artificial intelligence,” the CFA said in the statement, asking for “protections for using or refusing to use the technology, professional development resources to adapt pedagogy to incorporate the technology, and further protections for faculty intellectual property.”