Flux Festival, a celebration of bold innovation in moving image and sound, will return to Los Angeles April 24–25, 2026. Arriving at a moment when the future of creative authorship, AI, and intellectual property is being actively contested, the festival captures an unparalleled snapshot of the global creative zeitgeist, presented through a thoughtfully curated program of talks, screenings, sensory exhibits, and performances. View the schedule and register at flux.net.
The 2026 festival takes place over two days at Blum Gallery, one of Los Angeles’s most celebrated contemporary art spaces, opened exclusively for the occasion. The gallery will be transformed, both inside and out, into a new media showcase. Day One is an invitation-only symposium — titled Copyforward — featuring a mix of invited legal experts including USC Gould School of Law Professor Doug Emhoff with artists, filmmakers, and scholars examining the implications of applying artificial intelligence to film and creative media, with a special focus on questions of AI, IP, and copyright for artists, filmmakers, and guild representatives. This builds on Mozilla Foundation’s Hollywood’s 8 Rules for AI, a blueprint developed with 91 creatives for redesigning AI deployment around creative leadership.
Day Two opens to the public with a full program of talks, sensory exhibits, and performances with artists and filmmakers experimenting at the very edge of what’s possible in moving image and sound. A sneak peek into a few of the participants includes celebrated media artists: filmmaker Andrew Thomas Huang; creative technologist Tina Tarighian; multi-disciplinary dance artist and filmmaker Sara Silkin; and artist-director duo mots (Daniela Nedovescu and Octavian Mot). A complete list of filmmakers and presentations will be announced shortly.
The 2026 Flux Festival is presented in collaboration with Mozilla Foundation, alongside AIMS (AI for Media & Storytelling), a collaboration between the School of Cinematic Arts and the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at USC, and the Center for Sports, Entertainment, Media & Technology Law (SEMT) at the USC Gould School of Law.
Meg Grey Wells and Jonathan Wells, Flux Festival co-curators, say: “Flux Festival 2026 brings together artists who are questioning, embracing, resisting, and reimagining the technologies transforming everyday life. AI is part of that story, but only one part. A lot has changed since our first festival in 2024 and that’s exactly what this year’s program reflects. What draws us to every artist in this year’s lineup is the same thing that always captivates us: a genuine reckoning, through art, with what it means to be human right now.”
Holly Willis, Flux Festival co-curator and AIMS co-director, says: “We are thrilled to partner with Flux, the Mozilla Foundation, and USC Gould’s Center for Sports, Entertainment, Media & Technology to present a powerful illustration of the creativity of filmmakers and storytellers who are using new tools.” She continues, “While we recognize the real need to scrutinize AI and its numerous impacts, we also want to explore what emerging story forms can tell us about who we are as a culture at this moment.”
Jeffrey Schneider, Flux Festival co-curator and executive director of SEMT at USC Gould School of Law, says, “AI is changing how creative work is made, but also how it’s credited, protected, and paid for. At law schools, we study how legal frameworks adapt to new technologies, but we may have never seen a paradigm shift like this. Copyforward is a chance to bring scholars together with dealmakers and creatives to discuss the new issues created by the technology but also practical, fair solutions.”
Ziyaad Bhorat, Vice President, Imagination & Strategic Growth, Mozilla Foundation, says, “Intellectual property frameworks are the hidden architecture of creative economies. They determine who participates, who benefits, and whose work becomes someone else’s asset. Most artists never see that layer until it’s already decided. AI has forced it into the open, and compressed what would have taken decades of legislative drift into a few years of litigation. Flux Festival is a bet that putting artists, lawyers, and technologists in the same room now, before the rules calcify, is one of the few interventions that actually matters.”
For more information and to purchase tickets for Flux Festival, visit: flux.net.
About Flux Festival
Flux Festival is curated by Meg Grey Wells and Jonathan Wells, directors of Flux, an LA-based creative studio, along with Holly Willis, co-director of AIMS, a research studio at USC exploring AI and storytelling. Copyforward is co-curated with Jeffrey Schneider, Executive Director of the Center for Sports, Entertainment, Media & Technology Law at USC Gould School of Law. The 2026 festival is convened in partnership with Mozilla Foundation.
About Flux
Flux, led by curators Meg Grey Wells and Jonathan Wells, champions emerging talent in film, visual art, and music through exhibitions, immersive screenings, and curated programming. Their exhibition Spectacle: The Music Video toured five museums globally. Jonathan founded ResFest, a seminal international digital film festival. Flux also presents its ongoing screening series at the Hammer Museum at UCLA.
About Mozilla Foundation
Mozilla Foundation is a non-profit building a better technology future — powered by people, open by design, fueled by imagination. We deliver people-first alternatives to today’s extractive systems. We build side by side with developers, innovators and advocates, united in the belief that a better technology future is not only possible — it’s ours to create.
About AIMS
AIMS is a collaboration between USC’s School of Cinematic Arts and the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, co-founded by Mike Ananny and Holly Willis to study the changing nature of storytelling in the context of artificial intelligence. AIMS was launched in fall 2023 through an endowment designed to ensure the arts and humanities are part of the campus-wide exploration of AI. AIMS hosts working groups, conversations, and events centered on AI, and curates the Signal + Noise gallery in the School of Cinematic Arts complex to showcase creative and critical responses to AI.
About the USC Gould Center for Sports, Entertainment, Media & Technology Law
Housed at the University of Southern California’s Gould School of Law, the Center for Sports, Entertainment, Media & Technology Law (SEMT) is an interdisciplinary initiative and a catalyst for creativity — designed to prepare students to excel and lead at the intersection of law, business, and innovation. At the heart of the Center’s mission are its core pillars: experiential learning, industry partnerships, alumni involvement, and interdisciplinary collaboration.
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