Shapeshifters Cinema

About Us

SHAPESHIFTERS CINEMA is an experimental microcinema located in Oakland, CA. We provide a venue and support for contemporary artists working with experimental and artist-made film, video, sound, music and other types of mediated performance. We host regular, live events, offer workshops on experimental moving image and sound production and operate a storefront shop specializing in print publications, DVDs, sound recordings and other artist-made media.

SHAPESHIFTERS BREWERY makes a variety of small-batch, seasonal, hand-crafted beers, brewed on-site in a space right behind the cinema. These are served (to 21+) at all our events as well as some off-site events. Find out more at shapeshiftersbrewery.com

SHAPESHIFTERS CAFÉ, is right next door to our cinema! We offer freshly-made salads, sandwiches, coffee, tea, pastries and more. Open Monday-Friday 6am-2pm and every Saturday 10am-2pm. Find out more at shapeshifterscafe.com

Staff

Gilbert Guerrero - Operations Director & A/V Tech
Kathleen Quillian - Programming Director
Ellie Vanderlip - Education & Outreach Director

The Shapeshifters Membership program provides crucial, sustaining support for our small, DIY, volunteer-run organization. By joining the membership program, you become part of an engaged, diverse, creative community working in and around experimental moving image, sound and time-based art. Each level offers a range of access to members-only resources and events, discounts, comps and more. Find out more and join now!

Cinema

Gravitational Lensing: Feminist Film Dialogues is a series curated by Amy Reid and Kathleen Quillian that is dedicated to exploring the visions, voices, concerns and lineage of women, non-binary, genderqueer and trans filmmakers through public film screenings, workshops, conversations and presentations. New programs are presented monthly at Shapeshifters. Find out more.

Upcoming Programs & Events

Do-Over Music Series - Nathan Clevenger Klee Quartet + Improvised Music & Film
Thursday, April 10, 2025 (SECOND Thursday, this month)
7-9pm
Admission: $10

The Do-Over Music Series at Shapeshifters Cinema, organized by Lisa Mezzacappa and Jordan Glenn, is a monthly series of sound performances presented by a rotating cast of local luminaries and special guests. The first set features performances of creative - improvised - composed - electronic - acoustic - music. The second set opens up to a live improvised collaboration of sound and visuals made using images culled from the Shapeshifters 16mm film collection.

Set 1 (7pm): Nathan Clevenger Klee Quartet

Ben Krasner - ceramics, electronics, objects
Safa Shokrai - contrabass
Jordan Glenn - percussion
Nathan Clevenger - Fender Rhodes, percussion

Set 2 (8pm): Improvised music & film:

John Ingle - saxophones
Matt Ingalls - clarinets
with extra special guest
John Bischoff - electronics
Projections by Shapeshifters hosts Kathleen, Ellie & Gilbert

Expanded Puppet Performances - Happy Accident + Facing West Shadows
Friday, April 18, 2025
7pm
Admission: $15 (discount for members)

Portland-based duo Happy Accident (puppeteer liz HOWLS and musician/unlicensed electrician Servant Baby) joins us for a night of multimedia mayhem. Using giant puppets, found objects, sputtering lights and live performance they tease out the toxic threads that emanate from contemporary culture and weave them into a new absurdist narrative that colorfully reimagines Saturday mornings spent in front of the TV drooling over piles of synthetic material. By the end of it we are left to ask ourselves: "What kind of culture would produce something like this?"

Bay Area multimedia collaborative Facing West Shadows (Lydia Greer and Caryl Kientz) will share excerpts from some of their previously performed expanded shadow puppet shows, as well as from their newest project Lysistrata, a visual poem about political violence, greed, and historical trauma and how it can be met with creative resistance.

Gravitational Lensing, Program 7: Everyday Sublime
Saturday, April 19, 2025
7pm
Admission: $18 (discount for members)

Films that weave intricate patterns through the complex phenomena of conception, life and death while paying close attention to the mysteries that happen along the way.

Screening: Miss Jesus Fries on Grill (1973, 16mm film) by Dorothy Wiley, Maternal Filigree (1980, 16mm film) by Sandra Davis, Freya (2022, DV) by Elisa Gonzalez, Blue Hour (2023, DV) by Maya Korn and An Odd Pair (2021, 16mm & 8mm shown on DV) by Melissa Friedling.

Promotional Image from Freya by Elisa Gonzalez.

Find out more about the Gravitational Lensing: Feminist Film Dialogues series.

Breathing Life of the Snake - Thingamajigs Performance Group
Saturday, April 26, 2025
7pm
Admission: $10 (discount for members)

Offering an evening of improvisational acoustic landscapes and paracinematic interventions, Thingamajigs Performance Group (Suki O'Kane, Keith Evans, Rae Diamond & Edward Shocker) will perform from visual scores that follow the uncertainties and unexpected revelations of a life that only vaguely understands where it is going next.

Thingamajigs Performance Group (TPG) is a sound-based ensemble working co-creatively in a variety of mediums and with a wide array of local and international artists. Formed in 2008 from longtime Thingamajigs contributors, TPG continues to break new ground in performance fields such as durational performance, alternate tuning, group and open compositional formats, interdisciplinary and intercultural collaboration, and site work.

Skin, Inscribed - Contemporary Brazilian Hand-Processed Films
Curated by Tetsuya Maruyama (in person)
Tuesday, June 10, 2025
7pm
Admission: $15 (discount for members)

Curated by Tetsuya Maruyama, this program features short, contemporary works produced at artist-run film labs scattered throughout the vast and diverse geopolitical territories of Brazil. Far from commercial "movies," these films, made with a variety of experimental processes, emerge from the personal interests of each artist without expecting anything in return.

Screening: Typefilm an Armory Show (2022, 16mm) by João Reynaldo, Wild Flower (2025, 16mm double-projection) by Moira Lacowicz, untitled (three moons) (2024, 16mm double-projection) by Tetsuya Maruyama, Corpse of Water/Confined Flux (2020, 16mm) by Helder Martinovsky, Walden Street (2025, 16mm double-projection) by Duo Strangloscope, Consider (2024,16mm) by Ж, I will remember Lucy (2022, 16mm) by Maria Mion, Bleach Farm (2024, 16mm) by Lígia M. Teixeira & Francisco B. Gusso

Promotional image from "I will remember Lucy" by Maria Mion.

RELATED WORKSHOP: Tetsuya will also be teaching a 16mm pinhole camera workshop (see below for details and to register).

Workshops

Build Your Own Panorama Crankie
Instructor: Risa Lenore
Sunday, April 13, 2025
12-5pm
In-person at Shapeshifters Cinema
Admission: $75 (Discount for Shapeshifters members)

Risa Lenore—Artistic Director of Possibly Puppets Handmade Theatre—joins us again to lead her super-fun panorama "crankie" workshop. A crankie is a pre-cinematic media device—a moving panorama of painted/illustrated imagery made on a scrolling backdrop. After learning about and seeing examples of the art form, participants will create their own on paper scrolls using text from a short story, song or poem (self-penned or otherwise). Skills needed: imagination, a playful attitude and very basic drawing skills (can you draw a line? a dot?—you got this!) Bring your favorite drawing supplies. Colored pencils, inks, pens and scroll paper will be provided. By the end of this, you will go home with your very own panorama crankie!

Movement Imagined: 16mm Pinhole Camera Workshop
Instructor: Tetsuya Maruyama
TWO DAY WORKSHOP
Monday, June 9 & Wednesday, June 11, 2025
6-9PM, both days
In-person at Shapeshifters Cinema
Admission: $120 (Discount for Shapeshifters members)

In this workshop with visiting artist Tatsuya Maruyama (founder of the artist-run Megalab film lab in Rio de Janeiero) participants will learn how to create a pinhole camera to capture images on 16mm film using modified 35mm photographic film canisters and vintage Japanese matchboxes. Participants will then hand-process their film and create negative and positive copies through simple contact printing to allow the freedom to work directly with the surface of the film with light, in the same way a painter leaves their gesture on a canvas.