Shapeshifters Cinema

About Us

SHAPESHIFTERS CINEMA provides 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 screenings and performances by local and visiting artists in our intimate 40-seat theatre and offer workshops on a variety of experimental and DIY moving image and sound production. Our storefront shop specializes in print publications, DVDs, sound recordings and other kinds of media made by artists who have screened or performed in our venue.

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 - Romus / O'Kane / Ewing / Robinson / Glenn
Thursday, August 7, 2025
7pm
Admission: $10 (discount for members)

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): Rent Romus & Suki O'Kane

Rent Romus - reeds
Suki O'Kane - percussion

Set 2 (8pm): expanded cinema + improvised music with:

Rob Ewing - trombone
Kevin Robinson - saxophones
Jordan Glenn - drums
Films, film loops and other visual interventions by the Shapeshifters Performance Group (Ellie, Kathleen & Gilbert)

Gravitational Lensing: Feminist Film Dialogues
Program 10 - Craft, Tradition & Ritual
Presented in association with San Francisco Cinematheque
Friday, August 22, 2025
7pm
Admission: $15 (discount for members)

Films that honor personal and familial legacies by focusing on activities traditionally passed down through matrilineal lines including sewing, crafting, gathering, weaving and decorating.

Screening: On the Inside We Are Color (16mm film shown on DV) by Elena Pardo, Water Ritual #1 (1979, 16mm film shown on DV) by Barbara McCullough, Primitiva (2023, 16mm film shown on DV) by Azucena Losana, Thread (2022, 35mm film shown on DV) by Abigail Smith, Nana (2021, DV) by Kani Kamil, Le Tarantole Dormono Sotto Le Pietre (2023, 16mm film shown on DV) by Giada Cicchetti and Seeing Her (2020, 16mm film shown on DV) by Lindsay McIntyre.

Promotional Image from Primitiva by Azucena Losana

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

CROSSROADS 2025 - Program 8: the mountain replied with an echo
Sunday, August 31, 2025
8pm
Gray Area Foundation for the Arts, 2665 Mission St. San Francisco

Shapeshifters is excited to be the community partner for Program 8 of SF Cinematheque's annual CROSSROADS film festival.

Program 8: the mountain replies with an echo includes five films exploring earth, sky and subterranean spaces, indigeneity, interspecies entwinement and relationships to the ungrievable land. Luminously material films embodying geologic memories, reconstructed histories and incantations of transformation. Speculations on potential futures: how it was and how it could be. Have we met somewhere before?

SCREENING: Tuktuit : Caribou (2025) by Lindsay McIntyre (Inuit/Canada); digital video, color, sound, 15 minutes. The Early Sun, Red as a Hunter's Moon (2025) by Adam Piron (Kiowa/Mohawk); digital video, color, sound, 13 minutes. I Carry the Universe with Me 我將宇宙隨身攜帶 (2024) by Cherlyn Hsing-Hsin Liu (US/Taiwan); digital video, color, sound, 21 minutes. Black Glass (2024) by Adam Piron (Kiowa/Mohawk); digital video, color, sound, 9 minutes. Mines to Caves (2023) by Cauleen Smith (US); digital video, color, sound, 10 minutes. TRT: 68 minutes

Promotional Image from I Carry the Universe with Me 我將宇宙隨身攜帶 (2024) by Cherlyn Hsing-Hsin Liu

Find out more about CROSSROADS 2025

Animation Brüt: Pegbar Curious
Friday, September 5, 2025
7pm
Admission: $14 (discount for members)

Animation Brüt is a rejection of conventional storytelling and image making. It embraces the gestural, the fervent, and the fevered dreamers of sequential imagery. Animation has limits, Animation Brüt embraces them and licks the wrapping for more flavor. Featuring CGI lacerations, hammered steel stop motion, and queer yearnings fuzzed out on magnetic tape. Curated by Sam Gurry, Animation Brüt is a night of experimental animation, presenting films by artists working inside and out of the traditional animation paradigm but all seeking to break down its boundaries.

Drawing from a legacy of queer underground film and DIY animation, this program showcases artists who've always worked outside the lines, getting wild, wet, or, honestly, a little weird with it. Films about coming out, coming of age, and coming a lot (hell yeah brother). From cardboard puppets to rotoscoped runways to libidinal scribbles barely holding it together, Pegbar Curious is a celebration of movement as confession, feelings in excess, and that good, good weird, weird animation.

Featuring work by Zhong Xian, Miz Reyes, Gaby Escovar, Kohana Wilson, David Delafuente, Mallbat, Laura Collins, and more.

Rotating Signals: The Contemporary Korean Avant-Garde
Friday, September 12, 2025
7pm
Admission: $14 (discount for members)

A program of 10 short films, curated and organized by Joshua Kim, highlighting the current landscape of experimental film in Korea, as well as from those in the Korean diaspora around the world.

SCREENING: A Dark Room (2025, b/w, silent, 10 mins) by Heehyun Choi, Spoken Word (2023, b/w, silent, 4 mins) by Hyoin Kwak, Rotating Signals (2025, color, sound, 10 mins) by Chae Yu, Shadow-Forest (2025, color, sound, 28 mins) by Go-Eun Im, Long Sand and Water (2023, color, silent, 5 mins) by Hyeisoo Kim & Luuk Schröder, Bye, Snark, Boo-Jum! (2024, b/w, silent, 8 mins) by Jiyong In, Geomeunyeo (2025, b/w, sound, 3 mins) by Kyujae Park, Pyohaerok (2025, color, silent, 14 mins) by Il-hwan, Buseok (2024, b/w + color, silent, 18 mins) by Kyujae Park, Lord (2024, color, silent, 14 mins) by Chul-woong Jang

Promotional image from Long Sand and Water by Hyeisoo Kim & Luuk Schröder

Workshops

Cel Jam
Instructor: Anna Firth
Sunday, August 3, 2025
12-5pm
In-person at Shapeshifters Cinema
Admission: $75 (Discount for Shapeshifters members and students)

Try your hand at handmade animation in this all-levels workshop with Oakland-based experimental animator, Anna Firth. Part history lesson and part materials exploration, participants are invited to paint a simple scene, one transparent layer at a time, to contribute to a greater group vision. We will use a slightly DIY approach using supplies you can easily source from local craft stores so you can continue to paint cel beyond the workshop. All materials provided and any level of experience welcome! Feel free to bring any of your favorite materials (collage/drawing/photos/etc.) to customize your background art.

A Few Good Magic Tricks—A Low-stakes Workshop for the Magic-Averse
Instructor: Kirk Pearson
Thursday, August 14, 2025
7-9pm
Admission: $25 (discount for members)

Magic is the oldest performing art in the world—which means we've had thousands of years for some terrible tricks to be invented. Magic has been hijacked by bad magicians doing bad magic, and frankly, it's time for a comeback. Because when a trick is good—really good—it can be transcendent. A Few Good Magic Tricks is a low-stakes workshop for anyone who wants to dabble in the dark arts of sleight-of-hand, misdirection, and charmingly-suspicious behavior. Instructor Kirk Pearson will share approachable tricks that are fun to learn, impressive to perform, and built on time-tested techniques and simple props. You will not only learn how the tricks work, but also why they work—plus the performance skills that turn a trick into a miniature miracle of theatrical mischief. This is magic for regular humans—artists, weirdos, introverts, extroverts, skeptics, believers, and the magic-curious. All genders, ages, and experience levels are welcome. No experience necessary. Props will be provided. Smirks encouraged. Top hats optional.