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

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

Intermodal – Madison Brookshire & Robert Blatt
Sunday, September 14, 2025
7pm
Admission: $10-20 sliding scale (discount for members)

Working between experimental music and expanded cinema, in their first collaborative performance SF-based artist/composer/writer Robert Blatt and LA-based filmmaker/painter/performer Madison Brookshire explore dynamic relationships of color and harmony, movement and stillness, and audio and visual forms of field recording.

Program will include No. 4 by Madison Brookshire (2022, 16mm film), Untitled (Resonance) by Robert Blatt (2025, Five tuned pipes, field recordings, and electronics), Pandemonium by Madison Brookshire (2025, audio-visual field recording + digital video), Untitled (Close Position) by Robert Blatt (2024, audio casette decks, audio cassettes + electric guitar)

Promotional image from No. 4 by Madison Brookshire

STUDIO 8 Film Festival – Opening Night Shorts Program
Organized by the SF Artists Alumni
Friday, September 19, 2025
7pm
Admission: $10-50, sliding scale

The second edition of the STUDIO 8 Film Festival celebrates experimental film and animation by alumni of the San Francisco Art Institute. Kicking off the festival weekend is a dynamic program of nonfiction and experimental works, curated by SFAI alumni artists April September and Rye Purvis, exploring themes of performance, queer identity, and artistic legacy. The selected films illustrate how experimental filmmaking continues to serve as an essential tool for engaging with personal, cultural and societal issues by challenging dominant narratives, setting the stage for a weekend rooted in risk-taking and radical imagination.

SCREENING: The World is Not Our Home by Juan Luis Matos, estos paisajes nos están encendiendo by Daniel Melo Morales, Fogline by Julie McNiel, Shi Arl by Arlene Bowman, Set You Free by Nykelle Devivo, Sasquatch, so confusing by Rye Purvis, La Nueva Ola de Añil by Karla Claudio, TABLEAU by Nao Bustamante.

For more information about the festival, visit: www.sfartistsalumni.org

Donald Beaman, Sean Forth, Hollyfrancis
Saturday, September 20, 2025
7pm
Admission: $10 (discount for members)

"Donald Beaman...conjures up a twilit landscape with shimmering guitars, clever-but-not-fussy arrangements and vocals that recall the enigmatic lilts of Cass McCombs and Will Oldham…in the classic folk/rock/country vein, while still feeling absolutely fresh...quietly gorgeous…filled with empathy and warmth. — Aquarium Drunkard

"Hollyfrancis is performing as a 2 piece, featuring pedal steel and harmonica. Based out of Oakland, CA, their sound draws from their Appalachian roots, country twang, and rock n roll. Somewhere in the mix of Neil Young, Pavement, and Wilco, they focus on combining melody and softness with grit and cathartic release." — some guy

"Sean Forth is a singer songwriter currently living in the santa cruz mountains. Sean brings a catalog of songs based off his own experiences which he blankets on top of his freak folk country blues style guitar picking" — not Sean

Uncanny Cabaret II - Variety Show & Fundraiser
Saturday, September 27, 2025
5-7pm
Admission: $25-50, sliding scale (All proceeds go to benefit Driveway Follies)

As summer turns to fall and the days grow shorter, we can only think of one thing - Halloween! Join us to kick off the season with Uncanny Cabaret II — a special multi-media variety show and fundraiser for our friends at Driveway Follies, the long-running and beloved Oakland Halloween puppet show tradition.

This family-friendly event will include live puppet performances by Driveway Follies, Risa Lenore (of Possibly Puppets), and David Wallace & Leonora Taylor-Wallace, along with expanded film performances by Lydia Greer and Kathleen Quillian + Two turn-of-the century stop-motion haunted house films with live music performed by Renée Delores & Owen Caraway as well as short films by Mary Ellen Bute, David Sherman and Lawrence Jordan.

Gravitational Lensing: Feminist Film Dialogues
Program 11 - Relative Positions | Unmapping Lineages
Presented in association with San Francisco Cinematheque
Sunday, September 28, 2025
7pm
Admission: $15 (discount for members)

By deconstructing ties to family, culture and geographical origins, the films in this program create new navigational charts—triangulating between points known and points unknown—to find paths that lead toward the discovery of the self.

Screening: Incantation (2021, DV) by Kalpana Subramanian; Hair (2023, Super-8 film shown on DV) by Sara Alghesheyan, Mudra (Yearning to be Loved) (2023, DV) by Meghana Bisineer; Kolmas Punkt (The Third Point) (2019, 16mm shown on DV) by Alina Taalman; Everything in our house did not seem to fit (2023, Super-8 film shown on DV) by Alicia Abieyuwa Bergamelli; Can You Carry Me? (2023, 16mm film shown on DV) by Tess Meersman; Dandelions (1995, 16mm film shown on DV) by Dawn Wilkinson; Range (2005, 16mm film) by Bill Basquin, and Navajo Talking Picture (1986, 16mm film shown on DV) by Arlene Bowman

Promotional Image from Hair by Sara Alghesheyan

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

Do-Over Music Series - Brown / Kalb / Rivero / Greyduck / Glenn
Thursday, October 2, 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): Chris Brown presents "RhythmiChrome"

Solo music for virtual piano in just intonation and live electronics performed to video projections by Johanna Poethig

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

Chris Brown
Isabelle Waldner Kalb -guitar
Danishta Rivero - voice
Sadie Greyduck - double bass
Jordan Glenn - drums/percussion
Films, film loops and other visual interventions by the Shapeshifters Performance Group (Ellie, Kathleen & Gilbert)

Incredibly Strange Music + Britney Buddha - 99 Hooker
Friday, October 10, 2025
7pm
Admission: $10 (discount for members)

Selected from Other Cinema's legendary underground vault of media ephemera, Incredibly Strange Music is a program of zany, delightful, and downright thought-provoking short music films (or "soundies") curated and compiled by Craig Baldwin & 99 Hooker. From the weird and dark to the radiantly quirky, these 16mm films constitute a material history for music lovers and "media archeologists" everywhere.

Following this tantalizing teaser, 99 Hooker will perform a live "autopsy" of the sounds + images exhumed and aggregated from the body of work created by pop princess and cultural icon Britney Spears to round out this entertaining, avant-pop extravaganza that will leave you with a really weird medley of ear (and eye) worms going back almost a century!