Shapeshifters
Cinema

About Us

Shapeshifters Cinema is an experimental microcinema located in Oakland, CA. Our mission is to provide a venue and support for contemporary artists working with experimental and artist-made film, video, sound, music and other types of mediated performance. In addition to regular, live events, we offer workshops on experimental moving image and sound production and a storefront shop specializing in print publications, sound recordings and other artist-made media. 

Staff

Gilbert Guerrero - Co-director
Kathleen Quillian - Co-director
Ellie Vanderlip - Workshop Coordinator/Administration Assistant

Cinema

Current and Upcoming Programs & Events

CROSSROADS 2022 program 6: the dark of the screen
Saturday, August 27, 2022
8:30pm
Grey Area Foundation, 2665 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA 94110
Advance tickets available here. $12 General/$10 Cinematheque Members and members of Gray Area
Masks and proof of vaccination are required for entry

Shapeshifters is excited to be the community partner for program #6 of SF Cinematheque's annual CROSSROADS film festival. Program 6: the dark of the screen showcases alchemical ecstacies of haptic celluloidal surfaces that play and flirt teasingly with deep dives into the worlds of circuitry, electronic feedback and system noise. Direct experiences of sensual cinema give way to heavily mediated electronic meditations. Performances of electronic transgression contrast and collide with reflections on the mediation of desire and the nightmarish traumas of the contemporary surveillance state.

SCREENING: irradiance (2020) by Ramey Newell (Canada); digital video, color, sound, 3 minutes. Estuary (2021) by Ross Meckfessel (US); 16mm, color, sound, 12 minutes. death by fantasies by mirrors (2022) by Charlotte Clermont (Thiothià:ke/Montreal); digital video, color, sound, 13 minutes. Pigment-Dispersion Syndrome (2022) by Jennifer Reeves (US); digital video, color, sound, 6 minutes. Thalassophobia (2022) by Kit Young (US) & Colleen Kelly (US); video performance with live sound, color, sound, 15 minutes. Dreams Under Confinement (2020) by Christopher Harris (US); digital video, color, sound, 3 minutes. Autoimmune (2020) by Douglas McCausland (US), Ian Kirkpatrick (US) and Marcos Serafim (Brazil/US); digital video, color, sound, 13 minutes. TRT: 65 minutes

Workshops

Upcoming Workshop

Found Footage Filmmaking
Instructor: Craig Baldwin
Saturday, August 20, 2022
1-5PM
In-person at Shapeshifters Cinema
Masks required for attendance
$45, includes materials (discount for Shapeshifters members)
Register Now

This 4-hour, one-day, in-person workshop intensive with San Francisco experimental filmmaker/curator Craig Baldwin will introduce participants into the world of hands-on, analog 16mm film editing. Students will not only get a direct, human-scale experience with celluloid, but will also come to new understandings of the sources and provenances of mid-century “orphan” material and possible Art World destinations of re-purposed and "redeemed" works. Space is limited!