Past Programs

Holding Back the Tide by Emily Packer
Friday, April 12, 2024
8pm
Admission: $10

This impressionist hybrid documentary, directed by NY-based artist Emily Packer, traces the oyster through its many life cycles in New York, once the world's oyster capital. Now their specter haunts the city through queer characters embodying ancient myth, discovering the overlooked history and biology of the bivalve that built the city. As environmentalists restore them to the harbor, Holding Back The Tide looks to the oyster as a queer icon, entangled with nature, with much to teach about our continued survival.

Related workshop: Emily will also be leading a workshop on Sunday, April 14th, inspired by elements of her film. Participants will explore the ecologic, economic, and social functions of the Port of Oakland through the moving image.

Remembering Luther Price II: Two Films by Tom Rhoads
Presented by San Francisco Cinematheque
Thursday, March 28, 2024
7:30pm
Admission: $12 General / $10 Cinematheque Members

As an echo to San Francisco Cinematheque's program Luther Price: New Utopia and Light Fracture (presented Sunday, March 24 at CounterPulse) and in celebration of the life of filmmaker Luther Price, SF Cinematheque and Shapeshifters proudly present this rare screening of early works by the artist's pre-Price avatar Tom Rhoads.

Following a near-fatal shooting suffered in Nicaragua in 1985, the artist later known as Luther Price (and previously known by myriad appellations, including LA, Brigk Athey, Laija Brie and others) suspended his physically-demanding sculptural/installation practice and turned to filmmaking, adopting the persona Tom Rhoads. Just as obsessive and fastidious as Price would later be, Rhoads immediately dove deeply into Super-8 filmmaking, creating elaborate works which radically extrapolate on home movie aesthetics while enacting primal domestic psychodramas and complex expressions of familial portraiture and which assail audiences with assaultive walls of mid-century American kitsch, aggressive audio collage and gender-confounding drag performance. Screening to include Green and Warm Broth (both 1988, both screened in Super-8mm) and the confounding late-period Price work, Dipping Sause (2005, 16mm screened as digital video), a fetishistic meditation on the adversities of childhood in a godlessly mechanistic yet absurdly mocking and humiliating universe. (Steve Polta)

The two-part series Remembering Luther Price also celebrates the release of two publications on the artist: Luther Price: New Utopia and Light Fracture and Luther Price in San Francisco: A Remembrance (both available from SF Cinematheque).

This Room is Nothing Without You - Experimental and Expanded Animation
Saturday, March 23, 2024
6-9pm
SOLD OUT! - There will be no more tickets available at the door

This Room is Nothing Without You is a program of experimental and expanded animation works by Bay Area artists Meghana Bisineer, Lydia Greer, Kathleen Quillian & Jeremy Rourke that was originally going to be presented as part of Bay Area Now 9 cinema programming. In light of YBCA's response to the eight BAN9 artists' Love Letter to Gaza protest action on February 15, 2024, the collective has withdrawn from participating in YBCA's programming and has instead decided to share the work and conversations at Shapeshifters Cinema with proceeds going towards humanitarian aid in Gaza.

The artists have also chosen to include short animations by Yasmeen Abedifard and Ola Abdel Latif Barakat whose works both resonate with their own and that also speak to critical issues of the day.

The program will conclude with a conversation between the artists and curators Kathleen Maguire and Gina Basso.

Promotional image by Jeremy Rourke

Improvised Electronic Music w/Thomas Dimuzio, Marcia Bassett & Samara Lubelski + Barry Weisblat
Saturday, March 16, 2024
8pm
Admission: $12

Two sets of improvised music by local and visiting musicians.

Bay Area-based Thomas Dimuzio will present improvised electronics on the Buchla 200 series Electric Music Box.

NY-based improvised drone duo Marcia Bassett (guitar) and Samara Lubelski (violin) will explore drones and wavering frequencies with violin, guitar, and electronics, accompanied by color slide gel projection visuals by Barry Weisblat.

Fundraiser for Palestine - Lifting the Veil: Palestine in Jocelyne Saab's Cinema
Sunday, March 10, 2024
6pm
SOLD OUT! (There will be no more tickets available at the door) Admission: $10-100, sliding scale

Please join us for our second fundraiser to support the people of Palestine during this terrifying time of seige. This screening was organized by filmmakers and film scholars, Amy Reid and Raed Rafei.

Jocelyne Saab (1948-2019) was a Lebanese filmmaker who dedicated a large part of her career to struggles for self-determination in places like Palestine, Western Sahara and Kurdistan. Between 1974 and 1982, she made a dozen films centered around Palestinians during the Lebanese civil conflict including women resistance fighters, the situation in refugee camps and Israeli invasions of Southern Lebanon. Moving between a journalistic approach and an essayistic, personal style, Saab captured moments that were central to the experience of Palestinians in Lebanon, notably the 1982 siege of Beirut, the departure of the fedayeen from Lebanon and the exile of Arafat and other PLO leaders aboard the Greek cruise ship Atlantis.

Screening: The Palestinian Women (1974), Children of the War (1976), South Lebanon (History of a Besieged Village) (1976), Beirut, my city (1982) and The Ship of Exile (1982). Newly restored 16mm films will be screened as HD video files, provided by the Jocelyne Saab Association.

WARNING: Some of the films we will be screening contain distressing images of war.

The screening will be followed by a discussion moderated by Lebanese film scholar and maker Raed Rafei.

All proceeds will be donated to Middle East Children's Alliance (MECA for Peace).

DONATE TO MECA: If you are unable to attend this screening, but would like to make a direct donation to MECA, or if you would like to make an additional donation, you can do so here.

NEW: Listen to Raed Rafei and Amy Reid speak about this program Saturday, March 9th at 5:30pm with Gregory Scharpen on the Film Close-ups program on KALX 90.7FM.

Gravitational Lensing - Prequel Screening & Fundraiser
Sunday, March 3, 2024
6-9pm
Admission: $10-100 sliding scale

March is Women's History month! And we are kicking off this month's programming with a stellar screening of films made over the past 50 years that speak to a spectrum of women's issues including mother-child relationships, mental health and self-determination.

This very special screening will include the films Schmeerguntz (1965) by Gunvor Nelson & Dorothy Wiley, Anything You Want to Be (1971) by Liane Brandon, Women and Children at Large (1973) by Freude, Killing Time (1979) by Fronza Woods, Artificial Paradise (1986) by Chick Strand, Chronicles of a Lying Spirit by Kelly Gabron (1992) by Cauleen Smith, Noa, Noa (2006) by Lynne Sachs, Our Voices in Reverse (2013) by Nadia Shihab, The Way Light Keeps its Shadow (working title/WIP) by Vanessa Woods and Edge of Alchemy (2017) by Stacey Steers.

We will also have a raffle for prizes including DVDs, rare books, handmade art and more! All proceeds from the event will go towards supporting the forthcoming series Gravitational Lensing: Feminist Film Dialogues, that we will be launching at Shapeshifters beginning in April.

Many thanks to the filmmakers and to Canyon Cinema, Pacific Film Archive and Women Make Movies for loaning films for this event! Thank you also to Kathy Geritz, Kristy Guevara-Flanagan, Steve Anker, Steve Polta, Lydia Greer, Lisa Mezzacappa and Patricia Ledesema Villon for their generous donations of items for raffle.

MAKE A DONATION: If you are unable to attend this screening but would like to donate to support the Gravitational Lensing series, you can do so on our donation page. Any and all amounts are greatly appreciated!

promotional image still from "Our Voices in Reverse" by Nadia Shihab

SF BEER WEEK—Fermented Film Night featuring One Pint at a Time documentary on Black-owned craft breweries
Tuesday, February 13, 2024
8pm
Admission: $14

As part of this year's SF Beer Week, we are excited to screen One Pint at a Time (2021) a documentary film by Aaron Hosé on Black-owned craft breweries. While there is an extensive European legacy tied to beer-making, the reality is that beer has a far broader history rooted in the African continent. One Pint at a Time tells those stories in craft beer that have been ignored because of society's preconceived notions of who typically makes and drinks beer. The film follows Black brewers as they fight past discriminatory and financial hurdles to make a name for themselves within a multi-billion-dollar industry where they share less than 1% of annual earnings.

Enjoy a selection of beers made in our on-site microbrewery. Small bites from our café will also be available for sale. Plus free popcorn!

Ross Lipman: Between Two Cinemas
Friday, February 2, 2024
8pm
Admission: $10

Between Two Cinemas is something beyond category: at once an original essay film unveiling previously unseen archival material on Stan Brakhage and Andrei Tarkovsky, and an anthology of short films featuring new collaborations with visionary experimentalist Bruce Baillie, Jeanne Dielman cinematographer Babette Mangolte, Bela Tarr composer Mihaly Vig and synthesizer pioneer Patrick Gleeson. It's also a new spin on the artist's talk, documenting filmmaker/archivist Ross Lipman's winding path between classic international cinema and the American avant-garde. In this riveting but completely unclassifiable work, he looks back at a life in the cinema and an elusive divide at the heart of it.

Cuban Feminist Movie Night
Saturday, January 27, 2024
5:30-7:30pm
Free Admission

The East Bay DSA Political Education Committee and the Tenant and Neighborhoods Council Language Justice Committee will co-host a Cuban Feminist Movie Night with two films highlighting the accomplishments and repercussions of women's involvement in the Cuban Revolution of the 1950s. Maestra (2012) by Catherine Murphy tells the story of the women teachers of the Cuban literacy campaign, in which 250,000 volunteers taught 700,000 people to read and write in a single year. Mi Aporte (1969) by Sara Goméz shows the debate inside post-revolutionary Cuba on what the revolution went on to mean for the reshaping of gender roles in the country. There will be a Q&A with director Catherine Murphy following the screening.

EBDSA will be collecting solidarity supplies for Cuba at this event as well, so if you are able, please bring donations of Aspirin, Ibuprofen, Imodium, other OTC medicines, and Bandaids.

Special Programming

Shapeshifters has been invited to take the helm of cinema programming for the month of December at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts as part of Bay Area Now 9, YBCA's triennial exhibition highlighting artists working throughout the Bay Area. As part of our programming we have organized several screenings and workshops—all of which will take place at YBCA.

Special Screening — Shapeshifters @ YBCA

Prismatic Permutations: Looping Film Program
Presented by Shapeshifters Cinema at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
December 1-31, 2023
The program will show continuously in the YBCA screening room during museum hours (11-5pm)

Prismatic Permutations is an hour-long program of documentation of select expanded cinema performances that have been presented by Shapeshifters Cinema over its 11-year history. The program represents the various ways artists have worked with time-based media by combining various forms of live, improvised and/or mediated performance that push past the traditional confines of the film screen to create ephemeral, one-of-a-kind experiences that defy category. The program features documentation of performances by Minoosh Zomorodinia; Andy Puls; Kerry Laitala & Kenneth Atchley; Tommy Becker; Keith Evans w/The Rae Diamond Long Tone Choir; Killer Banshee; Dennis Keefe, Jim Baldocchi, Agnes Szelag & Kanoko Nishi; Jeremy Rourke; and Kit Young w/Tonya Powell, Tina Combs, Roy Lobato & Joel Mulen.

Special Screening — Shapeshifters @ YBCA

Spectral Evidence: Live, Expanded Cinema
Presented by Shapeshifters Cinema at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
Saturday, December 9, 2023
12-2pm
Admission: $9

Spectral Evidence is a live, expanded cinema program featuring kinetic, multi-projector and multi-media performances by Zack Parrinella & Zekarias Musele Thompson; Suki O’Kane with Andy Cowitt, Rae Diamond and paige starling sorvillo; and Greta Snider & Headboggle. This one day event will take place in YBCA's screening room.

Harry Smith's Early Abstractions w/live music + Uman, Povey, Behrens & Reeves
Friday, December 15, 2023
8pm

As part of the centennial celebrations happening this year in honor of the famously eclectic and spirited polymath Harry Smith, we are excited to share a program of abstract, experimental and hand-made films.

The program centers around Smith's own Early Abstract Animations (six short films made between 1946-1952) which will be presented on 16mm film and accompanied by live, improv jazz music by Lisa Mezzacappa, Cory Wright, Brett Carson & Kjell Nordeson.

Rounding out the program will be a selection of contemporary, abstract and direct animation films (also presented on 16mm film) including Hand Eye Coordination by Naomi Uman, St. Louise by Thad Povey & the Scratch Film Junkies, Stan's Salon by Jon Behrens and The Girl's Nervy by Jennifer Reeves.

Rebecca Barten & David Sherman
Friday, December 8, 2023
8pm
Admission: $10 (discount for members)

San Francisco expats, Rebecca Barten & David Sherman (proprietors of the original microcinema Total Mobile Home) screen a night of their individual short personal 16mm and video works that span years of experimental practice. In their essayistic explorations of mediumist histories, Barten and Sherman share poetic collage aesthetics and existential/romantic sensibilities. This evening's themes include primitive cinema, eros, animals and eschatology. Featuring premieres of new works, including Barten's With My Own Eyes, I Have Seen the Appearance of Things Disappear and Sherman's DiElectric Drift.

Fundraiser Screening for Palestine
Sunday, December 3, 2023
6pm
Admission: $10-100, sliding scale

Please join us for a fundraiser screening to support the people of Palestine. ALL proceeds brought in from this fundraiser will be donated to Medical Aid for Palestinians (UK) and the Palestine Children's Relief Fund (US)—two relief organizations suggested by the participating filmmakers.

We will be screening two films from two different decades that focus on the daily life and struggles of the citizens in Gaza.

Electrical Gaza (2015) by Rosalind Nashashibi / 16mm & animation (HD video provided by LUX), 18 mins.

Electrical Gaza combines Nashashibi's footage of Gaza, and the fixer, drivers and translator who were her constant company, with animated scenes. Nashashibi presents Gaza as under a spell; isolated, suspended in time, difficult to access and highly charged. Electrical Gaza shows us Gaza as Nashashibi experienced it in the quiet pause before the onslaught of Israeli bombardment in the summer of 2014.

Gaza Ghetto: Portrait of a Palestinian Family (1984) Joan Mandell, PeA Holmquist, Pierre Bjorklund / 16mm (print provided by Sebastian Di Trolio), 82 min

In the first documentary film made in Gaza, Gaza Ghetto (1984) highlights the historical precedents that fuel the current cycles of violence and continue at the heart of the Israel-Palestine conflict. Intimate scenes of family life (a child born, a grandmother dies) in Jabalia, the largest Palestinian refugee camp, are intercut with visits to the architects of the Israeli military occupation. Ariel Sharon, Benyamin Beneliezar and soldiers on patrol candidly discuss their responsibilities. Gaza Ghetto shows how the roots of the Palestine-Israel conflict influence today's harsh realities and dreams of peace, justice and stability.

A Synesthete’s Atlas: Cartographic Improvisations between Eric Theise and Santomieri-Farhadian Duo
Friday, December 1, 2023
8pm
Admission: $15 (discount for members)

Real-time cartographic improvisations using projected, manipulated digital maps by Eric Theise in collaboration with Thea Farhadian, violin and electronics, and Dean Santomieri, electric resonator guitars. A visual wash of street grids, land masses, water bodies, and curiosities from built and natural environments. Chromatic timbres and iridescent micro-tonalities. Orphaned labels and free-floating symbology. Auditory roundabouts and redirections. Saturated colors and the subtlest of tints. Sounds symphonic and screeching. Jittery zooms, pans, and traversals. Glitches in crowdsourced data.

This performance will last approximately 50 minutes and will occasionally introduce strobing effects that may affect photosensitive viewers.

Cosmic Rays - Sightings
Friday, November 17, 2023
8pm
Admission: $15 (discount for members)

The Cosmic Rays Experimental Film Festival was founded in 2017 by filmmakers and educators Sabine Gruffat and Bill Brown to showcase non-commercial short films, live-cinema, and new media projects to audiences in the Triangle region of North Carolina and across the Southeastern U.S. Sightings is a special touring program of short films featured in the 2023 festival that probe the limits of representation. These films cut across the generic boundaries of documentary and fiction, the social boundaries of the personal and the political, as well as the material boundaries of cinema itself.

The full program includes: Prearranged Signal by Alina Taalman; Lockdown Dreamscape by Nicolas Gebbe; Lesser Choices by Courtney Stephens; Because the Sky is Blue by Wenhua Shi; Hors Titre by Wiame Haddad; Sine Die by Camila Moreiras; NE Corridor by Joshua Solondz; Phase II by Kelly Sears; Blue Room by Merete Mueller; and Sightings by Pere Ginard. Running Time: 75 minutes.

Diaries and Destruction: Films by Ellie Vanderlip and Influences, 1979-2023
Friday, November 10, 2023
8pm
Admission: $12 (discount for members)

Diving into both her diary films and found footage manipulations from the past five years, this program of Ellie Vanderlip's latest work includes 16mm investigations on the intersections of infrastructure, climate change, and misogyny, and well as a cohort of digital diary films about memory and identity connected to land as a "Californian". Vanderlip also programs key works of influence from Chick Strand, Lynne Sachs, Naomi Uman and Greta Snider that demonstrate the power of the female filmmaker as diarist and détourneuse in reclaiming female narratives.

New shorts by Peggy Ahwesh
Friday, November 3, 2023
8pm
Admission: $10 (discount for members)

Peggy Ahwesh will be joining us to present a selection of new video works that move from the magic of the night sky to the geopolitics of the midwest to the antics of transgressive women. The program is centered on Lies and Excess, a fragment of an unfinished film shot in dingy Atlantic City that was abandoned as a partial rough cut. Looking at it years later, it somehow seemed a 'perfect film' and a sly comment on film construction, storytelling and the lives of women. In Kansas Atlas, we see a bird’s eye view of the landscape of Kansas—the heartland and geographical center of the US—with its unnerving blend of austere beauty and reactionary politics. Together, these provide a look at the contradictory nature of humans in the pursuit of truth, purpose and pleasure.

Peggy will also be at Pacific Film Archive on Wednesday, November 1st to present OR119, a recent film made in collaboration with Jackie Goss. This program is part of PFA's Alternative Visions series.

back home - an experimental documentary by Nisha Platzer
Wednesday, September 20, 2023
8pm
Admission: $10 (discount for members)

back home follows the filmmaker’s pursuit to get to know her older brother, Josh, twenty years after he took his own life. As she connects with the friends who knew him best as a teen, a complex portrait emerges. Through intimate recollections re-imagined on Super8 and 16mm, and lyrical images hand-processed with plants, seaweed, soil and ashes, back home floats between memory and present time in a fragmented meditation on identity, grief and loss, illuminating the transformative power of healing in community.

Thursday Night Happy Hour: Dead Media Salon - 35mm slides
Thursday, September 21, 2023
5-9pm
Free Admission

Join us this Thursday from 5-9PM for our inaugural Happy Hour: Dead Media Salon. On the third Thursday of every month, we will be reviving and revering a different form of media from the junk heap of technology-past. This month we will be celebrating 35mm transparency slides! You are invited to bring in a selection of your favorite personal or found 35mm slides to project in the cinema space (we will provide the carousels). As a special bonus, artist and experimental story-teller David Wallace will be on hand to add an extra dimension to the experience by weaving an improvised story through your images.

If you are just looking to chillax and imbibe, you are also invited to just come by and enjoy a pint and some snacks on our back patio. We will be serving on tap Ice Cold Popcorn Ale and our new Farm to Theatre English brown ale fermented on cherries, as well as a limited menu of beer-friendly delectables. Our storefront shop will also be open during this time if you just want to buy some merch or beers to go.

Thursday Night Happy Hour: Drink & Draw on Film
Thursday, September 14, 2023
5-9pm

Join us this Thursday from 5-9PM for Drink & Draw on Film! We will have all the materials you need to make your own handmade film loop, including markers, inks, scratching tools, nail polish + clear film leader, opaque black film leader and random clips from old 16mm films, all of which you can scratch and draw on to your hearts delight. And when you're done, we will throw it on the projector to see the magic unfurl. We will be charging a small fee to cover the cost of materials, but once you've finished one, you can officially call yourself a filmmaker—and that's much cheaper than enrolling in art school, right?

If you are just looking to chillax and imbibe, you are also invited to just come by and enjoy a pint and some snacks on our back patio. We will be serving on tap Ice Cold Popcorn Ale and our new Farm to Theatre English brown ale fermented on cherries, as well as a limited menu of beer-friendly delectables. Our storefront shop will also be open during this time if you just want to buy some merch or beers to go.

CROSSROADS 2023, Program 1: the brick and the mirror
Friday, September 8, 2023
7pm
Grey Area Foundation, 2665 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA 94110
Admission: $12 General/$10 Cinematheque Members and members of Gray Area

Shapeshifters is excited to be the community partner for Program 1 of SF Cinematheque's annual CROSSROADS film festival.

Program 1: the brick and the mirror opens the festival with ringing, circling bouquets of ecstatic gestures, oscillations of kinetic song, mechanical delirium, otoacoustic exaltation and corybantic instability. Speculations on rotary motion, cinematic intermittency, haptic alchemy, accident and audiovisual hallucination rise from flicker, disorientation and dissolution. Mirrors shatter. All is quiet in the turning and music fills the air.

SCREENING: giroscopio (2021) by John Muse (US) & Brendamaris Rodriguez (Puerto Rico); digital video, color, sound, 8 minutes. dissolution (2023) by Jenelle Stafford (US) & Ramin Roshandel (US/Iran); digital video, color, sound, 5 minutes. The Sick Sense 2023: The Year We Make Kontakte (or, My Friend Flicker) (2023) by Brent Coughenour (US); video/sound performance, color, sound, 25 minutes. Bouquets 31–40 (2022) by Rose Lowder (France/Peru); 16mm, color, silent, 11 minutes. Music in the Air (2023) by Scott Stark (US); 16mm, color, sound, 15 minutes. TRT: 60 minutes.

[Image: giroscopio (2021) by John Muse & Brendamaris Rodriguez]

Thursday Night Happy Hour: A/V Club
Thursday, August 31, 2023
5-9pm

Join us this Thursday from 5-9PM for our inaugural Happy Hour A/V Club! Loren Risker, proprietor of Out of Focus TV and A/V tech aficionado will be hosting this monthly gathering for folks who want to meet and share film/video/sound/music projects in progress.

If you are just looking to chillax and imbibe, you are also invited to just come by and enjoy a pint and some snacks on our back patio. We will be serving Ice Cold Popcorn Ale and Saison du Cinema on tap as well as a limited menu of beer-friendly delectables. Our storefront shop will also be open during this time if you just want to buy some merch or beers to go.

Carbon Song Cycle - a site-specific multimedia performance by Pamela Z and Christina McPhee
Co-presented with San Francisco Cinematheque and The Exploratorium
Thursday, August 24 (8pm/After Dark) & Saturday, August 28, 2023 (2pm & 7pm)
Kanbar Forum, The Exploratorium, San Francisco

Experience environmental balance and imbalance through a site-specific multimedia performance created by composer/performer Pamela Z and media artist Christina McPhee, Carbon Song Cycle is a work for chamber ensemble and expanded cinema. It's inspired by ongoing changes and upheavals in the Earth's ecosystem, and by the carbon cycle—the process through which carbon is exchanged between all terrestrial life forms and domains. To compose the music, Pamela knitted together melodic motifs inspired by scientific data on the carbon cycle and texts referencing environmental balance and imbalance. Playing on the idea of the natural exchange of elements they pass sonic material between the players and explore audio elements related to the imagery in Christina's video material. The video is built from footage Christina shot at petroleum fields, natural gas locations, and geothermal sites around backcountry California, along with carbon-inspired drawings and images of processes involving intense heat and chemical transformations. The artists have crafted a site-specific experience that utilizes the architecture of the space to create a unique and intimate experience. The chamber ensemble features Pamela Z (voice and electronics), Dana Jessen (oboe), Suki O’Kane (percussion), Crystal Pascucci (cello), and Charith Premawardhana (viola).

PLEASE NOTE: There will be three presentations of Carbon Song Cycle. All presentations will take place at The Exploratorium.

Cinema Ann Arbor Book Release + Film Screening with Frank Uhle
Friday, July 21, 2023
8pm
Admission: $10 (discount for members)

Cultural historian and author Frank Uhle will be joined in conversation with local filmmaker/educator/historian Danny Plotnick to talk about his new book Cinema Ann Arbor. The book offers a first-hand, in-depth look at the history of film-watching and film-making in the college town of Ann Arbor, Michigan and uncovers unexpected and essential stories of the university’s film societies and the campus rebels who ran them. Uhle introduces readers to unforgettable people—nonconformists, artists and nerds, from the Weather Underground to the Velvet Underground—who composed the magnificence of Ann Arbor’s twentieth-century film scene.

Following the conversation, Uhle will present a 40-minute film program including ONCE Kittyhawk by Doug Rideout - 1972 (36 minutes) A profile of Ann Arbor's legendary avant-garde music/theater troupe which includes a recreation of one of their signature pieces. Starring Robert and Mary Ashley, Joe and Anne Wehrer, Nick Bertoni, Milton Cohen, George Manupelli, Cynthia Liddell, and others; Gerard Malanga as the Baron von Richthofen by George Manupelli - 1967 (4 minutes) A musical sendup of the WWI flying ace starring poet/Warhol associate Gerard Malanga, then in town as a film festival juror; The Best of May 1968 by Jay Cassidy - 1972 (4 minutes) Found footage of Vietnam war bombing raids mixed with home movies shot by a soldier; Footsi by Pat Oleszko - with soundtrack by "Blue" Gene Tyranny - 1978 (5 minutes) A comical exploration of the world by a tiny pair of fingers, made by the film festival's longtime performance artist; No Smoke by Mary Cybulski/John Tintori - ca 1975 (2 minutes) An experimental short made by Cinema Guild members to inform audiences about smoking rules in campus auditoriums; Gemini Fire Extension by Andrew Lugg - 1972 (5 minutes) Experimental short featuring performance artist John Orentlicher; Skate Witches by Danny Plotnick - 1986 (2 minutes) An 8mm short about some punky female skateboarders. Shot in the heart of U-M campus, and an award winner at the Ann Arbor 8mm Film Festival; 23rd Ann Arbor Film Festival Clear Leader Film - 1986 (3 minutes) Animation drawn by audience members on a strip of film in the festival lobby; Plus various short film society logos and ads These works have been digitally transferred from original 16mm and 8mm prints, many for the first time, for Uhle's book tour film program.

Counter Weights
Tuesday, July 18, 2023
8pm
Admission: $10 (discount for members)

Counter Weights is a program dreamed up by Zack Parrinella and Anna Kipervaser — two friends and filmmakers who don’t get to see each other often enough — as a chance to weave a conversation through the moving image with a selection of digital video and 16mm works by artist filmmakers working today.

The full program includes: Society of Motion, Andrew Kim, 2015, 3 min, sound, 16mm; SEA 404 (Material Immaterial #2), Cherlyn Hsing-Hsin Liu, 2019, 3 min, sound, 16mm; water, clock, Zack Parrinella, 2021, 8 min, sound, 16mm; Gathering Moss, Erin Espelie, 2018, 5 min, silent, 16mm; Tattva, Kalpana Subramanian, 2018, 5 min, sound, digital; in ocula oculorum, Anna Kipervaser, 2021, 12 min, sound, digital; Tape Moderne, Sylvain Chaussée, 2018, 3 min, silent, 16mm; The Order of Revelation: Surah An-Najm, Anna Kipervaser, 2017/2021, 7 min, silent, 16mm; Color Prism Suite #1, Zack Parrinella, 2015, 3 min, sound, 16mm; Color Prism Suite #2, Zack Parrinella, 2021, 4 min, sound, 16mm; Plane Wave, Daniel Kelly, 2016, 9 min, silent, 16mm; Particular Matter, Zack Parrinella, 2019-2023, 15 min, 3x16mm, live sound by Kevin Corcoran and Jacob Felix Heule; TRT: 77min

From Inside of Here - An Experimental Documentary by Bill Basquin
Saturday, July 15, 2023
8pm
Admission: $10 (discount for members)

From Inside of Here (2020), by Bay Area-based filmmaker Bill Basquin, is a feature-length film meditation on vulnerability and interconnection shown through the lens of an ecosystem and through the body of the filmmaker. The film is structured around a series of camping trips made by the filmmaker to the Gila National Forest in New Mexico, which is the site for the reintroduction of the endangered Mexican Grey Wolf. The place itself is a character in the film, as are the filmmaker’s methods. The film is composed of multiple digital and analog formats: 16mm film, HD video, infrared stills, inter-titles, and sound recordings. The film will be preceeded by an earlier short by Basquin, Martin (2004), a portrait of sheep shearer and farmer Martin Denton, shown on 16mm film.

Deep Listening: The Story of Pauline Oliveros
Bay Area Premiere!
Friday, June 16, 8pm - Film screening + Q&A with director Daniel Weintraub and IONE - SOLD OUT!
Saturday, June 17, 2pm - Film screening + Music Performance - SOLD OUT!
BOTH SHOWS ARE TOTALLY SOLD OUT! THERE WILL BE NO MORE TICKETS SOLD AT THE DOOR.

Deep Listening: The Story of Pauline Oliveros tells the story of the iconic composer, performer, teacher, philosopher, technological innovator and humanitarian, Pauline Oliveros. She was one of the world’s original electronic musicians, one of the few women amongst notable post-war American composers, a master accordion player, a teacher and mentor to musicians, a gateway to music and sound for non- musicians and a technical innovator who helped develop everything from tools that allow musicians to play together while in different countries to software that enables those with physical limitations to create beautiful music. On the vanguard of contemporary American music for six decades, her story illuminates the pathway to how we got where we are and where the future will take us in the worlds of music, the philosophy of sound, and the art of listening. Made in collaboration with executive producer Ione, Oliveros’ partner in life and work, and the Ministry of Maåt, Inc., the film combines rare archival footage, live performances, and unreleased music with appearances by Terry Riley, Anna Halprin, Ione, Linda Montano, Laurie Anderson, Thurston Moore, Alvin Lucier, Claire Chase, Miya Masaoka, Morton Subotnick, Tony Martin, Ramon Sender and many more ground-breaking artists.

Long Haulers by Amy Reid + Barbara Hammer, Vanessa Renwick and Jodi Darby
Saturday, May 20, 2023
8pm
Admission: $15 (discount for members)

In this program, we present the work of four fiercely-independent feminist artists who each share their respective experiences of traveling alone on the open road.

Long Haulers is a feature-length, experimental documentary by Amy Reid that weaves together the stories of three women truckers, Sandi, Lori and Tracy. Through experimentation, direct observational filmmaking, and performative play, Reid rides and films with these women to share their stories of fleeing domestic violence and how they grapple with mental health issues and the stigmas of being formerly incarcerated.

To open the program, we will present three short works that engage with the themes depicted in Reid's film.

Shot and edited over the span of three decades, SF HITCH by Vanessa Renwick recounts the artist's experience of hitch-hiking with their feisty canine companion from Chicago to San Francisco in 1981. Both visuals and narrative are woven together with the agility and vitality of Beat poetics—a reflection of the experience of unmoored travel and an homage to the very artists they meet upon arrival.

Place Mattes by Barbara Hammer captures the experience of traveling through a landscape but never actually being fully in it. Figure and ground are presented as two planar relationships, flattened and made two-dimensional through optical printing, with the artist unable to touch the surrounding environment until finally coming to rest in the interior space of a restaurant. Shown on 16mm film. Print provided by Canyon Cinema.

Rounding out the program will be a reading of Jodi Darby's' zine Our Lady of Near Death Experiences (originally published in 1998) about the artist's experience of becoming a cross-country truck driver as a young woman in the mid-1990s. A mini-memoir told in vignettes, Our Lady is a twisted love song to the road in all its complexities.

Stitching the Future with Clues by Allison Leigh Holt with Kit Young and Amma Ateria
Thursday, May 11, 2023
7:30pm
A Co-presentation with The Exploratorium as part of After Dark: Thought and Action
Gallery 1, Kanbar Forum, The Exploratorium

Shapeshifters is pleased to co-present Allison Holt's expanded cinema presentation of Stitching the Future with Clues, a neurodivergent-futurist manifesto performance which will be presented as part of After Dark: Thought and Action at The Exploratorium. Looking at neurodivergence as a way of knowing, through a cybernetic frame, it combines animated diagrams, video and audio feedback processes, and expanded media techniques, drawing from Holt’s article "THE CONVERSATION: Feedback Structures, Ways of Knowing, and Neurodivergence" (PUBLIC Journal #59: Interspecies Communication) to consider feedback systems as a medium for understanding the sensing, processing, and exchanging of information happening not just in human minds and brains, but within and between all scales of intelligent life. With text, animation, performance, and editing by Allison Leigh Holt; video synthesis by Kit Young and sound by electronic musician Amma Ateria, this film explores the post-humanist sense-making of neurodivergence: differently-attuned to temporal, psychic, and environmental embodied experience. A post-screening dialogue will take place between artist Allison Leigh Holt and neuroscientist Clifford Saron, PhD.

The Simulacrum Is True: Scott Stark & 99 Hooker
Friday, May 12, 2023
8pm
Admission: $10 (discount for members)

Join us for an enthralling evening of hyperreal channel-surfing with media artists Scott Stark and 99 Hooker who will re-arrange before our very eyes the deck chairs on the sinking cultural ship of planet Earth using an assortment of old and new media that they will extract from their respective technological satchels.

The Last Forever is a multi-media live performance composed by Scott Stark and Kamila Kuc. During the pandemic, these two artists independently perused hundreds of discarded 35mm family slides from diverse sources and then proceeded to exchange images and captions in a series of on-line “exquisite corpse” tennis sets allowing mysterious characters and spontaneous plot twists to evolve into a playful narrative about a spouse who's gone missing. In many of these seemingly mundane images, the artists discovered subtle indicators of interpersonal family dynamics captured by the camera during dinners, parties and travels which provided clues to the artists’ playful ruminations on the complexities of human and more-than-human relations as mediated by technology.

Mixing audio and visual information for real time media, "h9sh" by 99 Hooker is equal parts prose poem, music video, extended cinema and hallucinatory TV, involving 4D portraits, chaos poetry, surreal soundtracks, art history lectures by Stan Brakhage, Bruce Conner multiplied (15,000 frames), Marie Menken's handheld genius and so much more, all culled from an endless archive of material aquired and created over the years. h9sh - ACTION: 1a.) to chop into small pieces b.) confuse, meddle; 2.) to talk about, review as in "h9sh over"; 3.) #media link. THING 1.) delicious with Bomba sauce 2.) restatement (remix) of the previously "known," 3.) Hodgepodge. 4.) Intoxicant. Free with purchase.

Dominic Angerame: A Complete Retrospective, Program 4: It's a R(eel) A(nswer) P(rints)!
Saturday, May 6, 2023
8pm
Admission: $10 (discount for members)

This is the fourth and final screening of the complete retrospective of the work of Dominic Angerame. Since 1968 Angerame has produced more than 30 films on 16mm and several newer works in digital format. Some of these films have never had a public screening. Many of Angerame’s films show San Francisco, the city he has lived and worked in since 1979, and its varying cityscape as it looks and changes over time. He has also created short comedies, short-form documentaries and many diary films. Angerame has taught film in many schools and universities in the Bay Area as well as at the University of Nevada, Reno. He was Executive Director of Canyon Cinema from 1980-2012.

For this final screening we finish at the start, with 11 of his earliest films dating back to 1968 including A Ticket Home (1982), Freedom's Skyway (1980), SFAI (1980), A Film (1979), Neptunian Space Angel (1977), El Train Film (1976), Scratches, Inc. (1975), Delaware Park (1969-73), Demonstration (1968-74), Putzo (1972) and 10x17 (1971). We will also be showing 8 short, diary films—all of which have never been publicly screened before, including At the Robert Fulton Estate, Newtown Ct., Palm Sunday, Democratic Convention, No Nothing Cinema, Bruce Conner playing piano, Erotica, Last Temptation of Christ, Susan’s portrait of Dominic and Havana Diary.

Animated Shorts by Lydia Greer & Luca Dipierro
Friday, April 14, 2023
8pm
Admission: $10 (discount for members)

Join us for this moving image feast featuring two west coast artists who use puppets, non-linear narrative and stop motion animation to delight and unsettle. East Bay artist Lydia Greer will show a selection of recent short pieces, including two animated music videos—Absentee and Unproud Warrior—both made, in collaboration with Caryl Kientz and Facing West Shadows, for singer-songwriter Cass McCombs and Anti- Records. She will also be sharing excerpts from recent pieces made using puppets, props and performing objects in collaboration with Facing West Shadows. Portland-based artist Luca Dipierro, will present his latest film, The Cadence - A Tale of Paper and Cloth, a 33-minute animation shot in stop motion, using marionettes made with paper, bookcloth, and thread. Five years in the making, The Cadence tells the story of a boy, lover of silence, and the journey toward his own beginning. The program will also include a selection of Dipierro’s short films made between 2012 and 2018 that dive into themes of loneliness, death and violence through the playfulness and symbolic resonance of the puppet theater.

You Could Be with Us: Rae Diamond, Keith Evans and Suki O’Kane
Friday, April 7, 2023
7pm - food, community + outdoor projections/8pm - show
Admission: $10 (discount for members)

und o’r mountain ov r bay v river eostre

You might be somewhere else. Following the sounds of revival and worms, desiccants and drains to egg sulphur and sardine salt, the trio will create a river the audience will float down in an array of mammatus salmon ripples and low tide highs, measuring the fences of cattail vapors and gradients of unseen script: A sentence made of breath, drum wash, and stridulations blurred on walls, luminous with projections. There is something akin to blossoms opening here. You could be with us.

with Rae Diamond (movement, voice, viola), Keith Evans (moving image, electronics), and Suki O’Kane (percussion, electronics, handheld projection)

Image: Amphoterism (2021) by Keith Evans, Photo by Kevin Corcoran

Dominic Angerame: A Complete Retrospective (Program 3: SEX, DEATH, PASSION)
Saturday, March 25, 2023
8pm
Admission: $10 (discount for members)

This is the third in a series of monthly screenings comprising a complete retrospective of the work of Dominic Angerame. Since 1968 Angerame has produced more than 30 films on 16mm and several newer works in digital format. Some of these films have never had a public screening. Many of Angerame’s films show San Francisco, the city he has lived and worked in since 1979, and its varying cityscape as it looks and changes over time. He has also created short comedies, short-form documentaries and many diary films. Angerame has taught film in many schools and universities in the Bay Area as well as at the University of Nevada, Reno. He was Executive Director of Canyon Cinema from 1980-2012.

For this third screening we will present a compelling program of mid-career work that wrestles with the adverse forces of desire and death. All (but one) of them shot and shown on 16mm film. The program includes Anaconda Targets (2004), Consume (2003), The Waifen Maiden (2003), Pixiescope (2003), Battlestations: A Naval Adventure (2002), Phone/Film Portraits (1985), Voyeuristic Tendencies (1984), Hit the Turnpike (1984), Honeymoon in Reno (1984), I’d Rather be in Paris (1983) and The Mystery of Life (as Discovered in Los Angeles) (1982).

Bodies for Strength and Power: experimental films and projector performances by Kristin Reeves
Sunday, March 12, 2023
8pm (Doors open at 7pm)
Mosswood Chapel, 3630 Telegraph Ave., Oakland
Admission: $10 (discount for members)

Still and moving media have doubled for the human body since its invention. By following through on the logic that media is body/human/person/material: outdated found footage becomes media cadaver to exhume, examine, and reanimate; video synthesizers model brain signal overload; 9X16mm grid performs a real-time exercise in crafting a personal narrative within the limitations of our physical selves. With both found and original media, visiting filmmaker Kristin Reeves pursues material of resiliency, loss, and control. This program will include: What Is Nothing (After What Is Nothing) (2017, 9X16mm projector performance), CSP Closings & Delays (2017, 16mm Film to HD video & HD video), &Human (2011, SD video), Threadbare (2010/14, 16mm film to HD video), Body Contours (2015, 16mm film to analog video synthesis), The White Coat Phenomenon (2012, VHS to HD video), Music of Desire (2017, 16mm film to video using analog video synthesizers), Je Ne Sais Plus [What Is This Feeling] (2012-present, 9X16mm projector performance).

Dominic Angerame: A Complete Retrospective (Program 2, The City Symphony Series)
Saturday, February 25, 2023
8pm
Admission: $10 (discount for members)

This is the second in a series of monthly screenings comprising a complete retrospective of the work of Dominic Angerame. Since 1968 Angerame has produced more than 30 films on 16mm and several newer works in digital format. Some of these films have never had a public screening. Many of Angerame’s films show San Francisco, the city he has lived and worked in since 1979, and its varying cityscape as it looks and changes over time. He has also created short comedies, short-form documentaries and many diary films. Angerame has taught film in many schools and universities in the Bay Area as well as at the University of Nevada, Reno. He was Executive Director of Canyon Cinema from 1980-2012. For this second program we will present the five original films of the highly-acclaimed City Symphony series, made between 1984-1997, projected in their original 16mm film format, including: Continuum (1987) with live guitar accompaniment by Kevin Barnard, Deconstruction Sight (1990), Premonition (1995), In the Course of Human Events (1995) and Line of Fire (1996). TRT: 75 mins.

Street Poems: The Films of Mark Street
Friday, February 17, 2023
8pm
Admission: $10 (discount for members)

For this program NY-based filmmaker Mark Street will present five films rooted in the tradition of street photography, as well as one short made from 35mm educational film strips. The films wander from city to city and corner to corner pondering ephemeral visual moments, revealing diaristic musings on the pandemic and surveying human connection in a time of cultural and political change. As a group they are a testament to the ethos of always carrying a camera even when you don’t know exactly why.

SF Beer Week: Beer Release Party
Tuesday, February 14, 2023
6-9pm
Free Admission

SF Beer Week opens Friday, February 10th (and runs through February 19th)! As part of this annual, local event, we invite you to join us at Shapeshifters on Tuesday, February 14th for a special beer release party, featuring two new beers made on-site in our microbrewery: Black Magic Dry Irish Stout (made with California-grown malted barley and malted oats) and Black Magic Special Edition (made with bourbon-infused cocoa nibs and Ceylon Cinnamon). House-made vegan chili al mole and fresh-baked bread made by local baker Ed's Breads will be available for purchase. We'll also be projecting some fun, silent films and playing scratchy vinyl records in the cinema. Stop in and raise a glass with us!

Dominic Angerame: A Complete Retrospective (Program 1)
Saturday, January 21, 2023
8pm
Admission: $10 (discount for members)

This program is the first in a series of monthly screenings comprising a complete retrospective of the work of Dominic Angerame. Since 1968 Angerame has produced more than 30 films on 16mm and several newer works in digital format. Some of these films have never had a public screening. Many of Angerame’s films show San Francisco, the city he has lived and worked in since 1979, and its varying cityscape as it looks and changes over time. He has also created short comedies, short-form documentaries and many diary films. Angerame has taught film in many schools and universities in the Bay Area as well as at the University of Nevada, Reno. He was Executive Director of Canyon Cinema from 1980-2012. This first program will include his most recent work: Luminae (2022), Khorosho (2022), Flashbacks (2021), Have Another Espresso (2020), Prometheus (2021), Revelations (2018), and The Soul of Things (2018) with live guitar accompaniment by Kevin Barnard.

WOLF: A Celebration of the First Full Moon of 2023
Friday, January 6, 2023
8pm
Admission: $10 (discount for members) - SOLD OUT!

While January's full moon has many names, the Wolf Moon connotes stark, cold quiet nights enlivened by the sounds of howling wolves in communication. Sounds which strengthen fellowship and community. To that end, WOLF gathers together four artists from the Bay Area (Zekarias Musele Thompson, NOSEI, Mishmish and Christopher Robin Duncan) to mark this celestial event with sound, film and food.

Midwinter Market
Saturday, December 17, 2022
1-5pm
Free admission

Join us for an afternoon Midwinter Market as we welcome the winter solstice with food, libations, music and an array of local vendors specializing in artist-made, vintage and collectible items including SF Cinematheque (artist books, film ephemera), Craig Baldwin/Other Cinema (16mm educational/industrial films), Small Press Distribution (independently published books), owllamode (vintage inspired adornments), Desert Glass Jewelry (rings, bolo ties), Shipwrecked Shop (tiki hair adornments), Ms. Lori's Unique Boutique (eclectic cultural ephemera), Chihuahua Ranch (vintage-inspired jewelry), and Spellbound Vintage (vintage ephemera, vinyl records, natural history collectibles). Our friends Scott and Kathleen will be presenting a live rendition of their weekly radio show Gearwax with a specially-curated program culled from their extensive and eclectic collection of vinyl records. The Shapeshifters store front shop will also be open, featuring an ever-expanding collection of print publications, LPs, CDs and other artist-made media and goods as well as a selection of fresh, seasonal beers made on-site in our microbrewery. We will also have house-made soda, masala chai and hot chocolate, plus warm tamales from La Guerreras Kitchen available for purchase. Come spend the day with us!

Songs From A Cinema - Justin Rhody, Abigail Smith & Ben Kujawski
Sunday, December 11, 2022
8pm
Admission: $10 (discount for members)

Justin Clifford Rhody, Abigail Smith & Ben Kujawski will be joining us from Santa Fe, NM (where they collectively run their own microcinema, No Name Cinema) to present an hour long program of their own respective short films. The formats and techniques run the gamut of wild eclecticism, with works shot on Super-8, hand-sewn/painted/xeroxed 35mm shorts, mail art collaborations, VHS found footage and abstract mini-DV video pieces. Additionally, all three artists will perform together—as K/S/R—two expanded cinema pieces involving dual 16mm projections of collectively assembled found footage and hand painted films with live musical accompaniment (violin, percussion, lap steel, flute, guitar, harmonica, accordion and keyboard). They will also have copies on hand of a newly released cassette tape titled "Songs From A Cinema." One night only! Don't miss!

Bjll Dingalls (Tom Djll/Bill Hsu/Matt Ingalls) and Bill Wiatroski
Friday, December 2, 2022
8pm
Admission: $10 (discount for members)

An evening of audiovisual electroacoustic improvisations with Bjll Dingalls (Tom Djll/Bill Hsu/Matt Ingalls) and Bill Wiatroski. In the blur between acoustic and amplified, synthetic and analog, algorhythm and improvisation, clarity is forged anew only if you look ahead. Swinging serious sonic sledgehammers since 2019, Bjll Dingalls lay the railroad into terra incognita.

Steev Hise & Tommy Becker
Friday, November 18, 2022
8pm
Admission: $10 (discount for members)

Way back in March of 2020—Saturday, March 21, 2020, to be exact—Shapeshifters was set to present the thrilling combined program of Steev Hise and Tommy Becker in our new cinema space. But as fate and history would have it, this was not meant to be. Now, almost three years later, we are finally able to make this show happen! Don't miss the opportunity to experience these two far-out A/V wizards performing at Shapeshifters together for one night only!

Recovering computer musician and former San Franciscan Steev Hise returns to the Bay Area to explore the intersections of free-jazz spazz, expanded cinema, performative bricolage and on-stage mental flaneurism. Projected real-time manipulations of appropriated video rubbish will accompany a rapidly morphing medley of prepared guitar ruminations, forming a hectic meditation on dark patterns and shadowy algorithms.

Tommy Becker will deliver a homemade mix-tape compiled from Tape Number One's catalogue of art rock investigations. Highlights from The Mirror Neuron, Emotions in Metal and Side One will be presented as live cinema and include live vocals and sound elements backed by melodic soundtracks synced to projected video. Performance art, found footage, costuming, props, found footage, animation, spoken word and computer design combine in an effort to fully understand human-vehicle relations, interpersonal complications and technological limitations in the warmth of the sun.

Dodecachordon 1-6 - Edward Shocker & Keith Evans
Sunday, November 13, 2022
11:53am (solar noon) - 6pm
Free Admission!

Dodecachordon, a 12-part work by composer Edward Schocker, combines multiple electric guitars and the natural acoustics of a room to explore the energetic relationships between pure harmonic vibrations. Supported with live projected images by Keith Evans, Shapshifters Cinema will be transformed into a resonating, abstract audio-visual chamber that listeners are encouraged to traverse in order to explore the unique acoustic and psychoacoustic phenomena that occur.

Sharing the title with a 16th century book written by a Swiss Monk, Heinrich Glarean (1488-1563), Dodecachordon reflects the Medieval church modes into a modern light using alternate tuning systems. Neither a performance nor an installation, this 6-hour work invites audience members to come and go as they please and to stroll, lay down, or meditate within a sonically and visually altered space.

Read more about Dodecachordon in this recently-published article in Classical Voice.

Joshua Churchill & Konrad Steiner // Aileron Vane & Samuel Casebolt
Saturday, November 12, 2022
8pm
Admission: $10-20 sliding scale (discount for members)

Join us for an evening of ambient music and visuals by two collaborative artist teams from the Bay Area.

Aileron Vane (Aaron Levine) recently released his debut album, Amassed Like Bells, a collection of ambient home recordings made from 2004-2007 utilizing lofi, processed guitar loops to generate delicate harmonic soundscapes. He will be performing the album in its entirety. Filmmaker Samuel Michael Casebolt, will project a visual album made specifically to accompany the audio album.

The collaborative performances of Joshua Churchill and Konrad Steiner are rendered from a wide palette of influences including musique concrète, metal, kosmische, film noir, found footage and personal film as each artist improvises the construction, layering, and movement of sound and image, respectively. Their improvised process weaves a rich and ever-changing tapestry of color, mood, movement, and saturation, where the various elements drift in and out of the forefront, creating a series of cinematic events ranging from evanescent to thunderous.

Moments of Perception: Random Canadian Moments
Curator Jim Shedden In Person
Program presented in association with San Francisco Cinematheque and Canyon Cinema
Thursday, November 10, 2022
7:30pm
Admission: $10 (discounts for SF Cinematheque and Shapeshifters members)

This program is presented on the occasion of the publication of Moments of Perception: Experimental Film in Canada (2021), Barbara Sternberg and Jim Shedden, eds. with essays by Michael Zryd and Stephen Broomer, published by Goose Lane Editions.

"The filmmakers in our book can be defined as Canadian, broadly speaking. The films we discuss were not always made in Canada. For this program, I have deliberately chosen work that was not only made in Canada, but represents different places in Canada, sometimes personal and sometimes grander. What becomes apparent is how vast and variable the country is, how sparsely populated it is, and how difficult it is to get anything like a coherent sense of the country and the people who live there. These films, then, are little stabs at Canada."" (Jim Shedden)

SCREENING: Terminal City (1982) by Chris Gallagher; 16mm, color, sound, 10 minutes, print from the Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre; 16mm Postcard (2005) by Amanda Dawn Christie; b&w, sound, 3 minutes, print from the Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre; Cattle Call (2008) by Mike Maryniuk & Matthew Rankin; digital video, color, sound, 4 minutes, exhibition film from Mike Maryniuk; Sight (2018) by TJ Cuthand; digital video; color, sound, 4 minutes, exhibition file from Vtape; Spanky to the Pier and Back (2008) by Guy Maddin; digital video, b&w, sound, 4 minutes, exhibition files from the Winnipeg Film Group; Low Tide (2019) by Eva Kolcze; digital video, color, sound, 4 minutes, exhibition file from the maker; Conservatory (2013) by Stephen Broomer; 16mm color, sound, 4 minutes, print from Canyon Cinema; Taylor Creek (2017) by Dan Browne; 16mm, color, silent, 4 minutes, print from the Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre; My Pandemonia (2020) by Peter Lynch; digital video, color, sound, 10 minutes, print from the maker; action: study (1987) by Richard Kerr; 16mm screened as digital video, color, sound, 5 minutes, print from the Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre; Light Study (2013) by Josephine Massarella; digital video, color, sound, 13 minutes, exhibition file from Canyon Cinema; Landfall (1983) by Rick Hancox; 16mm, color sound, 11 minutes, print from Canyon Cinema. TRT: 73 minutes

Read more about the program here.

Tomonori Nishikawa and Madison Brookshire
Friday, November 4, 2022
9pm
Please note new date and time!
Admission: $10 (discount for members)

Tomonori Nishikawa and Madison Brookshire join us from NY and LA respectively to present three 16mm film projector performances between them. Nishikawa will present the second variation of an on-going 16mm film projector performance piece, Six Seventy-Two Variations for which he uses a wood carving knife to scratch off the photographic emulsion of the looped film to produce images and sound as a live performance. Brookshire will present two double-projection performances, Double or Nothing and No. 3, 2022, which, in their own ways, accentuate idiosyncrasies inherent in running 16mm film through a projector.

Halloween and Dia de los Muertos Costume Party
Friday, October 28, 2022
7-10pm
Free Admission!

Put on your best, spooky costume and join us for our annual Halloween and Dia de los Muertos party (give or take a few pandemic years)! We will have some spooky films animating the space accompanied by live, improvised music, played exquisite corps-style by some favorite, local experimental musicians, including Cindy Webster on the singing saw, Suki O’Kane, Wayne Grim, Cyrus Yoshi Tabar, Steve Dye, Guillermo Galindo and more! House made beers and sodas, as well as light fare will be available for purchase. Join us as we lift the veil between the realms, summon the spirits and partake in some phantasmic, multi-cultural holiday revelry. All ages welcome.

Antarctica: Music from the Ice - Cheryl E. Leonard Performance and Record Release
Friday October 7, 2022
8-10pm
$10-25 sliding scale
Masks are required for entry

Fizzy icebergs, kazooing penguins, glaciers that buzz and burble, snoring elephant seals, and sounds played live on penguin bones and limpet shells: join us to celebrate the release of Antarctica: Music from the Ice, the latest album by musician, composer and instrument builder Cheryl E. Leonard.

In 2009, Leonard spent five weeks at Palmer Research Station on the Antarctic Peninsula as a participant in the National Science Foundation’s Antarctic Artists and Writers Program. At Palmer, she made field recordings of ice, water, wind, and wildlife, and gathered rocks, shells, and penguin bones, which she later fashioned into one-of-kind musical instruments. These sound sources are woven together into a set of compositions about the Antarctic Peninsula's dynamic environments and ecosystems, and the profound ways climate change is transforming the region. After 14 years of development, recordings of Leonard’s Antarctic compositions are finally available from Other Minds Records.

Leonard will give a short slideshow about her experiences working with sound at the bottom of the planet and will explain her compositional process, including field recording successes and defeats, instrument-building eureka moments, how to notate snappy icebergs, and techniques for playing penguin bones. This will be followed by a field recording listening session featuring several previously-unreleased recordings of Antarctic birds, ice, and seals. Next, Leonard will perform a solo set of several works from the album. Stick around after the music for informal Q & A and an Antarctic instrument petting zoo, where you can try your hand at making sounds on some of Leonard’s unique instruments.

Thingamajigs: Redline Redefined Launch Party
Sunday, October 9, 2022
1-4pm
Free Admission
Masks are required for entry

Thingamajigs presents Redline Redefined, a new multi-year project that investigates, narrates and celebrates our formally red-lined neighborhoods. Thingamajigs has curated a program of audio and visual pieces designed to transport audiences from their home to the streets of Oakland and Berkeley. Featuring eight of the East Bay's most exciting performing artists, events scheduled include soundwalks, live performances, video narratives, poetry readings and an online interactive map. A diverse group of local artists are participating in the project, including Sudhu Tewari, Theresa Wong, Katy Luo, Ayodele Nzinga, Suki O’Kane, Gabby Wen, Maxi Himpe and Hallie Smith. Redlining is the systematic practice of denying people financial and other services based on where they lived. In the 1930s, the federal government carved The East Bay into a series of puzzle pieces--imaginary lines were drawn down streets, dividing neighborhoods, families, and entire populations of residents. Redline Redefined project artists explore the balance between the past and present and encourages all of us to to take a second look at who is included and excluded from conversations about development in modern-day East Bay. Join us for an exciting in-person launch filled with live performances, poetry readings, films, installations and short artist presentations.

A Synesthete's Atlas - Eric Theise & Kyle Bruckmann
Sunday September 25, 2022
7-8:30pm
$10-25 sliding scale (advance tickets available on Eventbrite)
Masks are required for entry

An evening of real-time cartographic improvisations using projected, manipulated digital maps by Eric Theise, directed and accompanied by genre-trampling oboist Kyle Bruckmann. Expect a visual wash of street grids, land masses, bodies of water, and curiosities from the built environment. Saturated colors and subtle tints. Sounds symphonic and screeching. The flicker film as wayfinding device. Orphaned information and untethered symbology. Crowdsourced data with Swiss precision, and glitches a kilometer wide. OpenStreetMap as light show. This will be the first performance of A Synesthete's Atlas on the West Coast.

10,000 things
Thursday, September 22, 2022
6-10pm - please note early start time!
$10 admission
Masks are required for entry

Musician and seeker Suki O’Kane returns to Shapeshifters to enact 10,000 things, a score for durational performance, to mark the fall equinox. The piece starts 10,000 seconds before, and lasts a minimum of 10,000 seconds after the equinox itself, which will be observable at 6:03pm Pacific Daylight Time. Expect ritual acts of body, speech and mind, walking meditation, live cinema, durational sound, food, sunset, civil twilight, and the setting of a waning crescent moon. The show starts early at 6pm (the equinox arrives at 6:03pm) with a solo set from Ernesto Diaz-Infante, complementary autumnal food and drink at dark o'clock, and at 8pm two sets: the first, Phoebe Tooke will lead a visual conduction for an improvising ensemble comprised of Wayne Grim, Dyemark, Jacob Felix Heule, Suki O’Kane, Adria Otte, and special guests; the second reconvenes the artists from the 2022 spring equinox realization of the 10,000 things score enacted on the back deck of Shapeshifters with Alfonso Alvarez, Dyemark, Suki O’Kane, and special guests. Image from Heart Sutra (2022) by Dyemark.

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
$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. Image from Pigment-Dispersion Syndrome, by Jennifer Reeves.

Here and Now, vol. 3: Davis, Nakazawa, Turchin + Alien On Vacation
Saturday, July 23, 2022, 8:00PM

John Davis (image + sound)
Nao Nakazawa (image) + Alien on Vacation (sound, Hj Mooij & Whatnao)
Silvia Turchin (image) + Alien on Vacation (sound)

John Davis is a Northern California artist exploring the relationship between moving image and sound. Through live performance and studio-based projects, his work encourages sensory response through unexpected uses of traditional media.

Nao Nakazawa, originally hailing from Nagano, Japan, moved to California in 1996 to study film. First earning a BA in film & digital media from UC Santa Cruz, and later a MFA in cinema from SF State University, Nao has spent more than 25 years working on film and television productions throughout San Francisco Bay Area and Japan. Nao has been devoted to making his own films of many genres, such as documentaries, fictions and animations. For the past decade, he has been creating experimental works that feature live performances.

Silvia Turchin is a Bay Area experimental filmmaker whose work is concerned with memory and loss. Her films are experiential in style, encouraging viewers to immerse themselves in keen visual and aural observation of urban and natural landscapes. Her films include “Summer Light for Tula”, "F-Line", "Oh Christmas Tree" and "Dogs of the 9th Ward". Silvia has screened at festivals such as Edinburgh International Film Festival, Ann Arbor, Filmfest Dresden, Mill Valley, Big Muddy, Frameline and Experiments in Cinema. She holds her MFA in Cinema from San Francisco University and has taught film production at UC Berkeley, San Francisco State University and the San Francisco Art Institute, and is currently Associate Professor in the Cinematic Arts Department at Cal State Monterey Bay.

Alien on Vacation is Hj Mooij on bass and synths, and Whatnao on violin and mandolin. These aliens love earth music of all kinds and they try to imitate what they heard while on vacation on this planet.

---

An Evening of Expanded Cinema
as part of the exhibition series Drop: A Psychedelic Exploration
UMA Gallery
Mosswood Chapel
3630 Telegraph Ave., Oakland
Thursday, June 9, 2022, 8PM

Program changes: Due to unforseen circumstances, Andy Puls is unable to join us for this event. We have added two more films to the line-up. Please see below for details.

As part of the exhibition series Drop: A Psychedelic Exploration, hosted by UMA Gallery at Mosswood Chapel, Shapeshifters Cinema will be presenting a short program of film and performance that aims to open the door to psychic exploration and universal consciousness. The program will begin with a rare screening of Ira Cohen’s restored film The Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda (1968) that captures the height of the psychedelic era with costumed characters performing altered-state rituals while floating in a sea of mylar reflections. Then, Ben Russell’s Trypps #7 (Badlands) (2010) invites the audience on an intimate psychedelic journey to explore the romantic sublime, phenomenological experience, and secular spiritualism. Pat O'Neill's 7362 (1965-67), shown on 16mm film, shows a bilaterally symmetrical fusion of human, biomorphic and mechanical shapes in motion. Coni Beeson's Firefly (1974), also shown on 16mm, is a short expressive dance film featuring a young Carrie Mae Weems. Following the films, Oakland’s own Church of Color and Light will perform Apollo's Lore, a reflection on the nuances of solitude during the pandemic and the mythical Apollo, who is both the cause and cure of plagues. The 16mm film prints were provided by Canyon Cinema. Note: This program takes place at Mosswood Chapel, 3630 Telegraph Ave., Oakland

For more about Drop, including other events in the series, visit: https://www.umagalleryoakland.com/events

Carl Diehl presents Misdirections
Wednesday, May 18, 2022, 8:00 PM

Witness this veritable variety show of cine-magical feats, including Andrew Kim’s film essay on the curiously named village, Colon, MI and its claim as “the Magic Capital of the World;” Kathleen Quillian’s enchanted collage animation, The Conjuror; Kerry Laitala's phantasmagoric 16mm film Spectrology on magic lanterns and optical illusions; Stephanie Hough’s short EARTHVIEWS films which temporarily transform your personal digital device into a novel interface for seeing and knowing anew; and, from primordial depths, a media archeological fossil in the form of a kinescope film, featuring a bonafide magician circa 1950! This entourage of audiovisual delights orbits around an illuminated excursion into the life and times of the late, great magician, vaudevillian, and comedy emcee, Werner “Dorny” Dornfield (1892-1982), as presented by Portland-based, multimedia artist Carl Diehl. Diehl's presentation draws from his recent publication, Misdirections, a 68-page chapbook that delves into the life of his Great Uncle Dorny, including his association with Harry Houdini, and touches on L. Frank Baum's window-dressing trade journal, the Magic Capital of the World and the American Museum of Magic as told through a series of conversations with historians, performance artists, and magicians as well as reminiscences of Diehl's own personal experiences as an experimental artist and musician. The beguiling Jeremy Rourke will be your host for this thrilling dive into magical realms while Cindy Webster accompanies on the singing saw. Prepare to be dazzled and delighted in this one-night-only experience!

Media-Making Beekeepers: An Evening of Short Films and Honey Tasting
Saturday, April 30, 2022, 8PM

There are many fascinating insects in the world; few are so closely intertwined with humans as honeybees, Apis mellifera. The unique relationship that each of us has with honeybees is a paradoxical blend of awe and fear. We want to know how honeybees make honey and wax, raise their young and swarm, but no one wants to get stung – an inevitable part of beekeeping. One thing is always clear, honeybees don’t need us, we need them. The Bay Area has a rich history of media makers and beekeepers, but very few are doing both. This program presents a lucky round-up of a few of those elusive creators. We present work by Bay Area multimedia artists Nicky Tavares, John Davis, Robert Fox, Melanie Curry and Alfonso Alvarez. These diverse and intimate works celebrate each maker’s complex relationship with the honeybee. Following the screening will be a short talk about honey and how to experience the myriad of flavors in natural honey using the tasting guide developed at UC Davis Honey and Pollination Center.

Southern Climes: Films from AFW Melbourne
Program presented in association with SF Cinematheque
Sunday, May 1, 2022, 7:30 PM

Initiated by filmmakers Richard Tuohy and Dianna Barrie in 2009, Artist Film Workshop (AFW) is a film collective and not-for-profit organization which provides access to knowledge and resources for filmmakers and artists in Melbourne, Australia. AFW holds regular screenings and workshops for people interested in film or working with sound and vision. Visiting as part of an epic west coast tour, AFW member Paddy Hay will present a selection of recent and brand-new 16mm film works produced by members of AFW. The program reflects the diversity of interests, methodologies and technologies investigated by AFW members, showcasing a wide variety of filmmaking styles across forms of abstraction, archival/ found footage, audio-vision and lo-fi documentary. Techniques including contact and optical printing, DIY cameras and traditional lens-based photography are among the methods and approaches explored. ALL FILMS TO BE PRESENTED ON 16MM.

SCREENING: Valpi (2019) by Richard Tuohy; 16mm, color, sound, 9 minutes; Is Anybody Coming Over to Dinner (2022) by Audrey Lam; Self Portrait With Bag (2020) by Diana Barrie; Southern Climes (2018) by Hanna Chetwin; 4000 Frames from Hobart to Queenstown (2020) by Ilona Schneider; Window (2020) by Rowena Crowe; Fade (2017) by Callum Ross-Thomson; Landing (2019) by Sabina Maselli; Sensor Lights in Flemington (2022) by Lucas Haynes; The Gardens (2022) by Paddy Hay & Giles Fielke.

TRT: 74 minutes. Film descriptions + filmmaker bios here.

RELATED WORKSHOP: Reversing Reversal: An Introduction to Super-8 Film. An all-day workshop on experimental super-8 film processing with Paddy Hay immediately preceding the screening.

Lynne Sachs’ Film About a Father Who
Program presented in association with SF Cinematheque and Pacific Film Archive
Thursday, April 7, 2022, 7:30pm

In her nearly forty-year career as a filmmaker, Lynne Sachs, in various shorts and long form works, has developed a uniquely engaged and sensitive approach to personal experimental documentary form. Frequently focusing on families—often her own—Sachs’s films portray their subjects with rare personal complexity and grace. In so doing, Sachs’ portraits describe their subjects within the flows of history, always within the interwoven, multigenerational webs of family, friendships and society. Consisting of footage collected by Sachs from 1984 to 2019, and collecting oral history from family members documenting nearly a half century of family history, Film About a Father Who presents a complicated, multi-vocal, narrative portrait of the filmmakers’ father, while exploring a complex family dynamic of anger, confusion, love and forgiveness, evolving over generations. (Steve Polta)

RELATED WORKSHOP: Opening the Family Album at Shapeshifters Cinema from 5-7pm immediately preceding this screening.

RELATED SCREENING: Three additional films by Lynne Sachs—The Washing Society (2018, made with Lizzie Olesker), And Then We Marched (2017) and E•pis•to•lar•y: Letter to Jean Vigo (2021)—screen at Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive on Wednesday, April 6. Full details here.

Jake Parker Scott/Voicehandler/Laetitia Sonami
Thursday, March 24, 2022, 8PM

A night of experimental music accompanied by 16mm projections, including a set by Oakland-based duo, Voicehandler, who perform improvised, intuitive, incantatory music grounded in the most primitive and somatic instruments -- the voice and percussion -- juxtaposed with contemporary, disembodied electronics. Jake Parker Scott will debut a new text-based piece of expanded cinema featuring a set of 16mm collages created in San Francisco's Other Cinema archive. He will be accompanied by his pals Matt Robidoux and Mitch Stahlmann on various electronics. The night will conclude with a set from French sound artist, performer and electronic music pioneer, Laetitia Sonami, whose sound performances, live-film collaborations and sound installations explore ideas of presence and participation. 16mm projections throughout the evening by Jake Parker Scott, with film loop contributions from Joel Skavdahl during Voicehandler's set.

Shapeshifters Open House & Pop-up Market
Saturday, December 18, 2021
1-6pm
Free admission
Masks and proof of vaccination are required for entry

Join us for our first public event since March of 2020! We will be hosting an Open House and Pop-up Market from 1-6pm to welcome the community back in and check out our new storefront space where we will be selling our eclectic collection of artist-made media and goods as well as a selection of brand new beers made on-site in our microbrewery! Several other local vendors specializing in vintage, second-hand, hand-made and artist-made goods will also be set up in and around the space, including Kitten Claw Vintage, Owllamode, San Francisco Cinematheque, Land & Sea, Lea Zalinskis, Desert Glass Jewelry, Ted Mattes and Miss Lori's Unique Boutique. Cold beverages and warm eats will also be available for purchase.

CROSSROADS 2021: SF Cinematheque's 12th Annual Festival of Artist-made Film & Video
September 17-October 21, 2021
Read the full line-up of artists and details about the festival

Shapeshifters Cinema is proud to be a community partner for the opening program of CROSSROADS 2021, the 12th annual film festival presented by San Francisco Cinematheque.

Program 1: tendrils on a plane (co-sponsored by Shapeshifters Cinema) will livestream via the SF Cinematheque website on Friday, September 17, 2021 at 7PM, with live introductions by participating filmmakers before the program. The program will subsequently be available along with the other seven on-line programs in the festival (without the introductions) for “view-as-desired” viewing through October 21.

Program 1: tendrils on a plane includes: Primavera (2020) by Adrian Garcia Gomez, Pilgrimage (2020) by Anthony Buchanan, Blue Distance (2021) by Devin Jie Allen, Parenthesis (2021) by Vasilios Papaioannu, Rehearsal (2020) by Talena Sanders, June July (2021) by Kevin Jerome Everson (livestream only), life, like water, flows to greater bodies (2020) by Takahiro Suzuki, Tres bocetos de casa (2020) by Azucena Losana, a moment west (2020) by Noah Rosenberg. Find out more about this program

Thingamajigs: Sound of Wave in Channel

Sunday, July 25, 2021, 9:00 AM - 8:00 PM Pacific
Broadcast @ BAMPFA
Followed by a live conversation with the artists (at 8pm)
Presented in conjunction with Thingamjigs virtual residency at BAMPFA

This eleven-hour marathon experience, from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m., combines spoken word and sound. The work is built around Bay Area poet Stephen Ratcliffe’s work of the same name that documents one thousand poems written in one thousand consecutive days. Recorded at BAMPFA with Ratcliffe and the Thingamajigs Performance Group, this work explores the relationship between things as they are observed in the world and how they might be transcribed or transformed as works of art. The artists join us for a live Q&A following the performance at 8 p.m.

This is one of four programs presented as part of the Thingamajigs July virtual residency. Thingamajigs is a genre-crossing arts organization founded in the East Bay that promotes music and other art forms created with found materials or alternate tuning systems. Tune in via livestream

Sonic Biogenesis: Genomics and Mutant Jungles

Sunday, June 20, 2021, 7:00 - 8:00 PM Pacific
Broadcast via livestream
Followed by a live conversation with the artists
Presented in partnership with Kala Art Institute

Sonic Biogenesis: Genomics and Mutant Jungles features Guillermo Galindo’s “genome scores” which consist of graphic representations of his musical compositions and artwork merging textures of plants, animals, and microbes. These pieces illustrate, in Galindo’s unique symbolic language, how research and data have historically expressed and sustained systems of power, particularly relating to colonialism. As a follow up to Galindo’s exhibition Dissonant Matter at Kala Art Institute which closed early this year, Shapeshifters Cinema and Kala will co-present a new iteration of Sonic Biogenesis, a performance by Guillermo Galindo with The Living Earth Show—the new-music chamber ensemble consisting of guitarist Travis Andrews and percussionist Andy Meyerson. Andrews and Meyerson will play experimental sonic devices designed by Galindo. Animation by Christoph Steger bringing Galindo’s “mutants” to life will weave through the video. More about the show...

Nicky Tavares: Notes from the Lower Rungs on Being Chronically Tan and Enflamed
Sunday, March 28, 2021
7pm PST
Live broadcast via our streaming channel

Bay Area and Iowa-based artist and filmmaker Nicky Tavares makes work that sheds light on systemic inequalities through personal storytelling. She is interested in how new technologies shape and transform the way we see and present ourselves, and the myriad ways they are utilized by political, social, and cultural systems as both license and vehicle for subjugation of individuals who fall outside the bounds of dominant culture. Through her creative practice, she discovers seams where history, technology, creative inquiry, and ethics meet, and experiments with ways to stitch them together using threads from theory and practice. Shapeshifters will be streaming a selection of Nicky’s short films: Untitled Bee Film, Searching for Beauty in Student Loan Debt or at Least the Envelopes in Which It Comes, Garfunkel Is Dead, No Whining, and her latest work in progress, Notes from the Lower Rungs on Being Chronically Tan and Enflamed.

Andy Puls
Sunday, March 14, 2021
7pm PST
Live broadcast via our streaming channel

Andy Puls beams down from his woodland retreat with a performance of live generative music and colored light pieces made using his homemade "Melody Oracle" electronic music and synchronized refractive light projection system.

Keith Evans: utube
Sunday, February 7, 2021
7pm PST
Live broadcast via our streaming channel

So many vectors, revectors…liminal songs, matchbooks, reports from the front and backrooms scrubbed on keys. Cinema stalks onward, leaving for a time the blackened spaces in a burned and turbulent wake. Inside the floating spell-correct of this digital campfire are invitations to other layers, other notes on our troubled time together, emanations of equivocal data that may pass on down to the underground lakes of the plasma people. Transmission is in the electric rivers too. Make incomplete of it what you will. Viewers are invited to tune in on February 7th at 7pm PST to watch the livestream.

Kerry Laitala and Jonathan Walley on Expanded Cinema and Cinema Expanded
Sunday, January 31, 2021
7pm PST
Live broadcast via our streaming channel
Co-presented with Canyon Cinema

Artist and filmmaker Kerry Laitala (San Francisco) and cinema scholar Jonathan Walley (Columbus, OH) engage in an illustrated conversation about expanded cinema, including Laitala’s recent 16mm film projection performance Fire Fly EYE (hand-processed 16mm Ektachrome and B&W film, dual projection) and the iconic paracinematic work Retrospectroscope (1996). Walley will also discuss his book Cinema Expanded: Avant-Garde Film in the Age of Intermedia, published last year by Oxford University Press, the first comprehensive historical and theoretical account of expanded cinema published since Gene Youngblood’s landmark book Expanded Cinema (1970). Laitala will also share documentation of her studio, which will be the basis for a discussion with Walley about the role of studio spaces and practices in the creation of expanded cinema works. Q&A will follow.

Collage-based films of Faith Arazi
Sunday, January 24, 2021
7pm PST
Live broadcast via our streaming channel

San Francisco-based artist and filmmaker Faith Arazi works with handmade collage and film. Her inspirations draw heavily from the abstraction and primal stimuli in early children’s programming to engage viewers by way of familiar spontaneity, leading into peak experiences of pure emotions, youthful idealism, transition, and worship for the small and mundane. Compelled by a short attention span and playful spirit, Faith's practice sources a dynamic range of found images to explore capitalist anxiety, latinx identity, and poetic mystery. She is currently exploring techniques in repetition, layered visual complexity and movement. We'll be streaming a selection of Faith's films: Oracíon, Through a Field, Untitled Animation, and a collection of small and tiny animations (under 1 minute). Viewers are invited to watch this by tuning in on January 24th at 7pm PST to watch the livestream. Learn more about Faith's techniques and the thoughts behind her process in Cut & Paste: Collage As a Means of Play, the workshop she will be teaching on Sunday, February 7th.

STILL/MOVING: The Tenuous We
Sunday, December 20, 2020
7pm PST
Live broadcast via our streaming channel
Co-presented with The Maysles Documentary Center

STILL/MOVING is a program of work exploring poetry and the moving image. STILL/MOVING formed out of a 3-day workshop led by Lynne Sachs and Paolo Javier in May 2020, hosted on-line by the Maysles Documentary Center in Harlem, New York. During this initial workshop, a cohort of folks from around the world (Uruguay, Ireland, and all across the US) met over Zoom to explore the resonances and ruptures between still/moving images and written/spoken words. Inspired by the experience, the participants decided to continue working together and have since made two more collaborative projects over the ensuing months combining language and moving imagery in various forms. Shapeshifters will be screening the third project ("The Tenuous We") made by members of the group, with a live discussion between collaborating artists immediately after the screening. Viewers are invited to watch this program by tuning in on December 20th at 7pm to watch the livestream. The first two projects made by the group will also be available to view on The Maysles Center website from December 14-28. The Maysles Center will also be hosting a live discussion between workshop participants on Thursday, December 17th at 5pmPST/8pmEST. STILL/MOVING participants: Emily Apter, Danielle Chu, Quin de la Mer, Melissa Ferrari, Nina Fonoroff, Edith Goldenhar, Laura Harrison, Caroline Losneck, Mary Magsamen, Veronica Pamoukaghlian, Kathleen Quillian, Lynne Sachs, Moira Sweeney, Fereshteh Toosi, Jordan Wong.

Live from Shapeshifters: Rosario Sotelo
Sunday, December 13, 2020
7pm PST
Live broadcast via our streaming channel

"The Ruins," by Rosario Sotelo, is the documentation of the artist's travels through sacred sites in Guatemala during the closing of the Mayan Calendar in 2012. Shot on 16mm, it's a continuation of her work about place. Original music by David R. Molina.

Live from Shapeshifters: Dokuro
Sunday, December 6, 2020
7pm PST
Live broadcast via our streaming channel

Dokuro will perform In the Dust of the Stars, a sonic and visual meditation on the smallness of being human in the endless undulation of our universe. The video footage is meant to emulate conformal cyclic cosmology, a theory in which the universe iterates through infinite cycles, with the future time-like infinity of each previous iteration being identified with the Big Bang singularity of the next. This theory was popularized by Gilbert Penrose in his 2010 book Cycles of Time: An Extraordinary New View of the Universe. Our dust-like footprint in the universe falls parallel with how many people are feeling these days due to COVID-19 and all of the socio-economic challenges: we are tiny and much is out of our direct control. In our current lives it seems we take one step forward with a resulting two steps backward, an endless oscillation much like the movement of the universe. However, we also see this oscillation as something unifying and magical as we are all a part of the universe's massive rhythm. Dokuro is the artistic maelstrom formed by the duo of Agnes Szelag and The Norman Conquest. Their love for song-form and noise unveils itself during their intense live performances. As they delve into layers of sound they commit themselves to the compositional surprises each one presents, reacting, and in turn creating unexpected transitions that unfold into the next exploration. These intersections and song-like clusters, along with their abstract and textural videos, create a space for listeners to dream.

Live from Shapeshifters: Scott Stark
Sunday, November 29, 2020
7pm PST
Live broadcast via our streaming channel

Scott Stark returns to Shapeshifters to perform DAMNATION (sound by John Wynne) -- new work made using sheets of ice and images from a 1960s television series to follow the tragic trajectory of the eternally damned. Viewers are invited to watch this by tuning in on November 29th at 7pm to watch the livestream.

Live from Shapeshifters: Aggregate Animated Shorts Awards Ceremony
Sunday, November 8, 2020
7pm PST
Live broadcast via our streaming channel

Shapeshifters is excited to stream the 4th annual Aggregate Animated Shorts Awards Ceremony, organized by our sister organization Aggregate Space Gallery, based in West Oakland. Aggregate's Gallery Director Conrad Meyers will host this online award ceremony and screening which will include the top films from each of the festival's categories, as well as Viewer’s Choice awards that were rated by visitors via an online form during the two weeks that the full festival screened online. The awards ceremony will also include a film by each of the exhibition's jurors: Santiago Insignares, Carey Lin, and Fu Yang. Artists from the August on-line festival: Amber Crabbe, Kristine Diekman, Celia Eid & Sébastien Béranger, Richard Haley, Jiayang Huang, SHON KIM, Seren Moran, Ben Mosca, Maxine Schoefer-Wulf, Cassie Shao, Leon Simone, Melinda K.P. Stees, Cyane Tornatzky, Joshua Tuthill, and Claudia Ungersbäck.

Live from Shapeshifters: Lori Varga, Dennis Keefe & Kit Young
Sunday, November 1, 2020
7:00-8:00pm
Live broadcast via our streaming channel

Paying homage to the historic Vortex Planetarium sessions of 1959, Bay Area artists Lori Varga, Dennis Keefe and Kit Young will combine their massive arsenal of A/V systems to perform three distinct pieces celebrating the art of synesthesia. Pairing early electronic soundscapes with modular and semi-modular visual systems made from 16mm film projectors, vintage lumia equipment + state of the art digital and hand-built A/V systems, the trio will forge new pathways into alternate realities sculpted from cosmic light and sound in five dimensions!

Live from Shapeshifters: Wayne Grim & Phoebe Tooke
Sunday, October 25, 2020
7:00-8:00pm
Live broadcast via our streaming channel

In Decline, by Wayne Grim and Phoebe Tooke is an investigation of space and the physical nature of abandonment. The performance will move through three distinct movements: wreckage, estates, and steady states. Audio-visual tropes, conspicuous constructions, and subconscious arguments with oneself will be your guide.

Live from Shapeshifters: Anne McGuire
Sunday, October 18, 2020
7:00-8:00pm
Live broadcast via our streaming channel

Artist Anne McGuire sings and plays guitar for this variation on "Cuckoo Suite for Guitar and Voice" -- a performance she created for KZSU’s Day of Noise 2020.

Live from Shapeshifters: Kadet Kuhne
Sunday, October 11, 2020
7:00-8:00pm
Live broadcast via our streaming channel

Kadet Kuhne is a sound and visual artist who is presenting works that engage noise algorithms, spectra, evolving, chaotic and structured forms, and states of becoming through emergent patterns. Working collaboratively with animator Ying Herng, Chia, visual artist Christopher O’Leary, writer and playwright Carson Beker, and graphic designer Graham Akins, the sound performance by Kadet will be a combination of live interpreted visual data and composed overlays with no-input mixing, manipulated recordings, and analog synths.

Live from Shapeshifters: viDEO sAVant vs Φ4 performs The City and the Stars
Sunday, September 27, 2020
7:00-8:00pm
Live broadcast via our streaming channel

Musicians Maurizio Rinaldi and Fabrizio Saiu (based in Italy) react to the morphing flow of images created by viDEO sAVant (Charles Woodman, based in California), the sound changing in response to the visual score. Simultaneously the images are shifting, composed in reaction to alterations in sound and mood. Disparate images and sounds blur together and fuse to become a new kind of organism. The mix evolves as a push-pull between music and image, an active dialogue that constitutes a new, experimental film and soundtrack--one composed live. Viewers are invited to watch this by tuning in on September 27th from 7-8pm to watch the livestream.

Live from Shapeshifters: John Davis presents The Singing Sun
Sunday, September 20, 2020
7:00-8:00pm
Live broadcast via our streaming channel

Filmmaker and musician John Davis will perform improvised music to two 16mm films shown side by side. One film follows the life cycle of the honeybee, while the other uses plant matter as source material for a cameraless cyanotype film. The two films together highlight the tension between the formal yet temporal elements of matter existing in constant transformation and motion. Viewers are invited to watch this by tuning in on September 20th from 7-8pm to watch the livestream.

Live from Shapeshifters: killer banshee presents Mobility
Sunday, September 13, 2020
7:00-8:00pm
Live broadcast via our streaming channel

killer banshee (Eliot Daughtry and Kriss DeJong) revisits the archive with a presentation of their expanded cinema work: Mobility - Confabulation on the Experiential Nature of Modern Medicine. Originally created in live, improvised performances between 2005 and 2009, using early VJ software running on laptops controlled by MIDI keyboards and beamed from janky projectors, this work pushed the boundaries of both technological expression and presentation that continues to resonate today. Mobility began as an exploration of the personal experience of living with chronic, episodic, and life threatening medical health crises. It became a commentary on documentary, nonfiction, and a refutation of the demand for obvious narrative. Designed for two screens with accompanying audio, it challenges media tropes of medical drama, and instead highlights the personal experience. Comprised predominately of our own photos, video, and medical documents, augmented with selective found footage, it explores new ways to consider personal archives as a way to examine trauma in a poetic mode. In final form, Mobility developed into 6 segments, each addressing a different part of the lived experience and emotional residue from the events that required its creation. Viewers are invited to watch this by tuning in on September 13th from 7-8pm to watch the livestream.

Live from Shapeshifters: Suki O'Kane and Tim Perkis
Sunday, August 16, 2020
7:00-8:00pm
Live broadcast via our streaming channel

Suki O'Kane returns to Shapeshifters to present two new pieces for bass drum, electronics, and performative projection. Hard to Read is a new work directed by (and featuring the electronics and coding of) Tim Perkis. Together Suki and Tim animate and sonify his disarming and mysterious archive of human expression. Surprised by Sin is a new work for for bass drum, liberation texts, and hand-held projections. Viewers are invited to watch this live performance by tuning in on August 16th from 7-8pm to Watch it live, online.

Guillermo Galindo live performance webcast
Sunday, June 21, 2020
7-8pm

Guillermo Galindo will be performing -- live from Shapeshifters Cinema -- a variation on Sonic Botany, a project exploring how science has played, and continues to play, a role in colonizing and conquest. Viewers are invited to watch this live performance by tuning in from 7-8pm to http://shapeshifterscinema.com/livestream/.

Telecinema: Tommy Becker + Negativland
Saturday, March 14, 2020
7:30-10:00 pm, Online!
Presented in partnership with Out of Focus TV

The original show we had planned to present on Saturday, March 14th featuring Tommy Becker, Steev Hise and Jon Leidecker was cancelled, like so many others around the world, due to the global Coronavirus pandemic. The health and safety of our community is of utmost importance. But so is your sanity. So we've decided to go ahead with the show....online! Join us on Facebook Live, Apple TV or wherever you can tune in from the comfort of your own home as we present:

Negativland live at Spazio Aerio, Venice, Italy, September 30, 2016
+
Tommy Becker live at Shapeshifters Cinema, Oakland, CA, April 8, 2018

More info and how to watch...

Ether Ship
Sunday, January 11, 2020
8-9PM

Ether Ship electronic music group (Willard Van De Bogart and Lemon DeGeorge) will be premiering two new compositions with dimensional videos from their wilderness locations. Ether Ship has been performing for over 50 years. Their first performance was at the Sea Port Museum in New York City for the Avant Garde Festival created by Charlotte Moormon, and their most recent performance was in Denmark for the Re-Sound Conference. Willard Van De Bogart is on iPAD synthesizers and Lemon DeGeorge is on electronically processed harmonicas.

Elena Pardo w/Voicehandler + Laboratorio Experimental de Cine
Friday, December 6, 2019
8-9PM

In 2018 the Mexico City experimental film collective Laboratorio Experimental de Cine (LEC) held a residency at the film laboratories of the famous Mexican national film studio, Estudios Churubusco. Over the course of a year, a dozen filmmakers partnered with laboratory staff to create short films and exchange knowledge and approaches to analog film. The LEC residency culminated in the second biennial international independent film laboratories conference and the publication Recetario. The first part of this program screens some highlights from the residency, including "Bandera Churubusco" by Walter Forsberg, "Filmer & Son" by Antonio Bunt, "Churubusco Inventory" by Elena Pardo and "Boom boom boom" by Naomi Uman. The second part of the program features "Underground Pulses," a new expanded cinema performance looking at community resistance to underground mining in Mexico by LEC co-founder Elena Pardo with sound performed live by Voicehandler.

Lynne Sachs
Sunday, November 10, 2019
8-9PM

How do we negotiate the photographing of images that contain the body? What experiential, political or aesthetic contingencies do we bring to both the making and viewing of a cinema that contains the human form? If a body is different from our own – in terms of gender, skin color, or age – do we frame it differently? How does looking at a body on screen make us feel? New York filmmaker Lynne Sachs will guide her audience through her own evolution as a filmmaker by sharing excerpts from her own films in "My Body, Your Body, Our Bodies: Somatic Cinema at Home and in the World" an expanded cinema screening and talk. Sachs will explore the fraught and bewildering challenge of looking at the human form from behind the lens. Inspired by the performance self-portrait films of Vito Acconci, the audience will also be included in the making of a live, impromptu production. Excerpts from these films by Lynne Sachs will be included: “Drawn and Quartered” (4 min. 1986); “Still Life with Woman and Four Objects” (4 min. 1986); "Sermons and Sacred Pictures" (29 min. 1989); “The House of Science: a museum of false facts" (30min. 1991); "A Biography of Lilith" (35 min. 1997); “Window Work” (9 min. 2000); “Wind in Our Hair” (40min. 2010); “Same Stream Twice” (4min. 2012); “Your Day is My Night” (64min. 2013); “And Then We Marched” (4 min. 2017); "Carolee, Barbara & Gunvor" (8 min. 2018); “A Year of Notes and Numbers” (4 min. 2018); "The Washing Society" (44 min. 2018).

Jeremy Rourke
Friday, September 20, 2019
8-9PM

Jeremy Rourke is a self-taught animator and musician. His animation table is full of photo-puppets, clay, paint, pens, pencils, paper ephemera, lights, shadows, and flora. During live performances, he uses his animation in conjunction with lyrics, instrumental music, stories, sound samples, multiple projectors and real-time interactions with the screen to create an immersive expanded cinema.

Minoosh Zomorodinia
Sunday, October 13, 2019
8-9PM

Minoosh Zomorodinia is an Iranian-born interdisciplinary artist who makes visible her emotional and psychological reflections as seen in her mind's eye inspired by nature and her environments. Her work exposes and experiments with humanity's relationship to the natural world. The piece she will be presenting, Illusion is an ongoing project addressing confusion in contemporary urban life. Using a variety of cameras (digital, 16mm and super-8mm), the artist documents her own wanderings through various landscapes in search of the lost spirituality in the modern world and the ambiguous and mystical origin of self.