Cinema
Upcoming Programs & Events
LUMINOUS ALCHEMY REVISITED - Films by Nathaniel Dorsky, Jerome Hiler, Stan Brakhage, Deborah Stratman & Gary Beydler
Thursday, November 21, 2024
7pm
Admission: $20 (discount for members)
Over the past six decades, artists Nathaniel Dorsky and Jerome Hiler have created extraordinary works of entrancement and immense fascination. Shortly after they met—at a mid-1960s New York screening of Dorsky's INGREEN, their lives became inexorably intwined. They relocated together from the opposite coast to the Bay Area in the early-1970s (where they have lived and primarily worked ever-after). Their distinctive filmmaking practices developed independently, yet in parallel, with intermittent screenings of their own shorts and others within their respective homes for themselves and, occasionally, a handful of assorted friends. LUMINOUS ALCHEMY REVISITED, in essence and intention, is inspired by those intimate occasions.
For the uninitiated, the films of Hiler and Dorsky are temporary gateways into an illusory realm. Exhibited in the absence of a soundtrack and at a speed slightly decelerated to eighteen frames-per-second, their films construct a collage of intumescent imagery that transcends the limitations of the perceivable world. The five programs of the inaugural LUMINOUS ALCHEMY were presented at Northwest Film Forum in June; …REVISITED redirects that illustrious series into new territories with films absent from the earlier screenings.
This season-specific, quasi-retrospective, from AUTUMN sequentially to SUMMER and, with RULING STAR, from summer back to winter, intermingles the works of Dorsky and Hiler into two concise programs, each with interrelated films by Gary Beydler, Deborah Stratman and Stan Brakhage. Nearly ten films in all, each exhibited on the format of their creation: 16mm!
Two programs in a single evening! Single admission for both!
LUMINOUS ALCHEMY REVISITED I (7pm): Hand-held Day (1975) by Gary Beydler, Aubade (2010) by Nathaniel Dorsky, Autumn (2016) by Nathaniel Dorsky, Roman Numeral V (1980) by Stan Brakhage, Winter (2007) by Nathaniel Dorsky
LUMINOUS ALCHEMY REVISITED II (8:30pm): Pavane (2023) by Nathaniel Dorsky, Summer (2013) by Nathaniel Dorsky, The Magician's House (2007) by Deborah Stratman, Ruling Star (2019) by Jerome Hiler
Presented by Paracme in association with the Tenth Annual Report of Camera Obscura.
Promotional image: "Aubade" by Nathaniel Dorsky.
Gravitational Lensing: Feminist Film Dialogues
Program 5 - Process & Transformation
Friday, November 22, 2024
7pm
Admission: $18 (discount for members)
Ontological studies of transition and transfiguration through physical, emotional and spiritual interactions, symbolism and cultural standards of beauty and power.
Program 5 - Process & Transformation includes Element (1973, 16mm) by Amy Greenfield, Makeover Movie (2022, DV) by Sue Ding, Three Peonies (2017, 16mm shown on DV) by Stephanie Barber, Moon Cycle (2023, 16mm shown on DV) by Justine Tamiko Lai, To the Earthen Red (2022, DV) by Nika Pecarina, Well Dressed (2006, Super-8 shown on DV) by Elliot Montague, Siboney (2014, DV) by Joiri Minaya and Boi Oh Boi (2012, DV) by Theo Jean Cuthand.
Promotional Image from Moon Cycle by Justine Tamiko Lai.
Find out more about Gravitational Lensing: Feminist Film Dialogues.
John Saint Pelvyn, Katsy Pline & Phillip Laurent
Wednesday, December 4, 2024
7pm
Admission: $10 (discount for members)
An evening of exploratory sound featuring the reconstructed folk abstractions of John Saint Pelvyn, the country-inflected ambient soundscapes of Katsy Pline, and Phillip Laurent's Hill Songs performed with accompaniment from Zekarias Thompson and Benjamin Rodgers.
Guitarist, singer, and player of some species of dismantled electrified folk, John Saint Pelvyn is a musical enigma of curious proportions. Though a longtime denizen of the Minneapolis underground music scene, in late 2020 an acute episode of severe neuromuscular wasting left him unable to play, sing, or walk. He spent most of recent years regrowing his body from scratch, and at the same time reinventing the way he makes music. His latest release on Astral Editions, "Solo Guitar and Voice", explores a new kind of playing, mostly abandoning a blues stride style in favor of oceanic waves of strumming, rich quivering whammy bar wobble, and sheets of shimmering feedback which he seems to harvest from the air using his guitar like a musical dowsing rod. He accompanies himself with otherworldly vocal abstractions, alternating between a haunting countertenor, polyphonic overtones, and throat singing.
Katsy Pline's 2024 album Devotion is a record of ambient country music assembled from B-bender guitar, electronics, synthesizers and saxophone. Largely eschewing harmonic development in favor of oceanic feeling, the record stretches the swirling unconscious yearning of heartbreak country into glacial shapes, starlit and blue.
Phillip Laurent's work Hill Songs is a collection of brief, instrumental meditations written and recorded during a self-fashioned four day composer's retreat while house sitting for a loved one in the Berkeley hills. Featuring a mix of synthesizers, chimes, and the homeowner's collection of wind instruments, these Hill Songs channel Laurent's intimate relationship to the house where they were recorded, its visitors (the raccoons, skunks, and squirrels who feast on its surpluses), and the sublime alienation of a hill with a view.
Do-Over Music's Year-End Finale!
Suki O'Kane Presents Matthew Sperry's Treasure Mouth
Thursday, December 5, 2024
7-9pm
Admission: $10 (discount for members)
Once described as “hackable karoake with live visuals and improvised text” this score was pulled from the journals of the late Matthew Sperry. He envisioned an ensemble of singers and musicians attempting to keep up with someone writing extemporaneously on an overhead projector. The results are irresistible, at once vertiginous, hilarious, and touching.
John Shiurba conducts this edition with:
Val Esway, vocals
Karl Evangelista, guitar
David James, guitar and vocals
Dan Plonsey, reeds
Gino Robair, electronics
Maw Shein Win, extemporaneous writer
Cory Wright, reeds
Lisa Mezzacappa, bass
Jordan Glenn, drums
Kathleen Quillian, Gilbert Guerrero and Ellie Vanderlip, projection
Suki O’Kane, latkes
Makeshift Market + Brunch
Saturday, December 7, 2024 (rain or shine)
Brunch, 10am-2pm
Makeshift Market, 1-6pm
Free Admission
Join us on Saturday, December 7th for food, drink, music, vendors and more, happening all day long at Shapeshifters.
Brunch will be served in the café, from 10am-2pm featuring house-made pastries, seasonal toasts, breakfast burritos, coffee & espresso drinks, house-blended teas and more.
From 1-6pm our cinema space will open up for the Makeshift Winter Market where
local artists and organizations will be on hand to sell an array of handmade, small batch and one-of-a-kind items, including San Francisco Cinematheque (experimental film books), Jim Granato (vinyl records), Shipwrecked Shop (handmade tiki & mid-century modern style gifts), Danny Plotnick (original photographs), Anna Firth (riso prints and zines), Niko Charuza (riso prints), Layla Chamberlin (lino prints & jewelry), Sita Rupe (paintings and prints), Amonda Kallenbach (riso prints & comics), and Octavia Veeder (gemstone jewelry).
Get crafty at the material cinema worktable where you will find all the supplies you need to make your own hand-painted/hand-scratched 16mm film loops. When you're done we'll throw it on the projector to watch it come to life! No filmmaking experience necessary. Fun for kids of all ages!
There will be two kinds of house-made beer on tap (+ some canned that you can take to-go) and other beverages and snacks for purchase + a steady stream of grooved vinyl audio gems on the hi-fi, selected by DJs Jim G, Johnny Whatevs & Billy Z.
Come spend the day with us!
New Films by Dominic Angerame
Sunday, December 8, 2024
7pm
Admission: $10 (discount for members)
San Francisco-based filmmaker Dominic Angerame returns to Shapeshifters to screen 16 new films, with subjects ranging from portraits of friends to political protests—all shot on film over the past few decades and finished this year.
Program includes Aeon (2024, 12 mins.), Film Diary #1—Robert Fulton III (2024, 2 mins.), Film Diary #2—No Nothing Cinema (2024, 4 mins.), Film Diary #3—In Memory of Kurt Kren (2024, 3 mins.), Film Diary #4—Cemetery (2024, 3 mins.), Film Diary #5—Last Temptation of Christ (2024, 4 mins.), Film Diary #6—1984 Democratic Convention (2024, 5 mins.), Film Diary #7—Psalm Sunday (2024, 5 mins.), Film Diary #8—Papa John Creach (2024, 3 mins.), Film Diary #9—Water Fall (2024, 3 mins.), War Zone (2024, 7 mins.), San Francisco Art Institute (A Ghost Story) (2024, 9 mins) + 4 more brand new films—hot off the presses—titles TBA!
Gravitational Lensing: Feminist Film Dialogues
Program 6 - Reproductive Health & Justice
Friday, December 13, 2024
7pm
Admission: $18 (discount for members)
Films illuminating the body's reproductive capabilities, including menstruation, pregnancy and childbirth as well as thoughts, feelings and other extenuating circumstances around whether or not to continue a pregnancy once conceived, or to even have a child at all.
Program 6 - Reproductive Health & Justice includes films by Ruth Hayes, Claire Maske, Diane Nerwen, Janis Crystal Lipzin, SF Women's Health Collective and others TBA.
This screening is part of the Gravitational Lensing: Feminist Film Dialogues weekend-long focus on Reproductive Health & Justice which also includes the Urgent Action Video Making Workshop on Saturday, 12/14 and Films from the Abortion Clinic Film Collective: Documenting Reproductive Justice on Sunday, 12/15.
Find out more about Gravitational Lensing: Feminist Film Dialogues.
Promotional Image from Reversal by Diane Nerwen.
New & Recent Animated Films by Lewis Klahr
Co-presented by San Francisco Cinematheque
Saturday, December 14, 2024
7pm
Admission: $10 (discount for members)
LA-based filmmaker Lewis Klahr will join us to present an evening of 8 recently finished and in-progress animated films created between 2020 to 2024. Notable, perhaps, for their genre hopping, none of these films have screened in the Bay area and most have yet to screen before an audience. Klahr has curated this “preview” program to test the effectiveness of various sequences and combinations. All of the included films are from Klahr’s ongoing, multipart series From 45 to 33 whose first completed section, "The Blue Rose of Forgetfulness, had a memorable screening at BAMPFA in September.
Screening: Interstitial Romance (Warm Novelette) (2024), Thin Rain (2023), Five Days Till Tomorrow (2022) w/music by Michael Pisaro Liu, Railroad Bill (2023) Music by Dick Connette, Small Town Rain (2024), Crayon Angels (2021) w/music from producer Lorenzo Wolf's tribute album to Judee Sill, Repast (2020), 3 Friends of the Cold Season (2024) w/music by Dick Connette.
Klahr's Circumstantial Pleasures program will also be presented by SF Cinematheque at The Lab on Wednesday, December 12, 2024.
Films from the Abortion Clinic Film Collective: Documenting Reproductive Justice
Sunday, December 15, 2024
7pm
Admission: $12 (discount for members)
In the Abortion Clinic Film Collective series, we hear from medical directors and staff, mothers and daughters, criminal defense attorneys and advocates from across the country, about how their personal and professional lives have been affected post-Dobbs. Each portal provides a window into the broad and life-threatening ramifications of that Supreme Court decision and its devastating legacy for the health and well-being of our country and people.
Featuring films by Lynne Sachs, Kristy Guevara-Flanagan, Đoan Hoáng Curtis, Kelly Gallagher, Lindsay Opuku-Acheampong, Raymond Rea, Ruth Hayes, and Sasha Waters.
This screening is part of the Gravitational Lensing: Feminist Film Dialogues weekend-long focus on Reproductive Health & Justice which also includes Gravitational Lensing, Program #6: Reproductive Health & Justice on Friday, 12/13 and the Urgent Action Video Making Workshop on Saturday, 12/14.
