SHAPESHIFTERS CINEMA is an experimental microcinema located in Oakland, CA. We provide a venue and support for contemporary artists working with experimental and artist-made film, video, sound, music and other types of mediated performance. We host regular, live events, offer workshops on experimental moving image and sound production and operate a storefront shop specializing in print publications, DVDs, sound recordings and other artist-made media.
SHAPESHIFTERS BREWERY makes a variety of small-batch, seasonal, hand-crafted beers, brewed on-site in a space right behind the cinema. These are served (to 21+) at all our events as well as some off-site events. Find out more at shapeshiftersbrewery.com
SHAPESHIFTERS CAFÉ, is right next door to our cinema! We offer freshly-made salads, sandwiches, coffee, tea, pastries and more. Open M-F, 6am-2pm and the first Saturday of every month, 11am-3pm. Find out more at shapeshifterscafe.com
Gilbert Guerrero - Operations Director & A/V Tech
Kathleen Quillian - Programming Director
Ellie Vanderlip - Education & Outreach Director
The Shapeshifters Membership program provides crucial, sustaining support for our small, DIY, volunteer-run organization. By joining the membership program, you become part of an engaged, diverse, creative community working in and around experimental moving image, sound and time-based art. Each level offers a range of access to members-only resources and events, discounts, comps and more. Find out more and join now!
Shapeshifters Cinema sits on the historic territory of Huichin, the ancestral and unceded land of the Chochenyo Muwekma Ohlone, successors of the sovereign Verona Band of Alameda County.
Our building is wheelchair-accessible and has one wheelchair-accessible bathroom.
Our weekly Thursday Night Happy Hours have been paused indefinitely. We are currently only open when we have a scheduled event. See individual events listed below for all start times.
Doors open 30 minutes before showtime, unless otherwise noted.
Do-Over Music Series - Jas Stade + Improvised Music & Film
Every First Thursday
7-9pm
Next program: Thursday, November 7, 2024
Admission: $10
The Do-Over Music Series at Shapeshifters Cinema, organized by Lisa Mezzacappa and Jordan Glenn, is a monthly series of sound performances presented by a rotating cast of local luminaries and special guests. The first set features performances of creative - improvised - composed - electronic - acoustic - music. The second set opens up to a live improvised collaboration of sound and visuals made using images culled from the Shapeshifters 16mm film collection.
Set 1 (7pm): Jas Stade - solo guitar
Set 2 (8pm): Improvised music & film:
Jas Stade (guitar), Marië Abe (accordion), Mikey Maleki (multiple instruments), Cody Putman (bassoon) and Jordan Glenn (drums) improvise to fun film loops + quirky found footage excavated from the Shapeshifters 16mm film collection.
In Plain Sight - Films about Climate and Surveillance
Saturday, November 9, 2024
7pm
Admission: $12 (discount for members)
Weaving a thread through the seemingly disparate elements of climate and surveillance, the films in this program reveal and ruminate on some of the troubling elements that lie hidden beneath the surface of our so-called civilized society.
Program includes The Unintentional Art of Surveillance (2024, DV) by Phoebe Tooke, In Order Not to Be Here (2002, 16mm film) by Deborah Stratman, The Fifth Day (2024, 16mm shown on DV) by Anjali Sundaram with live accompaniment by Wayne Grim, and The Silver Returns (2001, 16mm film) by David Sherman.
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 films by Sue Ding, Stephanie Barber, Justine Tamiko Lai, Nika Pecarina, Elliot Montegue, Joiri Minaya and more TBA.
Promotional Image from Moon Cycles by Justine Tamiko Lai.
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 12 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)
Our intimate, 40-seat cinema is able to host a range of presentations by contemporary artists working in film, video, sound, music, multimedia and performance. Our focus is primarily on experimental and artist-made.
Doors open 30 minutes before showtime, unless otherwise noted.
Tickets for all events are available on-line pre-show as well as at the door (unless otherwise noted). Information and links are posted under each program event listing. Please note: we only honor tickets purchased directly from Shapeshifters.
Find out more about our venue.
Our venue and equipment is available for private rentals. Find out more.
We are working on scheduling more great workshops for you. Sign up on our mailing list and be the first to know about them!
Our workshops emphasize a DIY approach to art-making. Each one is taught by a different guest artist who shares practical, hands-on lessons in a variety of media and creative practices using materials and resources you probably already have, or are otherwise easy to acquire. Learn something new or enhance your own established art practice. Everyone is welcome!
The Shapeshifters shop features an eclectic range of DVDs, books, CDs and other artist-made items. Browse the selection here
Jennifer Reeves, September 29, 2024 at Shapeshifters Cinema
Workshop with Phil Hoffman & Deirdre Logue, September 22, 2024 at Shapeshifters Cinema
The Beth Schenck Quintet, August 1, 2024 at Shapeshifters Cinema
Suki O'Kane, August 16 2020 at Shapeshifters Cinema
John Davis, September 20, 2020 at Shapeshifters Cinema
Killer Banshee, September 13, 2020 at Shapeshifters Cinema
Elena Pardo, December 6, 2019 at Shapeshifters Cinema
Lynne Sachs, November 10, 2019 at Shapeshifters Cinema
Minoosh Zomorodinia, October 13, 2019 at Shapeshifters Cinema
Jeremy Rourke, September 20, 2019 at Shapeshifters Cinema
Shapeshifters receives Alameda Count ARTSFund Grant
We are pleased to announce that Shapeshifters Cinema was one of 120 Alameda County nonprofit arts and cultural organizations to receive a 2024 ARTSFUND grant. The ARTSFUND grant provides general operating support to assist with the mission and ongoing programs of Alameda County nonprofit arts and cultural organizations. See the full list of 2024 grant recipients.
Word is out! The Shapeshifters universe is expanding! In January 2023, we took over the cafe next door to our cinema and brewery. We've been slowly working on fixing it up since then to fold it into the Shapeshifters vision. In the meantime, the kitchen is in full swing! We've got all kinds of seasonal and freshly-made sandwiches and salads, locally-roasted coffee drinks, house-blended teas, pastries (made both in-house and by local phenom Firebrand Bakery) and breakfast items, including our very popular breakfast burrito. We are currently open Monday-Friday from 6am-2pm. Check out our full menu. All items are available for dine-in, take-out or delivery. You can also follow us on Instagram where we post weekly specials and other fun things @shapeshifterscafe.
In the wake of SFMOMA's announcement to cut its historically-significant and beloved film program, KQED journalist Sarah Hotchkiss wrote a great article looking at how this affects the over-all ecology of the Bay Area film culture and the film programs and microcinemas (including Shapeshifters) that continue to cultivate it. Read the article here.
Jack London Improvement District awards funds to Shapeshifters for our merch expansion!
Due to restrictions brought on by the global pandemic and for the safety of our community, we shut down for over a year... but we did not stop! In addition to livestreaming artists' work and hosting artist-led workshops, we opened a retail shop online. We are expanding and building out a shop at our venue with the help of funds provided by the Jack London Improvement District (BID). The funds will go towards building a wall of shelves and stocking up on artists books, records, DVDS, CDs, unique works of art, and handmade goods. Check out the announcement and the full list of award winners.
Shapeshifters receives an Oakland CARES grant!
We are very grateful to have received a grant through the Oakland CARES Fund for Artists and Arts Non-Profits, made possible by the city of Oakland Economic & Workforce Development Department, Cultural Affairs Division and administered by Center for Cultural Innovation. These funds ensure that we can continue our (modified) operations during these challenging and uncertain times.
Thank you to all of our donors & funders
We rely on individual donations to support artists and operate our cinema. We are immensely grateful for their contributions.
View the list of donors
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