Cinema
Upcoming Programs & Events
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)
