Cinema
Upcoming Programs & Events
Easy for You to Say by Jonathan Kiefer
Friday, May 3, 2024
8pm
Free Admission
In this wry ode to the blank page -- shot in part at Shapeshifters -- a melancholy Barcelona poet (Raúl Portero) visits the tiny California college responsible for an English translation of his possibly final work.
Shapeshifters Spring Happening
Saturday, May 4, 2024 (rain or shine)
11am-6pm
Join us this Saturday, May 4th for food, drink, music, vendors and more, happening all day long at Shapeshifters.
We will be serving brunch in our café, from 11am-3pm featuring house-made pastries, seasonal toasts, breakfast burritos, coffee & espresso drinks, house-blended teas and more.
From 1-6pm we will continue the fun in and around our cinema space with tamales, house-made beer on tap and a steady stream of audio gems chosen from our collection of pop, punk, lounge and dollar bin vinyl records.
Some of our favorite local artists and organizations will be on hand selling an array of handmade, small batch and one-of-a-kind items, including San Francisco Cinematheque, owllamode, Anna Firth, Nico Charuza, Maya Dijiji, Bright Moments, The Catman of West Oakland and Ms. Lori's Unique Boutique. Oakland's own Driveway Follies, purveyors of the amazing annual Halloween puppet show, will be there with some of their handmade marionettes to show. They will also have a craft table where you and/or your kid can make your own paper bat puppet!
Freight Train Lady + HAIL DIRT!
Thursday, May 9, 2024
Doors 7pm / Music 8pm
Admission: $10
Join us for a night of FOLK ROCK! Featuring Freight Train Lady and HAIL DIRT! Plus live projections, including visuals by Christian Moreno and handmade 16mm films by Ellie Vanderlip. Freight Train Lady is a country band living in San Francisco playing songs from the north coast. HAIL DIRT! is a queer folk band from San Francisco playing ballads of revenge, religion, and existentialism.
Los Guardianes del Maíz (The Keepers of Corn) - by Gustavo Vazquez
Friday, May 24, 2024
8pm
Admission: $10
Los Guardianes del Maíz is a 60-minute documentary film by Bay Area filmmaker Gustavo Vasquez that tells the story of native corn from the perspectives of indigenous farmers, artisans and cooks in Mexico whose ancestors shepherded the ever-evolving seeds from the dawn of agriculture into the 21st Century. It's a story of collective labor spanning more than 350 generations. These voices are joined by community leaders, scientists, chefs, and others whose knowledge and activism stand not only in defense of food sovereignty and the genetic integrity, diversity, and community ownership of native seeds, but in defense of a durable cultural legacy and a way of life.
Navigators by Noah Teichner
Sunday, June 2, 2024
6-8pm
Admission: $10
Navigators by Paris-based filmmaker Noah Teichner is a feature-length experimental essay film about the 1919 deportation of 249 anarchists and radicals from the United States to Russia on the Buford (nicknamed the "Soviet Ark"), the same ship that would later be used as the set of Buster Keaton's slapstick comedy The Navigator. Using archival film footage and text from the journals of the exiles (including Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman) as well as scenes from Keaton's film, Teichner teases out the many threads entangled in this multi-layered comedy of errors to weave together a new story made from the unlikely concurrence of these two narratives.
STUDIO 8 Film Festival - Opening Night Shorts Program
Organized by the SF Artists Alumni Association
Friday, June 14, 2024
7pm
Admission: $20
The STUDIO 8 Film Festival is a 3-day event organized by the SF Artists Alumni Association to showcase the work of filmmakers who honed their craft while students at the legendary (and now-closed) San Francisco Art Institute. The opening night program features short films by Jibz Cameron aka Dynasty Handbag, Deborah Fort, Dean Snider, Kerry Laitala, Minoosh Zomorodinia, Dimitra Skandali, Liz Miller Kovacs, Lynne Sachs, Mark Street, Yin-Ju Chen, Dicky Bahto, Tommy Becker, Anne McGuire and Malic Amalya.
The festival also includes screenings of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon + a Juneteenth-themed shorts program at the Balboa Theatre on Saturday, 6/15 and a Kuchar Brothers bonanza screening w/Mike Kuchar and V.Vale in person at Roxie Theatre on Sunday, 6/16. For more information about the event, visit: https://www.sfartistsalumni.org/studio8filmfestival
Gravitational Lensing is a new series dedicated to exploring the visions, voices, concerns and lineage of women, non-binary, genderqueer and trans filmmakers through public film screenings, workshops, conversations and presentations. Programming will begin in June. Stay tuned!
About Our Cinema
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.
Tickets
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.
Venue Specs
Find out more about our venue.
