Vital Signs is a monthly film series organized by Bay Area filmmaker and curator Jonathan Kiefer to showcase new and recently-released, feature-length, contemporary, independent and artist-made films that have shown around the international film festival circuit but may or may not have been picked up by distributors and are otherwise hard to find. Films may feature obscure themes, unusual perspectives or eccentric material, but they have all been sifted through the Vital Signs filter so you can be sure they are all films worth leaving your home to see in community with like-minded art film/film art appreciators. Screenings will take place at Shapeshifters every first Sunday at 2pm unless otherwise noted.
Join us for First Sunday Brunch! Our café is open 11am-2pm for brunch on first Sundays before every Vital Signs matinée film. Check our Instagram page for updates.
Vital Signs in the Press
"Shapeshifters Cinema Hosts a New Film Series for Adventurous Moviegoers" by Sarah Hotchkiss for KQED
"Vital Signs in Oakland" by David Hudson for the Criterion Collection website
Upcoming Film Programs
The Currents, by Milagros Mumenthaler
Sunday, October 4, 2026
2pm
Admission: $15 (discount for members)
At the height of her career, Lina, a 34-year-old Argentine stylist, is driven by a sudden impulse after an award ceremony in Switzerland. Back in Buenos Aires, she says nothing, but something in her has shifted – quiet and invisible, it subtly unravels a past she thought she had left behind.
Cast: Isabel Aimé González Sola, Esteban Bigliardi, Ernestina Gatti
In Spanish with English subtitles
Running time: 104 minutes
The Becomers, with special guest A.S. Hamrah
Thursday, October 22, 2026
7pm
Admission: $15 (discount for members)
Vital Signs Film Series is delighted to welcome A.S. Hamrah for a special screening, discussion, book-signing, merciless report on a film industry in self-imposed crisis, and several glimmers of cinephilic hope. "Most people's favorite film critic," as described by Screen Slate, Hamrah's most recent book is Last Week in End Times Cinema.
The Becomers (2023)
By Zach Clark
90 minutes
Proving love is indeed the strangest force in the universe, Zach Clark's oddball romance follows a pair of body-snatching aliens across America as they try to find both their place within this odd world and each other. Featuring narration by Russell Mael (Sparks), this freewheeling science-fiction comedy is filled lo-fi effects and the heartfelt, emotionally astute exploration of what it means to find your own kind. A truly one-of-a-kind film that'll make you feel closer to everyone in the cinema by the end.
"Zach Clark has alarming ideas he turns into well-written screenplays and then directs on a tight budget, and he's great with actors," A.S. Hamrah writes. "There's no reason Clark isn't the next Jonathan Demme, besides a general, society-wide incompetence that can always find the money for anything as long as it isn't good."
The Tree of Knowledge, by Eugène Green
Sunday, November 1, 2026
2pm
Admission: $15 (discount for members)
A young man from the Lisbon suburbs falls in with a mysterious ogre bound by a demonic pact, then flees with two animal companions to a rural farm, where folklore and danger collide.
In Portuguese with English subtitles
Running time: 100 minutes
London, by Sebastian Brameshuber
Sunday, December 6, 2026
2pm
Admission: $15 (discount for members)
Bobby drives back and forth on the highway that links Vienna and Salzburg to visit his friend who is in a coma. He picks up other travellers to save money on petrol including the soldier questioning what it means to fight, the supermarket trainee heading to see family, the academic looking at the history of the highway, the queer woman about to get married—different paths, different accents, different stories, most of them true. Mountains and forests rush by outside, broken up by junctions, barriers and bridges, the quality of light shifts along with the seasons. Neither a documentary, nor entirely fiction, London is a quietly political portrait of today's Europe via its in-between spaces and those passing through them.
In German with English subtitles
Running time: 120 minutes
Previous Film Programs
Removal of the Eye by Artemis Shaw & Prashanth Kamalakanthan
Sunday, September 6, 2026, 2pm
Directors Artemis Shaw & Prashanth Kamalakanthan in person!
Admission: $15 (discount for members)
Kallia and Ram are at their wits' end with their sleepless baby when they realize Kallia’s Greek mother is on a secret mission to exorcise the family from the evil eye. Trapped between the pressures of new age parenting, old world superstitions, and meddling in-laws, they fight to hold onto their dreams. Filmmakers Shaw and Kamalakanthan turn the lens on themselves and their loved ones—including their actual baby and parents—in this fearless, intimate comedy.
Cast: Artemis Shaw, Prashanth Kamalakanthan, Katerina Shaw, and Niko Kamalakanthan.
Directed by Artemis Shaw and Prashanth Kamalakanthan.
Running time: 92 minutes
Directors Artemis Shaw & Prashanth Kamalakanthan will be joined by Bay Area filmmaker Sofía Camargo for a discussion of the film.
A. Rimbaud by Patrick Wang
Sunday, August 2, 2026
2pm
Admission: $15 (discount for members)
The improbable life of French poet Arthur Rimbaud unfolds with all the shock and playfulness of his poetry. Starring Blake Draper. Directed by Patrick Wang. TRT: 175 minutes
Mare's Nest by Ben Rivers
Sunday, July 5, 2026
2pm
Admission: $15 (discount for members)
Mare's Nest unfolds in a world without adults, where main character Moon wanders through unfamiliar landscapes, encountering solitary figures who reveal alternative ways of living. Guided by a sage and her interpreter in a remote mountain hut, she seeks meaning amid uncertainty. Inspired by a text written by author Don DeLillo, the film reflects the ongoing fascination of director Ben Rivers with lives unfolding apart from mainstream society and follows Moon's quiet observations as she moves through this enigmatic realm towards an open, unknowable future.
Revelations of Divine Love
with director Caroline Golum in person
Sunday, June 21, 2026
2pm
Admission: $15 (discount for members)
An irreverent biopic vividly realized through fantastic psychedelia and handmade sets with an ever-topical feminist approach, Revelations of Divine Love, by Caroline Golum is inspired by and adapted from the memoir of 14th-century mystic and philosopher Julian of Norwich—an account of religious ecstasy, plague, and revolt considered to be the first English-language book to be authored by a woman. Running time: 73 minutes. In English and Latin with English subtitles.
View trailer
Read the NY Times article
Read Guy Maddin's interview with Caroline Golum
Vital Signs Film Series
WHAT DOES THAT NATURE SAY TO YOU, by Hong Sangsoo
+ City of Nature, by Kota Ezawa
Sunday, May 3, 2026
2pm
Admission: $15 (discount for members)
Vital Signs is a new film series organized by Bay Area filmmaker and curator Jonathan Kiefer to showcase new and recently-released, feature-length, contemporary, independent and artist-made films that have shown around the international film festival circuit but may or may not have been picked up by distributors and are otherwise hard to find. Films may feature obscure themes, unusual perspectives or eccentric material, but they have all been sifted through the Vital Signs filter so you can be sure they are all films worth leaving your home to see in community with like-minded art film/film art appreciators. Screenings will take place at Shapeshifters every first Sunday at 2pm.
Kicking off the series is WHAT DOES THAT NATURE SAY TO YOU (2025) by Hong Sangsoo with opening short City of Nature (2011), by Kota Ezawa.
In his 33rd feature, Sangsoo spins a bitterly comic fable on the trials of living simply and righteously in our world. Donghwa is a fledgling poet in his thirties. He rejects material aspirations and seeks to lead a life dedicated to truth and beauty. Then he meets and has some drinks with his girlfriend's family. (TRT: 108 min. Korean with English subtitles.)
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Shapeshifters Cinema | 567 5th Street, Oakland, CA 94607