- The Ghost Mountain Experiment
Obsessed with the dream of living a simple back-to-nature lifestyle, eccentric artist, environmentalist, and author Marshal South flees civilization with his wife Tanya. The Ghost Mountain Experiment tells the story of how they raised a family on a remote, waterless mountaintop, but how isolation and betrayal takes their toll and ultimately destroys a desert paradise and a marriage.
- Debate Team
Debate Team explores the strange subculture of competitive college debate, following four teams in their quest for the national title. What emerges is not simply a chronicle of the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat, but a more disturbing examination into the nature of competition itself.
- This Dust of Words
Thirty years after he last saw her, Stanford English Professor John Felstiner finds wonder and mystery in the life and death of a former student. This Dust of Words, whose title is based on Elizabeth Wiltsee's honors thesis, is both an elegy for a life lost and a celebration of the charitable nature of humanity.
- Pete McCloskey: Leading from the Front
Narrated by Paul Newman, Pete McCloskey: Leading from the Front tells the colorful and inspirational life story of Pete McCloskey, a war veteran, lawyer, and former Republican Congressman. His story offers an example of an authentic hero, who as an elected official follows his moral compass regardless of the prevailing political winds.
- Klunkerz
Klunkerz is a history of mountain bikes showing how a handful of hippie cyclists in the late 1960s and early 1970s literally reinvented the wheel. Little did they realize that their obsessive tinkering would ultimately lead to the birth of a multi-billion dollar industry and an Olympic sport.
- When Medicine Got it Wrong
When Medicine Got it Wrong tells the story of loving California parents who rocked the halls of psychiatry and changed how we understand schizophrenia.
- Paperback Dreams
Paperback Dreams chronicles the rise and fall of Cody's and Kepler's Books -- two landmark independent bookstores struggling to survive in the internet age.
- Runners High
Runners High is an intimate, character driven documentary of struggle, courage, and hope that follows teenagers -- from a tough Oakland neighborhood -- as they sign up and train for a marathon.
- Call It Home
Call It Home celebrates the beauty and importance of the well known Bolinas Lagoon -- chronicling a community's debate over a decade to understand the forces affecting its future.
- Fruits of War
Fruits of War follows four reformed gang members as they come to terms with their two countries -- El Salvador and the U.S. -- violent histories.
- Monumental
Monumental chronicles how David Brower, a 1930s mountaineer, transformed the Sierra Club from a group of gangly rock climbers into a political powerhouse of the environmental movement, actively defining and preserving the Western landscape.
- Piece by Piece
Piece by Piece documents the history of San Francisco's controversial graffiti art movement, with a fast-paced journey into the world of San Francisco street art, as seen through the eye of the artists.
- Freeway Philharmonic
Freeway Philharmonic captures the dedication, perseverance, and rigorous life of seven San Francisco Bay Area freelance classical musicians as they perform with regional orchestras across Northern California.
- Pikyáv (to fix it)
Pikyáv is a poetic film chronicling the Northern California Karuk Tribe's efforts to regain their cultural identity and to resume their historical role as caretakers of their ancestral homelands, the fertile watershed of the Klamath River.
- The Key of G
The Key of G explores the community of family and caregivers that have come together around Gannet Hosa-Betonte, a developmentally disabled young man taking his first steps toward independence.
- Following Sean
Following Sean chronicles filmmaker Ralph Arlyck's return to San Francisco in search of Sean, a sincere 4-year-old when Arlyck first met and filmed the boy thirty years ago, and to discover what kind of adult the precocious child has grown into.
- Grandma Has a Video Camera
Grandma Has a Video Camera is a personal documentary of one family's parallel journey over 13 years, showing their immigrant lives in the U.S. and how they maintain connections to their Brazilian homeland.
- Prison Town, USA
Prison Town, USA tells the story of Susanville, California, a small town that tries to resuscitate its economy by building a prison -- with unanticipated consequences.
- Plagues and Pleasures on the Salton Sea
Plagues and Pleasures explores the economic, political and environmental issues that face the Salton Sea, a one-time vacation destination for the rich and famous now occupied by an eccentric and individualistic populace.
- Gumby Dharma
At once quirky and colorful, heartbreaking and redemptive, Gumby Dharma takes us on a journey through the life and career of spiritual seeker Art Clokey, whose famous characters, Gumby and Pokey, and Davy and Goliath, echoed the spiritual path of their creator.
- Frisbee: The Life and Death of a Hippie Preacher
Frisbee tells the story of evangelist Lonnie Frisbee, a young hippie fully immersed in the 1960s counterculture when he found God while on an acid trip.
- Emile Norman: By His Own Design
A portrait of self-taught Californian artist Emile Norman, this film illustrates how Norman works with the same passion for life, art, nature, and freedom that inspired him through seven decades of a changing art scene and turbulent times for a gay man in America.
- Desert Dreamers
Desert Dreamers is a journey into the heart of California's Mojave Desert, where spiritual seekers, burlesque dancers, outsider artists, miracle healers, and UFO followers explain why they choose to live in one of the hottest, driest, and loneliest places in the United States.
- Sandman
Sandman is a beautifully meditative film that explores the inspiration behind Jim Denevan's massive, yet ephemeral, sand art -- looking at how one artist deals with a tragic childhood and the uncontrollable nature of life itself.
- Mighty Warriors of Comedy
Mighty Warriors of Comedy is a rousing introduction to one of the most devastatingly, funny comedy troupes of the past decade, the 18 Mighty Mountain Warriors, an audacious, Asian American sketch comedy troupe hailing from San Francisco and now trying to break into TV and movies in LA.
- 24 hours on craigslist
The mundane and the sublime, the ridiculous and the profound, all come together to paint a portrait of a thriving, humanistic community in filmmaker Michael Ferris Gibson's documentation of 24 hours on craigslist.
- Nuestra Familia, Our Family
Nuestra Familia, Our Family tracks the history of the Norteño street gang in Salinas and its links to the prison-based NF.
- Let All the Stories Be Told
Let All the Stories Be Told follows a group of theater artists from the beginning stages of a work -- based on the 1978 mass murder/suicide by members of the Peoples Temple in Jonestown, Guyana -- to opening night at the Berkeley Repertory Theater.
- Art and Life
An extraordinary foray into the many worlds of renowned artist, opera/theater director, activist and professor Peter Sellars, Art and Life: Finding the Thread offers a unique perspective on the human experience.
- No Sweat
No Sweat features two, young companies committed to creating "sweat-shop-free" clothing in an industry notorious for its exploitation of mostly poor, immigrant women.
- A Home on the Range
Jack London, California vigilantes, McCarthyism, the Cold War and agribusiness come to life in A Home on the Range: The Jewish Chicken Ranchers of Petaluma, a quintessentially American story of how a community of immigrants found a new home in California.
- Screaming Queens
Screaming Queens introduces viewers to a diverse cast of former prostitutes, drag entertainers, police officers, ministers and neighborhood activists, all of whom played a part in the events leading up to San Francisco's Compton's Cafeteria riot of 1966.
- Fruit of Labor
Fruit of Labor shows the important role that street vendors play in preserving a vibrant cultural tradition in the Fruitvale district of Oakland.
- Counting Sheep
Counting Sheep chronicles the struggle for survival of the wild Sierra Nevada bighorn sheep, a majestic emblem of American wilderness.
