- Stage Left: A Story of Theater in San Francisco
From the founding of the Actor's Workshop in 1952 through present day, experimentation and political consciousness have become hallmarks of San Francisco's theater community. Stage Left is a colorful history of the intriguing, influential and often outrageous theatrical innovations of Bay Area artists.
[November 11, 2012]
- It Came from Kuchar
By the 1960s, twins George and Mike Kuchar were shaping the underground film scene alongside Andy Warhol and Kenneth Anger. It Came from Kuchar interweaves the brother's lives, their admirers and a 'greatest hits' of Kuchar clips into a hilarious and moving tale.
[October 28, 2012]
- A Brush with the Tenderloin
What happens when a soft-spoken artist decides to paint a fanciful mural on one of San Francisco's diciest street corners? A colorful collection of locals interact with artist Mona Caron and end up playing key roles in the mural's evolution in A Brush with the Tenderloin.
[September 23, 2012]
- Beaverbrook
Beaverbrook is the story of Camp Beaverbrook, a sleep-away summer camp that operated from 1961 to 1985. Combining archival footage and former campers' life-changing stories, the film makes a poignant, often humorous case for reconsidering Camp Beaverbrook's demise and the decline of the summer camp industry in general.
[July 29, 2012]
- Everyday Sunshine: The Story of Fishbone
Narrated by Laurence Fishburne, Everyday Sunshine: The Story of Fishbone reveals the creative alchemy, the clash of egos, and the enduring friendships behind Fishbone's storied career.
[February 19, 2012]
- Why Isn't Chris von Sneidern Famous?
Why Isn't Chris von Sneidern Famous? examines the on and off stage life of critically acclaimed San Francisco singer/songwriter Chris von Sneidern.
[November 7, 2010]
- California Is a Place: The State in Four Acts
California Is a Place: The State in Four Acts is a collection of short films which look at different aspects of what it means to be a Californian.
[October 17, 2010]
- Speaking in Tongues
Speaking in Tongues follows four students in an urban school district that is exploring the provocative notion that speaking a foreign language can be a national asset.
[September 26, 2010]
- Audience of One
Audience of One tells the story of Richard Gazowsky, a San Francisco-based Pentecostal pastor turned film director who receives a vision from God to shoot a multi-million dollar sci-fi epic movie, sending him and his followers on a journey of extreme faith.
[August 29, 2010]
- A Day Late in Oakland
A Day Late in Oakland chronicles the life of Chauncey Bailey, the journalist who was gunned down on his walk to work in August 2007, and the evolution of Your Black Muslim Bakery, the organization implicated in the killing.
[August 6, 2010]
- Commune
Commune explores an audacious premise -- that being together in the wilderness will help create revolutionary movement in the rest of society.
[July 11, 2010]
- Firestorm
Firestorm tackles the national crisis in emergency care through the eyes of Los Angeles firefighters, who have become the safety net for the city's poor, uninsured and under-insured residents.
[May 16, 2010]
- The Damnedest, Finest Ruins
The Damnedest, Finest Ruins examines the 1906 earthquake and fire, which burned for three days. With restored silent film footage, rare archival photographs, and the remastered voice of Enrico Caruso, it challenges the official story of what happened on those terrible days.
[April 11, 2010]
- 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.
[July 26, 2009]
- 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.
[July 19, 2009]
- 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.
[July 12, 2009]
- 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.
[July 5, 2009]
- 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.
[June 28, 2009]
- 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.
[May 10, 2009]
- 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.
[November 16, 2008]
- 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.
[November 9, 2008]
- 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.
[October 12, 2008]
- 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.
[July 28, 2008]
- 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.
[September 28, 2008]
- 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.
[February 10, 2008]
- 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.
[January 27, 2008]
- 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.
[November 18, 2007]
- 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.
[October 21, 2007]
- 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.
[October 14, 2007]
- 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.
[September 9, 2007]
- 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.
[July 29, 2007]
- 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.
[April 15, 2007]
- 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.
[March 25, 2007]
- 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.
[November 19, 2006]
- Emile Norman: By His Own Design
A portrait of self-taught Californian artist Emile Norman, this film illustrates how Norman worked 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.
[October 15, 2006]
- 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.
[September 24, 2006]
- 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.
[August 26, 2007]
- 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.
[May 20, 2007]
- 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.
[May 21, 2006]
- 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.
[April 30, 2006]
- 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.
[April 8, 2007]
- 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.
[October 2, 2005]
- 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.
[September 25, 2005]
- 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.
[July 23, 2006]
- 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.
[June 19, 2005]
- 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.
[May 22, 2005]
- Counting Sheep
Counting Sheep chronicles the struggle for survival of the wild Sierra Nevada bighorn sheep, a majestic emblem of American wilderness.
[April 24, 2005]
