Shapeshifters Cinema Hosts a New Film Series for Adventurous Moviegoers
Jonathan Kiefer knows a little something about the inertia and distractions that can keep you from getting out of the house.
Despite being a bona fide film buff — Kiefer is a filmmaker, a Roxie Theater employee, and a California College of the Arts film professor — he was surprised “and a little sad” at how rarely he was actually going to the movies. Earlier this year, he decided to take matters into his own hands.
Vital Signs Film Series (aka “monthly proof of cinematic life”) launched last month at Oakland’s Shapeshifters Cinema, a 40-seat theater best known for its experimental offerings. What Kiefer pitched wasn’t their ordinary fare — 16mm shorts, expanded cinema events, DIY workshops — but Kathleen Quillian and Gilbert Guerrero, Shapeshifters’ founders, were game.
“Outside of the experimental film and the programming that we do, how do we just keep expanding?” Gilbert says. “We have this space, it’s just sitting here empty.” Why not host a weekend matinee?
The series kicked off on May 2 with the prolific South Korean director Hong Sansoo’s What Does That Nature Say to You. A short animation by fellow CCA faculty member Kota Ezawa opened the program. The series’ second offering, Caroline Golum’s Revelations of Divine Love, screens this Sunday, June 21.
Vital Signs hopes to fill an untapped niche in the Bay Area film ecosystem. Not quite experimental and not quite mainstream, Vital Signs movies might be touring the international film festival circuit; they likely won’t be playing on a Bay Area screen anytime soon. Kiefer describes them as “adventurous stuff that is kind of indie, art house, slightly strange, noncommercial, very boutique offerings.”
“Maybe if you’re lucky, they’ll wind up on the streaming platforms,” he explains. “But then with this type of film especially, it’s not as good just to watch it at home as it is to be in even a small room with just a few people.”
Made on a budget of around $200,000, Revelations of Divine Love tells the story of the 14th-century Christian mystic Julian of Norwich, who recounted her visions in what is now considered the oldest surviving English-language text written by a woman.
“You might think this is going to be cheeky to a point of detachment and super hipster, holding the audience at arm’s length, but it’s a very sincere piece,” Kiefer says. “And it’s really beautiful.”
Golum, who’s based in Brooklyn, will be in attendance for a Q&A after the Shapeshifters screening.
Kiefer’s pitch came just as Shapeshifters was making its own ask. In March, the cinema launched a GoFundMe to raise $60,000 to help cover immediate expenses. “The biggest donor to our organization over the years has been an unnamed shadow donor,” the GoFundMe explains, “and that has been us — the founding directors — who have kept the engine running with regular financial infusions from out of our own pockets.”
Founded in 2012, Shapeshifters Cinema started as a monthly experimental film series, first at Oakland’s Arbor Cafe, then at the Temescal Arts Center. Since 2019, they’ve operated a microcinema and brewery in a Victorian near Jack London Square (Guerrero is an award-winning brewer). In 2023 they took over the next-door cafe.
While workshop fees, rentals and food and beer sales help sustain the operation, Guerrero says Shapeshifters isn’t yet profitable. “From the business side of it, it’s just how do we get people to come in so we can pay the rent,” Guerrero says.
While the first Vital Signs screening didn’t have a huge turnout, Quillian says, the people who came were first-time visitors. “That is something we’re excited about,” she says. “It’s going to open up space for people who are not necessarily into short experimental or performative work.” After all, it’s Shapeshifters’ fan base, now growing, that helped them raise over $53,000 in two weeks.
Kiefer is well aware of the factors at play in the current arts funding landscape — and the importance of artist-run places like Shapeshifters. He tried to impart the lessons of indie filmmaking to his CCA students.
“Make what you can with what you have,” he says he told them. “Understand that institutions may or may not be helpful, or if they are, it might be in a limited way or for a limited time. The closing of the school seems like a brutal but effective example of that.”
Meanwhile, Vital Signs puts that indie mentality into practice, building a community of adventurous moviegoers one hard-to-see film at a time. Ben Rivers’ Mare’s Nest is scheduled for July 5, Patrick Wang’s A. Rimbaud for Aug. 2. Future screenings will include Artemis Shaw’s Removal of the Eye and Sofia Bohdanowicz’s Measures for a Funeral.
It’s no accident the series launched in spring, Kiefer says: “You start to see flowers blooming, and there’s a hope that’s associated with that.”
‘Revelations of Divine Love’ screens Sunday, June 21, at 2 p.m. at Shapeshifters Cinema (857 5th St., Oakland). Director Caroline Golum will be in attendance.
