A documentary made by firefighters reconstructing the history and narratives of the Gartland Fire, a 1975 blaze that killed more than a dozen people on 16th Street, will make its public debut Tuesday night. Michael Rustia, Ron Lewin, David Jebe and Adam Wood set out to use the stories of the firefighters who responded to that fire to tell the...
As Valencia Street in the Mission is increasingly burnished to a shine, Artists’ Television Access — flying a black-and-white sign like a pirate flag — stands out as a rough spot in a sea of diamonds. The cinema collective moved from SoMa to the Mission in 1986. Since then, ATA has hosted art, performance and cinema, exploring the areas where...
Leah Nichols first met Steve Jones at a sidewalk memorial for a mutual and recently departed friend. She was in tears. He wasn’t. “Buck up,” Jones advised. A year and a half later, she’s made a 10-minute stop-motion animated film about Jones that premieres Wednesday at the Urban Film Festival. Jones, it turns out, is funny, personable and knows everyone...
Film archivist Stephen Parr once remarked that the best database of film was in his head — “because there’s a lot more room for serendipity.” That serendipitous database is now lost. The 63-year-old Parr died unexpectedly, possibly as a result of complications from Parkinson’s though details are unclear, late on the morning of Oct. 24. He was the founder and...
Lotus SF, an Indian restaurant, will give a new face to the historic yellow building at 2434 Mission St. The venue used to be home to Big Glass, an Irish bar owned by Daniel McCarthy back when the Mission was an Irish neighborhood, and later became a retail space. As Michael Nolan, a reader and contributor, pointed out. Daniel was...
On its face, Almost Sunrise, which is showing Saturday, June 10 at 2:30 p.m. at the Vogue Theater as part of SF DocFest, is a film about two veterans who trek from Milwaukee to Los Angeles to raise awareness about trauma in vets. But everyone stands to learn something from this film. Make no mistake, the documentary by director...
This summer, Brava! For Women in the Arts will premiere one film and two plays as part of the theater’s Summer of Xicanas series. Two of the events examine Argentina’s Dirty War, a period in the 70s and 80s when the country’s military dictatorship persecuted tens of thousands suspected political opponents. The first is the film “Observando al Observador (Observing the Observer)”,...
With 166 people exonerated, 2016 set the record for Americans wrongly convicted of crimes that they did not commit. Mission-based filmmaker Jamie Meltzer masterfully puts three human faces to this statistic. Over the course of five years, Meltzer followed a trio of innocent ex cons on an often painful but liberating journey to reclaim their lives, capturing their triumphs and...
You might have heard the Mission be called “ground zero” of gentrification in the city, but one local resident decided to explore a different microcosm of affordable housing loss: Parkmerced. His short documentary on the impending demolition of the housing there, “Who Killed Parkmerced?” will be shown at DocFest on Sunday and Tuesday. Nick Pasquariello, a Mission District resident and...
Some San Franciscans remember a time when the corner of 16th and Valencia streets was a graveyard. Memorials filled the empty pit and the walls to commemorate the estimated 14 people (the final number is still unknown) who perished in a fire at the Gartland Hotel on the night/morning of December 12, 1975. Archival photos of the scene look eerily...
From activism to the environment, from spirituality to Rock’n’Roll, this year’s repertoire of real life stories told in 55 features and 55 short films screening at the SF Documentary Film Festival is sure to pique a range of interests. On Wednesday morning, the festival’s organizers gave a sneak peek of some of the featured material at a press conference held...
With a rap sheet that spans some three decades, one of the activists who famously hoisted a 75-foot “Resist” banner from a crane behind the White House last November is now the subject of a short documentary. The protest denouncing President Donald Trump’s policies made national headlines and landed Greenpeace activist Karen Topakian and a handful of others, including local...
A film festival highlighting Chicano work and perspectives in Los Angeles will have a sister event in the Mission District for the first time in its more than 20-year run, bringing a party, panelists, and a screening to 24th Street on April 8 and 9. Organizations all along 24th Street will host thematically fitting events for the festival all day on Saturday, like...
Progressive politicos, activists, and other movie-goers descended on the Roxie Theater on Friday night for what has become a San Francisco tradition in recent years: lamenting tech’s influence on the city, particularly its financial takeover of local politics. Supervisors David Campos and Aaron Peskin, State Senator Mark Leno, author and journalist David Talbot, and various aides, journalists, and local activists...
The tech industry, its money, and its political influence are hitting the silver screen next week in a new film critical of the “sharing economy” and the influence of Silicon Valley on San Francisco. “Company Town,” which will have its San Francisco premiere at the Roxie Theater on Friday, October 28, at 7 p.m., takes places over a few tumultuous weeks in...
