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We show films every Saturday at ATA Gallery, 992 Valencia (@ 21st).
SHOWTIME 8:00pm. ALWAYS FREE BOOKS, VINYL, VHS, AND WINE.
Well hello!! OC is back, jes' shaking with the excitement of a case of Archive Fever...a wide-eyed, full-bodied embrace of our own kind of Cultural Anthropology, a sub-pop group-grok of both outsider cinema and street-savvy fashion!! Yes, BOTH the astonishing surprises in secret 16mm industrial-film collections, AND the marvelous milieux opened and at hand in the instance of an actual public auction of vintage Tees!! Craig Baldwin's limited-edition 222 T-SHIRTS– in this, his fourth book's inaugural launch--serves as a irresistible invitation to a cinemascopic display of thee most curious clothing artifacts...on tables, on the walls, and on live models!..scheduled so that the bidding plays as prologue to a delirious evening of gobsmackin' celluloid core-samples. The two lineages— both from the cotton plant!--here understood as precious traces of particular sensibilities oh-so-at-risk of disappearing forever into the black hole of forgotten cultural history. Come in to browse for free for the afternoon's silent auction; we'll deliver the garments to the winners at our 8PM showtime. Titles include: A 1953 tribute to the rescue of Treasures in a Garbage Can (the veritable theme of tonight's event!)...IBM's mid-50s proto-techno-utopian Piercing the Unknown...a '56 personal-travelog on a Carnivalesque Caribbean cargo cult, in Kodachrome...an early-70s Christian rant on ''cults”, with Eldridge Cleaver(!)...a mid-70s Oscar Mayer Wienermobile ride into a funk-fueled factory overflowing with fatty cow flesh...a '68 educational-TV explication of human sexual intercourse...a late-70s Mormon fantasia of Jesus Christ preaching amongst the Mayan pyramids... an early-80s human-potential confessional on celebrity bed-wetting...a mid-70s doomed-date/tsunami-apocalypse cautionary...and of course mid-century trailers, TV commercials, and Russ Forster on the Califone! PLUS free books, films, albums, cassettes, even laserdiscs...and open bar! $12
SEPT. 13: KORNELIA BOCZKOWSKA's THE ANIMAL SHOW Ever wondered how experimental films represent animals? Our international cinema sister Kornelia personally introduces a global program that challenges the representation of animals in mainstream media, highlighting non-anthropocentric modes of seeing, being, and movement. These home movies, diaries, animations, found footage, and music videos--both handmade and digital--deepen our understanding of the complex relationship between humans, animals, media, and environment: Becoming, Jan van Ijken (Netherlands, 2018), the miraculous genesis of animal life seen in a great microscopic detail--a salamander in its transparent egg from fertilization to hatching; Not (A) Part, Vicky Smith (16mm, UK, 2019), in reference to the rapid decline of flying insects, dead bees found on walks were positioned directly onto negative film and contact-printed; Jamal [A Camel] (16mm, 1981), Ibrahim Shaddad's report from the life of a Sudanese camel plays out in a dreary, small room--a sesame mill; buffalo lifts, Christina Battle (16mm, Canada, 2004), a herd of buffalo desperately try to hold on as they cross the film frame; a bmovie, Lindsay McIntyre (Canada, 2005), in-camera S8 film about a dog named b; Laika, Deborah Stratman (USA, 2021), homage to the spirits of Space Test dogs, with music by Olivia Block, Michael Morris (16mm, USA, 2023), cine-poem for Black Taffy’s song Riding Day and a loving nod to LeGrice’s 1970 Berlin Horse; PATTAKI, Everlane Moraes (Cuba, 2019)--in the dense night, when the moon lifts the tide, water beings are hypnotized by the powers of Yemaya, goddess of the sea; The Fourfold, Alisi Telengut (Canada/Mongolia, 2020), based on ancient shamanic rituals in Mongolia and Siberia, and against the backdrop of modern existential crisis and human-induced environmental change, an exploration of indigenous worldviews and wisdom--a reclaiming of the ideas of animism for planetary health; HORANGI, Lynn Kim (USA/Korea, 2024), based on a dream of laying in a field of tigers, wrapping around each other, existing in union...a moment of tenuous harmony and myriad tactile feelings and emotions;Cuban iMAL (world premiere, USA, 2025), shot by both Dominic Angerame (here in person) when in Cuba and Alanna Zrimsek when on African safari; TBA, Toney Merritt (USA), also a 2025 world premiere, and also with artist in person! $11
Not one, but two long-form arguments for Palestinian autonomy, because our righteous anger and the urgent need for action against genocide in our time--in real time!–demands extraordinary measures. The first piece affords an entrance into legendary prankster Banksy's art hotel near the West Bank barrier, housing a semi-secret museum that displays artifacts from creative resistance struggles against 70+ years of Zionist occupation. Vin Arfuso's feature, in its NorCal premiere, comes from a collaboration between Palestinian-American musician Anwar Hadid, Pink Floyd's Roger Waters, and the grandson of South African founding father Nelson Mandela. A slightly extended intermission accommodates easy entry for patrons choosing only the second on the bill, the Oscar-winning (though effectively suppressed) No Other Land, hardly seen in SF despite wide-spread protests against the egregious political censorship. This powerful doc from a Palestinian-Israeli directorial collective shows the destruction of the West Bank village of Masafer Yatta, and the alliance which develops between an activist and a journalist from the respective nationalities. Doors at 6:45 for the 7:15 Walled Off, tho additional arrivals are welcome during the 8:45-9PM break. $10 for either or both
VERSES OF RESISTANCE
SEPT.27: MEJIA: GUATEMALAN POET-FILMMAKERS A righteous celebration of the history-making initiatives by our own Alex Mejia to restore crucial films with the Cinemateca Nacional in Guatemala City! Tonight he guides us on a ultra-rare journey through the region's radical cinema underground, where poets picked up cameras and filmmakers found their voices in verse...from a forgotten '40s doc capturing Indigenous political mobilizations for Jacobo Arbenz, through national poet Otto René Castillo's experimental collaborations in West Berlin exile, to militant writer Eduardo Labarca's fierce reflections on art and armed struggle. The program showcases the recently digitized Al Cabo del Tiempo (scanned right here at SF State!), in which the radical Taller de Cine collective grapples with defeat through a critical poet's lens. We'll witness Anais Taracena's lyrical video with Indigenous author Rosa Chávez, building toward our centerpiece: Javier Briones' (in person) sublime meditation on historical memory, told through Maya Achi voices and the ancestral lands that hold their stories. Five films..Decades of resistance..Traditions of political fury becoming cinematic poetry. Tamales de chipilin too! $11
Now in its eighth edition, Oakland's Drunken Film Fest remains committed to bringing the year's most creative shorts, too often excluded by traditional industry-centered festivals, to where people are--in bars. Nested in a cozy alt-space with our own modest canteen, OC is honored to host this year's opening event, a “special” West Bay pop-up promising a sumptuous spread of four resonant remixes of contemporary film, TV, and internet material...alternatively cool, clever, and critical. The centerpiece is Ryland Knight's 50-min. homage to the luscious imagery of feature auteur Michael Mann (ten of his titles sampled, from Thief to Blackhat), whose big-budget scenes are here married to the hypnotic dream-pop of Beach House's Depression Cherry–each track of the album supporting a pastiche from another of the ten Mann productions. The opening set is a witty threesome of rather different, “collage-y” pieces: Drew Durepos' evil-bird bricolage Animal Trials, Jordan Wong's Mountain Lodge--a send-up of inane online commodity fetishism, and Neozoon's A Little Lower than the Angels--a comic cut-up skewering religious propaganda. DFF director Arlin Golden is here in person to introduce the artist behind our evening's anchor--Knight (Cherokee) is an East Bay writer/director and 2024 Sundance Native Lab Fellow. $10
Our semi-annual Live A/V eye-and-ear-popper unveils an all-star line-up of seven inter-media magicians, interlaced amongst an equal number of single-channel shorts. Headlining is the much-loved visual poet 99 Hooker, a sho' nuff mad genius on a mission to unleash his beatnik-in-a-box-of-bits-and-
Lightning ignites a devastating firestorm, forcing Bay Area artist/activists Annie Sprinkle & Beth Stephens from their redwood forest home. But the wildfire is just the beginning of their transformative journey, as they craft a cinematic reckoning with the power of fire--with its capacity to destroy and renew. Created through an ecosexual lens (imagining the Earth as a lover), and narrated by a mythic white peacock, their compelling story weaves a tale of resilience, queer love, and environmental awakening. Instead of fighting fire, can we learn to live with fire? This vibrant feature, introduced by Annie and Beth in person, documents the couple’s adventures in the wake of disaster, while also honoring the broader communities impacted by ecological and social fires. Enlisting a collective of artists, witches, Indigenous elders, and formerly incarcerated firefighters, Sprinkle & Stephens examine the ways in which queers--and all humans--can support the health of the Earth. The film sports an electric score by experimental composer Guillermo Galindo, Lady Monster’s tassel-twirling burlesque, a dangerous full-body fire stunt by the artist Cassils, a volcanic fire-play massage with sex educator Barbara Carrellas, and an impassioned ritual by performance-poet Guillermo Gómez-Peña. Shapeshifters suds on tap! $11
Arguably America's most prominent trans maker, Angelo (North by Current) Madsen has placed their West Coast theatrical premiere here in thee feisty microcinema that, for almost four decades now, has stood up for queer empowerment, sex-worker rights, and the Modern Primitive movement. In fact, ReSearch's V Vale, Paul King, and Cleo Dubois--widow of the subject of tonight's doc--are all on hand tonight to introduce Madsen's masterwork, a feature-length exploration of the huge human community who find erotic, psychic, and spiritual satisfaction in binding, piercing, and tattooing their bodies as they please...a subculture aptly represented by the life and career of recently deceased Fakir Musafar. Dubois gave Madsen free rein to bring to light more than a hundred hours of previously unseen recordings, to be stitched together with Musafar's stunning photographs and the voices of performance artists Annie Sprinkle and Ron Athey. While Madsen's provocative profile questions assumptions about “masculine/feminine”, and considers issues of BDSM control and consent, it also acknowledges the complexity of other ethical issues surrounding the practices, faces the charges of (Native) cultural appropriation, and forces audiences to think critically about the line(s) between free individual expression and reckless self-harm. $13
Many of us came to know and love Rodney a couple decades back when he moved from Miami to San Francisco, and proceeded to impress larger and larger audiences with his sharp wit, his emotional range, and his outrageous cinematic talent. But it wasn't long before his special fusion of genre savviness and contemporary pop-cult dread took him to Hollywood, which he similarly awed with even more masterful re-animations of classic narrative modes into the up-to-date stylizations of psychological horror seen in his Room 237, The Nightmare, and A Glitch in the Matrix. The time has finally come when the dark visionary's woefully underseen art-films are readily available and appreciated in an incredibly rich program of the mature auteur's shorts...in fact perfect for our annual Halloween haunting. Here in the flesh, Mr. Ascher himself leads the evening's deep dive over the edge of modern film angst, including his infamous The S from Hell, Visions of Terror, Primal Screen, The First Ventriloquist, a music video, a collaboration with Doris Wishman(!), and our own 16mm monster mash. Come in costume for Tricks AND Treats!! $11
NOV.8: SACHS' SNEAK-PEEK/BOOK-LAUNCH + QUILLIAN + We are oh-so-lucky to host the most lovely presence of thee queen of contemporary film-essay, Lynne Sachs! Returning to the site of her very earliest retrospective, Lynne blesses the first section of our semi-annual SisPix with an hour of her engaged oeuvre: Beginning with a brief reading from her Hand Book: A Manual on Performance, Process, and the Labor of Laundry, and Lizzie Olesker's Handbook: Labor of Laundry--even another perfect-bound bundle of Lynne's image-text brilliance--she proceeds with The Washing Society cine-excerpt that best complements that new release, then clothes-pins her abortion-rights-ritual short Contractions to our riveted line-of-sight, and closes her Artist's Talk with a few choice chapters from her forthcoming feature, Every Contact Leaves a Trace. Tonight's second set of women's work is constituted by a quintet of feminist films that parlay personal insights into the public sphere: Shapeshifter Kathleen Quillian's Wildflower Season considers her daughters' comings-of-age, Virginia's Sasha Waters' Fragile picks up the thread, correlating a parallel trajectory into one's middle-age, Sacramento State's Jenny Stark spatializes the metaphor with her Where Your Road Ends, Mine Begins, Caribbean-based Karla Betancourt's New Indigo Wave extols the organic plant-based inks of Oaxaca, Mexico, and East Bay artiste Kate Dollemeyer's 16mm Cycladic Thermometer imagines female figurines from ancient Greece as possible agents for healing the wounds of the world. $12
NOV.15: BECKER + SCOTT + NEW EXPERIMENTAL WORKS A polymorphous program that honors radical expression and innovative film-form, this evening of NewExperimental Works promises a fresh bouquet of more than a dozen cine-initiatives! Tommy Becker personally introduces the world premiere of his single-channel Prefer Not to Say, on the disappearance of privacy amongst intrusive bureaucracies, Alex Mejia is in the house with Canceled Cyanos, on the deep history of plant-chemistry cinema, Kelly Sears bestows on us the West Coast debut of her airy The Call, Mike Plante's The Polaroid Job exposes his fascinating family history with in-store photo-ops in holiday costumes, and Jake Parker Scott blazes up from CalArts to unveil his Javanese gong-smithing piece Transformation by Fire. PLUS Nik Nerburn's exquisite doll-house miniature Bad Weather, Max Oginz' monumental Center Surface Signal, and brief bits of cinema brilliance from Bryan Boyce, James Samsing, Peter Lichter, and John Cannizzaro (in person?)... all leading to the latest mind-melt from that unstoppable SoCal sensation Damon Packard! Free pencils. $12
OCCUPIED STATE
NOV.22: SPELLETICH/THOMPSON: ON ICE + LORD + WOBBLY + The Cali Apocalypse plays out ever more cinematically in this scream of rage against the evil machine that is ICE! Mission gem/Ant Farm vet Chip Lord kicks it off with the new super-cut of his classic Not Top Gun, puncturing the retrograde militarism oozing out of San Diego. Also a neighbor, Wobbly steps up with live remixes of the most Contra Costa-critical audio collages cooked up by Negativland, and Mr. Rick Prelinger expertly unspools what's too often hidden in the archive--how a geographic paradise has been despoiled by prisons and factory-farming. We climax with Kal Spelletich/Mike (Steel Pole Bath Tub) Morasky's live remediation of ICE depredations, garnered from ProPublica reporter AC Thompson. AC shares updates, fields questions, and joins us in smashing an ICE pinata! Gilbert's beer's here too. $13
Following their last feature here, our Native (Ojibway) cohorts have been busy with many projects--including a bombshell for ITVS--and tonight's half-hour opener gives us a strong sense once again of their razor-sharp perspective. Their de-colonial discussion comes to focus on ex-Oakland mayor Libby Schaaf's rematriation of a sizable East Bay land parcel to the Sogorea Te Land Trust, serving as a springboard for a larger campaign for the return of most all Indigenous lands and cultural artifacts. In the program's second part, we bear witness to Matt Peterson/Malek Romamny's studied cine-essay on mass population displacement, with coverage of Mohawk and Dine resistance to Black Mesa relocation juxtaposed with footage of Palestinian refugee camps, environmental activists, and families of martyrs and political prisoners. The parallels between the Southwestern US footage and the Gaza material create a conversation about the critical importance of the meaning of homeland, and its conditions for life, community, and sovereignty. $10
DEC.6: ROURKE's BIT OF WIND + PICKARD/MONTERO + TRAINOR + This season's celebration of single-frame cinema boasts none Other than local hero Jeremy Rourke, with four new and enhanced works, most of which to be presented in his “live-music mode”--adjacent, almost 'embedded' stand-up strumming (with occasional added screens). Opening the program is an eye-popping line-up of pixilated premieres, with three more animator/performers in person! Leo Pickard proffers his live-tracked birds nest, then brings on Camila Montero to introduce their collaboration El Raton Perez. East Bay-based Anna Firth is also here with her delightful Air. AND the evening's repertoire is enriched by the inclusion of somewhat earlier works--Kingdom of Not's Why Do Doggie Eat the Tinsel, Jim Trainor's The Moschops, James Head's Fangula, Kelly Gallagher's Dance, and the crafty creations of Chileans Cristobal Leon & Joaquin Cocina. PLUS Philip Stapp's epic Picture in your Mind, Frank Caldwell's Day and Night, and our beloved custom of toast-n-jam! $12
Come wallow in the holiday spirit as Kooky Kringles, Satanic Santas, and myriad mischievous elves wash up on the shores of consciousness in a Crimson Tide that will change how you view Christmas forever! John Law (Santa Melmoth), Rob Schmidt (Santa Rob), and The One True Santa are all here in the house with a sleighful of SantaCon howlers, including a sneak-peak at a spankin' new network-bound knockout. Scott (Laughing Squid) Beale's You Better Watch Out teases out the trainwreck of the Portland '96 SantaCon, Chuck Cirino's Santa Clone Rampage brings to light some--tsk tsk!--misbehavin' at the second SF romp, and a preview of Seth Porges' feature extravaganza digs up additional documentation of LA and NYC donnybrooks. Plus a privileged peek at the Danish pranksters Solvogron who planted the seed in 1976. Spiked eggnog! $12
DEC. 20: FINLEY: A RADICAL THREAD + GREEN/BLACK +
Headlining our survey of regional subculture, here's the SF debut of Jeanne Finley's A Radical Thread, with the esteemed educator/video-artist in person. She introduces her inspiring hour-plus group-portrait of a 50-year-strong Sierra Foothills sustainable community that saved the Yuba River and managed to narrate their struggle--and others--in an expansive hand-woven tapestry. The evening's opening half-hour is made up of a rather curious compilation of short docs that focus more particularly on San Francisco itself, including Ellie Vanderlip's (also in person) Muni study the one, Craig Baldwin's (here too) mid-Market memoir Stolen Movie, James Hong's refreshingly frank Folsom Street Fair, and Sam Green/Andy Black's much-loved Cinematic Study of Fog. PLUS precious glimpses of the Emeryville Mudflat sculptures, William Wiley and Michael McClure installing city-wide billboard art, and a super-rare early-60s 16mm clip of Mission Street's Original Gangstas. $12
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