The Fall of the I-Hotel

Mudflat

August 1980 •English

Years ago, artists would walk around the muck at the edge of the San Francisco Bay in Emeryville, and build loads of sculptures out there on the flats, created from driftwood and found objects that drivers would enjoy as they motored south on the old Highway 17 (known in numerous radio ads as 'Highway 17, The Nimitz'). Grabbing material off someone else’s work was considered fair game and part of the fun, and contributed a kinetic dynamic to the ongoing display. Now the place is a park, and the sculptures are gone, but you can see what it used to be like in this neat and funny documentary by Ric Reynolds, augmented by Erich Seibert’s wonderful musique-concrète/time-lapse sequences. The flashback circus sequence includes Scott Beach and Bill Irwin. Sculptors interviewed include Walt Zucker, Tony Puccio, Robert Sommer, Ron & Mary Bradden, and Bob Kaminsky.

Druid Heights

August 2015 •English

Druid Heights is a short documentary film by Marcy Mendelson about a wild & wooly place. California’s hidden bohemia. Where sex, drugs and philosophy thrived among the eucalyptus just a few miles north of the Golden Gate.

The Bridge

October 2006 •English

The Bridge is a controversial documentary that shows people jumping to their death from the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco - the world's most popular suicide destination. Interviews with the victims' loved ones describe their lives and mental health.

India's forgotten people

September 2020 •English

Whispers of Concrete

October 2021 •Spanish

In recent years, the Marga Marga Province has witnessed a drastic change in the visual and sound landscape due to urban expansion. Faced with the observation and the need to explore the territory that seems more and more alien and less and less our own, the film functions as a material resource and support for plastic reflection on living in the midst of capitalist progress.

Ricochet

May 2021 •English

When a young woman is shot by an undocumented immigrant on Pier 14 in San Francisco, the incident ignites a political and media furor that culminates in Donald Trump’s election as President of the United States. In the eye of this storm, two public defenders fight to reveal the truth.

Paper Cannot Wrap Up Embers

March 2007 •English

During the last half-century, Cambodia has witnessed genocide, decades of war and the collapse of social order. Now, documentary filmmaker Rithy Panh looks at an irreparable tragedy that is less visible, yet no less pervasive: the spiritual death that results when young women are forced into prostitution. Angry and impassioned, PAPER CANNOT WRAP UP EMBERS presents the searing stories of poor Asian women whose lives were violated and their destinies destroyed when their bodies were turned into items of sexual commerce.

The Hippie Temptation

August 1967 •English

CBS TV news special hosted by Harry Reasoner explores the way-out world of the Hippies and the Haight-Ashbury psychedelic 1960s LSD scene. Footage of LSDs users experiencing bummer trips. The Diggers, the Oracle and cool street and Golden Gate Park scenes with hippies tripping out. The Grateful Dead are interviewed and are shown performing "Dancin' in the Streets" on a flatbed truck in Golden Gate Park. The Hippie Temptation!

Mondo Topless

November 1966 •English

Mondo Topless is a 1966 pseudo documentary directed by Russ Meyer, featuring Babette Bardot and Lorna Maitland among others.

100 Per Cent White

July 2000 •English

A decade after taking a series of photographs of skinhead members of a far-right group for his book Public Enemies, Leo Regan returns to three members of the gang to see what has happened to them in the intervening years.

Uploaded: The Asian American Movement

May 2012 •English

A documentary that explores the increasing visibility of Asian Americans in pop culture since the advent of new media forms such as YouTube.

America; I Too

March 2017 •English

Three arrested and detained undocumented immigrants must navigate the system to fight impending deportation.

Sky and Ground

November 2017 •English

Three generations of the Nabi family flee their home in Aleppo and try to make it to safety in Germany where some members of the family have already settled. Along the way they suffer countless setbacks and heartache.

Megacities

August 1998 •English

Megacities is a documentary about the slums of five different metropolitan cities.

Bestseller Barcelona: The World of Carlos Ruiz Zafón

October 2022 •German

A journey through the fantastic and mysterious Barcelona that the Spanish writer Carlos Ruiz Zafón (1964-2020) loved so much, the city of myth and legend, the city that was before it became one of the main European tourist destinations.

In Ur Eye

December 2014 •English

A short documentary on the gentrification of Hackney.

State of Pride

March 2019 •English

Fifty years after the Stonewall uprising, Oscar-winning filmmakers Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman travel to three diverse communities – Salt Lake City, San Francisco, and Tuscaloosa, Alabama – for an unflinching look at LGBTQ Pride, from the perspective of a younger generation for whom it still has personal urgency.

Terra Firma

December 2016 •Arabic

In a small commercial harbour in the south of France, two Moroccan sailors are watching over ferries that were abandoned by ship-owners. Young Syrians make a stopover to load their cattle, African traders prepare a convoy of second-hand vehicles. Men, machines, and animals transit through this space open onto the sea.

An Untitled Film by George Alshevskij-Jones

January 2024 •English

“An Untitled Film” by George Alshevskij-Jones is a short documentary/visual essay about the struggles of moving to seek a better future in a different country. The research for the film was done by observing and talking to people who have left their home country. It doesn’t matter what country a person has left and in which country he has found himself, the general experiences and emotions stay the same. The most important message that I want the film to convey is that everything is possible and home is not a place on a map, but a place in the soul of each person that I spoke to. The unconventional way of showing many people as one is not just a way of making the film more convenient to create, but a way to fit a much information into one consistent image, that the audience is more likely to understand and perceive as the author intended it. My own experience blended in with the experiences of others.

From the Black You Make Color

November 2012 •English

Eight women on the margins of Israeli society are thrown together during the course of a school year at Tel Aviv's oldest beauty school. Amidst the combs and colorings, these women present a microcosm of modern-day Tel Aviv -- native Israelis and new immigrants, Asians and Africans, among them women struggling with cancer and personal loss. As they learn to create beauty without, each woman undergoes a powerful transformation within.