The 13th Festival of the Moving Image showcases outstanding recent media work created by students in the Broadcast Electronic Media Arts (BEMA) and Cinema programs at City College of San Francisco. The festival offers the public an opportunity to see an array of sophisticated and inspiring work by CCSF students. Come out and support student film! Program details coming soon. Interested in a career in filmmaking? Check out City College’s programs and Free City: Cinema Broadcast Electronic Media Art

FILM SYNOPSIS Seeking an alternative to America’s consumer culture, hundreds of back-to-the-land families coalesced around Poet Laureate Gary Snyder and settled on the San Juan Ridge in the late ‘60s. Repeatedly threatened by corporate Goliaths intent on clear-cutting the Sierra forests, damming the Yuba River, arson, and polluting the Ridge with open-pit gold mining, the community organized to defend their homesteads. Their success overcoming these seemingly impossible obstacles has created national models of sustainability. Now they are facing their greatest threat of all: climate driven wildfires. A Radical Thread is set against the dramatic scars of 19th century hydraulic gold mining and told through Marsha Stone’s 17-year collaborative project stitching an 83-foot tapestry visualizing the Ridge’s story in twelve narrative embroidered panels. Shelly Covert, the spokesperson for the Nevada City Rancheria Nisenan Tribe credits the community’s activism for helping set the stage for cultural reparations. Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Gary Snyder’s prescient archival footage about the environmental costs of fossil fuels are combined with his faith in the Ridge’s continued vitality. And Tapestry Illustrator Jennifer Rain Crosby demonstrates how its creation embodies the ethos of the community. But the main character is the tapestry itself that depicts a community originating with much optimism and hope, runs into multiple challenges, grows and learns as it survives, faces the existential threat of climate change, and comes together to understand new ways of sustainability for future generations. The fact that many voices contribute to the community’s narrative, reflects the power of their collective nature as well the process of making the tapestry. A Radical Thread explores what can happen when a community truly dedicates itself to “living lightly on the land.” As second-generation Ridge member Caleb Dardick says, the Ridge endures because each member will step up and say, “I want to add my stitch.”

an Art+Media project created with the San Francisco Public Defender's Office– screens 3 new short films about Public Defender Clients: Sal, Prezi and Julia. The screening will also include a preview of a short sentencing mitigation video, used by attorneys in a courtroom to argue for a more lenient sentence. The films will be preceded by remarks from Mano Raju, the San Francisco Public Defender. After the screening, Boots Riley will moderate a panel discussion with the film's subjects, filmmakers and Mano Raju. Defender is created by The Adachi Project, an unprecedented partnership between the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office, EVEN/ODD, and Compound, honoring the legacy of the late San Francisco Public Defender, Jeff Adachi. Defender brings to light stories of the people and communities most affected by inequities of the criminal legal system, and aims to promote a culture of reform through the language of art and media."

A mysterious young girl wanders a desolate, otherworldly landscape, carrying a large egg.

Aventurera is a pitch-black film noir punctuated by Afro-Caribbean musical numbers, starring dancer-singer Ninón Sevilla as a proper young lady who, within ten minutes, witnesses a parent’s suicide, is sold into prostitution, and transformed into a nightclub sensation. Through these hairpin turns, director Alberto Gout re-writes the rules of female portrayal in Mexican cinema through a razor-sharp indictment of bourgeois society.

Babe, a pig raised by sheepdogs, learns to herd sheep with a little help from Farmer Hoggett.

A woman hospitalized for pain discovers she's pregnant. After a medical emergency, she faces criminal charges. With support from her attorney and women's rights advocates, she fights for justice in a landmark case that could change lives.

Anand, a 30-something city dweller compelled to spend a 10-day mourning period for his father in the rugged countryside of western India, tenderly bonds with a local farmer who is struggling to stay unmarried. As the mourning ends, forcing his return, Anand must decide the fate of his relationship born under duress.

Comedian Noam Shuster Eliassi creates a personal and political one-woman show about the struggle for equality in Israel/Palestine.

Come See Me In The Good Light is a poignant and unexpectedly funny love story about poets Andrea Gibson and Megan Falley facing an incurable cancer diagnosis with joy, wit and an unshakable partnership. Through laughter and unwavering love, they transform pain into purpose, and mortality into a moving celebration of resilience.

As the first elected councilwoman of her deeply conservative Iranian village, Sara Shahverdi — a divorced, motorcycle riding, former midwife — stands out. Tenacious and not easily intimidated, Sara is determined to uplift her community and put an end to the empty promises and laziness perpetuated by local councilmen over the years. But it is as an advocate for the girls and women in her village where she encounters the greatest opposition. Among other things, she aims to break long-held patriarchal traditions by training teenage girls to ride motorcycles and stopping child marriages. When accusations arise questioning Sara’s intentions to empower the girls, her identity is put in turmoil.

A French corporation goes head-to-head with an American web media company for the rights to a 3-D manga pornography studio, resulting in a power struggle that culminates in violence and espionage.

What begins as a minor accident sets in motion a series of escalating consequences.

Film title: Above All (2025) description (no more than 3 sentences): From carbon dioxide trapping heat to drones enabling remote warfare, or chemicals raining onto fields, the film reveals how air has become a charged site. Above all is a lens through which to examine the climate crisis, technology, and neocolonial ambition. Part of a broader series on airspace, the work explores the histories, policies, regulations, and infrastructures that shape it, as well as the environmental and anthropocentric changes unfolding across this vertical plane. Film title: Murmurations (2025) description (no more than 3 sentences): Filmed from over 60 rooftops in his hometown in Catalunya during the COVID-19 lockdown, Murmurations captures the fluid, unpredictable, and collective aerial formations of starling swarms, known as murmurations. That sound becomes a metaphor for intimacy and collective care. Structured around WhatsApp voice messages exchanged between the artist and his lover in Brazil, the film traces longing, illness, and resilience, interweaving personal narrative with his HIV diagnosis and archival footage from the ACT UP Video Collection at the New York Public Library.

The country hits cloud nine when obsessed scientist Chris Cooper (Kevin McDonald) invents Gleemonex, a happiness drug. Soon everybody is taking the little orange pill. But Cooper gets a heavy dose of the blues when he discovers that early test subjects have slipped into comas. Can Cooper stop the people’s happy habit-before it’s too late?

Opened by Rikki Streicher in 1966, Maud’s, once the longest-running lesbian bar in the United States, gained an international reputation during the ‘70s and ‘80s as a meeting place for queer women. Witty, honest, and informative, Paris Poirier’s documentary about the bar blends personal stories with historical accounts from San Francisco icons — including Phyllis Lyon, Del Martin, Sally Gearhart, and Streicher herself — to provide an invaluable window into a time when bars like Maud’s were the only places the sapphic community could gather.

Desperate to save her marriage, a woman in China hires a professional to go undercover and break up her husband's affair. With strikingly intimate access, Mistress Dispeller follows this unfolding family drama from all corners of a love triangle.

Moscow, winter 2021: At TV Rain, the only remaining independent channel, young journalists have been branded “foreign agents”— targeted for surveillance or worse, and required to tag their reporting with a disclaimer that they are serving foreign powers. Regardless: Ksyusha furiously produces and edits stories to distract herself from her fellow-journalist fiancé’s imprisonment; Anya hosts everyday heroes of resistance on her interview show, while shielding both her sanity and her young daughter from the regime’s relentless “fuckery”; Sonya produces the “Hi, You’re a Foreign Agent” podcast at her kitchen table while beholding her empty living room (why buy a sofa when who knows what will happen to her?); Alesya fends off anxiety that her office has been bugged, while hiding her relationship with her girlfriend from her traditional mother. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is just weeks away, as these Gen-Z heroines confront propagandist absurdity and personal endangerment, fighting for the soul of a country they love to the bitter end.

What begins as an intimate portrait of Russian independent journalists facing persecution by Putin’s regime takes a drastic turn when Russia starts a full-scale war in Ukraine and they are all forced into exile. The film offers a front row seat to how authoritarianism works and the lives of those who resist, which becomes all the more globally relevant every day.

Alystyre Julian’s Outrider is the first feature-length portrait of Grammy-nominated, epic poet, performer, and activist Anne Waldman. In immersive jaunts of collaboration, the film follows Waldman and her century-crossing lineage of artistic and generative practices. Guided by poetic kinships of the Beat generation and with radical female musicians, Waldman has spent decades generating close communities of kindred spirits, from the downtown New York scene and the founding of the dynamic Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church; to the Naropa University’s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics; to gatherings in Big Sur, Mexico City, Morocco, and beyond. Through performances, song, and conversation, Outrider collaborates with Waldman as a person woven of poetry, an inimitable creative and social force dedicated to the propulsion of the artistic imagination and the generative practices which form in its wake. The film moves within Waldman’s artistic circles and poetic vortex, to include Patti Smith, Meredith Monk, Bob Dylan, Laurie Anderson, Thurston Moore, Kiki Smith, Pat Steir, Fast Speaking Music, and others. As a visionary word-worker and transcendent presence, Outrider celebrates Waldman as she channels through the ancient, bardic tradition the thunderous power of poetry.

In 1936, as the British Empire tightens its grip on Palestine, Yusuf is caught between his village home and his work in Jerusalem. Amidst an anti-colonial revolt, and Jewish refugees fleeing persecution from Europe, all sides converge in a decisive moment for the entire region. Palestine's Official Selection for the 98th Academy Awards.

When a machine that allows therapists to enter their patients’ dreams is stolen, all hell breaks loose. Only a young female therapist, Paprika, can stop it.

Conversation between photographer Peter Hujar and Linda Rosenkrantz from 1974 sheds light on New York's vibrant downtown art world and the introspective journey of an artist's life.

Put your soul on your hand and walk  was my response as a filmmaker, to the ongoing massacre of he Palestinians. My personal way not to lose my sanity. A miracle happened when I met Fatem through a Palestinian friend. Ever since, she became my eyes in Gaza, while surviving under the bombs and documenting the war. And I, became her connection to the outside world, from her Gaza prison, as she puts it. We kept this line of life going for more than 200 days. The bits of pixels and sounds that we exchanged constitute the film that you see. Fatem's assasination on April 16, 2025, following an Israeli attack on her home has forever changed its meaning.

In a world where humanity has lost the ability to dream, one creature remains entranced by the fading illusions of the dreamworld. This monster, adrift in reverie, clings to visions no one else can see—until a woman appears. Gifted with the rare power to perceive these illusions for what they truly are, she chooses to enter the monster’s dreams, determined to uncover the truth that lies hidden within.

Sisters Nora and Agnes reunite with their estranged father, the charismatic Gustav, a once-renowned director who offers stage actress Nora a role in what he hopes will be his comeback film. When Nora turns it down, she soon discovers he has given her part to an eager young Hollywood star. Suddenly, the two sisters must navigate their complicated relationship with their father — and deal with an American star dropped right in the middle of their complex family dynamics.

"Suburban Fury" examines the 1975 assassination attempt on U.S. President Gerald Ford by Sara Jane Moore, a conservative, middle-aged, single mother from the San Francisco suburbs who became radicalized while working as an FBI informant.

The Last Showgirl, a poignant film of resilience, rhinestones and feathers, stars Pamela Anderson as Shelly, a glamorous showgirl who must plan for her future when her show abruptly closes after a 30-year run. Directed by Gia Coppola, The Last Showgirl co-stars Oscar®, SAG® Award and Golden Globe® winner Jamie Lee Curtis as Shelly’s best friend, who brings her own unique interpretation and brilliance to the story, Dave Bautista, Brenda Song, Kiernan Shipka and Billie Lourd. Written by Kate Gersten, the film is produced by Robert Schwartzman, Natalie Farrey and Gia Coppola and features a new original song “Beautiful That Way,” sung by pop superstar Miley Cyrus, produced by Academy Award nominee Andrew Wyatt and written by Wyatt, Cyrus and Lykke Li.

Librarians emerge as first responders in the fight for democracy and our First Amendment Rights. As they well know, controlling the flow of ideas means control over communities. In Texas, the Krause List targets 850 books focused on race and LGBTQia+ stories – triggering sweeping book bans across the U.S. at an unprecedented rate. As tensions escalate, librarians connect the dots from heated school and library board meetings nationwide to lay bare the underpinnings of extremism fueling the censorship efforts. Despite facing harassment, threats, and laws aimed at criminalizing their work – the librarians’ rallying cry for freedom to read is a chilling cautionary tale.

Inspired by the folk tale of the boy Siljan, who after a quarrel with his father turns into a stork and leaves home, the film is a story about the relationship between a farmer and a white stork.

Haunted by the suspicious death of his ailing mother, a university professor coerces his enigmatic gardener to execute a cold-blooded act of vengeance.

Theater Closed: Nov. 27, 2024 Happy Thanksgiving!

On Christmas Eve, three homeless people living on the streets of Tokyo find a newborn baby among the trash and set out to find its parents.

Unbecoming Attractions RETURNS! Kelly and Carl present to you a SEVENTH helping of jewels and junk sifted from the scrapheap of our collective cinematic consciousness, just in time for ye olde holly days. There will be some jingle but jangle will be kept to a minimum. Join us for around 70 minutes of: Dazzling colors! Beautiful humans! Hyperbolic press quotes! This eclectic hoot of a trailer show - all in 35mm! - has something for everyone! (Except children.) Selected from the archive of the Film on Film Foundation.

Viridiana, a young nun about to take her final vows, pays a visit to her widowed uncle at the request of her Mother Superior.

Winner of four Ariel Awards—for Best First Feature, Original Screenplay, Actress, and Breakthrough Performance—and selected as Mexico’s official submission for the Best International Film Oscar, We Shall Not Be Moved tells the story of Socorro—played by Luisa Huertas in a tour-de-force performance—a retired lawyer consumed by her obsession to find the soldier who killed her brother during the student protests of October 2, 1968, when demands for democracy and justice were brutally silenced in Mexico City’s Tlatelolco Square. Nearly six decades later, her relentless pursuit has fractured her relationships with her sister, Esperanza, and her son, Jorge. When a new clue emerges, Socorro sets out on a perilous quest for vengeance, putting her family, her legacy, and her own life in jeopardy. Shot in striking black and white, director Pierre Saint Martin delivers a powerful and intimate reflection on the enduring wounds of Mexico’s modern history.

Each member of a family in Taipei asks hard questions about life's meaning as they live through everyday quandaries. NJ is morose: his brother owes him money, his mother-in-law is in a coma, his wife suffers a spiritual crisis when she finds her life a blank and his business partners make bad decisions.

Zodiac Killer Project is a sly, sideways spin on the true crime genre, fashioned by a filmmaker who lovingly critiques the tropes and cliches of the form with a connoisseur’s eye. Using Bay Area landscapes, stylized b-roll, and archival material to tell the story of an abandoned documentary about the infamous and still unsolved serial murders of the late 1960s, Charlie Shackleton’s Zodiac Killer Project is an improbable resurrection that blends ruminative speculation and chilling anecdotes with a melancholic air of irresolution.

Terry Zwigoff returns to The Roxie with a double-feature that includes a film he and his neighborhood cinema have been heckling, cajoling, even daring one another for decades to get up on screen in the Mission District; his 1st cinematic effort, the 1985 LOUIE BLUIE; a wry, ribald, & magical portrait of the country-blues string band player and irrepressible raconteur Howard Armstrong (a.k.a. Louie Bluie), paired with the ‘Director’s Cut” of a perennial cult favorite, the nasty as it wants to be, BAD SANTA. Terry in person to talk us through why these two, and why now, while he’s signs & sells Criterion remasters of both.