Gravitational Lensing: Feminist Film Dialogues
Program 10 - Craft, Tradition & Ritual
Presented in association with San Francisco Cinematheque and Third World Newsreel
Friday, August 22, 2025
7pm
Admission: $15 (discount for members)

Seven films that honor personal and familial legacies by focusing on activities traditionally passed down through matrilineal lines including sewing, crafting, foraging, weaving and decorating.

Screening: On the Inside We Are Color (16mm film shown on DV) by Elena Pardo, Water Ritual #1 (1979, 16mm film shown on DV) by Barbara McCullough, Primitiva (2023, 16mm film shown on DV) by Azucena Losana, Thread (2022, 35mm film shown on DV) by Abigail Smith, Nana (2021, DV) by Kani Kamil, Le Tarantole Dormono Sotto Le Pietre (2023, 16mm film shown on DV) by Giada Cicchetti and Seeing Her (2020, 16mm film shown on DV) by Lindsay McIntyre.

Find out more about the Gravitational Lensing: Feminist Film Dialogues series.

CROSSROADS 2025 - Program 8: the mountain replied with an echo
Sunday, August 31, 2025
8pm
Gray Area Foundation for the Arts, 2665 Mission St. San Francisco
More information + tickets

Shapeshifters is excited to be the community partner for Program 8 of SF Cinematheque's annual CROSSROADS film festival.

Program 8: the mountain replies with an echo includes five films exploring earth, sky and subterranean spaces, indigeneity, interspecies entwinement and relationships to the ungrievable land. Luminously material films embodying geologic memories, reconstructed histories and incantations of transformation. Speculations on potential futures: how it was and how it could be. Have we met somewhere before?

SCREENING: Tuktuit : Caribou (2025) by Lindsay McIntyre (Inuit/Canada); digital video, color, sound, 15 minutes. The Early Sun, Red as a Hunter's Moon (2025) by Adam Piron (Kiowa/Mohawk); digital video, color, sound, 13 minutes. I Carry the Universe with Me 我將宇宙隨身攜帶 (2024) by Cherlyn Hsing-Hsin Liu (US/Taiwan); digital video, color, sound, 21 minutes. Black Glass (2024) by Adam Piron (Kiowa/Mohawk); digital video, color, sound, 9 minutes. Mines to Caves (2023) by Cauleen Smith (US); digital video, color, sound, 10 minutes. TRT: 68 minutes

Find out more about CROSSROADS 2025

Do-Over Music Series - Staiano / Levis / Mor / Zhang / Wilson
Thursday, September 4, 2025
7pm
Admission: $10 (discount for members)

The Do-Over Music Series at Shapeshifters Cinema, organized by Lisa Mezzacappa and Jordan Glenn, is a monthly series of sound performances presented by a rotating cast of local luminaries and special guests. The first set features performances of creative - improvised - composed - electronic - acoustic - music. The second set opens up to a live improvised collaboration of sound and visuals made using images culled from the Shapeshifters 16mm film collection.

Set 1 (7pm): Moe Staiano + Jason Levis DRUMSET DUO!

Set 2 (8pm): expanded cinema + improvised music with:

Edan Mor- saxophone
Jasmine Zhang- voice/objects/electronics
Adam Wilson- synthesizers/bass
Films, film loops and other visual interventions by the Shapeshifters Performance Group (Ellie, Kathleen & Gilbert)

Animation Brüt: Pegbar Curious
Friday, September 5, 2025
7pm
Admission: $14 (discount for members)

Animation Brüt is a rejection of conventional storytelling and image making. It embraces the gestural, the fervent, and the fevered dreamers of sequential imagery. Animation has limits, Animation Brüt embraces them and licks the wrapping for more flavor. Featuring CGI lacerations, hammered steel stop motion, and queer yearnings fuzzed out on magnetic tape. Curated by Sam Gurry, Animation Brüt is a night of experimental animation, presenting films by artists working inside and out of the traditional animation paradigm but all seeking to break down its boundaries.

Drawing from a legacy of queer underground film and DIY animation, this program showcases artists who've always worked outside the lines, getting wild, wet, or, honestly, a little weird with it. Films about coming out, coming of age, and coming a lot (hell yeah brother). From cardboard puppets to rotoscoped runways to libidinal scribbles barely holding it together, Pegbar Curious is a celebration of movement as confession, feelings in excess, and that good, good weird, weird animation.

Featuring work by Zhong Xian, Miz Reyes, Gaby Escovar, Kohana Wilson, David Delafuente, Mallbat, Laura Collins, and more.

Rotating Signals: The Contemporary Korean Avant-Garde
Friday, September 12, 2025
7pm
Admission: $14 (discount for members)

A program of 10 short films, curated and organized by Joshua Kim, highlighting the current landscape of experimental film in Korea, as well as from those in the Korean diaspora around the world.

SCREENING: A Dark Room (2025, b/w, silent, 10 mins) by Heehyun Choi, Spoken Word (2023, b/w, silent, 4 mins) by Hyoin Kwak, Rotating Signals (2025, color, sound, 10 mins) by Chae Yu, Shadow-Forest (2025, color, sound, 28 mins) by Go-Eun Im, Long Sand and Water (2023, color, silent, 5 mins) by Hyeisoo Kim & Luuk Schröder, Bye, Snark, Boo-Jum! (2024, b/w, silent, 8 mins) by Jiyong In, Geomeunyeo (2025, b/w, sound, 3 mins) by Kyujae Park, Pyohaerok (2025, color, silent, 14 mins) by Il-hwan, Buseok (2024, b/w + color, silent, 18 mins) by Kyujae Park, Lord (2024, color, silent, 14 mins) by Chul-woong Jang

Ann Arbor Film Festival Early Bird Submissions: The submission window is now open for experimental, animation, documentary, fiction, and performance-based works for the 64th annual Ann Arbor Film Festival, the oldest avant-garde and experimental film festival in North America. Deadline to submit is August 31, 2025. Find out more.

Kinesthetic Cinema Call for Submissions: Artists are invited to submit works of “kinesthetic” or, interactive media that invites audiences to kinesthetically engage and/or participate beyond a single-channel theater-viewing experience. This open call welcomes film, video, and/or performance works that prompt or engage the viewer kinesthetically–through spoken word, sound, song, gesture, or full-body movement for a program that will be curated by Kym McDaniel that will be exhibited at the Wexner Center for the Arts in September 2025. Deadline to submit is September 1, 2025. Find out more.

San Francisco International Film Festival Call for Submissions: Submissions are now being accepted for the 69th San Francisco International Film Festival scheduled for April 23–May 3, 2026. Works in all genres, forms, and lengths are considered. Early submission deadline is September 26, 2025. Find out more.

San Francisco Underground Short Film Festival Call for Submissions: Media Meltdown are resurrecting the San Francisco Underground Short Film Festival at the 4 Star Theater this November! SFUSF is a punk rock phantasmagoria, lifting up local, no budget, no-holds barred films. From bizarro B-films to midnight movie trash, they want to see your silly, your subversive, your surreal, and your strange, regardless of budget or experience level. Deadline to submit is September 30, 2025. Find out more.

Experiments in Cinema Call for Submissions: Experiments in Cinema seeks submissions for the next edition of EIC (v21.5) happening in Albuquerque, NM April 16-19, 2026. Deadline to submit is November 1, 2025. Find out more.

Single Frame Call for Submissions: Single Frame has opened up its call for entries of experimental documentary shorts under 20 minutes for its 5th annual event happening on April 19, 2026 at UNEXPOSED, a microcinema facilitating the growth of experimental and avant-garde film in the Triangle, NC. Deadline to submit is January 1, 2026. Find out more.