October is our Membership Drive month! Our goal is to raise $10,000 over the next few weeks by inviting new folks to join the Shapeshifters Membership Program. For anyone who can’t get enough of experimental moving image, sound, performance and time-based art, it’s one of the best deals in town! Have you joined yet?

The Shapeshifters Membership Program provides crucial, sustaining support for our small, DIY, volunteer-run organization. By joining the membership program, you become part of an engaged, diverse, community of creatives working on the cultural fringe. Each level offers a range of access to members-only resources and events, discounts, comps and more.

All members who join or renew by October 30th (as well as those in good standing) will receive a 🎃 Halloween treat! 🎃 Members will receive an invitation to a special pre-screening event with food, drinks and live music + a special discount ticket code for The Haunted Frame program on Friday, October 30th featuring films by Kerry Laitala, Charlotte Pryce, Deborah Stratman, David Sherman and Martha Colburn + an amended/abridged rendition of the classic 1922 witchcraft film Häxan with live sound accompaniment by Edan Mor (See details below).

Don’t miss out! Take a look at all the great perks waiting for you when you join the Shapeshifters Membership Program.

Cosmic Rays 2026 Touring Program: Hiding Places
Saturday, October 17, 2026
7pm
Admission: $15 (discount for members)
★ The café will be open before the screening from 4-7pm ★

The Cosmic Rays Experimental Film Festival was founded in 2017 by filmmakers and educators Sabine Gruffat and Bill Brown to showcase non-commercial short films, live-cinema, and new media projects to audiences in the Triangle region of North Carolina and across the Southeastern U.S.

Hiding Places is a selection of films from the 8th iteration of the festival, curated by John Winn, about places, both familiar and strange—malls and museums, rivers and forests, living rooms and TV screens—and the people that resist, inhabit, exploit, and hide therein.

Program: Evacuations (2025)by Lilli Carré, Another Earth (2025) by Ben Russell, Allrecipes (Stuffed Manifesto) (2025) by David de Rozas, Place Holder (2026) by Jesse McLean, Api (April, 1949) (2025) by Harper Stone, Good Neighbors Care (2025) by Kate Hinshaw, Little Balls of Mercury (2025) by Andrea Marquez, Hiding Places (2025) by Magdalena Bermudez

View a trailer for the program

The Becomers, with special guest A.S. Hamrah
Thursday, October 22, 2026
7pm
Admission: $15 (discount for members)
★ The café will be open before the screening for Happy Hour from 4-7pm ★

Vital Signs Film Series is delighted to welcome A.S. Hamrah for a special screening, discussion, book-signing, merciless report on a film industry in self-imposed crisis, and several glimmers of cinephilic hope. "Most people's favorite film critic," as described by Screen Slate, Hamrah's most recent book is Last Week in End Times Cinema.

The Becomers (2023)
By Zach Clark
90 minutes

Proving love is indeed the strangest force in the universe, Zach Clark's oddball romance follows a pair of body-snatching aliens across America as they try to find both their place within this odd world and each other. Featuring narration by Russell Mael (Sparks), this freewheeling science-fiction comedy is filled lo-fi effects and the heartfelt, emotionally astute exploration of what it means to find your own kind. A truly one-of-a-kind film that'll make you feel closer to everyone in the cinema by the end.

Watch a clip from the film

"Zach Clark has alarming ideas he turns into well-written screenplays and then directs on a tight budget, and he's great with actors," A.S. Hamrah writes. "There's no reason Clark isn't the next Jonathan Demme, besides a general, society-wide incompetence that can always find the money for anything as long as it isn't good."

The Haunted Frame
Friday, October 30, 2026
7pm
Admission: $15 (Special Halloween discount for members)

Motion picture film is imbued with a hallowed energy that is magnified by the change of seasons and our turn towards dormancy, death and all things supernatural. For, just beneath the surface and between the frames there lurk the shadows of spectral beings, conjured alchemically and activated by light, that momentarily come to life as they flicker upon the screen. This special Halloween cine-séance brings together a program of haunting films by artists who aren't afraid to look into the darkness to see what hides within.

Screening: Secure the Shadow...'Ere the Substance Fade (1997, 16mm film) by Kerry Laitala, The Magician's House (2007, 16mm film) by Deborah Stratman, Evil of Dracula (1997, 16mm film) by Martha Colburn, Tuning the Sleeping Machine (1996, 16mm film) by David Sherman, Of This Beguiling Membrane (2020, 16mm film shown on DV) by Charlotte Pryce, and an amended/abridged rendition of the classic 1922 witchcraft film Häxan with live sound accompaniment by Edan Mor

Shapeshifters members will be treated to a special pre-screening party featuring live music + food and libations from Shapeshifters Café. Keep an eye on your inbox for details!

Marjorie Keller Films
Wednesday, October 21, 2026
7pm
Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA), Berkeley
More Information & Tickets

Catch a rare screening of the intimate, visually intricate films of Marjorie Keller at BAMPFA in Downtown Berkeley. Marjorie Keller was a filmmaker, scholar, activist, and teacher who reshaped American experimental cinema through a distinctly feminist lens. This screening is part of Alternative Visions, BAMPFA's ongoing experimental film series, and will be introduced by guest Steve Anker.

Do-Over Music Series - Ivers / Lee / O'Kane / Mezzacappa
Thursday, November 5, 2026
7pm
Admission: $10 (discount for members)

Set 1 (7pm): sound performance by:

John Ivers - bass clarinet/electronics
Michelle Lee - bass flute

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

the above artists +
Suki O'Kane - percussion
Lisa Mezzacappa - bass

Plus, films, film loops and other visual interventions by the Shapeshifters Performance Group (Ellie, Kathleen & Gilbert)

The Shapeshifters shop features a variety of media (LPs, audio cassettes, books, prints, DVDs and more) all made by artists who have presented or performed in our space, and/or that represent and celebrate the spirit of our DIY, creative community.

Recent additions to the Shapeshifters shop include Agnes Martian’s The Future Light Cone audio cassette, Sadie Greyduck’s audio casette baa, Covering the Surface audio cassette by Marcia Bassett & Sergej Vutuc, Lynne Sachs and Lizzie Olezker’s Hand Book: A Manual on Performance, Process, and the Labor of Laundry, Marielle V Jakobson’s Star Core LP and Analog Cookbook, Issue #8: All Recipes.

Take a look at all available items.

Computerless Animation Workshop
Instructor: Anna Firth
Sunday, November 22, 2026
12-5pm
Admission: $70 (discount for members)

Spend a Sunday with the Animation Video Lunchbox! We'll start with a quick history of this obscure analog technology with a cult following and then jump into some hand-drawn animation on paper. We'll experience the instant feedback of the "pencil test" process that the Video Lunchbox is famous for while working together to create mini animations. After a lunch break, we'll gather to capture the final animations into the Lunchbox through a security camera and enjoy a mini screening of the results. At the end of the day, you'll leave with an animated clip made in a little vestigial box from animation's past and a new experience with computer-less animation.

Provided materials: Punched paper, light boxes, animation peg bar, pens, pencils, erasers, collage materials, animation lunchbox, decommissioned b&w security camera, CRT TV

ATA Monthly Open Screenings: Artists’ Television Access (ATA), the stalwart experimental microcinema holding ground in SF’s Mission District since 1984, hosts Open Screenings every first Thursday. This free community film/video show welcomes short format work (15 min or less) from all genres made by independent filmmakers, experimental artists, rogue visionaries and inspired tinkerers who work with the moving image. ATA’s Open Screenings happen the first Thursday of every month at 8:00 pm. Entries must be received by 7:00 pm on show night. Find out more.

City College San Francisco, Part-Time Pool, Film Production: City College San Francisco is seeking a part-time Film Production Instructor to join its faculty pool. CCSF is particularly interested in candidates who can teach CINE 24: Introduction to Basic Filmmaking and CINE 54: Cinematography & Lighting. Applications are being accepted through October 1, 2027. Find out more.

Chicago Underground Film Festival: For more than three decades, the Chicago Underground Film Festival has championed cinema that exists outside the mainstream. These are films made on their own terms, driven by artistic necessity rather than market logic. CUFF is now accepting submissions for its 2027 festival. Super early deadline to submit is October 19, 2026. Find out more.

SF Arts Commission Gallery Program Associate Position: The San Francisco Arts Commission is seeking a part-time Gallery Program Associate to support the day-to-day operations, exhibitions, public programs, administration, and visitor experience of the San Francisco Arts Commission Galleries. Deadline to apply is October 23, 2026. Find out more.

Center for Cultural Innovation Work//Shift Fellowship: Applications are now open for the Work//Shift Fellowship, a new 12-month fellowship from the Center for Cultural Innovation’s Research to Impact Lab. Work//Shift will bring together 8 organizers, artists, intellectuals, and policy thinkers working across industries shaped by precarious and gig work to ask: What could a social safety net designed for everyone actually look like? Deadline to apply is October 26, 2026. Find out more.

Experiments In Cinema Call for Submissions: Experiments in Cinema (Albuquerque) seeks new and old moving image art that will engage audiences with the magic and wonder that is un-dependent cinema! Submissions might be (but are not limited to) essay films, dance films, film poems, structural films, post-structural films, post-post structural films, underground films, abstract films, experimental narratives, experimental documentaries, video installations, transgressive films, portrait films, political rant films and more. Deadline to submit is November 1, 2026. Find out more.

UC Santa Cruz Assistant Professor of Narrative Film and Media Production Position: The Department of Film & Digital Media at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) invites applications for the tenure-track position Assistant Professor of Narrative Film and Media Production. We are seeking applicants whose innovative creative work demonstrates an active and sustained practice in narrative form, expansively defined, with expertise in moving image media, production, and exhibition. Deadline to apply is November 2, 2026. Find out more.

Cosmic Rays FF Call for Submissions: The Cosmic Rays Film Festival (Chapel Hill, NC) is an annual celebration of short films that expand our idea of what film is and what it can be. The festival presents several programs of short films that are formally inventive, speak with a personal voice, and are inspired by the possibilities of film as art. Deadline to submit is November 16, 2026. Find out more.

Call for submissions, Found Footage Magazine, Issue #13: Found Footage Magazine is an independent film journal devoted to the inventive use of existing images in film & video arts. They are currently accepting submissions for essays, interviews, video-essays, film reviews, and book reviews that explore the inventive ways in which archives and existing images can be reworked and recontextualized through moving image art for the forthcoming issue #13 (2027). Deadline to submit is June 1, 2027. Find out more.