Isaac Sherman / Saapato / Agnes Martian
Friday, September 25, 2026
7pm
Admission: $15 (discount for members)
★ The café will be open before the show from 4-7pm ★

Isaac Sherman is a musician, composer and filmmaker living in Los Angeles, California. He uses synthesizers, samplers, field recordings and a variety of acoustic instruments to explore sonic curiosities through improvisation, composition and collaboration. He is interested in using synthesis to emulate physical instruments, creating an uncanny relationship between intuitive listening and inquisitive aural exploration. In 2025, Sherman released A Pasture, Its Limits and toured the West Coast and Midwest. He frequently performs around Los Angeles and has collaborated with artists such as Nicole McCabe, Dustin Wong, MA Tiesenga, Max Jaffe and more. He has scored films by Cecelia Condit and Josh Weissbach.

Saapato is the music project of upstate New York based sound artist Brendan Principato. His work explores the intersection of ecology and music, weaving manipulated field recordings with lush electronic soundscapes that invite listeners to reconsider their place within nature. He has completed multiple artist residencies with the National Park Service and Alaska State Parks, including a 2023 residency near Juneau documenting whale and bird migrations and a 2022 residency on Fire Island, New York, focused on the fragile ecologies of swale and dune habitats. His work also encompasses film and sound design, where he has served as composer and field recordist for documentaries produced by Scientific American and The Nature Conservancy as well as sound design work for A24's Backrooms. His site-specific sound installations were most recently presented at Experimental Sound Studio's Sonic Pavilion 2025 festival in Chicago.

Started in 2019 as a weekly ritual of open-ended sonic exploration, Oakland-based Agnes Martian soundtracks a pataphysical planetarium that charts undiscovered constellations of deep inner/outer space, exploring tension and transcendence in spaces between propulsive groove, ecstatic repetition, and ambient meditation. Their latest LP, Elsewhere (Centripetal Force, 2025) weaves together expansive synthesizer spacescapes, fiery sax workouts, and spoken word interventions. Meanwhile, the band’s recent live performances have explored a variety of unconventional formats, including quadraphonic soundscapes, expanded cinema, and durational sound installation, in restless pursuit of new soundmaking possibilities.

Uncanny Cabaret III - Variety Show & Fundraiser for Driveway Follies
Saturday, September 26, 2025
5-7pm
Admission: $25-50, sliding scale (All proceeds go to benefit Driveway Follies)
★ The café will be open before the event from 2-5pm ★

Join us to kick off the Halloween season with Uncanny Cabaret III — the third annual multi-media variety show and fundraiser for our friends at Driveway Follies, the long-running and beloved Oakland Halloween puppet show tradition.

This family-friendly event will include a mix of live performances, puppets and recent and historic Halloween-adjacent films. 8 Fables Shadow Puppet Orchestra will perform The Golden Egg with rod puppets, shadow puppets and a live musical score; David Wallace & Leonara Taylor-Wallace return with Kitty Cat Kids Go On Vacation—the third chapter in their on-going narrative series—with live action and handmade puppets; Kathleen Quillian's expanded poem The Tempest conjures the spirits and creatures that lurk in the shadows through cut paper silhouettes, lumia and various optical tricks; Ellie Vanderlip takes on Alfred Hitchcock in oiseaulium densare her multi-projector deconstruction of his classic film The Birds; Kiera Griffith will introduce you to some of her large handmade puppets and members of Driveway Follies will give a special presentation of some of their amazing trick puppets and a behind the scenes look at their annual puppet show experience.

Woven through these performances will be several recent and historic Halloween-adjacent films including Kerry Laitala's Spectrology (2009) which simulates the magic of 18th century phantasmagoria shows through optical tricks and mesmerizing spectral illusions captured on 16mm film; PLUS The Skeleton Dance (1929) and Hell's Bells (1930)—two classic Silly Symphony animations celebrating the spooky delights of the season.

Do-Over Music Series - Trinidad / Free / Heigl / Lopez / Glenn
Thursday, October 1, 2026
7pm
★ The café will be open before the event for Happy Hour from 4-7pm ★
Admission: $10 (discount for members)

Set 1 (7pm): sound performance by:

Chris Trinidad - electric bass
Nora Free - tenor saxophone
Alex Heigl - electric guitar

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

the above artists +
Robert Lopez - percussion
Jordan Glenn - drums

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

What Comes From Sitting In Silence? by Sophie Schrago
Saturday, October 3, 2026
7pm
Admission: $12 (discount for members)
★ The café will be open before the screening from 4-7pm ★

What Comes From Sitting In Silence? by Sophie Schrago is the opening film for the 2026 Drunken Film Festival, a week-long diy pop-up film festival that takes place in bars around Oakland.

Synopsis: In the heart of Mumbai, Khatoon runs the city's first women's Sharia court from a cramped storefront. As one of India's first female Islamic law judges, she counsels couples and women fleeing abuse, creating a unique space where plaintiffs can speak freely and seek justice. Running time: 76 minutes.

The Currents, by Milagros Mumenthaler
Sunday, October 4, 2026
2pm
Admission: $15 (discount for members)

At the height of her career, Lina, a 34-year-old Argentine stylist, is driven by a sudden impulse after an award ceremony in Switzerland. Back in Buenos Aires, she says nothing, but something in her has shifted – quiet and invisible, it subtly unravels a past she thought she had left behind.

Watch the trailer

Cast: Isabel Aimé González Sola, Esteban Bigliardi, Ernestina Gatti
In Spanish with English subtitles
Running time: 104 minutes

Other Cinema's Magick-Geo + Psycho-Geo Fundraiser for Shapeshifters
Saturday, October 10, 2026
8pm
Artists' Television Access, 992 Valencia St. San Francisco

Meet us in San Francisco! Our friend, mentor and cinematic guiding light Craig Baldwin has dedicated an entire program—one of the few he has carved out for the fall season of his long-running and legendary Other Cinema series—to us!

Here's what's in store: "A colossal collab...of microcinemas!! Other Cinema takes a knee to Oakland's SHAPESHIFTERS project, with a party-hardy program of Bay Area magick! Anchoring the Psycho-Geo line-up is none Other than stage magician extraordinaire Michael Nguyen! This master's mind-blowing visual delights are then answered by very different versions of "reality", local verite and archival lovelies bearing on our shared space and sensibility: Playland, Berkeley mudflats, DIY solar ovens, Bullitt production shorts, James Hong's cine-poems, sidewalk-busking DJ Beau Dayshus, and the Bay Area premiere of Bill Morrison's Sawyer Ave. AND on sale: Not only Maya's charm bracelets, but also GILBERT's CRAFT BEER!"

16mm Found Footage Phytography
Instructor: Ellie Vanderlip
Sunday, September 27, 2026 • 12-4pm
In-person at Shapeshifters Cinema
Admission: $70 + $10 Materials fee (Discount for Shapeshifters members)

In this special found footage-focused phytography workshop, filmmaker Ellie Vanderlip will demonstrate the phytographic method, a non-toxic process of making imagery by harnessing the chemistry of plant matter. This workshop will also demonstrate how to create inverted transfers of 16mm found footage using the same non-toxic steps, as a unique and striking method for creating experimental prints of existing media. Participants will play with creating patterns with plants, generating experimental prints from found footage materials in the Shapeshifters collection, and combining both plant shape and found image to create interesting visual interplay. Film, processing materials, and found footage will all be provided.

New Member Glasses Have Landed!

Shapeshifters members at the Clairvoyant level and higher get one free beer at every event hosted at Shapeshifters Cinema (and 10% off every beer thereafter) that are served in a special member glass.

The image for this year’s glass (that we are affectionately calling a tall-girl glass) was created by Bay Area illustrator and animator Anna Firth and features a two-sided, interactive design that changes with the level and contents of the glass. Immerse yourself in the magic of this design as faces and shapes appear and disappear! Did that really happen? Have another beer and find out!

If you are currently a Shapeshifters member at the Clairvoyant level or higher, your glass will be waiting for you in the cinema to enjoy your member beer every time you come in for a screening or event. At the end of your membership year, the glass is yours to keep.

Come on by and enjoy your next member beer in this new member glass!

Take a look at all the great perks waiting for you when you join the Shapeshifters Membership Program.

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.

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.

Vermont Studio Center Summer & Winter 2027 Residency: A Vermont Studio Center residency provides artists and writers from around the world with the time and space to deepen their creative practice while building a solid network of mentors, collaborators, and friends. Sessions run for two, three, and four weeks, and include resident presentations, open studios, and an acclaimed Visiting Artists & Writers program. Deadline to apply is September 30, 2026. Find out more.

Leonardo@Djerassi 2027 Open Call for Residents: Residencies at Djerassi (Woodside, CA) are awarded competitively, at no cost, to national and international artists. The Leonardo@Djerassi residency is open to collaborations between artists and scientists who are engaged in research or creative practice within biology, chemistry, physics, mathematics, environmental, agricultural, or related scientific fields. Deadline to submit is October 9, 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.