Happy New Year! We hope you had a restful and rejuvenating holiday break. We certainly did. But we are glad to be back and are excited to share lots of great things that are coming up this month on the Shapeshifters calendar, starting this weekend with our first Saturday brunch service and first workshop of 2026, as well as a special off-site event happening January 22—25 at Minnesota Street Projects during SF Art Week. Read on for details!

This month we celebrate the 3 year anniversary of Shapeshifters Café. We’ve come a long way since we took over the sweet little café next door to our cinema in January of 2023. Over the past 3 years we have given the interior a decorating makeover, fine-tuned the menu, brought everything up to code, obtained a beer & wine license and added a Saturday brunch service. It’s been a lot of work—and there is still so much more to do—but so far we have been very pleased with results!

If you’ve been meaning to come by, or you haven’t been to see us in a while, please do! We are currently open M—F, 6am—2pm and Saturday, 10am—2pm (with visions of expanding our hours eventually to align with those of our cinema, which are at the complete opposite end of the time spectrum!).

Along with our tried-and-true favorites, we are always adding new items and specials that change with the seasons. Everything on the menu is made fresh and to-order using organic and locally-sourced ingredients.

For the whole month of January we are offering everyone in the Shapeshifters community a 10% discount on your next café order (see coupon at the bottom of the newsletter for details).

Stop by and see us!

Jennifer Reeves: Screening + Blu-ray compilation release
Presented in association with San Francisco Cinematheque
Wednesday, January 14, 2025
7pm
Admission: $15 (discount for members)

Film maven Jennifer Reeves joins us from NYC to screen new digital masters of nine of her 16mm film-based works which have just been released on a new Blu-ray compilation by Re:Voir. Join us to celebrate this release and to revisit a selection of Reeves' works made over the past several decades in all-new 2K form.

Screening: Fear of Blushing (2001), We Are Going Home (1998), Landfill 16 (2011), Color Neutral (2014), Strawberries in the Summertime (2014), Pigment-Dispersion Syndrome (2022), Configuration 20 (1994), Girls Daydream About Hollywood (1992), and The Girl's Nervy (1995).

NOTE: Jennifer Reeves will also appear at Gray Area, San Francisco on January 15 to present her double-projected 16mm/digital video hybrid work The Gloria of Your Imagination (2024–2025). Full details here.

Zoe Beloff: Life Forgotten & Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse People
Friday, January 16, 2025
7pm
Admission: $10 (discount for members)

NYC-based media archeologist Zoe Beloff joins us to screen two of her latest films—both set in the artist's Lower East Side neighborhood, both looking at its history as a place of immigrants and at different ways that popular entertainment brings people together.

Set in New York's Lower East Side in the early years of the twentieth century, Life Forgotten (2025, 16mm film shown on DV) centers on a real storefront cinema—Frank Seiden's Variety Theater—where silent movies were presented with improvised dialog and Yiddish ballads by Frank and his sons to an audience that didn't hesitate to join in or argue back. It was a welcoming space for women and the film follows a group of radical young garment workers who gather here to figure out how to fight for women's rights and change their world. Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse People (2025, DV) is a work of remembrance that asks but does not answer the question how does everyday art bring people together? One by one, the community that is the Mouse People, recite the text of Franz Kafka's short story in quiet places on New York's Lower East Side. The film presents Josephine's story, as something transmitted across time, something that comes from inside the body of an oppressed people; spoken alone, summoned mysteriously, at the edge of consciousness. Why was it that Josephine's voice so captivated them?

Thomas Carnacki, Petra Zélie & S*Glass
Sunday, January 18, 2026
7pm
Admission: $15 (discount for members)

An evening of sonic textures, projected imagery, and perhaps a tardigrade, featuring Thomas Carnacki, Petra Zélie and S. Glass—three sets for the price of one evening—each performance approaching the notion of "experimental music" from a different practical angle, but unified by a shared sense of immersion, subtlety, and perhaps the uncanny.

Thomas Carnacki is a variably-sized entity engaged in unsettling textures, organic sources, occasional flights of whimsy, and (aspirationally) subtle nuance. Though sometimes brief spasms of wanton abandon enter the proceedings. Contributing musicians down the years have included Gregory Hagan, Sheila Bosco, Agnes Szelag, Jesse Burson, the late Jim Kaiser, though for this current evening the instantiation will be Cheryl E. Leonard and Gregory Scharpen. Carnacki music has appeared in numerous films, theatre pieces, and internationally-touring dance performances, including an evening-length work by Margaret Jenkins that toured Sweden. Carnacki has released over a dozen records of varying in sizes (from 3" to 12"), about which people have opined things such as: "ectoplasmic tendrils form unfathomable noises as unknown machines creak, click, and rattle...This is a whole other world where art and the afterlife briefly touch."

Petra Zélie is a multidisciplinary artist, educator, and experimental sound composer whose work spans film, performance, and sonic art. Her feature film The Yellow Wallpaper (2022) has won Best Narrative Feature at multiple international festivals and will be included in the Van Gogh Museum's "Yellow" exhibition (Amsterdam, February 2026). As an experimental sound artist, Zélie creates immersive compositions utilizing granular synthesis, voice manipulation, and site-specific interventions. Recent performances include Stanford University, UC Berkeley, SF Sound, and The Hive Oakland, and the La Cloaca festival in Mexico City (December 2025).

S*Glass creates electro-acoustic sound collages with tape music, electronic processing, voice, found sound, and chance operations. Every show uses a different batch of curated audio, mixed live, while the self-produced studio albums are more refined assemblages. The playing of non-musical objects is sometimes incorporated (dental floss, aluminum foil, wind-up toys, metal lunch box, cabbage). Self-shot video is screened during sets, which is mostly textures made with multiple layers that slowly wobble out of sync, jump cuts, and a smattering of primitive animation. The overall effect is one of surreal disorientation. S*Glass is a founder of Bren’t Lewiis Ensemble (a large non-musical music group begun in the early 1980s), and Glands of External Secretion (a duo with rock musician Barbara Manning since the early ’90s). From the late ’80s until 2004, he was the main driver behind Bananafish. Since 2017, he’s performed as a solo artist and completed U.S. tours of the West Coast, New England, parts of the South and Midwest, England and Scotland, Australia and New Zealand, Japan, and a handful of places in Canada.

ATRIUM Alternative Art Fair
January 22—25, 2026
Opening reception Thursday, January 22, 6-9pm
Minnesota Street Projects, San Francisco
https://www.atriumfair.com/

Shapeshifters Cinema is excited to be a participating venue in ATRIUM—a new, free, alternative art fair showcasing the best emerging, underground and established contemporary art galleries in the Bay Area and beyond. Taking place at Minnesota Street Projects January 22—25 during SF Art Week, ATRIUM brings together 20+ galleries that will present featured selections from their respective programs—plus SKYLIGHT ABOVE, an upstairs exhibition of artist-run spaces (where Shapeshifters will be).

We will be showing a selection of film, video and multimedia works made by artists from the Shapeshifters family whose work represents the wide range of DIY, experimental and visionary moving image, sound and performance practices and techniques that we revere, including Tommy Becker, Karel Doing, Facing West Shadows, Ariana Gerstein, Lisa Marr, Kristin Reeves, Jeremy Rourke, Nadia Shihab, Scratch Film Junkies, Shapeshifters Cinema Performance Group + Edan More, Seraphina Perkins & Jasmine Zhang and Thingamajigs Performance Group.

The weekend-long event is free and open to the public with an opening reception on Thursday, January 22 from 6–9pm. Meet us there!

Build Your Own Crankie
Instructor: Risa Lenore
Sunday, January 11, 2026
12-5pm
In-person at Shapeshifters Cinema
Admission: $75 (+ $25 materials cost) (Discount for Shapeshifters members)

Learn how to make a "crankie" with puppeteer and artist Risa Lenore, artistic director of Possibly Puppets Handmade Theatre. A crankie is a pre-cinematic device consisting of a moving panorama, or painting that scrolls through a viewing frame when turned with cranks. Participants will learn about crankies and how they work and then build one with simple materials and an illustrated scroll. This is a beginner-friendly workshop, open to everyone. Colored pencils, markers, scroll paper and prepared crankie kits will be provided. Participants will need to bring a short story, a song or a poem to illustrate, along with imagination, a playful attitude and the most basic drawing skills. If desired, Risa will help you create simple paper puppets to accompany your crankie. We will share and film our projects at the end of class and you will go home with your very own crankie!

Shapeshifters members are the heart of the organization.

By joining the Shapeshifters Membership Program, you become part of an engaged, diverse, creative community working in and around experimental moving image, sound and time-based art.

In exchange for your generous support, we offer a wellspring of fantastic benefits including:

• 10% discount on tickets, registrations and everything purchased in both the cinema and café (Seer level, $60)

• A special, limited edition beer mug (with original image designed this year by Anna Firth!) + one free beer at every on-site event you attend (Clairvoyant level, $100)

• Shapeshifters T-shirt or tote bag (Conjurer level, $150)

• One free admission to every screening hosted in our cinema (Magus level, $300)

• Named sponsorship of one Shapeshifters Fellow (Shapeshifters level, $500)

Help ensure the future of Shapeshifters Cinema. Become a member now.

Want to support the organization without committing to a membership? Consider making a tax-deductible donation through our fiscal sponsor, San Francisco Cinematheque, a 501(c)3 nonprofit. All donations go directly towards covering the costs of operating our venue, without which we can’t continue to do what we do. And if the company you work for offers matching donations, you can double your impact! Every donation makes a huge difference and is greatly appreciated.

Our storefront shop is a thoughtfully-curated collection of publications, prints, recordings and other limited edition, handmade and singular items—made primarily by artists who have performed or presented in our space over the years. Recent additions to our shop include 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 the items available in the Shapeshifters Shop.

We also have gift cards! Shapeshifters gift cards can be purchased in any amount you choose and can be used in both the cinema and café. That means that your recipient can use it to buy whatever they want! A latte, a book and a ticket to a film screening; or, a beer, a record and admission to a workshop. The variations are endless! Not only are you giving your favorite creative person access to a treasure trove of great things (and experiences), you are also supporting your favorite microcinema/brewery/café. It’s a win-win scenario! Buy a gift card now.

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.

CU Boulder Assistant Professor of Cinema Arts Position: The Department of Cinema Studies & Moving Image Arts at the University of Colorado at Boulder seeks to fill an Assistant Professor of Cinema Arts position starting Fall of 2026.  The ideal candidate possesses strong conceptual, theoretical and technical understandings of the cinematic arts in narrative forms that can bridge areas such as classical, emerging, avant-garde, slow and transcendental cinema, Second Cinema and Third Cinema. Candidates must have strengths in technical aspects of creating narrative films, including directing, cinematography, editing, sound design, producing, and/or screenwriting. Deadline to submit is January 12, 2026. Find out more.

CROSSROADS 2026 Call for Submissions: San Francisco Cinematheque seeks submissions of recent films, videos and works of performance cinema for CROSSROADS 2026, the seventeenth iteration of our annual film festival. CROSSROADS 2026 will be held September 4–6, 2026  at Gray Area/Grand Theater in San Francisco. Early submission deadline is January 31, 2026. Find out more.

Prismatic Ground Film Festival Call for Submissions: Prismatic Ground is a New York festival centered on experimental documentary and avant-garde film, and for the first time accepting performance, music and poetry/live reading submissions. Hosted with media partner Screen Slate at handful of venues across NYC, the festival will hold its sixth edition April 29-May 3, 2026. Deadline to submit is March 1, 2026. Find out more.

Extremely Shorts 2026 Call for Submissions: Submissions for Aurora Picture Show’s 29th annual Extremely Shorts Film Festival are now open. Extremely Shorts is an open-call, juried competition of three-minutes-or-shorter films and videos of all kinds and from around the world. Screenings will be presented at Aurora Picture Show in Houston, TX in late May, with some participating filmmakers in attendance and receptions. Deadline to submit is March 10, 2026. Find out more.

Found Footage Magazine Call for Submissions: Authors are invited to submit essays, interviews, video-essays, film and book reviews for Found Footage Magazine, Issue #12. Deadline to submit is June 1, 2026. Find out more.