Upcoming Programs
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 Ellie Vanderlip & Kendra Rose
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)
★ The café will be open before the screening for brunch from 11am-2pm ★
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.
Cast: Isabel Aimé González Sola, Esteban Bigliardi, Ernestina Gatti
In Spanish with English subtitles
Running time: 104 minutes
preceded by
Al lado del río (By the River), by Sofía Camargo, 12 minutes
In the thick humidity of their summer house, a mother and her two daughters navigate the quiet tension of a new reality. 12 minutes.
Sofía Camargo in person
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!"
Image from “Another Earth” by Ben Russell
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
Members
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, creative community working in and around experimental moving image, sound and time-based art. Each level offers a range of access to members-only resources and events, discounts, comps and more.
Take a look at all the great perks waiting for you when you join the Shapeshifters Membership Program.
Shop
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.
Opportunities
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.
