Community Calendar
Check out the screenings, happy hours and other professional events happening throughout the Bay Area.
Have an event you’d like to include? Let us know.
Want to see what’s happening at Cinemama? Check out over events here.
CAAMFest
CAAMFest 2024: LIFTING THE TRUTHS OF OUR STORIES
These are stories that are brave, bizarre, beautiful, and are all true of something – they are ours. Generous expressions of what impacts us, what matters, what we long for and imagine. It is of US. It is anthropic. We are faceted in our existence.
THE NEXT 15 MINUTES: FULL SPECTRUM FUTURES
Dimensions overlap, timelines fracture, tech is tech-ing and nothing is off-limits. In this immersive dramatic reading, five BIPOC Bay Area writer/directors will present fresh perspectives in science fiction --- with homegrown actors bringing their stories to life accompanied by curated sound design. Produced by Celia C. Peters/Artistic Freedom Ltd. Presented by Betti Ono.
Saturday, May 17 at 6pm. California Ballroom, 1736 Franklin St., Oakland. Reception to follow show. Free + open to the public.
International Queer Women of Color Film Festival
This year's Festival Focus, "Fierce Determination," showcases 49 films across 7 screenings—from the ancestral traditions of Mauna Kea to Black Southern liberation stories—illuminating how LBTQIA+ BIPOC communities persist, thrive, and imagine liberatory futures through radical artistry and collective care.
Frameline49
Discover emerging talents and embrace an unparalleled community of festival-goers at the world’s largest celebration of queer media. Frameline pays tribute to LGBTQ+ experiences through pioneering documentaries, gripping features, delightful shorts, cinematic classics, engaging episodics, and more.
CiNEOLA
CiNEOLA returns to the Roxie Theater with short film program, SERENATA DE PROTESTA, reflecting on the Latin American diaspora and the experiences of Latine communities in California. Features live in-person Q&A with local filmmakers.
Accessibility Info: Click here to learn more.
SFFILM
Save the date for SFFILM 2025! More details will be announced at the end of March on their website.
Henrietta Fundraiser & Filmmaking Mixer
Join us on March 15th, 4-7pm at Woody's Cafe in Oakland for an enchanting afternoon celebrating independent filmmaking! Meet the team behind "Henrietta The Dragon Slayer," a fantasy short film. And see behind-the-scenes and about the big vision for this proof of concept project.
Your $10 ticket includes light refreshments, engaging ice-breakers, exclusive behind-the-scenes content, and more! Costumes welcome!
Every ticket directly supports our post-production costs. Help bring this magical story to life while enjoying a fun-filled community event!
Get your tickets now!
Venue is ADA-accessible
VERSED - Boots Riley
VERSED is a series of hybrid workshops, hands-on labs, virtual and in-person trainings for creators of all ages and skill levels to spark and sustain careers in the media arts on a free or below-market basis.
The next session will feature a conversation with Boots Riley.
Activist, filmmaker, and musician, Boots Riley studied film at San Francisco State University before rising to prominence as the frontman of hip-hop groups The Coup and Street Sweeper Social Club. His debut feature film Sorry to Bother You premiered at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival, was acquired by Annapurna Pictures, and was released to resounding box office success and widespread critical acclaim.
Fervently dedicated to social change, Boots was deeply involved with the Occupy Oakland movement and was one of the leaders of the activist group The Young Comrades. His book of lyrics and anecdotes, Tell Homeland Security-We Are The Bomb, is out on Haymarket Press.
He is the recipient of the Independent Spirit Awards for Best Feature Film, and SFFILM's Kanbar Award. His most recent work, I'm a Virgo, is available on Amazon and was nominated for a Gotham Award and 4 Independent Spirit Awards. He is currently working on I Love Boosters starring Keke Palmer and Demi Moore.
Blood & Popcorn Film Festival
Blood & Popcorn Film Festival is a micro Horror film festival that celebrates Bay Area Filmmakers and spotlights international talents year round with multiple horror film screenings. Enjoy the best curated collection of horror films that offer spine chilling frights and gory delights. Actor and Filmmaker Q&A.
BAMMS 2024 San Francisco
Join us in San Francisco to learn and connect with the Bay Area film and media community! Speakers and sessions will include insights from ITVS’ groundbreaking study, California Film Commission info session on the state tax credit for independent filmmakers, Film SF, local filmmakers who have made projects in the Bay Area, local union members and representatives, the Bay List, and more.
Accessibility: The Foundry and ITVS are wheelchair accessible. ITVS has a lift available for access to the second floor if needed. Both venues have ADA-compliant and gender-neutral restrooms. ITVS is next door to The Foundry.
Also, be sure to stay tuned for SFFILM’s Frost House and The Roxie and George Rush’s Karaoke gathering on December 12th.
The Bay Area Media Maker Summit (BAMMS) was launched in 2021 to cultivate a healthy and inclusive film and media making community. You can find out more about BAMMS here.

UNION screening
Up against one of the most powerful companies on the planet, a group of Amazon workers embark on an unprecedented campaign to unionize their warehouse in Staten Island, New York.
The screening includes a Q&A with producer Samantha Curley & local Amazon organizers.
Directed by Stephen Maing and Brett Story. 104 MIN.
The theatre is ADA accessible.
San Francisco Transgender Film Festival
SFTFF is the world's first and longest-running Transgender Film Festival, and co-presents year-round screenings in collaboration with other LGBT film festivals.
Accessibility Info can be viewed here.
AfroComicCon International Film Festival
This is the 7th consecutive year of the AfroComicCon International Film Festival and our first year at the historic Grand Lake Theater. The festivities are from 4 pm - 10:30 pm. Our co-directors are Juan Davis and Mirage Thrams. We have an amazing program this year:
AFCCIFF '24 Finalists film screenings, films from the Bay Area, the US, and from all over the world!
An AfroComicCon Fashion Show that will dazzle you
Live music entertainment
A filmmaker's panel with Q & A
We are announcing our collaboration with 'Clip Tease' an LA-based film festival brought to us by Mirage Thrams our co-director, all trailers submitted to our festival will be automatically enrolled in hers, and the winner will get their film produced!
An afterparty, TBA the venue, (close by)
Arab Film Festival
The Nation’s Oldest and Largest Festival of Arab Films
The flagship event of the Arab Film and Media Institute, the Arab Film Festival is the longest running independent festival of its kind in North America. Launched in 1996, the festival's mission is to present the best of contemporary films that illuminate the richness of Arab culture through authentic narratives and images, providing insight into the beauty and complexity of the Arab world.
The festival also offers special programming to local audiences, and unprecedented access to the diversity and range of authentic Arab experiences. The festival has gained an international reputation for excellence and offers its audiences access to media that reflects the lives of under-represented and provocative themes and groups on a cultural and societal level.
The 28th edition runs October 24-November 3, 2024, in-person throughout the San Francisco Bay Area, with a virtual track open nationally.
South Asian Film Festival
3rd i's 22nd annual SF International South Asian Film Festival presents groundbreaking cinema from India, Pakistan, France, UK, Canada, and the USA. From witty comedies to nuanced dramas, from sci-fi to real life, 3rd i offers a celluloid celebration of inspiring stories from South Asia and its Diaspora.
Superfest Disability Film Festival
Superfest Disability Film Festival is coming this week, and whether you are joining in person in the Bay Area or online anywhere in the world, you need to be a part of it! Superfest is the longest running disability film festival in the world. Since 1970, it has celebrated cinema that portrays disability through a diverse, unabashed and engaging lens, and we can't wait to come together as a community to take in this much-loved disability cultural event for its 37th festival, hybrid for the second year, with new levels of access.
Image Description: A purple and white flyer with stylized film reel borders, showing colorful pictures of shots from all of the films, a white film wheel graphic, and the following text in white and yellow: It’s almost here! The 2024 Superfest Disability Film Festival. Passes are available now and start at $0! www.superfestfilm.org. Oct 17-20 Virtual Screenings, Oct 19 at the Exploratorium in San Francisco. There are logos for the Paul K. Longmore Institute on Disability and the Disability Cultural Center.
Green Film Festival
The Green Film Festival of San Francisco is interested in exploring all aspects of "environmental film" whether they be compelling documentaries, adventure films or narrative fiction films and midnight movies with environmental themes. Through this experience the festival hopes audiences can begin to engage with sustainable solutions to the problems facing the planet.
Festival films play live in theater Oct. 17-24 and are also available to stream on demand Oct. 17-27 at sfindie.com.
SpookFest
Back for its seventh edition, SpookFest is the beloved film festival that goes bump in the night! We scavenged the crypts, summoned the demons, and took all the candy from the “Take 1” bowls to bring you a night of homegrown short films and Halloweeny spookiness. There’s also a costume contest, so dress to impress! After the screening, join us for a FREE afterparty to continue the festivities and meet the filmmakers.
Accessibility: Wheelchair and ADA Seating, Wheelchair-Accessible Bathroom, Assistive Listening Devices (comfortable headphones that increase the audio volume for all movies)
SFFILM Doc Stories
Created in 2015, Doc Stories was designed to celebrate non-fiction film. The annual event provides essential opportunities for collaboration, distills key industry trends, and showcases bold new films. Over the last decade, Doc Stories has become an essential festival for established and emerging filmmakers to debut new work during a busy fall season. As a result, luminaries such as Werner Herzog, Laura Poitras, Roger Ross Williams, Matthew Heineman, Lisa Cortés, Shaunak Sen, Victor Kossakovsky, Morgan Neville, Raoul Peck, Julia Reichert, Steven Bognar, Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, and Wim Wenders have all premiered work at SFFILM’s Doc Stories. At a time when the documentary industry wrestles with seismic changes, this festival remains an essential space for interrogation and inspiration. Fittingly, the 2024 Anniversary program celebrates the origins of Doc Stories with a group of films that will challenge and delight audiences. Thank you to all the participating filmmakers for bringing your art to SFFILM. We look forward to the next ten years of Doc Stories as we continue to honor the essential craft of documentaries. —Jessie Fairbanks, Director of Programming
San Francisco Short Film Festival
The short film — what a perfect genre. Like the perfect snack. Or the very best poem: intensity and imagination distilled down to the most crucial and poignant of words. Short films are the quintessential starting point, and for some filmmakers, the definitive end goal.
FILM + FASHION @ OAKLAND STYLE WEEK
Future style is hitting The Town Filmmaker Celia C. Peters will preview The Godspeed Collexion at FASHION FORWARD on October10 at 7pm. Get a sneak peek at the capsule collection inspired by the lead characters in GODSPEED, the afrofuturist thriller now in development. Also peep the work of five other illmatic independent Oakland designers who will also be previewing their collections. This free, ticketed event is part of Oakland Style Week 2024.
Drunken Film Festival
Drunken Film Fest is a one-of-a-kind, free pop-up film festival that brings independent films to bars (and theaters) throughout the bay. Each night's shorts program is a special mix of different genres including animation, avant-garde, documentary, local, music videos, and narrative.
The festival includes screenings of these Bay Area films:
Lion in the Wind by TT Takemoto
Fortune by Shirley Yumeng He
Sometimes: An Observation by Nicole Vargas
We Exist in Memory by Darian Woehr
European Man…American Beach by Rex Shannon
Cantaloupe-a-dopamine and the Dance of the Melonless Mind by Samantha Stone and Micha Vassau
Navel Gazer by Shirin Mori
Terminally Ill by Chris Cole
Fist Up Film Festival
At the Fist Up Film Festival...
We believe watching a good film can change your life…
We believe some films are made to be discussed…
The Fist Up Film Festival presents films that are intended to create impact, inspire discussion and foster understanding. By placing emphasis on the connected experiences between global and local communities, The Fist Up Film Festival creates visual parallels between people’s lived experiences and stories from around the world.
For our 15th Anual Festival films will be shown from the 4-14th of October at different venues in the Bay Area, California. We believe that Social Justice films don't have to make the audience feel horrible about the state of the world. We focus on uplifting stories that show our power!
The Five Demands
A screening of the film, The Five Demands, about the 1969 protest at City College of New York initiated with five demands from Black and Puerto Rican students seeking more inclusion at the college. The screening will be followed by a discussion with director Andrea Weiss and student leader Francee Covington.
In April 1969, a small group of Black and Puerto Rican students shut down the City College of New York, an elite public university located right in the heart of Harlem. Fueled by the revolutionary fervor sweeping the nation, the strike soon turned into an uprising, leading to the extended occupation of the campus, classes being canceled, students being arrested and the resignation of the college president. Through archival footage and modern-day interviews, we follow the students’ struggle against the institutional racism that, for over a century, had shut out people of color from this and other public universities. The Five Demands revisits the untold story of this explosive student takeover and proves that a handful of ordinary citizens can band together to take action and effect meaningful change.
NR, 57 mins., 2023.
Free to attend.
SORRY WE'RE DEAD
The ennui of a filmmaker, trapped between aspiration and reality, frames Lana Jing’s quirky, sarcastic, and cinematic-joke filled quarter-life crisis. At her lecture hall job, where aging white men wax on, self-involved, Lana accidentally frames her friend and co-worker when she destroys the only copy of an aging tech-bro’s high-profile lecture. Lana is forced to navigate stop motion animation, a secret admirer, and terrible bridge traffic to sort out a way forward to her destiny… kinda.
Oakland International Film Festival
LIFT UP OAKLAND!
In our pursuit to utilize film as a tool to improve the Oakland economy, the 22nd Oakland International Film Festival will kick- off with two documentaries that share stories of how self-determination and perseverance can lead to community development.
InFocus: An Open Forum for Diverse Storytellers
Join us for an evening of community building and ideas exchange as we celebrate creativity and 20 years of building the BAYCAT community!
Have meaningful, facilitated conversations exploring roles beyond the line, and how to be a filmmaker in the ever-changing landscape of the media industry in the Bay Area. Enjoy small bites and beverages while hearing from like-minded creatives from all stages of their careers!
QWOCMAP Encore Screening (Online)
Watch the 20th annual International Queer Women of Color Film Festivalonline at your own pace! The online Encore Screening is completely FREE, virtual, and available worldwide, September 11-17, 2024.
This year's theme, 'Joyful Reunion,' celebrates deep human connections and transformative visions. Drawing on Indigenous knowledge, shared ecology, and queer realities, these films explore the dynamic tides of love, self-fulfillment, and home.
The Encore Screening invites attendees from around the world to explore a diverse slate of 5 screenings, 4 Filmmaker Q&A’s, and a special anniversary spotlight panel, "UNSHAKEABLE LEGACY: Queer Women of Color Filmmakers.”
Upholding our long-standing commitment to disability justice, we ensure inclusivity with subtitles for the Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing, audio descriptions for the Blind and Low Vision, and ASL interpretation for all filmmaker Q&As.
PUNK KIDS - Theatrical Premiere
Theatrical Premier of Bay Area Film “Punk Kids”. Hosted by: Tony Gapastione of BraveMaker.org Q&A Moderated by: Sam Bempong of Make It Bay.
The Punk Kids journey began in 2018 when writer director Mike Heff was inspired to write a short film about his experiences growing up in a punk rock band. Punk Kids was only Mike’s second script since he moved away from directing music videos and focused on writing screenplays. He produced Punk kids with Tiny Rabbit Productions as a short film in 2019 and was discovered by Executive Producer Jamal Trulove from the award winning film The Last Black Man in San Francisco. With the help of Jamal and his company Tru Narrativ, Punk Kids was turned into an independent feature film. Produced during the pandemic over the span of 3 years, Punk Kids is a true testament to the gritty punk rock spirit of chasing your dreams and achieving them even when the odds are against you.
Accessibility Info:
Closed Captioning. ADA Venue.
Latinx Heritage Screening Series
We are thrilled to present a new screening series celebrating Latinx Heritage Month highlighting these San Francisco Bay Area stories and storytellers. Following the screening of all six films, there will be a filmmaker conversation with Clara Pérez Medina, Javier Roberto Carlos, Lottie Pacheco-Lobatos, Marilyn Montúfar, and Susana Canales Barrón, moderated by SFO Video Arts Curator Vincent Balgamino. Please stick around afterwards for a light reception with the filmmakers, and see SFO's screening room where the films will screen throughout September and October for free. Please note: the screening will begin promptly at 1:30pm.
FILMS:
A Film is a Goodbye That Never Ends , María Luisa Santos
A woman waits for a visa with Turbo, a dog that she grows to adore. As time passes, she has to grapple with how their relationship will change when she has to leave.
https://www.marialuisasantos.com
A Place to Call Home , Clara Pérez Medina
Three generations of artists map the contours of their communities.
https://www.claraperezmedina.com
Distant Futures , Susana Canales Barrón
Some say cars are born in Silicon Valley and go to die in the San Joaquin Valley, but few speak of the connection people have with their cars. As rural landscapes transform with neon-lit electric vehicle chargers, this film looks at the bond communities in the San Joaquin Valley have formed with their automobiles amidst a technological shift.
https://www.susanabarron.com
El Soñador, Javier Roberto Carlos
"El Soñador" is an intimate film portrait of Marcos "El Soñador" Alvarez, a blind street musician from El Salvador, and his dreams of overcoming struggles through music in San Francisco.
https://www.javierrobertocarlos.com
Film SF (the San Francisco Film Commission) champions filming in San Francisco to support a diversity of storytellers and our thriving production community. In addition to overseeing and facilitating production activity in the City, we also sponsor local film and media organizations, and our incentive, the Scene in San Francisco Rebate Program, awards up to $600,000 back to qualifying productions in fees paid to city agencies.
https://www.sf.gov/departments/office-economic-and-workforce-development/film-sf
SFO Museum’s Video Arts program presents short films from artists working at the leading edge of their craft in a variety of genres—narrative, animation, documentary, and experimental. The films are projected onto a 160” screen in a dedicated, state-of-the-art gallery space in the International Terminal Main Hall. The gallery is located prior to all security checkpoints and is accessible to millions of annual visitors.
https://www.sfomuseum.org/programs/video-arts
The Worst Film Festival
Come join us for a night of hilariously bad movies at The Worst Film Fest - it's so bad, it's good!
It is no secret that the building blocks of success are those of failure - bleak, tragic, humorous, glorious failure. The spotlight tends to shine on the success story, but what did it take to get there? Our mission is to bring failures out of the shadows and celebrate the process of progress.
Everyone has failures. It’s what we learn from them that makes us better filmmakers. Join us in celebrating our worst work and join a film community that shares, grows, and supports each other.
Proceeds from ticket sales will support upcoming projects from local filmmakers.