Join us for our next filmmaker happy hour, hosted by Theo Hollingsworth.

Theo Hollingsworth is a comedic writer, producer, actor, and director based in Oakland, California. He studied film production at Howard University and has worked on hundreds of TV and Film projects over his 15 year career. Currently he works full time as part of the Production Management Team at Pixar Animation Studios supporting the creation of feature length animated films. As an independent content creator, he’s produced a variety of short films, documentaries, and web series and has his work screened globally through film festivals and on streaming platforms. You can see more of his work at TheoHollingsworth.com

On Sunday May 5th at 12:30pm we're screening ELEMENTS: A SHORT ANTHOLOGY interweaves the lives of four Bay Area residents on the same day, told in four separate films.

For those of you who attended Reel Queer Flix last fall, you’ll remember MEDIAN, which was filmed right outside of Grand Lake Theatre.

Before the screening, get down to the funkalicious tunes of Will Hammond Jr. & Golden Tiger. We’ll also have a special q&a with Director Matthew Riutta joing by his designers, actors and crew, in a conversation about making films in the Bay Area.

And in usual Cinemama fashion, you can join us after the screening for a reception nearby! Details will be announced at the event.

Accessibility: The New Parkway Theater is ADA accessible. There will be 1 ASL interpreter and all the films are captioned.

View a sneak peek of FOR OUR CHILDREN, this Wednesday evening, 7:15pm at Grand Lake Theatre.

The evening will include a Q&A with members of the filmmaking team, including the film director, Débora Souza Silva and protagonist Rev. Wanda Johnson (mother of Oscar Grant), and moderated by Niema Jordan.

Wanda Johnson and Angela Williams, mothers of young Black men victimized by police brutality, come together and build a network of community-led support, mutual aid, and healing in this trenchant documentary spanning Oakland’s Fruitvale to the American South. 

Long before George Floyd’s murder and the BLM protests in 2020, Oscar Grant’s 2009 fateful encounter with law enforcement on a BART platform seeded public awareness and cultural consciousness of systemic racism and its discontents. Paying forward lessons learned and advocating against anti-Black violence in memory of her son, Oscar, Wanda Johnson holds space for Angela Williams, whose teen son, Ulysses, survives a police encounter in Troy, Alabama, living to tell his story. 

Radical empathy fuels this timely exposé.

The Grand Lake Theatre is ADA accessible.

Join us for our next filmmaker happy hour, hosted by Myah Overstreet!

Myah Overstreet is a Brooklyn-based filmmaker and journalist, originally from Oakland, California. After completing her masters degree at the Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley, her debut film To Be Invisible was acquired by The New Yorker and premiered at the 40th annual Sundance Film Festival.  

Myah’s area of focus is on culture and social inequalities among marginalized communities. She is dedicated to amplifying untold stories about the history and narrative of the Black woman in America. 

She has taken on freelance roles as a producer, researcher, editor, and coordinator for independent filmmakers. Her previous documentary film roles include work as an associate producer on BLACK MOTHERS LOVE & RESIST (2022), which premiered at the San Francisco International Film Festival, and most notably, her work as a production assistant on the film HOMEROOM (2021), which is currently streaming on Hulu. 

Myah’s written work has appeared in The Washington Post, YES! Magazine, The California Health Report, Oaklandside, and The Richmond Pulse.

A mixer for Bay Area filmmakers.

The venue is ADA Accessible. Cash bar with a special menu by Q Mixers.

Admittance is on a first come basis.

Panel discussion after the screening moderated by filmmaker Debra Wilson
Post-event mixer at a nearby location, to be announced

ACCESSIBILITY:

We will have one (1) ASL interpreter during the event, and all the films will be open captioned. The venue is ADA accessible. If you are attending and would like us to know of any accssibility needs, please email our partners at Cinemama: info@cinemamafilm.com

FILMS:

ANTHEM by Marlon Riggs

Created in 1991, Marlon Riggs’ experimental music video politicizes the homoeroticism of African-American men. With sensual, sexual, and defiant images and words intended to provoke, Anthem reasserts the “self-evident right” to life and liberty in an era of pervasive anti-gay and anti-Black backlash and hysterical cultural repression.

FEMME RAGE by Sarah Taborga and Aïma Paule

A rally cry to all QTBIPOC Femmes, across the gender spectrum, to unleash their rage about living, surviving, and thriving within a cishetero-capitalist-white supremacist-patriarchy.

CODE SWITCH by Davis Alexander James and Micha Lyric Borneo

During a trip to the barbershop, a Black trans person navigates the complexity and dynamism of gender expression.

A DIFFERENT DIRECTION by Sampson McCormick

A black gay man struggling to navigate life challenges in dating and career, while leaning on the help of his best friend to make a big decision to severe ties with a toxic parent.

HOW NOT TO DATE WHILE TRANS by Nyla Moon

In this dark comedy, Andie searches for romance in a world full of problematic men.

BABY by Jessie Levandov

Ali, a Dominican-American teenager from the Bronx, spends a Saturday afternoon navigating a budding romance.

BLACKNESS IS EVERYTHING by Alba Roland Mejia

Filled with poetry and captivating slice-of-life images, this experimental film celebrates the diversity of the Black diaspora in The Bay Area.

THE BEAUTY PRESIDENT by Whitney Skauge

Meet America’s First Drag Queen for President
“If a bad actor can be president, why not a good drag queen?” In 1992, Joan Jett Blakk made a historic bid for the White House as one of the first openly queer write-in candidates. Today, Terence Smith, the man behind the persona, reflects back on his place in gay rights history.

Filmed in Oakland, San Francisco, and New York City, Tongues Untied shares fierce examples of homophobia and racism: the man refused entry to a gay bar because of his color; the college student left bleeding on the sidewalk after a gay-bashing; the loneliness and isolation of the drag queen or trans woman. Yet, they also affirm the Black, gay male experience: protest marches, smoky bars, "snap diva," humorous "musicology" and vogue dancers, in Marlon Riggs' seminal film.

Marlon Riggs graduated magna cum laude from Harvard and received his masters degree in journalism from the University of California, Berkeley, where he became the youngest tenured professor at the Graduate School of Journalism.
In 1989, Marlon completed his landmark experimental documentary film Tongues Untied. Ultimately, it was aired on national PBS as part of the television series P.O.V. The three principal voices of Tongues Untied are those of Riggs, and poets Essex Hemphill, and Joseph Beam. Tongues Untied had political backlash; Republican Senator Jesse Helms famously argued to defund the arts after its release. He produced, wrote, and directed several documentary films, including Ethnic Notions, Tongues Untied, Color Adjustment, and Black Is...Black Ain't. His films examine past and present representations of race and sexuality in the United States.

Marlon Riggs was an Oakland resident and lived in the Adams Point neighborhood where he died of AIDS related complications in 1994 at the age of 37.

"A Black male warrior fighting for the right to love other Black men,
Marlon Riggs affirms what was nearly lost, newly found: the certainty
that Black male lives are utterly precious."
—Alice Walker, Author, The Color Purple