A film festival is an organized, extended presentation of films in one or more cinemas or screening venues, usually in a single city or region. Increasingly, film festivals show some films outdoors. Films may be of recent date and, depending upon the festival's focus, can include international and domestic releases. Some film festivals focus on a specific filmmaker, genre of film, or subject matter. Several film festivals focus solely on presenting short films of a defined maximum length. Film festivals are typically annual events. Some film historians, including Jerry Beck, do not consider film festivals as official releases of the film.
The Roxie Theater, also known as the Roxie Cinema or just The Roxie, is a historic movie theater, founded in 1912, at 3117 16th Street in the Mission District of San Francisco. It is a non-profit community arthouse cinema.
The San Francisco International Film Festival, organized by the San Francisco Film Society, is held each spring for two weeks, presenting around 200 films from over 50 countries. The festival highlights current trends in international film and video production with an emphasis on work that has not yet secured U.S. distribution. In 2009, it served around 82,000 patrons, with screenings held in San Francisco and Berkeley.
Sweetwater Saloon was a bar and music venue located at 153 Throckmorton Avenue Mill Valley, California, with a 30-year history of live musical performances by the likes of Bonnie Raitt, Elvis Costello, Jerry Garcia, The String Cheese Incident, John Lee Hooker and Carlos Santana. There were typically at least 4 to 5 musical acts booked per week making it a popular local hangout. Sweetwater Saloon also featured an open mike night on Mondays that occasionally featured surprise performances by well-known artists such as Gregg Allman, Train and others. Village Music, a nationally recognized independent record store also in Mill Valley held twice-yearly parties at Sweetwater by well-known musicians who were also Village Music store customers. A documentary film about Village Music, Sweetwater and the music community in Mill Valley,Village Music: Last of the Great Record Stores was released in 2012. After closing in 2007 it was reopened as Sweetwater Music Hall in 2012 by Bob Weir and his partners a few blocks away from its original location
Filmmaker, or "Filmmaker: a diary by george lucas", is a 32-minute documentary made in 1968 by George Lucas about the making of Francis Ford Coppola's 1969 film The Rain People.
The Frameline Film Festival began as a storefront event in 1976. The first film festival, named the Gay Film Festival of Super-8 Films, was held in 1977. The festival is organized by Frameline, a nonprofit media arts organization whose mission statement is "to change the world through the power of queer cinema". It is the oldest LGBTQ+ film festival in the world.
Rob Nilsson is a filmmaker, poet, and painter, best known for his feature film Northern Lights, co-directed with John Hanson and winner of the Camera d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival (1979). He also is known for directing and playing the lead role in Heat and Sunlight, produced by Steve and Hildy Burns, also featuring Consuelo Faust, Don Bajema and Ernie Fosseliius. Heat and Sunlight won the Grand Jury Prize Dramatic at the Sundance Film Festival in 1988, and his 9 @ Night Film Cycle won the 2008 San Francisco Film Critics Circle Marlon Riggs Award for Courage and Vision in Cinema. Nilsson has also received Lifetime Achievement awards from the Fargo International Film Festival, the St. Louis International Film Festival, the Kansas City Filmmaker's Jubilee, the Master's Award from the Golden Apricot Film Festival, a Filmmaker of the Year Award from the Silver Lake Film Festival, and the Milley Award from the city of Mill Valley for accomplishment in the Arts.
Thomas J. Cahill was the chief of police of San Francisco, California from 1958 to 1970, the longest tenure as chief of police in San Francisco history. He served under mayors George Christopher, John F. Shelley, and Joseph Alioto.
The California Film Institute (CFI) is a non-profit film exhibition organization based in San Rafael, California. The organization exhibits films year-round at the Christopher B. Smith Rafael Film Center, presents the annual Mill Valley Film Festival and DOCLANDS Documentary Film Festival, and supports the year-round CFI Education Program. The founder and current director of CFI is Mark Fishkin.
The KFRC Fantasy Fair and Magic Mountain Music Festival was an event held June 10 and 11, 1967, at the 4,000-seat Sidney B. Cushing Memorial Amphitheatre high on the south face of Mount Tamalpais in Marin County, California. Although 20,000 tickets were reported to have been sold for the event, as many as 40,000 people may have actually attended the two-day concert, which was the first of a series of San Francisco–area cultural events known as the Summer of Love. The Fantasy Fair was influenced by the popular Renaissance Pleasure Faire and became a prototype for large scale multi-act outdoor rock music events now known as rock festivals.
The 64th annual Venice International Film Festival, held in Venice, Italy, from 29 August to 8 September 2007.
Hrag Varoujan Yedalian is an Armenian-American political consultant and documentary film director and producer. He is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley and holds a Masters of Public Administration degree from the University of Southern California. He has attended UCLA School of Law and studied film editing at the AFI Conservatory. Hrag runs the Los Angeles-based consulting firm Blue State Campaigns. His work has been featured in Rolling Stone, The Hollywood Reporter, and San Francisco Chronicle. He previously worked at Steven Spielberg’s organization, the USC Shoah Foundation.
T. Arthur Cottam is a screenwriter, actor, producer and film director. A graduate of the Film and Television Production program at the Tisch School of the Arts of New York University, Cottam resides in Los Angeles, California. He acted in theatre, and received an Artistic Director Achievement Award from the Valley Theatre League for his role in the theatre production Othello, an alternative mashup adaptation, created and directed by Josh T. Ryan. Cottam directed short films along a topical series called "Dirty Little Shorts".
Jan Millsapps is a U.S. digital filmmaker, fiction writer, and Professor Emerita in the Cinema Department at San Francisco State University. She has produced films, videos and interactive cinema on subjects ranging from domestic violence to global terrorism, and has published in traditional print and online venues.
Freude (Florence) Bartlett also known as Freude Solomon-Bartlett, was an American experimental film director and founder of the Serious Business Company, a San Francisco-based film sales and film distribution company known for its collection of avant-garde, animation and women's films.
Belfast is a 2021 British coming-of-age drama film written and directed by Kenneth Branagh. The film stars Caitríona Balfe, Judi Dench, Jamie Dornan, Ciarán Hinds, Colin Morgan and Jude Hill. The film, which Branagh has described as his "most personal", follows a young boy's childhood in Belfast, Northern Ireland, at the beginning of The Troubles in 1969.
Britta H. Sjogren is an independent filmmaker and academic.
The San Francisco Independent Film Festival, known as IndieFest, is an annual film festival, held in January or February, that recognizes contemporary independent film. It is run by SF IndieFest, a nonprofit organization, and based at the Roxie Theater in the Mission District.
