 | |
| Type | Nonprofit |
|---|---|
| Industry | Documentary, Film, New Media, Storytelling |
| Founded | San Francisco, California (2002) |
| Headquarters | San Francisco, CA, |
Key people |
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| Website | https://citizenfilm.org |
Citizen Film is a San Francisco-based documentary company founded in 2002 by Sam Ball, Sophie Constantinou and Kate Stilley Steiner.
They produce long-form documentary programs such as Joann Sfar Draws from Memory and Green Streets (in progress) [ permanent dead link ], and they have produced more than 100 short films. [1] In addition, they provide key production and/or post-production services for independent producers such as Nancy Kates (Regarding Susan Sontag); Vicki Abeles ( Race to Nowhere ); Tiffany Shlain (The Tribe); and Jenni Olson (575 Castro St.). [2] [3] [4] [5] They have produced several films with Academy Award winner Debra Chasnoff (A Foot in the Door and The Respect for All Project), promoting equity in education "at the earliest age possible and on an ongoing basis." [6] [7] [8]
Citizen Film also produces new media projects such as Lunch Love Community, co-directed by Constantinou and Helen DeMichiel; and Half-Remembered Stories, a collaboration with the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival. [9] [10]
Susan Lee Sontag was an American writer, philosopher, and political activist. She mostly wrote essays, but also published novels; she published her first major work, the essay "Notes on 'Camp' ", in 1964. Her best-known works include the critical works Against Interpretation (1966), On Photography (1977), Illness as Metaphor (1978) and Regarding the Pain of Others, as well as the fictional works The Way We Live Now (1986), The Volcano Lover (1992), and In America (1999).
KQED is a PBS member television station licensed to San Francisco, California, United States, serving the San Francisco Bay Area. The station is owned by KQED Inc., alongside fellow PBS station KQEH and NPR member KQED-FM (88.5). The three stations share studios on Mariposa Street in San Francisco's Mission District and transmitter facilities atop Sutro Tower.
KQEH, branded on-air as KQED Plus, is a PBS member television station licensed to San Jose, California, United States, serving the San Francisco Bay Area. The station is owned by KQED Inc., alongside fellow PBS station KQED and NPR member KQED-FM (88.5) in San Francisco. The three stations share studios on Mariposa Street in San Francisco's Mission District and transmitter facilities atop Sutro Tower; until January 17, 2018, KQEH's transmitter was located atop Monument Peak.
Josh Kornbluth is an American comedic autobiographical monologist based in the San Francisco Bay Area who has toured internationally, written and starred in several feature films, and starred in a television interview show.
CAAMFest, known prior to 2013 as the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival (SFIAAFF), is presented every March in the San Francisco Bay Area in the United States as the nation's largest showcase for new Asian American and Asian films. It annually presents approximately 130 works in San Francisco, Berkeley and San Jose. The festival is organized by the Center for Asian American Media.
Nancy Kates is an independent filmmaker based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She directed Regarding Susan Sontag, a feature documentary about the late essayist, novelist, director and activist. Through archival footage, interviews, still photographs and images from popular culture, the film reflects the boldness of Sontag’s work and the cultural importance of her thought, and received funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Foundation for Jewish Culture and the Sundance Documentary Film Program.
Stephen Henderson Talbot is an American TV documentary producer, reporter and writer. Talbot directed and produced "The Movement and the 'Madman' " for the PBS series American Experience in 2023. He is a longtime contributor to the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and the series Frontline. His more than 40 documentaries include the Frontline films "The Best Campaign Money Can Buy", "Rush Limbaugh's America", "The Long March of Newt Gingrich", "Justice for Sale", and "News War: What's Happening to the News". Talbot has also written and produced PBS biographies of writers Dashiell Hammett, Beryl Markham, Ken Kesey, Carlos Fuentes, Maxine Hong Kingston and John Dos Passos. He was co-creator and executive producer of the PBS music specials, Sound Tracks: Music Without Borders".
James Dalessandro is an American writer and filmmaker. He is best known for his historical-fiction novel 1906 based on events surrounding the great San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906.
The San Francisco Bay Times, the first LGBTQ newspaper founded jointly by gay men and women, launched in 1978 and remains one of the largest and oldest LGBTQ newspapers in Northern California. The business includes the 24/7 live-streaming Castro Street Cam that streams Harvey Milk Plaza and the Castro live to the world, serving as an emotional lifeline to LGBTQ people elsewhere, including internationally, who seek connection due to isolation in their regions. It also includes the LGBTQ news and events service "Betty's List," as well as "Harvey's List" and the "Bay Times List."
Scott Kildall is an American conceptual artist working with new technologies in a variety of media including video art, prints, sculpture and performance art. Kildall works broadly with virtual worlds and in the net.art movement. His work centers on repurposing technology and repackaging information from the public realm into art. He often invites others to participate in the work.
Debra Chasnoff was an American documentary filmmaker and activist whose films address progressive social justice issues. Her production company GroundSpark produces and distributes films, educational resources and campaigns on issues ranging from environmental concerns to affordable housing to preventing prejudice.
Daniel Nicoletta is an Italian-American photographer, photojournalist and gay rights activist.
Castro Camera was a camera store in the Castro District of San Francisco, California, operated by Harvey Milk from 1972 until his assassination in 1978. During the 1970s the store became the center of the neighborhood's growing gay community, as well as campaign headquarters for Milk's various campaigns for elected office.
The Rejected is a made-for-television documentary film about homosexuality, produced for KQED in San Francisco by John W. Reavis. The Rejected was the first documentary program on homosexuality broadcast on American television. It was first shown on KQED on September 11, 1961, and was later syndicated to National Educational Television (NET) stations across the United States. The Rejected received positive critical reviews.
Richard O. Moore was an American poet associated with Kenneth Rexroth and the San Francisco Renaissance.
Kate Stilley Steiner is a filmmaker, editor, and producer. She co-founded Citizen Film, a San Francisco-based not-for-profit production company which "creates films and online media that foster active engagement in cultural and civic life."
Last Call at Maud's is a 1993 American documentary film directed by Paris Poirier. The film explores the history of lesbian culture from the 1940s to the 1990s as it records the last evening of Maud's, a San Francisco lesbian bar that closed in 1989 after 23 years in operation.
Robert N. Zagone is an independent filmmaker and television director who is best known for his independent feature films Read You Like a Book and The Stand-In. He is also well known for the iconic guerilla-style documentary Drugs in the Tenderloin, as well as many film recordings of the musical culture of San Francisco, including Go Ride the Music, featuring Jefferson Airplane and Quicksilver Messenger Service; A Night at the Family Dog, featuring the Grateful Dead, Santana, and Jefferson Airplane; Big Brother and the Holding Company with Janis Joplin; and the infamous Bob Dylan Press Conference. Zagone was one of the first filmmakers to cover the cultural explosion of the 1960s in the San Francisco Bay Area.
The MESS International Theatre Festival (MESS) is a theatre festival that takes place annually in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is the oldest living theatre festival in the Balkans, programming international experimental performances and emerging artists. MESS was the largest theatre festival in the Former Yugoslavia and was named one of Living Theatre's international showcases in 1974. It survived the Siege of Sarajevo, during which it hosted directors such as Susan Sontag and Peter Schumann. It organized the first edition of the Sarajevo Film Festival in 1993 and still acts as a collective board member today. Today it is the largest theatre festival in Bosnia and Herzegovina and one of the largest in South-Eastern Europe. In 2009 it expanded its activities to the city of Zenica, which now hosts parts of the regional program.
Black Mothers Love & Resist is an American documentary film released in 2022.