SF Urban Film Fest

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SF Urban Film Fest

Our unique film festival focuses on cities and civic engagement inspired by great storytelling.

10th Anniversary Festival Dates: April 15-21, 2024

Making cities better is a grueling process. Although we all want healthier, safer and more affordable cities, making them a reality is a complicated process that often alienates the folks who need support the most. The SF Urban Film Fest makes urban planning fun, entertaining, and accessible. We started it as a place where urban issues can be understood through films, and discussed in a jargon fre

e, human, innovative, and impactful way. Our community includes filmmakers, urban planners, artists, architects, educators, real estate developers, activists, tech professionals, college professors, students, government staffers and journalists. At the SF Urban Film Fest, you can:

Discover how your city works. Meet people who are making your city a better place to live. Find ways you too can make your city great. Learn to use storytelling to maximize engagement and impact. linktr.ee/sfurbanfilmfest

10/21/2024

Going down memory lane with the SF Urban Film Fest photo from Nov 2018 right before the festival had to shut down as wildfire smoke engulfed San Francisco and I am naive to wear only a red bandana instead of a mask. Fast forward to 2024 when we know so many things about different types of masks for smoke versus viruses.

07/10/2024

SA AMIN: OUR PLACE is going on the road! The film's impact campaign will make 4 stops in San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego and San Jose to connect Filipino diaspora communities across California. Thank you to California Arts Council for our third impact grant making this film and tour possible. Up next is Historic Filipinotown / LA on Saturday July 20th. Please spread the word about this free screening and panel. To RSVP and get more info please go to Eventbrite here: https://lnkd.in/gYsy5EUX

"SA AMIN is the untold story of Filipinos in San Francisco’s South of Market neighborhood, the cultural heart of the Filipino-American community. The film tells the story of how Filipino activists, artists and intergenerational families are claiming a right to the city, battling against displacement caused by urban renewal, real estate speculation, and tech booms."

(image credit Alejo and Sammay Dizon)

05/03/2024

Thank you for joining us at Rooted Resurgence, the 10th anniversary of the SF Urban Film Fest. We had a full week of excellent forward-thinking panels and film programs. Each of these programs grounded us in our communities—including you, our supporters, and volunteers. From our fabulous opening night party at San Francisco LGBT Nightlife staple Oasis to the Chinatown Rebels program at Edge on the Square on Grant Avenue. The breadth and diversity exhibited in each of our seven programs reflect the richness of San Francisco culture and what the city still has to offer. Thank you so much for pouring into the festival as much as we are sure you pour into your own neighborhoods and lives. We could not have had a successful 10th anniversary festival without you!

If you missed any of the festival events, please check out the SFUFF Medium blog for event recaps soon! https://lnkd.in/g3M9T34

04/12/2024

Like all of our programs, Q***r Third Spaces aims to celebrate, and support the people and places centered in our featured films. Join us in highlighting people and the Q***r Third Spaces that make us feel at home.

Per Sia! With a pedigree from weekly performances at the late, iconic Esta Noche, her trajectory has gone on to include art curation, stand-up, television, and maybe a quinceañera or two, in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and México. Currently she is a regular performer in the nationally acclaimed “Drag Story Hour” as well as an educator in residence at an after school arts program in the San Francisco Unified School District profiled on KQED Arts, National Public Radio and CNN.

Chloe Sherman’s work has been exhibited at Schlomer Haus Gallery (San Francisco), F³ Freiraum für Fotografie (Berlin), Kunsthalle Nürnberg (Nuremberg), also internationally with Sotheby’s ArtLink Auction. She has been published in the books Nothing But the Girl, RESEARCH: Angry Women in Rock, and Out in America and featured in magazines including Rolling Stone, Interview, and The Advocate.

The STUD is San Francisco’s oldest LGBT bar and one of the world’s most famous drag bars. It was started by associates George Matson and Alexis Muir on May 27, 1966. According to George Matson, it was a “bar for people, not just pretty bodies”. The Stud is known for its themed parties, drag and burlesque shows, and community events.

The Friends of Harvey Milk Plaza organization was formed in 2016 in response to SFMTA plans to install an elevator in the culturally sensitive Harvey Milk Plaza and sought greater community involvement in the redesign effort. Since its inception, the organization has worked to see that the community’s aspirations for the plaza are realized.

The Leather & LGBTW Cultural District
Meet the folks from the world’s first city-recognized LEATHER & LGBTQ Cultural District.

The Castro LGBTQ Cultural District aims to highlight the importance of LGBTQ people to Castro’s history and ensure we have a place in its future.

04/10/2024

🏘️Join us to hear perspectives from people who are spearheading effective changes in housing policy and support to increase affordable housing for all. A few are highlighted in this post.

⭐️Jacquelynn (Jacque) Evans is a health worker, doula, and community advocate. A native of San Francisco, she is currently a Peer Parent Mentor in the Child Welfare Department at Homeless Prenatal Program where she works with women and pregnant people experiencing housing insecurity. Jacque is also featured in the film!

🤝Homeless Prenatal Program was founded in 1989 and is a nationally-recognized family resource center in San Francisco that empowers homeless and low-income families, particularly mothers motivated by pregnancy and parenthood, to find within themselves the strength and confidence they need to transform their lives.

‼️One of Rose Pak’s final efforts before she passed away in 2016 was to push City Hall to buy the New Asia restaurant and banquet hall site for affordable housing. Chinatown Community Development Corporation (CCDC) has been selected as the nonprofit housing developer and plans to build up to 175 units for seniors and to preserve the ground floor as one of the last remaining banquet halls in Chinatown.

🫡In November 2024, Bay Area residents may vote on a $20 billion regional affordable housing bond that could create 72,000 new affordable homes, more than double what would be possible without a bond. Stay tuned for more news from the Bay Area Housing Finance Authority and the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC).

🏘️Creating a Future for Home is a solution oriented program led by those doing the work! Don’t miss out on this. Get your tickets soon before they run out!
🎟️Ticket link in bio

04/09/2024

💥Your chance to watch award winning films about the heart of San Francisco’s historic Chinatown while sitting in the place where those films happen is here thanks to our community sponsors and

📣Hoi Leung serves as Curator and Deputy Director at the Chinese Culture Center and is the co-curator of the Chinatown Rebels program April 19 . In addition to CCC’s main gallery, Hoi also curates pop-up exhibitions at 41 Ross in Ross Alley, Chinatown @41.ross

⭐️ on the Square is a contemporary art hub located at the heart of San Francisco Chinatown. Our year-round programming is designed to bring together creators and educators for a well-rounded cultural experience.

❤️The Chinese Culture Center’s mission is focused on Chinese diasporic communities. While a third of San Francisco is Asian American, because of funding inequities and white supremacist culture, there are still relatively few artistic opportunities to tell our community’s stories; which in turn means there are few narratives that connect Asian American experiences to struggles for justice and the stories of people of color more broadly, a goal that the organization strongly pursues.

📚On Waverly bookstore and gift shop recently opened to serve as a hip and casual space for gathering, learning and shopping.

🎟️The event is sold out; tickets may become available on the day of the event at RUSH.

04/08/2024

🌍Together we can build a world that is truly liberatory for trans people. Don’t know where to start? Our community partners of our Trans World Building program do!

🎥Jill Hill .industries is a filmmaker, video artist, and agent of chaos from Palm Springs, California. Jill is also a proud member of SURGE MEDIA COLLECTIVE in San Francisco.

💭Lalu (Esra) Ozban creates, curates, exhibits and archives still/moving images.They are currently a Ph.D. candidate in Film and Digital Media at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Lalu’s artistic, curational, and scholarly work focuses on trans, q***r, and feminist theories, histories, pedagogies, and praxis.

🏳️‍⚧️The Transgender, Gender-Variant, and Intersex Justice Project’s (TGIJP) mission is to challenge and end the human rights abuses committed against Black, Black/Brown Trans people inside of California prisons, jails, detention centers and beyond.

‼️TGIJP has been in the search for a permanent space for many years. More than anything, it has been looking for a space that can hold its vision of a Black Trans Cultural Center and political home for TGIJP community members. Help TGIJP realize this vision by supporting their capital campaign.

⭐️Shine Wit Purpose (SWP) centers trans masc and non binary beautiful Pasifika, Black & Brown, Indigenous people.

🫶🏽SWP says: “Our mission is to reclaim and amplify our voices with storytelling and to restore ourselves, and center our healing using artivism (art and activism) that will push current system change efforts through community advocacy and organizing.”

Our Trans World Building program will bring together these integral organizations and people into one space. 🎟️RSVP at www.sfurbanfilmfest.com

04/05/2024

🌊Have you watched a film about oysters and rain water and learned about the significance of oysters to q***rness, about our waters future, and shaping of our built environment? Not us either, but thanks to our community partners and our curator , that is going to become a reality!

🌊Margaret Ikeda spearheads innovative design research of hybrid nature- and human-made marine ecosystems.

🌊Check out PlanktoScope live-feed video projection! What microscopic creatures live in our Bay water?

🪸 Culvert Reef - The Presidio Trust and CCA’s Architectural Ecologies Lab partnership develops innovative designs to foster the growth of oyster beds under a concrete gully in Crissy Field Marsh. Concrete is less concrete and more fluid than you think.

🦪 - The Wild Oyster Project works towards restoring wild oysters in the San Francisco Bay, a shallow estuarine system that once had significant intertidal habitat. Save Your Shucks!

🌊 Embarcadero Seawall - The Port of San Francisco is undertaking a $13 billion infrastructure project to safeguard San Francisco from sea level rise. As part of this huge project, it is spearheading a living seawall pilot. While traditional seawalls are barren, exposed concrete surfaces, living seawalls are designed to encourage underwater habitats.

🎟️RSVP for this before it’s too late! Link in bio!

04/04/2024

🏡At the heart of our Urban Flourishing program are various people and organizations who have been integral to the community.

💭Ron Sundstrom , SFUFF’s esteemed Humanities Advisor, curated the program Urban Flourishing and Migrant Lives and he will also moderate the panel on April 16 at Main Branch in Civic Center. Ron’s most recent book “Just Shelter”, published by Oxford University Press, is on bookshelves now so hurry and get your copy!

❤️‍🔥Shauna Siggelkow leads the storytelling teams at producing films that show the fine grain lived immigrant experience.

🫶🏽 empowers and responds to the needs, rights and aspirations of the Latino community, people who migrate, and under-resourced families in the San Francisco Bay Area.

⭐️Working at the intersection of spirituality and social movements, Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity mobilize congregations to take a stand on issues of social justice like immigration and mass incarceration.

🎥Define American uses storytelling to tell more authentic and nuanced immigrant narratives focused on people with lived experience.

🎟️Learn from panelists from these amazing organizations at our Urban Flourishing program. Register at sfurbanfilmfest.com, link in bio.

04/03/2024

🥳Celebrate SF Urban Film Fest’s 10th year anniversary! Mix and mingle while enjoying drinks and light appetizers. 🪩As you watch the Tunnel Vision film, experience the audio through silent disco headsets.

🎟️Get your tickets and join us at Oasis on April 15

⭐️Slide 1 + 2: Looking back at SFUFF Team and past festival photos makes us happy! Here’s one from the event “Through the Lens: Realizing Identity & Needs Through Filmmaking” from the 8th Annual SF Urban Film Fest: Urban Futures, 2022. That event was curated by Omeed Manocheri

❤️‍🔥Slides 3 + 4: Oasis is a community location which has reinvented itself multiple times over, Oasis exemplifies the festival theme - Rooted Resurgence. From its start as a community pool in the 80’s, to its contemporary moment as a staple in San Francisco’s drag nightclub scene, Oasis has always stayed rooted in community throughout its many transformations.

03/28/2024

🪩Q***r Third Spaces: Resurgence and Resilience 4/21 6-9p

🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️Countering a 2017 SFUFF Program on the demise of q***r bars in the Mission District, this program will celebrate how LGBTQ+ communities work tirelessly in spite of structural forces to keep them and their allies oppressed.

🎥🕺Be immersed in a night full of artist showcases, live drag performance, screening of three short documentary films, and a stacked lineup of passionate q***r placemakers!

🎟️Learn more about the films, panelists, performers, and partners at sfurbanfilmfest.com and don’t forget to get your tickets while you’re there!

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1446 Market Street
San Francisco, CA
94102

Website

https://sfurbanfilmfest.org/

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