SF Urban Film Fest gathers a diverse, engaged audience and uses the power of storytelling to spark discussion and civic engagement around urban issues. The collective asks what it means to live together in the city and make urban planning more equitable and inclusive.
SF Urban Film Fest stages events throughout the City. Programming includes film screenings coupled with wide-ranging discussions, storytelling workshops aimed at civically-minded professionals, community members, and advocates, and place-focused gatherings connecting physical and social spaces in cities.
SF Urban Film Fest collaborates with cultural, academic, grass-roots, and civic organizations including the Roxie Theater, SPUR, the University of San Francisco, SFMOMA, Tenderloin Museum, GLBT Museum, Imprint City, BAVC, The Bauhinia Project, and others. Projects are often jointly initiated to combine film and community planning, most recently with Young Community Developers in the Bayview and SOMA Pilipinas Cultural Heritage District in SOMA.
SF Urban Film Fest is an intentionally culturally diverse and cross-disciplinary collective. Its five members include Founder Fay Darmawi, an immigrant from Indonesia who has worked in the field of affordable housing for 30 years; Omeed Manocheri, a first generation Iranian-American multimedia producer; Robin Abad Ocubillo a Filipino-American urban planner with a passion for film who has led open space and streets programs in San Francisco and Los Angeles; Susannah Smith, a white queer documentary filmmaker and artist with a focus on the way places make us; and Ronald Sundstrom, a Professor of Philosophy, whose areas of research include philosophy of race, political and social philosophy, justice and ethics in urban policy, and African American and Asian American philosophy.
