San Francisco Cinematheque: Contemporary Views from the Bay Area

Screenings & Films

San Francisco Cinematheque: Contemporary Views from the Bay Area

In partnership with San Francisco Cinematheque |

October 21, 2023, 3–5 PM

Join us for nine works by ten contemporary Bay Area filmmakers, a cross-section of the Bay Area’s ever-vibrant multi-generational community curated by Steve Polta, artistic director of San Francisco Cinematheque. These works present a compelling mix of contemplative landscape study, critiques of consumerism and media representation, poetic considerations of solitude and connection, and an abiding love for the physical and chemical charms of the filmic medium itself. Full program details, program notes, and artist bios available at sfcinematheque.org →

Curated by BAN9 Curatorial Counsel member Gina Basso, the ongoing BAN9 Film series will span the entirety of the exhibition, featuring acclaimed Bay Area filmmakers, collectives, and new media artists. Offerings will vary monthly, reflecting BAN9’s curatorial themes and diving into the breadth and depth of the Bay Area’s vibrant film scene by highlighting the local organizations and individuals who contribute to the shape and form of the region’s rich cinematic landscape.

FIlms

(sans)(image) (arc and Sophia Wang, 7 min, 2023, 16mm, black and white, sound)

Light Signal (Emily Chao, 11 min, 2022, 16mm screened as digital video, color, sound)

Caracole (for Mac) (Nathaniel Dorsky, 7 min, 2022, 16mm, color, silent)

The Canyon (Zachary Epcar, 15 min, 2020, 16mm, color, sound)

Locus Suspectus (J.M. Mártinez, 8 min, 2020, digital video, color, silent)

water, clock (Zack Parinella, 9 min, 2021, 16mm, black and white, sound)

The Pendulum (Linda Scobie, 3 min, 2021, 16mm, color, sound)

Girl is Presence (Lynne Sachs and Anne Lesley Selcer, 4 min, 2020, digital video, color, sound)

Tropicollage (Astria Suparak, 1 min, 2021, digital video, silent, color)

Gina Basso

Gina Basso is a San Francisco-based independent film programmer of experimental, artist-made, and non-fiction film and video works and thematic narrative film series. She has organized film programs for local cinemas including The Roxie Theater, The Castro Theater, and Alamo Drafthouse New Mission Theater. She has curated programs for McEvoy Foundation for the Arts, Design Within Reach, Hunter’s Point Shipyard and the Northwest Film Forum and is the former film curator for San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. In her creative practice, she uses video to explore transitional or altered states of being. Through moving collage, handmade animation, and sound she draws on a rich tradition of experimentation with various forms, materials, and processes, combining found and original footage to harness the energy of poetic montage. Her video work has been presented at CROSSROADS Festival, Artist Television Access, HAXAN Film Festival, and Antimatter Experimental Film Festival.

San Francisco Cinematheque is a non-profit media arts organization dedicated to the cultivation of the international field of non-commercial artist-made cinema. San Francisco Cinematheque inspires aesthetic dialog among artists, stimulates critical discourse, and encourages appreciation of artist-made cinema across the broader cultural landscape.

Cinematheque is dedicated to presenting and encouraging study and appreciation of film, video and performance works which engage with the histories and traditions associated with forms of cinema identified under various non-commercial rubrics as avant-garde, experimental, underground, personal, graphic, abstract, expanded, and visionary (etc., etc., etc.), including formally innovative narrative and documentary forms, animated works, and other marginalized forms. In its dedication to supporting aesthetically radical cinema from all historical eras and geo-political locales, Cinematheque celebrates the breadth and depth of this vibrant art form. Since its founding in 1961, Cinematheque has supported the careers of thousands of film/video artists and enjoys a strong position as a major nexus in the international avant-garde film community.

Bay Area Now 9 is curated by Martin Strickland, Director of Curatorial Initiatives, and Fiona Ball, independent curator; under the artistic leadership of Amy Kisch, Head of Art + Public Programming; and developed with the inaugural YBCA Curatorial Counsel of curators, artists, activists, and cultural workers working across the Bay Area’s creative disciplines and communities: Erina Alejo, Gina Basso, Jason Bayani, Mina Girgis, Candace Huey, José Ome Navarrete Mazatl, Aay Preston Myint, and Lehua Taitano.

The BAN9 YBCA project team also includes Yoni Asega, Manager of Exhibition Design; David Tim, Head Preparator, Project Design; Bella Manfredi, Senior Preparator, Multimedia + Graphics; O Soo Vegh, Exhibition Project Manager + Registrar; Rea Lynn de Guzman, Manager of Public + Educational Programs; Flavia Mora, Public + Educational Programs Coordinator; and Cori Lucas, Community + Program Event Manager.

YBCA is grateful to the preparator team who made this exhibition possible: Isaiah Acosta, Amy Bergstein, Micha Dudgeonwood, Owen Goodwin, German Hoyle, Calvin Jones, Linden Julien-Lehr, Lauren Kenwood, Benjamin Leon, Maren Mouhanna, Éamon McGivern, Christian Neill, David Prigge, and Kelsey Westphal.

YBCA Programs are made possible in part by the City and County of San Francisco, MacKenzie Scott, Kenneth Rainin Foundation, San Francisco Arts Commission (SFAC), #StartSmall, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Marilyn Conrad Trust, New England Foundation for the Arts, California Arts Council, The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, William G. Irwin Charity Foundation, The Bernard Osher Foundation, The Sato Foundation, Gaia Fund, Office of Mayor London N. Breed, San Francisco Office of Economic and Workforce Development, Headlands Center for the Arts, ICA San Francisco, Bay Area Mind and Music Society, GitHub, Harvey and Leslie Wagner Foundation, McNabb Foundation, Raymond James Charitable, Savant Group Charitable Foundation, The Building Works, Fremont Group Foundation, and YBCA Members.

Lead image: The Pendulum (2021) by Linda Scobie. Courtesy of San Francisco Cinematheque