San Francisco Film Society Fall Season - Cinema by the Bay

November 5–8, 2010
Roxie Theater, The Lab & Southern Exposure

The San Francisco Film Society's Cinema by the Bay festival celebrates the passion, innovation and diversity of Bay Area filmmaking, featuring new work produced in or about the San Francisco Bay Area that demonstrates the incredible depth and breadth of America’s film and media frontier.

The 2010 edition of Cinema by the Bay opens with Chris Brown’s darkly comic feature Fanny, Annie & Danny and presents dynamic films from leading Bay Area filmmakers throughout the weekend, including Jennifer Gilomen and Sally Rubin's Deep Down, a complex documentary that contrasts the devastating result of rampant energy consumption with the remote and picturesque backdrop of Appalachia. SF360 Presents Essential SF concludes the festival in celebration of Bay Area veteran visionaries and the launch of the newly designed SF360.org.

For tickets and full program information, visit sffs.org.

Thoreau Center Film Screening: "The Killing Seasons"

Presented by Director John Antonelli

Friday, October 8

12:30 pm

Pacific Room at Tides

Can wildlife conservation efforts go too far? Two African stories. Two white families. Two vastly different approaches: one ruthless, one collaborative. Two perplexingly different outcomes.

Filmmaking partners John Antonelli and Will Parrinello will screen their 20 minute rough cut of The Killing Seasons. Shot on location in Zambia and Swaziland, the film began as short segments about Hammer Simwinga and Thuli Makama, two Goldman Environmental Prize winners. Now, midway in the production, Antonelli is shaping the story in the edit room and planning another trip to Africa. This informal feedback session will help inform the filmmakers on their progress and guide them as they move forward.

Antonelli's Sam Cooke: Crossing Over was broadcast on PBS American Masters, which was just nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Nonfiction Series.

Parrinello's most recent film Mustang: Journey of Transformation had its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival and was broadcast on PBS.

For more information on the filmmakers, go to www.mvfg.com

Brown Bag events are free informal mid-day learning sessions hosted at Tides. Friends, neighbors and colleagues are welcome. Visitors, please sign in at the front desk.

Thoreau Center Film Screening: The Wall

Friday, September 10
12:30 pm to 2:00 pm
Pacific Room at Tides, Thoreau Center for Sustainability SF
Presented by Lou Ramirez

Join us for a premiere screening of the San Francisco Film Festival's The Wall, directed by Ricardo A. Martinez.

In 2006, the U.S. Congress passed The Secure Fence Act calling for the construction of 700 miles of fence along the U.S./Mexico border. Filmed over two years, The Wall documents the impact of constructing this border fence along the Southwest. From policy makers to citizens of border towns, the debate elevates as residents respond to having a fence built in their backyard. Nobody could have imagined how many problems the fence would create, from an excess of dead bodies to an increase in smuggling costs.

The San Francisco Latino Film Festival runs September 16 through September 28, 2010. Check local listings for screenings and the Cine+Mas website for more information: www.sflatinofilmfestival.com.

Brown Bag events are free informal mid-day learning sessions hosted at Tides. Friends, neighbors and colleagues are welcome. Visitors, please sign in at the front desk.

Nov 19 - Thoreau Center Film Screening: Prom Night in Mississippi

Thursday, November 19, 12:30p

Pacific Room at Tides

An official selection at the Sundance Film Festival, Prom Night in Mississippi tells the story of senior students of Charleston High who rally in preparation for the school’s first-ever integrated prom. In 1997, Academy Award-winning actor Morgan Freeman made an historic offer to the high school in his hometown of Charleston, Mississippi: He would foot the bill for the school’s senior prom—on condition that both black and white students be allowed to attend. Even though the students shared classes and every other aspect of school life, they had a tradition of holding two proms—one white, one black. Freeman’s offer was ignored. In 2008, he made it again. This time, the school accepted and history was made, but not without significant opposition.

Thoreau Center Film Screening: Amreeka

When: Wednesday, October 21, 2009 12:30 PM-1:30 PM


Where: Pacific Room at Tides



The Thoreau Center is hosting a screening of the recently released film Amreeka. This film chronicles the adventures of Muna, a single mother who leaves the West Bank with Fadi, her teenage son, with dreams of an exciting future in the promised land of small town Illinois. In America, as her son navigates high school hallways the way he used to move through military checkpoints, the indomitable Muna scrambles together a new life cooking up falafel burgers as well as hamburgers at the local White Castle.


By writer-director Cherien Dabis in her feature film debut, Amreeka is a universal journey into the lives of a family of immigrants and first-generation teenagers caught between their heritage and the new world in which they now live and the bittersweet search for a place to call home.


National Geographic Entertainment will release Amreeka in September 2009. Amreeka is a First Generation Films-Alcina Pictures-Buffalo Gal Pictures/Eagle Vision Media Group Production, presented by E1 Entertainment in association with Levantine Entertainment, Rotana Studios and Showtime Arabia.


Amreeka made its world premiere in dramatic competition at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, and played as Opening Night of New Directors/New Films, a co-presentation of The Museum of Modern Art and The Film Society of Lincoln Center. Amreeka made its debut internationally in Directors’ Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival.

Film Presentation: Legacy of Torture: The War Against the Black Liberation Movement

Legacy of Torture: The War Against the Black Liberation Movement"
Presenter: Filmmaker Claude Marks
Friday, June 12, 12:30pm to 1:30pm
Atlantic Room

“The same people who tried to kill me in 1973 are the same people who are here today, trying to destroy me. I mean it literally. I mean there were people from the forces of the San Francisco Police Department who participated in harassment, torture and my interrogation in 1973 ... none of these people have ever been brought to trial. None of these people have ever been charged with anything. None of these people have ever been questioned about that.” -- John Bowman, former Black Panther

In 2005 several former members of the Black Panther were held in contempt and jailed for refusing to testify before a San Francisco Grand Jury investigating a police shooting that took place in 1971. The government alleged that Black radical groups were involved in the 34-year old case in which two men armed with shotguns attacked the Ingleside Police Station resulting in the death of a police sergeant and the injuring of a civilian clerk.

In 1973, thirteen alleged "Black militants" were arrested in New Orleans, purportedly in connection with the San Francisco events. Some of them were tortured for several days by law enforcement authorities, in striking similarity to the horrors visited upon detainees in Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib.

In 1975, a Federal Court in San Francisco threw out all of the evidence obtained in New Orleans. The two lead San Francisco Police Department investigators from over 30 years ago, along with FBI agents, have re-opened the case. Rather than submit to proceedings they felt were abusive of the law and the Constitution, five men chose to stand in contempt of court and were sent to jail. They were released when the Grand Jury term expired, but have been told by prosecutors that "it isn't over yet."