Sep
26
7:00 PM19:00

Screening of "Home is a Hotel" on September 26, 2023


Home is a Hotel

Date: Tuesday, September 26

Time: 7:00 PM (92 minutes)

Location: The New Parkway

TICKETS

Synopsis:

Across America, cities are struggling with homelessness and housing affordability. How does one decades old solution — cramped Single Room Occupancy units — impact the lives of those who live in them? Home Is a Hotel takes you inside San Francisco's SRO housing through intimate portraits of their residents filmed over five years. This character-driven, verité documentary immerses viewers in what it means to call a single room home in the heart of one of America’s richest cities. It's the story of an immigrant single mom in Chinatown, a blind Latina librettist fighting harassment and eviction, a divorced couple in recovery co-parenting a six-year-old son, a graffiti artist who paints murals for the tech companies gentrifying his neighborhood, and a determined mother on a quest to find her runaway daughter — all of them trying to better their lives within the four walls of rentals as tiny as 80 square feet.

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Sep
12
7:00 PM19:00

Screening of "Jack Has a Plan" on September 12, 2023

Jack Has a Plan

Date: Tuesday, September 12

Time: 7:00 PM (73 minutes)

Location: The New Parkway

TICKETS

*A Q&A will follow the screening.

Synopsis:

Jack Tuller’s career as a budding San Francisco musician was altered in 1994 when he was diagnosed with a terminal condition and given six months to live. Jack Has a Plan tells the story of the following 25 years as Jack dodges one bullet after the next. How is it possible to be terminal for two decades? But Jack somehow turns his predicament into a Left Coast art-performance project complete with experimental movies, diaries, and funky dance moves. Finally, Jack engineers a graceful exit from life’s stage. But not if his family and friends have anything to say about it. San Francisco Examiner: “As joyous, thrilling and funny as any film about death could be.”

The film has screened at more than 40 film festivals across North America, earning 20 major awards, including Jury Awards for Best Feature Documentary at DOCUTAH, the DC Independent Film Festival, Mystic Film Festival, Atlanta DocuFest, and Dances With Films in Los Angeles, as well as the prestigious Impact Award at the Boulder International Film Festival.

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Oct
11
7:00 PM19:00

Screening of AMERICAN JUSTICE ON TRIAL: THE PEOPLE VS NEWTON

Join the Berkeley FILM Foundation and the African American Museum and Library at Oakland for a special screening and panel discussion of AMERICAN JUSTICE ON TRIAL: PEOPLE V. NEWTON. This project won the Al Bendich Award in 2017.

Purchase Tickets HERE.

Directed by Andrew Abrahams and Herb Ferrette, this 40-min short film tells the forgotten story of one of the “trials of the century.” With startling relevance to today, Black Panther leader Huey P. Newton faced the death penalty for killing a white policeman in a pre-dawn car stop in 1967 Oakland. While Newton and his maverick attorneys boldly indicted racism in the courts and the country, and a groundbreaking jury led by a historic Black foreman deliberated Newton’s fate, the streets of Oakland and the nation were set to explode if the jury, as expected, returned a verdict of murder.


Tuesday, October 11, 2022
7:00pm
Post-screening panel discussion, Q&A
The New Parkway Theater: 474 24th Street, Oakland, CA


Panelists:

Oakland historian and podcaster LIAM O’DONOGHUE (moderator)
Producer/Creator LISE PEARLMAN
Director ANDREW ABRAHAMS
Oakland civil rights attorney JOHN BURRIS
Huey’s brother MELVIN NEWTON

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Screening of ON THE DIVIDE
May
3
7:00 PM19:00

Screening of ON THE DIVIDE

Date: Tuesday, May 3
Time: 7:00pm
Place: The New Parkway Theater, 474 24th St, Oakland, CA 94612

Director Maya Cueva will be in attendance for a post-film conversation. Tickets are $15 and can be purchased here.

ON THE DIVIDE follows the story of three McAllen, Texas, Latinx people who, despite their views, are connected by the most unexpected of places: the last abortion clinic on the U.S./Mexico border. As threats to the clinic and their personal safety mount, our three characters are forced to make decisions they never could have imagined.

ON THE DIVIDE premiered in Spring 2021 at the Tribeca Festival and has been programmed at festivals across the world, winning the Best Documentary Award at the New Orleans Film Festival and the Santa Fe Independent Film Festival.

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Screening of SONG FOR CESAR
Apr
26
7:00 PM19:00

Screening of SONG FOR CESAR

Join us once again at The New Parkway Theatre in Oakland for a screening of BFF grant winner SONG FOR CESAR directed by Andres Alegria and Abel Sanchez.

A Song for Cesar presents a previously untold story of the life and legacy of Cesar Chavez and the farmworker movement. Through interviews, performances, stunning archival footage and photographs, and a rich original soundtrack, the film features the musicians and artists – including Joan Baez, Maya Angelou, and Carlos Santana, among others – who dedicated their time, creativity, and even reputations to peacefully advance Cesar Chavez’s movement to gain equality and justice for America’s struggling farmworkers.

This will be a very special event, so please share with your friends, family and colleagues! Director Andres Alegria will be in attendance for a post-film conversation. Tickets are $15 and can be purchased here: https://ticketing.uswest.veezi.com/purchase/11104?siteToken=y62bhsm2h1sfp48nzexbtnm2wg

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Screening of THE BOYS WHO SAID NO!, with post-film Q&A (BFF)
Dec
7
7:00 PM19:00

Screening of THE BOYS WHO SAID NO!, with post-film Q&A (BFF)

Director: Judith Ehrlich
90 minutes
Q&A to follow screening

As the war in Vietnam raged, one of the largest and most successful youth-led resistance movements in American history was growing at home. Hundreds of thousands of young men opposed to an unjust war said NO to being drafted into the military, risking up to five years in federal prison. Their individual courage and collective nonviolent actions helped end a tragic war and the draft. Directed by Oscar-nominated filmmaker Judith Ehrlich, The Boys Who Said NO! tells for the first time the inspiring story and impact of the draft resistance movement.

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Screening of ALICE STREET, with post-film Q&A (BFF)
Nov
16
7:00 PM19:00

Screening of ALICE STREET, with post-film Q&A (BFF)

Director: Spencer Wilkinson
66 minutes
Q&A to follow screening

Two artists form an unlikely partnership to paint their most ambitious mural to date in Oakland’s downtown, ground zero for gentrification. The mural is dedicated to the diverse cultural artists that intersect on the corner, who are threatened by displacement. As the mural paint dries, a luxury condo is planned that will obstruct the art and cultural history. The community decides to fight back.

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Screening of BELLY OF THE BEAST, with post-film Q&A (BFF)
Oct
19
7:00 PM19:00

Screening of BELLY OF THE BEAST, with post-film Q&A (BFF)

Director: Erika Cohn
81 minutes
Q&A to follow screening

When an unlikely duo discovers a pattern of illegal sterilizations in women’s prisons, they wage a near impossible battle against the Department of Corrections. Filmed over seven years with extraordinary access and intimate accounts from currently and formerly incarcerated people, BELLY OF THE BEAST exposes modern-day eugenics and reproductive injustice in California prisons.

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Screening of FRUITS OF LABOR, with post-film Q&A (BFF)
Sep
21
7:00 PM19:00

Screening of FRUITS OF LABOR, with post-film Q&A (BFF)

Director: Emily Cohen Ibañez
78 minutes
Q&A to follow screening

A Mexican-American teenager dreams of graduating high school, when increased ICE raids in her community threaten to separate her family and force her to become the breadwinner for her family. She works long days in the strawberry fields and the night shift at a food processing factory. Set in an agricultural town on the central coast of California, FRUITS OF LABOR is a coming of age story about an American teenager traversing the seen and unseen forces that keep her family trapped in poverty. A lyrical meditation on adolescence, nature and ancestral forces, the film asks, what does it mean to come into one’s power as a working young woman of color in the wealthiest nation in the world?

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Global Screening of COUP 53
Aug
19
to Aug 20

Global Screening of COUP 53

Join BFF and film organizations around the world for a global screening of COUP 53 on Wednesday August 19, 2020 at 6:00pm PST, a film produced by BFF Board Member Paul Zaentz.

COUP 53 tells the story of the 1953 Anglo-American coup in Iran that overthrew the democratically elected Prime Minister Mossadegh and reinstalled the Shah. Iranian director Taghi Amirani and Bay-Area editor Walter Murch (Apocalypse Now, The Conversation, The English Patient) discover extraordinary never seen before archive material hidden for decades. The 16mm footage and documents not only allow the filmmakers to tell the story of the overthrow of the Iranian government in unprecedented detail, but also lead to explosive revelations about dark secrets buried for 67 years. What begins as a history documentary about 4-days in August 1953 turns into a live investigation, taking the filmmakers into uncharted cinematic waters. The roots of Iran's volatile relationship with Britain and America has never been so forensically and dramatically exposed.

Watch the trailer.

Tickets are $12 and half of all ticket sales will go directly to the Berkeley FILM Foundation! Once the event begins, you will have 24 hours to watch the film online.

Get your advance ticket through Eventive by clicking here.

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