A sneak preview of the opening weekend at the oldest film festival in the Americas.
By Meredith Brody (April 23, 2025)
After a five-day iteration in 2024, SFILM returns in 2025 with eleven days stuffed with over 150 movies (narratives, documentaries, and shorts) from 50 countries, special events, workshops and talks, and awards. April 17-27.
By Noma Faingold (April 16, 2025)
Watching the 28-minute, 10-screen film/art installation, “Lessons of the Hour,” by British artist/filmmaker Sir Isaac Julien, isn’t as overwhelming as one might think. In fact, the flood of images, sounds and words, dedicated to the life of writer, orator, philosopher, and social justice activist Fredrick Douglass (1818-1895), a former slave, allows the viewer to absorb and interpret the immersive experience in their own way.
Compiled by Gary Meyer (updated November 21, 2024)
The Internet can be a dangerous place to find the good, the bad and the ugly. Thanksgiving as a search subject is especially rewarding. We present a sampling, mostly from the past. We found vintage greeting cards, Hollywood stars, ads for disgusting sounding foods, awkward family photos and all around nostalgia. You won’t believe what turkeys have been put through but we hope you will laugh and be astonished.
By Gerald Peary
(Nov. 10, 2024)
A seven-part podcast, The Rabbis Go South, produced and hosted by Amy Geller and me, has launched! It tells the story of 16 Reform rabbis answering the call of Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1964 to help desegregate St. Augustine, Florida. The rabbis were arrested and jailed, the largest incarceration to that time of rabbis in American history. A very compelling story. But like most of you, we’d never heard about this incident before we began. 
By Geneva Anderson
(March 16, 2024)
Haley Bennett rises to become the Grand Dame of Champagne in Thomas Napper’s “Widow Clicquot”
The Sonoma International Film Festival (SIFF27) is just around the corner, March 20-24. Set in the heart of the wine country, with a program that emphasizes film, food, wine, parties, and community engagement, SIFF has twice been voted one of the 25 coolest festivals in the world by MovieMaker magazine. SIFF27 showcases 43 narrative and 16 documentary features plus 48 shorts from over 25 countries. Continue reading
By C.J. Hirschfield
(November 2, 2023)
At a recent San Francisco gathering Bobi Wine (Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu) said he would like you to know that the United States gives $1 billion a year to support Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni’s 30+ year ruthless and dictatorial rule.
Ugandan opposition leader, former member of parliament, activist, and national megastar musician Wine would very much like for you to “stop paying for our oppression.”
By C.J. Hirschfield
It’s not only the key to our own personal happiness, but it is also what will save our democracy.
So get off your butt and join a club, damn it!
By C.J. Hirschfield
(Updated January 17, 2023)
Shanina and Noah
Shanona Tate is one of the frontline workers we have come to revere as of late—a pediatric emergency room nurse who works the overnight shift at a New York hospital. We can bang pots and pans to acknowledge her service and that of other employees within essential industries who must physically show up to their jobs—at whatever hour–but until we really see the economic and psychic toll it takes we can’t begin to understand how our current system is not working for them.
By Gaetano Kazuo Maida
October 16, 2022
“The drum is like a heartbeat.” —John Santos
I grew up in the Bronx in the ‘50s. This was in an old Italian neighborhood, full of grape arbors and fig trees (even a goat!), but by the time I was eight our neighbors on one side and across the street were from Puerto Rico, and on the other side were African Americans; it’s mostly Caribbean now. My public school was a ten block walk from home and most of my classmates there were Jewish. My parents were a mixed couple (Japanese/Sicilian) and most of their friends were mixed in one way or another as well, so I had a strong sense of a wonderfully polyglot community that ill-prepared me for the rather homogeneous and affluent population of my elite public high school. But it did open my ears to a wide variety of music. The soundtrack at home was folk, blues, soul (long story), flamenco, and opera, but in the streets it was doo-wop and Afro-Caribbean.
By C.J. Hirschfield
October 8, 2022
For a documentary to even-handedly and adroitly cover a complex, painful and controversial subject in just 52 minutes requires not only talent, but a clarity of vision, and cinematic compassion.
Award-winning Bay Area filmmakers Alan Snitow and Deborah Kaufman have accomplished just that in their timely Town Destroyer, with its world premiere at the Mill Valley Film Festival Saturday, October 8.
Continue reading
By C.J. Hirschfield October 8, 2022
Xavier. Amin. Andrew. Blood Sugar X. Oakland’s Grammy Award-winning singer/songwriter, born Xavier Dphrepaulezz and now known as Fantastic Negrito has had many names, and even more lives. The new documentary Fantastic Negrito: Have You Lost Your Mind Yet?, which has its world premiere at the Mill Valley Film Festival, traces his remarkable and unlikely journey, telling the story in chronological order, interspersed with song tracks and jam sessions that feature his unique blues/R&B/roots music. It all comes together beautifully. Continue reading
