Blog

  • OpenScreening

    ATA’openscreening.jpeg.pagespeed.ce.NgD79VABiRs Open Screening is the only monthly open submissions screening in the Bay Area. Get your work out there!

    The first Thursday of every month we have an Open Screening. An Open Screening is where we invite local filmmakers to show their short subject films (under 15 mins.). It is a free event and you can either screen a film or just be a member of the audience. Either way it is FREE. It is a great place to network, if you are a filmmaker, crew member, actor or a fan of local films. Please let us know if you would like to screen something. We love films and would love to see yours.

    Submissions: Label all tapes w/ name, contact, title and length. Mail to: Open Screening, 992 Valencia, SF, 94110.  1-2 weeks advance submissions strongly recommended. If not, just walk in before the show. Maximum length: 15 min. Formats: Digital File (PC or Mac),  DVD, miniDV/DV-cam, VHS, beta, 8mm and 16mm. For 8mm and 16mm films give us advance notice.

    Door opens at 7:30 pm

  • Staff meeting and staff night

    Staff meeting at 7 pm

    staff screening at 8 PM: Joseph Losey’s Mr. Klein, made in France during the director’s long post-blacklist exile from the US, is a chilling (and chilly) parable about identity, fascism, exploitation and oppression.

  • ATA @ SFPL: The Fall of the I-Hotel (special location: Noe Valley Branch Library)

    fall of I hotelArtists’ Television Access (ATA) teams up with SFPL to mine the treasures in the Library’s 16mm film archive. Join us for the 3rd installment of our quarterly screening series. That’s real film, not video!

    Tuesday, December 1st   6:30 pm

    Special Location: Noe Valley Branch Library

    451 Jersey St (at Castro)

     

    The Fall of the I-Hotel

    (Curtis Choy, 1983) 58 minutes

    Just about every San Franciscan knows where Noe Valley and the Mission are, but what about Carville, Irish Hill, or Manilatown? The names of these lost San Francisco neighborhoods are reminders that seemingly-robust communities can be transformed at the whim of powerful real estate and corporate interests. The Fall of the I-Hotel chronicles the final months of Manilatown, the stretch of Kearny Street that housed a huge population of Filipino immigrants for much of the twentieth century. Its last major remnant, the International Hotel at Jackson Street, was demolished in 1977 after years of community resistance. Its residents, mostly Filipino and Chinese seniors, struggled to save their homes, aided by extensive support from church and community groups, activists, and residents citywide. This film not only documents the culmination of a decade-long battle to save the International Hotel, but also gives an overview of Filipino American history.

    Filmmaker Curtis Choy beautifully lays out the history and way of life of the Manongs [Filipino elders] living in the hotel through interviews and archival photographs, then guides a vérité immersion in the protests themselves. The nighttime cinematography, though barely discernable in existing video transfers, is extraordinarily rich on the 16mm print we’ll be showing. The film’s depictions of evictions, police/protestor face-offs, and the forced transformation of a neighborhood make The Fall of the I-Hotel as relevant as ever today.

    If Wayne Wang’s 1982 Chan Is Missing marked the beginning of Asian-American narrative filmmaking as a force on the national cinematic scene, then The Fall of the I-Hotel was a similar catalyst for Asian-American documentary. Its director Curtis Choy had made humorous and serious short films for many years, and also worked as cinematographer and sound mixer on other films (including Chan Is Missing) while also documenting the events leading up to the I-Hotel’s final days.