Artists' Television Access

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  • OpenScreening

    ATA’s free community film/video show welcomes short format work or (15 min or less) from all genres. An open forum for independent filmmakers to show their work, we hold screenings the first Thursday of the month at 8:00 pm. Entries must be received by 7:00 pm on show night, cued and labeled, to be considered. Space is limited!

    Submissions: To submit a digital file, email openscreening@atasite.org with the title “Open screening”. For physical media, label all tapes with name, contact info, title, and length, and mail to: Open Screening, 992 Valencia St, San Francisco, CA 94110. 1–2 weeks advance submissions 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, 8 mm, and 16 mm. For 8 mm and 16 mm films give us advance notice.

    Doors at 7:30 pm, show at 8:00 pm, FREE

  • Caroline McManus: SUPERFETATION

    ATA Window Gallery presents: SUPERFETATION by Caroline McManus
    SUPERFETATION is a mixed media installation composed of the following elements:

    WATER
    FOUND OBJECT
    Ikea pod chair.
    AUTONOMOUS ROBOT:
    Robotic goldfish.
    TRASH, RESIN
    GLAD ForceFlex trash bags cast in resin and plastic fish transport bag.
    NETWORKED IMAGES ON TILE:
    Stills from the 1988 film, “Baby M”.

    This film is based on a controversial case wherein a gestational laborer, Mary Beth Whitehead, was denied parenthood rights and portrayed as a hysterical, trashy woman in the media. In her bold feminist performance, Born to be Sold: Martha Rosler Reads The Strange Case of Baby $/M, Martha Rosler counters this narrative, which this work builds off of.

    Superfetation is a second conception during pregnancy, which causes the womb-bearer to carry two, differently-aged embryos, growing parallel to one another. In a spectacular real-life case in the United States, a hired surrogate laborer, carrying what she thought were twins, learned upon giving birth that this was not the case at all. In fact, one child, which she thought had been an implanted embryo, was actually her own child, conceived with her partner. She immediately recognized the child as hers, yet she was required to relinquish both children: the contract she signed meant that her child was no longer her “property”.

    As the surrogacy industry stands, both the working bodies and the born bodies become property. In the United States, the nuclear family structure produces, reproduces and protects property. Currently, the demand for surrogacy services among the global middle class is exploding at the same time that the nuclear family structure absorbs all demands that would otherwise be provided by community-centered care, and/or a functional welfare state.

    This work utilizes the symbol and phenomenon of superfetation to explore themes related to the acceleration of consumption culture, private property, and bodies-as-property in a near-dystopian future accelerated by climate change.

  • Rewards Program

    An improvisational music project featuring Miles Lassi, Zekarias Thompson, and Skyway Man set to expanded cinema 16mm and 35mm slide projections by Ellie Vanderlip.
    A three-projector celluloid meditation live-scored by improvisational trio Rewards Program, on the power of the seed and birth and death in the atomic age.
    MILES LASSI is an interdisciplinary artist based out of Oakland, CA. As a musician, he has performed in over 150 cities throughout North America, Europe and Asia with many
    different ensembles ranging from the Vietnam National Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall to national broadway tours like Ain’t Too Proud, Dirty Dancing, and Tina: The Tina Turner Musical. Miles is dedicated to creating new media and has done so at the New York Film Festival, Lincoln Center, Apollo Theater, deYoung Museum, Joyce Theater, Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture, A.C.T., SXSW and Snap Studios/KQED.
    SKYWAY MAN is the alias of keyboardist, songwriter, and producer James Wallace. Based in Oakland via Richmond, VA, and Nashville, TN, he has released seven albums and composed music for Film/TV, including Joe Pera Talks With You (HBO). Over the past 15 years, he has toured extensively across the U.S., Europe, and Asia, performing at festivals like Bonnaroo, Pickathon, SXSW, Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, and Wilco’s Solid Sound. He has collaborated with Abigail Washburn, Langhorne Slim, Erin Rae, and Maya Hawke, among others. Brittany Howard once named his band a favorite local act in Rolling Stone, and his work has been featured in NPR, The Wall Street Journal, and Stereogum. He’s produced 20 full-length albums for other artists, including Bay Area musicians Mikayla McVey, Milk for the Angry, and Pancho Morris. Over the past few years he’s developed a practice of live instrumental film scoring using keyboards and sequencers.
    ZEKARIAS MUSELE THOMPSON (b. 1983, they/them/their) is an artist based in Oakland, CA, and Reykjavik, IS often working in sonic composition, mark-making, photography, collaborative group practice & performance, and writing. Their practice is concerned with humanity’s conceptual and emotional organizational structures—and how we bring them into material form. Zekarias has presented solo exhibitions and projects at the Museum of the African Diaspora, the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, The Lab, Gray Area, the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History, and the Center for New Music and Audio Technologies. Zekarias is a co-founder of Working Name Studios, a collectively owned and organized arts institution with the mission of building institutional stability and equity for underrepresented creative practices, ideas, and people. They were part of the Emerging Artist Program at the MoAD for 2024, and are currently an MFA candidate in the Department of Art Practice at UC Berkeley.
    ELLIE VANDERLIP is a San Francisco-based experimental filmmaker, performer, and educator. She received her MFA in Cinema from San Francisco State University in 2022. She is a co-director at Oakland’s Shapeshifters Cinema, on the board of directors at San Francisco’s Cinematheque, and maintains a studio at Artists’ Television Access. She has hosted filmmaking workshops with the Exploratorium, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and the University of San Francisco, and lectures at St. Mary’s College and San Francisco State University. Her primary focuses are found footage experimental documentary, material cinema, and expanded cinema performance. Her work has screened nationally and internationally, including at San Francisco DocFest and Belgrade’s Kinoscope Festival, and has upcoming writings about alternative archives in Found Footage Magazine.