Category: events

  • Rewards Program

    A three-projector celluloid meditation live-scored by improvisational trio Rewards Program.
    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.
  • TINAFF: Program 2

    Operation Prutas (7:00)
    A man and a woman plot to steal a centuries old statue of a mischief god. Directed by Ara Chawdhury

    Crossroads (10:29)
    June and Daniel spend their last day together in sorrow as June prepares to leave Santa Cruz for a program far away. In a desperate attempt to relive their best moments, they cannot help but notice that their time together is coming to an unavoidable end. Directed by Christopher Lawrence

    The Mere (20:00)
    A young couple in crisis attracts ancient attention at a lake getaway in the woods.
    Directed by Denys Bastov

    Bob and Ted’s Double Date (14:00)
    Best friends Bob and Fred have to scrape together $20 to impress their dates. Directed by Riley Vitale

    -INTERMISSION- 15 min.

    It won’t happen Again (6:26)
    Two frenemies encounter one misfortune after another. Directed by Christian Linaban

    Foxtails (9:11)
    Two boys spend a summer day together, discovering something unexpected in the tall grass. Directed by Alejo Perez-Stable Husni

    Moment of Freedom (15:15)
    A wannabe vlogger descends into a religious psychosis following a prolonged episode of self-destruction. Directed by Cameron Patera

    Swim (13:38)
    After Claire disappears at the lake swimming on a family camping trip, her mom denies the problem in their relationship.
    Directed by Bella Reeves

    Disectoid (13:34)
    Disectoid is a “Micro Anthology”, where horror shorts bleed into insanity as they progress. Hosted by the enigmatic “Arnold Hitchcock” portrayed by Arnold Mzera, who guides you through this labyrinth of cinematic terror. Directed by Lucas Gustavo Rendón


    May The Water Not Freeze   (16:26)
    A farming cooperative in Western Maine prepares for their first winter while stewarding community with other Black farmers & cultivating Muslim foodways. Directed Zahira Chaudhry

    Viva La Florida (09:32)

    Viva La Florida is a quirky comedic short film about Nick, a burned-out car salesman whose Florida vacation depends on closing one impossible deal. Directed by Michael Cochrann

  • INTRO TO NONFICTION STORYTELLING WITH ALKA RAGHURAM

    Have a Story You Can’t Wait to Tell?

    This workshop will help storytellers develop tools to transform personal experience or a topic they are passionate about into a story with structure. Participants will gain a sharpened story concept.

    Ready for the next steps beyond “Intro To Nonfiction Storytelling”?

    Check out Alka’s 4-Week Documentary Writing Intensive, an in-person development lab designed to help you transform raw material into narrative clarity. Over four focused weeks, you will move from idea to articulation — shaping a documentary concept with structure, voice, stakes, and ethical intention. More info and class registration: https://www.junoon.pictures/junoonlabs

    Alka Raghuram is an award-winning filmmaker and a multidisciplinary artist. She has made several fiction, experimental, and documentary films. She was awarded the L’Oreal Woman of Worth Filmmaker Award for her script The Conqueror at Tribeca All Access. Her script Ayna was a finalist at the Sundance Screenwriters Lab. Alka frequently collaborates with other artists to create narrative performances and installations. Some of her collaborations include “Yatra” with Kathak and Flamenco dancers Pandit Chitresh Das and Antonio Hidalgo Paz; “Agni” with choreographer Charlotte Moraga and musician Alam Khan, and a photo, video and art installation Inspired by Burqa Boxers at the Locarno Film Festival. She recently received Creative Work Fund for a multimedia project called “Invoking The River” about the river Yamuna’s mythological significance and its environmental degradation, in collaboration with Chitresh Das Institute of dance.

    WINNER – Locarno Film Festival, co-production market top prize: Grant Open Doors