Tag: archive

Shelter: a Squatumentary

With universally skyrocketing property values, rent and home-ownership have become unaffordable at best and impossible at worst. Thus, people all over the world continue a long tradition of circumventing the expensive price tag and reclaiming this basic human right by squatting. *Shelter: a Squatumentary* is a documentary film that explores the squatting movement in the East Bay from 2004 to 2007. We follow three examples of the struggle for housing in an unaffordable marketplace such as the San Francisco Bay Area. Hellarity House, Banana House, and Power Machine are stories of squatters who have found one tentative solution to the ongoing housing crisis. Directed by Hannah E. Dobbz, 45 min. (2008)

Bio: Hannah E. Dobbz is a freelance writer, editor, and filmmaker. She has spent countless hours working with the now-defunct Fault Lines editorial collective and Indymedia in San Francisco, and she appeared on the “Indymedia is Not Dead” panel at last year’s Allied Media Conference in Detroit. Her articles have been published in Fault Lines and Maximum Rock ‘n Roll, with topics surrounding activism, squatting, DIY, and punk.

Mischief at 16th and Florida

Weaving the complexities of wild rat behavior, and their survival-based knowledge of place, the complex history of punk rock squatters, work horses, robber barons, creeks, firehydrants and natural disasters are revealed in  this  lone industrial street in San Francisco’s Mission District. 28 min. Dir Sabrina Alonso

C RED BLUE J is an experimental documentary feature that uses the director Christopher Sollars’ family including: his sister Jennifer who works for the Bush Administration, Fred his Born Again father, and Karen his Lesbian mother, to illustrate the complications of division during the 2004 Presidential election. During the Fall of 2004, Sollars, an artist living and working in San Francisco, flew to Washington D.C. to get a first hand look at his “Young Republican” sister’s world. Jennifer is an appointee by the Bush Administration for Alternative and Renewable Energy within the Department of Energy and is working on the new Bush’s Hydrogen Plans. C RED BLUE J is pieced together through an archive of family super-8 films, photos, interviews, and art videos. The story personalizes the political division of the 2004 Presidential campaign as the Gay Marriage Vote is tactically used to split the Nation’s vote and the director’s family. C RED BLUE J puts a face to the name of the opposition and reconstructs the lack of communication within a family and the nation. Directed by Chris Sollars (2007)

Recipient of the Frameline 30 Audience Award for Best Documentary and of a 2005 Frameline Film & Video Completion Fund grant, The Believers is an unprecedented feature documentary that shatters assumptions about faith, gender, and religion. Built around the world’s first transgender gospel choir, the film portrays the choir’s dilemma – how to reconcile their gender identity with the widespread belief that changing one’s gender goes against the word of God. The Believers is a unique story of determination and perseverance and an important look at the intricacy and diversity of spirituality and the LGBT community.Directed by Todd Holland, 2006.