Leaving California: The Untold Story(2023)

Wild Window: Bejeweled Fishes(es)

Bejeweled Fishes captures the spectacular beauty of the myriad fishes inhabiting coral reefs of the Tropical and Eastern Pacific. This Wild Window was captured in the Maldives Islands, Fiji, the Philippines, Mexico, California, and Indonesia.

Buchanan Stories / Buchanan Change(en)

Buchanan Mall is five consecutive blocks of public parkland in the heart of San Francisco’s Western Addition. 7,000 low-income residents who live adjacent to Buchanan Mall face acute challenges: recent, rapid gentrification and decades-long cycles of unemployment and mass incarceration. Against this backdrop, a remarkable new story has unfolded. This predominantly African-American community has come together to re-imagine and reclaim Buchanan Mall as connective tissue, repairing the neighborhood’s fractured social fabric, celebrating local culture, creating small businesses, and advocating for safe, affordable housing.

Lobanov(ru)

The 2021 Duma elections made Mikhail Lobanov a recognizable Moscow politician. The 37-year-old mathematician, lecturer at the Moscow State University, has long been involved in social activities: ten years ago he opposed political agitation at the university, participated in the creation of an independent association of university employees to protect their rights, and was almost fired for his activism. In 2021 elections, Lobanov ran for the Communist Party (he is not a member of the party, calls himself a democratic socialist) and waged a powerful grassroots campaign against the pro-government candidate, TV presenter Yevgeny Popov.

The 9 Lives of Barbara Dane(en)

For decades, Barbara Dane lent her stellar singing voice to social-justice movements in the Bay Area and beyond, garnering an impressive FBI file along the way. Deeply respected by fellow luminaries in folk, blues and jazz, Dane built a far-reaching legacy with music, activism, and love. As Maureen Gosling’s celebratory portrait reveals, early solidarity with those suffering racial and economic injustice sparked Dane’s passion to use her talent to sustain marginalized people. Rather than chase stardom, she followed her own maternal instincts to root herself and her family among generations of activist performers. Bonnie Raitt, Jane Fonda and other notables attest to Dane’s unique way of shaping and being shaped by tumultuous social revolutions from the 1950s on. Nearing 90, Dane triumphantly tours with piano virtuoso Tammy Hall to celebrate a life of staying awake and connected, true to her ideals. One star among many illuminates so much.

The Salt of the Earth(fr)

During the last forty years, the photographer Sebastião Salgado has been travelling through the continents, in the footsteps of an ever-changing humanity. He has witnessed the major events of our recent history: international conflicts, starvations and exodus… He is now embarking on the discovery of pristine territories, of the wild fauna and flora, of grandiose landscapes: a huge photographic project which is a tribute to the planet's beauty. Salgado's life and work are revealed to us by his son, Juliano, who went with him during his last journeys, and by Wim Wenders, a photographer himself.

Riding Giants(en)

Riding Giants is story about big wave surfers who have become heroes and legends in their sport. Directed by the skateboard guru Stacy Peralta.

Arabella Martinez: San Francisco Foundation Community Leadership Awards 2005(en)

Arabella Martinez, winner of the San Francisco Foundation 2005 Community Leadership Awards (The San Francisco Foundation Award), was recognized for her commitment to building culturally relevant services and resources necessary for strong and vibrant communities, and for her outstanding contributions to Oakland’s Fruitvale district and the creation of the Fruitvale Transit Village.

California Nurses Foundation - A Little Different(en)

Citizen Film worked closely with The California Nurses Foundation (CNF) to identify nurses who are strong storytellers, and engage them in creating first-person documentaries. These intensely personal narratives emblemize strategies for providing healthcare in an increasingly diverse State. Citizen Film collaborated with CNF to curate those stories into a digital curriculum that provides cultural-competency training to CNF’s very large constituency of healthcare providers around the state.

Back On Track(en)

Low-level narcotics offenders too often cycle in and out of jail, re-offending soon after they hit the streets. District Attorney Kamala D. Harris has convened City leaders to answer this problem and, along with key partners, has launched Back On Track, an innovative education and employment reentry initiative focusing on young adult drug offenders. Designed to increase community safety by reducing recidivism, Back On Track couples strict accountability and close supervision with education, employment support and health care. The purpose of Back On Track is to prevent young people from committing crimes by leading them to make life changing choices.

Coast Modern(en)

A core group of architects embraced the West Coast from Vancouver to LA with its particular geography and values and left behind a legacy of inspired dwellings. Today, architects celebrate the influence established by their predecessors.

CMC Teen Jazz Orchestra: Cultivating respect and self expression through music(en)

CMC’s visionary leaders and artists to celebrate one of San Francisco’s most-revered and longest-running community arts programs.

CMC Young Musicians Program: Mission District youth find focus, follow dreams(en)

The mission of Community Music Center is to make high quality music accessible to all people, regardless of financial status.

David Brower Center(en)

Named for the man many consider the father of the modern environmental movement, the David Brower Center was founded on the idea that when diverse people engage, dream, and work together, they are more effective at finding solutions to today’s most pressing environmental and social problems.

E4FC - 2013 San Francisco Foundation Community Leadership Awards(en)

The San Francisco Foundation presents 2013 Community Leadership Awardee, Educators for Fair Consideration (E4FC), with The San Francisco Foundation Award, made to an organization demonstrating exemplary commitment to improving human relations in the Bay Area. E4FC provides direct support to and advocacy for highly motivated, college-bound undocumented students who had come to the United States as children and wished to remain. They are a leader in the field of immigrant work, providing youth tangible support and the space for them to tell their own story. As a result, E4FC's work is an essential part of the DREAMers movement catapulting the organizations role as a leader in both the Bay Area and as a national model in supporting and empowering immigrant youth. www.sff.org/cla

Sinatra in Palm Springs(en)

Palm Springs, a small desert oasis 100 miles East of Los Angeles was Sinatra's true home for 50 years. During his brief yet turbulent marriage to Ava Gardner his Palm Springs home was center stage. For the rest of his life, the Rancho Mirage compound on Frank Sinatra Drive, was the home he called "My Heaven". Palm Springs still feels the ghost of Frank Sinatra.

The Beach Boys - California Surfin(en)

Harmonium in California(fr)

Through concerts and interviews, folk-progressive group Harmonium takes Quebec culture to California. This documentary full of colour and sound, filmed in California in 1978, recounts the ups and downs of the journey of the Quebec musical group Harmonium, who came to feel the pulse of Americans and see if culture, their culture, can succeed in crossing borders.

Me Mataron 3 Veces(es)

After their mother's femicide, three siblings are separated and forced to live in different places. Years later they gather to raise their voices and fight to be made visible in a country where orphans for femicide are ignored by the state and invisible to society. It's up to them to tell their story.

Flood in the Desert(en)

Explore the 1928 collapse of the St. Francis Dam, the second deadliest disaster in California history. A colossal engineering and human failure, the dam was built by William Mulholland, a self-taught engineer who ensured the growth of Los Angeles by bringing the city water via aqueduct. The catastrophe killed more than 400 people and destroyed millions of dollars of property.

Valley Uprising(en)

In the shady campgrounds of Yosemite valley, climbers carved out a counterculture lifestyle of dumpster-diving and wild parties that clashed with the conservative values of the National Park Service. And up on the walls, generation after generation has pushed the limits of climbing, vying amongst each other for supremacy on Yosemite's cliffs. "Valley Uprising" is the riveting, unforgettable tale of this bold rock climbing tradition in Yosemite National Park: half a century of struggle against the laws of gravity -- and the laws of the land.