2022 SF DocFest Full Program
Announcing the
21st SF Documentary Festival (SF DocFest)
June 1 – 12, 2022
The 21st San Francisco Documentary Film Festival (SF DocFest) will be held June 1 – 12, 2022. SF DocFest will screen 36 features and 58 shorts included with feature programming and across 9 short programs. The festival this year will be presented as a hybrid of virtual screenings and live presentations. Films may be viewed on demand anytime during the festival, and there will also be 36 films that will be shown at the Roxie Theater in San Francisco. The majority of the in-person screenings held at the Roxie Theater will also include live Q&A sessions.
For those who are unable to attend in person, the festival may be attended virtually through on demand screenings and online Q&A sessions. The full festival program may be found at sfdocfest2022.eventive.org. The following are a few highlights of this year’s SF DocFest program.
HEADLINERS
OPENING NIGHT
Jason Loftus
When members of Falun Gong hack China’s state TV to expose brutal repression – lives are changed forever.
Jeff Adachi, Chihiro Wimbush
When a young women is shot by an undocumented immigrant on Pier 14 in San Francisco, the incident ignites a political and media furor that culminates in Donald Trump’s election as President of the United States.
CENTERPIECE
Kelly Duane de la Vega, Zandashé Brown
IN THE BONES is a lyrical documentary that explores the personal and political by interweaving the lives of 12 characters living in Mississippi during a legislative session in which equal pay for equal work and abortion rights are being decided.
CLOSING NIGHT
Vincent Liota
OBJECTS follows three unique people who have held onto things which have gained incredible meaning for them over decades. These objects are not things they flaunt. They are things that touch them secretly…a fifty-year-old clump of grass, a sweater that once belonged to a French actress, and a forty-year old sugar egg.
Sam French, Clementine Malpas
At the height of the international occupation of Afghanistan, two women are imprisoned on charges of “moral crimes” by an Afghan justice system that is supported by billions of dollars of aid money from the European Union.
MUSIC SPOTLIGHT
Bob Sarles, John Anderson
The story of first generation blues performers who had made their way to Chicago from the Mississippi Delta and their ardent and unexpected followers – middle class kids who followed the evocative music to smoky clubs deep in Chicago’s ghettos.
Kenneth Thomas
This small apartment-sized store championed local, underground, independent, and challenging music to the masses – most memorably with their infamous bi-weekly, college essay-length, new-release lists.
OTHER LIKE ME – The Oral History of COUM Transmissions & Throbbing Gristle
Marcus Werner Hed, Dan Fox
Led by the artists Genesis P-Orridge and Cosey Fanni Tutti, COUM mutated into the visionary, transgressive and absolutely uncompromising industrial/noise band Throbbing Gristle.
Abby Berendt Lavoi, Jeremey Lavoi
ROOTS OF FIRE is a story about musicians pushing the boundaries of a type of American roots music known as Cajun Music.
Cat Brewer
SIGN THE SHOW brings together entertainers, the Deaf and Hard of Hearing (HOH) community, and American Sign Language (ASL) interpreters to discuss accessibility at live performances in a humorous, heartfelt, and insightful way.
Laurence Madrigal
A love song to the artists, dance, music, slang, clothes and, most importantly of all, the people who came of age during the Hyphy Movement.
Yang Yang
This film tells the story of young artists and musicians in Beijing in the 1980s demanding freedom and making rebellion through their art and music, creating indelible memories for a generation of Chinese people.
ACTIVISM
Jessica Sarah Flaum
With increasing burdens placed on clinics, activists are combining the powers of abortion pills and the internet to provide abortions in a revolutionary way and highlight how new technology could transform accessibility in the United States.
Tamara Perkins
Single mother and organizer Clarissa Doutherd is building a powerful coalition of parents. They’re fighting for child care and early education funds, desperately needed by low and middle income parents and children across the country.
Dunstan Bruce, Sophie Robinson
Dunstan Bruce is 59 and he’s struggling with the fact that the world seems to be going to hell in a handcart. He is angry and frustrated. How does a middle-aged, retired radical, who feels invisible get back up again?
KEEP THE CAMERAS ROLLING: THE PEDRO ZAMORA WAY
Stacey Woelfel, William T. Horner
The true story of a pandemic; politics; misunderstanding and prejudice; the impact of the media; and, most importantly, AIDS activist Pedro Zamora, his life, his joy, and his influence, as told by people who knew and loved him, and by those who witnessed the strength of his commitment and its impact.
Shako Liu
Spurred by a rise in anti-Asian violence, ‘Asians with Attitudes,’ a volunteer-based evening patrol group in Oakland’s Chinatown, has galvanized the Asian American community to become one of the loudest voices in the fight to stop Asian hate.
Derek Knowles, Lawrence Lerew
SENTINELS is an immersive observational film that follows a small group of young environmental activists as they undertake a tree-sitting campaign to stop one of the largest logging companies on the West Coast from clear-cutting a northern California redwood forest.
ARTS
Sheri Jan Brenner
Tsherin Sherpa, devoted Tibetan Buddhist artist, trained by his father in the art of traditional Tibetan Buddhist thangka painting, moves to San Francisco from Kathmandu and reinvents himself to fit in with his surroundings.
Jesse Lerner, Sara Harris
In 1986 Noah Purifoy (1917- 2004) retired from his position of many years on the California Arts Council and moved to a remote desert site north of Joshua Tree National Park, where, over the last eighteen years of his life, he created an ambitious series of over a hundred assemblage sculptures which sprawl over acres of the harsh, arid land.
ROGER CORMAN, THE POPE OF POP CINEMA
Bertrand Tessier
Roger Corman is one of those rare Hollywood gems that finds their talent early and sticks with it for life. To date, he has 412 producing credits, 56 directing credits and nine writing credits. But even with so much experience, there’s a good chance you’ve never heard of most of his films.
Gabriel Diamond
Sarah Crowell and Keith Hennessey are both dancers, teachers, and activists in the Bay Area. They have known each other for nearly 30 years. But they’ve never collaborated or connected deeply, until now.
Scott Leberecht
Steve ‘Spaz’ Williams is a pioneer in computer animation. His digital dinosaurs of Jurassic Park transformed Hollywood in 1993, but an appetite for anarchy and reckless disregard for authority may have cost him the recognition he deserved.
Alexandra Henry
An award-winning feature-length documentary celebrating the courage and creativity of women who despite their lack of recognition have been an integral part of the graffiti and street art movement since the beginning.
PERSONAL STORIES
Alexis Neophytides
Through the eyes of nine thirteen-year-olds, we see how pressing social, geographical and political challenges are shaping, and being shaped by, young people.
Derek Dabkoski, Ian McClellan, Im Joong Kim
TBI survivor Derek Dabkoski enrolls in an experimental stem cell surgery study to have stem cells injected directly into the injured area of his brain. He hopes to regain the functionality he lost when he was brutally attacked and left for dead on the streets of San Francisco a decade ago.
Deng Wei
Filmmaker Deng Wei’s grandfather Zuogui has been blind since the age of three, living most of his life as a fortune teller and raising many children. Now approaching the final chapter of his life, Zuogui lives a life of bitter discontent toward his son (and Wei’s father) Donggu, a businessman who is set on earning the respect not afforded him as a child.
Timothy O’Donnell
A decade in the making, a young filmmaker confronts addiction, family, and memory as he chronicles his father’s journey to recover lost memories following a traumatic brain injury.
Bradley Berman
When Jack, a man with a terminal brain tumor for 25 years, decides to end his life, his family and friends struggle to accept his decision. Jack’s best friend documents his three-year quest to die a happy man, culminating in a permanent going-away party.
Cristian Gomes
For 76 years, Frank Kuiack made a living as a fishing guide in an iconic Canadian park. At 84-years-old and recently diagnosed with bone cancer, Frank’s health has taken a turn for the worse.
Matteo Robert Morales, Mattis Appelqvist Dalton
At 16, Miguel left Mexico to start a new life in New York City. Thirteen years later, Miguel opens a package from his mother, where he discovers photographs that throw him back to his childhood in rural Mexico – a time when living in the US had been just a dream.
Marion Gabriot
The story of five women farmers around the world, working the land, which plays a key role in the planet’s food production. A tribute to some of these women, invisible but essential links in the chain who ensure subsistence agriculture every day and everywhere on earth.
TICKETS AND PASSES
Note that all live screenings require patrons to be masked and to present proof of vaccination for admission.
Individual tickets for virtual shows are $10 each.
Individual tickets for screenings at the Roxie Theater are $15 each.
Live + Virtual Pass is $185 each. It includes access to every virtual on demand film in the festival via our online screenings (June 1-12) and all live festival screenings at the Roxie Theater (June 1-9).
Live + Virtual Donor Pass is $250 each. It includes access to every virtual on demand film in the festival via our online screenings (June 1-12) and all live festival screenings at the Roxie Theater (June 1-9). Additionally, you’ll receive recognition for your generous support of independent film storytelling.
Virtual Screening Pass is $95 each. It includes access to every virtual on demand film in the festival via our online screenings (June 1-12).
Virtual Screening Donor Pass is $150 each. It includes access to every virtual on demand film in the festival via our online screenings (June 1-12). Additionally, you’ll receive recognition for your generous support of independent film storytelling.
For more information on tickets and passes, visit https://sfdocfest2022.eventive.org/passes/buy.
DOCFEST 2022 STAFF
Founder/Director: Jeff Ross; Programming: Chris Metzler, Kayla Myers, Sarah Flores, Gigi Haycock; Publicity: Larsen & Associates; Graphic Design: Michael Madfes
The full festival program and additional information is available at sfindie.com. You may also contact DocFest at 415-662-FEST, or by emailing info@sfindie.com.
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San Francisco Documentary Film Festival (SF DocFest)
Since 2001, SF DocFest has brought the most weird and wonderful aspects of real life to the big screen. What started as a three-day event in an empty church in Union Square has become a two-week long festival across different venues in the Bay Area. Presented each year by SF IndieFest, the 20th San Francisco Documentary Film Festival (SF DocFest) will take place from June 3rd through 20th both online and in theaters this year. More information is available at sfindie.com. You may also contact DocFest at 415-662-FEST or via email at info@sfindie.com.
