SF Doc Fest (2018)
May 32 - June 14 - 17th San Francisco Documentary Festival
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21 titles
- DirectorDouglas TirolaThe story of craft beer as told through a young New York lawyer who dreams of opening his own brewery and a Milwaukee based beer educator trying to pass the Master Cicerone exam.
- DirectorNick KovacicMatthew RiggieriStarsDamián AlcázarCarlos CamarenaGraciela Angeles CarreñoIn Mexico, families have passed down the tradition of distilling agave for generations. Discover how this delicate plant has carried the weight of a nation and the people trying to protect it.
- DirectorBen NilesStarsPriscilla AlarconDeondra BrownDesirae BrownIndependently produced by the award-winning filmmaker, Ben Niles (Note by Note, Some Kind of Spark), Digging Through the Darkness takes an intimate look at The 5 Browns, a group of sibling pianists with a meteoric rise to stardom only to be devastated years later by the tragic realization that all three sisters had been sexually abused by their father. Told intimately using archival family video, interviews, rehearsals, performances and verité footage, Niles weaves together the remarkable story of musical determination and passion mirrored by profound bravery and survival-both personally and professionally-as The 5 Browns come to terms with their broken family and work to find solace and healing in their own individual ways. " The 5 Browns (Desirae, Deondra, Gregory, Melody and Ryan) burst on the scene after a New York Times profile in 2000. All five were studying piano at the esteemed Juilliard School (a first in the schools long history) which led to immediate stardom and appearances on several shows including 60 Minutes, Jay Leno and Oprah. The following year they were signed to Sony Records followed by performances in major concert halls around the world. But as Melody describes it, "a lot was lurking there."
- DirectorLaurie CoyleIn the docu-detective Adios Amor, the filmmaker discovers forgotten photographs taken over 50 years ago, and sets out to find their spunky protagonist: Maria Moreno, a migrant mother of twelve who led a movement for farmworker rights years before Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta launched the United Farm Workers. The search for Maria leads through archives, attics, and orchards, Californias rich agricultural belt, the Arizona desert, and beyond the U.S.-Mexico border, and recovers a treasure trove of audiotapes, home movies and memorabilia. Revived as well are the vivid memories of the maverick journalists and artists who captured Marias story and kept her memory alive. What emerges is a suppressed history of the people who harvest the food on our tables even when they cant feed their own families, and the epic saga of an outspoken, trailblazing woman who told their story to the world. Featuring a rocking score of cello, accordion, Gospel and Tex-Mex music, the search for Maria Moreno pays loving tribute to countless anonymous women working behind the scenes for social justice, and provokes us to ask, why havent we ever heard of them?
- DirectorSarah MenziesFollowing a new generation of young Afghan women cyclists, Afghan Cycles uses the bicycle to tell a story of women's rights - human rights - and the struggles faced by Afghan women on a daily basis, from discrimination to abuse, to the oppressive silencing of their voices in all aspects of contemporary society. These women ride despite cultural barriers, despite infrastructure, and despite death threats, embracing the power and freedom that comes with the sport.
- DirectorJosh LowellPeter MortimerStarsJohn BranchTommy CaldwellKevin JorgesonIn an unbelievable story of perseverance, free climber Tommy Caldwell and climbing partner Kevin Jorgeson attempt to scale the impossible 3000ft Dawn Wall of El Capitan.
- DirectorOlympia StoneStarsElizabeth KingThe sculptor Elizabeth King mines the spaces in between classical sculpture and automata; life and the life- like. Double Take: The Art of Elizabeth King explores the motives and creations of this quiet iconoclast at a pivotal moment in her career.
- DirectorJason CharnickStarsJason CharnickArnie CharnickRaymond CharnickA man discovers a box of interviews with his father, a heroin addict who died of AIDS in 1997. What he finds will uncover generations of family secrets, forcing him to redefine his own past, doubt his present, and question his future.
- DirectorSkizz CyzykStarsWilliam 'Igor' AlfordCharles BrohawnMitchell CashionA feature length documentary about stripmine crooner, Rev. Fred Lane, and the Raudelunas arts collective of Alabama in the Seventies.
- DirectorRita BaghdadiJeremiah HammerlingGenerations of family farming tradition go up in flames as the North Dakota oil boom leaves human memory, culture and identity scorched in its wake.
- DirectorNick TaylorStarsBeth ButlerDan CantorNoam ChomskyTHE ORGANIZER is a portrait of Wade Rathke, the controversial founder of ACORN, as well as an exploration of the much maligned and misunderstood occupation - community organizing. Before it's infamous demise following several highly publicized scandals, ACORN had been the largest community organization in the US. Rathke, a former anti-war and welfare rights organizer founded the organization in Little Rock in 1970 and over the next decades shepherded its growth into a national political powerhouse for the poor. His entrepreneurial vision helped build ACORN but internal conflict and external pressures would lead to its tragic downfall. Undeterred, Rathke is now building new organizations around the world and trying to rebuild at home. With a wealth of archives and interviews, THE ORGANIZER is a film about people who have dedicated their lives to the often hidden, usually messy and always controversial job of building power for the powerless.
- DirectorGiorgio Angelini'Owned' is a fever dream vision into the dark history behind the US housing economy. Tracking its overtly racist beginnings to its unbridled commoditization, the doc exposes a foundational story few Americans understand as their own.
- DirectorLaura GreenAnna Moot-LevinThree healthcare providers bring care to those living on the margins, in a rural American community struggling with a shortage of doctors and the ravages of the opioid epidemic.
- DirectorDaniel FroidevauxElisa GonzalezA community of electrically sensitive people is fleeing to a remote mountainous region of West Virginia called the National Radio Quiet Zone. In the shadow of one of the world's largest and most sensitive radio telescopes, The Quiet Zone follows four characters as they adapt to life in this unique environment. The film draws a subtle parallel between the telescope and the electro-sensitive community, reflecting growing concerns and ambivalence about the relentless permeation of communications technology.
- DirectorAdam SekulerA patient inquiry into a couple's journey towards conscious death.
- DirectorGiorgio FerreroFederico BiasinStarsAndrea Pavoni BelliVan QuattroDanilo TribunalBeautiful Things is a journey into our obsessive consumption. The many objects we accumulate and we believe to be essential begin their production journey in silent secluded industrial and scientific sites. The film describes the hidden mechanical liturgy within four different remote locations where bordeline men work in complete isolation without any interference from the outside world. These men trigger, unconsciously, the long chain of creation, transport, commercialization and destruction of the objects feeding our bulimic lifestyle. They are monks inside temples of steel and concrete. They repeat the same liturgy every day. And we don't even know that they exist.
- DirectorLouis BrownAn African-American father seeks revenge on a White Supremacist teenager, who is responsible for his son's murder.
- DirectorBrent HodgeStarsJudd ApatowSteve BannosLinda CardelliniThe creators and stars of the TV show Freaks and Geeks (1999) share their untold stories and pivotal moments from the making of the series that only aired for one season.
- DirectorGuy FioritaMOLE MAN follows RON, a 66-year-old autistic man who has spent the last five decades building a 50-room structure in his parents' backyard. Using no nails or mortar, Ron instead creates perfectly balanced structures from scavenged materials he finds in the woods outside his Western Pennsylvania home. When Ron's father passes away, leaving him living alone with his 90-year-old mother, Ron's siblings are left to figure out what's best for Ron - who has never been officially diagnosed with autism - when his mother can no longer care for him. In an effort to find the money to keep Ron in his home, his friends team up in search of a mythical mansion Ron insists lays abandoned in the forest. But will they be able to find it? And, more importantly, does it even exist? This is the story of an extraordinary life, a family, and the beauty of thinking differently.
- DirectorChanda ChevannesStarsSandra SteingraberA triumphant documentary about resistance, UNFRACTURED follows introspective biologist and mother Sandra Steingraber as she reinvents herself as an outspoken activist.
- DirectorKim HopkinsA young mother yearns to escape the unending hardships of a remote Cuban fishing village in search of a false and potentially fatal American dream.