1/26/2025 – Straight from the Haight (and other Microcinemas in Mid-Sixties San Francisco)

Posted January 15th, 2025 in Announcements, Events and Screenings, News / Events

STRAIGHT FROM THE HAIGHT (and other Microcinemas in Mid-Sixties San Francisco) 
Sunday, January 26, 2025 @ 3:40pm 
The Roxie Theater, San Francisco 

Presented by Canyon Cinema

With the emergence of Canyon Cinema, that foundational film presenter and distributor, in the early Sixties, there was a visible upsurge of interest in experimental and artisanal filmmaking in the Bay Area. This, in turn, inspired the creation of a number of haphazardly-cobbled micro-cinemas, some lasting but months, but marked by a broadening embrace of handcrafted experimentation.

This program looks specifically at the Straight-Ashbury Viewing Society, an adjunct of the short-lived Straight Theater on Haight Street, assembling a group of seminal films that screened there in the fall of 1966. Accompanying this screening will be an informal discussion of other mid-Sixties venues, such as the Cinematheque Coffeehouse, Fether’s Point, and the S.M. Eisenstein Memorial Cinema Institute.

Programmed and hosted by Steve Seid, former curator of experimental media at the Pacific Film Archive.


STRAIGHT-ASHBURY VIEWING SOCIETY LINE-UP
All films screened between July and September, 1966

BreathDeath (Stan VanDerBeek 1963, 14.5 min, B&W, sound, 16mm transferred to digital)

Blue Moses (Stan Brakhage 1962, 11 min, B&W, sound, 16mm)

Die (John Luther Schofill, 1966, 5 min, color, silent, 16mm)

Mass for the Dakota Sioux (Bruce Baillie, 1964, 20 min, B&W, sound, 16mm)

Unsere Afrikareise (Peter Kubelka, 1966, 12.5 min, color, sound, 16mm)


TRT: 63 minutes


Discussion to follow