Filmmaker Attempts to Shed Light on Navajo Nation’s COVID Crisis and Monumental Effort to Protect its Most Vulnerable

After visiting the Navajo nation earlier this month, filmmaker Karney Hatch (Overdrawn, Plant This Movie!) was overcome by the staggering number of cases and the scale of the loss facing the community and decided to volunteer in hopes of helping the Navajo & Hopi Families COVID-19 Relief Fund raise money by shooting some footage…

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Congrats to SDFF 2020 selection That’s My Jazz on Webby!

We’d like to congratulate That’s My Jazz for their Webby win in editing! That’s My Jazz is an SDFF 2020 Official Selection and one of the more recent projects to come out of Breakwater Studios, which is also responsible for Life’s Work,honored by SDFF in 2017.

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Congratulations to our longtime Premier Venue Partner (and local treasure!) Rialto Cinemas® on their 20^th Anniversary! While we all have our fingers crossed that we’ll be enjoying movies together at the theater soon enough, we encourage everyone to check out Rialto virtual cinemas, which is offering a host of first run art house and independent films, including one of SDFF 2020’s top official selections, The Booksellers. The virtual cinema is also a way to continue to support our local art house theater while sheltering in place. Rialto owner Ky Boyd is also giving daily film recommendations which are (unsurprisingly) fantastic and a great way to be adventurous and sample something that may fall outside of your usual film fare.

For more on the Rialto and its 20 years in Sebastopol check out Sonoma West’s excellent piece by clicking on their logo.

To see the Rialto’s Virtual Cinema, featuring independent first-run films, and owner Ky’s film picks, click the the Rialto logo.

Sebastopol Hardware + Spirit Works Distillery

This is how Sebastopol does taking care of each other…

Community businesses and individual donors have always been key partners in bringing SDFF to life. In-kind donations, monetary support, media exposure: all are vital to our existence. In recognition of their support, the SDFF team is proud to shine a light on these partners and what they are doing in this time of COVID-19.

When the community ran out of hand sanitizer early on in the pandemic, Spirit Works Distillery and Sebastopol Hardware joined forces to make and distribute it!

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Happy Earth Week!

SDFF 2018 Environmental documentarian helps Confront Extinction through free live lesson on Earth Day

SDFF 2018 filmmaker and conflict photographer Kate Brooks participated in a live, online education event for Earth Day, “Confronting Extinction,” which is available to stream for free…

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Oscar-winning short by SDFF 2010 Alum Streams Free!

Marshall Curry, whose film Racing Dreams was an SDFF 2010 Official Selection, won the 2020 Academy Award for Best Live Action Short with his remarkable and unexpectedly moving short, The Neighbors Window ….

SF Gay Men’s Chorus Dedicates Original Piece to COVID-19 First Responders

While COVID-19 has so far prevented us from bringing you the excellent feature documentary and SDFF 2020 Official Selection Gay Chorus, Deep South (David Charles Rodrigues, 2019), it hasn’t prevented us from sharing this beautiful original composition of Cyndi Lauper’s “True Colors” by the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus.…