Citizen Film

Take a journey with master graphic novelist Joann Sfar as he finds inspiration in his Algerian-Jewish heritage and the lively streets and cafes of his current home in France. This collaboration between Citizen Film, KQED Presents and Paris-based Les Films du Poisson was telecast on PBS stations around the U.S. in 2012.

Ron Padgett (1942- ) is a poet and editor whose artistic career took off during his teenaged years in Tulsa, Oklahoma. There, along with Joe Brainard and Dick Gallup, he produced The White Dove Review, an art and culture magazine. Both Padgett and Brainard serendipitously moved together to New York City, where Padgett studied at Columbia University under the tutelage of Kenneth Koch and interacted with various Beat poets. He has taught poetry at various schools in the City, edited volumes such as the Full Court Press and Teachers & Writers Magazine and written volumes of poetry including 2013’s Collected Poems which won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. He also wrote “memoirs” of both Brainard and fellow Tulsan Ted Berrigan.

Each of the stories celebrates pioneers of a national movement to engage encore workers, adults age 50+, in solving problems, meeting important social needs, and improving life for people and communities

Saaty-Tafoya reflects on her eight week sabbatical, during which she visited healthcare centers across the United States that are innovators in diverse design and practice, to learn how to merge service delivery transformation, hospitality, sustainability, and community.

A Studio B Production – Co-produced by Citizen Film for the San Francisco Symphony

In July 1945, 19-year-old rifleman Stuart Canin found himself on the veranda of President Harry S. Truman’s temporary “little White House” in Potsdam, Germany. The president asked Canin to play the violin in order to break the ice of tense negotiations that would determine the post WWII fate of the world. Canin would become an internationally acclaimed concertmaster for Seiji Ozawa, Kent Nagano, John Williams, but he was never so nervous as when he was summoned by the Commander in Chief to perform for Stalin and Churchill on the eve of the Cold War.

“Factory-made wheelchairs are huge, heavy and ugly.” To counter this reality, wheelchair riders Ralph Hotchkiss and Omar Talavera began making beautiful, all-terrain wheelchairs. Their work draws on the resourcefulness of disabled people in the Third World, who have no choice but to build their own chairs. A well-crafted piece in its own right, Zimbabwe Wheel illustrates that wheelchairs can be truly empowering works of art: hand-crafted machines that are inexpensive, durable, and tailored to the needs of the rider.” Working on your chair is like working on your whole sense of self,” says a student, describing a feeling no factory-made chair can provide.

This playful short film was produced in collaboration with the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco as part of a multimedia installation entitled "We are not permanent but we are not temporary." The installation was designed to explore the impermanence of life, searching, wandering, and the welcoming of strangers.

This short film reveals the inspiration, motivation and political challenges at San Francisco City Hall during the frantic days leading up to the first government-sanctioned same-sex marriage.

During the Great Depression, the Group Theater—including Stella Adler, Harold Clurman, Elia Kazan and Clifford Odets—gave voice to a new generation of immigrants.

A Studio B Production – Co-produced by Citizen Film for the San Francisco Symphony

Citizen Film partnered with co-producer WTTW Chicago Public Media, the National Writing Project (NWP), Facing History and Ourselves, PBS LearningMedia and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s American Graduate program to provide content for high school civics, history and language arts classes around the country. This content includes a suite of video assets designed to frame classroom discussions and writing about civic themes. We also partnered with PBS to create a short film illustrating the impact of this education campaign on students.

Charlotte Biltekoff is the author of “Eating Right in America” where she traces the food reform movements throughout American history. She questions socially accepted ideas about “good and bad eaters” and what those assumptions reveal about food, culture, and the struggle over moral values.

University of Washington professor Noam Pianko and his students collaborated with Citizen Film, the Pacific Northwest Jewish Archive and Seattle’s Jewish Community Federation to unpack and digitize archival photos and documents, then turn them into shareable digital content.

Making from-scratch meals for 5,000 kids is hard work for everyone, and it happens every day at the Berkeley Public Schools Central Kitchen. Part of the Lunch Love Community series.

In 1939, Yiddish was the spoken language of three-quarters of the world's Jews. But when leading Jewish scholars convened in 1980, they estimated that only 70,000 Yiddish books remained in the world. This engaging, often funny documentary film chronicles the adventures of an enterprising 23-year-old named Aaron Lansky, who rallied together an international network of volunteers and set out to rescue the world's Yiddish books. Twenty years later, the National Yiddish Book Center has collected 1.5 million Yiddish books and helped save a rich diverse, and surprisingly modern literature from oblivion. With rare archival images, and a lyrical portrayal of the National Yiddish Book Center's warehouse and cultural complex, A Bridge Of Books celebrates a pursuit that has become a powerful vehicle for the transmission of history, culture and identity across several generations.

In 1996, Women's Educational Media released their groundbreaking documentary Its Elementary-Talking About Gay Issues in School. It's Still Elementary tells the fascinating history of why and how the 1996 film was made, the infamous response it provoked from the conservative right, and the questions it raises about the national safe schools movement today. Includes interviews with some of the original students and teachers from Its Elementary.

Gary's Story is part of a collective filmmaking project that looks at relationships between teenagers and their grandparents in families that have recently immigrated to the US from the former Soviet Union. Gary's family is from Moscow.

Flamin' Hot glimpses into a middle school science class, "What's On Your Plate," to reflect how kids behave even when they conduct experiments with the combustion of a Hot Cheeto. The Lunch Love Community Project is an open space documentary project by Helen De Michiel and Sophie Constantinou, produced by 30 Leaves Production, Citizen Film and Media Working Group.

A Foot in the Door tells the story of Kindergarten to College (K2C), the first universal children’s savings account program in the United States. Launched by the City and County of San Francisco, the program automatically provides a college savings account to children when they start kindergarten.