Film Catalog

Better This World is a 2011 documentary film that was directed by Kelly Duane and Katie Galloway. It had its world premiere at the San Francisco International Film Festival on April 23, 2011, where it won two Golden Gate Awards for Best Documentary Feature and Bay Area Documentary Feature.

For her entire professional life, renowned ecologist Nalini Nadkarni pioneered climbing techniques to study “what grows back” after an ecological disturbance in the rainforest canopy. Now, after surviving a life-threatening fall from a tree, she must turn her research question onto herself in order to understand the effects of disturbance and recovery throughout her life.

Mary Katzke got both the idea and the money for her latest documentary unexpectedly: via a life-threatening illness. Misdiagnosed in 1991, Katzke later found she had advanced breast cancer, requiring massive chemotherapy. Dropped by her insurance company, she sued her doctor to cover medical bills, promising herself that if she survived five years, she’d make a film for other women in the same crisis. With her settlement, she created a life-affirming video, Between Us, for hospitals to give to new breast cancer patients.

BEWARE THE SLENDERMAN tells the story of the internet’s elusive Boogeyman and two 12-year-old girls who would kill for him. Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weier lured their best friend into the woods, stabbed her 19 times, then set out on an odyssey to meet the tall and faceless man known online as Slenderman. Shot over 18 months with heartbreaking access to the families of the would-be murderers, the film plunges deep down the rabbit hole of their crime, a Boogeyman and our society’s most impressionable consumers of media. The entrance to the internet can quickly lead us to its dark basement, within just a matter of clicks. How much do we hold children responsible for what they find there?

Bold literary visionary Margaret Anderson founded the journal Little Review in 1914, an overlooked but profound influence on American literature. Anderson introduced writers such as Gertrude Stein, Emma Goldman, Djuna Barnes and Ezra Pound, and went to trial for publishing excerpts from James Joyce’s new work, ULYSSES. Immersed in her own pointed, charismatic writings, this engrossing profile follows Anderson’s inspiring life and travels. Anderson resisted censorship, meager finances and mediocrity in her unflagging search for literary enchantment; this film reveals her life to be her greatest creation.

A wake-up call about how American advertising lures us into having negative body images.

In this intimate portrait, several dwarfs who appeared in Jan Krawitz and Thomas Ott’s 1982 film Little People welcome the camera into their lives once again. Through a prism of “then and now,” the characters in the film confront physical and emotional challenges with humor, grace, and sometimes, frustration.

Cherilyn grew up on her grandparents’ farm on the Navajo Nation. She has returned to grow produce for the community and is embarking on the biggest crop to date. Big Water Summer follows the farm over several months that don’t go as planned.

A portrait film about bestselling author and laugh-out-loud funny lady Anne Lamott, this film is a moving tale of survival. She is a lovable paradox, a born-again Christian and liberal activist. Spend 40 minutes with her through this film and you will wish you were meeting her for tea tomorrow.

Young journalist Shiori Ito embarks on a courageous investigation of her own sexual assault in an improbable attempt to prosecute her high-profile offender. Her quest becomes a landmark case in Japan, exposing the country’s outdated judicial and societal systems.

A queer oddball seeks approval from Black peers despite a serious lack of Hip-Hop credentials.