Over the past eight years, Sophie Constantinou has directed more than 40 shorts about San Francisco Foundation grantees.

This year’s Community Leadership Awards event features new profiles of Bishop Yvette A. Flunder, founder of Ark of Refuge; Gonzalo Rucobo of Bay Area Peacekeepers; John Santos, Musician and Cultural Activist; Jordan Simmons, Artistic Director of the East Bay Center for Performing Arts.

A ceremony including film projections is followed by a catered reception. FREE and open to the public at San Francisco’s Herbst Theatre. RSVP here.

Watch trailer.

Citizen Film is creating video projections for a new play about the 1930's theatre ensemble The Group Theatre, whose members included Stella Adler, Harold Clurman, Cheryl Crawford, Elia Kazan, Clifford Odets and Lee Strasberg. Written and directed by Corey Fischer, In the Maze of Our Own Lives includes film and projection designs directed by Sam Ball, line-produced by Emma Bailey and edited by Kate Stilley.

Citizen Film’s collaboration with Fischer & TJT was made possible by The Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation and The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation Playwright Collaboration Initiative and the Creative Work Fund.

Click here for tickets. A special discount is available for "friends of Citizen Film" : mention promo code CASTCREW2011 from now until Oct. 1 to purchase tickets for just $20.

Lunch Love Community co-directed by Sophie Constantinou and Helen De Michiel has received a Fledgling Foundation Creative Media grant to disseminate "powerful content that will help parents, teachers, administrators and policy makers think differently about the possibilities for nutrition in schools."

Next up, Sophie and Helen are among the select group of change-makers invited to participate in the Reel Food residency November 5-9 bringing together nonfiction media-makers with non-profit organizations that are working for healthy, just and sustainable communities.

Citizen Film is constantly producing several different projects at the same time. This gives interns the rare experience of participating in nearly every stage of the documentary process, from conception to shooting, editing and distribution.

If you are interested in the January - May internship, please review the internship description and then email a cover letter and resumé to Emma Bailey by October 15th.

Lunch Love Community "media socials" bring together parents, teachers and activists for screenings of short films, followed by spirited discussions about the future of locally-produced organic lunch programs in public schools. Following in-person screening events, conversations continue online with coverage by bloggers, online commentary and views by many thousands of people on YouTube. The “media social” concept is spreading as directors Helen De Michiel and Sophie Constantinou bring Lunch Love Community to events in Sacramento, Eugene, Ithaca and Waltham, then return to Berkeley for the Slow Food festival:

Healthy Eating Active Living Forum: March 31st Sacramento, CA
Cinema Pacific Film Festival: April 9th Eugene, OR
Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival: April 13+16 Ithaca, NY
Slow Food East Bay: May 1st Berkeley, CA
Making Media Now: May 6th, Waltham, MA

Since 2002, dozens of talented storytellers have collaborated with Citizen Film's team to create films that explore what Jewish identity is becoming. Escape from Suburbia is the fifth NJFP short to be presented at the SF International Film Festival and it offers a fresh perspective on the past. Join director Mayana Bonapart and other next-gen filmmakers for a special screening and discover how today's digital generation is expressing themselves, their heritage and their dreams.

April 23, 2011, 12:00pm, Sundance Kabuki Cinemas (public)
May 5, 2011, 12:45pm (for students and educators only: contact Keith, kzwolfer@sffs.org)

If you think Jews are the People of the Book, come meet the People of the Screen. Join SF Jewish Film Festival Executive Director Peter Stein, Liz Nord (Jericho’s Echo), Citizen Film’s Sam Ball (Joann Sfar Draws from Memory) and New Jewish Filmmaking Project participant Zoe Pollak (Memory Paths) for a conversation and show of clips highlighting new forms and themes that are emerging as Jewish storytelling enters a new digital age.

Sunday, April 10, 2011, 11am at UCSF Mission Bay Campus, 1675 Owens Street – part of FedFest 100, the SF Jewish Community Federation Centennial Celebration.

For a full evening dedicated to the work of young-adult Jewish filmmakers, visit the 9th Street Media Arts Screening Room - 145 9th Street, San Francisco Wednesday, April 6, 6pm to 8pm.
Watch and discuss new films from Israel’s prestigious Reali School and from the New Jewish Filmmaking Project, a program of the SF Jewish Film Festival.

Science class in Nepal's "Bright Horizons" School

Citizen Film Teams up with Bread and Butter Films to help Catholic Charities Fight Poverty

This month, Citizen Film provided post-production services to Nicole Newnham and Camille Servan-Schreiber's documentary celebration of how the Bay Area branch of the largest social service organization in the United States is stepping up its efforts to reduce poverty. The video is designed to help Catholic Charities CYO transmit an inclusive message about people joining together to help others during difficult times.

Connecting the Dots to Fight Breast Cancer

Citizen Film is collaborating with the Breast Cancer Fund to create an Electronic Media Kit that shows the link between breast cancer and exposure to chemicals and radiation in our everyday environments. The media kit will be showcased online and offered to local and national TV news media to promote awareness of what ordinary citizens can do to create healthier communities and homes. Join the Breast Cancer Fund at http://www.breastcancerfund.org/community/

Student Success in the Inner City

Citizen Film is collaborating with director Kelly Amis to create short films that aim to give America’s inner-city schoolchildren a better deal. Join a community of students, parents, teachers and principals as well as activist leaders like John Legend and Irasema Salcido, who are making a difference in education reform: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/teached/teached

Bright Horizons in Nepal

Citizen Film and the Bright Horizons Children's Home are creating a short film about the innovative school that gives Nepali orphans, semi-orphans and destitute children a roof over their head, three meals a day, full medical care, and a K-10 education that leads them out of poverty and into self-sufficiency.

Immerse yourself in Mona Caron's poetic musings of past and future times as she works on her newest Bay Area mural, El Camino. Kate Stilley Steiner profiles the San Francisco-based, Swiss-born artist for SwissInfo.ch.

Watch four brand new CF docs, created for the San Francisco Symphony's Second Century Campaign. The films premiered at the Symphony's $125 million fundraising campaign kickoff - giving top donors a chance to hear the power of their impact on music lovers from all walks of Bay Area life.

Citizen Film's Kate Stilley Steiner and Berkeley's Studio B Films worked together to introduce concertmaster Alexander Barantschik, supporters Ron and Mary Loar, youth cellist Nathan Chan and second grade teacher Sandy Noltimier.

Lunch Love Community, directed by Helen De Michiel and Sophie Constantinou, is a mosaic of short films designed to inspire vision, passion and action to help change the way our children eat.

The full house Lunch Love Community premiere at the Pacific Film Archive was a spirited afternoon of bite-sized films, interspersed with lively discussion about the relationship between food, community and education.

The conversation continues online, where Lunch Love Community has been covered by more than 100 bloggers, and on the websites of many parent-teacher associations.

Sacramento's Crest theatre presented a night of Half-Remembered Stories produced by Citizen Film, followed by a Q & A with filmmakers Samantha Abernathey, Corey Abraham, Mayana Bonapart, Yenny Martin, and Jason Zavaleta.

The New Jewish Filmmaking Project, a program of the SF Jewish Film Festival, explores Jewish heritage from the digital generation's point of view. Next up, these young filmmakers will present their work at the 9th Street Media Arts Center, April 6th and at the Jewish Community Federation's Centennial Celebration, April 10th.

This year’s grantees of the Foundation’s Lynn and Jules Kroll Fund for Jewish Documentary Film include: Joann Sfar Draws From Memory, directed by Sam Ball, executive produced by Valerie Joseph, and co-produced by Sophie Constantinou and Estelle Fialon. The film tracks one of the most celebrated graphic novelists of our time as he inventively combines memoir with philosophical musings, both on and off the page.

Citizen Film recently collaborated with director Kelly Amis on Teached, a documentary project and advocacy campaign designed to combat inequality in the American educational system.

The latest short, Path to Prison, premiered this month at the Teach for America annual alumni conference in Washington D.C.

To all our friends, colleagues and supporters,

We are excited to announce the launch of Lunch Love Community, a new series of webisodes made for the internet. Starting today, six of our short films are now available for you to watch online and share across your own networks.

Thanks to you for your support of this new and unusual film project, and we invite you to have a "first-look" and tell us what you think.

In a mosaic of diverse voices and themes, these carefully crafted 3-6 minute "bite sized" documentary essays explore different aspects of the groundbreaking Berkeley School Lunch Program, and how a passionate group of citizens are inspiring larger systemic change in the way our children eat, how they think and how they learn at school.

Lunch Love Community is what we call our "open space documentary project", made to be watched and used across multiple media platforms. Our intention is to spark dialogue, and to inspire people across the country to get involved in the community-based food reform movement now gaining momentum from the grassroots to the White House.

It has taken a whole community almost fifteen years now to change the way children are offered healthy and nutritious meals in the Berkeley schools. Parents, educators, food justice advocates, cooks, policymakers, and helpful citizens have worked tirelessly to realize this vision and make it a reality.

In a similar spirit, filmmakers Helen De Michiel and Sophie Constantinou are exploring the short "webisode" format as a new approach to online storytelling and dissemination. They are embracing social media platforms for sharing the films, encouraging dialogue and sparking citizen involvement and community participation.

Each Lunch Love Community webisode selection can easily be watched, used and shared by anyone online. We encourage you to tell your friends and social media followers about the project and spread the work.

You are receiving this announcement because you have supported the project financially, or with your good energy and attention. Many of you we know personally, and many of you we do not know (yet!).

But to everyone, thank you again for being a part of Lunch Love Community and helping us make this vision an evolving and dynamic reality.

- Helen, Sophie & the production team

P.S. Stay connected. We are now making six new webisodes to be posted and released through winter 2011.

The Lunch Love Community Documentary Project has been funded by people like you, who believe stories about change can help fuel change. In addition the project has received funds from the following foundations and organizations.

September 28th, 6:30-8:30pm
Herbst Theater, 401 Van Ness Avenue, San Francisco
RSVP

Come celebrate the achievements of Bay Area innovators in social justice and the arts. Gather together at this free, popular event. Meet community leaders, eat, drink and enjoy the premiere of short films by Sophie Constantinou profiling the SF Foundation's 2010 Community Award Recipients. See how:

Dr. Washington Burns, executive director of the Prescott-Joseph Center for Community Enhancement has helped West Oakland residents strengthen their community and narrow disparities in health and social services access.

Sylvia Rosales-Fike, founder, president, and chief executive officer of AnewAmerica Community Corporation helps immigrants to bring their own families out of poverty.

The East Bay Asian Local Development Corporation reaches deeply into diverse neighborhoods to create new economic opportunities.

Anna Halprin, choreographer and dancer, has pioneered major dance movements and has been recognized worldwide.

Half Remembered Stories, our new multimedia exhibition –a program of the recent 30th San Francisco Jewish Film Festival- is a multimedia exhibition exploring Jewish Heritage from the digital generation’s point of view. Check out www.njfp.org for inspiration and look back on your own family stories. For a chance to win two passes two Noisepop’s Treasure Island Festival, share a half-remembered moment or story of your own at the HRS Contest page or just add a quick comment on our multimedia collage. For many of us, the recent Rosh Hashana celebration and Yom Kippur were a way to look back, in order to move forward. Share your reflections with us.

Thirty Leaves Production and Citizen Film are busy editing a mosaic of web-based short films exploring how a determined community of cooks, educators, parents, health advocates, politicians and food purveyors in Berkeley are pioneering the movement to reinvent school lunch. Many of you contributed to this program through Kickstarter.com and we are pleased to announce that your contribution has been matched by the East Bay Community Foundation. Stay tuned for Web Launch information. Our goal is to ignite a national movement rooted in community values. Please contact emma@citizenfilm.org to find out how you can help us spread the word.

A scent, a song, a story, a snippet from the past…

What do you half-remember?

Tell us your own half-remembered story and win a night to half-remember at the Noise Pop Treasure Island Film Festival and Bay Area restaurants! The winning entry will be published in Zeek Magazine.

Enter the contest and while you’re at it, browse 11-multimedia collages, produced by Citizen Film for the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival.

Save the Date! Tuesday, September 28, 2010, 6:30pm

Producer / Director Sophie Constantinou is hard at work on her seventh straight year of producing and directing short documentaries profiling the SFF Community Leadership Award winners.

Her 2010 crop of new films premiere Tuesday, September 28th at the San Francisco Foundation's free annual event honoring another year of amazing artists, activists and community-builders.

RSVP for the event

Dr. Washington Burns, ED, Prescott-Joseph Center for Community Enhancement
Anna Halprin, Choreographer
Sylvia Rosales-Fike, CEO of AnewAmerica Community Corp.
East Bay Asian Local Development Corporation

Screening October 16, 2010, 11am: Escape from Suburbia, part of the New Jewish Filmmaking Project's Half-Remembered Stories, directed by Mayana Bonapart.

Saturday, July 24th at 12:30pm at the Castro Theatre

Join Citizen Film for the launch of our new multimedia exhibition HALF-REMEMBERED STORIES, a program of the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival!

Citizen Film worked with 11 emerging filmmakers who explored the voids in their own family stories using today’s web-based storytelling technology. The result is Half-Remembered Stories, a dynamic multimedia exhibition exploring Jewish heritage from the digital generation’s point of view.

Sample the multimedia exhibition and meet our new generation of digital storytellers while noshing on bagels and sipping coffee. One ticket gets you into the reception, followed by a screening of Te Extraño, and Escape from Suburbia.

Preview the exhibition at www.njfp.org.

June was a great month for our newest collaboration entitled Lunch Love Community. Thanks to the generous support of the Fledgling Fund and over 120 individual donors, we surpassed our fundraising goal of $19,000 to launch a national dialogue about how to change the way our children eat.

Lunch Love Community will be a mosaic of web-based short films exploring how a determined community of cooks, educators, parents, health advocates, politicians and food purveyors in Berkeley are pioneering the movement to reinvent school lunch. Thanks to everyone for your support of this important collection of documentary shorts that will help to ignite a national movement rooted in community values.

Lunch Love Community is a collaboration between Thirty Leaves Production and Citizen Film, and is being co-produced by Helen de Michiel and Sophie Constantinou.

Please join Citizen Film in the movement to provide organic school lunches that change the way kids think about food.

Sophie Constantinou and Helen de Michiel are documenting the Berkeley School Lunch Initiative: a culturally diverse group of parents, food producers and community leaders who have come together to nourish and inspire students.

We hope you will support our series of short, mouth-watering films about Chefs Ann Cooper, Alice Waters, and the Berkeley School Lunch Initiative. These bite sized documentaries will travel freely across the internet to show how a sustainable school lunch program works, and spark food policy reform nationwide.

Click here to contribute or find out more.

The "Lunch Love Community" Digital Story Campaign is a complement to the NEA-supported documentary Open Minds Open Mouths which Helen and Sophie are completing for broadcast.

Support the "Lunch Love Community" Campaign by joining our Facebook Page.

Joann Sfar Draws from Memory @ the 53rd SF International Film Festival Join Citizen Film and Valerie Joseph for a free preview of this new documentary directed by Sam Ball and co-produced by Sophie Constantinou

The film tracks Joann Sfar, a popular graphic novelist and filmmaker, through the Algerian and Jewish family heritage that inspires his work. We follow the artist into a whimsical universe where worlds exuberantly collide.

Read more >

Also screening at the Festival: Gainsbourg (Je T'aime...Moi Non Plus), directed by Joann Sfar.

The New Jewish Filmmaking Project (NJFP), produced by Citizen Film, is creating an online digital storytelling exhibit for the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival. We’ve invited 11 talented young storytellers to collaborate, including Jason Zavaleta. Jason has been blogging about the process of making his next film for the SF Jewish Film Festival:

Read more >

Featured NJFP Mentor: NJFP Participants work one-on-one with Bay Area documentary film professionals to hone their stories. Steve Bloom - Pixar Animation Studios DVD/Promo Editor is mentor to Jason Zavaleta.

"My job's weird.  I edit documentaries at an animation studio... Documentary and animation editing are almost opposites -- one is a subtractive process of sifting through miles of footage and the other is additive, building something up from little bits of dialogue and art.  But both are about discovering a good story and telling it in the most satisfying way."  Steve has been showing Jason many tricks of the trade, but good storytelling is the main thing Steve hopes to emphasize.  "All of the other stuff is secondary."

Citizen Film has been collaborating with Vicki Abeles on Race to Nowhere: The Dark Side America's Achievement Culture. Check out the upcoming screenings list below to see this film near you.

Sophie Constantinou has been working as a consulting director and cinematographer on this film that is taking the country by storm, capturing the attentions of parents and students across the nation.

See the Film Near You:  Upcoming Screenings List