Citizen Film

Depicts what happens when students K-8 discuss LGBT-related topics in age-appropriate ways. Shot in six public and private schools (in San Francisco and New York City, as well as Madison, Wisconsin, and Cambridge, Massachusetts), It’s Elementary models excellent teaching about family diversity, name-calling, stereotypes, community building, and more.

Join former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, historian David Kennedy and a diverse group of Americans to explore whether a unifying set of beliefs, an American creed, can prove more powerful than the issues that divide us.

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.

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

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.

Wired for What? visits four very different elementary schools grappling with computerization to find out if technology is helping to change our schools for the better or if it is dulling students’ creativity and draining precious resources from other crucial educational needs.

GroundSpark creates visionary films and dynamic educational campaigns that move individuals and communities to take action for a more just world. Citizen Film has been a frequent collaborator of GroundSpark over the years. Its “One Wedding and a Revolution,” directed by Academy Award Winner Debra Chasnoff is co-produced by Kate Stilley Steiner, with cinematography by Sophie Constantinou. Chasnoff’s “Let’s Get Real” and “That’s a Family” were also co-produced by Stilley Steiner, who edited those films and supervised post-production as well.

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

CMC’s visionary leaders and artists to celebrate one of San Francisco’s most-revered and longest-running community arts programs.

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

When filmmaker Debra Chasnoff faces stage-4 cancer, she turns her lens on herself and the disease. What emerges is a portrait of her extended LGBTQ family —a story about hanging on while letting go.

School lunch chef Wanda McAfee-Conart reflects in her job and how it connects her to the sensory environment and to her own family history.

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.

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.

Moscow, January 1948. In the bitter cold, a large crowd attends the State Funeral of the Yiddish actor and director Solomon Mikhoels. An official proclamation mourns the death of "a great People's Artist of the Soviet Union." What people are really mourning is the death of the most popular Jewish theater in the Soviet Union, and the man who kept it alive against all odds for over 20 years. No doubt many suspected the truth: he had just been assassinated by Stalin's secret police.

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.

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.

Thousands of feet up in Switzerland’s Engadine Valley you’ll find a community of people working together to carry out centuries-old family traditions of dairy farming. In this collaboration with Lataria Engiadinaisa, Citizen Film follows the daily routine of some of these farmers from the top of the world.

"People of the Graphic Novel" is a playful introduction to the history of an art form: from the first "funny pages" to seminal artists including Will Eisner and Art Spiegelman.