Content from 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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

"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.

Activist James Richards is an icon of the Bayview Hunters Point neighborhood. For 80 years, he has fought steadfastly to provide his community with what they urgently need: jobs. As a leader of the Aboriginal Blackman United (ABU)—whose slogan is “If we don’t work, don’t nobody work”—Richards has been behind decades of protests at discriminatory worksites around Bayview Hunters Point. His commitment has led to important legislative victories that created mandatory local hire requirements, that have led to job opportunities that either previously didn’t exist or had been withheld from the community. For his 80th birthday, we’ve gathered his friends, fellow community leaders, and San Francisco officials to reflect on his legacy and lasting influence on workforce development in the city.

This Ukrainian-Jewish teenager immigrated to San Francisco as a young child. Now on the brink of adulthood, she interviews her grandparents about their new lives yearning to see her American world through their eyes. Yelena understands that life in the US has changed her profoundly.

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.

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.

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.

Citizen Film worked closely with The California Nurses Foundation (CNF) to identify nurses who are strong storytellers, and engage them in creating first-person documentaries. These intensely personal narratives emblemize strategies for providing healthcare in an increasingly diverse State. Citizen Film collaborated with CNF to curate those stories into a digital curriculum that provides cultural-competency training to CNF’s very large constituency of healthcare providers around the state.

Under Their Skin: Tattoos of Memory and Resilience is a character-driven film featuring grandchildren of survivors (3Gs) who have made the controversial decision to tattoo their grandparents’ concentration camp numbers on their own bodies. The film follows subjects as they navigate personal relationships and public interactions that alternately celebrate and challenge their decision—and raise questions about the reenactment of trauma, and the act of transforming that trauma into healing. In interweaving storylines, we will meet 3Gs whose stories reveal that historical remembrance is an essential part of engaging with social issues and the rise of hate and intolerance today.

Klaira presents a surprising vision of assimilation and a loving depiction of San Francisco. She and her grandparents explore how the experience of immigration changed their sense of self and altered the fabric of their relationship.

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

This Ukrainian-Jewish teenager immigrated to San Francisco as a young child. Now on the brink of adulthood, she interviews her grandparents about their new lives yearning to see her American world through their eyes. Yelena understands that life in the US has changed her profoundly.

"Mission Asset Fund's work cuts to the core of the financial pain points families everywhere face." - Sam Ruiz

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.

Ann Cooper is the tough, hard-working chef whose convictions drive her to reinvent herself as a school reform activist. She takes on the professional challenge to overhaul in only three short years, the neglected and dysfunctional Berkeley school lunch system.