Swords to Plowshares

By inviting viewers to take a closer look at the birds that serve as one of this country’s hardiest symbols, Karsten Wall’s stunning documentary invites a deeper consideration of the conditions we humans have created for them.

An unconventional, tone-shifting travelogue that stitches together nations of the former Yugoslavia through chance encounters, 1970s rock music, architecture, and inventive editing, Ryan Ferko’s Hrvoji, Look at You From the Tower locates traces of the past in an increasingly fractured present.

A cinematic portrait of the homeless population who live permanently in the underground tunnels of New York City.

In 2023, there were an estimated 30.6 thousand homeless people. This number continues to rise at an alarming rate. One of them is the headstrong Ruurdt. He has difficulty getting help and cannot adapt well to our society. He is now also in danger of losing the houseboat that was assigned to him. 'Ruurdt' is an intimate portrait of a man on the fringes of our society.

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.

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 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 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.

Low-level narcotics offenders too often cycle in and out of jail, re-offending soon after they hit the streets. District Attorney Kamala D. Harris has convened City leaders to answer this problem and, along with key partners, has launched Back On Track, an innovative education and employment reentry initiative focusing on young adult drug offenders. Designed to increase community safety by reducing recidivism, Back On Track couples strict accountability and close supervision with education, employment support and health care. The purpose of Back On Track is to prevent young people from committing crimes by leading them to make life changing choices.

Low-level narcotics offenders too often cycle in and out of jail, re-offending soon after they hit the streets. District Attorney Kamala D. Harris has convened City leaders to answer this problem and, along with key partners, has launched Back on Track, an innovative education and employment reentry initiative focusing on young adult drug offenders. Designed to increase community safety by reducing recidivism, Back on Track couples strict accountability and close supervision with education, employment support and health care. The purpose of Back on Track is to prevent young people from committing crimes by leading them to make life changing choices.

Citizen Film and the Bright Horizons Children’s Home created 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.

Allegations of a significant elephant-poaching problem in Botswana have sparked a political row between the president and his predecessor. As Alastair Leithead reports, the issue has ignited a national debate over whether there are too many elephants and whether hunting should be re-introduced.

Latvia is home to almost one fifth of the world’s population of the lesser spotted eagle, yet their number is endangered. Uģis Bergmanis is one of Latvia’s best-known ornithologists, and he does his best to save the eagles in Latvia. He also has another passion – he hunts wolves. He can sit for hours in freezing temperatures until meeting his prey eye to eye. There are many stories in this man. And some of them are going to be told.

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.

Diane di Prima (1934-2020) was a poet, writer, publisher and playwright whose work has been associated with the Beat movement. Born and raised in New York City, she associated with poets such as Amiri Baraka, Jack Kerouac and Frank O’Hara, co-editing The Floating Bear magazine with Baraka in the 60s and co-founding the Poets Press and the New York Poets Theatre. Throughout her life in New York and later out West, both her sense of anarchic limitlessness and her zeal for collaboration guided her work.