MAKE IT BETTER (SAN FRANCISCO) -- As the movie-going public continues to thirst for authentic stories, Bay Area filmmakers are rising to the call. From big-scale documentaries tackling the realities of climate change to short films focused on underrepresented members of our communities, the days of the Bay Area’s cinematic legacy consisting mostly of disaster movies destroying the Golden Gate Bridge, or the cinematic work of Alfred Hitchcock, are fading. Instead, a new generation of directors, producers, and visionaries are leading the charge to make a difference on the silver screen.
Soumyaa Kapil Behrens, Documentary Film Institute director
Soumyaa Behrens is an award-winning director and producer, as well as the director of the DocFilm Institute at San Francisco State University. Her films regularly engage with issues of the human condition as well as how political landscapes shape identity and power structures within marginalized communities. At present, she is in post-production on the documentary film, 780 Abbreviated, which depicts how gentrification forced the closure of a community recycling center in San Francisco. Behrens has also produced and directed DocFilm projects like Veteran Documentary Corps, Madame Mars, The Love Boat, The Life of a String Quartet and Abina and the Important Men.