This was at once a wonderful experience
Posted: Sat Jul 12, 2025 6:16 am
It was a wonderful event — nothing like the kind of film showing that takes place in church-like silence, but an active, participatory event where people freely shared their knowledge and experience of San Francisco’s history. A new show the year afterward was also jammed. Long Now Foundation stepped up and offered to make this event part of their Seminars on Long-Term Thinking talk series, and in year 3 we moved to the 400-seat Cowell Theater at Fort Mason. and an occasion for great chagrin, because at least 250 people who showed up were unable to get in.
And so we moved to the beautiful Herbst Theater and in 2011 to the 1410-seat Castro Theatre, where we’ve been every year since then. And for the last eight years we’ve also been putting on whatsapp lead Lost Landscapes at Internet Archive. Many great things have happened at the Archive showings: people have recognized their relatives in the films, and many have seen their own streets and neighborhoods as they’ve never before seen them.
Combining favorites from past years with this year’s footage discoveries, the 11th annual feature-length program shows San Francisco’s neighborhoods, infrastructures, celebrations and people from 1906 through the 1970s. This year’s program features new scenes of San Franciscans working, playing, marching and partying during the Great Depression; unseen footage of Seals Stadium and the Cow Palace in the late 1930s; newly-discovered footage of the San Francisco Produce Market in operation; glimpses of neighborhoods now gone; Cathedral Hill on the cusp of redevelopment; 1960s antiwar activism; newly found footage of Tom Mooney’s victory parade after his release from Alcatraz in 1939; Bay ferries in operation; rare images of southeastern San Francisco and the Hunters Point drydock; the 1975 Gay Freedom Day parade; a 1940s-era ode to our fog; and many more newly discovered gems.
And so we moved to the beautiful Herbst Theater and in 2011 to the 1410-seat Castro Theatre, where we’ve been every year since then. And for the last eight years we’ve also been putting on whatsapp lead Lost Landscapes at Internet Archive. Many great things have happened at the Archive showings: people have recognized their relatives in the films, and many have seen their own streets and neighborhoods as they’ve never before seen them.
Combining favorites from past years with this year’s footage discoveries, the 11th annual feature-length program shows San Francisco’s neighborhoods, infrastructures, celebrations and people from 1906 through the 1970s. This year’s program features new scenes of San Franciscans working, playing, marching and partying during the Great Depression; unseen footage of Seals Stadium and the Cow Palace in the late 1930s; newly-discovered footage of the San Francisco Produce Market in operation; glimpses of neighborhoods now gone; Cathedral Hill on the cusp of redevelopment; 1960s antiwar activism; newly found footage of Tom Mooney’s victory parade after his release from Alcatraz in 1939; Bay ferries in operation; rare images of southeastern San Francisco and the Hunters Point drydock; the 1975 Gay Freedom Day parade; a 1940s-era ode to our fog; and many more newly discovered gems.