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Get ready to be moved, inspired and engaged! Join us for the 15th Annual Fist Up Film Festival for a world of thought-provoking cinema, carefully curated. 

We’re thrilled to announce our collaboration with Fist Up Film Festival for October 2024! Presenting contemporary films that leave a lasting impact, inspire meaningful discussions, promote awareness, and encourage empathy.

This film festival uniquely bridges the gap between global and local communities, weaving together shared experiences from diverse backgrounds. These curated films amplify the voices of historically marginalized communities, honoring their stories and lived experiences. We invite you to be a part of this meaningful evening through our screenings and engaging Q&A sessions!

Admission is donation-based, with a suggested $15 contribution. Join us in celebrating the power of film and storytelling! You can also sign up to volunteer and come for free!

THIRD NIGHT: Helena de Sarayaku w/ Q&A from filmmaker + Report back from the Amazon

Helena from Sarayaku traces the Sarayaku Kichwa people’s struggle to protect their lives, cultures and their territories from oil extraction in the period 2002 to 2021. It is both an anthropological study conducted by indigenous people for indigenous people, and for the world, and a vehicle to demonstrate the contribution of indigenous peoples to protecting the planet.

Helena’s elders encourage her in her quest to convey the indigenous message to the urban citizens of the world that their lives have to change for the protection of all of us. “Take these voices to other countries so they will listen, speak this message in their language when you get there.”

“We defend our territory so the great destroyers of the ​E​arth do not come,” explains one of the elders. Thanks to the struggle of the Sarayaku, “everything that our elders left us is intact,” but “others lost their cultures, and they will never get them back…[the companies] will build the road, the rainforest will be destroyed. They will contaminate the rivers. The world is coming to an end as our ancestors predicted… they destroy it without being aware of it. We cannot go on like this.”

Get ready to be moved, inspired and engaged! Join us for the 15th Annual Fist Up Film Festival for a world of thought-provoking cinema, carefully curated. 

We’re thrilled to announce our collaboration with Fist Up Film Festival for October 2024! Presenting contemporary films that leave a lasting impact, inspire meaningful discussions, promote awareness, and encourage empathy.

This film festival uniquely bridges the gap between global and local communities, weaving together shared experiences from diverse backgrounds. These curated films amplify the voices of historically marginalized communities, honoring their stories and lived experiences. We invite you to be a part of this meaningful evening through our screenings and engaging Q&A sessions!

Admission is donation-based, with a suggested $15 contribution. Join us in celebrating the power of film and storytelling! You can also sign up to volunteer here and come for free!

SECOND NIGHT: Songs From The Hole with Q&A from filmmakers

At 15, he took a life. Three days later, his brother’s life was taken. A documentary visual album, “Songs from the Hole” follows James “JJ’88” Jacobs through a musical opus of Hip-Hop and Soul, inspired by his innermost struggles as both a person who has committed and experienced violent harm, as he serves a double-life prison sentence. The film interweaves the collective storytelling of its non-fiction participants with imagined representations of memories, dreams and spiritual dialogues set to its protagonist/co-creator’s original music.

Director: Contessa Gayles; Executive Producer: Jenny Raskin, Lauren Haber, Geralyn White Dreyfous, Regina K. Scully, Meadow Fund, Dream Hampton; Producer: Contessa Gayles, richie reseda, David Felix Sutcliffe; Screenwriter: James “JJ’88” Jacobs, Contessa Gayles; Cinematographer: Michelle Kwong, Contessa Gayles; Editor: Contessa Gayles, Rafe Scobey-Thal, Princess A. Hairston; Production Designer: richie reseda, Contessa Gayles; Sound Designer: For analog-ny audio; Supervising Sound Editor/Re-recording Mixer: Keith Hodne, Co-Supervising Sound Editor/Sound Designer: Eric Di Stefano, Sound FX Editor: Eli Akselrod; Music: Music Written and Performed by James “JJ’88” Jacobs; Music Produced by richie reseda, Tairiq Bright and Garfield Bright III for TwiinTowers Productions, Dylan Wiggins, James “JJ’88” Jacobs; Original Score by richie reseda, Tairiq Bright, Garfield Bright III, James “JJ’88” Jacobs; Principal Cast: James “JJ’88” Jacobs, Myles Lassiter, Devonte Hoy, Jovon Times, Africa Turner, Ernest Walker, Ryleigh Legget , Kellie Evans; Additional Credits: Co-producer: James “JJ’88” Jacobs, Co-Executive Producers: Kelsey Koenig, Robina Riccitiello, Lauren & John Driscoll, Jennifer Pelling.

Experience an unforgettable night of Argentine music with Lautaro Tissera Favaloro: Tango, Milonga, Chacarera, and more at La Peña!

Save the date! December 13th, 2024. More details coming soon!

Come join us at our Empowering Women of Color Open Mic!! This Open Mic event provides a space to celebrate the voices of women of color that enact and highlight the beauty of our cultural diversity. We welcome ALL who experience life through the lens of women in body, spirit, identity – past, present, future, and fluid. Come support local Bay Area talent or get ready to perform yourself!

In collaboration with the UC Berkeley Women of Color Initiative.