CROSSROADS 2025 is the sixteenth manifestation of Cinematheque’s annual film festival. CROSSROADS 2025 features 47 works of film, video and performance by 47 artists representing 19 countries and territories presented in 8 curated programs. Weaving through this year’s lineup are alchemical and environmental evocations of utopian and dystopian realities; ruminations on the impermanence inherent in existence; transnational, transgenerational and even trans-species relations and expressions of vulnerability, resilience and political resistance culled from the world’s rotting image bank. CROSSROADS opening night features a sound/image performance by legendary Portland sound artist Daniel Menche and filmmaker Karl Lemieux projectionist for Godspeed You! Black Emperor. Cinematheque is proud to announce that, of these 47 featured artists, 16 are receiving their CROSSROADS debut this year.

CROSSROADS 2025 featured filmmakers
Saif Alsaegh • Lin Htet Aung • Sarah Ballard • Dianna Barrie • Alice Bommer • Stefano Canapa • Heehyun Choi • Karel Doing • Tori DotNet • Sam Drake • Zachary Epcar • Kevin Jerome Everson • Janie Geiser • Pere Ginard • Sidney Gordon • Jerome Hiler • Ken Jacobs • Derek Jenkins • Karl Lemieux • Lucie Leszez • Cherlyn Hsing-Hsin Liu • Jodie Mack • J.M. Martínez • Lindsay McIntyre • Daniel Menche • Tomonari Nishikawa • Antoni Orlof • Kyujae Park • Miranda Pennell • Adam Piron • Nicole Remy • Craig Scheihing • Linda Izcali Scobie • Erica Sheu • Cauleen Smith • Greta Snider • Scott Stark • Malena Szlam • Sofia Theodore-Pierce • Richard Tuohy • Malaz Usta • Guillaume Vallée • Friedl vom Gröller • Sophie Watzlawick • Micah Weber • Karen Yasinsky • Antoinette Zwirchmayr

Festival passes and individual program tickets here.

CROSSROADS 2025 program 1: temporary near thing/pulsebeat promises
Friday, August 29, 7pm
https://www.sfcinematheque.org/screening/crossroads-2025-program-1/

CROSSROADS 2025 opens with works considering domestic, carceral and liminal spaces, intimacies, alienations and territories best left unmapped. Caesurae entangle. Wheels squeak and wind blows. Spectral figures roam through apertures of ghostings and dystopian fantasies unfurl beneath the San Francisco Bay. Program opens with Ken Jacobs’ Flo Rounds A Corner, presented in memory of Flo Jacobs (1941–2025). Here is the key; unlock the door.

SCREENING: Flo Rounds A Corner (1999) by Ken Jacobs (US); digital video, color, silent, 6 minutes. Exhibition file courtesy of Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York. In the Stranglehold of Ivy (2024) by Antoinette Zwirchmayr (Austria); 16mm screened as digital video, color, silent, 7 minutes. Exhibition file from Lightcone. Half Halt (2025) by Sofia Theodore-Pierce (US); digital video, color, sound, 11 minutes. Boyd v. Denton (2023) by Kevin Jerome Everson (US); digital video, b&w, sound, 3 minutes. Exhibition file from Picture Palace Pictures. Tulsa (2025) by Scott Stark (US); digital video, color, sound, 14 minutes. Sinking Feeling (2024) by Zachary Epcar (US); digital video, color, sound, 21 minutes. TRT: 66 minutes

CROSSROADS 2025 – program 2: certain lights / nothing is stable
Friday, August 29, 9:30pm
https://www.sfcinematheque.org/screening/crossroads-2025-program-2/

CROSSROADS opening night culminates with Celluloid Between the Wounds (World Premiere), a visceral sound and image convergence of legendary Portland sound artist Daniel Menche and Karl Lemieux, a Montréal-based filmmaker known for projection work with Godspeed You! Black Emperor and for his own alchemical films and multi-projector performances. In collaboration, Menche’s massive, textural drones and percussive detonations seem to awaken something subterranean while Lemieux’s flickering visuals melt, collapse and resurrect with each improvised gesture. Nothing is stable and caught in the tension between precision and chaos, in a shared physical space vibrating with the energy of the now. Performance is preceded by Linda Izcali Scobie’s flickering double-projector Crystal Palace and the CROSSROADS festival opener A Certain Light by Nicole Remy, a sensuous and circling lo-fi pinhole exploration.

SCREENING: A Certain Light (2024) by Nicole Remy (Peru); digital video, color, sound, 15 minutes. Crystal Palace (2024) by Linda Izcali Scobie (US); 2x16mm, color, sound, 8 minutes. Celluloid Between the Wounds (2025) by Karl Lemieux (Canada) & Daniel Menche (US); 35–45 minutes. TRT: 69 minutes

CROSSROADS 2025 – program 3: the earth as if it were a dream
Saturday, August 30, 2:30pm
https://www.sfcinematheque.org/screening/crossroads-2025-program-3/

Premonitions, farewells, glimpses of hope. From the San Francisco Bay to the Antopodes and points in between comes a program of alchemical, environmental evocations; visions of ecological dystopia; fantasies of escape; reveries of solitude and an exploration of the sonorities of the sea.

SCREENING: In The Maritime Frequencies (2025) by Greta Snider (US); digital video, color, sound, 16 minutes. Archipelago of Earthen Bones—To Bunya (2024) by Malena Szlam (Chile); digital video, color, sound, 20 minutes. Organized Forgetting (2025) by J.M. Martínez (US); digital video, black & white, sound, 7 minutes. A Patriot of These Woods (2024/2025) by Karel Doing (UK); 16mm screed as digital video, color, sound, 9 minutes. Shades of Blue (2025) by Antoni Orlof (Poland); 16mm screened as digital video, color, silent, 13 minutes. TRT: 66 minutes

CROSSROADS 2025 – program 4: this isn’t what it appears
Saturday, August 30, 5pm
https://www.sfcinematheque.org/screening/crossroads-2025-program-4/

This isn’t what it appears. There is always the camera. Light enacted, spirits summoned, shadows sharpen and twist. Eight works which form a web of monsterful ponderings on indexicality; visual rendering and portraiture; hypnosis and hysteria; and the loves, losses and violences inherent in photography. Haunted evocations of repressed memories both personal and cultural, anonymous and specific.

SCREENING: World Wide Web (2024) by Tori DotNet (US); digital video, color, sound, 6 minutes. I'm Not Your Monster (2025) by Karen Yasinsky (US); digital video, black & white, sound, 5 minutes. Slideshow (2024) by Janie Geiser (US); digital video, color, sound, 8 minutes. This Isn't What It Appears (2022) by Heehyun Choi (US/South Korea); digital video, color, sound, 20 minutes. It follows It passes on (2023) by Erica Sheu (Taiwan/US); digital video, color, sound, 5 minutes. My Will And Desire Like Wheels Revolving (2025) by Alice Bommer (US); digital video, black & white, sound, 3 minutes. Emergency Exit (2024) Friedl vom Gröller (Austria); 16mm, black & white, sound, 4 minutes. 16mm print from sixpackfilm. Full Out (2025) by Sarah Ballard (US); digital video, color, sound, 14 minutes. TRT: 65 minutes

CROSSROADS 2025 – program 5: shadows between the frames
Saturday, August 30, 8pm
https://www.sfcinematheque.org/screening/crossroads-2025-program-5/

The call of silences and the tremblings of the city. San Francisco’s own Jerome Hiler’s masterful reverie Careless Passage caps a program of spectral and transmutational films, works which defy gravity while exploring the expressive properties of the cinematic apparatus and sensuous shock encounters with the physical and luminous world. Program presented in memory of Tomonari Nishikawa (1969–2025).

SCREENING: Buseok (2024) by Park Kyujae (South Korea); digital video, color, silent, 18 minutes. Apollo (2003) by Tomonari Nishikawa (Japan/US); digital video, black & white, sound, 6 minutes. Print from Canyon Cinema. Market Street (2005) by Tomonari Nishikawa (Japan/US); digital video, black & white, silent, 5
minutes. Print from Canyon Cinema. where night falls a thud (2024) by Sophie Watzlawick (Germany/Switzerland); digital video, black & white, sound, 8 minutes. Exhibition file from sixpackfilm. Ashes to ashes (2025) by Sidney Gordon (Canada); 16mm, color, sound, 5 minutes. 45 7 Broadway (2013) by Tomonari Nishikawa (Japan/US); 16mm, color, sound, 5 minutes. Print from Canyon Cinema. Careless Passage (2024) by Jerome Hiler (US); 16mm screened as digital video, color, silent, 20 minutes. Exhibition file from Canyon Cinema. TRT: 68 minutes

CROSSROADS 2025 – program 6: hold me in your arms
Sunday, Aug 31, 2:30pm
https://www.sfcinematheque.org/screening/crossroads-2025-program-6/

Are these archives? Global transmissions from the troubled present open CROSSROADS day three. Snapshots of doubt, pain vulnerability, resistance and resilience culled from the world’s rotting image bank. Interrogations of reality: sardonic and ironic, cutting and inciting. Misinformation flipped on its head. Hands touching hands holding hands. Touching me touching you.

SCREENING: space_invaders.exe (2024) by Malaz Usta (Syria); digital video, color, sound, 11 minutes. Exhibition file from Light Cone. The Mirage of Ultra-Realistic Hands (2024) by Guillaume Vallée (Quebec); digital video, color, sound, 14 minutes. Exhibition file from La Distributrice de Films. A Metamorphosis (2025) by Lin Htet Aung (Myanmar); digital video, color, sound, 17 minutes. Fear of Floating (2024) by Dianna Barrie & Richard Tuohy (Australia); 16mm, color, sound, 7 minutes. Man number 4 (2024) Miranda Pennell (UK); digital video, color, sound, 10 minutes. The Motherfucker's Birthday (2024) by Saif Alsaegh (Iraq/US); digital video, color, sound, 7 minutes. TRT: 66 minutes

CROSSROADS 2025 – program 7: for all the seasons of your mind
Sunday, August 31, 5pm
https://www.sfcinematheque.org/screening/crossroads-2025-program-7/

Fleeting seasons and persistent memories. Documentations of invisible threads, weaving between us, before us, around us and through us. Love in varying forms. An opening quartet of lush if melancholic lyricism gives way to a darker dreamscape of troubled interiorities and toxic landscapes.

SCREENING: LOVER, LOVERS, LOVING, LOVE (2025) by Jodie Mack (US/UK); digital video, color, sound, 14 minutes. under the flower moon (2024) by craig scheihing (US); digital video, color, sound, 7 minutes. Letter from Blackhawk Island (2024) by Derek Jenkins (US/Canada); digital video, color, sound, 2 minutes. Bosco (2023) by Stefano Canapa (Italy) & Lucie Leszez (France); digital video, black & white, silent, 8 minutes. Exhibition file from Light Cone. I think I said "Yes" (2025) by Pere Ginard (Spain); digital video, color, sound, 4 minutes. Suspicions About the Hidden Realities of Air (2025) by Sam Drake (US); digital video, color, sound, 9 minutes. All said done (2025) by Micah Weber; digital video, color, sound, 4 minutes. TRT: 66 minutes

CROSSROADS 2025 – program 8: the mountain replies with an echo
Sunday, Aug 31, 8pm
https://www.sfcinematheque.org/screening/crossroads-2025-program-8/

CROSSROADS closes with five films exploring earth, sky and subterranean spaces, indigeneity, interspecies entwinement and relationships to the ungrievable land. Luminously material films embodying geologic memories, reconstructed histories and incantations of transformation. Speculations on potential futures: how it was and how it could be. Have we met somewhere before?

SCREENING: Tuktuit : Caribou (2025) by Lindsay McIntyre (Inuit/Canada); digital video, color, sound, 15 minutes. The Early Sun, Red as a Hunter’s Moon (2025) by Adam Piron (Kiowa/Mohawk); digital video, color, sound, 13 minutes. I Carry the Universe with Me 我將宇宙隨身攜帶 (2024) by Cherlyn Hsing-Hsin Liu (US/Taiwan); digital video, color, sound, 21 minutes. Black Glass (2024) by Adam Piron (Kiowa/Mohawk); digital video, color, sound, 9 minutes. Mines to Caves (2023) by Cauleen Smith (US); digital video, color, sound, 10 minutes. TRT: 68 minutes