Proximities: Four Films by Cauleen Smith
April 29–May 23, 2021
presented by San Francisco Cinematheque in association with the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Program curated by Steve Polta and Tanya Zimbardo.

Since at least the 1940s, the San Francisco Bay Area has been one of the world’s epicenters of personally expressive filmmaking and community-focused non-mainstream film culture. At the close of a tumultuous and even traumatic year, Cinematheque culminates its 2020 exhibitions with Commingled Containers: Echoes from a Bay, two guest-curated programs highlighting recent works by Bay Area filmmakers and celebrating the continuously-renewing, ever-evolving traditions of the region’s vibrant artist communities.

CROSSROADS 2020 is the eleventh manifestation of Cinematheque's annual film festival, presented this year online and free to the public. CROSSROADS 2020 consists of 9 programs featuring 84 works of film and video by 71 artists representing 22 countries and territories.

Phil Solomon (January 3, 1954—April 20, 2019) was among the great avant-garde filmmakers of this era. Solomon’s more than twenty films and digital pieces create an interior universe that has rarely, if ever, been surpassed in any medium for its intimacy, evocation of personal sensibility, expressive dream-like sounds and images, and for its sublime—and terrifying—sense of ambiguity between the recognizable world and its dissolution.