Contributors

SERGIO DE LA MORA is an Associate Professor in the Chicana/o Studies Department at University of California, Davis. He has lived in the Mission District of San Francisco, CA, for most of his life. He received a BA in Spanish and Latin American literature from San Francisco State University and a PhD in Literature from the University of California, Santa Cruz. He is the author of Cinemachismo: Masculinities and Sexuality in Mexican Film as well as many articles on film, gender and culture.

JOSHUA GRANNELL is the former general manager of Landmark's Bridge Theatre, the producer of the San Francisco Underground Short Film Festival, and recently produced his first feature film titled, All About Evil. His alter ego, Peaches Christ, is an underground drag phenomenon, emcee, actor and award-winning short filmmaker. Ms. Christ's Backlash Production Company and Midnight Mass movie series are based in San Francisco. Joshua was also the recipient of a Certificate of Honor from the San Francisco Mayor's Office and a commendation from the California State Assembly.

LAURA HORAK is a PhD candidate in Film Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. She curated the Girls Will Be Boys film series at the Pacific Film Archive and writes for the San Francisco Silent Film Festival. She is writing her dissertation on cross-dressed women in silent and early sound film.

ELISABETH HOUSEMAN has worked at the Bridge Theatre for twelve years and is compiling an archive and history for the theatre. Her other interests include the history of the natural world and medicine and she is currently researching a book on 19th century poisoning cases. She has appeared in three of Joshua Grannell's films and performed many times at Midnight Mass.

LIZ KEIM is the Director of the Cinema Arts Program and Senior Curator at the Exploratorium. She initiated the Exploratorium's cinema program and collection in 1982. This program has expanded to include screenings at other sites around the world, artist residencies, workshops, exhibit projects, installations, and special events such as A Trip Down Market Street Centennial Celebration 1905/2005, co-produced with filmmaker Melinda Stone. She is a film instructor at the University of San Francisco teaching experimental film.

JULIE LINDOW is a writer and editor. She earned an MA in English Literature with an emphasis in cultural theory from San Francisco State University, and worked for ten years in environmental and cultural preservation at the Foundation for Deep Ecology, International Forum on Globalization, and Headlands Center for the Arts. Most importantly, she spent her youth slinging popcorn and candy at the Castro Theatre, where her relationship with San Francisco's vibrant film exhibition community began.

R.A. MCBRIDE fuses photojournalism and fine art techniques, capturing both raw and polished moments. Her large-scale cinematic portraits of America's disappearing urbanscapes have been exhibited at galleries in New York, San Francisco, Chicago, and Phoenix. Her photographs have been featured by Instant City, The Sun, and Bitch, among other publications. In 2007, the San Francisco Arts Commission awarded a grant for her "Left in the Dark" photographic series. McBride received a BA in Photography from Columbia College and is a founding member of Point Blank, an experimental photography group, which has been staging outdoor art happenings in San Francisco since 1998. This is her first book.

GARY MEYER co-founded Landmark Theatres in 1975 with Berkeley's U.C. Theatre. Landmark developed innovative ways to show and promote independent, classic and foreign films, while helping launch the careers of dozens of directors whose films have shaped contemporary cinema. As a consultant projects included feasibility studies and business plans for restoring old theaters. Currently Meyer operates San Francisco's Balboa Theatre and is a co-director of the Telluride Film Festival.

D. SCOT MILLER is a Bay Area writer, visual artist, teacher, and curator. He sits on the board of directors of nocturnes review, and is a regular contributor to The East Bay Express, San Francisco Bay Guardian, Popmatters, and Mosaic Magazine. He is completing a book of poems, his Afro-surreal novel, Knot Frum Hear, and has recently published his old fashioned manifesto simply titled, AfroSurreal.

EDDIE MULLER has written novels, biographies, movie histories, plays, short stories, and films, for which he has received several awards and much acclaim, and has twice been named a San Francisco Literary Laureate. His debut novel, The Distance, earned the "Shamus" Award from the Private Eye Writers of America, and Tab Hunter Confidential: The Making of a Movie Star, which he co-wrote with the actor, was a national bestseller in 2007. Muller has also produced films, but he is probably best known for producing and hosting NOIR CITY: The San Francisco Film Noir Festival. As founder and president of the Film Noir Foundation, he has been instrumental in restoring and preserving several nearly lost film noir classics. In 2011 he will present a month-long series of rare film noir at the Cinematheque Française in Paris.

KATHERINE PETRIN received an MS in Architecture Historic Preservation from Columbia University in New York and has practiced as an Architectural Historian at Architectural Resources Group since 2000. A founding member of Save New Mission, Katherine authored the local landmark legislation for the New Mission Theater. Born on San Francisco's west side, Katherine is an enthusiastic Board Member of the San Francisco Neighborhood Theater Foundation (SFNTF) where she advocates for the city's historic theaters and co-organizes the popular outdoor film series, Film Night, in Washington Square Park, Dolores Park and Union Square, and assists the SFNTF with operating San Francisco's historic Vogue Theatre.

SAM SHARKEY is an exhibitionist with a practiced affinity for shooting and watching film. He is a Bay Area native and graduated from the University of San Francisco with a degree in Media Studies. His professional collision with cinema began with Landmark Theatres in 2004, affording him the time to dabble in the panoply of cinema in San Francisco including projection, stage-management, and freelancing on film shoots in collaboration with Peaches Christ on her stage shows and feature film. Sharkey has also co-produced sing-along variety shows showcasing in multiple venues across the city. Currently he has the honor of being a co-owner/operator of the Red Vic Movie House as well as a protégée in the Cinema Arts program at the Exploratorium.

REBECCA SOLNIT is a San Francisco-based cultural critic and writer. She is the author of many acclaimed works of non-fiction, including the bestselling Wanderlust: A History of Walking, Hollow City: The Siege of San Francisco and the Crisis of American Urbanism, A Field Guide to Getting Lost, and River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West. She contributed to After the Ruins, 1906 and 2006: Rephotographing the San Francisco Earthquake and Fire, and her most recent book is A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster.

MELINDA STONE earned a PhD in Communication from the University of California, San Diego, and is an Associate Professor and Director of Film Studies at the University of San Francisco. Her historical research projects focus on amateur film clubs and modes of film exhibition, particularly in California. She also spends her time making films and directing site-specific film screenings, such as the "California Tour," that feature her as an impresario engaging her audiences in games of chance, prize give-aways, and sing-alongs.

CHI-HUI YANG is the director of the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival, the largest showcase of Asian and Asian American cinema in the nation. His curated works have also been presented internationally, including at the Flaherty Seminar, Seattle and Washington DC International Film Festivals, and the Barcelona Asian Film Festival.