Essential SF

Julie Charles is SFMOMA’s Deborah and Kenneth Novack Director of Education in the museum’s Education Department. She serves as the leader for all of SFMOMA’s educational programming, which includes the museum’s robust offerings for school communities and educators. Since 2006, Julie has designed and led programs for various audiences, including families, youth, teens, students, and teachers. Julie joined SFMOMA in 1997 as the Manager of Docent Programs.

Julie has taught art history at multiple Bay Area museums, including the Fine Arts Museums of California, the Contemporary Jewish Museum, the Asian Art Museum, and the San Jose Museum of Art, and at universities, such as the Academy of Art University and UC Berkeley Extension. Julie earned both her BA (University of California, Los Angeles) and her MA (American University, Washington, DC) in Art History and in 2012 was a graduate of the Getty Leadership’s Next Gen program.

Shaun Farley attended Binghamton University in New York, where he doubled in History and Anthropology before realizing sound was where his interests really lay. He then attended Emerson College in Boston, where he earned a Master’s in Visual and Media Arts and was drawn to sound for film and television. His audio post career began in 2004 at WGBH in Boston, carried him to the Washington, DC area, and ultimately led to Skywalker Sound in 2014. Throughout his career, he has been a passionate advocate for the impact sound can have in storytelling. This has led to speaking engagements at AES conventions and The Smithsonian, as well as editorial leadership with the website DesigningSound.org. Shaun continues to work with Skywalker, and regularly advises emerging filmmakers on ways they can take advantage of sound in their films.

Founded in 1977, Frameline is a San Francisco-based nonprofit media arts organization dedicated to the development, exhibition, distribution, and preservation of LGBTQ+ cinema and independent queer media. Frameline’s mission is to change the world through the power of queer cinema. As a media arts nonprofit, Frameline’s programs do just that by connecting filmmakers and audiences in the Bay Area and around the world through the funding, distribution, restoration, and amplification of queer films.

Accepting on behalf of the organization, Allegra Madsen is the current Executive Director of Frameline. She holds an MA in Curating from California College of the Arts and rose through Frameline’s own curatorial ranks, serving as Director of Programming before becoming Executive Director. Under her leadership, Frameline has built industry initiatives connecting LGBTQ+ filmmakers, programmers, and distributors to the resources essential for sustainable careers in film. She approaches this work with a clear conviction: Queer cinema functions as infrastructure and generative friction, not cultural amenity. That thesis shapes both her programming and public voice alike.

The Lee Neighborhood Theatres started in 1992 with the opening of the 4 Star Theatre in the Richmond District in San Francisco. The Presidio Theatre followed in 2004 and Marina Theatre opened in 2008. Frank Lee and his wife Lida have specialized in first-run bookings featuring Asian films during the early ‘90s with an emphasis in films from Hong Kong and Mainland China.

Bay Area audiences were introduced to these films on a traditional open-ended run at the 4 Star. Additionally, an annual New Asian Film Series was organized and continued for eight years featuring hard-to-find Asian films from the Far East. Currently, the Presidio and Marina Theatres on Chestnut Street primarily screen current Hollywood film releases and independent films.

Jeff Root is an SF Bay Area projectionist and artist who grew up outside of Rochester, NY, and began working with physical film at a very young age in the 1970s. His father worked at Kodak, which had a media lending library, and would bring home super 8 cameras, film, and projectors to a very image-curious ‘tween. Jeff would shoot and edit films using kids from the neighborhood as actors, and then screen these films in a makeshift theatre in the attic of his home.

His first projection job was at The Little Theatre in Rochester, and soon after, he became a part-time projectionist at the Dryden Theatre at the George Eastman Museum. It was here where he first learned how to handle and screen archival film, using two projectors with changeovers. This skill came in handy when he moved to San Francisco in 2002 without a real plan, and happened to land a job at the Castro Theatre. The challenge of the position along with the wide array of programming and unpredictable needs from clients kept the job interesting and fresh. During times of sparse programming at the Castro, or during their renovations, he would work as a freelance projectionist for area film festivals and events. Wherever he’s projecting, Jeff’s love of film is steadfast and has influenced nearly all of his creative endeavors.