Homebase: A Spotlight on Bay Area Talent

Rosa Morales is the Associate Manager of Narrative Film with the SFFILM Makers team. Inspired by a lifelong passion for storytelling, she has built her career in supporting artist development programs that uplift voices of filmmakers from under-represented communities. She is a graduate of UC Berkeley with a focus in Media and Latinx Studies and was a member of the 2019 Industry Academy with Film at Lincoln Center. Born and raised in San Francisco, she is committed to cultivating and celebrating the bountiful art community in the Bay Area and beyond.

Adam Bergeron and wife Jaimi Holker own CinemaSF, a movie theater management company focusing on classic theaters in the Bay Area. They operate the Balboa and Vogue Theaters, will be reopening the 4 Star Theater this year, and will operate the Park Theater in Lafayette beginning in 2023. Adam and Jaimi have lived in San Francisco for 25 years; They have raised two kids and two dogs in the city they love. Adam loves movies, loves the Bay Area movie community, and hopes we can keep all the old theaters open and vibrant.

Patricia has always had a hard time writing bios, which was part of her inspiration for writing Hannah’s Biography. After over a decade working in architecture and energy engineering, she made the intrepid leap to sitting alone in a room thinking up stories in front of a blank computer screen. She had the opportunity to bring one of these stories to life in the short film Hannah’s Biography with the support of the SFFILM Filmhouse Residency and hopes to have many more opportunities to do so.

Morgan Mathews is a writer-director born in Atlanta, GA, and based in the East Bay. His current works span across narrative and non-fiction filmmaking, while leaving room to bridge the two together. Creating in different genres and formats, Morgan’s storytelling approach stems from an obsession with nuance and finding the range of interiority through Black life across family dynamics, classism, and subculture experiences. While working at a tech company in 2019, Morgan co-wrote and directed a half-hour dramedy series concept, Bit., which was inspired by the lived experiences of his partners at Chocolate Chip Media, and is currently in a development agreement. Over the past two years, Morgan has been an artist-in-residence at SFFILM’s FilmHouse for his feature length film inspired by Half-Day, as well as the documentary Black Butterflies that explores the subculture of durags and its implication as a self-care practice for Black men across the world.

Lex Sloan is the Executive Director at the Roxie Theater in San Francisco. She graduated with an MFA in Cinema from San Francisco State University and a BA in Social Change Media from Western Washington University. Sloan has a passion for exhibition and distribution previously working with Frameline Film Festival and the Green Film Festival. She is also an accomplished filmmaker with a passion for social justice and equity, producing the award-winning web series Dyke Central and many short films as well as soon to be released Beakman & Jok. Sloan is a devoted member LGBTQ filmmaking community and is committed to ensuring that queer history is preserved and shared through the power of cinema.

Débora Souza Silva is a documentary filmmaker whose work examines systemic racism and inequality. Her work has been featured in the New York Times, and on PBS, BBC, Reveal News, KQED, and Fusion. She is a recipient of the Les Payne Founder’s Award from the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) and the NYT Institute Fellowship. She started her career as a TV reporter in Brazil before moving to California to pursue a Master’s in Journalism at UC Berkeley. In 2016, Silva was awarded a fellowship with the Center for Investigative Reporting; in 2018, she was a filmmaker in residence at SFFILM.