Editor

The San Francisco Film Society announced today that the second annual Cinema by the Bay festival, a highlight of the expanded SFFS Fall Season, will run November 5 - 7. CBTB is a celebration of the passion, innovation and diversity of Bay Area filmmaking, the pioneering spirit of local directors and the incredible depth and breadth of the region's film and media production. The three-day festival will feature the best new work produced in or about the San Francisco Bay Area and provide audiences with an opportunity to focus attention solely on the engaged and eclectic nature of the region's film culture. The call for entries for narrative features, documentary features and short films is open now through August 13.

The Cinema by the Bay festival is an essential element of the Film Society's year-round efforts to highlight Bay Area film culture. SFFS has long celebrated films produced in the creative heart of the West, giving Golden Gate Awards to Bay Area documentaries and shorts, and four years ago inaugurating a dedicated Cinema by the Bay section in the annual San Francisco International Film Festival. The most recent edition of the International featured 24 local narrative and documentary feature and short films, capping a total of 137 local films showcased at SFIFF since the program's inception. With a dedicated fall festival, the Film Society continues the tradition established by Film Arts Foundation, which from 1984 to 2005 programmed the Bay Area's most dynamic showcase of local independent filmmaking with its Festival of Independent Cinema.