In
the
Clear
Stream
of
All
of
It

A film by Ben Grossman

News

SF: A second showing is scheduled at the Roxie. Tues 9/12/23 at 6:45pm

Tickets here. Thank you San Francisco for a BEAUTIFUL premiere.

PRESS: Screen Slate

Article by Elisabeth Nicula. Read here

SF Premiere at the Roxie! Sat 9/9/23 at 1:30pm

The screening will be followed by a Q&A with Ben Grossman and Caitlyn Galloway, moderated by Alexis Madrigal (host of KQED's Forum). Get your tickets!

A disconnected writer, struggling to stay sober, tries to remember why he was attracted to San Francisco when the city was a different place.

Where are the artists?

And the poets?

Where is the city’s notorious rebellious spirit?

He encounters an urban farm and learns that the city he’s looking for is here, under his feet.

Ben Grossman
(Director / Producer)

Ben is a writer and filmmaker living in San Francisco. His short film, Come Full Circle, (48 min), showed at film festivals including The American Indian Film Festival, 2013. In the Clear Stream of All of It is his first feature-length documentary.

Caitlyn Galloway
(Producer)

Caitlyn is an artist and designer based in San Francisco. She was the co-founder of Little City Gardens, a working farm in the city from 2010-2016.

Laura Heberton
(Producer)

Laura is a producer and writer of award-winning, ground-breaking narrative and documentary films with a focus on strong storytelling by directors bringing a unique perspective to the cinematic landscape. Notable features include Josephine Decker’s Thou Wast Mild and Lovely and Butter on the Latch, Robert Machoian and Rodrigo Ojeda-Beck’s God Bless the Child, Kate McLean and Mario Furloni’s Freeland, and Morrisa Maltz’s The Unknown Country. Her projects have received support from SFFILM/Kenneth Rainin Foundation, Gotham Film and Media Institute (formerly IFP), the Sundance Institute, US in Progress Poland, Austin Film Society, Rotterdam’s Cinemart and Rooftop Films. She is a Cannes Producing Fellow and a founding member of Video Consortium’s Pittsburgh chapter.

Iva Radivojevic
(Editor)

Iva is a Brooklyn and Lesbos based filmmaker, writer, editor who spent her early years in Yugoslavia and Cyprus. Her films have screened at NYFF, SXSW, Rotterdam IFF, HotDocs, Museum of Modern Art (NYC), PBS, New York Times Op-Docs. She is the recipient of the 2017 Sundance Art of Non-Fiction Fellowship, 2015 Guggenheim Fellowship, 2011, 2012 and 2017, Princess Grace Special Project Award and Film Fellowship and was named one of 25 New Faces of Independent Film by Filmmaker Magazine. Her most recent film, Aleph, is inspired by Jorge Luis Borges and premiered at New Directors/New Films in 2021.

David Barker
(Consulting Editor)

David is a screenwriter, editor and director. He co-wrote and edited Petra Costa’s The Edge of Democracy, which premiered at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for an Academy Award, and edited Shirley, directed by Josephine Decker, which premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. He co-wrote and edited the Nepali fiction film White Sun, directed by Deepak Rauniyar, which premiered at the 2016 Venice Film Festival, won numerous international awards, and was Nepal’s entry to the Academy Awards. His revisionist thriller Daylight (2010) was a ‘Critic’s Pick’ in both The New York Times and The New York Post on its release, and an earlier feature Afraid of Everything (1999) premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and was called “a miracle of independent filmmaking” (The New York Post). David studied filmmaking with Jean-Pierre Gorin and Babette Mangolte, and philosophy with Giorgio Agamben and Jacques Rancière.

David Coulter
(Composer)

David is an English-born multidisciplinary artist, musician, composer, director, and educator based in the Bay Area since 2015. Since the 80s, David Coulter has composed music, directed shows, produced records and played his musical saw and other assorted weird and less weird instruments in studios, theatres and on stages around the world with the likes of The Pogues, Tom Waits, Kronos Quartet, Vivian Stanshall, Yoko Ono, Robert Wilson, Beck, Marianne Faithfull, Jarvis Cocker, Richard Hawley, Hal Willner, Arthur H, Brigitte Fontaine, Damon Albarn, Gorillaz. Coulter curates and directs multi-artist events. Credits include Monkey: Journey to the West (Gorillaz and Chen Shi-Zheng), Double Fantasy Live, Rain Dogs Revisited, Discreet + Oblique: The Music of Brian Eno, Twisted Christmas, In Dreams: David Lynch Revisited, Improbable’s The Eldership Project, and An Anatomy Act. His project, Jim Jarmusch Revisited, premiered at Philharmonie de Paris and went on to sell out London’s Barbican Theatre. His film credits include contributions to Stuart Staples’ original scores for Claire Denis’ Let the Sun Shine In (2017) and High Life (2018).

Robert Arnold
(Colorist)

Robert has been doing color grading and video finishing work for independent documentary and narrative filmmakers for over a decade out of his facility in San Francisco. His work as colorist can be seen in such films as My Name is Andrea (2022), Stray (2020), Freeland (2020), The Seer and the Unseen (2019), and The Gospel of Eureka (2018), among many others. His own films include the narrative feature The Exchange (2014), and a feature documentary, The Key of G (2007), which aired nationally on PBS.

Featured Poets

Cecilia Vicuña
Simon Ortiz
Lew Welch

Special Thanks

Patrice Strahan
Peter Woods

Website & poster designed by Companion—Platform

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In 2013, Ben Grossman made a short film, Come Full Circle, about the 1969 Indians of All Tribes takeover of Alcatraz Island. That film, and the lasting friendships he formed with local American Indian activists, forever changed his understanding of the importance of taking care of the earth. Shortly after, he was introduced to Little City Gardens, a farm in San Francisco. He was blown away. This farm was a vibrant, living embodiment of the values he had been awakened to. It was a place of creativity and collaboration. These people, through their farming, were true artists. He saw a film immediately. Embedded in this place, in the middle of the city, was a potent reverence for land and a call to think differently about how we interact with it. He knew nothing about farming; he's always been a city person. This tucked away place in the city changed his perspective. This place gave him the same feelings that he got from a moving piece of writing or a powerful poem.

Ben's aim for In the Clear Stream of All of It has been to bring audiences to this place, allowing others to experience its vitality. He saw this from the beginning as a story that would most truthfully be told as a cinematic portrait rather than as a journalistic documentary. He wanted to give beauty a chance to speak loudly. He also wanted to portray this farm as part of the city. This farm was a city place.​

The film features work, with blessing, by acclaimed Indigenous poet Simon Ortiz and Chilean-born artist Cecilia Vicuña, both of whom implore us to imagine ourselves as part of a large, vital earth. To honor and amplify Indigenous voices in this film is deliberate. The imperative to find connection to the land underneath us originates in Indigenous practice and belief. Cecilia Vicuña graciously offered a voice recording of her poem. The film, including its title, also features poetry by Lew Welch, with many thanks to City Lights Books.

The farm closed in 2016 after losing access to its land. It had a huge presence in its community and beyond. While it existed, it offered Ben and countless others new ways of thinking about what living in the city can mean. It was a place with a pulse, and it reminded us where we might look for connection and meaning. We hope more people can see land around them, wherever they are, as a friend.​

Contact

For press inquiries or to help organize a screening, please reach out to: intheclearstreamfilm@gmail.com