S.F.'s 22-year-old free movie tradition has been canceled

San Francisco Chronicle​

04-05-2025

Sundown Cinema, a decades-old outdoor film series, has been canceled this year due to the ongoing financial struggles of its organizer, the San Francisco Parks Alliance.
Layoffs and other difficulties have plagued the nonprofit organization for months, prompting them to pull the plug on the free outdoor screenings just ahead of its usual summer season. The annual event series has been held at parks around the city since 2003.
'We do not currently have staff on board to produce Sundown Cinema,' SF Parks Alliance CEO Robert Ogilvie told the Chronicle. 'For us to be able to afford to have the staff to do it, we would have to have the right level of funding.'
Sundown Cinema programming typically begins in May, running through the early fall. Last year's lineup featured seven screenings including 'Labyrinth' (1986) at Glen Park, 'Selena' (1997) at Dolores Park and a special cut of Bay Area archivist Rick Prelinger's 'Lost Landscapes of SF' (2024) and at Duboce Park. It was created by the San Francisco Neighborhood Theatre Foundation in 2003 under the name Film Night in the Park, and the organization joined forces with the alliance in 2019 to rebrand and broaden its audience.
Each event costs around $40,000 to produce, according to Ogilvie, who has been serving as CEO of the organization for two months. He said that the SF Parks Alliance used to receive more grant funding from the city, which helped offset costs.
'That has dried up as the city struggles with its own budget deficit,' Ogilvie said, adding that they also used to have around five or six activation staff on hand that helped out with Sundown Cinema, among other events.
'As of the end of April we do not have any,' he added.
A total of eight staff members were let go at the end of last year, and another six were laid off last month, as a result of the nonprofit's financial woes, leaving the organization with only 13 paid employees, four of whom work part-time.
The SF Parks Alliance serves as a fiscal sponsor, helping to fund projects and events at parks so that these small groups, such as the Buena Vista Neighborhood Association and North Beach parks group, don't need to hire accounting staff or obtain nonprofit status on their own.
A recent Chronicle report found that the organization has been struggling to reimburse several community organizations that it helps to fund, which has led it to divert funds from staffing to better support these partners.
Just last week, the San Francisco Film Festival partnered with the SF Parks Alliance for a packed pre-season screening of 'The Fog' (1980) at the grassy Civil War Parade Ground as part of the San Francisco International Film Festival.
'Despite the fact that it was April, hundreds of people showed up and celebrated being in the park together until late in the night,' SFFilm's Executive Director, Anne Lai, told the Chronicle. 'So it's particularly sad to learn of the cancellation of the rest of this year's series. … We wish the leadership team much fortitude with hopes that the series will return next year.'
Noise Pop has also partnered with the SF Parks Alliance to promote Sundown Cinema via advertising on DoTheBay. Representatives confirmed that the event platform's partnership with the series ended last year.
While it's unclear if any of Sundown Cinema's previous sponsors plan to take the reigns of the beloved tradition, Ogilvie hopes that this is just a temporary setback for the SF Parks Alliance, and said they are viewing it as a pause with the hope that they can bring it back for future seasons with enough fundraising.
'I am absolutely hoping to be able to resume,' he said. 'I came here to try to get this organization on a sounder financial footing so that we can do all the great things that we have done for San Francisco.'
Loyal attendees of the San Francisco film series can get one last fix at the previously announced June 7 screening of 'Wicked' during the Yerba Buena Gardens Festival, which is set to proceed as planned, without the alliance's help.