We are pleased to present the screening of  Griff, and Keelan Williams, new documentary "Tell Them We Were Here", a series of intersecting, beautifully photographed studio visits and conversations annotated with archival and contemporary images highlighting the work of eight groundbreaking Bay Area artists. Throughout the documentary, we see how these artists have engaged with the legacies of Bay Area activism and social consciousness.

Genre: Documentary
Director: Keelan Williams, Griff Williams
Producer: Griff Williams, Keelan Williams
Runtime: 1h 28m

View Trailer

Artists in conversation : Sadie Barnette, Amy Franceschini (Futurefarmers), Jim Goldberg, Tucker Nichols, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Alicia McCarthy, Nigel Poor (Ear Hustle), and Michael Swaine.

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About the Film

The worldview of the new documentary “Tell Them We Were Here,” which profiles eight current Bay Area artists whose work over the decades has not only made an impact but also helped inform the Bay Area’s artistic identity, is expressed by an early voice-over in the film: “Artists in the Bay Area are more devoted to a ‘life’ in arts rather than a ‘career’ in arts.”

The inventive and informative film by artist and Gallery 16 founder Griff Williams and filmmaker Keelan Williams made its world premiere in the virtual cinema of the Berkeley Art Museum’s Pacific Film Archive on Friday, May 7. It also features local curators from BAMPFA, Oakland Museum and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art as well as other observers and artists such as filmmaker Eleanor Coppola and Matt Gonzalez, chief attorney of the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office who is also an artist.

The film begins with Amy Franceschini, who created the first moving image on the internet and designed Twitter’s logo. (You can’t get more Bay Area than that.) But her lasting work might be her revival of “victory gardens,” the World War II-era community gardens push on the home front. Through her organization Futurefarmers, which she describes as “an international group of artists, activists, researchers, farmers and architects who work together to propose alternatives to the social, political and environmental organization of space,” she uses art as a window into reimagining urban design.

Then there’s Sadie Barnette, whose social justice-fueled art grew out of the FBI surveillance files of her Black Panther father, Rodney Barnette. Ironically, Sadie in some ways got to know her father better through the FBI’s 500-page surveillance file. So while her work is rooted in history, she says she likes to tell “History with a big H at the family level.”

The documentary concludes with Alicia McCarthy, a disciple of the Mission School of graffiti and street art, and her colorful murals in the Tenderloin and elsewhere.

The other artists portrayed are Jim Goldberg, whose mesmerizing photography has juxtaposed the rich and the poor; Tucker Nichols, an artist and sculptor whose “mail art” makes extensive use of the post office; multimedia artist Lynn Hershman Leeson, a pioneer in incorporating technology into a body of work that addresses surveillance, identity and artificial intelligence; Nigel Poor, whose work with inmates at San Quentin State Prison led to the first prison-produced podcast, “Ear Hustle”; and Michael Swaine, an artist and free thinker who might be best known for pushing a sewing machine around disadvantaged neighborhoods and mending clothes for free.

About the artists

Griff Williams is an American painter, publisher, filmmaker and gallerist. His work has been exhibited in galleries and museums including the San Diego Museum of Art, Orange County Museum of Art, the Crocker Art Museum, and the San Jose Museum of Art. His work has been reviewed in Art in America, Flash Art, Frieze, Artnews, SFAQ and others.

Williams earned his BFA from the University of Montana, Missoula in 1984 and his MFA The San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco in 1993. In 1993, he founded Gallery 16 and the pioneering fine art printmaking workshop Urban Digital Color in San Francisco. He has curated over 300 exhibitions and has worked with hundreds of artists including Lynn Hershman Leeson, William Kentridge, Jim Isermann, bell hooks, Rex Ray, Margaret Kilgallen, Mark Grotjahn, Paul Sietsema, Arturo Herrera, Michelle Grabner, and Ari Marcopoulos.

Williams has designed and published dozens of acclaimed books with the Gallery 16 Editions imprint including Los Quatro Reinas by Barry Gifford and David Perry, Bill by Bill Berkson and Colter Jacobsen, The Boy Who Would Be Tsar by Prince Andrew Romanoff. His recent books include The Gay Seventies: Hal Fischer is the first monograph to feature the complete collection of works Hal Fischer produced in San Francisco’s Haight and Castro neighborhoods in the 1970’s. His book on the life and artwork of the late San Francisco artist Rex Ray including essays by Rebecca Solnit and Christian Frock was published by Chronicle Books in 2020.

In 2021, Williams and his son Keelan made a feature film, Tell Them We Were Here, a documentary about eight of artists in the San Francisco Bay Area. The film was included in film festivals around the world including Doxa, On Art Poland, Moments Spain and Docfest. The San Francisco Chronicle stated “the Williamses see art as more than the exclusive domain of museums, galleries and collections, but as an essential component of a healthy society-something that can make communities not just more beautiful, but more functional.”

Williams was nominated for the SECA Award from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 2000 and The Louis Comfort Tiffany Award in 2017. Williams has been an instructor at the California College of the Arts, the San Francisco Art Institute and Mills College.
Public collections of Williams' work include the Crocker Museum, Stanford Hospital, Neiman Marcus Collection, Progressive Insurance, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive.

The artist lives and works in Sonoma, California. 

gallery16.com

griffwilliams.com

Keelan Williams, born and raised in the Bay Area, is a filmmaker based in Los Angeles, California. He graduated from Loyola Marymount’s School of Film and Television Production. Williams has directed, produced, shot, and edited short films, documentaries, concert films, and music videos.

His first short film, Everything Old Is New Again, was an Official Selection at The Big Sky Documentary Film Festival and was nominated for Best Documentary at Film Outside the Frame. Tell Them We Were Here is his first feature length documentary.

keelantw.com