Indiefest is back for 2026, and a team of burlesque beauties will 'Bare to be Stupid’ with Indiefest's West Coast premiere of the ‘Weird Al’-themed burlesque documentary Tight & Nerdy Saturday night.  

San Francisco Indiefest 2026 kicked off Thursday night, with a screening of that documentary on the SF origins of SantaCon. If you missed it, it’s available as video on demand on the Indiefest website. Same goes for tonight’s screening of Bring the Ruckus: The Residents and Wu-Tang Clan playing at The Roxie (6:15), so you’ve got no excuse for missing any of what will surely be a kick-ass 2026 Indiefest (February 5-12).

But there’s a Saturday night screening that really slapped our polka face. You may recall back in early 2023 when an SF-based burlesque group was running a Kickstarter to make a documentary about their ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic-themed burlesque troupe. Welp, they actually raised their $115,000 and made the damned thing, and now the documentary Tight & Nerdy will have its West Coast premiere Saturday night at The Roxie at 8:30 pm.

“Our biggest hurdle was music licensing,” producer Jeff Nucera (producer of MTV’s The Osbournes and Showtime’s Gigolos) tells SFist. “Weird Al and his team were extremely supportive, but Al doesn’t fully control his parodies. So we had to reach out to the original writers of those songs to get permission to use them.”  

“But now, we are thrilled beyond belief to be able to hold our West Coast Premiere in San Francisco at the 28th San Francisco Independent Film Festival,” he adds. “Not only did the Tight & Nerdy troupe start many years ago in the SF Bay area at the Hubba Hubba Revue, but our very first shoot for the documentary took place in San Francisco in 2016. Bringing this film back to where it all started is a dream come true.”  

There will be some extra live-action treats for the audience Saturday night too. Tight & Nerdy members Mistress Marla Spanx and Pearl E. Gates will be performing some onstage numbers that do not appear in the film, in a set emceed by troupe members Odessa Lil and Pickles Kintaro. Plus there will be a Q&A with the troupe and the filmmakers after the show.

And yes, of course they have met ‘Weird Al’ and he has seen them perform.

“The ‘core four’ members of the troupe all met Weird Al at different points throughout the years since we formed,” troupe member Odessa Lil tells us. “I snuck in undercover as a 501st [Jedi] member to one of his shows 11 years ago. I got to ‘guard’ him during the signing since I was dressed in a friend's Imperial Guard uniform, and eventually I got to talk to him. I said, ‘I'm in your burlesque troupe!’ and he looked confused for a second, then remembered that he knew about us already.”

“Meeting Weird Al was beyond anything I ever could have imagined, and meeting him with my troupe mates made it all the more meaningful,” she adds. “ He's exactly the kind and attentive guy he seems like he would be. He's a vegan, you know.”

“Al is always so gracious and so wonderful,” says troupe member Pickles Kintaro. “He is just the kindest whenever I see him. He looks at me. He knows he recognizes me. And then I go, ‘Pickles,’ and then he goes, ‘Oh my God, Pickles. How are you?’ and I get a great big Weird Al hug. It's the sweetest thing ever.”

Saturday’s screening is sure to be packed with Hawaiian shirts and maybe even an accordion or two on the premises, and marks the culmination of years of efforts.

“I hope this documentary speaks to folks of all ages and genders,” Odessa Lil adds. “The greatest thing about modern burlesque is its inclusivity and opportunity for creative empowerment. We're weird — and we're middle-aged women who take their clothes off to Weird Al's music. But what we're saying is, you will find your people like we have.”

Tight & Nerdy will play Saturday night, February 7 at 8:30 pm at the Roxie Theater (3117 16th Street) Tickets here

Related: SF-Based 'Weird Al' Yankovic-Themed Burlesque Group Is Making a Documentary, Will ‘Bare To Be Stupid’ [SFist]

Images courtesy ‘Tight & Nerdy’

The 25th annual SF Independent Film Festival better known as IndieFest is now rocking at the Roxie, plus online until February 12, with 95 independent films including documentaries about Moby and Negativland.

Though COVID-19 has been relentlessly canceling Bay Area events for nearly three whole years now, the SF Independent Film Festival known as IndieFest has only had to cancel screenings one year (2021), thanks to quirks in the calendar and up-and-downs in case counts. And IndieFest was still held in 2021, but was online-only, and has kept that online streaming component in place for its 2022 in-person return, and now in 2023, for its 25th annual IndieFest .

While Opening Night already passed Thursday evening, in-person screenings continue at the Roxie through Thursday, February 9.  Online screenings will remain available for streaming through Sunday, February 12. BrokeAssStuart.com has a detailed rundown of IndieFest screenings, and we'll call out a few more highlights.

These include EDM rocker Moby’s directorial debut, Punk Rock Vegan Movie (February 4, trailer below), exploring the intersection of punk music and animal rights, and featuring  interviews with Dave Navarro, Ian Mackaye, and HR from Bad Brains. Bay Area music lovers will also want to circle Monday’s screening of the Negativland documentary Stand by For Failure (February 6).

In terms of features, Berkeleyside is raving about the horror-comedy Poundcake (February 8, trailer below). The closing night screening is the subversive high school comedy Therapy Dogs (February 9), and the festival series Iranian Women Revolt highlights Iranian women in cinema.

And while it’s technically after the festival’s close, longtime IndieFest-ers will squeal with delight that The Anti-Valentine's Day '80s Power Ballad Sing-A-Long Show (February 14) will return to the Roxie with 80s hair-metal band videos.

The 25th annual Indiefest runs through February 9 (through February 12 online)  at the Roxie Theatre. Tickets and schedule here

Related: Help the Roxie Choose What Movie to Screen For Its Reopening Weekend [SFist]

Image: Andrew D. via Yelp

Now in its 24th year, SF IndieFest recently announced its 2022 lineup of 42 short and 26 feature films — cinema collected from ten counties — that will show both in-person at the Roxie Theater and online from February 3rd to the 13th.

Though San Francisco's COVID case rate remains high, and recently hit a per-capita rate higher than any other county in the Bay Area, Mayor Breed has made it clear she won’t order additional public health restrictions — “I've said in the past, this is about learning to live with this virus.”

And in the case of some events, this means they are pressing forward as planned in the coming weeks.

For SF IndieFest, this means the film festival should see its 24th iteration come to the Roxie Theater (and online) for ten days starting February 3rd.

“Once again, SF IndieFest will bring the freshest new independent films from around the world to San Francisco,” reads a statement from organizers of the independent film festival. “This year’s festival includes 42 short and 26 feature films from 10 countries.”

In addition to the “virtual festival”— which can be accessed by either a pass (that gives you access to the entire festival's on-screen catalog) or tickets to individual viewings — 20 live presentations will take place at the Roxie. But to contend with the current COVID-19 surge, the theater is currently limiting attendance to 50% of its normal capacity and requires both a mask and proof of vaccination for admission; advance tickets are recommended to guarantee a seat inside the theater come showtime.

A few of this year's highlights include the festival’s centerpiece film, All My Friends Hate Me, which focuses on a birthday-party college reunion of now thirtysomethings that delves into one man’s feelings of inadequacy and paranoia; The Sleeping Negro, directed by Skinner Myers, pedestals a series of racially charged incidents that a young Black man must navigate in order to find his own humanity; Catch The Fair One promises a rollercoaster of on-screen events as Native American boxer Kaylee trains to go undercover in a sex trafficking operation to seek revenge against the men who kidnapped her sister.

To see SF IndieFest’s entire catalog, including the festival's live schedule at the Roxie Theatre and how to buy individual tickets and festival passes, visit sfindiefest2022.eventive.org; click here to search through SF IndieFest’s film guide to find and discover certain titles.

Related: BottleRock Announces 2022 Lineup With Metallica and Pink for Memorial Day Weekend, Tickets On Sale Tuesday

Photo: Screenshot from "All My Friends Hate Me"

The Witch - Alamo Drafhouse and the AMC Theaters

The Witch is a tough sell. While it has both the creepiest and most beautiful imagery I've seen in a horror movie in many years, it's also pretty slow, and filled with dialogue I could only understand maybe half the time. This isn't the kind of movie most horror fans are going to flock to.

The story centers on a family of 17th century Puritans in New England who are banished from their village and forced to live alone on their own farm, right outside an imposing woods. When their newborn baby disappears right before the eyes of eldest daughter, Thomasin (Anya Taylor-Joy), the logical conclusion is he was kidnapped by a witch.

The film takes place several years before any of the Salem Witch Trials took place, and director Robert Eggers presents the idea of witchcraft as it was viewed by those early Puritan settlers. To them, witches were as real as the elements, and as real as God. Evil was not to be doubted. What was to be doubted was the innocence of those accused of it.

What happens to the family is like a mini-version of the later witch trials, as accusations are tossed around, and the family begins to turn on each other, convinced the real witch is among them. And therein lies the real horror: The rejection of family and the safety of home.

Much of the dialogue in the film is taken from actual journals and writings from the era. This, along with impeccable costuming, and the dead on-look of a sad and dilapidated farmstead, gives the film some admirable authenticity. But combining that dialogue and its unfamiliar sentence structure with the thick English accents of the cast meant I spent a lot of the movie wishing it had a subtitle option. (This will definitely be getting a second viewing come its video release.)

If we are to take the presentation of the witch in the movie to be as real as the characters believe it to be, (and the movie does leave this a bit ambiguous), then we might also have to accept that said witches were evil, and the subsequent witch trials were completely justified. On the other hand, to see the abject misery the women in this family are subjected to, well, who the hell wouldn't want to leave all that to go dance naked in the woods and fly across the sky on a broomstick?

Race - Everywhere

Sports biopic stars Stephen James as Jesse Owens, the black Olympian who won four gold medals during the 1936 Olympics, which were held in Germany at the height of Hitler's reign. Take THAT "Aryan supremacy"! Jason Sudekis co-stars as his college coach, Larry Snyder.

Risen - Everywhere

Jesus rises a little early in the cinemas this year in this drama starring Joseph Fiennes as skeptical Centurion Clavius, sent by Pontius Pilate to search for the missing body of Jesus and investigate the so-called resurrection of a Jewish messiah. Think of it as Law & Order: Holy Land.

Touched With Fire - AMC Van Ness

Drama stars Katie Holmes and Luke Kirby as two bipolar poets who meet in a mental health facility where they are both undergoing treatment. They fall in love and must figure how and if they can balance a relationship, their own creativity, and their illnesses, or if they will ultimately have to make some sacrifices.

SF IndieFest - Roxie and Alamo Drafthouse

IndieFest continues through February 25th with enough docs, pseudo-docs, dramas, horror, and foreign flicks to keep any cinephile pretty occupied. Check out the full schedule here.

Documentaries are always a strong point of IndieFest's programming but this year's leader of the pack is clearly Worst in Show. The brisk, hour-long film goes behind the scenes of California's ugly dog competition circuit, that culminates in the extremely popular "World's Ugliest Dog Contest" held annually at Petaluma's Sonoma Marin Fair.

The film's central drama is the rivalry between the 2009 winner, Pabst, a boxer mutt with a charming underbite, and 2002 champ Rascal, a wiry pipsqueak of a thing with a record winning streak, leading up to last summer's big contest.

But much like Christopher Guest's 2000 mockumentary Best in Show, local filmmakers John Beck and Don Lewis clearly understand that the real stars of the show are the dog's owners as much as their uncomely pooches.

"When the winner is announced ever year that dog's image goes around the world but no one ever talks about the owners," explains Beck, on the phone, who now lives in Benecia but used to cover the main contest as a reporter for the Petaluma Press Democrat.