HE’S MADE 11 FILMS SET IN S.F. — AND IS ONE OF THE CITY’S BEST UNKNOWN DIRECTORS
S.F. filmmaker JP Allen gets rare big-screen showcase in the Bay Area
Sep 21, 2026
It’s long past time for JP Allen to be acknowledged as one of the city’s very best filmmakers.
Over the course of 11 films — most of them shot in San Francisco — Allen has produced a body of work that is understated yet passionate, focused on human relationships at their most intense. Imagine Ingmar Bergman’s movies, but as skewed through a West Coast sense of humor and sensibility.
These films don’t just deserve to be known. They deserve to be lauded, argued over and, someday, studied. This fall, three different venues are stepping up to celebrate Allen on the 25th anniversary of his first film, “Coffee and Language.”
The Roxie Theater in San Francisco plans to screen Allen’s latest, “Memorizing Alison” (2025), about a man recovering from the hit-and-run death of his girlfriend on Sept. 28. The next day, the Rafael Film Center in Marin will be showing “The Filmmaker” (2018), in which a man meets a troubled young woman who might be his daughter.
JP Allen is the unidentified man in “Centaur.”
The series concludes Oct. 5, with “Coffee and Language” at the Rialto Elmwood Theater in Berkeley. The filmmaker is slated to appear at each event for post-screening Q&As with the audience.
Born in 1960, Allen was raised in the country in North Texas and moved to Los Angeles for film school in 1982. Five years later, he traveled up to San Francisco and fell in love with the city’s cultural and visual beauty. “I felt that I’d found my home as well as the landscape of my imagination,” he said.
For those unfamiliar with Allen’s work, here are six things to know — and notice — in order to fully appreciate his work:
1. Feelings vs. rationality. The notion that life must be felt is a recurring idea in Allen’s work, including in “Memorizing Alison.” Curiously, Allen, who often appears in his own films, usually plays the guy trying to think his way out of feeling something.
2. He faces uncomfortable truths. As with Bergman’s characters, Allen’s can be surprisingly cruel to each other. He has an artist’s willingness to face the ugly truth about people and relationships.
3. Nothing can be taken back. As Allen has gotten older, his films have expressed a deepening sense of the irrevocable. “The Filmmaker,” one of my favorites of his movies, is especially profound in this regard. It has an Olympian vision of life as something grand, and yet it also leaves you with a feeling of loss, of opportunities that can never be regained.
4. Restraint is his strength. When Allen makes an emotional point, he moves on. That’s partly why most of his films are under 90 minutes. Whether it’s a feeling, a plot point or a character revelation, Allen shows what he has to show, and he gets out.
5. He has a gift for story. Alas, most independent filmmakers don’t have the knack for storytelling. They create characters and situations, but they can’t find a compelling narrative. Allen is one of the rare art film directors whose movies make you think, “I wonder what’s going to happen next.”
JP Allen wrote, directed and stars in "Centaur,"
about a man making a videotape about his planned revenge murder
against the drunk driver who killed his girlfriend
6. An eye for San Francisco. Allen isn’t interested in postcard views. He finds the city where actual people live. He likes Golden Gate Park, where much of his 2021 film “The Girl in Golden Gate Park” takes place, but in another movie he shows us the city as seen from the top of the Stockton Tunnel. In another, he shows us the outside of the Pinecrest Diner on Geary Street on a rainy day. Whatever love he has for San Francisco isn’t grounded in wishful thinking. Still, Allen’s gaze lends the city a faint air of enchantment.
The three screenings of Allen’s films are rare chances to see his movies on the big screen with an audience. But for those who can’t make it to those screenings or just want to see more, you should know that nine of his films are available to stream on Prime Video.
Of the films I have not yet mentioned, the ones I’d see first are “Gambling” (2004), “Sex and Imagining” (2009) and “Centaur” (2011). But if you take up this journey, I expect you’ll find that every film JP Allen is worth watching.
Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle
