DocFest: The Secret Song & parklunchgod

Join us for post-screening Q&A with director Samantha Campbell and the crew!

The Secret Song* chronicles the final months of Doug Goodkin’s fabled 45-year career teaching music to children in San Francisco. Goodkin’s time-tested methods are thrown into disarray as the pandemic forces schools into “distance” learning, and a music program that always prioritized singing and learning “through the ear, not through the eye” has to adapt to an online format. The film shows the dynamism and adaptability that all teachers find and bring forth in the classroom, and how a sense of belonging helps us surmount hardships and adversity.

*Followed by parklunchgod, a short about an alien who explores San Francisco’s Privately Owned Public Spaces and the hidden power structures that exist within them (dir. by Julia Mendoza Friedman).

Presented as part of San Francisco Documentary Festival 2023.