Welcome to Summer/Fall 2026!

BFA Photography, Film Studies Minor, Ohio University
MFA Film, San Francisco Art Institute
PhD Media & Communications, European Graduate School

Dr. Denah Johnston is an experimental filmmaker, curator and writer who has been teaching Film History and Studies since 2008. Denah has been at CCSF since 2015 and has taught American Cinema (CINE 18), Film History sequence (CINE 20A/20B/20C), Introduction to Film Studies (CINE 21),  The Films of Alfred Hitchcock (CINE 23A), Exploring Film Noir (CINE 23B), Cult Cinema (CINE 23C), Film Festival (CINE 40), Film/Video Work Experience (CINE 170) and Women and Film (WGST 10). Denah also works with students and faculty to organize the annual City Shorts Student Film Festival in spring and Festival of the Moving Image in fall. 

TEACHING PHILOSOPHY

As a teacher I challenge students to discover and articulate their individual responses to artist's works rather than buying into prefabricated attitudes and opinions about media.

I advocate for giving ourselves to a film’s world and ideas, its links to the past and possibilities for moving into the future. My courses are designed to help students get to the real reason(s) we form certain opinions about film and art, to detach from unexamined, habitual responses and relate to, resist or connect with material, the better to explore it. Understanding the effects and implications of audiences' continuous exposure to popular criticism has become a central theme in my own thinking as I explore the reception of work made by underrepresented producers including women, POC and LGBTQ filmmakers, cult, amateurs and auteurs.

In summary, my goal as a teacher is to enable students to become receptive and critical viewers, empowered creators and skillful producers of film.

ABOUT
Professor Johnston's award-winning films have been exhibited by the National Gallery of Art, BAMPFA, San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival,  Athens International Film & Video Festival, the Calder Foundation, Queer Salon Berlin, Officinema and are distributed by Canyon Cinema. Curatorial work includes experimental programs, talks and discussions at festivals, universities, galleries and salons worldwide, most recently in England, Australia and Mexico. Denah's queer film programming  has been supported by the NEA and Warhol Foundation. Publications include writings on the artistic rebellion of avant-garde cinema from post-war to punk, auteur theory, the occult, women and queer filmmakers, and co-editing  agnesfilms, a website supporting feminist filmmaking from 2014-2023. Current research focuses on excavating and programming rarely screened prints from the vault and the women of Canyon Cinema. Professor Johnston presented a paper on the Women of Canyon Cinema at the University of Sussex in Brighton, UK followed-up by a curated screening of work on the topic at the Roxie Theater. Denah continues to create film-based work and writes about film criticism,  history, exhibition, collectives and reception.

SELECT SCREENINGS/PUBLICATIONS/PRESENTATIONS

Commissioned Essay for Umbrella Entertainment Collector's Edition 4K/Blu-Ray release of Pedro Almodóvar's  Matador (1986): “I love you more than my own death:” Noir, Intertextuality and the Absurdity of Gender in Matador. Forthcoming 2026. Print.

Panelist, "Breaking Into Filmmaking: Resources, Community, and Practical Advice for Emerging Creators," hosted by SF Film Collective. June 17, 2026.

Morocco 'Top Hat & Tails' screening at the Internet Archive, introduction and post-screening discussion exploring Morocco’s lasting impact on cultural history. June 9, 2026.

SF Artists Alumni Studio 8 Film Festival, Roxie Theater, September 20, 2025 

A juried open-call-instigated program of shorts by SFAI alumni, preceded by films by the jurors and a special program of Gunvor Nelson films: the seldom screened collage/animation Field Study #2 and her ever-mesmerizing Moons Pool. Marian Wallace: Program moderator/announcer.
V. Vale: Guest presenter for “Keeping the Torch Lit” award from Christopher Coppola.

Commissioned Essay for Umbrella Entertainment Collector's Edition 4K/Blu-Ray release of Lynne Ramsay's You Were Never Really Here (2017): “It’s a beautiful day.” “It is a beautiful day.” On Lynne Ramsay’s You Were Never Really Here. 2024. Print.

Women of Canyon Cinema, Roxie Theater, May 22, 2024

Post-Screening Discussion: Denah Johnston in conversation with Steve Anker, Antonella Bonfanti, Maia Cybelle Carpenter, Janis Crystal Lipzin and Amy Reid.

Emerging from research on the many roles women have played in the history of Canyon Cinema, this program provides a glimpse into the array of films by women in the organization’s beginnings in the 1960s through the end of the 1990s. These filmmakers explore an array of aesthetic and conceptual approaches to topics from women at work behind the scenes as well as domestic life, sexism in art, puritanical attitudes about sexuality and life, complexities of love, issues of control, photographic reproduction, optical printing and feminist critique of pornography.

"Women of Canyon Cinema," Doing Women's Film and Television History Conference: Changing Streams and Channels, University of Sussex, Brighton UK, June 14, 2023.

Brakhage Symposium: A Tribute to George Kuchar University of Colorado, Boulder, March 4-6, 2016 Curated and introduced a program of George Kuchar's films spanning from the late-1960s into the late 1970s highlighting his unique and varied sense of humor as well as varied modes of storytelling using the medium of film collaborating with other artists (Curt McDowell, George Segal and Donna Kerness).

“The Devil Made Me Do It. The Innovation and Influence of Benjamin Christensen's Häxan.” Abraxas Special Issue #2: Luminous Screen The Influence of the Esoteric in Cinema. Ed. Jack Sargeant. Fulgur: London, 2014. Print.

"From Vault to Screen: Canyon Cinema 16mm." National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. July-August 2014 Co-programming an extensive series of eight screenings to highlight new acquisitions, recent restorations, archival and vintage prints from the Canyon collection. National Gallery of Art Summer Film Program.

“Lynne Ramsay: Outsider Auteur.” SCAN Journal of Media Arts Culture Special REVcon Issue. Eds. Jack Sargeant and Alex Munt. Macquire University, Australia. Vol. 10 No. 1, January 2013. Web.

No Future Now: A Nomadology of Resistance and Subversion, Atropos Press, 2012