Seven Nights On One Screen In The Outer Richmond
The 21st San Francisco Short Film Festival runs October 15 to October 22, 2026, produced by San Francisco IndieFest. The festival's own ticketing site welcomes visitors to the 2026 edition playing at the 4-Star Theater October 15 to 22.
Seven live programmes, one a night, run October 15 to 21 at the 4-Star Theater, 2200 Clement Street, with virtual presentations alongside. The organiser advises advance tickets.
The Room And The Seat Count
CinemaSFBay operates the 4-Star Theater. Its rentals page publishes the house as one theater with 123 seats and two wheelchair spaces.
The festival's ticketing platform sells 120 general-admission seats for each live night, which is 840 seats across the run. At the published single-ticket price the week is worth $12,600 to the organiser. That assumes a full house at every programme.
Seven live nights at the venue's listed capacity is 861 seats. Size the block against the venue's own seating chart and ask for that chart before anyone signs.
The Published Clock
The festival's schedule carries seven dated programme blocks. Opening Night, October 15, 8:15 PM. Funny LOL, October 16, 8:30 PM. An Animated World, October 17, 8:30 PM. True Stories, October 18, 5:00 PM. Spontaneous Connections, October 19, 8:15 PM. Spine-tingling Stories, October 20, 8:15 PM. Closing Night, October 21, 8:15 PM.
Six nights start at 8:15 or 8:30 PM and Sunday starts at 5:00 PM. A group attending the full run checks in on October 15 and checks out on October 22, which is seven nights. Six of those seven nights end at 10:15 PM or 10:30 PM. That is the clock a hotel block has to cover.
What A Ticket Costs
The festival publishes tickets for live shows at $15 and tickets for all virtual presentations at $10. Live seats sell per programme. Advance tickets are recommended, and nothing on the ticket pages reserves a seat.
Three published routes into the festival are live screenings, watching on a television, and a pass. The pass description reads as a way to binge the whole festival at the theater, online, or both. The ticketing platform lists a Live+Virtual Screenings Pass at $95 and a Virtual Screenings Pass at $65. The pass page asks for an account before purchase.
One discount is published. MOVIES FOR ALL gives $5 tickets to holders of an EBT or SNAP card who show proof at the box office for live shows, or email a photograph of themselves holding the card to info@sfindie.com for virtual ones. The code is moviesforall. The programme caps it at one ticket per show per cardholder. A per-person benefit with a one-ticket cap cannot be aggregated into a group rate.
What The Organiser Allocates To Groups
A sweep of the organiser's pages turns up no group rate, no group code, no bulk tier, no held block and no cut-off. The single line on the site that addresses a group is a sponsorship invitation. That is an advertising channel.
A block of any size therefore competes with walk-up single sales at $15. The organiser publishes no mechanism that moves a group ahead of the door.
The Only Published Bulk Instrument Is The Room Itself
CinemaSFBay sells the house, and its rental ladder prices the 4-Star by daypart and head count. Non-evening rentals from 10 AM to 1 PM run $600 for 50 guests and under, $700 for 50 to 100, and $800 over 100. Wednesday to Sunday evening rentals, from 4 PM to 7 PM or 7 PM to 10 PM, run $1,200, $1,300 and $1,400 on the same bands. Wednesday to Sunday late-night rentals from 10 PM to 1 AM run $600, $700 and $800. The page quotes an ongoing $1,000 rate for Monday or Tuesday evening rentals of any size.
Rental slots traditionally run up to three hours, longer bookings need prior arrangement and an additional fee, and prices are subject to change. The marquee rents at $250 a side.
Put the two published price lists side by side. The festival's Monday and Tuesday programmes fall on the venue's flat $1,000 evenings. The same room sold seat by seat at $15 holds $1,800. The rental buys the room, and the programme is the organiser's inventory, so a group cannot buy Monday's programme at the rental price. The gap between the two numbers is what a coordinator negotiates across.
What The Room Side Publishes
Neither the organiser nor the venue publishes a lodging channel. San Francisco IndieFest thanks hotels among its supporters on its about page. That is an acknowledgement, not a block. The 4-Star calendar does show the house closed for a private event on October 11, which confirms the building can come off general sale.
The grouprooms.org directory lists 562 hotels in San Francisco as of 6 October 2026, so the city is covered in-network. Everything a coordinator needs beyond the address has to be asked for. No cut-off, no deposit, no attrition formula, no rooming-list deadline, no name-change fee, no nightly rate and no late-checkout price is published for any property.
What To Put In Writing
Ask the festival for the seat map and the hold policy for a group of ten or more. Ask whether a pass can be bought for a group at a published price, and what the pass covers. Ask the venue what the 123-seat room offers a group that walk-up tickets do not.
Ask the hotel for the rate across October 15 to 22, the cut-off date, the deposit and its due date, the attrition percentage with its penalty formula, the rooming-list deadline, the name-change fee, and a late-checkout price for October 22. Ask for seven nights priced as one block, and ask what happens if only four fill.
Then compare. If the festival will not hold seats and the hotel will not move on rate, the group pays $15 a seat and books rooms at public rates. That is the whole contract.
