Info about 1st film of GDI 2026 season!

All are invited to the first screening of the Santa Cruz Guerilla Drive-In 2026 season! Back after an extended hiatus! Friday June 26th - gather a bit before dusk to watch… 

“We Are the Best” - Three teenage girls in 1980s Stockholm form a punk band despite having no instruments or musical talent. The movie follows the misfits Bobo, Klara, and the more reserved Hedvig as they navigate adolescence and punk culture, creating music as an outlet for their energy and anger, even when told punk is dead. The film captures the spirit of youthful rebellion and friendship. 

URBAN WASTELAND LOCATION: From downtown, head south on Soquel Avenue. At Riverside, by the Royal Taj, turn right. Follow the path down to the sandy area under the bridge.

PLUS thrilling short films, an intermission, great company and a guaranteed good time!

BRING blankets, pillows, anything you need to be comfortable in foldy metal chairs indoors, friends, snacks to share. Donations to support the project are more than welcome.

SANTA CRUZ GUERILLA DRIVE-IN is an outdoor movie theatre under the stars that springs up in the fields and industrial wastelands. Beyond showing great movies and bringing a broad community together, part of our mission is helping reclaim public space and transforming our urban environment. 

Into the digital age! (From GDI Instagram)

 

We're testing out our new equipment. Back in the day, we had hundreds of meters of extension cords, big speakers with speaker cables, and a giant box with an amplifier connected to both DVD and VHS. We are excited to be moving into the digital age.

Information about our summer series coming so soon! 

From GDI’s IG page - https://www.instagram.com/sc_gdi  

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SANTA CRUZ GUERILLA DRIVE-IN is an outdoor movie theater under the stars that springs up unexpectedly in the fields and industrial wastelands. Beyond showing great free movies and bringing a broad community together, part of our mission is reclaiming public space and transforming our urban environment. 

A BLAST FROM THE PAST (as we look towards the future!) - (from GDI instagram)

A BLAST FROM THE PAST (as we look towards the future!)

Santa Cruz Guerilla Drive-In at City Hall Protest (Photo: B. Elderberry) 

https://santacruzlife.com/santa-cruz-guerilla-drive-in/ (article from years ago) - There are no formal drive-in movie theatres left in Santa Cruz County, but a few times a year you can follow a set of buried-treasure type directions to find the Guerilla Drive-In, an anarchist outdoor moving movie theater whose legality is hazy but whose awesomeness is not.

Guerilla Drive-In, which started in 2002, claims, “Beyond showing great free movies year-round and bringing a broad community together, part of our mission is reclaiming public space and transforming our urban environment.”

Bringing together two passions innate to Santa Cruz — DIY (Do It Yourself) culture and great cinema — Guerilla Drive-In screens free films at different locations around town.  The first guerilla theater in the country, it often does not secure rights or permits to show these films. This is part of their mission to reclaim public space — they don’t believe permits should be needed to simply enjoy a movie outdoors with some friends.  As a result, police officers have sometimes broken up the peaceful viewings, on the grounds of trespassing.

The movement has since spread to places like Hollywood, Berkeley, and even New York.

Though some of the art films shown at Guerilla Drive-In are family-friendly, getting to the various secret locations is not for the faint of heart — recent instructions for finding the film Brazil included phrases like “Go to the back of the building.  Follow the Giant Dragons,” and “Use of bikes and Hwy 1 footbridge connector is encouraged.  At the bottom of the big bike hill, make a right.”

But what makes the Guerilla Drive-In most special isn’t the hunt to find it, or the rocky legal history, or even the fact that it started in Santa Cruz and turned into a national underground movement.  It’s the sense of community it creates, and the leeway allowed in DIY culture that isn’t present in for-profit movie theatres.  Although it only happens a few times a year, it’s worth following the Drive-In to see when the next warehouse or parking lot will turn into the weirdest theatre you’ve ever seen. -Blair Stenvick

And did you know that GDI has an instagram page? If you use this particular social media give it a look (this post was originally there). https://www.instagram.com/sc_gdi 

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SANTA CRUZ GUERILLA DRIVE-IN is an outdoor movie theater under the stars that springs up unexpectedly in the fields and industrial wastelands. Beyond showing great free movies and bringing a broad community together, part of our mission is reclaiming public space and transforming our urban environment.

Our beloved regular location alongside the railroad tracks (from GDI instagram)

Our beloved regular location on the Westside off of Fair Ave alongside the railroad tracks. A winery yard was behind us and we would jump the fence to plug into power - eventually they would feed us an extension cord through the chain link fence (very kind of them!). 

All of that is gone and a grocery store is there now. Site no longer appropriate for showings. Favorite memories from that location? Anyone remember the jeering section? 

Now we are actively looking for new locations - any suggestions? Remember the perfect site by day, imagining a screening at dark, might be flooded by light pollution (so helpful to check out at night!).

And did you know that GDI has an instagram page? If you use this particular social media give it a look (this post was originally there). https://www.instagram.com/sc_gdi 

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SANTA CRUZ GUERILLA DRIVE-IN is an outdoor movie theater under the stars that springs up unexpectedly in the fields and industrial wastelands. Beyond showing great free movies and bringing a broad community together, part of our mission is reclaiming public space and transforming our urban environment.

THE LIST! (from GDI instagram)

THE LIST! In previous years of the Guerilla Drive-In project we had a massive list of films that we would also add to before each season. So when we were putting together the schedule we had a lot from which to choose. And we are putting together a new list for our 2026 Santa Cruz Guerilla Drive-In schedule! Any recommendations?

And massive thanks to Wes Modes for being such a wonderful rememberer of the history of things (list from https://modes.io/santa-cruz-guerilla-drive-in/) and collaborator on this and many other projects in the past in Santa Cruz. Wes is now in Cincinnati and doing things there! And Wes has also supported from afar! 

And did you know that GDI has an instagram page? If you use this particular social media give it a look (this post was originally there). https://www.instagram.com/sc_gdi 

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SANTA CRUZ GUERILLA DRIVE-IN is an outdoor movie theater under the stars that springs up unexpectedly in the fields and industrial wastelands. Beyond showing great free movies and bringing a broad community together, part of our mission is reclaiming public space and transforming our urban environment. 

A blast from the past! (from GDI instagram)

Was this when we projected the Subversive Shorts Film Festival on the top portion of the building next to the corporate movie theater in downtown Santa Cruz? We instructed people to bring radios and had a low power transmitter for the film’s audio to get around the repressive downtown ordinance against amplified sound. 

We used to compile the subversive shorts on VHS tapes and begin each showing with these and then have an intermission and then main feature. VCRs aren’t a part of our gear anymore. Perhaps we will find another way to show subversive shorts for our upcoming GDI season!

And did you know that GDI has an instagram page? If you use this particular social media give it a look (this post was originally there). https://www.instagram.com/sc_gdi 

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SANTA CRUZ GUERILLA DRIVE-IN is an outdoor movie theater under the stars that springs up unexpectedly in the fields and industrial wastelands. Beyond showing great free movies and bringing a broad community together, part of our mission is reclaiming public space and transforming our urban environment.

Look for 2026 schedule May - September!

The Santa Cruz Guerilla Drive-In is back! Consider it a prolonged hiatus. We are developing a late-Spring / Summer / early-Autumn schedule. More information to come! 

A reminder: SANTA CRUZ GUERILLA DRIVE-IN is an outdoor movie theater under the stars that springs up unexpectedly in the fields and industrial wastelands. Beyond showing great free movies and bringing a broad community together, part of our mission is reclaiming public space and transforming our urban environment.

Begun in 2002 with over 200 showings and more than 15 locations, always free! (last scheduled series of screenings 2010-11 Winter series - then sporadic individual screenings, often at SubRosa: a community space, but not always specifically part of GDI - although always with GDI tech-support!). 

More information about SubRosa at - https://www.subrosaproject.org/ 

Hooray! We look forward to seeing you under the stars around town enjoying films and sharing space together. If you have ideas about other events that can spring forth after film screenings that you’d like to host (ex: Midnight Mystery Rides) please let us know! Updated contact information coming soon too!

- the Santa Cruz Guerilla Drive-In collective