"A Balcony on the World" Film Screening

The San Francisco Maritime National Park Association in partnership with the San Francisco Maritime Historical Park invite you to an exclusive screening of A Balcony on the World on Saturday, October 24th, at the Marina Theatre (2149 Chestnut St.) in San Francisco.

This screening offers a rare look at a film that’s as much about art and architecture as it is about the rich maritime history of San Francisco.

A Balcony on the World is a powerful and visually lush new film, bringing long-overdue attention to San Francisco’s Aquatic Park Bathhouse Building (now home to the San Francisco Maritime Museum) a shimmering jewel of WPA-era Streamline Moderne design. Constructed during the depths of the Great Depression, the Bathhouse was conceived as a “democratic country club”—a public place of leisure, art, and civic imagination. But its story, until now, has remained largely untold.

From the beginning, the film’s creator set out not to make a film about a building, but about everything the building represents—artistic passion, cultural inclusion, public investment in beauty, and the inevitable tension between civic ideals and commercial pressures. The film debuted on Bay Area PBS station KQED on August 22, 2025.