Allie Light was a celebrated San Francisco-based documentary filmmaker whose career spanned half a century and brought her both an Academy Award and an Emmy. Yet, one film she never made was the extraordinary story of her own life.
That story began in a cold-water flat in the Mission District, continued to public housing in the Sunnydale project and into teenage motherhood, followed by treatment for depression during a locked-in hospital stay — and ultimately triumph on a Hollywood stage, where after overcoming all those obstacles she accepted the 1992 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.
Though she recorded footage of her own life, Light always turned the camera toward others, drawn to their compelling stories. Working out of a purple Victorian home in San Francisco’s Glen Park neighborhood, she made 20 films over five decades, many with her late husband, Irving Saraf, with whom she shared both the Oscar and an Emmy, and with her daughter Julia Hilder, who, like her mom, grew up in San Francisco and attended its public schools through college at San Francisco State…