FREE FOR ALL is a feature length documentary that will chronicle a year inside a busy urban public library, San Francisco Public Library (SFPL). With public libraries around the nation facing drastic budget cuts and closures, now is the ideal time to spark a national dialogue about the American Public Library’s future and to assess the high stakes for democracy if public libraries become extinct.

As a busy urban library in the heart of a profoundly stratified neighborhood in the throes of transformation, San Francisco Main Public Library is the ideal site to begin this conversation. In the blocks surrounding the Main, you’ll find homeless men and women sleeping in doorways; a law school and a media arts college; scores of Vietnamese noodle shops and a large farmer’s market frequented by Asian and immigrants; the Symphony, Ballet and Opera venues; SRO hotels and blood banks; City Hall and the Veterans Administration; and, coming soon, the world headquarters for Twitter. SF Main is the only place where people from these many communities come together every day. Because here, and across America, the public library is the only civic institution where the doors are open to all, attendance is entirely voluntary, and everything is free.