We Still Love Here: A Filmmaker Puts a Lens on the True Cost of Losing a Home When Oakland Was Left Without Its Team
Sean Havey’s We Still Love Here has been made an Official Selection for the 2026 Sparknify Human vs. AI Film Festival and is a case in point as to why human storytelling is so vital these days. One can see his discussion with Sparknify host Kelby Whitehead on Silicon Valley Spotlight.
The scoreboard at the Oakland Coliseum put down the final tally of yet another baseball game when the Athletics took in their last home match there on September 26, 2024. For the thousands of fans in attendance, however, it was the close of something much deeper. What went with the team was a community and a place to congregate, a sense of who they were and decades of recollections that will not be coming back.
To the generations who have known it, the Oakland Coliseum was something more than a stadium. It was the place where parents first put their kids in front of a baseball game, where strangers would make friends and families would share in the joy of a win or the pain of a loss. In a city with such diverse communities, it was one of the rare spots where people could be put at ease by a common bond that put aside their differences. Then, after 57 seasons, it all came to an end.
Sean Havey was on hand to put that last chapter on film. The filmmaker did not set out to do a run-of-the-mill sports piece on the exit of a pro franchise; he pointed his lens at the fans, the ones who count. We Still Love Here is what he made of it: a 14-minute documentary of uncommon humanity that tells the story of the A’s last home game from the vantage point of those with an affinity for the team and its home turf.
Cinema’s Grand Jury has made it an Official Selection for the 2026 Sparknify Human vs. AI Film Festival, part of an international roster of fine short films culled from over 3,000 entries. Two years to the day after the A’s last took the field at the Coliseum, the film will be shown at the festival’s San Francisco premiere on September 26, 2026. Havey will be doing an interview in conjunction with the event to talk about the film and the stories within it. For a special episode of the Silicon Valley Spotlight, host Kelby Whitehead will sit down with Havey to get into the documentary and the people it puts on record, as well as the singular ability of filmmaking to put human feeling to the screen.
Watch the Interview: Sean Havey on We Still Love Here
In this conversation one can get to know the filmmaker of a documentary that is among the most moving at the festival and reflect on the importance of such stories in an age where artificial intelligence is so quickly remaking cinema.
A Filmmaker Who Has Spent His Career Capturing the Human Side of Oakland
With over ten years in the business, Sean Havey is well versed in the art of a powerful documentary. The filmmaker, cinematographer and producer has put his stamp on a number of well regarded nonfiction films, tending to those that deal with communities, institutions or individuals in the midst of some deep change.
Among his credits is 2023’s Stephen Curry: Underrated. Directed by Peter Nicks, the film tells the story of the improbable ascent of the NBA star and made its debut at Sundance; Havey was both its producer and cinematographer. He also put in time as producer and director of photography on Homeroom, the 2021 piece that won plaudits for its look at Oakland High School students making their way through senior year during the COVID pandemic and calls for social reform.
His other work runs the gamut from Anthem, the Hulu offering on American identity and music, to The Force, in which Nicks turns his eye to the Oakland Police Department and its institutional problems.
Havey does not confine himself to the set, however. A New Jersey native who has made the Bay Area his home for many years, he is now very much a part of the Oakland scene. He is on the board of Open’hood, an Oakland nonprofit that puts documentaries and personal stories to use in order to build up communities and shed light on social matters.
The hallmark of Havey’s output is the uniformity of his method. In the case of a basketball phenom, some teens facing an open ended future or baseball fans bereft of their team, he will go past the subject at hand to get at the human element.
Take Stephen Curry: Underrated. It is more than a film about basketball; it is about defying expectations and having faith in oneself. Homeroom is not just high school drama but a matter of identity and finding one’s voice. We Still Love Here goes beyond the Oakland Athletics to show what occurs when the repository of a community’s memories is gone in an instant. This is what makes the documentary such a fine specimen of cinema that is centered on the human condition.
The Oakland Coliseum Was Never Just a Baseball Stadium
To an uninitiated observer who has not been to an Oakland A’s game, the exit of a pro baseball franchise is just another business story. The team goes, the stadium is shut down and fans get on with it. Those who have spent their formative years at the Oakland Coliseum, however, find the matter much more involved.
A sports team is part and parcel of a city’s cultural identity; its stadium holds the collective memory. In time, the bond between the community and the club can mean more than what happens on the field.
Oakland and the Athletics had a particularly unique connection. It is a city with a deep well of cultural diversity, working class pride, art, activism and an independent streak. The Coliseum was a mirror of that.
One did not go there for luxury or corporate amusements. For many generations the stadium provided something hard to come by in most American cities these days: a place where people of all stripes could put in an appearance and feel they were among their own. Families with little else in common would be sitting side by side. Kids made their association with the place through their elders. Fans came back year in and year out and built up ties over the decades. An A’s game was a rite of passage linking one part of life to another.
Hence the devastation of the last home game. It was more than the end of some pastime, it was the undoing of a social institution.
In We Still Love Here, Havey eschews the economics of the team’s departure in favour of the devoted fan base. He makes of it something more universal than a tale of sports business. What is left of a community when it is deprived of a place that in part defines its character?
The question is not confined to Oakland. It will be familiar to anyone who has seen a childhood neighbourhood go, a family concern close its doors, a historic structure give way to redevelopment or a treasured institution disappear. The particulars are different but the feelings are the same: loss and nostalgia and anger and love and the sense of belonging, along with the hard truth that some things are gone for good.
Why We Still Love Here Represents the Power of Human Filmmaking
The Sparknify Human vs. AI Film Festival is built around a deceptively simple question: is artificial intelligence capable of moving an audience in the way a human filmmaker can? With each new step forward in generative AI, that is a harder question to answer. The tools at hand today are able to put together ever more refined imagery, lifelike characters and settings, and cinematic sequences of an order that would have called for vast production resources not long ago. Yet one must not confuse the making of a convincing picture with the creation of an experience of real emotional weight.
We Still Love Here is significant for precisely that reason. There is no reliance on impressive visual effects or some imagined world; its appeal is far more basic. It is about actual people in the grip of a moment that will not be repeated. The fans one sees in the documentary are no inventions of a script, their ties to the Athletics are genuine and their recollections are of decades past. Any sadness they show is not for the benefit of the camera. The import of the scene was there before the filmmaker even got to it. What Havey has done is to see that meaning and put it across in cinematic terms for the rest of us.
The Power of Authentic Emotion
In documentary work, one of the harder tasks is to get at genuine emotion without getting in its way. It is not like a scripted production in which an actor can do a scene over and a director has the reins on the performance; the documentarian has to spot the important moments as they are happening. Sometimes a bit of spontaneity or an extended silence between two people will say more than a well put together monologue. It calls for a measure of patience and sensitivity to human nature.
That is where Havey’s background in observational film comes into play. He spoke to Filmmaker Magazine in 2021 on the subject of Homeroom and the kind of camerawork that is needed when one is immersed in an unscripted environment. More generally his practice is to put in time with his subjects and let things of substance come of their own accord.
The value of this is plain to see in We Still Love Here. The last home game for the Oakland A’s was something that could not be done again. When the final out was down, so was that part of Oakland’s history. For the filmmaker it is an unusual responsibility. The camera has to record the event, but also register why it means what it does to those who are there.
When Sorrow Becomes a Celebration of Love
In the festival’s Sorrow category we put forward We Still Love Here. The emotional pull of its subject matter lies in the fact that the sadness is of a piece with the love. One does not grieve over what was never of consequence to them. The fans’ grief is all the more intense for the hold the team, the stadium and the community surrounding them have on them.
To a good many in Oakland the Coliseum was a constant in a city that has seen vast social, economic and cultural shifts. It was where family traditions were kept up and generations were linked, a fixed point in an ever changing milieu. To lose it was to face the passing of time and the end of something that had seemed unshakeable.
It is among the most potent of cinema’s emotional paradoxes. A film on loss can be made into a tribute to what was loved. An ending can be put before future generations. In the case of this baseball documentary, it is in the end a film about humanity.
Why the Film Earned Its Place Among the Official Selections
In its assessment of the traditionally made films before it, the Cinema Grand Jury looked to cinematic storytelling, artistic and technical prowess and emotional impact. With We Still Love Here named an Official Selection of the festival, the jury has put its stamp of approval on a piece that is in keeping with the event’s focus on human emotion.
What makes the film stand out is not the mere documentation of a notable sporting occasion but the way it is turned into a close look at loss, collective memory and a sense of belonging. While the subject matter is of a local nature, the emotions it stirs are universal. One need not be a fan of the Oakland A’s to feel the sorrow of a cherished meeting place being lost, nor even have a grasp of baseball. The connection is made by seeing in the people on screen something essentially human.
Such is the type of narrative the Sparknify Human vs. AI Film Festival was put together to honour. It also puts forward a compelling question for the future of cinema: when AI can put forth human emotions on screen with such conviction, will viewers still be able to tell the difference from what comes of actual lived experience? The festival does not take for granted that a film made by humans will invariably be more moving. Rather, it is left to the filmmakers and the audience to put that to the test in the works they view. We Still Love Here is a forceful illustration of what traditional documentary work has to say in the matter.
Two Years Later, Oakland's Story Reached the 2026 Human vs. AI Film Premiere
The timing of the event was in itself particularly significant. We Still Love Here was put before the audience at the Sparknify Human vs. AI Film Premiere in San Francisco on September 26, 2026, two years to the day from the Oakland Athletics’ last home game.
Held at the Delancey Street Screening Room on the waterfront, the occasion drew in filmmakers, artists and film buffs as well as AI innovators and others in the creative community. It was the end point of an international contest that had drawn over 3,000 films from all corners of the globe. Of those, just 32 were chosen for the competition, an even split of 16 conventionally made and 16 AI generated.
The four screening sessions at the premiere set out to put a number of emotions under the microscope: Joy & Sorrow (happiness, hope and grief); Intensity & Serenity (the difference between being overwhelmed and finding inner peace); Love & Hate (connection, devotion and conflict); and Desire & Disgust (longing, aversion and the like).
By not disclosing until the reveal which films were the work of humans and which of AI, the format was designed to have the audience judge the pieces by their emotional impact, not the means of production. The questions posed at the 2026 premiere were whether an AI could elicit a more potent sorrow than a straight documentary or if a human director could put together a more believable experience than the latest generative AI can manage. In the end, does where a film comes from count if it has its effect on the viewer?
A Special Screening of We Still Love Here
The premiere’s Joy & Sorrow session, which got underway at 11 AM, put on a screening of We Still Love Here. The occasion was also the venue for Sean Havey to sit down with Kelby Whitehead and talk about the documentary and how it was made.
In the context of the festival the film was a fitting example of what traditional filmmaking can do in the way of keeping genuine human experiences intact. AI may have shown off some remarkable new avenues for visual storytelling, but Havey’s work was a creative accomplishment of another order. It is a record of a point in history as seen by those who were there.
There was an extra measure of resonance to having the film shown on the second anniversary of the Oakland A’s last home game. More than just a chance to see a documentary, the event was one to put a community in mind and consider the value of holding on to human stories.
More Than 3,000 Films. One Question: What Moves Us?
An international competition, the Sparknify Human vs. AI Film Festival is set apart by its focus on where cinematic storytelling, new technology and human feeling meet. Conventional festivals will put their competitions around a genre or some technical discipline; Sparknify makes emotional impact the measure of all things.
Both AI generated and films made in the traditional manner are in the running for this festival’s short film categories. The entries are sorted into eight basic emotions: Joy, Sorrow, Intensity, Serenity, Love, Hate, Desire and Disgust. It is a singular chance to see how varied creative methods can convey identical human experiences.
The 2026 edition of the contest was put through a demanding three part judging procedure. After an initial review of eligibility and the technical side of the submissions, the films were turned over to expert panels. Traditionally produced work was considered by the Grand Jury of Cinema, made up of industry leaders, critics and veteran filmmakers. For the AI generated pieces, the Grand Jury of AI Innovation brought in those with expertise in generative AI and kindred technologies.
From there the top films went before the Grand Jury of Academia, a body of over 200 film educators, scholars and professors from across the globe. In the last stage a blind evaluation was conducted on the basis of artistic expression, storytelling and the emotion put forth.
All of this was done to put a question to the test that will be of greater import as AI filmmaking comes of age: what makes a story a success when the viewer has no way of knowing who or what was behind it?
The winner of the Sparknify Humanity Award, the festival’s top prize, is the one that does best in this final reckoning. At the 2026 event that honor was bestowed on Down The Hatch from director Alexandra Lukina. There were also Best Cinema and Best AI Generated Film Awards given for other fine work. What the choices show is the breadth of international filmmaking and the room for growth in both artificial intelligence and human ingenuity.
The Future of Filmmaking Will Be Technological. But Will It Be Human?
Generative AI is changing the face of filmmaking with a speed that has no precedent. Where once the technology was good for nothing more than short, uneven video clips, it can now put together cinematic sequences of growing sophistication. Filmmakers have the means to render their imagined worlds and build out complicated scenes in ways that would have demanded a large budget in the past.
For the independent creator this is arguably one of the greatest broadening of creative options cinema has ever seen. At the same time it raises some basic questions as to what storytelling is all about. Is an emotional truth contingent on having lived it? Can a character put together by a machine convey grief with the same force as someone who has suffered a real loss? Will the audience come to prefer the visual polish of AI made films or the unvarnished authenticity of a documentary?
There is no easy answer to be had. An AI film well made can get at the heart of love, grief and human relations in a way that strikes a chord. Conversely a film made the old fashioned way with real actors and locations may not move anyone. The medium is not the measure of artistry.
Films such as We Still Love Here are a case in point for the particular kind of creativity that comes from human hands. A documentary filmmaker will have an appreciation for the emotional import of an event drawn from a knowledge of culture and history. He can win the trust of his subjects and make artistic calls based on the nuance of experience and how things are playing out. It is not a matter of technical process but of human engagement. As the tools at a filmmaker’s disposal grow in power, the skill of spotting a story of substance will only become more vital.
The future of the medium may not rest on whether it is human or AI doing the making. More telling is the difference between a film that puts up an impressive picture and one that allows the viewer to see something of themselves. This is the crux of the Sparknify Human vs. AI Film Festival and the reason We Still Love Here warrants a look outside of the baseball world.
Watch Sean Havey's Interview on Silicon Valley Spotlight
Director Sean Havey’s talk with Sparknify host Kelby Whitehead is one to see for anyone with an interest in the art of filmmaking, documentary work, Oakland history or just good stories of people and where they make their home.
The interview goes along with a film that puts before us the question of what is forfeited when a community is without the places that bind it, and in what way cinema can put those experiences on record once the time has come and gone. One can also get to know the work of a filmmaker who has made a career of unearthing the extraordinary in the everyday human condition.
A Sparknify program, Silicon Valley Spotlight is put on to honour the creative and innovative types who are redefining artistic expression. The series is an examination of the originality and human ingenuity that can be found in Silicon Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area by way of experimentation. It covers everyone from filmmakers and visual artists to musicians and performers of a more unorthodox bent.
Filmmakers: The 2027 Human vs. AI Film Festival Is Coming
What the 2026 festival had in store was nothing short of remarkable. It showed that while artificial intelligence is changing cinema’s tools, there is a universal urge to put forth and be moved by stories with real emotional weight.
For 2027 the Sparknify Human vs. AI Film Festival will once more convene AI creators and traditional filmmakers from all corners of the globe to examine how technology, art and humanity are coming together.
We would like documentary directors, independents, animators, cinematographers, storytellers and generative AI creators to get their next projects ready. Be it through old fashioned filmmaking or the latest in AI, we are looking for work that puts perspectives to the test, stirs up true feeling and stretches what cinema can be.
The submission portal for 2027 is not open at present, but filmmakers may register now so as to be put on notice when it does. Go to the official site of the festival to sign up for updates and word on the 2027 portal.
Cinema’s future is in the making. It will be put in place by human filmmakers or artificial intelligence, or some new way of working between the two. In any case it is plain that while technology can alter the process of film making, the true measure of cinema’s power has to be what it stirs in us.
Sean Havey and the Oakland fans whose stories he has put on record would say that power is very much a human thing. The Athletics are no longer in Oakland, but the love and sense of community, not to mention the memories, have not gone anywhere.
We Still Love Here.
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