A critical look at S.F.’s ‘sharing economy’

San Francisco political junkies will swoon over “Company Town,” a documentary that takes roundhouse swings at the city’s new and highly touted “sharing economy” and the big-time players behind it, such as Airbnb.

The film, from Berkeley documentarians Deborah Kaufman and Alan Snitow, raises many pointed questions about the fundamental fairness of changes wrought by the triumph of high tech, suggesting that a city once renowned for oddballs and iconoclasts has been transformed into a moneybags operation.

The film personifies the dispute by focusing on the expensive 2015 Board of Supervisors race between incumbent Julie Christensen and former Supervisor Aaron Peskin.

Christensen, seen here as an affable sort and a seeming moderate, was appointed to the board by Mayor Ed Lee, an enthusiastic booster of San Francisco’s high-tech transformation.

Running to replace her as supervisor for District Three — including North Beach, Nob Hill, Chinatown and the Union Square area — the outspoken Peskin is a longtime gadfly of city politics, and no friend to the sharing economy.

Among them are school principal and Chinatown activist Jeffrey Kwong, Examiner columnist Joe Rodriguez (who has much to say about the new economy’s impact on the Mission District) and David Talbot, founder of Salon.com (and a former journalist at the Hearst-owned Examiner).

Kaufman and Snitow are veterans, having produced and directed documentaries on hot-button issues like “Blacks and Jews,” “Between Two Worlds” and “Thirst.”