Now having its first Bay Area screening since its December 1921 premiere, the documentary The Visit of the Italian Cruiser Libia to San Francisco, Calif., November 6–29, 1921 offers a fascinating glimpse of the local scene in the early twenties, with the Italia Virtus Club welcoming Italian sailors to the city. The film showcases various aspects of the city's thriving Italian-American community; Capra himself is briefly seen on a pier, working on the shooting. Also shot in San Francisco, with a cast of local actors and waterfront denizens, Capra's first fictional film as a director, Fulta Fisher's Boarding House, prefigures Josef von Sternberg's The Salvation Hunters in its artistic treatment of squalor. Fulta is based on a Rudyard Kipling poem, reworked by Capra to bring Christian redemption to his prostitute heroine (played by Mildred Owens). Pop Tuttle the Fire Chief is one of the few surviving Plum Center Comedies, a series of rustic slapstick two-reelers shot in San Francisco and Belmont. Capra worked on the series as a prop man, editor, gag man, and personal assistant to the director, Robert Eddy.