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Favorite Movies of 2011

2011-12-31T17:52:00.000-08:00

As some of you may know, this blog is on hiatus while I recover from major reconstructive surgery on my left hand. I couldn't resist, however, returning to weigh in on the films that rocked my year. As I'm only just beginning to re-enter the world of two-handed typing, apologies are offered for not providing commentary along with my list choices (thank goodness for Copy and Paste). Where available, I've hyper-linked titles to any capsule reviews I've written previously.

I saw 290 "new" films this year – 230 narrative features and 60 documentary features – plus 39 repertory/revival screenings. Only 194 films were viewed in some kind of public setting, my lowest number in a decade, with the rest seen via commercial DVDs, festival screeners and on-line streaming. This is a personal trend I expect will continue as home viewing becomes increasingly attractive and the communal experience of movie-going further deteriorates. The films on the these lists were all seen by me in 2011 and make the cut regardless as to whether they first played festivals in 2010 or will be theatrically released in 2012. As in the past, I've separated documentaries onto a separate list. Not sure that's the right thing to do, but it works for me. Finally, these are my "favorite" films of the year, i.e. the ones that gave me the greatest pleasure and not necessarily those I'd choose, if forced at gun point, to anoint as 2011's "best."

2011 Ten Favorite Narrative Features
1. Heartbeats (Canada, dir. Xavier Dolan)
2. The Imperialists Are Still Alive! (USA, dir. Zeina Durra)
3. Cirkus Columbia (Bosnia/Herzegovina, dir. Danis Tanovic)
4. Tomboy (France, dir. Céline Sciamma)
5. Aurora (Romania, dir. Cristi Puiu)
6. Drive (USA, dir. Nicolas Winding Refn)
7. A Separation (Iran, dir. Asghar Farhadi)
8. Le quattro volte (Italy, dir. Michelangelo Frammartino)
9. Gold and Copper (Iran, dir. Homayoun Assadian)
10. Old Cats (Chile, dir. Pedro Peirano/Sebastián Silva

2011 Ten Favorite Documentary Features
1. The Tiniest Place (Mexico, dir. Tatiana Huezo)
2. The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu (Romania, dir. Andrei Ujica)
3. Angel (France, dir. Sebastiano d'Ayala Valva)
4. Project Nim (UK/USA, dir. James Marsh)
5. Tabloid (USA, dir. Errol Morris)
6. Gainsbourg: The Man Who Loved Women (France, dir. Pascal Forneri)
7. I Wish I Knew (China, dir. Jia Zheng-ke)
8. Senna (UK, dir. Asif Kapadia)
9. The Red Chapel (Denmark, dir. Mads Brügger)
10. Cave of Forgotten Dreams (Canada/USA/France, dir. Werner Herzog)

* (For the record, I saw David Weissman and Bill Weber's astounding We Were Here: Voices from the AIDS Years in San Francisco back in 2010)

10 Favorite Repertory/Revival Screenings
1. Deep End (1970, UK, dir. Jerzy Skolimowski, Castro Theatre)
2. Battleship Potemkin (1925, USSR, dir. Sergei M. Eisenstein, Castro Theatre)
3. La Dolce Vita (1960, Italy, dir. Federico Fellini, Castro Theatre, San Francisco International Film Festival)
4. Dance Hall Racket (1953, USA, dir. Phil Tucker, Roxie Theater, "I Wake Up Dreaming" Film Noir series)
5. The Leopard (1963, Italy, dir. Luchino Visconti, Castro Theatre)
6. World on a Wire (1973, West Germany, dir. Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Pacific Film Archive – San Francisco International Film Festival)
7. L'argent (1928, France, dir. Marcel L'Herbier, Castro Theater, San Francisco Silent Film Festival Winter Event)
8. The Night Has a Thousand Eyes (1948, USA, dir. John Farrow, Roxie Theater, "I Wake Up Dreaming" Film Noir series)
9. Sunrise (1927, USA, dir. F.W. Murnau, Castro Theatre, San Francisco Silent Film Festival)
10. All eight films I saw in the "Southern Discomfort" series at the Pacific Film Archive and Roxie Theater: God's Little Acre (1958, dir. Anthony Mann), The Intruder (1962, dir. Roger Corman), Moonrise (1948, dir. Frank Borzage), Swamp Water (1941, dir. Jean Renoir), Hurry Sundown (1967, dir. Otto Preminger), Poor White Trash (1957, dir. Harold Daniels), The Beguiled (1971, dir. Don Siegel), Shy People (1987, dir. Andrey Konchalovskiy)

3 Dozen Honorable Mentions – Narrative Features
The Adventures of Tintin (USA, dir. Steven Spielberg)
The Artist (France, dir. Michel Hazanavicius)
Bachelor Days are Over (France, dir. Katia Lewkowicz)
Biutiful (Mexico/Spain, dir. Alejandro González Iñárritu)
Carnage (France, dir. Roman Polanski)
A Cat in Paris (France, dir. Jean-Loup Felicioli, Alain Gagnol)
Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame (China/Hong Kong, dir. Tsui Hark)
Eastern Plays (Bulgaria, dir. Kamen Kalev)
Essential Killing (Poland, dir. Jerzy Skolimowski)
Even the Rain (Spain, dir. Iciar Bollain)
Hahaha (South Korea, dir. Hong Sang-soo)
Hell (Mexico, dir. Luis Estrada)
Hobo with a Shotgun (Canada, dir. Jason Eisener)
Honey (Turkey, dir. Semih Kaplanoglu)
I Saw the Devil (South Korea, dir. Kim Jee-woon)
The Kid with a Bike (Belgium, dir. Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne)
The Last Circus (Spain, dir. Álex de la Iglesia)
Le Havre (Finland/France, dir. Aki Kaurismäki)
Leap Year (Mexico, dir. Michael Rowe)
Life, Above All (South Africa/Germany, dir. Oliver Schmitz)
Living on Love Alone (France, dir. Isabelle Czajka)
Neds (UK, dir. Peter Mullan)
Nothing's All Bad (Denmark, dir. Mikkel Munch-Fals)
October (Peru, dir. Daniel Vega Vidal, Diego Vega Vidal)
Poetry (South Korea, dir. Lee Chang-dong)
Puzzle (Argentina, dir. Natalia Smirnoff)
A Screaming Man (Chad/France, dir. Mahamat-Saleh Haroun)
The Sleeping Beauty (France, dir. Catherine Breillat)
Submarino (Denmark, dir. Thomas Vinterberg)
Take Shelter (USA, dir. Jeff Nichols)
The Tree of Life (USA, dir. Terrence Malick)
The Trip (UK, dir. Michael Winterbottom)
Tuesday, After Christmas (Romania, dir. Radu Muntean)
Ulysses (Chile, dir. Oscar Godoy)
Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Thailand, dir. Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
We Are What We Are (Mexico, dir. Jorge Michel Grau)

A Dozen Honorable Mentions – Documentary Features
Bill Cunningham New York (USA, dir. Richard Press)
Buck (USA, dir. Cindy Meehl)
Cameraman: The Life and Work of Jack Cardiff (UK, dir. Craig McCall)
Cinema Komunisto (Serbia, dir. Mila Turajlic)
The Desert of Forbidden Art (Russia/USA/Uzbekistan, dir. Tchavdar Georgiev, Amanda Pope)
The Green Wave (Germany, dir. Ali Samadi Ahadi)
The Interrupters (USA, dir. Steve James)
The Mouth of the Wolf (Italy, dir. Pietro Marcello)
Nostalgia for the Light (France, dir. Patricio Guzmán)
Phil Ochs: There But For Fortune (USA, dir. Kenneth Bowser)
Pina (Germany, dir. Wim Wenders)
Summer Pasture (China/USA, dir. Lynne True, Nelson Walker III)

French Cinema Now 2011

2011-10-25T13:21:00.000-07:00

Showcasing a mix of auteur blockbusters and auspicious upstarters – including three North American premieres – the San Francisco Film Society's French Cinema Now (FCN) launches its fourth annual edition on Thursday, October 27. The majority of this year's 11 films were nowhere on my radar, an exciting prospect given that past FCN treasures like Stella, The Wolberg Family and Love Like Poison were similarly unknown entities.

By my estimation, most of this year's FCN selections won't return to the Bay Area or see a Region 1 DVD release – rendering the week-long festival even more of an imperative for local Francophilic cinemaniacs. Note that all but Opening Night takes place at the SF Film Society/New People Cinema, a smaller venue than those employed in past years. This might result in sell-outs, so advance tickets are duly advised. I'm also happy to report that while festivals increasingly lean towards digital exhibition, eight of this year's FCN entries will be screened in 35mm (see the Film on Film Foundation calendar for specifics). What follows are observations and gleaned tidbits on this year's films, from someone who has yet to see any of them.

The two standout FCN titles are undoubtedly Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne's The Kid with a Bike (Le gamin au vélo) and Aki Kaurismaki's Le Havre. Both were in competition at Cannes, with the Dardennes brothers taking a second-place Grand Prix (and thereby losing an unprecedented third Palme d'or to The Tree of Life). Compared to 2008's somewhat disappointing Lorna's Silence, reviews for The Kid with a Bike have been stellar. It's the first time the Belgian neo-realists have employed a bona fide movie star (Cécile de France) and it's their fourth outing with actor Jérémie Renier, who began his career 15 years ago with the Dardenne's La Promesse. Perhaps an equally bright future awaits newcomer Thomas Doret, who's said to give an astounding performance as a boy coming to terms with his deadbeat father's rejection. The Kid with a Bike has distribution through IFC, so I'd expect it to be in local theaters soon.

A different kid is at the center of Finnish director Kaurismaki's Le Havre. He's an illegal African refugee who's being sheltered from police by sympathetic working-class denizens in the titular port city. Le Havre is said to represent a kinder, gentler Kaurismaki, almost fairytale-like in its shortage of trademarked deadpan glumness. Though entirely in French, the film is Finland's 2011 Oscar® submission and Kaurismaki has promised to attend the ceremony should it land him a Best Foreign Language Film nomination. The director famously withdrew 2006's Lights in the Dusk (the only Kaurismaki film I've really liked) from Oscar® consideration, due to his opposition to the Iraq War. Le Havre is scheduled to open in Bay Area Landmark Theaters on November 11 and is being distributed by iconic Janus Films. Nice to know they're still around. Keep your eyes peeled for a cameo by Jean-Pierre Léaud.

A third high-profile film at FCN is Mia Hansen-Løve's Goodbye First Love. I wasn't taken with Hansen-Løve's 2007
debut All is Forgiven, but I sure came around after seeing the exceptional Father of My Children at this year's SF International Film Festival (SFIFF). Goodbye First Love had its international premiere this summer at Locarno, garnering rave reviews and a Special Mention from the jury. Repeating the bifurcated structure of Father of My Children, the film details the obsession of a girl's first love and the repercussions it causes later in life. Actress Lola Créton (the sister who went to live with Catherine Breillat's Blue Beard) plays the lead character at ages 15 and 24. Goodbye First Love is being distributed by IFC Sundance Selects, which guarantees it a VOD and DVD release, but not necessarily a local theatrical run.

Amongst the remaining FCN films, I'm most excited about The Long Falling (Où va la nuit), the latest collaboration between director Martin Provost and actress Yolande Moreau. Their last partnership was Séraphine, the portrait of a naïve 20th century artist which resulted in seven César Awards including Best Picture and Best Actress. Here Moreau plays a farmwife who murders her brutish husband. She flees first to the Brussels apartment of her estranged gay son and then to a boarding house run by a sympathetic widow (Edith Scob) – at which point this understated, noir-ish thriller is intriguingly said to take on Thelma and Louise overtones. Provost adapted the story from Keith Ridgway's best-selling novel and cinematography is by the incomparable Agnès Godard. Reviews are great.

Another one loved by critics is Angèle and Tony (Angèle et Toni), which premiered at last year's Venice Film Festival and won Best Debut Film at Deauville for its writer/director Alix Delaport. Friends who caught it at this summer's Sacramento French Film Festival also came back raving. Clothilde Hesme (Mysteries of Lisbon, Regular Lovers) plays an attractive, resolute single mother with a past who hooks up with a coarse Normandy fisherman (Comédie Française actor Grégory Gadebois.) In Variety, Boyd Van Hoeij describes the film as "a work of subtle intimacy about the need for a human connection, with the bulk of heavy lifting done by pitch-perfect, wholly naturalistic performances."

One of my favorite contemporary French actors is Emmanuelle Devos, so it's nice to see her represented twice at FCN. First up is Opening Night film Bachelor Days are Over (Pourquoi tu pleures?), a comedy of manners in which a groom-to-be encounters untold doubts and roadblocks en route to the "happy" day. The film closed out Cannes' Critics Week sidebar and is a first directorial effort by actress Katia Lewcowicz. Singer/songwriter/producer Benjamin Biolay stars (last seen at FCN as the father in Stella), with support from Devos as his prickly sister and Valérie Donzelli as the fiancé. Donzelli, incidentally, directs and stars in France's 2011 Oscar® submission, Declaration of War, which would have been a swell addition to this year's FCN line-up.

Devos turns up again in Delphine Gleize's The Moon Child (La permission de minuit). It stars Vincent Lindon (Mademoiselle Chambon, Welcome) as the life-long doctor of a boy who's unable to endure sunlight. Conflict arises when the doctor leaves for a position in Geneva working for W.H.O. and Devos arrives as his replacement. There's virtually nothing about this film to be found on-line, at least in English. I notice that Gleize also directed 2002's Carnage, a highly stylized film about the aftermath of a bullfight. While I had reservations about that one, the combination of Lindon and Devos makes The Moon Child a priority.

Another actor I never tire of seeing is Olivier Gourmet. He plays a small role in The Kid with a Bike (his sixth Dardenne brothers' film) and also stars in Pierre Schoeller's The Minister (L'exercice de l'état), which won the FIPRESCI prize in Cannes' Un Certain Regard sidebar. In this film we'll see Gourmet in an atypical white-collar role, playing a conflicted Minister of Transportation who's given the task of implementing privatization of the French railway system. The Minister is said to be a detached, yet absorbing observation of the behind-the-scenes machinations of French politicos. The always welcome Michel Blanc plays his secretary. Schoeller's last film was the Guillaume Depardieu-starring Versailles, which played the SFIFF in 2009.

The phenomenon of actors becoming film directors seems more prevalent in France than in any other national cinema. This year's SFIFF closed with Mathieu Amalric's On Tour and now FCN brings us his latest work, The Screen Illusion (L'illusion comique). This reworking of Pierre Corneille's 17th century play is the third in a series of TV films commissioned by the Comédie Française and chosen from their repertoire. In his rave review for Variety, Jay Weissberg reveals that three rules were imposed on the director. "No additional words, use only thesps who've played the parts onstage, and film in locations away from the theater in no more than 12 days." (That sounds like four rules, but never mind). Having found Amalric's largely improvised On Tour a bit ragged and only occasionally inspired, I think a set of rules could serve him well. His script retains the original's Alexandrine couplets (mercifully not made to rhyme in the English subtitles), while relocating the story to Paris' 5-star Hôtel du Louvre. And though the cast might be well known to French theater-goers, I failed to recognize a single name.

Finally, two very different films in this year's FCN have received almost unvaryingly bad reviews. Their common factor is that each stars one of my favorite French-Arab actors, namely Sami Bouajila and Roschdy Zem. Bouajila finds himself being romantically pursued by a mother and daughter (Nathalie Baye and Audrey Tautou) in Pierre Salvadori's shrill-sounding farce, Beautiful Lies (De vrai mensonges). Salvadori also wrote and directed 2003's painful Après vous (the film which convinced me Daniel Auteuil is French cinema's biggest jambon.) Writing in Variety, Jordan Mintzer complains about "the script's vaudeville-like scenarios" and how the film's "long-winded assembly of quid pro quos and borderline sexist banter goes only to the most predictable places." He does, however, have praise for Bouajila, "the film's one redeeming character," so I might want to check this one out after all.

As for Roschdy Zem, he plays one-quarter of an upper-class bohemian wife-swapping quartet in Anthony Cordier's Four Lovers (Aimez qui vous voulez). Originally titled Happy Few when it premiered at last year's Venice Film Festival, it co-stars Marina Foïs, Élodie Bouchez (Wild Reeds, The Imperialists are Still Alive!) and Nicolas Duvauchelle (Isabelle Huppert's crazy son in White Material). SBS Film's Simon Foster declares it "the sort of film that people who never watch French films think all French films are like." And over at Variety, Boyd Van Hoeij finds Four Lovers "essentially an exercise in bourgeois navel (and further downwards) gazing that doesn't add anything new to the genre. Lovers of middlebrow French relationship dramas and subtitled smut might be happy." On the plus side, he notes how the film "neatly showcases the thesps' no-problemo attitude towards nudity," with only Zem forgoing going full frontal. As a connoisseur of subtitled smut, I wouldn't dream of missing this.

Cross published on The Evening Class.

16th Berlin & Beyond Film Festival 2011

2011-10-19T07:58:00.000-07:00

Last year's Berlin & Beyond Film Festival (B&B) was deemed festival non grata by a number of Bay Area cinephiles. Troubled by the Goethe Institut's forced retirement of B&B founder Ingrid Eggers and annoyed at B&B's shift from January to an already festival-stuffed October, they lent support to an unofficial boycott. The weak-willed amongst us, however, couldn't resist skulking into the Castro Theatre for at least a taste of new German language cinema, which included the outstanding duo of The Robber and The Silence, plus Germany's Oscar® submission When We Leave (which, in a decidedly minority opinion, I ended up really, really hating).

Fast forward one year and it looks like the fences have been mended. At the press conference announcing this year's line-up, both Festival President Sabine Erlenwein and Director Sophoan Sorn made a point of mentioning that Eggers was in the audience. Now everyone is free to enjoy a guiltless 16th annual Berlin & Beyond, which runs from October 20 to 26 in San Francisco, with a San Jose Encore Day on October 29. As for Ingrid Eggers' 3-year-old counter-fest, German Gems, it's slated for a full-day Castro takeover on January 14, 2012. Several important new German language films are missing from this year's B&B, so let's hope Ingrid has gotten her hands on them.

There are 23 narrative and documentary features in this year's fest, of which I've seen seven (via DVD screener except where noted). The strongest is The Day I Was Not Born, an intense, noteworthy debut from director Florian Cossen. While waiting for a connecting flight in Buenos Aires, a young German woman mysteriously recognizes a Spanish lullaby. She learns that not only is she the child of parents "disappeared" by Argentina's military dictatorship, but the circumstance of her adoption by German parents is reprehensible at best. Cossen ups the ante by giving us a somewhat unsympathetic heroine who is aided in her search by a suspicious, German-speaking cop (effectively played by Rafael Ferro, the long-distance swimmer in Veronica Chen's Agua). Equally memorable is Beatriz Spelzini as an aunt who demands justice. Her scenes are heartbreaking.

A newish trend at Bay Area festivals has been the screening of genre films in Late Show time slots, with 3rd i South Asian and SF Jewish Film Festivals being recent examples. B&B gets into the act with Michael Steiner's Sennentuntschi, an atmospheric Swiss creep-fest. It's a film I'm certain many non-genre fans like myself will be happy they stayed up late for. The Sennentuntschi is a woman of Alpine folklore, created to service men's "needs" and constructed from straw, rag and a broom. She's given life by Satan and her revenge is a bitch. In a wordless performance, French actress Roxane Mesquida (Catherine Breillat's Sex is Comedy and Fat Girl) perfectly embodies the creature's ferity and vulnerability. While never less than engaging as a solid genre piece, the film isn't immune to goofing around. Serge Gainsbourg and T. Rex pop up on the soundtrack and the plot embraces absinthe consumption, psychotic priests, stillborn babies and worse.

There's also a macabre element at play in Chris Kraus' (Four Minutes) The Poll Diaries, a historic epic set on the shores of the Baltic Sea. In the days leading up to WWI, a spirited teenage girl hides a wounded Estonian anarchist not only from the Russian and German armies, but also from her disciplinarian father, a disgraced scientist with a penchant for human dissection. The film ultimately becomes a bit silly and laborious, but the real attraction here is the setting – an enormous mansion built on stilts overlooking the sea. I caught The Poll Diaries at the Palm Springs International Film Festival and can only imagine how great it will look on the Castro's big screen in 35mm. It's the most sumptuously photographed film I've seen this year. And speaking of 35mm, B&B deserves big kudos for once again making its audience privy to every film's screening format.

This year's opening night film is Yasemin Samdereli's Almanya – Welcome to Germany, a big-hearted family dramedy about three generations of Turkish Germans road-tripping to Anatolia whilst flashbacking upon family history. It'll provide crowd-pleasing entertainment on opening night, but those looking for a thoughtful depiction of immigration, cultural identity and assimilation are advised to look elsewhere. The festival closes a week later with Andres Veiel's If Not Us, Who, which was screened at the B&B press conference. It follows the path of 60s/70s revolutionary Gudrun Ensslin (an intensely watchable Lena Lauzemis) – from her complicated relationship with radical writer/publisher Bernward Vesper, right up to her infamous association with militant RAF leader Andreas Baader. The telling is rather flat, however, lacking the urgency and dynamism that made The Baader Meinhof Complex a compelling watch.

If Not Us, Who co-stars Alexander Fehling as Andreas Baader. The popular actor reappears in the title role of Young Goethe in Love, which is the main event of B&B's Encore Day in San Jose. The festival desperately wanted to show this new Philipp Stölzl (Northface) film at the Castro, but distributor Music Box Films nixed screening it in any theater with more than 500 seats (the film opens at Landmark's Clay Theater on November 18 and recently played the Mill Valley Film Festival). According to Festival Director Sorn, the Castro's size is also the reason why Tom Tykwer's 3 got relegated to San Jose. This is rather weird considering the film's June Frameline showing at the Castro, as well as a recent theatrical run at the Sundance Kabuki. (My Frameline review of 3 is here). Filling out the San Jose line-up are the aforementioned The Poll Diaries and Peter Luisi's The Sandman, an absurdist tale about a priggish stamp dealer whose body starts excreting mountains of sand. While reasonably entertaining and well acted, The Sandman's titular metaphor is overburdened and would probably work best as a short.

Of all the films I hope to see during the festival proper, Andreas Dresen's Stopped On Track sits at the top. Dresen is no stranger to B&B. His film Cloud 9 (aka "the geriatric sex movie") played here in 2009 and I believe one or two others have been featured at the fest. Stopped on Track employs a mix of actors and non-professionals – all speaking improvised dialogue – to tell the story of a postal worker's last months before dying of a brain tumor. The film was co-winner (with Kim Ki-duk's Arirang) of the top prize in Cannes 2011's Un Certain Regard sidebar. Of possible related interest is Michael Schaerer's Bold Heroes, B&B's 2011 Centerpiece Film about five teenage boys with terminal diseases all living together in a Swiss clinic.

Documentaries are generally a good bet at B&B and this year's festival offers seven. All five German docs are personal profiles of sorts: urban guerilla turned Foreign Minister Joseph Fischer (Joschka & Mr. Fischer), Universal Pictures founder Carl Laemmle (100 Years of Hollywood: The Carl Laemmle Story), wildlife conservationist Jane Goodall (Jane's Journey), championship boxing brothers Vitali and Wladimir Klitschko (Klitschko) and five former East German citizens incarcerated for attempting to flee to the West (Face the Wall). From Austria there's a look at teenage immigrants who've left crisis regions for a home in Europe (Little Alien) and a story of extreme mountain skiing (Mount St. Elias). Finally, six German language shorts will be screened before select features, in lieu of being grouped into one program. This is a welcome format for folks like me who (regrettably) rarely attend shorts programs.

Cross published on The Evening Class.

34th Mill Valley Film Festival 2011

2011-10-04T07:48:00.000-07:00

The 34th Mill Valley Film Festival (MVFF) gets underway this Thursday, October 6 with Glenn Close's gender-bending turn as a 19th century Irish butler in Albert Nobbs. Close will attend the screening with director Rodrigo Garcia, and then reappear the following night for her own festival tribute and reception. Sharing opening night duties at a separate venue will be Jay and Mark Duplass' Jeff Who Lives at Home (see review below), starring Jason Segel and Susan Sarandon. The film is scheduled for a March, 2012 release, making it an unusual choice for a MVFF opener. Both Duplass brothers are confirmed guests. Closing out the fest on Sunday, October 16 will be the film I'm most anticipating this autumn, Michel Hazanavicius' The Artist. This silent, B&W French homage to 1927 Hollywood won a Best Actor prize at Cannes for Jean Dujardin, best known in these parts for his lead performances in Hazanavicius' OSS117 spy spoofs. It's recently been confirmed that Dujardin, along with co-star Berenice Berjo (who is also the director's wife), will be joining Hazanavicius for the evening's festivities. It kills me that I'll have to miss it.

In addition to Glenn Close, MFFF34 hosts a tribute to Burkina Faso's director Gaston Kaboré, one of the greats of African cinema. His debut film, 1982's Wend Kuuni (God's Gift) will screen at the tribute, and 1997's Buud Yam will be shown two days later. Three actors get the MVFF Spotlight treatment this year, most notably Hong Kong actress Michelle Yeoh. She'll be here along with French action director Luc Besson, both promoting The Lady, which examines the life of Burmese prodemocracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi. The remaining Spotlights are for young actors Ezra Miller (Lynne Ramsay's We Need to Talk About Kevin co-starring Tilda Swinton) and Elizabeth Olsen (Martha Marcy May Marlene). MVFF34's Centerpiece Film will be Simon Curtis' My Week with Marilyn (starring Michelle Williams as Monroe) and for the fest's Special Premiere they'll be screening Stephan Elliott's (The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert) latest, A Few Best Men. Both directors are confirmed to attend their respective screenings.

Regrettably, I'll be out of town for most of this year's festival. Were I around, here are some films I'd be making an effort to see (none were available to preview on DVD screener). At the top is Gerardo Naranjo's Miss Bala, which eyes Mexico's drug wars from the perspective of a kidnapped beauty pageant contestant. The film was highly praised when it premiered in Cannes' Un Certain Regard sidebar and it's just been chosen as Mexico's 2011 Oscar® submission. Also from Cannes, but from the main competition, is The Conquest (La conquête), a thinly veiled look at the political machinations of French president Nicolas Sarkozy. Making its U.S. premiere at MVFF34 is actor Ralph Fiennes' directorial debut Coriolanus, which resets Shakespeare's play in war-torn Bosnia. Shame, director Steve McQueen's acclaimed follow-up to 2008's Hunger, once again stars Michael Fassbender, this time as a Manhattan sex addict. Albania-set The Forgiveness of Blood comes from the same American director as 2004's Maria, Full of Grace. This tale of a Balkan blood feud has, with some controversy, been submitted as Albania's 2011 Oscar® submission. Speaking of Oscar®, Germany has entered Pina into the race, Wim Wenders' 3-D look at legendary choreographer Pina Bausch. This is one of more than two dozen feature documentaries contained in MVFF34's Valley of the Docs sidebar.

Below are capsule reviews of ten MVFF34 films I have had the chance to preview, all on DVD screener except where noted.

Circus Columbia (Cirkus Columbia) (Bosnia/Herzegovina, dir Danis Tanovic)
Nearly 10 years after snatching the Golden Globe and Oscar® right out of Amélie's hands with No Man's Land, Danis Tanovic returns with this near-perfect yarn about one town's drift toward civil war. After earning his fortune abroad, prodigal husband and father Divko returns to his Bosnian birthplace with new mistress in tow, promptly evicting his wife and teenage son from the family domicile. Divko's redemption drives this bittersweet, rollicking film. But in the background, hints of a dark future intensify, culminating in Tanovic's unforgettable final shot which announces the start of war. Reviews from last year's Venice Film Festival were very mixed, but the director's impeccable pacing, balance of conflicting tones and direction of actors, all convinced me I was in the hands of a master filmmaker. Certain to be one of my Ten Favorite Films of 2011. As seen at the 2011 Palm Springs International Film Festival.

Hello! How Are You? (Buna! Se faci?) (Romania, dir Alexandru Maftei)
We've had almost five years of admiring Romania's prodigious output of dour, bleakly funny human dramas. What we haven't seen is a Romanian rom-com, which is what we get with this genial comedy of errors. Gabi and Gabi are husband and wife in a loving, but lackluster marriage. One day they spring to life after simultaneously engaging in clandestine correspondence with an online admirer (and you can certainly guess who those admirers will turn out to be). While the film initially struggles to make this tired premise fresh, the director gradually steps up his game and scores some original moves. It doesn't hurt that the main subplot follows their hunky son as he auditions for porn and constantly updates an audio diary of his sexploits. The fun, tropicalia-flavored music score is a revelation. As seen at the 2011 Palm Springs International Film Festival.

Silence of Love (Tous les soleils) (France, dir Philippe Claudel)
Director Claudel follows his 2008 psychological shocker I've Loved You So Long with something completely different – a gently humorous portrait of a single Italian-French father opening himself to the possibilities of love. Stefano Accorsi (Ferzan Ozpetek's Saturn in Opposition and His Secret Life) stars as a Strasbourg music professor who lives with a smart, rebellious teenage daughter he overprotects, and an agoraphobic, anarchist brother. While it gets a bit corny in places and the screaming, emotive Italian stereotypes can wear thin, the film is overall quite winning. Anouk Aimée shows up in a memorable supporting role and Strasbourg looks even lovelier than it did in José Luis Guerín's In the City of Sylvia. For what it's worth, I doubt the distributor could have come up with a lousier English title than Silence of Love.

The Mosque (A Jamaâ) (Morocco, dir Daoud Aoulad-Syad)
In 2007's Waiting for Pasolini (which opened our 2008 Arab Film Festival), giddy chaos overtook a Moroccan village with the arrival of an Italian film crew. Now Pasolini's director has made a sequel of sorts, whereby a poor farmer is forbidden from dismantling the film's fake mosque, which sits on his land and has been appropriated as a real place of worship. Unable to support his family, he's told by the mosque's fake imam that his rewards lie in the next life. While initially a tad plodding and one-note, The Mosque improves as complex layers are added to the farmer's predicament. The result is a worthy allegory assailing religious hypocrisy, corruption and authoritarianism.

Busong (Palawan Fate) (Palawan Destin) (Philippines, dir Auraeus Solito)
Director Solito, best known for his LGBT-themed films like The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros and Boy, returns to his southern Philippines roots. In this dreamy meditation steeped in Palawan island culture, indigenous folklore and healing arts are revealed to us through a half dozen loosely connected storylines. In the costumes and art direction, Busong maintains a timelessness into which modernity only occasionally intrudes – the distant sound of a chainsaw, a wisp of poisonous smoke from a nickel mine, and a somewhat heavy-handed story of a fisherman's humiliating encounter with a white landowner. All of this – the pristine beaches, jungles, unending skies and underwater life – is sumptuously photographed. Solito's now familiar homoerotic gaze is also in full evidence.

Beyond the Road (Por el camino) (Brazil/Uruguay, dir Charly Braun)
A youngish, Argentine ex-investment banker arrives in Montevideo, Uruguay and sets off to see some rural property left by his deceased parents. Along for the ride is a Belgian tourist, with whom he begins an uneasy fling. Considerably more interesting than their oscillating relationship are the stops they make en route; from a chic Punta del Este art gallery to a country horse fair, and from a rich uncle's estancia to a hippie commune in the boonies. First-time director Braun's talent lies in conveying a rich sense of place and populating his film with compellingly watchable "real" types. Even Naomi Campbell has a wistful cameo that's not out of place in this charmingly meandering, melancholy journey. Director Braun will attend both MVFF screenings.

The Prize (El premio) (Mexico, dir Paula Markovitch)
At the height of Argentina's Dirty War, a mother and 7-year-old daughter hide from authorities in a remote, ramshackle beach hut. Their tenuously safe existence is threatened when the girl starts school and enters an essay contest meant to extol the virtues of the country's military. Markovich is best known as co-screenwriter of Fernando Eimbcke's Duck Season and Lake Tahoe, but her feature directorial debut contains none of the absurdist humor of those remarkable films. Her subject matter is certainly vital (and from what I've read, closely autobiographical), but the film is sabotaged by extremely slow pacing. Scenes of wind-whipped beach wandering alternate with long stretches of mother and daughter cooped up in their shack (where oddly enough, we never once observe them cooking or eating), to the point of grossly overstating the characters' anxiety, boredom and isolation. This dampens the potency of an otherwise absorbing work containing superb performances and distinctive mise-en-scène. Director Markovitch will attend the October 16 MVFF screening.

Jeff Who Lives at Home (USA, dir Jay and Mark Duplass)
The Duplass brothers deliver their most mainstream film to date, which could put off fans of edgier works like Baghead and Cyrus. Jason Segel plays Jeff, a stoner whose begrudging errand for Mom (Susan Sarandon) sets off a day-long, follow-your-bliss-y search for signs of life in the universe. A cleverly crafted story rubs uncomfortably against too much strained poignancy. Still, highly recommended for those who think Segel is the most adorable schlub in the universe. As seen at a MVFF34 press screening.

Pegasus (Pégase) (Morocco, dir Mohamed Mouftakir)
Somewhere in a vague dystopia, a crazy woman raves about "The Lord of the Horse" who's coming to get her. It's up to comely mental institution psychologist Zineb to get to the bottom of it all. I won't elaborate further on the plot, which rolls insanity, rape, transexualism, incest and creepy folklore into one big convoluted and culturally abstruse psycho-thriller. Still, the film is extremely well made, with arresting imagery and shifting color palettes matching the temperament of any given scene. Amazingly, Pegasus was the top prize winner at this year's FESPACO, Africa's most important film festival. Popular Moroccan actor Anas El Baz (Casanegra) will attend both MVFF screenings.

Holidays by the Sea (Ni à vendre ni à louer) (France, dir Pascal Rabaté)
Graphic novelist turned film director Rabaté updates Jacques Tati with this homage to 1953's beloved comedy, Mr. Hulot's Holiday. Once again we're at a seaside resort, observing the droll antics of tourists and year-round denizens alike. But this isn't your grandfather's Tati, with subplots involving BDSM and a nudist camp. Rabaté conjures a few interesting visual ideas, but overall the film lacks cohesion and punch. And while comic mileage will always vary, this not painfully-unfunny frolic failed to elicit a single laugh out me. Points are given for top-notch production design, a cast of recognizable French character actors (including Jean-Pierre Jeunet regular Dominique Pinon) and an effectively whimsical, Theremin-heavy score (the film contains no dialogue to speak of).

SF Latino Film Festival 2011

2011-09-15T07:14:00.000-07:00

Being passionate about Latin American cinema in the Bay Area can be frustrating. Despite our favorable demographics and purported status as America's second-ranked center for film culture, scads of new Latin American films – from established auteurs to promising newcomers – make noise on the festival circuit each year yet ultimately fail to reach our screens. The most egregious example is probably Claudia Llosa's The Milk of Sorrow (La teta asustada), a 2009 Peruvian film which affirmatively answered the question, "Can a movie win the Berlin Film Festival's top prize and get an Oscar® nomination for Best Foreign Language Film and still go unseen by Bay Area audiences?" As Ricky Ricardo might say, I think our local programmers have some 'splaining to do.

And so it was I checked out the line-up for this year's Cine + Mas' San Francisco Latino Film Festival (SFLFF) and came up with a total blank. Not one of the 19 narrative and documentary features rang any bells, necessitating a lot of research to ferret out the potentially worthwhile. Below is my resultant take on the program, along with details on upcoming Bay Area cinema events of Latin American interest.

But first, the basic info. This is Cine + Mas' third year producing the festival, filling the void left by 2008's adios of Sylvia Perel's 12-year-old Latino Film Festival. It runs September 16 to 25, with the bulk happening at Landmark Theater's Opera Plaza Cinema on Saturday and Sunday, September 17 and 18. (Surprisingly, the festival didn't re- engage the Mission District's Roxie Theater, which seemed to work well as principal venue last year.) Additional screenings are booked into other Bay Area locations including Landmark's Embarcadero Cinema (opening night), the Mission Cultural Center, the Brava Theater, Pacific Film Archive and College of Marin.

A closer look at the 2011 SFLFF line-up revealed at least one familiar name – that of acclaimed Mexican director Luis Estrada (Herod's Law). His latest film Hell (Infierno) is a pitch black satire about a man deported from the U.S. to Mexico, and his re-acclimation to a homeland more corrupt and violent than the one he left behind 20 years ago. In spite of being denounced by the Mexican government, Hell received a staggering 14 Ariel Award (Mexico's Oscar®) nominations. It won nine, including Best Picture, Director and Actor, making this my Top Pick for the festival. You might want to secure advance tickets for this, as there's only one screening and the Opera Plaza theaters are small. I've got mine.

Far down Hell's cast list you'll find the name Gabino Rodríguez, a young character actor who plays small roles in big films (Rudo y Cursi, Sin Nombre) and leading roles in small Mexican indies (Perpetuum Mobile and The Cinema Hold Up, the latter a recent Sundance hit that would have been great in this festival). For A Stone's Throw Away (A tiro de piedra), Rodríguez co-wrote the screenplay with director/cinematographer Sebastián Hiriart and plays a goatherd whose omens and visions lead him on a quest to Oregon. This laconic road movie has played several significant festivals like San Sebastian, Morelia, Dubai and Miami. While Variety's Jay Weissberg gave it a mixed review, Howard Feinstein at indieWire praised Rodríguez' "masterful performance" and Hiriart's "outstanding cinematography. His feeling for natural, urban and small-town landscapes is unique, as if the steady eye of divinity were observing the world." San Francisco's Chinatown makes an appearance in the film.

I've liked every Peruvian movie I've seen recently, which is why I plan on catching Rosario Garcia-Montero's directorial debut The Bad Intentions (Las malas intenciones). Against the backdrop of Peru's civil war – 1982 to be exact – a morose rich girl acts out in weird ways when her mother gets pregnant. In a rave review from the L.A. Film Festival, indieWire's The Playlist names Garcia-Montero "a great new voice in the world of cinema" and calls The Bad Intentions "one of the best films of the year." Alyssa Simon's more measured Variety review detects the influence of Argentina's Lucrecia Martel. This might a good place to mention that the San Francisco Film Society will be bringing the Peruvian film Octubre, to its recently launched SFFS/New People Cinema later this autumn. Co-directed by brothers Daniel and Diego Vega Vidal, this excellent deadpan social comedy won Cannes' Un Certain Regard jury prize in 2010. Highly recommended. Watch the SFFS website for dates.

Another notable director in this year's fest is Venezuela's Fina Torres, who won Cannes' Camera d'or in 1985 for her first film, Oriana. I seem to remember liking her Celestial Clockwork at the 1996 SF International Film Festival, but I steered clear of 2000's Penelope Cruz vehicle, Woman on Top. Her latest is Habana Eva, a feisty romantic farce about a young seamstress torn between two men – her layabout architect fiancé and a foreigner who's on a real estate buying spree. What's a Habanera to do? Everyone is the trailer is ridiculously attractive and reviews I've read run good to mixed (with some ridiculing Torres' injection of magic realism.) But all agree there's enough going on – including some sly political commentary – to elevate the film above genre norms.

We find a wide range amongst the remaining SFLFF narrative features. Nicolas Lopez' love-in-the-time-of-Facebook comedy F*** My Life (Que pena tu vida) was Chile's biggest box office hit of 2010, and has already produced a sequel, F*** My Wedding. Todd Brown at Twitch calls it "a remarkably authentic rom-com for twenty-somethings" and "a fun little ride for what it is." Iris Disse's drama Following the Stars (Siguiendo las estrellas) looks like it could provide an insightful look at Panama's indigenous islanders, the Kuna. In Veronica Reidel's melodrama Capsules (Capsulas), a rich Guatemalan boy is forced to transport heroine capsules by his mother's drug kingpin boyfriend. Be forewarned – Robert Koehler in Variety calls this one "risible," with "crude staging, rickety pacing and telenovela-quality acting." Finally, there are two U.S. indies in the festival. MLK Jr. Way is a local slice of docu-fiction mumblecore about two Oakland Mexican-American slackers. Recently rendered jobless and homeless, they hatch a plan to secure rich white girlfriends to solve their problems. Then in Felix Martiz' low-budget thriller Santiago, an actor doing research tags long with a notorious pimp/dealer for one day.

Documentaries make up half the SFLFF line-up, starting with the opening night film, Café Takvba (Seguir Siendo: Café Takvba). It's a portrait of Mexico's most venerated rock band, whose personality and eclecticism have assured their popularity for over 20 years. The remaining docs are all of a more serious nature. Cruz Reynoso: Sowing the Seeds of Justice examines the remarkable life of the first Latino appointed to the California Supreme Court. It was shown at last year's Mill Valley Film Festival and will screen on KQED later this month. Other U.S. documentaries focus on a controversial Arizona Latino studies program (Precious Knowledge) and the murder of a Colorado transsexual teen Photos of Angie (Fotos de Angie). In contrast, Blattangelus steps inside a LGBT-friendly church in Mexico City.

The legacy of brutal Latin American dictatorships is the subject of three more documentaries. Open Sky (Cielo abierto) remembers rebelious Salvadoran archbishop Óscar Romero, who was assassinated in 1980 by U.S.-backed government thugs. In his review for Variety, Jay Weissberg calls this film an "absorbing portrait" and "moving tribute to a major late 20th century figure." Then in La Isla: Archives of a Tragedy, a 2005 Guatemala City explosion leads to evidence of a secret government prison where thousands were tortured and murdered. Finally, in The Chilean Building (El edificio de los Chilenos, we learn about children who remained in Europe while exiled parents clandestinely returned to fight Pinochet's regime.

* * * * *

In a fine example of the "when it rains, it pours" approach used to schedule Bay Area film festivals, the 3rd Annual Maya Indie Film Series runs concurrent with SFLFF – sharing not only dates, but venues as well. Maya Entertainment is a leading distributor of Latino-themed U.S. indies, and this year's "seven city tour with seven films in seven days" kicks off on Friday, September 16. SF Latino Film Festival shares its opening night at the Embarcadero Cinema by spotlighting Maya's All She Can as the evening's co-feature. This directorial debut by Amy Wendel tells the story of Luz, a small-town Texas high school student determined to win a state power lifting championship. Incidentally, the Maya series doesn't quite add up to "seven films" here in San Francisco. For some reason we don't get to see Sympathy for Delicious, actor Mark Ruffalo's directorial debut co-starring Orlando Bloom, Laura Linney and Juliette Lewis, which is part of the series in other cities.

In addition to co-opening the SFLFF on Friday evening, the Maya Indie Film Series begins at the Opera Plaza Cinema that same afternoon and remains there through Thursday, September 22. (On Saturday and Sunday, SFLFF and Maya will occupy three of the venue's four screens). All She Can and William Wedig's Forged will be screened daily, with the remaining four films filling out the schedule on a rotating basis. One possible highlight is the Peter Coyote-starring Di Di Hollywood, the latest from Spanish director Bigas Luna (Jamon, Jamon, The Chambermaid on the Titanic). The trailer looks like it could be trashy fun.

* * * * *

Earlier up I mentioned actor Gabino Rodríguez, who among other things is the acteur fétiche of prolific, 27-year-old Mexican indie filmmaker Nicolás Pereda. Fortunately for us, the adventurous and indispensable Yerba Buena Center for the Arts presents a full career retrospective of Pereda's works next month, in a program titled Mexico Rising: The Films of Nicolás Pereda. It consists of one short and five features, four of which star Rodrígues. I was moved by 2009's Perpetuum Mobile when I saw it at last year's travelling Hola México Film Festival (a festival so poorly attended here, its producers are bypassing San Francisco in 2011). At YBCA, I'm eager to catch Summer of Goliath, Pereda's most recent work which garnered some good reviews during its brief New York theatrical release this summer. From the YBCA website:

"Very much of his moment, Pereda combines aspects of some of the most notable trends in contemporary world cinema, including elements of deadpan minimalism, slacker cinema, the documentary/fiction hybrid and long-take formalism. Pereda's films are among the chief testaments to the incredible vitality and creativity of Mexican cinema today."

SFFS/New People Cinema Takes Off

2011-08-18T00:00:00.000-07:00

June 2011 brought the fantastic news that come September, the San Francisco Film Society (SFFS) would be transforming Japantown's New People Cinema into its very own year-round venue. Well summer's almost over and true to its promise, SFFS has revealed an auspicious line-up of September movies with which to inaugurate this new venture. This is exactly what I was hoping for – week-long runs of acclaimed films with limited distribution that were passed over by the likes of Landmark Theaters, the Roxie, YBCA and others. I'm doubly impressed by the commitment to daily matinee and evening showtimes.

While the Official Grand Opening doesn't happen until later in the month, programming unofficially gets going on Friday, September 2 with the Bay Area premiere of Jean-Luc Godard's Film socialisme. This latest polemic from France's cranky, 80-year-old master provocateur is purportedly about the decline of Western civilization, vis-à-vis a Mediterranean cruise and portrait of a provincial French gas station-owning family – with purposefully oblique/misleading subtitles to boot. While the 1985 Hail Mary riots outside the Roxie Cinema are a lovely memory, I need to think back 40 years to come up with a Godard film I unequivocally "liked." Through the decades I've dutifully slogged my way through each new work that's come to the Bay Area (and not all of them have), so I'm feeling no less compelled to see this, the director's first new feature since 2004's Notre musique. My reticence is lessened just knowing Patti Smith is in it. Here's a Film socialism trailer that appeared several months before the 2010 Cannes premiere. It appears to be the entire movie fast-forwarded in 4 1/2 minutes.

While Godard might be a hard pill for some, the following week brings a surefire crowd-pleaser to the SFFS/New People Cinema with the September 9 SF premiere of Natalia Smirnoff's Puzzle. I missed this Argentine film when it screened at last autumn's Mill Valley Film Festival, eventually catching up with it at January's Palm Springs fest. It was the most rapturously received of the three dozen movies I saw there. Puzzle is an accomplished, low-key charmer about a put-upon Buenos Aires housewife who finds personal validation and companionship in the world of competitive jigsaw puzzle tournaments (who knew?). It features a captivatingly understated performance by María Onetto, whom we last saw in Lucrecia Martel's The Headless Woman. Furthering the Martel connection is that director Smirnoff, making an assured directorial debut with Puzzle, served as Martel's assistant director on La ciénaga and The Holy Girl. My only complaint with Puzzle is a late-film plot development which rings so completely false, it might have derailed a lesser work. See the film and let me know if you agree.

On Friday, September 16, the SFFS Cinema ping-pongs from crowd-pleaser back to hardcore art film with Cristi Puiu's Aurora. This three-hour, slow-burning Romanian character study cum crime thriller screened at this year's SF International Film Festival and is Puiu's follow-up to The Death of Mr. Lazarescu. It was my favorite narrative feature of the festival and has an assured place in my year-end Top 10. While I anticipate seeing it again, Aurora's SF return will be especially welcomed by those who attended a fateful screening late in the festival. The 35mm print broke just before the crucial event at the film's mid-point, resulting in a canceled screening and a room of traumatized cinephiles.

The less informed you are going into Aurora the better. Simply know that your patience for the mundane "events" which frontload the film will be amply rewarded later and that the film's peevish protagonist, who appears in nearly every frame, is portrayed by the director himself. There's a note on the SFFS website advising that the September 20 and 21 showings of Aurora will be on Blu-ray, which I assume means the first four days will be 35mm. On Thursday, September 22, following Aurora's six-day run, the SFFS/New People Cinema will celebrate its Official Grand Opening with an open house reception. Festivities will include a ribbon-cutting ceremony, sake ceremony and a selection of short films.

Beginning Friday, September 23 the cinema shifts gears with a week of special events, starting with SFFS' first ever three-day mini-festival of recent Hong Kong Cinema. As mentioned in the press release, "SFFS has played a pioneering role in introducing Hong Kong cinema to Bay Area audiences through the SF International Film Festival, which has shown over 70 Hong Kong films, beginning in 1959." The seven films in this series range from opening night indie Merry-Go-Round (partially set in San Francisco) to the latest from veteran Johnnie To (an atypical romantic dramedy, Don't Go Breaking My Heart). Other recognizable Hong Kong directors in the fest include Ann Hui (All About Love, in which pregnant, lesbian ex-partners re-connect) and Benny Chan (sci-fi actioner City Under Siege).

Benny Chan's most recent film, martial arts epic Shaolin, screens later that week for two days (September 28 & 29), separate from the Hong Kong mini-fest. Set in early 20th century China, this tale of a warlord's spiritual redemption boasts a cast of HK superstars (Andy Lau, Nicholas Tse, Jackie Chan) and fight sequences performed by real Shaolin monks. In between Hong Kong Cinema and Shaolin, SFFS hosts a special screening of the documentary The Disappearance of McKinley Nolan on Monday, September 26. Directed by Henry Corra (who will attend the evening shows), this doc is about the mysterious 40-year-old disappearance of an African American G.I. in the jungles of Viet Nam and Cambodia.

And that takes us up to Friday, September 30 and a one-week run of Passione, John Turturro's valentine to the music and people of Naples which opened this year's Cinequest in San Jose. The month of October also finds SFFS into the full swing of its Fall Season, so save these dates: Taiwan Film Days (Oct. 14-16), NY/SF International Children's Film Festival (Oct. 21-23) and French Cinema Now (Oct. 27-Nov.2).

SF Silent Film Festival 2011

2011-07-11T21:31:00.000-07:00

As the San Francisco Silent Film Festival (SFSFF) prepares to launch its 16th edition this week, I find it impossible to say anything about this magnificent event I haven't already stated in previous SFSFF blog posts. So at the risk of sounding like a broken 78-rpm record, here again are the reasons why SFSFF is one of the biggest highlights of my movie-going year.

First there's the venue. How do you top watching silent films in an authentic setting like the beloved 89-year-old Castro Theatre? Then there are the films themselves, always expertly curated and rich in variety. (And here it's worth noting that all 13 of this year's feature films will be screened in 35mm!) Next come the consummate musicians who are brought in to accompany each and every program – silent films were never meant to be experienced in silence! Then don't tell anyone, but the SFSFF is also educational – with its on-screen slide shows, program guide of scholarly essays, informative panels and special guest intros. Finally, it's terrific fun – four convivial days of sharing long hours in the dark with like-minded enthusiasts. To the uninitiated who might ask "why silent films," I simply defer to the festival's mission statement:

"Silent filmmakers produced masterpieces and crowd-thrilling entertainments. Remarkable for their artistry and their inestimable value as historical documents, silent films show us how our ancestors thought, spoke, dressed and lived. It is through these films that the world first came to love movies, and learned to appreciate them as art."

Here's a ruminative stroll through this year's tantalizing 18-program line-up.

Thursday, July 14

7:00 P.M. Upstream (1927, USA, dir. John Ford)
In 2009, nitrate prints of 75 American silent movies, many of them previously considered "lost," were discovered in a Wellington, New Zealand film archive. John Ford's Upstream, a lighthearted backstage drama about the struggling denizens of a showbiz boarding house is the first feature-length of these treasures to be preserved for the public. Upstream is said to reflect the influence of visionary director F.W. Murnau upon Ford, a filmmaker best known for his epic Hollywood westerns. Interestingly, this is the second year in a row that SFSFF kicks off with a John Ford silent. Upstream will be accompanied by the Donald Sosin Ensemble (consisting of Sosin and members of the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra) and afterwards an Opening Night party will take place at the top floor loft of the McRoskey Mattress Company.

9:15 P.M. Sunrise (1927, USA, dir. F.W. Murnau)
For the first time this year, SFSFF will screen a film concurrent with its Opening Night party. Considered the zenith of silent film art by many – and named one of the greatest motion pictures of all time by others – F.W. Murnau's masterpiece has of course been shown at previous SFSFF editions, most recently at the 2009 Winter Event. The reason for this speedy return is the world premiere of Giovanni Spinelli's new rock score which is performed on a single electric guitar. The very notion will set some purists' teeth on edge. I admit I felt dubious until reading this piece on Anne Thompson's indieWire blog and watching this 6 1/2 minute doc short at Vimeo. Now I can't wait.

Friday, July 15

11:00 A.M. Amazing Tales from the Archives (Archivist as Detective)
Celluloid sleuths from the George Eastman House, UCLA Film & Television Archive, and Academy Film Archive will illuminate the process of film identification. Last year's Silent Film Preservation Fellow Ken Fox will also speak on recreating intertitles for the recently rediscovered and restored Douglas Fairbanks film Mr. Fix-It (which screens Saturday night). Musician Stephen Horne will accompany these presentations of cinematic discovery. FREE ADMISSION.

2:00 P.M. Huckleberry Finn (1920, USA, dir. William Desmond Taylor)
Filmed on location in Mississippi, this is the earliest film adaptation of Mark Twain's popular novel. William Desmond Taylor was the obvious choice for director, having already made the immensely popular Tom Sawyer (1917) and The Further Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1918). Two years after the release of Huckleberry Finn he would be shot dead in his living room in what remains one of Hollywood's great unsolved mysteries. Of the 64 films Taylor directed during his nine years in Hollywood, only 18 exist today. Huckleberry Finn is the 1000th film to be preserved by the National Film Preservation Foundation and NFPF director Annette Melville will be on hand to introduce it. Donald Sosin will accompany. For a detailed account of the film's preservation, check out this fascinating entry at the SFSFF blog.

4:15 P.M. I Was Born, But… (1932, Japan, dir. Yasujiro Ozu)
Considered one of the great films about childhood, master Ozu's gentle satire about two young brothers and their disillusionment over social hierarchy occasionally plays UC Berkeley's Pacific Film Archive, most recently in 2009. Still, nothing will top seeing it on the Castro's big screen in a new 35mm print from Janus Films, with live accompaniment by the amazing Stephen Horne.

7:00 P.M. The Great White Silence (1924, UK, dir. Herbert G. Ponting)
In 1910, British filmmaker Herbert Ponting accompanied Captain Robert Scott on a race to reach the South Pole. It wasn't until 1924, however, that he edited his footage of the ill-fated Antarctic expedition into a feature-length film, which has been recently restored by the British Film Institute (this screening will be its North American premiere). The documentary is one of three 2011 SFSFF programs that will be accompanied by Sweden's Matti Bye Ensemble. Their original score was developed during a recent residency at Marin's Headlands Center for the Arts, as part of a special collaboration with the SFSFF.

9:00 P.M. Il Fuoco (1915, Italy, dir. Giovanni Pastrone)
Il Fuoco means "The Fire" in Italian, and diva Pina Menichelli is said to be incendiary as a femme fatale who seduces and discards an infatuated artist. With her feathered headdress, long capes and clenched teeth, Menichelli earned the nickname "Our Lady of Spasms" for her abrupt, vampish gestures in the film. Stephen Horne and composer/performer Jill Tracy will provide the accompaniment and rock musician/Italophile Jonathan Richman – fresh from translating the poetry of Pier Paolo Pasolini for City Lights Press – will do the introduction.

Saturday, July 16

10:00 A.M. Disney's Laugh-O-Grams (1921-1923, USA)
One of my favorite things about SFSFF is hearing 21st century children shriek with delight at the antics of century-old silent comedies. There should be merriment galore when this year's fest screens a half-dozen fairy tale cartoons produced at Walt Disney's Kansas City, MO studio. Laugh-O-Gram Studio was Disney's pre-Hollywood enterprise, where he first employed ace animators like Ub Iwerks and Friz Freleng. Leonard Maltin and Disney author/historian J.B. Kaufman will introduce the program. Donald Sosin provides the accompaniment.

12:00 P.M. Variations on a Theme: Musicians on the Craft of Composing and Performing for Silent Film
Last year's musicians panel was such a success that SFSFF has brought it back for another go-round. With the aim of shining a light on the process of composing silent film scores, members of Matti Bye Ensemble, Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra, Alloy Orchestra, plus Dennis James, Giovanni Spinelli, Stephen Horne, and Donald Sosin will all be on hand to discuss and debate their craft. Composer/performer Jill Tracy will moderate.

2:00 P.M. The Blizzard (1923, Sweden, dir. Mauritz Stiller)
From the acclaimed director of Sir Arne's Treasure and Erotikon comes this romantic melodrama about the consequences of a young man's rebellion against his family. Highlights are said to include a jaw-dropping reindeer drive across a wide river, an unsettling dream sequence and some weird hallucinations. Shortly after making The Blizzard, director Stiller came to Hollywood after accepting Louis B. Mayer's offer to make films for MGM. He brought along a young Swedish actress he had discovered and renamed "Greta Garbo." This film will be accompanied by the Matti Bye Ensemble.

4:00 P.M. The Goose Woman (1925, USA, dir. Clarence Brown)
Speaking of Garbo, this next film is by a director who became best known for helming many of the star's early Hollywood vehicles, including Flesh and the Devil, A Woman of Affairs and Anna Christie. Here he directs a reportedly knockout lead performance by Louise Dresser as a former opera diva who lost her voice while giving birth to an illegitimate baby. Now a wretched tender of geese, she seeks to exploit a murder case in order to regain her lost fame. Inspired by real events. Musical accompaniment by Stephen Horne.

6:30 P.M. Mr. Fix-It (1918, USA, dir. Allan Dwan)
Four years before directing Douglas Fairbanks in his celebrated role as Robin Hood, Allan Dwan made this romantic comedy-of-manners. Fairbanks stars here as a college boy who goes all out to save his best friend from an arranged marriage. It co-stars a certain Wanda Hawley (no relation) as the bride-to-be. This screening is the premiere of a recent restoration by the George Eastman House. Dennis James will do his thing on the Castro Theatre's Mighty Wurlitzer.

8:30 P.M. The Woman Men Yearn For (1929, Germany, dir. Kurt Bernhardt)
Marlene Dietrich appeared or starred in more than a dozen silent movies, so it's surprising that this is her first appearance at the SFSFF. Released one year before her star-making turn in The Blue Angel, this is the film that proves the Dietrich persona was not entirely crafted by director/svengali Josef von Sternberg. In this potboiler that travels from the French Riviera to an Alpine resort, a woman who recently murdered her husband manipulates an unhappy newlywed into freeing her from the clutches of an accomplice. None other than San Francisco's Czar of Noir, Eddie Muller, will introduce the film and The Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra will accompany.

Sunday, July 17

10:00 A.M. Amazing Tales from the Archives II: Kevin Brownlow on 50 Years of Restoration
Esteemed film historian Kevin Brownlow, recipient of the 2010 SFSFF Award and recently honored by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, returns to the festival with this presentation. He'll talk about his love affair with silent film and his crusade to return it to the public. The program will include numerous film clips that will be accompanied by Stephen Horne on piano. FREE ADMISSION.

12:00 P.M. Shoes (1916, USA, dir. Lois Weber)
Lois Weber was the most important woman director of the silent era. In 1914 she became the first to direct a feature length film (The Merchant of Venice) and in 1916 – a year in which she made 19 films – she was simply the highest paid movie director in the world. (John Ford once served at her assistant director.) This former street corner evangelist made well over 130 films in all, and their controversial subject matter (abortion, birth control, prostitution, capital punishment, alcoholism, drug addiction) ensured their commercial success at the time. Shoes is a recent digital restoration by the EYE Film Institute Netherlands and tells the tale of a young working woman who sells her body for a pair of shoes. Dennis James will provide accompaniment.

2:00 P.M. Wild and Weird: Short Film Favorites with New Music (1906 – 1928)
This is perhaps the program I'm most looking forward to. In these 10 short films from four countries (USA, France, Germany and Russia), we'll get to marvel in some fabulous silent-era special effects. Probably the best known are Wladyslaw Starewicz' 1912 stop-motion animated insect fantasy, Cameraman's Revenge and Edwin S. Porter's 1906 Dreams of a Rarebit Fiend. The films will be accompanied by the innovative and incomparable Alloy Orchestra, making their one and only appearance this year's festival.

4:30 P.M. The Nail in the Boot (1931, Georgian SSR, dir. Mikhail Kalatozov)
This bit of Soviet agitprop is a very early work by the director of 1957's Palme d-or winning The Cranes are Flying and 1964's acclaimed I Am Cuba. During wartime, a young soldier runs to secure help for his besieged comrades, but his efforts are thwarted by the titular poorly manufactured boot. The film was eventually banned by Stalin because Kalatazov "did not apply the revolutionary method of dialectical materialism to his theme, but proceeded from formalistic aestheticism.” Whatever. Opening the program will be Chess Fever, a comic featurette directed by montage theorist Vsevolod Pudovkin, one year before the release of his masterwork, Mother. Stephen Horne accompanies.

7:30 P.M. He Who Gets Slapped (1924, USA, dir. Victor Sjöström)
The 16th SFSFF closes with a twisted tale of betrayal and revenge starring Lon Chaney. He plays a humiliated scientist turned masochistic circus clown, a role that's considered one of his finest because of how he uncharacteristically underplayed it. The film was MGM's very first production, and Chaney shares the screen with two of the studio's biggest stars, John Gilbert and Norma Shearer. This was also the American debut of Swedish director Victor Sjöströn (The Phantom Carriage, The Scarlet Letter). Leonard Maltin will be on hand to present director Alexander Payne (Election, Sideways) who will introduce He Who Gets Slapped as this year's Director's Pick. Matti Bye Ensemble will do the accompaniment honors.

Cross published on The Evening Class and Twitch.

SF Film Society / New People Cinema

2011-06-27T21:25:00.000-07:00

(Photo by Daichi Ano)

In what must surely be the most celebratory news of 2011 for Bay Area cinephiles, the San Francisco Film Society (SFFS) announced last week that it will be partnering with Japantown's chic subterranean movie house, the New People Cinema. What this means is that for the first time in its 54-year history, SFFS will finally have a year-round exhibition venue it can call home. The news comes nearly a year after Landmark Theaters declared its intention to shutter the Clay Theater, which sparked months of negotiations by the SFFS to purchase or lease it. Those negotiations broke down over a number of issues, including the landlord's insistence that condos be built on top of the nearly century-old cinema. (Interestingly, the Clay remains in operation as a Landmark Theater today).

Despite my fondness for the Clay – it was the first San Francisco movie theater I visited upon moving here in 1975 (and the film I saw was Lina Wertmüller's Swept Away) – I'm thrilled that SFFS has landed the New People. As stated in the official SFFS press release, it's "San Francisco's most up-to-date and technically perfect film theater" featuring the "highest quality analog and digital equipment, great sight lines and immersive THX-certified surround sound." Also known as VIZ Cinema, the 143-seat facility is located in the basement of Japantown's New People Building at 1746 Post Street, itself a "cutting-edge four-story building devoted to contemporary Japanese art, fashion, food and design." I love that they sell Blue Bottle coffee in the café and I dig their futuristic toilets.

New People, SFFS and local cinephiles are anything but strangers to each other. The theater hosted the Film Society's Taiwan Film Days last autumn and served as an additional venue for the recent San Francisco International Film Festival. The SF International Asian American Film Festival has used the space for two years running and 3rd i's South Asian Film Fest had their 2010 opening night there. Since arriving on the Bay Area film scene in 2009, New People has also programmed its own regular line-up of Japanese repertory mixed with new releases (mostly genre and anime). In recent months, however, that programming has slowed considerably. Excepting benefit screenings for Japanese earthquake/tsunami victims and a few festival rentals, the theater has too often gone dark. Partnering with SFFS will clearly be a boon for New People as well.

The SFFS/New People Cinema is scheduled to debut in September, with initial offerings to be announced just before Labor Day. In addition to accommodating panels, classes and one-time events, the press release states that a "substantial portion" of the SFFS Fall Season will take place there. I'm wondering if that includes French Cinema Now, New Italian Cinema and the International Animation festivals, which are traditionally housed in the considerably larger, 272-seat Theater One of Landmark's Embarcadero Cinema.

By far, the most exciting aspect of the SFFS/New People partnership will be the re-emergence of the SFFS Screen. Launched in 2008 at the Sundance Kabuki Cinemas – home of the Film Society's SF International Film Festival and located just down the street from New People – the SFFS Kabuki Screen hosted week-long theatrical runs of foreign, indie and documentary films that had screened at local festivals. More importantly, it also premiered important works that had never been seen in the Bay Area, period, such as Pablo Larraín's Tony Manero, Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Three Monkeys and Elia Suleiman's The Time That Remains.

Unfortunately, during its roughly three-year existence the SFFS Screen spent more time "on hiatus" than it did being operational, due to the vagaries of screen availability at the Kabuki. Now that SFFS has its very own cinema to program, I anticipate seeing many of the limited-distribution titles I jealously notate opening in Manhattan cinemas each week (reviews of which get skillfully compiled on Fridays by David Hudson at MUBI Notebook). Here's a film-415 starter wishlist of recent films I'd love to see booked into the new SFFS/New People Cinema: Kôji Wakamatsu's Caterpillar, Radu Muntean's Tuesday, After Christmas, Daniel and Diego Vega Vidal's October and Michael Rowe's Leap Year.

Cross published on The Evening Class and Twitch.

Frameline35 2011 Capsule Reviews – Documentaries

2011-06-13T20:54:00.000-07:00

The 35th anniversary edition of the Frameline SF International LGBT Film Festival is set for launch this Thursday, June 16 and will run right up through Gay Pride Day on Sunday, June 26. I've had the chance to preview 14 films from the line-up – the six documentaries below and eight narrative features I've placed in another film-415 post. All were seen on DVD screener and where applicable I've noted any special guests that are expected to attend the screenings.

These 14 capsule reviews represent only a fraction of the 80 feature films Frameline will show this year, so if you haven't already done so, check out my extensive overview of the line-up. Films I look forward to seeing during the festival itself include Absent, Old Cats, Madame X, The Mouth of the Wolf, Miwa: A Japanese Icon, Daniel Schmid – Le chat qui pense, Shut Up Little Man! An Audio Adventure and The Queen Has No Crown. Finally, in a year when the sheer number of transgender films warranted a special Transgender Film Focus in the festival, it was interesting to note that both my favorite narrative feature (Tomboy) and my favorite documentary (Angel) each explore transgender themes. See you at the festival!

Angel (France, dir. Sebastiano d'Ayala Valva)
A South American boxer turned Parisian transsexual prostitute makes a poignant journey home in this fascinating and affecting documentary that's among the best I've seen this year. We first meet the soft spoken, but physically imposing Angel in Paris, where he's lived and worked for five years. After receiving French residency papers that allow him to travel abroad, this strictly observational documentary follows Angel home to Guayaquil, Ecuador where he's anxious to see what's become of the hard-earned money he's been sending home.

Once the initial joy of the reunion wears off – his grateful family sings his praises and the women are fascinated by his breasts – a disillusioned Angel realizes that his largesse has largely been squandered. Only a brother he put through police academy has made good. He also travels to the seaside village of his father and is disappointed by another set of relatives he's supporting. The final straw comes when he goes to inspect the house he's paying to have built for his retirement, only to find that construction has barely begun. Before returning to France, the film stops in the capital city of Quito, where Angel once lived and worked. Here we're shown another side of Angel, that of a courageous LGBT activist who was mightily feared by the police. A "one year later" epilogue finds him living in Marseilles, newly determined to consider his own well being.

Hit So Hard (USA, dir. P. David Ebersole)
This fine doc about Patty Schemel is an absolute must-see for fans of Courtney Love's band Hole, and worthwhile for anyone with an interest in women rockers, queer rockers, grunge rockers or queer women grunge rockers. Schemel was one of the latter, playing drums during Hole's drug and alcohol-fueled heyday between 1992 and 1998. She famously came out to Rolling Stone in 1995. While this film doesn't emphasize her lesbianism, it doesn't soft-peddle it either.

Fortunately for us, Schemel was a prolific videographer and her footage documents an era. Most notable are delightful home movies of Love, Kurt Cobain and baby Frances Bean, with whom Schemel lived in 1992. We learn that she left a job at Microsoft to play rock and roll, prefers drumming while barefoot and her favorite movie is The Man with the Golden Arm (starring Frank Sinatra as…a junkie drummer!) Hit So Hard's emotional highpoint is the heartbreaking story of how Schemel came not to play on Hole's 1998 album "Celebrity Skin," resulting in a tailspin she barely pulled herself out of. Schemel is fine today. She still plays music, owns a dog-walking business and will be at the Frameline screening with her partner Christina Soletti and director Ebersole.

Becoming Chaz (USA, dir. Fenton Bailey, Randy Barbato)
After spending 10 unhappy years as a painkiller-addicted, video-gaming recluse, celebrity offspring Chastity Bono began a brave one-year FTM metamorphosis. This transformation has been chronicled by Bailey and Barbato, the dynamic duo of LGBT-flavored bio-docs (The Eyes of Tammy Faye). It's a year marked by "top-surgery" (i.e. breast removal), dealing with the media and daily testosterone injections. The latter brings about changes not welcomed by Bono's lesbian partner Jennifer Elia, a recovering alcoholic who receives nearly equal screen time. The ups and downs of their loving, but contentious relationship occasionally drag the film into TMI territory.

The film's real value lies in the education on transgender and FTM issues it provides. One noteworthy segment focuses on Bono's heart-rending involvement with Transforming Family. We follow him to a transgender convention and learn why most FTMs opt not to have "bottom surgery." There's also plenty about his parentage, particularly the guarded reactions of a megastar mom. In one inspired sequence, a vintage clip of Sonny performing his 1965 hit "Laugh at Me," is edited with cruel shock-jock reactions to Chaz' transition. The film's only real low is its cheesy, "inspirational" music score, which no doubt pleased Oprah Channel viewers (where the film had its small-screen premiere last month). Bono, Elia and co-director Barbato will be in the house for this screening.

Tales of the Waria (Indonesia, dir. Kathy Huang)
In this intriguing documentary we're presented with four portraits of transgenders living on Indonesia's Sulawesi island. Waria is a combination of the words wanita (woman) and pria (man), and in pre-Muslim times they were trusted caretakers of the king. None desire sex-change operations, believing they were created as men and must ultimately return to God as men. The most compelling story is that of Mama Ria, a waria in her fifties who has been a policeman's second wife for 18 years. One memorable scene shows her strolling arm in arm with the first wife during a family outing at a water park. Over the course of the film we sadly watch her marriage come to an end, despite recent plastic surgery to improve her looks. The other warias are Suharni, a hairdresser who leaves her boyfriend to earn money in Bali; Agus, a husband and father who struggles with the desire to return to the waria way of life; and Tiara, an exuberant showgirl and beauty pageant trainer. (Seen and reviewed for the SF International Asian American Film Festival)

The Advocate for Fagdom (France, dir. Angélique Bosio)
I've been a fan of Canadian provocateur Bruce La Bruce ever since No Skin Off My Ass singed my brain at Frameline almost 20 years ago. This new doc gave me a much needed refresher course. It'll also work well as a primer for newcomers to Mr. La B's cinema of queer punk aesthetics, revolutionary politics, hardcore sex and boredom. Things kick off with etymologic musings on the La Bruce name (a 1930's gay arsonist?!), moving on to his early years as a 'zine-ster and cable TV talk show hostess. All of his films get touched upon with judicious clips and weigh-ins from the likes of Gus Van Sant, Harmony Korine and ever eloquent John Waters. (Is it truly a documentary these days if Waters doesn't appear in it?) We're given peeks into La Bruce's personal life; a visit to his family's farm, an interview with his Cuban refugee husband. The doc ends with a stimulating discussion of his filmic use of hardcore sex – he was one of the first and is still one of the few. While not officially listed as an expected guest for this screening, La Bruce is scheduled to appear the following night for his latest outrage, L.A. Zombie. I'd be surprised if he didn't show up for this as well.

Cho Dependent (USA dir. Lorene Machado)
The appeal of this straight-up, no frills concert film – miscategorized by Frameline as a narrative feature – will depend entirely on whether you think Margaret Cho is funny. More often than not, I do. Filmed in Atlanta, our SF homegirl riffs on her Dancing with the Stars stint ("I had the most pronounced camel toe"), Steven Slater ("the Nelson Mandela of flight attendants") and the supremacy of gaydom ("If you're a gay man, you're probably near the end of your reincarnation cycle.") Some routines about bodily functions drone on and on. The title comes from Cho's Grammy-nominated album of comic songs, several of which she performs here. A C&W number reveals an impressive singing voice and a rap ("My Puss") delivered with her mother's unmistakable inflection is a scream. Due to a scheduling conflict, Cho will not be at the screening to receive the Frameline Award being bestowed upon her this year. Director Lorene Machado, however, will be on hand.

Cross published on The Evening Class and Twitch.

Frameline35 2011 Capsule Reviews – Narrative Features

2011-06-13T19:21:00.000-07:00

The 35th anniversary edition of the Frameline SF International LGBT Film Festival is set for launch this Thursday, June 16 and will run right up through Gay Pride Day on Sunday, June 26. I've had the chance to preview 14 films from the line-up – the eight narrative features below and six documentaries I've placed in another film-415 post. All were seen on DVD screener and where applicable I've noted any special guests that are expected to attend the screenings.

These 14 capsule reviews represent only a fraction of the 80 feature films Frameline will show this year, so if you haven't already done so, check out my extensive overview of the line-up. Films I look forward to seeing during the festival itself include Absent, Old Cats, Madame X, The Mouth of the Wolf, Miwa: A Japanese Icon, Daniel Schmid – Le chat qui pense, Shut Up Little Man! An Audio Adventure and The Queen Has No Crown. Finally, in a year when the sheer number of transgender films warranted a special Transgender Film Focus in the festival, it was interesting to note that both my favorite narrative feature (Tomboy) and my favorite documentary (Angel) each explore transgender themes. See you at the festival!

Tomboy (France, dir. Céline Sciamma)
It's the summer before 4th grade and Laure's family has moved to a new town. When a potential playmate mistakes her for a boy, athletic Laure plays along and becomes Mikael to all the neighborhood kids – a charade that's kept hidden from her parents until just before the start of school. This complex and intelligent tale about gender identity won a jury prize at this year's Berlin Film Festival and it's now one of my favorite films of the year. Writer/director Sciamma has fashioned a heartfelt, matter-of-fact look at a difficult subject without a single dramatic false note or emotional misstep. Her job was no doubt made easier by actress Zoé Héran, on whose young face we can already read the anxiety of being trapped in the wrong body and the exhilaration of being temporarily freed from it.

Weekend (UK, dir. Andrew Haigh)
Two British gay men hook up on a Friday night – one a reserved, semi-closeted lifeguard and the other an art gallery worker who pushes his sexuality in people's faces. Over the course of 48 hours fueled by alcohol, drugs, sex and a lot of talking, the pair forges the kind of accelerated intimacy that would seem the sole province of gay men. In this remarkable narrative feature debut, director Haigh conveys in small steps how it's possible for two different and imperfect people to move toward something better than themselves. And far from being the claustrophobic two-hander I expected, the film wisely takes time to open up and observe our protagonists interacting with the outside world. Haigh, whose hustler documentary Greek Pete was a highlight of Frameline33, is expected to be present at Weekend's screening.

Leave It on the Floor (USA, dir. Sheldon Larry)
The world of urban ballroom culture depicted in Jennie Livingston's 1991 documentary Paris is Burning – think voguing, throwing shade and schoolboy realness – is given the full-blown movie musical treatment in this ambitious contempo L.A. updating. Our enrée into this milieu is Brad, a gay teen who leaves home and finds acceptance and mucho d-r-a-m-a living in the House of Eminence, a commune of competitive drag queen castaways ruled by the no-nonsense Queef Latina. The songs, which range from hyper-choreographed production numbers (the show-stopping "Justin's Gonna Call") to aching ballads ("It's Just Black Love") mostly do what songs in a musical should do – amplify emotions and propel the story forward. I have a feeling this will be the uproarious screening of Frameline35, given its vibe and prime Friday night slot during Pride weekend. The film's director and four of its actors will be there as well.

L.A. Zombie (USA/France/Germany, dir. Bruce La Bruce)
Ghoul-ed out French porn star François Sagat wanders a desolate urban landscape and screws the marginalized dead back to life with his big, prosthetic zombie dick. The grand surprise is that all this is quite touching, silly and disgusting in equal measure. There's no dialogue to speak of – unusual for La Bruce, a director known for characters that rarely stop yammering. The resulting aural void gets filled by ambient sound and an effective electro/classical score. Working with longtime DP James Carman, this is La Bruce's most visually accomplished film to date and much of their color-heightened imagery is haunting and gorgeous. Still, I missed the politics, snotty humor and raggedness of the provocateur's previous work. Monsieur La Bruce, a longtime Frameline habitué, is scheduled to attend the screening.

A Few Days of Respite (Algeria/France, dir. Amor Hakkar)
Moshen and Hassan are cross-generational gay lovers fleeing Iran. En route to Paris they get waylaid in a French village where the older Moshen becomes fatefully entangled with a lonely widow. Oddly, the men are given no backstory and speak to each other in French instead of Farsi. Events which might have played out believably over the course of a week's time raise red flags of implausibility when crammed into the narrative's two-day time frame. Still, the story is not uninteresting and the film manages a quiet grace despite the clunkiness. And there's certainly no faulting its humanist intentions. Performances are solid, with Samir Guesmi, a French-Arab actor seen in recent films by Rachid Bouchareb and Arnaud Desplechin playing younger Hassan and director Hakkar taking on the role of Moshen.

Three (Germany, dir. Tom Tykwer)
A shaggy art engineer says farewell to his "deterministic understanding of biology" when he embarks on an affair with a rugged bisexual stem cell researcher in Tom Tykwer's (Run Lola Run) first German language film in 10 years. Complicating matters is the researcher's simultaneous fling with a tightly-wound talk show hostess who has been the engineer's romantic partner for 20 years. No one knows that the other two sides of the triangle are getting it on. Throw in multiple split-screens, graphic testicular surgery, metaphysical goings-on, interpretive dance and athletic camera movements and it all adds up to something fairly uneven and incohesive upon first viewing – especially on DVD screener. Tykwer, a multi-level operator and strong visualist, certainly deserves the big screen experience for which the Castro Theatre is so well suited.

Codependent Lesbian Space Alien Seeks Same (USA dir. Madeleine Olinek)
Frameline35's best titled flick is a potentially terrific short stretched into a feature-length film of modest appeal. At its heart is the relationship between a dowdy stationary store worker and an intergalactic gal who's been sent to earth to have her heart broken. Parallel stories of two fellow femme space travelers go underdeveloped and a painful subplot about private detectives repeatedly grinds the film to a halt. At its best, CLSASS possesses a sweet charm, nifty low-fi art direction and some genuine chuckles. Director Olinek and three of the film's actors plan to attend the screening.

Kawa (New Zealand, dir. Katie Wolfe)
A handsome, well-to-do Maori husband and father struggles with coming out just as he's about to assume leadership of the family clan in this adaptation of Witi Ihimaera's (Whale Rider) semi-autobiographical novel, "Nights in the Garden of Spain." While it features several effective performances, the rote direction and stiltedly earnest script are the stuff of low-end cable TV dramas. (The saintly wife reacts to news of her husband's homosexuality by running to the bathroom and throwing up). I can recommend this as having some cultural interest – but barely. Author Ihimaera is expected to attend the screening.

Cross published on The Evening Class and Twitch.

Frameline35 2011 A Look at the Line-Up

2011-05-30T22:45:00.000-07:00

Frameline, the oldest (and still the largest) LGBT film festival in the world, has announced the line-up for its milestone 35th anniversary edition which takes place from June 16 to 26. At a press conference last week, Executive Director K.C. Price and Festival Director Jennifer Morris gave a tour of this year's 231 films (80 features and 151 shorts) representing 30 countries in 105 programs. As usual, they've gone and programmed virtually every new queer film I've been lusting after these past 12 months, plus some intriguing selections that weren't on my radar. Here's a selective overview of what's in store for us.

Frameline is a festival of inclusion and as Price noted at the press conference, a chance fortuity renders this especially true for Frameline35. "For the first time ever, our four big evening screenings – Opening Night, Centerpiece Narrative, Centerpiece Documentary and Closing Night – together represent the letters L, G, B and T. Having these four absolutely magnificent films for our 35th anniversary demonstrates just how far queer cinema has come in the past three decades."

Let me break that down for you:

L is for lesbian, million-selling country-western singer Chely Wright ("Shut Up and Drive," "Single White Female") who famously came out last year. Centerpiece Documentary Wish Me Away tells the story. Wright, her partner and the film's two directors, all plan to attend the screening.

G is for gay icon Christopher Isherwood. A BBC adaptation of his 1976 autobiography Christopher and His Kind, which covers the writer's Berlin years from 1929 to 1939, closes the festival on Gay Pride Day. Isherwood is played by Matt Smith, best known as TV's Dr. Who. Director Geoffrey Sax will be there, along with Isherwood's longtime partner, renowned artist Don Bachardy.

B is for the bisexual triangle at the center of Three, the latest from German director Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run), in which a husband and wife have separate affairs with the same man. At this year's German Film Awards (aka the "Lolas"), the film won prizes for Best Director, Actress and Editing. 3, as it was released in Germany, is Frameline35's Centerpiece Narrative film.

T is for the transsexual teenage son awaiting a recently released convict (Esai Morales) when he returns to his Brooklyn home after three years in prison. Frameline35's opening night film Gun Hill Road had its world premiere at this year's Sundance Film Festival and was the recipient of a Frameline Completion Fund grant. Director and cast members are expected.

Showcase
Frameline spotlights six films in its Showcase sidebar this year, described as "gems that are handpicked by our programmers from hundreds of outstanding films." I'm most excited to catch Andrew Haigh's Weekend, which follows two very different British gay men over an intimate weekend of drinking, drugging, talking and having sex. Weekend drew rave reviews when it opened 2011's SXSW film festival (and won an Emerging Visions audience award), drawing favorable comparisons to films in the American mumblecore movement. The Showcase film that's bound to attract the most attention, however, is Becoming Chaz. This new doc by Frameline habitués Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato (The Eyes of Tammy Faye, Party Monster) accompanies Cher and Sonny Bono's offspring as he undertakes FTM gender reassignment. Chaz Bono and the two directors are expected guests (and wouldn't it be fab if Cher showed up?) Becoming Chaz is one of 13 films in Frameline35's special Transgender Film Focus.

Three other Showcase movies appear to be musicals-of-sorts. Sheldon Larry's Leave It on the Floor is a narrative feature which transports the world of 1991's Paris is Burning to contemporary L.A. (And speaking of that seminal documentary, Frameline35 will feature a 20th anniversary screening of it). Dance competition also figures into the plot of J.B. Ghuman Jr.'s Spork, in which a nerdy 13-year-old with an intersex condition conspires to win a school talent show. Then in Mangus! a wheelchair-bound teen maneuvers his way into the lead of a high school production of "Jesus Christ Spectacular." This one boasts a supporting role by Heather Matarazzo (Welcome to the Dollhouse) and a John Waters cameo (playing Jesus himself!) The final Showcase film is French director Céline Sciamma's Tomboy, a coming of age drama which seems devoid of singing and dancing.

World Cinema
There were so many South American queer films at last year's Frameline, they rated their own sidebar. This year there are only two in the World Cinema section, but both top of my list of must-sees. For my money, Argentine director Marco Berger's Plan B was the revelation of Frameline34 (and it's now available on Netflix' Watch Instantly). Berger returns to the fest this year with Absent, a thriller about a gay teen's menacing pursuit of his straight swimming coach. Absent won 2011's Berlin Film Festival Teddy Award for Best Feature, arguably the world's highest LGBT cinema accolade. The other film is Pedro Peirano and Sebastián Silva's Old Cats. Silva directed 2009's astute Chilean social comedy The Maid, which was co-written by Peirano. In their new work, an elderly couple fends off the opportunistic machinations of their lesbian daughter and her butch girlfriend (played by The Maid's Catalina Saavedra). I'm also hot to see Lucky Kuswandi's Madame X, a wild-looking ride from Indonesia in which a hairdresser is transformed into a kick-ass super-heroine battling forces of intolerance and social conservatism. In his rave review for Variety, critic Boyd Van Hoeij praised the film's "riotous antics and wicked sense of humor," "intentionally gaudy CGI and tacky graphics," "bright and saturated pop-vid aesthetic" and an "appropriation of popular mainstream formats in service of a strong pro-minority, pro-LGBT message." You can watch the trailer here.

There are a few more selections in World Cinema I hope to check out. Kawa is the coming out story of a New Zealand Maori family man, based on Witi Ihimaera's semi-autobiographical novel "Nights in the Garden of Spain" (also the film's original title). Ihimaera's novel "Whale Rider" was adapted into a successful film in 2002. In A Few Days of Respite, cross-generational gay lovers fleeing Iran for Paris make an eventful stopover in a French village. This is a second feature for Algerian director Amor Hakkar, who also portrays the couple's older half. His remarkable first film The Yellow House, screened at our Arab Film Festival in 2008. Of the dozen remaining films in World Cinema, I'm especially curious about Romeos from Germany, Sweden's Four More Years and Walking Toward from Italy.

U.S. Features
At the press conference, Exec Director Price had this to say about the 21 films in Frameline35's U.S. Features section: "We've always relied very heavily on World Cinema to bring us our strongest programs, but this year it was the other way around – the U.S. Features are glorious. We're really glad that on this landmark festival, we have so many great films coming from our own country." Upon scanning the familiar looking roster of coming out tales, rom-coms, relationship dramas and genre spoofs, I zeroed right in on Canadian bad-boy Bruce La Bruce's L.A. Zombie (which is technically a USA/French/German co-production.) Apparently La Bruce had more to say on the subject of gay zombies following 2008's Otto; or, Up with Dead People. Despite an abundance of gore and hardcore sex (it stars French gay porn actor François Sagat), the film is said to offer substance and provocation in equal measure. Devout La Bruce fans won't want to miss The Advocate for Fagdom, a documentary portrait of the director that's also in this year's festival.

Elsewhere in U.S. Features, beloved comedian, author, activist and SF native Margaret Cho returns to Frameline for the zillionth time with her new concert film, Cho Dependent. Prior to the screening, Cho will be honored with this year's Frameline Award, "for all that she has done for the queers of the world, and all she will undoubtedly continue to do." Another Frameline returnee is local director and occasional SF Chronicle film critic David Lewis, best known for his popular romantic dramas (Rockhaven, Redwoods). With Longhorns, Lewis branches out with a horny frat boys sex romp set in 1980s Texas. This isn't something I'd ordinarily be drawn to, but the festival catalog neglects to mention that H.P. Mendoza (Colma: The Musical, Fruit Fly) is the film's producer/editor/composer, and it was shot by ace Bay Area cinematographer/director Fraser Bradshaw (Everything Strange and New). Lastly in U.S. Features, who could resist a title like Codependent Lesbian Space Alien Seeks Same? Certainly not I.

Documentaries
Most years I could be quite content limiting my Frameline experience to its exceptional line-up of documentaries. This appears to be one of those years. Topping my list of must-see docs is Pietro Marcello's The Mouth of the Wolf, which I expected in last year's festival after it won Berlin's 2010 Teddy Award for Best Documentary. My patience has been rewarded. Marcello's film is a docu-fiction hybrid about Enzo, a man returning to Genoa, Italy following a 20-year prison stint. Awaiting his return is transwoman Mary, his lover and an ex-con herself. A third character is Genoa, with the director employing archival footage of the city in a manner comparable to Terrence Davies' Liverpool in Of Time and the City. Jay Weissberg's Variety review calls the film, "hauntingly beautiful," "uncategorizable" and "unselfconsciously poetic."

Biographical documentaries about notable LGBT-folk are a Frameline mainstay and this year's fest has three I don't want to miss. Hit So Hard relays the rough-and-tumble saga of Patty Schemel, an out lesbian who played drums for the band Hole. Akihiro Maruyama, a cross-dressing entertainer and gay activist better known as Miwa, gets profiled in Miwa: A Japanese Icon. Outside of Japan, she's best known for the 1968 cult film Black Lizard, which co-starred friend and lover, author Yukio Mishima. Daniel Schmid – Le chat qui pense reflects on the life of the Austrian film and opera director who was a contemporary of Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Rosa von Praunheim. Other Frameline35 bio-docs include accountings of tennis champ Renée Richards (Renée), United Airlines Flight 93 hero Mark Bingham (With You, at a screening that will be attended by his mother, Alice Hoagland), and punk rock legend Marian Anderson (Last Fast Ride – The Life, Love and Death of a Punk Goddess, which is narrated by Henry Rollins).

Documentaries about Bay Area life are always well worth a watch. As a huge fan of the early 1990's Peter and Raymond phenomenon, I'm really looking forward to Shut Up Little Man! An Audio Misadventure. Strange that it's taken nearly 20 years to make a doc about this. The program Only in San Francisco offers up a trio of fun-sounding local doc shorts. They include Making Christmas: The View from the Tom and Jerry Christmas Tree, about the behemoth Xmas display we see on 21st Street each December; Smut Capital of America, which celebrates the history of our fair city's sex industry; and Running in Heels: The Glendon "Anna Conda" Hyde Story, about one drag queen's run for District 6 supervisor. On a more serious note, The Grove honors our National AIDS Memorial Grove in Golden Gate Park.

You're thinking enough with the documentaries already, but sorry, there are still five more I'm compelled to mention. Attendees of both Frameline and the SF Jewish Film Festival should be familiar with the terrific work of gay Israeli director Tomer Heymann (Paper Dolls). His new film The Queen Has No Crown, is a personal meditation on family, separation and loss. I'm always interested in the fight for gay rights in other countries and East Bloc Love examines that struggle in the former Soviet republic of Belarus. In the film Angel, a Parisian transsexual prostitute and former boxer returns home to Ecuador after five years abroad. (A)sexual provides a potentially intriguing overview of the – you guessed it – asexuality movement. I highly recommend Tales of the Waria, a doc about Indonesian transsexuals that I reviewed as part of this year's SF International Asian American Film Festival.

Final Notes
There are also 21 shorts programs in Frameline35 – way too many to discuss here. If I catch one during the fest, it'll most likely be Maya Deren's Sink and Generations: New Works from Barbara Hammer. As part of this year's Transgender Film Focus, LGBT historians/filmmakers/archivists Jenni Olson and Susan Stryker present We Who Are Sexy: the Whirlwind History of Transgender Images in Cinema, an on-stage conversation with film clips. On the first Sunday of the festival, Frameline always presents a family film. This year it's The Muppets Take Manhattan and admission is free for kids 12 and under. Finally, as we rapidly approach a time when film festivals will no longer project "films" due to the encroachment of cheaper and more convenient (and in the opinion of many, aesthetically inferior) digital exhibition, Frameline has graciously included in this year's press kit a list of all the Frameline35 movies that will be screened in 35mm, which I share with you here:

Short Films: Drives , The Time In Between, Samaritan, Franswa Sharl, D'une rive a l'autre, Family Affair, Blokes, Who's the Top, Generations (16mm)

Feature Films: Gun Hill Road, Three, Four More Years, A Few Days of Respite, Looking For Simon, The Evening Dress, Romeos, Madame X, The Muppets Take Manhattan, Paris Is Burning, Old Cats

SFIFF54 2011 Wrap-Up of Special Events

2011-05-13T13:08:00.000-07:00

The 54th edition of the San Francisco International Film Festival (SFIFF54) drew to a close last Thursday, after showcasing 193 films from 48 countries at 265 screenings (134 of which featured special guests). During those 15 jam-packed days I took in 29 films, which will be encapsulated in a future film-415 post. Meanwhile, here's a look back at four memorable SFIFF54 special events I attended. All of them, not surprisingly, transpired inside the city's beloved Castro Theatre.

But first let's talk about regrets – yes, I've got a few. I didn't see Oliver Stone get this year's Founder's Directing Award, nor screenwriter Frank Pierson's acceptance of 2011's Kanbar Award. I was also M.I.A. for Mathew Barney's Persistence of Vision Award ceremony and producer Christine Vachon's State of Cinema address (which fortunately, I was later able to watch here). Most of all, I regret having to pass up the Terence Stamp tribute, which featured an on-stage interview by Elvis Mitchell and screening of Federico Fellini's Toby Dammit. Stamp was here to receive the Peter J. Owens acting award, an incredibly inspired choice the festival seemingly pulled out of its hat at the 11th hour. I heard it was an unforgettable evening and the Castro was nearly sold out, no mean feat considering the event had only been announced one week prior. Alas, the four events I did attend were spectacular enough to assuage any feelings of remorse.

SF Film Society Director of Programming Rachel Rosen, star Ewan McGregor and director Mike Mills on stage at the Opening Night screening of Beginners (photo by Tommy Lau).

Moments after entering the Castro Theatre for the Opening Night screening of Mike Mills' Beginners, I heard the disappointing news that star Ewan McGregor would not be attending. His flight from Paris was cancelled (something about gasoline pouring from the plane's wing while taxiing for takeoff), but there was a possibility he'd arrive in time for the after-party. The unenviable task of informing the Ewan-adoring crowd of this development befell Director of Programming Rachel Rosen. Following the screening, she and director Mills were in the middle of a very engaging Q&A when a man strode past my aisle seat. From the back it looked like it could almost be – yes, it was indeed – him! McGregor's first words from the stage were, "Sorry about that," and for another half hour he and Mills told some very funny tales about the production of Beginners. My favorite involved co-star Christopher Plummer and several pairs of black skinny jeans. Woe to those who missed seeing McGregor in order to beat the crowds to the fabulous opening night party at Terra Gallery.

British band Tindersticks accompany a clip from Claire Denis' film Nenette et Boni on stage at the Castro (photo by Pamela Gentile).

I'm sure it's no longer a secret to anyone that the original recipient of this year's Founder's Directing Award was meant to be Claire Denis, who unfortunately bowed out at the last minute. Her spirit, however, was still very much present at SFIFF54. For this year's film-with-live-music event, the festival presented Tindersticks: Claire Denis Film Scores 1996-2009. Over the course of 70 glorious minutes, the British band Tindersticks performed 23 compositions from the six Denis films they've scored, while corresponding images towered above them on the Castro's huge screen. The eight musicians commanded the full width of the stage, and side-lights bathed them in colors that changed according to the moods of their cool, impassioned music. I was particularly thrilled to hear the throbbing twang of L'intrus' main theme, and the lovely title song from Vendredi soir, featuring the reedy vocals of lead singer Stuart Staples. This astounding show was one of only two U.S. performances and one of only six worldwide. In short, a rare privilege to behold and a certified coup for the festival.

Mel Novikoff Award recipient Serge Bromberg hams it up before his presentation spotlighting 100 years of 3-D cinema (photo by Pamela Gentile).

More than any other film or event at SFIFF54, I was most anticipating Serge Bromberg's Retour de Flamme: Rare and Restored Films in 3-D. This presentation of 100 years of stereoscopic cinema coincided with Bromberg receiving the festival's 2011 Mel Novikoff Award, "bestowed upon an individual or institution whose work has enhanced the filmgoing public's appreciation of world cinema." I'd seen Bromberg – a consummate preservationist, programmer, director (Henri-Georges Clouzot's Inferno), raconteur and showman – work his magic on the Castro stage twice before. The program would surpass my already high expectations as one of the greatest film events I'd ever attended.

Following the awards ceremony and brief on-stage interview (where Bromberg shared some harrowing film preservation war-stories), the amazement commenced. First up was 1941's Third Dimensional Murder, a silly haunted house short with monsters throwing things at the camera. This was the only film that required old-style, red and blue-lensed 3-D spex. After that, modern polarized glasses came into play. I was delighted to see some of my favorite cartoon characters in 3-D, like Donald Duck and Chip 'n' Dale (Working for Peanuts, 1953) and Bugs Bunny (Lumber Jack-Rabbit, 1954). A trio of 1950s Russian films, collectively known as The Parade of Attractions, featured 3-D vistas inside an aviary and large aquarium (look out for the octopus tentacles!), plus a juggling act that had the Castro crowd dodging flying clubs. One of the longer works of the evening was Motor Rhythm. Made for the 1939 World's Fair, this was a 3-D stop-motion animated musical in which a Chrysler-Plymouth assembles itself part-by-part (you can watch an eye-straining 2-D version here). Modern 3-D animation was represented by the likes of John Lasseter (Knick Knack, 1989) and a brand new Road Runner cartoon by Matthew O'Callaghan (Coyote Falls) which closed Bromberg's presentation.

At one point Bromberg reminded us that France was the true birthplace of cinema. So perhaps it was no surprise that the two most affecting segments of his program featured the works of French pioneers Georges Méliès and the Lumière Brothers – names not normally associated with stereoscopic cinema. It turns out that Méliès unknowingly invented 3-D movies when he simultaneously shot European and American negatives with side-by-side cameras turned by a single crank. By assembling bits and pieces of both negatives (representing left and right eye), and using a computer to stabilize the images, Bromberg has been able to partially construct a 3-D effect for three Méliès shorts. In Parafargamus the Alchemist (1906), for example, a large serpent puppet appears to slither right into the audience. For me, the highlight of the entire event was three short stereoscopic films shot by the Lumières in the mid-1930s. In one, the camera is placed squarely on a train platform and in another, on a crowded beach. Passersby walk near the cameras and occasionally stare into them, the 3-D effect bringing these distant personages to life in ways that no 2-D image ever could. The effect was akin to emerging from a time machine whose dial was set to 1930s France. It gave me the shivers.

New Burlesque performers Mimi Le Meaux, Evie Lovelle, Roky Roulette and Kitten on the Keys walk the Castro red carpet before the Closing Night screening of On Tour (photo by Tommy Lau).

Before I knew it, the festival's 15 days had sailed by and I was back at the Castro for the closing night film, On Tour. French actor-turned-director Mathieu Amalric stars as a washed-up TV producer who takes a troupe of six American New Burlesque performers on a tour of French harbor cities. As luck would have it, California and the Bay Area in particular are at the epicenter of New Burlesque, making it possible for four of On Tour's performers to attend the screening. During the Q&A, they discussed how the project came about and what it was like being directed by one of France's most famous actors. They also revealed why the film may never see a U.S. release. Apparently, either the descendents of Screamin' Jay Hawkins or Aerosmith's Steven Tyler (they weren't sure which), is demanding €300,000 for the rights to one song heard in the movie.

Mid-Q&A, performer Roky Roulette excused himself, stating that he needed to return home (he lives in the Mission District and has two daughters). We should have suspected it was a ruse. When the Q&A ended, he returned to the stage costumed as KFC's Colonel Sanders, chawin' on chicken and doing a funky striptease down to a g-string and explosion of feathers. In a San Francisco Chronicle interview the week before, I'd read that Roulette's claim to fame is a striptease he performs while riding a pogo-modified hobby horse. Sure enough, at the festival's closing night party he brought the house down with this routine, putting one helluva an exclamation point on SFIFF54. You can watch a video of it at the film-415 YouTube channel.

Cross published on The Evening Class and Twitch.

SFIFF54 2011 DVD Screener Previews

2011-04-18T10:51:00.000-07:00

The 54th San Francisco International Film Festival (SFIFF) gets underway this Thursday, April 21and runs until May 5. Since the Opening Press Conference three weeks ago, the fest has announced that Oliver Stone will receive the 2011 Founder's Directing Award, in a program that'll include an onstage interview, clips reel and screening of 1986's Salvador starring James Woods. It has also been revealed that actors Zoe Saldana (Avatar's Na'vi princess) and Clifton Collins Jr. (Perry Smith in Capote) will accept this year's Midnight Awards, in a late-night talk show styled ceremony hosted by Beth Lisick at the W Hotel. Still waiting to be announced is the recipient of SFIFF54's Peter J. Owens Acting Award. Since posting my two-part overview of the full line-up, I've previewed 10 films on DVD screener. Here are some impressions.

The SFIFF54 Latin American selections were mostly a field of unknowns (at least to me), so priority #1 was checking out some of those. I had little interest in Tatiana Huezo's The Tiniest Place, until I read Robert Koehler's rave in an indieWire report from the recent Guadalajara Film Festival. Indeed, the film is a revelation. It's one of those documentaries that does more than cogently impart information and exists as a work of art. This is the story of Ciquera, an El Salvador mountain village that was bombed into non-existence during the country's civil war. The director starts us off in the present day, rendering a tranquil, thriving hamlet and the quotidian goings-on of its inhabitants. Just as you become impatient and start wondering if the film is merely an innocuous ode to rurality, the villagers begin to speak – both on camera and in voiceover – of their experiences during the civil war years (1980 – 1992). Captivating storytellers all, their tales escalate in horror as the film progresses, until it becomes nearly unbearable. No archival footage is used, just some faded photographs and the villagers' words disconcertingly contrasted against the idyll of contemporary Ciquera. Miraculously, Huezo manages to end her film in a place of hope. Huezo, whom Koehler called "one of the bright new talents of Latin American cinema," will be at the festival to present her film. The Tiniest Place is beautifully shot and will be screened in 35mm, a rarity for festival documentaries these days. Don't miss it.

I was also impressed by Ulysses, Oscar Godoy's fictive portrait of a Peruvian immigrant establishing a new life in Santiago, Chile. Before the opening credits, we see Julio wake up on a busy sidewalk with his head resting in a pool of blood. How this came about is never really explained, and it's the first of several nice touches of ambiguity in Godoy's screenplay. Ulysses is more than another grim case study of a downtrodden immigrant, although there are certainly elements of that. Julio's story is more complex – a former history professor whose reasons for immigrating seem born more of escape from personal tragedy than fiscal necessity. We observe as he battles loneliness, first with prostitutes and then in a promising relationship with a music store clerk, and watch as he gradually improves his economic lot. The result is a quietly heartbreaking, but ultimately optimistic film that achieves its full power cumulatively. Two other Latin American films are recommended as well. Alejandro Chomski's Asleep in the Sun plays like a sumptuously art-directed Twilight Zone episode involving dogs, trepanation and the migration of "diseased" souls. Then in Carlos César Arbeláez' straightforward but affecting The Colors of the Mountain, a Colombian boy's new soccer ball gets booted into a minefield, an apt metaphor for a place where adults navigate the treacherous choice between allegiance to guerrillas and government soldiers. Young actor Hernán Mauricio Ocampo is unforgettable in the lead role.

Every year the SFIFF line-up includes a few movies – about the movies – and Mila Turajlic's Cinema Komunisto is "the story of a country that no longer exists, except in the movies." In 1948, Marshal Tito's slightly more benevolent brand of Yugoslav communism caused a rift with the USSR. The Soviets stopped the flow of Russian films to the renegade republic, and of course, Hollywood happily filled the void. Soon Yugoslavia developed its own successful homegrown industry of WWII "partisan" films, which helped kickstart an era of international co-productions. Starting with Jack Cardiff's The Long Ships in 1962, these epics brought in western currency and jet-setting movie stars. Tito himself was a movie buff, handpicking Richard Burton to star in The Battle of Sutjeska, a hagiographic biopic about Tito's WWII exploits. Providing a nifty frame of reference in Cinema Komunisto is Levic Konstantinovic, Tito's personal projectionist for 32 years who asserts that he screened 8,801 films for the leader between 1949 and 1980. His personal recollections, combined with choice movie clips and archival materials, make this a breezy examination of one nation's brief cinematic legacy.

If you've seen the films of Wong Kar-wai, Hirokazu Koreeda, Tran Anh Hung, Jian Wen and especially Hou Hsiou-hsien, you've no doubt exalted in the visual aesthetics of cinematographer Mark Lee Ping-bin. In Kwan Pun-leung and Chang Hsiu-chiung's documentary Let the Wind Carry Me, they seek insight into the Taiwanese DP's artistry, which Lee himself ascribes to a balance between "visual poetry and realism." All the aforementioned directors go on camera to discuss Lee's artistry and work methods, praising his use of natural and household light, and his adaptability to fickle weather conditions. Actors Shu Qi and Romain Duris speak of his ability to accommodate his camera to their movements, which Mark claims is unintentional and unconscious. For me, it was a pleasure to finally see the man who's given me so many moments of cinematic ecstasy, like for starters, the opening scene of Hou's Millennium Mambo with Shu Qi's trance-inducing strut along a neon-lit urban skywalk. Lee, it turns out, is a long-haired, bearded man with a rugged frame and deep voice who speaks about how pottery taught him color and how his chosen profession is a lonely one (he has an American wife and young son who live in L.A.) Unfortunately for a film about someone as visionary as Lee, this documentary is somewhat perfunctory and artless, filled with static talking heads, awkward edits, ill-fitting music cues and moments of superfluousness. Also, many of the clips are of poor quality, at least on the DVD screener I watched (but verified by Russell Edwards in his Variety review from the Tokyo Film Festival).

Of the 10 films I previewed, the biggest surprise was Hong Sang-soo's Hahaha. I am not a fan of this Korean director's work. For me, they have an exasperating sameness – full of immature, narcissistic, sexist, alcoholic intellectuals and their codependent female counterparts, all rampaging through fractured narrative structures. Hahaha has all of that, but it's been dialed way down. There's almost – dare I say – a sweetness to it, making this is the first Hong film I've enjoyed without reservations. Here's the set-up. Two friends, an unemployed wannabe film director who's about to emigrate to Canada, and a depressed, married film critic meet for drinks to reminisce about their summer holidays in the port city of Tongyeong. This reunion is only heard in voiceover, and only seen via B&W snapshots. The bulk of the film consists of their separate tales being dramatized on-screen. It's a bit confounding how the two narrative strands connect until Hong slips in a revelatory a-ha moment and then runs with it for the film's duration. If you've never seen a Hong Sang-soo film, this would make as good an entry point as any.

I previewed two more documentaries and one narrative feature. From French actor/director Romain Goupil comes Hands Up, a timely tale of 5th graders plotting to prevent the capture and deportation of a Chechen classmate. It's like a classic caper film as conceived by the minds of stealthy children, with coded text messages and ring tones only kids can hear. Valeria Bruni Tedeschi is wonderful as always, playing the cool Mom who's in on it. Also from France is the documentary Detroit Wild City, an outsider's portrait of a city that's lost 25 percent of its population in the last decade and where nature is reclaiming its stake. Director/cinematographer Florent Tillon has a tremendous skill for photographing the city's once-majestic buildings now in ruin, as well as an eye for the absurd (a bus whose sign alternately flashes "Have a nice day" and "Not in service.") The film's profiles of Detroit's remaining denizens, however, vary greatly in interest and relevance – a major exception being a poetic young urban explorer whose observations and laments perfectly compliment Tillon's visuals.

And finally there's The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye, Marie Losier's oddly touching documentary about industrial music pioneer Genesis P-Orridge (Throbbing Gristle, Psychic TV). While the film begins with a nifty overview of his music career, the greater part is given to P-Orridge's all-consuming relationship with Lady Jaye, a nurse/dominatrix almost half his age who died in 2007. "You know how it is. You fall in love madly with someone and there’s this moment when you just want consume each other and not be individuals anymore. We wanted to pursue that. Not just talk about it, but live it." And "living it" involved extensive plastic surgery, matching breast implants and beauty mark tattoos, not to mention identical hairdos and wardrobes. Losier effectively uses a mix of home movies, interviews and concert footage to recount this strange tale in a completely non-judgmental way.

Cross published on The Evening Class and Twitch.

SFIFF54 2011 The Line-Up (Part 2)

2011-04-09T20:09:00.000-07:00

My previous film-415 coverage of the San Francisco International Film Festival (SFIFF) includes an overview of films and special events announced prior to the Opening Press Conference, a special report on that press conference, and a look at the European films in this year's line-up. Now here's a gander at what the programmers are bringing us from the rest of the world.

Asia
Last month's SF International Asian American Film Festival (SFIAAFF) offered little in the way of new works from prominent Asian auteurs. I'd hoped the SFIFF would pick up the slack and to a degree they have. I'm most excited about prolific cult director Takashi Miike's 13 Assassins. Critics found this samurai epic surprisingly well-crafted, yet still over-the-top in Miike's inimitable way – making it his most satisfying film since 1999's Audition. In this wacky world of contemporary film distribution, 13 Assassins has actually been available for some time via Comcast's On-Demand and Amazon's Instant Video. It's also scheduled for a local theatrical release on May 20. But since SFIFF is showing it on the Castro Theater's enormous screen, you'd be crazy to see it any other way. Relatedly in the festival's The Late Show sidebar is Outrage, Takeshi Kitano's return to the neo-yakuza gang-warfare genre he pioneered. This screened in Cannes' main competition to mostly yawning reviews, so never having been a big Kitano fan to begin with, I'll give it a pass. Outrage 2 is already in production.

Another Asian auteur overlooked at this year's SFIAAFF was Hong Sang-soo, who released two new films in 2010. The festival has chosen to bring us Hahaha, which won the top prize in Cannes' Un Certain Regard sidebar. Hong's films all take place within a very insular world of sexist, alcoholic intellectuals (frequently a film director or screenwriter), and they usually involve a journey and have a bifurcated structure. They also annoy me to no end. Yet I'm strangely compelled to watch each new film, just to see how he's reworked his thing (or not). Hahaha will have the added advantage of starring the amazing Korean actress Moon So-ri (Oasis, The Good Lawyer's Wife).

Three other Asian films will get high priority from me. Park Jung-bum's The Journals of Musan shared the top prize at this year's Rotterdam Film Festival. This is Park's directorial debut, in which he also plays the main character, a North Korean refugee struggling to adjust to life in capitalist Seoul. One of the most talked about films at last month's New Directors/New Films series in NYC was Koji Fukada's Hospitalité, a dark comedy that plays on Japanese xenophobia and issues of globalization. The SFIFF54 documentary I'm most anticipating is Kwan Pun-leung and Chiang Hsiu-chiung's Let the Wind Carry Me, a portrait of renowned cinematographer Mark Lee Ping-bin. Directors Wong Kar-wai, Hou Hsiou-hsien, Hirokazu Kore-eda and others line up to sing Lee's praises and discuss his work methods. I noticed that one of the doc's co-directors had a film in the 2009 SFIFF, the remarkable Taiwanese family drama, Artemisia.

At the 2008 SFIFF I was all nerves watching Hong Kong director Dante Lam's intense The Beast Stalker, and his latest action melodrama The Stool Pigeon has a spot in this year's fest. Also of interest from Hong Kong is Love in a Puff, which is – of all things these days – a romantic comedy about smokers. Both have garnered very positive reviews. India is represented by four films, including a fifth SFIFF appearance by documentary filmmaker Kim Longinotto. Her past films have examined everything from Iranian divorce courts to Japanese female wrestlers. Her new work Pink Saris, profiles an activist for India's untouchable women. I'm also reading good things about the doc Marathon Boy, an inspirational portrait of a prodigy marathon runner that transitions into something more complex and disturbing. Indian narrative features are represented by Kashmir-set Autumn, about which I've not heard positive reports, and Nainsukh, a meditation on an 18th century miniaturist painter that's part of the festival's Spotlight, Painting with Light. Other Asian countries represented at SFIFF54 include Kyrgyzstan (The Light Thief), Malaysia (Year Without a Summer), China (The High Life) and Indonesia (Position Among the Stars, the third chapter in Dutch documentarian Leonard Retel Helmrich's ongoing look at one Jakarta family).

Latin America
I was probably more disappointed in the selection of films from this region than anywhere else. On the plus side, SFIFF54 has programmed the much-lauded Nostalgia for the Light from Chilean Patricio Guzmán, arguably Latin America's greatest documentary filmmaker. The director, who is currently being feted with a Pacific Film Archive retrospective, is scheduled to attend the fest. Nostalgia also opens in local theaters on May 13. I'm also quite stoked to see Federico Veiroj's A Useful Life. The protagonist of this B&W, melancholic love letter to cinephilia, programs an Uruguayan cinematheque that's on the verge of closing its doors.

Unfortunately, many of the past year's high profile Latin American films are absent from SFIFF54. At the top of the missing list I'd place Pablo Larraín's Post Mortem, the Chilean director's follow-up to Tony Manero that premiered to great acclaim at Venice. Then there's the Mexican film Leap Year, which won the Camera d'or for best first feature at Cannes. From that same festival, there was Daniel and Diego Vidal's wonderfully deadpan Peruvian comedy October, which took home the Jury Prize in Un Certain Regard. Fortunately, I was able to see it at Palm Springs and it's a hoot. For good measure I'll add Old Cats (the new film by Sebastián Silva, director of The Maid), Brothers and Sisters (from top Argentine filmmaker Daniel Burman) and Guest (José Luis Guerín's documentary about the year he spent travelling the Latin American film festival circuit with In the City of Sylvia).

Of the festival's remaining Latin American films – all of which were news to me – two are singled out for praise in Robert Koehler's recent indieWire dispatch from the Guadalajara Film Festival. Calling The Tiniest Place the most remarkable film he saw at the fest, this documentary profiles an El Salvador village that's returning to life years after being decimated by civil war. He cheered its director, Tatiana Huezo, as "one of the bright new talents of Latin American cinema, exhibiting a mastery of every aspect of filmmaking…programmers were beside themselves with enthusiasm." Sounds like it's not to be missed. Koehler also liked Jean Gentil, whose co-directors Laura Amelia Guzmán and Israel Cárdenas, helmed the 2008 SFIFF entry Cochochi. Carlos César Arbeláez' The Colors of the mountain is set in a Colombian village torn between guerillas and government soldiers, its story told through the eyes of a young boy. The film won the New Directors Award at the San Sebastian Film Festival and has earned warm reviews from Variety and elsewhere. For a thorough critical overview of all eight SFIFF Latin American films, check out Michael Guillén's SFIFF54 LATINBEAT entry at The Evening Class.

Africa/Middle East
My unequivocal recommendation is this section is Oliver Schmitz' Life, Above All, a skillfully directed and tremendously moving South African AIDS drama that I saw in Palm Springs. Schmitz first came to my attention with 1988's Soweto gangster drama Mapantsula, and Life, Above All marks his return to Africa after years directing for German TV. While the film is scheduled to open in cinemas later this year, I've received notice that Schmitz and the film's 15-year-old lead actress, Khomotso Manyaka, will be traveling to the fest. There are three additional films from and/or about sub-Saharan Africa. Kinyarwanda, a tale of genocide and reconciliation from Rwanda, won the Audience Award for World Cinema at Sundance this year. Documentary The Redemption of General Butt Naked examines one man's dubious transition from bloodthirsty Liberian warlord to Pentecostal preacher. French/Burkina Faso co-production The Place in Between follows two parallel stories of global displacement – one of them focused on a young Frenchwoman of mixed race who travels back to Africa in search of her birth mother.

The search for an unknown parent in a foreign land is also a theme found in Denis Villeneuve's Incendies. Lubna Azabal (Paradise Now) stars as an Arab-Canadian who learns that her father is still alive and that she has a brother she never knew existed. Accompanied by her reluctant Canadian twin, she sets off on a familial search in an unnamed Middle Eastern country. Buoyed by incredible reviews and an Oscar® nomination for Best Foreign Language Film, Incendies is set to open at Landmark's Embarcadero Cinema on May 6. Another Middle Eastern-set film made by a North American director is Maryam Keshavarz' Circumstance, a drama about two young Iranian lesbians. While the film won the Sundance Narrative Audience Award, critics have not been as kind, labeling the film clunky and heavy-handed. There's also an Iranian documentary in the festival, Ali Samadi Ahadi's The Green Wave, which recounts that country's unsuccessful 2009 anti-government revolt. Finally, I'm really looking forward to Microphone, which promises an energetic take on various cultural youth movements happening in Alexandria, Egypt. Director Ahmad Abdalla's impressive first film Heliopolis, screened at our 2010 Arab Film Festival.

USA/Canada
In researching the U.S. and Canadian line-up, I was surprised to discover that the majority are directed or co-directed by women. The most high-profile amongst the narrative features is surely Kelly Reichardt's Meek's Cutoff, which stars Michelle Williams (who worked with the director previously in Wendy and Lucy) as a pioneer woman forced to assert herself on the Oregon Trail. The film opens May 6 at Landmark's Embarcadero Cinema. Also highly anticipated is Miranda July's The Future, her long-awaited follow-up to 2005's Me and You and Everyone We Know. While I'm part of a tiny minority who found much of that film unbearably infantile, I'm still curious about The Future. It's confirmed that July will attend the festival, along with husband Mike Mills who directed this year's opening night film, Beginners. Alison Bagnall's The Dish & the Spoon is about an unhinged, cheated-upon wife who teams up with a British teenage boy. It stars one of my favorite American actresses (Greta Gerwig), in one of my favorite movie settings (a beach resort in the off-season.) Women seldom get to direct horror films, but Emily Lou makes her directorial debut with The Selling, a comedy about the difficulties of unloading a haunted house in a down real estate market. This is a world premiere and a local production to boot. Finally, in Larysa Kondracki's Canadian/German co-production The Whistleblower, Rachel Weisz is a Nebraska cop who discovers that U.N. workers are complicit in Bosnian sex slave trade.

Women are all over the North American documentary line-up as well and I'm aiming to catch three of them. I'm a long-time fan of the Bay Area's Lynn Hershman Leeson (Teknolust), and her !Women Art Revolution surveys 40 years of radicalized art made by women. Marie Losier's The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye tells the curious story of industrial rock musician Genesis P. Orridge (Throbbing Gristle, Psychic TV), and the extreme steps he took to merge into one "pandrogyne" being with his beloved Lady Jaye. Then in the critically acclaimed Foreign Parts, Véréna Paravel and co-director J.P. Sniadecki provide an elegiac tour of a neighborhood in demise, the Willets Points area of Queens (setting for Ramin Bahrani's 2007 film Chop Shop). Other women-directed SFIFF54 documentary features include American Teacher, Better This World, Hot Coffee, The Last Buffalo Hunt, Miss Representation and Something Ventured.

Guys also have a hand in the USA/Canadian line-up, but not a big one. Errol Morris' new doc Tabloid is said to be extremely fun, revisiting a 1976 scandal in which a former Miss Wyoming abducted a Mormon missionary and made him her sex slave. Another high profile documentary is Andrew Rossi's self-explanatory Page One: A Year Inside the New York Times, which arrives in Bay Area theaters July 1. Director Christopher Munch (The Hour and the Times) has had an interesting, but all too infrequent career (five movies in 20 years). His new film Letters from the Big Man tells the earnest, unironic story of a young woman who develops a metaphysical relationship with a Sasquatch. Apart from the aforementioned Incendies, SFIFF54's lone Canadian narrative feature is Sébastien Pilote's The Salesman, an affecting study of a 67-year-old auto dealer at the end of a successful career.

SFIFF54 2011 The Line-Up (Part 1)

2011-04-09T19:08:00.000-07:00

It's with a mixture of optimism and anxiety that I first eyeball the line-up of our beloved San Francisco International Film Festival (SFIFF) each year. As one who obsessively follows the major international fests – making notes along the way about prize-winners, critics' raves and new films by favorite directors and actors – I always have a clear idea about what I want to find on the SFIFF roster. This year is pretty typical. The festival programmed six of the 20 films on my wishlist and a bunch more that were bubbling just beneath it. Combine those with some intriguing titles that were previously unknown to me, and I've got enough to fill every non-working, non-sleeping hour between April 21 and May 5. I've already written about the films and special events that were announced prior to the festival's press conference, as well as a report on that press conference. Now here's my round-the-world, two-part look at what else has got me going.

Europe
We'll start off in France with films by three returning SFIFF veterans. Provocatrice Catherine Breillat follows up 2009's Bluebeard with yet another revisionist fairytale, The Sleeping Beauty. This will be Breillat's fifth film to play the The International – the third since opening the fest in 2008 with The Last Mistress. Chantrapas is 77-year-old French/Georgian director Otar Iosseliani's 11th film to screen in the festival, which must be some sort of record. I've loved several of his works (especially Farewell, Home Sweet Home), but groaned all the way through 2007's geezer-fest Gardens in Autumn. I hear good things about his latest, however, and Iosseliani is expected to attend. SFIFF reaches back to the 2009 Venice Film Festival for Claude Miller's (co-directing with son Nathan) I'm Glad That My Mother is Alive, the story of an adopted young man who re-establishes a relationship with his birth mother. In spite of good reviews and Miller having a 2008 U.S. arthouse hit (The Secret), this film fell off the radar. I'm sure looking forward to it.

Three other French narrative features are unknown entities: Children of the Princess of Clèves, Living on Love Alone and Hands Up. Based on terrific reviews I've read, I'll put my money on actor/director Romain Goupil's Hands Up, in which a group of 5th graders plot to save a Chechen classmate from deportation. The film features performances by the always welcome Valeria Bruni Tedeschi and Hippolyte Giradot. There are also two French documentaries on hand, three if you want to include Werner Herzog's 3-D Cave of Forgotten Dreams, which explores 30,000-year-old cave paintings in southern France (the film will have a local theatrical release this spring). The doc I definitely plan to catch is Florent Tillon's Detroit Wild City, a lyrical, outsider's look at an American city in decline. For those who need to see yet another documentary about a gay, European fashion designer, there's Yves Saint Laurent L'amour Fou (it opens in theaters May 27).

It won't come as a surprise that the four longest films in SFIFF54 hail from Europe. Leading the pack at 272 minutes (including intermission) is Raúl Ruiz' delightfully confounding Mysteries of Lisbon, reportedly his final film. I've enjoyed Ruiz' films in the past, most recently Time Regained at the SFIFF in 1999. This one holds special promise because it was the #1 favorite 2010 film of Michael Guillén of The Evening Class. It only screens once, on Saturday afternoon, April 23. That same evening, the masochist in me had originally planned to catch the restored revival of Rainer Werner Fassbinder's ultra-rare, 214-minute, 1973 made-for-TV cyberpunk epic, World on a Wire. Upon learning that the lone San Francisco screening would be digital (you'll find details about that here), I changed course and will see it a week later at the Pacific Film Archive in 35mm. Last year saw a second coming of the Romanian New Wave and that's where our other two Euro butt-busters come from. Andrei Ujica's The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu (187 minutes) was one of last year's most acclaimed documentaries, exploring the ex-dictator's cult of personality via clips from his official record. Clocking in at a comparatively brisk 181 minutes is Cristi Puiu's Aurora, which is the director's follow-up to 2005's groundbreaking The Death of Mr. Lazarescu. The film is said to be a slow, difficult sit-thru, with Puiu making his acting debut and appearing in every frame. I know I'm game.

Several other Eastern European films are personal must-sees. Sergei Loznitsa's My Joy is said to be a brutal, allegorical road movie about life in rural Russia. It shocked audiences at Cannes, where it was the only film in the main competition by a first-time feature director. Also from Russia is Aleksei Fedorchenko's Silent Souls, which I saw at this year's Palm Springs International Film Festival and recommend. This is also a road movie, albeit one steeped in the funerary rituals of Russia's Merjan ethnic minority. Polish director Lech Majewski's The Mill and the Cross was perhaps the most lauded film to come out of this year's Sundance Film Festival. It brings to life Pieter Brueghel's 16th century painting, "The Road to Calvary," and stars Charlotte Rampling, Rutger Hauer and Michael York. A good film to double-bill with The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu might be Mila Turajlic's Cinema Komunisto, a documentary that examines Yugoslavia's movie industry under Marshal Tito. Lastly, Radim Spacek's Walking Too Fast is about a creepy member of Czechoslovakia's secret police bucking the system in the 1980s.

Sweden has three films in the line-up. The one I've already seen (again, at Palm Springs) is Sound of Noise, a clever yarn about musical terrorists that could be the most fun you'll have at SFIFF54. I'm especially looking forward to Lisa Aschan's She Monkeys, an edgy coming-of-age tale. In her rave review for Variety, Alyssa Simon calls it "one of the most intense and complex feature debuts to come from Sweden since Lucas Moodysson's Show Me Love." The American Black Power movement as seen from a Swedish perspective is the subject of Göran Hugo Olsson's The Black Power Mixtape (1967-1975), which has gathered accolades from Sundance, Berlin and most recently, NYC's New Directors/New Films. It will open in local theaters this summer. Other films of interest from Scandinavia include Eva Mulvad's The Good Life, a documentary about a formerly wealthy Danish mother and daughter now living on the skids in Lisbon. It's been favorably compared to the Maysles Brothers' Grey Gardens. Then there's Norwegian director André Ovredal's The Troll Hunter, a Blair Witch-like mockumentary that wouldn't normally be my thing, but it looks rather fun and has gathered excellent reviews. It also opens in Bay Area theaters on June 17.

Apart from the Fassbinder revival, SFIFF54 has two other German films I'd like to check out. Pia Marais' At Ellen's Age stars Jeanne Balibar (The Duchess of Langeais) as a woman in spiritual turmoil who transitions from flight attendant to animal rights activist. From 2010's Un Certain Regard sidebar at Cannes we have Christoph Hochhäusler's The City Below, an intense drama about an illicit affair set in Frankfurt's banking world.

Should you need a break from reading subtitles, there are three films from the UK to consider. Actually, the working class accents of Clio Barnard's revolutionary documentary The Arbor are so thick, you'll wish there were subtitles. I caught this portrait about the miserable life of playwright Andrea Dunbar at Palm Springs, where the struggle to understand actor's lip-synching to interviews, as well as reenactments from her plays, sent me to slumberland. Still, I know this is an important film – it was #5 on Sight & Sound's 2010 Top Ten list – and I hope to catch up with it again (preferably on a DVD with captions for the hearing impaired.) I expect fewer problems with Michael Winterbottom's The Trip, a comedic road movie with Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon (the same team that delivered 2005's Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story), and Richard Ayoade's Welsh coming-of-age comedy, Submarine. Both are scheduled for theatrical release this summer.

There are two final European films I'm dying to see, one of them for the second time. I viewed Michelangelo Frammartino's transfixing and nearly wordless cycle-of-life fable Le Quattro Volte at Palm Springs, and can't wait for a revisit. It contains one of the most astounding, continuous long-shot, long-takes in film history and even won a special Palme Dog at Cannes for Vuk, the goatherd's pooch (not a joke). If you miss is at the festival, Le Quattro Volte will open locally on June 10. The other film is Athina Rachel Tsangari's Attenberg, which comes hot on the heels of the notorious Dogtooth as the latest exercise in transgressive Greek cinema. In fact, Dogtooth director Giorgos Lanthimos has a major acting role in Attenberg, and the film took home a Best Actress prize for Ariane Labed at last year's Venice Film Festival.

SFIFF54 The Line-Up (Part 2)

SFIFF54 2011 Opening Press Conference

2011-04-04T07:17:00.000-07:00

This year's San Francisco International Film Festival (SFIFF54) will be my 35th since arriving in the Bay Area in the mid-1970s, as well as my fifth year as accredited press. I look forward to the Opening Press Conference each year because for starters, it involves a vertigo-inducing thrill ride to the top of the St. Francis Hotel via exterior elevator. As I zoomed up to the 32nd floor last Tuesday, I was contemplating what a friend and fellow blogger had just told me. For five days, SF Film Society (SFFS) members had been privy to the entirety of this year's line-up, save for which director and actors would be receiving the festival's special awards. My friend had just told me who was to receive the Founders Directing Award and I could hardly wait to blab the fabulous news to a select few at the reception. Alas, humble pie was not among the breakfast buffet options.

The press conference began exactly on time, as all SFFS events happily do. An invigorated Executive Director Graham Leggat welcomed the crowd, then proceeded to justifiably boast about the expansion of SFFS' programming activities since 2005. "We now provide dynamic, daily year-round programming in the core areas of education, exhibition and filmmaker services. And in so doing we've created an organization unparalleled in scope and vision, by any in the country except those in the much larger markets of New York and Los Angeles." Calling the Bay Area a "great region of film culture and cinematic activity," Leggat placed the SFFS squarely alongside such organizations as the Tribeca Film Institute, Sundance Institute, American Film Institute (AFI) and the Film Society of Lincoln Center (for whom Leggat was Director of Communications before coming to San Francisco).

Then came the announcement that the recipient of this year's Founder's Directing Award was in fact, still a TBA. "Wrangling talent, I can tell you, is the single most important part of my job – getting people to appear at the festival, on time and under budget. The process was compounded this year by a couple of late cancellations and detailed negotiations, all of which I will not go into. The Peter J. Owens Award for acting, the Founder's Directing Award and the Midnight Awards involve players to be named later." Leggat revealed that one potential awardee dropped out after learning that San Francisco was not located in Los Angeles! Should Leggat write his autobiography, I pray he'll reveal who this dum-dum was. I'm pretty darn certain it wasn't the director I'd been misled into anticipating, whom I later learned had indeed signed on, but then cancelled. Hopefully, she will make an appearance at a future festival.

Before turning the press conference over to the programming team, Leggat thanked numerous sponsors and made mention of three noteworthy milestones associated with this year's SFIFF. "This year marks the 45th year of involvement by George Gund, the festival's chairman of the board. In 1967, he walked into Claude Jarman's office and plunked a check for $1,000 down on the table – unsolicited, unbidden, with no strings attached. That sort of enlightened patronage has marked George's association with the SFFS and the International for 45 years. This year we'll hold a special tribute to him at the Film Society's Awards Night, and we've marked a screening by one of his favorite directors, Otar Iosseliani, as a special tribute to George. I think you'll whole-heartedly agree with me he's a saint, and the Film Society would not be here today if not for his unstinting support over these last five decades." The other two milestones noted by Leggat were the 20th anniversary of Schools at the Festival, and the fifth anniversary of SF360.org, the Film Society's daily on-line magazine. "It's the only independent, regional film magazine in the country. Funded solely by the Film Society, but categorically not a house organ, SF360 surveys the length and breadth of a vibrant SF/Bay Area filmmaking scene. We would like to think it gives identity, character and strength to that scene, as much as it draws from it."

"There are 189 films in this year's festival from more than 40 countries, with plenty of highlights to mention. In the next hour we'll run through many of them – being comprehensive but not exhausting, enlightening but not highhanded, humorous but not frivolous, informational but not dry, modest but not sanctimonious, and impressive but not boastful." And with that intro, Leggat brought to the stage Director of Programming Rachel Rosen, programmers Sean Uyehara and Rod Armstrong, and Golden Gate Awards Manager Audrey Chang. I won't relay much of what they said, because I'll be posting my own overview of the SFIFF54 line-up in just a few days. (You can find my write-up of the awards, special events and competition films announced prior to the press conference, here.) Rosen did start off by clarifying the absence of a Cinema by the Bay section in the festival. "We decided this year that the local productions, much as we love them, should take place alongside their international compatriots. So local films made by San Francisco filmmakers can now be found in the New Directors section, the documentary section and the Late Show section." Rosen also provided insight into this year's special spotlight on world cinema, which benefits from an annual Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences grant:

"This year our spotlight is called "Painting with Light." We found that there were three very unusual films about "flat art" and it's representation through film. What's interesting is the different ways they bring this flat art into full dimensionality, and also the way they enliven the history of the time in which the art was created. The centerpiece of "Painting with Light" is Werner Herzog's new documentary Cave of Forgotten Dreams, a wonderful 3-D exploration of French caves that have 30,000-year-old drawings. Mr. Herzog has been entrusted with showing these drawings to the world, and of course he does it in his inimitable way. Also in the spotlight is the Polish film The Mill and the Cross, which brings to life Brueghel's 16th century painting, "The Way to Calvary," and also a wonderful new Indian film called Nainsukh, which is about an 18th century Indian miniaturist."

Before the Q&A portion of the press conference got underway, Rosen presaged and addressed the inevitable question about trends in this year's line-up. (Last year's trend, if you remember, was individual films directed by three or more people). "We don't set out an agenda in order to find a theme or make a point. We're really just looking for the individual films that we love, and try to put them together in a group for San Francisco audiences. But I would say the trend this year is "films that find their own length" – or the "correct length" for their stories. So we have five films in the festival that are 75 minutes or shorter, and then we have seven films that are 130 minutes of longer. They run the gamut from A Cat in Paris at a lean 65 minutes to Raoul Ruiz' Mysteries of Lisbon at 257 minutes if you don't include the intermission." Other possible trends noted by Rosen include more films than usual from Scandinavia and Eastern Europe, and a number of films set in a vague near future, which "create an off-kilter feeling, or a sense of dis-ease – not with special effects, but with the wonder of good filmmaking craft and storytelling."

When it came time for the Q&A, I was the first called upon with a question about the decision to show Rainer Werner Fassbinder's 1973 World on a Wire digitally in San Francisco and in 35mm at Berkeley's Pacific Film Archive. Rachel Rosen responded:

"Part of it is circumstance. It was a digital restoration of a film that was shot on film, for television. So already we're already in an area where – in terms of what to show – it's not clear. But it really was a practical decision in that the restored film print has to be shown reel-to-reel, making our options for theaters in San Francisco either too large for the future distributor, or too small for what we thought the audience would want. Having the opportunity to show digital, we chose to go with a slightly larger theater and the PFA has reel-to-reel, so they decided to show it on film."

Here's how I'm guessing that translates. Most archival restorations must be shown using a reel-to-reel projection system, which the Sundance Kabuki is not equipped for. The Castro Theater can handle it, but the 1400 seating capacity is too large for a distributor hoping to eventually release the film theatrically. (I've been told the Roxie Theater plans/hopes for a one-week run this summer). On the other hand, the VIZ Cinema at New People (which the fest is using as a first-time venue this year) has reel-to-reel capability, but is too small for the size audience anticipated by the festival. Hence, SF fest-goers get digital at the Kabuki. For me the choice is clear. Fassbinder shot World on a Wire in 35mm and this restoration was supervised by the film's original cinematographer, Michael Ballhaus. See you at the Pacific Film Archive on Saturday, April 30.

Speaking of New People, Hell on Frisco Bay's Brian Darr asked a question about the festival's discontinued use of Landmark's Clay Theater and this year's deployment of New People in Japantown. Personally, I'm thrilled by the switchover. New People is closer to the Kabuki (the festival's main venue), it has stadium seating (no tall people blocking the subtitles) and top notch projection (digital projection could be extremely dicey at the Clay). Plus, it's subterranean and has space-age toilets. Here's Graham Leggat's response:

"As you may know, the Film Society has been very interested in running or purchasing the Clay Theater. Those negotiations are currently in a holding pattern. Outside of the Letterman (Digital Arts Center), the Lucas (Skywalker Ranch?) and the Dolby Theater, New People is the best equipped theater in town. We thought that we would go there, in part because the size fits us better. We've only been in the Clay for the last three years, and last year the turnout was not quite what we wanted it to be. So the New People with its smaller house size enables us to save us thousands and thousands of dollars. We hope that you will come to the screenings there. We've got it for two weeks, whereas we only had the Clay for one week last year. New People is a wonderful theater. It's part of a four-story, mini-department store complex devoted to Japanese popular culture. And it's a block away from the Kabuki so it really centralizes our operations."

I asked another question regarding which directors had confirmed their attendance at the festival. Given the long list of expected guests, Rosen understandably directed my query to the appropriate press release. She did confirm that all but one of the 11 filmmakers competing for the New Directors Prize would be here (The Place in Between director Sarah Bouyain has a good excuse – she's getting married). Later scanning the Guests Expected to Attend list, I came across these "names" that should be recognizable to any diehard festival-goer: Mathew Barney, Patricio Guzmán, Miranda July, Otar Iosseliani, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Mike Mills and Christopher Munch.

Someone else asked the programming team about this year's seven shorts programs. I rarely see shorts at film festivals, but my ears did perk up at the mention of several familiar names. Rocker Lou Reed has a short (Red Shirley, in which he interviews a 100-year-old cousin), as does noted documentarian Ondi Timoner (Library of Dust). Both are part of Cupid with Fangs, a program which also includes the winner of this year's Oscar® for Best Animated Short Film (Luke Matheny's God of Love). In the "experimentally-minded" program Mind the Gap, you'll find one from Tarnation director Jonathan Caouette, which stars Chloë Sevigny (All Flowers in Time), as well as the latest from Bay Area filmmaker (and Program Director of the SF Jewish Film Fest) Jay Rosenblatt (The D Train). Emily Hubley's Hail appears in the Get with the Program program of animated shorts.

Other Bay Area journalists asked about the number of films by Black directors and how many films had LGBT content (very few, in both instances). Another inquired about an SFIFF54 iPhone app. There isn't one, but the fest does have a very nifty mobile website at http://fest11mobile.sffs.org, so be sure and aim your smartphone browser there. Graham Leggat posed a question to actress/New Burlesque artiste Suzanne "Kitten on the Keys" Ramsey, who stood up and set off a mad flurry of camera clicking. Ramsey appears in the festival's closing night film, Mathieu Amalric's On Tour, and she attempted to define New Burlesque for the San Francisco press corps. What I took away is that many of its key players call the Bay Area home, including one Roky Roulette who is the world's only pogo-stick striptease artist. I can hardly wait to see what sort of on-stage antics go down at the Castro Theater on Thursday, May 5.

Finally, Leggat was asked if he had a favorite film in festival. "That's a good question. I mean most people hedge when they're asked that, but I don't have a problem. The one that I thought was pretty nifty was The Mill and the Cross. Also, if you liked Tristram Shandy:A Cock and Bull Story by Michael Winterbottom, you will very much like the sketch comedy The Trip, with Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan. They are hilarious together."

Programmer Sean Uyehara also willingly chimed in with his choice. "Well, not my favorite film, because you can't have one of those. But-my-favorite-film-is Letters from the Big Man, just because it's so completely confounding. It's about a woman who develops a metaphysical communication with a Sasquatch – and it's completely earnest. You can actually learn quite a bit about yourself while you're watching it – like – why are you resisting this movie?"

Cross published on The Evening Class and Twitch.

SFIFF54 2011 Early Announcements

2011-03-22T22:31:00.000-07:00

While the full line-up for the 54th San Francisco International Film Festival (SFIFF) won't be made public until next Tuesday, the press releases announcing this year's awards, special events and competition films have been filling my inbox since the first of the month. Judging from these anticipatory peeks, I think it's safe to say they've assembled yet another winning event – one befitting SFIFF's stature as the longest-running film festival in the Americas.

Of course, SF Film Society Members get a gander at the entire line-up five days early. Look for an email on Thursday with a link to a PDF file of the mini-guide and remember that we're sworn to secrecy until Tuesday morning's press conference. Until then, here's an overview of what we know thus far. Most of the hyperlinks below lead to press releases for each event.

● The festival opens at the Castro Theater on Thursday, April 21with a film I'm very keen on seeing. Beginners is director Mike Mills' highly anticipated follow-up to Thumbsucker, which was one of my ten favorite films of 2005. Ewan McGregor stars as an emotionally floundering man whose 75-year-old father (Christopher Plummer) has come out of the closet. Mélanie Laurent and Goran Visnjic co-star as McGregor's and Plummer's respective love interests. Mills and McGregor are expected to attend the screening and participate in a Q&A, which will be followed by an Opening Night party at the Terra Gallery on Rincon Hill. I wonder if The Future, the new film by Mills' wife Miranda July, will also be part of this year's line-up?

● SFIFF54 closes two weeks later with On Tour, for which actor Mathieu Amalric (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Quantum of Solace) won the Best Director prize at last year's Cannes Film Festival (the film also took the FIPRESCI prize in the main competition). Amalric directs his own performance as a worn-out manager who takes a bevy of American neo-burlesque dancers on a tour of provincial France. As best I can tell, the film doesn't have U.S. distribution so this could be the Bay Area's only chance to catch it on a big screen. It's expected that several of the film's burlesque performers will be at the Castro Theater that evening, and afterward the party will move to The Factory nightclub at 525 Harrison Street on Rincon Hill. I'd like to personally thank the festival for putting both Opening and Closing Night parties just two blocks from my home!

● For a number of years, the SFIFF has presented a classic silent film at the Castro Theater, with a contemporary music artist performing a newly composed score. With Tindersticks: Claire Denis Film Scores 1996–2009, this formula gets a slight twist. British band The Tindersticks will accompany a 70-minute montage of scenes from six Claire Denis films for which lead singer Stuart Staples and his band wrote and performed the original music. With their sound augmented by live strings and brass, the group will play alongside clips from Nénette et Boni, Trouble Every Day, Friday Night, The Intruder, 35 Shots of Rum and White Material, all of which have been stripped of their score. San Francisco is one of only six lucky cities to host this sure-to-be magnificent audiovisual experience. (The others are London, Istanbul, Los Angeles, Paris (in Église St. Eustache, no less) and Umea, Sweden.

● Eleven films will compete for this year's $15,000 New Directors Prize, "given to a narrative first feature that exhibits a unique artistic sensibility." In looking over the titles, I was surprised and a bit discomfited that only one film rang any bells. That would be Russian director Sergei Loznitsa's My Joy, which walked away from last year's Cannes with the distinction of being the most disturbing and transgressive film in the main competition (as well as the only one by a first-time feature director). Needless to say, I'm dying to see it. On the same day that the New Directors line-up was announced, the festival also revealed the 12 official selections for the $20,000 prize Golden Gate Awards Documentary Feature Competition. Here I found two films previously on my radar. Eva Mulvad's The Good Life profiles a formerly wealthy Danish mother and daughter now living on the skids in Lisbon, Portugal, and it's been favorably compared to Grey Gardens. In the other film, one man's dubious transition from bloodthirsty Liberian warlord to Pentecostal preacher becomes the subject of Daniele Anastasion and Eric Strauss' The Redemption of General Butt Naked.

● Since 1988, the festival has been presenting its Mel Novikoff Award to "an individual or institution whose work has enhanced the filmgoing public's knowledge and appreciation of world cinema." This year's honoree is none other than collector, preservationist, exhibitor, programmer and consummate showman Serge Bromberg, who is no stranger to Bay Area audiences. I believe his most recent appearance was at the 2007 SF Silent Film Festival and his last visit to the SFIFF was in 2001 with his delightful Treasures from a Chest presentation. (He also co-directed my favorite documentary of 2010, Henri-Georges Clouzot's Inferno, which the fest screened last year.) After receiving his award, Bromberg will once again thrill a Castro Theater crowd – this time with his collection of stereoscopic films in a timely program titled, "Retour de Flamme: Rare and Restored Films in 3-D." Among the highlights will be the Lumière Brothers' Arrival of a Train (not the 1896 original, but a 1936 remake in 3-D!) and Chuck Jones' Lumber Jack-Rabbit (the only one of Warner Bros. Looney Tunes made in 3-D).

● This year's State of Cinema Address will be delivered by producer Christine Vachon, who will speak on "the current state of independent film and the role of producers of provocative cinema going forward." Vachon has produced 60-some films her 25-year career, including works by John Waters, Todd Solondz, John Cameron Mitchell, Larry Clark, Kimberly Peirce and perhaps most notably, Todd Haynes' entire oeuvre, from 1991's Poison right up to his current HBO mini-series adaptation of Mildred Pierce. As SF Film Society's Director of Programming Rachel Rosen states, "She is someone who is in an ideal position to tell us how the business has changed and where she sees it going in the future."

● At the 1976 Academy Awards ceremony, Frank Pierson wasn't on hand to pick up his Best Original Screenplay Oscar® for Dog Day Afternoon (Gore Vidal accepted it on his behalf). Just where he was on that momentous evening might be a good question to ask when Pierson accepts this year's SFIFF Kanbar Award for excellence in screenwriting. Following an on-stage interview about his 50 years in the business – years that included two other Oscar®-nominated screenplays for Cat Ballou and Cool Hand Luke, plus writing and directing (gulp) the Barbra Streisand remake of A Star is Born – the festival will screen Sidney Lumet's gripping tale of a bank robbery gone wrong starring Al Pacino and John Cazale. Pierson will also conduct a master class on the craft of screenwriting.

● Thanks to Gucci and Martin Scorsese's Film Foundation, the SFIFF will screen the recent 4K digital restoration of Federico Fellini's 1960 wide-screen classic, La Dolce Vita at the Castro. I haven't seen it in well over 20 years, missing three recent opportunities at the Pacific Film Archive in 2008-2009. Due to the high volume of must-see new films at the fest, I tend to stay away from its revival/repertory offerings. But an exception probably needs to be made here.

● The festival's Persistence of Vision Award for 2011 goes to multimedia artist Mathew Barney, best known for his five-part Cremaster film cycle. At the award ceremony, Barney will be interviewed by Bay Area writer, curator and critic Glen Helfand, which will be followed by the North American premiere of Drawing Restraint 17. The film is the latest installment of Barney's Drawing Restraint series, "which merges sculpture, athleticism, and cryptic symbolism into a stunning meditation of artmaking and physical exertion."

● Finally, while it hasn't been "officially" announced, anyone who's scrutinized the Pacific Film Archive calendar for March/April knows that venerated Chilean documentarian Patricio Guzmán (Chile, Obstinate Memory, Salvador Allende) will be in town during the festival with his new film, Nostalgia for the Light. Since its Cannes premiere, the film has received unanimous acclaim on the festival circuit and also won the European Film Award for Best Documentary. Guzmán's new work is set in Chile's Atacama Desert, where astronomers search the sky and grieving families search the earth for the remains of loved ones murdered during Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship. A PFA retrospective from April 2 to 28 will feature five other Guzmán films, including the three-part The Battle of Chile. Amazingly – at least for a documentary from Chile – Nostalgia for the Light will have a local theatrical release beginning May 13.

* * * * * * *

For whatever reason, the optimist and masochist in me feels compelled to draw up a festival wish list each year. The 20 films below were culled from a larger, 100-film list, from which I've eliminated anything with impending theatrical release or LGBT content (Frameline will reliably program most of those). I've also left out stuff from 2011's Sundance/Rotterdam/Berlin triumvirate, although I'd sure be impressed to see something like Berlin Golden Bear winner Nader and Simin, a Seperation or Bela Tarr's The Turin Horse turn up.

This year's SF International Asian American Film Festival uncharacteristically ignored 2010's crop of Asian auteur films, so I'm counting on the SFIFF to fill in that gap. I'm also hoping they've programmed films from last year's second coming of the Romanian New Wave – films that were oddly absent from Toronto (which I didn't attend) and Palm Springs (which I did). Speaking of Palm Springs, here are a dozen terrific movies I saw at that festival which I hope the Bay Area gets to experience as well: The Albanian, Cirkus Columbia, Essential Killing, The Four Times, Honey, Life Above All, Nothing's All Bad, October, A Screaming Man, Silent Souls and Sound of Noise. Now without further ado – my wish list for SFIFF54:

13 Assassins (Japan dir. Takashi Miike)
Attenberg (Greece dir. Athina Rachel Tsangari)
Aurora (Romania dir. Cristi Puiu)
The Autobiography of Nicolas Ceausescu (Romania dir. Andrei Ujica)
Black Venus (France dir. Abdellatif Kechiche)
Brother and Sister (Argentina dir. Daniel Burman)
Caterpillar (Japan dir. Kôji Wakamatsu)
The Clink of Ice (France dir. Bertrand Blier)
Leap Year (Mexico dir. Michael Rowe)
Mysteries of Lisbon (Portugal dir. Raoul Ruiz)
The Names of Love (France dir. Michel Leclerc)
Neds (UK dir. Peter Mullan)
Old Cats (Chile dirs. Pedro Peirano, Sebastián Silva)
On the Path (Bosnia/Herzegovina dir. Jasmila Zbanic)
Pál Adrienn (Hungary dir. Ágnes Kocsis)
Post Mortem (Chile dir. Pablo Larraín)
The Sleeping Beauty (France dir. Catherine Breillat)
The Tree (France dir. Julie Bertucelli)
Tuesday, After Christmas (Romania dir. Radu Muntean)
Viva Riva! (Congo dir. Djo Munga)

Cross published on The Evening Class and Twitch.

SFIAAFF 2011 - Preview Capsules

2011-03-09T07:17:00.000-08:00

The 29th edition of the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival (SFIAAFF) begins this Thursday, March 10 and runs through March 20 at various Bay Area venues. In a previous post I gave an overview of this year's extensive line-up. The following are capsule reviews of six narrative features and four documentaries I've had the opportunity to preview on DVD screener.

Anna May Wong: In Her Own Words (USA/South Korea dir. Yunah Hong)
Those who attended SFIAAFF's 2004 Anna May Wong retrospective won't want to miss this seamlessly constructed documentary that covers all aspects of the star's career and personal life. Deftly blending quotes from letters and interviews, along with choice photos, clips and interviews with those who knew her (including renowned cinematographer Jack Cardiff), director Hong renders a clear sense of just who this legendary Chinese-American actress was – beyond the exotic stereotype she seldom escaped on-screen. Among its many revelations is that lyricist Eric Maschwitz wrote "These Foolish Things (Remind Me of You)" especially for his lover, Anna May. What doesn't quite work are the film's reenactments with actress Doan Ly, especially the attempted recreation of Wong's cabaret act.

Bi, Don't Be Afraid! (Viet Nam/France/Germany dir. Phan Dang Di)
In this sumptuously photographed family drama, a boy maneuvers his way around a world of troubled adult relatives. Five-year-old Bi's grandfather has returned to Hanoi to die, while his absent alcoholic father cavorts with a masseuse. Putting up with it all is his empathetic mother. Bi's young schoolteacher aunt is pursued by a hunky construction worker, but she's developed the hots for one of her students. The film is leisurely paced to a fault, with peculiar editing choices that fail to unite disparate plot threads. There's also an overheated eroticism that verges on creepy. And I never thought I'd ever say this about any film, but the ample male nudity here is fairly gratuitous. Still, Bi is worth a look for its urban mise-en-scène (particularly that of an ice factory where Bi spends much of his time), uniformly fine performances and the stunning, aforementioned Red One cinematography.

Dance Town (South Korea dir. Jeon Kyu-hwan)
A female escapee from North Korea adjusts to life in the South in director Jeon's third and final installment of his "urban loneliness" trilogy. The film is strongest in its first half, as Jung-rim tentatively stakes out a new existence, prodded by a well-meaning caseworker and some overbearing churchgoers. It all gets a bit overreaching and Crash-y, however, with storylines focused on characters in equally desperate straits. By the end, Dance Town seems to enjoy wallowing in its own miserablism, almost to the point – I hate to say it – of being laughable.

Dog Sweat (Iran/USA dir. Hossein Keshavarz)
Most of Iran's population is under 30-years-old and living amidst an authoritative, fundamentalist society. How they reconcile youthful desire for personal freedom in the face of such strictures is the theme of this modest, clandestinely-shot indie. The film juggles a number of potentially interesting, inter-connected storylines, but tends to lurch gracelessly between them. There's also a lack of depth in the characterizations, which holds particularly true in the depiction of a gay man and aspiring female pop singer who are joined in an arranged marriage. First we see their initial meeting amongst family members, followed by a scene of their wedding, and then a shot of them at home watching TV – all without a single word of dialogue in which they discuss their mutual predicament. Still, Dog Sweat has value in that it depicts a side of Iran we rarely see. Just don't go in expecting the level of artistry seen in youth-oriented films like Bahman Ghobadi's No One Knows About Persian Cats, Jafar Panahi's Offside or even last year's SFIAAFF shot-on-a-cellphone documentary, Sepideh Farsi's Tehran Without Permission.

The Imperialists Are Still Alive! (USA dir. Zeina Durra)
In this impressive directorial debut, we witness post-9/11 New York City through the eyes of its young "émigré intelligentsia." Theirs is an enviable life of limos, swag bags, galleries and underground clubs – but if you're young and Arab, it's also a life of disquiet and paranoia. French actress Élodie Bouchez (Wild Reeds, The Dreamlife of Angels) portrays a politically provocative artist of Bosnian-Lebanese-Jordanian descent, who in the opening scene is being photographed with nothing but keffiyeh wrapped around her head. One eventful night she learns that a friend has probably been abducted by the C.I.A., and she meets a handsome Mexican PhD student. The film follows the course of their burgeoning relationship amidst this life of privilege. Director Durra obviously knows this life well and her film is full of delicious rib-poking that avoids full-on lampooning of her bourgeois characters. These are real people with valid concerns – Bouchez's character spends much of the film fretting about a brother who's trying to escape the Israeli bombing of Beirut. Durra's screenplay has also devised interesting ways for her characters to interact with NYC's immigrant economic substrata of manicurists, maids and taxi drivers. Poignant, charming, politically aware – and shot in gorgeous 16mm depicting a wintry Manhattan – this is one of my favorite films of the year thus far.

Living in Seduced Circumstances (USA dir. Ian Gamazon)
The co-director of 2005's urgent Philippines kidnapping drama Cavite returns with this curious two-hander tale of revenge and torture. At a remote forest cabin, a demented pregnant woman torments an older man she's duct-taped to a wheelchair. Fancying herself "Princess of the Jungle," she shoots him with arrows, smacks him with a shovel and sticks his feet in a wood-burning stove. A motive for all this aggression is given early on, but another one arises that relates to the two characters being Vietnamese. Color camera filters and animation give the film a dreamlike quality, and Quynn Ton tears into her role with a terrifying, childlike malevolence. Overlong at 76 minutes, this would have made for one awesome short.

Passion (Mongolia dir. Byamba Sakhya)
In its communist era heyday, Mongolia produced seven features and 40 documentary films per year, but today the Mongolian Studio complex lies in near ruin. Jigjid Dejid was considered the country's greatest director, and now his son Binder struggles to carry on the tradition. When he discovers that his latest film can't be screened in Ulan Bator's only cinema because of format and aspect ratio issues, he takes it on the road. Unfortunately, Human Traffic, his cautionary tale about a rich city woman who sells her rural sister's kidney, inspires few ticket sales, even in the provinces. Joining this dispiriting 2,000 km journey is Binder's longtime cinematographer, Passion's director/narrator/DP Byamba Sakhya. Their close friendship renders this an extremely personal film, perhaps a bit too much so. But those with an interest in national cinemas, or for that matter, an overall concern for the future of film exhibition everywhere, will find much to appreciate. Highlights include Sakhya's staggeringly beautiful photography of Mongolia's towns and villages, along with a trove of fascinating clips from the country's cinematic legacy.

Piano in a Factory (China dir. Zhang Meng)
Chen Guilen plays accordion in a band and is in a fluctuating relationship with its comely lead singer. He's also in a custody battle with his soon-to-be nouveau riche ex-wife. To win the affections of his daughter, he launches a monumental scheme to build her a piano with help from his scrappy friends and bandmates. This is the framework upon which writer/director Zhang hangs this delightfully loopy film, which is quite unlike any Chinese movie I've ever seen. Zhang has a sublime visual sense, utilizing interior and exterior spaces for utmost effect in his compositions and camera movements. This is also a musical of sorts, with several production numbers and a soundtrack that encompasses everything from Russian pop songs to the theme from Super Mario Bros. One could complain that Piano in a Factory is a bit precious and overworked, but that criticism is easily overshadowed by the film's enormous ambitions and sense of fun.

Summer Pasture (USA/Tibet dir. Lynn True, Nelson Walker)
Yama and Locho are married Tibetan yak-herders whose way of life is fading as fellow nomads choose life in the city. This extraordinary documentary observes them through the course of one summer, giving us a rich portrait of both their quotidian lives and individual personalities. Wife Yama suffers from heart disease, yet rises at 4 a.m. to gather yak dung for fuel, with the rest of her day spent making butter and caring for their baby daughter. Husband Locho, a ladies man in his younger days and still rather vain, grazes the family herd. He has an illegitimate child by another woman, which counts against the three-child maximum he's allowed by the Chinese government (and the woman in question had to be paid off in caterpillar fungus, which is the region's new cash crop). One revealing sequence cuts back and forth as Yama and Locho, filmed separately, recount the incident. This is yet another SFIAAFF 2011 documentary with eye-catching cinematography, with yak silhouettes against a dawn sky and the arrival of a hailstorm among the high points. In the end credits I noticed that Philip Maysles – son of acclaimed documentarian Albert Maysles – was one of the cameramen, and the Maysles Institute itself is listed as one of the funders.

Tales of the Waria (Indonesia dir. Kathy Huang)
This fine documentary brings us four touching, humanist portraits of transgenders living in Makassar on the southern tip of Indonesia's Sulawesi island. Waria is a combination of the words wanita (woman) and pria (man), and their existence in this Muslim society is tolerated because in pre-Muslim times they were trusted caretakers of the king. None desire sex-change operations, believing that they were created as men and must ultimately return to God as men. (This is in contrast to Iran, where the government pays for the operation, believing that transexualism is okay because nothing in the Quran forbids it). The most compelling story is that of Mama Ria, a waria in her fifties who has been a policeman's second wife for 18 years. One memorable scene shows her strolling arm in arm with the first wife during a family outing at a water park. Over the course of the film, however, we sadly watch her marriage come to an end, despite recent plastic surgery to improve her looks. The other warias are Suharni, a hairdresser who leaves her boyfriend to earn money in Bali; Agus, a husband and father who struggles with the desire to return to the waria way of life; and Tiara, an exuberant showgirl and beauty pageant trainer.

Cross published on The Evening Class and Twitch.

SFIAAFF 2011 - A Look at the Line-Up

2011-02-27T13:36:00.000-08:00

Rather than wait until its 30th birthday, the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival (SFIAAFF) has chosen 29 as the ripe age for a makeover. At a recent press conference announcing 2011’s line-up, the fest introduced a new logo, website, tagline (“Stories to light") and most importantly, a new Festival and Exhibitions Director. Masashi Niwano, a 29-year-old Bay Area native, worked his way up the SFIAAFF ranks as volunteer, intern, theater operations manager and even filmmaker. He's come home after a four-year stint running the Austin Asian American Film Festival and now replaces esteemed Chi-hui Yang in helming the largest Asian fest in North America.

SFIAAFF has also replaced its traditional magazine-format program guide with a classy (but somewhat unwieldy and eye-straining) 6" X 9" catalog. Flipping through it at the press conference, I noted an absence of recognizable international auteurs – indeed, only two of the roughly dozen films I’d hoped for were in the program. Among the M.I.A. are new works by Lee Chang-dong, Tsui Hark, Takashi Miike, Kôji Wakamatsu, Anh Hung Tran, Amir Muhammad, Kim Longinotto and most strangely, SFIAAFF habitué Hong Sang-soo, who released two new films last year. Of course, SFIAAF is more than just a greatest hits collection from the previous year’s fest circuit. A closer examination would reveal many programs worthy of anticipation.

My two wish-list fulfillments are Jia Zheng-ke’s I Wish I Knew and Zeina Durra’s The Imperialists Are Still Alive! Considered China’s most important filmmaker by some, this new work from Jia (Still Life and last year’s SFIAAFF entry, 24 City) is a portrait of Shanghai, shot by his extraordinary, longtime cinematographer Yu Likwai. Imperialists is director Durra’s narrative feature debut and is set amongst NYC’s post-9/11 “émigré intelligentsia." The main character is a bourgeois but politically provocative artist who falls for a Mexican PhD student on the same night she learns that a friend has possibly been abducted under the C.I.A.’s “extraordinary rendition" program. The part is played by one of my favorite French actresses, Élodie Bouchez (André Téchiné’s Wild Reeds and Roman Coppola’s CQ.) It remains to be seen how the film fits the context of an Asian American film festival, given that the director – as well as Bouchez’s character – is of Bosnian-Jordanian-Palestinian descent. Also worth noting is that Imperialists was shot in 16mm and will be screened at the festival in that format. (Speaking of screening formats, you’ll need to purchase the catalog to learn what’s what – the free mini-guide and website make no mention of them).

This year’s SFIAAFF runs from March 10 to 20 and I’ve got a big, red circle drawn around Sunday, March 13. I plan on parking myself at the Castro Theater from noon till midnight that day for what promises to be one helluva quadruple-bill. The marathon kicks off with what was originally a distributor-imposed “surprise" screening. Said distributor has changed its mind, however, and now I’m free to tell you that the surprise is Lee Jeong-beom’s violent revenge thriller The Man From Nowhere, one of South Korea’s biggest 2010 box office hits. Actor Bin Won stars as a taciturn pawnshop owner who’s forced to revive his skills as a former government assassin in order to rescue the daughter of his junkie upstairs neighbor from child organ harvesters. Whew! Reviews say the film’s occasional hoary genre clichés are outweighed by kick-ass set pieces and a riveting performance by Won, in a role that’s polar opposite to the developmentally disabled son he portrayed in Bong Joon-ho’s Mother.

The Castro mood shifts radically at 3:00 with Chito S. Roño’s Emir, a campy, 22-song Filipino musical about an OFW (overseas Filipina worker) who becomes nanny to a young Middle Eastern prince. In his review for Variety, Jay Weissberg calls Emir “jaw-dropping in both good ways and bad," which is recommendation enough for me. The Castro’s evening programming begins at 6:30 with SFIAAFF’s 2011 Centerpiece Film, Le Thanh Son’s Clash. This martial arts epic was last year’s top box-office smash in Viet Nam and stars that country’s very own “Brangelina," couple Johnny Tri Nguyen and Ngo Thanh Van. The trailer is a blast and friends who attended the press screening say it’s sexy as all get out. Plus, Nguyen and Van are expected to appear live on-stage at the Castro. How do you top that? Perhaps with Raavanan, the latest spectacle from celebrated Indian director Mani Ratnam (Dil Se, A Peck on the Cheek), which screens at 9:30. This contempo retelling of a tale from the Ramayana stars mono-monikered hunk Vikram as a criminal who conducts a revenge kidnapping of a police chief’s wife (Aishwarya Rai). By the way, all four films at SFIAAFF’s day-at-the-Castro will be screened in 35mm.

Each year the festival presents a “ripe for rediscovery" movie from Out of the Vaults – traditionally at the Castro Theater. Unfortunately, this year’s selection unspools at Berkeley’s Pacific Film Archive at the exact same time as the Castro’s Centerpiece Film. I’m probably not the only person who’s distressed over having to choose. This year's revival will be 1936’s Charlie Chan at the Olympics, said to be “one of the best and most interesting of the 16 films in which Warner Oland played the title character." The event will include a conversation between Stephen Gong, executive director of the Center for Asian American Media (CAAM) and author Yunte Huang, who’s just written the book, “Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and His Rendezvous with American History."

Several of the films mentioned thus far hail from the festival’s new Cinema Asia sidebar, which is basically their old International Showcase with some foreign documentaries mixed in. Of the 15 selections on offer, I’m especially looking forward to Dooman River, the latest narrative feature about North Koreans in China from director Zhang Lu. His masterful Grain in Ear and its follow-up, Desert Dream, were shown at the festival in 2006 and 2008 respectively. I’ve also read good things about Jeon Kyu-Hwan’s Dance Town, which follows an exiled North Korean table tennis champ as she adapts to life in South Korea. Those who follow the Golden Horse Awards – arguably Asia’s most prestigious film accolade – will have the opportunity to catch two big winners from last year. Chang Tso-Chi’s When Love Comes won Best Feature Film, Audience Choice Award, Best Cinematography and Best Art Direction, while Chung Mong-Hong’s The Fourth Portrait took home prizes for Best Director and Outstanding Taiwanese Film. SFIAAFF’s Asian scope extends all the way to Iran, and I’ve heard nothing but raves for Homayoun Asadian’s Gold and Copper from friends who’ve seen it at other festivals. Praised for how it “illuminates the pressures and pitfalls of traditional roles in Iranian society," the film tells the story of a young mullah-in-training who must assume household and parental duties when his breadwinner wife falls ill to multiple sclerosis. A few other Cinema Asia possibilities include Bi, Don't Be Afraid!, which was Viet Nam’s Oscar submission, and Passion, a documentary about the legacy of filmmaking in Mongolia.

Eight documentary and eight narrative features will compete in this year’s Competition Awards. I’ve never been clear about the criteria for these awards, but it seems that the filmmaker must be North America-based, while the subject matter or setting can be anywhere in the world. In addition to the previously mentioned The Imperialists are Still Alive!, I’m most looking forward to Eyad Zahra’s The Taqwacores, based on the provocative 2003 novel about an imaginary Muslim-American punk scene. Two directors familiar to SFIAAFF audiences return with new projects in competition. From Ian Gamazon (Cavite) comes Living in Seduced Circumstances, a tale of vengeance and torture that “traverses an imaginary border toward the darkened realm of fairy tale." And director Stephane Gauger (Owl and the Sparrow) returns to the streets of Saigon for a look at underground Vietnamese hip-hop youth culture (Saigon Electric). The only narrative feature of significant LGBT interest in the festival is Hossein Keshavarz’s Dog Sweat, a clandestinely filmed, multi-character weaving about young people in Iran that includes a gay couple facing the threat of an arranged marriage. Bertha Bay-sa Pan’s romantic comedy Almost Perfect is notable for the appearance of Edison Chen – his first film, I believe, since 2008’s XXX-photo scandal made him an industry pariah. Rounding out this year’s narrative competition are Jy-ah Min’s M/F Remix, which “repurposes" Godard’s Masculine/Feminine for a new generation, and Chuck Mitsui’s One Kine Day, a skater dude’s day-in-the-life saga that’s steeped in Oahu working class youth culture.

Shifting over to the Documentary Competition, I’ve got an eye on Lynn True and Nelson Walker’s critically acclaimed Summer Pasture, a strictly observational doc about a married yak-herding couple being confronted with modernity. News junkies might remember a 2004 item about a Hmong immigrant who killed six white hunters in a Wisconsin forest. Mark Tang and Lu Lippold’s Open Season investigates that tragic story. The resurging interest in the life and career of actress Anna May Wong gets furthered with Yunah Hong’s Anna May Wong: In Her Own Words. The only LGBT doc in the festival, Kathy Huang’s Tales of the Waria, looks into the world of four Indonesian transgenders. Other competition documentaries explore such topics as India’s booming trade in “procreative tourism," i.e. Indian women being paid to act as birth surrogates for Western couples (Made in India), a traditional Hawaiian song competition for students (One Voice) and the deportation of U.S. Cambodian refugees with criminal records to a motherland they no longer know (Resident Aliens).

After Masashi Niwano was named Exec Director of the fest, one of his first missions was to curate a horror series for this year. The result is a fun-sounding trio of terror tales called "After Death: Horror Cinema from Southeast Asia." His picks include Thai blockbuster Nang Nak, which was first shown at the festival in 2000; Histeria, from Malaysian indie director James Lee (The Beautiful Washing Machine) which features that country's first on-screen lesbian kiss, and Affliction from the Philippines.

What else? The SFIAAFF 2011 opening night film is Andy de Emmony's West is West, a sequel to the popular 1999 British comedy East is East. This new adventure follows the multi-ethnic Khan family from Manchester to rural Pakistan, with returning cast members Om Puri, Linda Bassett and Jimi Mistry. (The film was also the sold-out opening nighter at our recent Mostly British Film Festival). After the screening at the Castro, SFIAAFF opening night continues with a party at the SF Asian Art Museum. Closing night's feature is Surrogate Valentine by Dave Boyle (White on Rice), a rock-mockumentary starring local indie singer/songwriter Goh Nakamura. This year also shines a spotlight on director Gurinder Chadha, who will sort of be on hand to introduce her new macabre comedy It's a Wonderful Afterlife – via Skype. Chadha's spotlight also includes revival screenings of her 2002 mega-hit, Bend It Like Beckham. And finally, this year's festival delivers a whopping nine programs of shorts.

In his opening remarks at the press conference, CAAM's Stephen Gong declared 2011's SFIAAFF “the most ambitious festival in our 29-year history." Nowhere is that more evident than in the New Directions section, which includes seven panel discussions (Directions in Dialogue), a night of cutting edge contemporary music at the 111 Minna Street club (Directions in Sound) and the festival's largest event, the all day/all night Festival Forum on Saturday, March 12. This year's forum features live music, spoken word, dance troupes and a Bollywood Under the Stars outdoor screening. Also, as part of Directions in Digital Media, be sure to check out Pixels, Politics and Play, CAAM's first ever independent games exhibition which will happen March 11 to 13 at SUPERFROG Gallery (located in the New People building on Post Street). As someone who couldn't care less about electronic games, whether it's Grand Theft Auto or iPhone Scrabble, I look forward to playing The Cat and the Coup. In this game designed by Peter Brinson and Kurosh ValaNejad, the player becomes the cat of Dr. Mohammed Mossadegh, Iran's first democratically elected Prime Minister who was deposed in a C.I.A.-engineered 1953 coup. Here's the trailer for it:

The Cat and the Coup - Trailer from Peter Brinson on Vimeo.

Cross published on The Evening Class and Twitch.