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Nearly two weeks have passed since the press conference wherein SFFILM revealed the exciting line-up for its 61st festival. In my first post for this year's event I talked out the programs that had been pre-announced. That was a simple task given that only three things were revealed in advance: a Tribute to Charlize Theron, a Centerpiece screening of Boots Riley's Sorry to Bother You, and the films competing for the Golden Gate Awards. In this entry, I'll take a look at the considerable roster of programs and events taking place outside the main line-up of films. But first here's an update on the 2018 SFFILM Festival's participating venues.
Two years have passed since the festival left the Sundance (now AMC) Kabuki Cinemas, which had been home base for nearly three decades (with assistance from Landmark's nearby Clay Theatre and Japantown's New People Cinema). In 2016, the fest relocated its headquarters to the then-new Alamo Drafthouse's New Mission Theatre, with the Mission district's Roxie and Victoria Theatres serving as supplemental venues. Last year saw a significantly reduced use of the Alamo, as well as the addition of four downtown venues: the spectacular Dolby Cinema on Market Street, the newly renovated Phyllis Wattis Theater at SFMOMA, plus both the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts' Theater and Screening Room. Two constants amidst all this change have been the Berkeley Art Museum's Pacific Film Archive and of course, San Francisco's jewel, the Castro Theatre.
So what's new for 2018? Well, the Alamo Drafthouse is completely out of the picture, along with the YBCA Theatre. Use of the Dolby Cinema remains roughly the same. There's hardly a better place in SF to watch a movie, but the Dolby can be problematic for all-day festival-goers with its strict no-food-or-beverage policy (that includes water bottles; expect bags and backpacks to be searched). Other venue holdovers from recent years include the Roxie, Victoria and PFA. Over in the East Bay, the festival will make good use of Oakland's Grand Lake Theatre for the first time, with programming scheduled for two nights. The only new San Francisco venue added for 2018 is the Creativity Theater at the Children's Creativity Museum, which supplants the YBCA Theater as a third venue operating in the festival hub near Mission and 4th Streets. The 183-seat theater with stadium seating looks pretty nifty in this picture, and I expect to be spending lots of time there. Finally, the happiest venue news for SFFILM Festival 2018 is that once again the Castro will host the fest for 12 consecutive days – from opening night on April 4 to closing night on April 15.
Big Nights
For its opening night slot on April 4, SFFILM Festival has selected Silas Howard's A Kid Like Jake, adapted by Daniel Pearle from his own off-Broadway play. In this very much of-the-moment dramedy, Claire Danes and Jim Parsons play Brooklyn parents of a possibly trans young son, who are encouraged by the boy's preschool teacher (Octavia Spencer) to play up his trans identity as a "diversity" ticket into a competitive private school. A Kid Like Jake premiered at Sundance in January and I believe this will be its first public showing since then. Director Howard, who is trans himself (and has directed episodes of the award-winning Amazon series Transparent) will be on hand at the Castro Theatre. This year's opening night party happens at the SF Design Center Galleria.
For a second year running, SFFILM Fest has scheduled its closing night festivities two days before the festival actually ends. I couldn't be more thrilled with the selection of Gus Van Sant's Don't Worry He Won't Get Far On Foot, which plays the Castro Theatre on Sunday, April 15. The movie premiered to positive reviews at Sundance, providing a crucial boost to Van Sant's career following 2015's universally derided Sea of Trees. DWHWGFOF is a partial adaptation of quadriplegic, Portland cartoonist John Callahan's same-titled memoir, focusing on his years in recovery for alcoholism. While Joaquin Phoenix has drawn unanimous praise for his portrayal of Callahan (a role Robin Williams originally hoped to play), the strongest plaudits have been for Jonah Hill, allegedly unrecognizable as a gay, trust-fund kid who becomes Callahan's AA sponsor. The rest of the tantalizing cast includes Jack Black, Rooney Mara, alt-rocking women Beth Ditto, Carrie Brownstein and Kim Gordon, and last but not least, Udo Kier. Gus Vant Sant, as well as the film's composer Danny Elfman, are expected to attend. SFFILM Festival's 2018 closing night party will follow at Public Works.
Awards & Tributes
SFFILM Festival's 2018 George Gund III Craft of Cinema Award could hardly go to anyone more deserving than Oscar-winning Bay Area filmmakers Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman (The Times of Harvey Milk, Celluloid Closet, Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt). The award's presentation, which up until last year had always taken place at the private Film Society Awards Night Gala, will occur at the Castro Theatre on April 15. The event includes a screening of End Game, Epstein and Friedman's new 40-minute Netflix documentary short about hospice care.
The Mel Novikoff Award is given each year to "an individual or institution whose work has enhanced the film-going public's appreciation of world cinema." For 2018 SFFILM has selected none other than internationally renowned professor, author, film scholar and all-around cinephilic ambassador Annette Insdorf. I first became aware of Insdorf years ago when she co-hosted (along with Roger Ebert) IFC's live red carpet coverage of Cannes' opening and closing ceremonies, and was impressed by her articulate and genial on-screen demeanor. She'll receive her Novikoff Award at SFMOMA on Saturday, April 14, in a program that will include a screening of Ernst Lubitsch's 1942 comedy To Be or Not to Be, starring Jack Benny and Carole Lombard.
Experimental filmmaker Nathaniel Dorsky is the recipient of this year's Persistence of Vision Award, which honors a filmmaker "whose main body of work falls outside of the realm of narrative feature filmmaking." I confess to being a near-philistine when it comes to experimental cinema. I recognize, however, by the revered tones with which my more esoterically inclined cineaste friends speak of Dorsky, that this award comes richly deserved. The director's works are described as "silent short films in which light, nature and everyday surrounds are carefully captured and combined to prismatic, alchemical effect." In an unusual move for the festival, this year's POV program will be presented twice – at SFMOMA on April 6 and at BAMPFA on April 15. Both programs will include screenings of four recent Dorksy works, as well as an on-stage conversation (BAMPFA's will be hosted by Steve Anker, dean of CalArts' School of Film/Video). Presentation of the POV Award itself will only take place at the SFMOMA program.
In addition to actress Charlize Theron, the other film personality receiving a SFFILM Tribute this year is director Wayne Wang. The moviemaker's radically eclectic filmography ranges from early, Bay Area-based indies focused on the Asian American experience (Chan is Missing, Dim Sum, The Joy Luck Club) to crowd-pleasing Hollywood rom-coms (Maid in Manhattan with Jennifer Lopez, Last Holiday with Queen Latifah) to edgier experimental works (Center of the World, Life is Cheap…But Toilet Paper is Expensive). Accompanying the tribute at the Dolby Cinema on April 7 will be a screening of 1995's Smoke with Harvey Keitel – arguably Wang's most popular and critically acclaimed work – in a new restoration overseen by the director. Personal fun fact: I had a tiny, non-speaking part in Wang's Dim Sum, which ended up on the proverbial cutting room floor.
Live & Onstage
High atop my list of must-sees for this year's festival is Guy Maddin's State of Cinema address at the Victoria Theatre on April 8. From his 1989 feature debut Tales from the Gimli Hospital to 2015's The Forbidden Room, I can't think of another filmmaker who has had more works exhibited at our festival than Maddin. The iconoclast Canadian director also received the fest's Persistence of Vision of Award in 2006. Regrettably, Maddin had to cancel two in-person gigs at last year's 60th anniversary event – the tribute to Canyon Cinema, for which he had selected the films, and the closing night presentation of his Vertigo mash-up, The Green Fog – making his appearance at this year's SFFILM Festival doubly sweet. Maddin has selected "Cinema as Dream State" as the subject for 2018's State of Cinema address, and I can't think of anyone more qualified to ruminate on that particular topic. Be prepared for 60 minutes of thought provoking hilarity.
Speaking of iconoclasts, the Bay Area lost one of its most beloved last year with the passing of Stephen Parr, so it's entirely fitting the festival offer up A Celebration of Oddball Films at its 2018 edition. Oddball was Parr's baby, a 50,000-plus reel collection of industrial, educational and otherwise uncategorizable films housed floor-to-ceiling in a Mission District warehouse. Watch the end credits of almost any documentary that includes archival footage and you're bound to see the name Oddball Films scroll by. Parr also hosted incredibly fun weekend screenings at the warehouse. The first time I climbed Oddball's steep alleyway staircase and walked through the mysterious door covered by shag carpet was for a 16mm Halloween screening of a doc on actress Maila Nurmi (aka Vampira), which I watched from a beat-up sofa (or was it a beanbag chair?). The SFFILM Oddball/Parr celebration at the Castro on April 9 will include a selection of films from the archive, accompanied with live music by Marc Capelle's Red Room Orchestra.
For its annual pairing of a classic silent film with live music accompaniment, the festival has chosen Yasujiro Ozu's 1932 familial comedy I Was Born, But… with a score by alternative rock band Blonde Redhead. This is a group I haven't thought about since the late nineties, but apparently they've kept active and at least have a tangential relationship to the world of cinema. Their second album, "La Mia Vita Violenta" was dedicated to Pasolini, and 2016's boxed-set compilation "Masculin Féminin" of course references Godard. It will be interesting to compare their score to that of Stephen Horne, who accompanied I Was Born, But… at the 2011 SF Silent Film Festival.
Two additional programs round out SFFILM Fest's 2018 Live & Onstage sidebar. In A Thousand Thoughts, director Sam Green (The Weather Underground) stages a "live documentary" about the Kronos Quartet at the Castro Theatre on April 10. The formidable string ensemble will play a live musical score while Green provides live narration during the movie, which itself takes place on multiple screens. A Thousand Thoughts is co-directed by Joe Bini, a Bay Area native who has edited over a dozen films for Werner Herzog, as well as works by Andrea Arnold, Lynne Ramsay and Nick Broomfield. Then on April 15 at the Victoria Theatre, SFFILM presents Deep Astronomy and the Romantic Sciences, described as an "evening of music, animation and interstellar investigations" by director Cory McAbee (The American Astronaut).
Special Events
For a second year in a row, SFFILM Festival hosts a trio of free public screenings. On April 5 at SFMOMA the fest presents an episode of the new PBS/BBC series Civilizations: How Do We Look?, an updating of Kenneth Clark's landmark 1969 series Civilization. The episode to be shown spotlights China's terra cotta warriors and SF Asian Art Museum director Jay Xu will be on hand to lead a post-screening conversation. A free screening at the Victoria Theatre on April 10 will find acclaimed documentarian Katie Galloway (2011's Golden Gate Award winner Better This World) presenting her new work. The Pushouts takes on the issue of high school dropouts through the story of former Oakland gang member Victor Rios, now a professor at UC Santa Cruz. Jun Stinson's Futbolistas 4 Life will screen at the same program, and it concerns Oakland students raising money for a new soccer field.
The third free screening is of Don Hardy and Dana Nachman's Pick of the Litter, which follows five Labrador Retriever puppies as they train to be guide dogs for the visually impaired. Dogs (as well as masters) are invited to attend the April 7 screening at the Victoria Theatre, with the balcony being set aside as an "animal-free zone." Following last week's dog-friendly screening of Wes Anderson's Isle of Dogs at the Roxie (which prompted a write-up in the NY Times), this could signal yet another Bay Area-originated trend. Finally, while these screenings are free, registration is required (and The Pushouts is already at RUSH).
Also operating under the umbrella of Special Events are a pair of Creativity Summits, both of which take place at the Creativity Museum on April 7 and are free to the public (registration required). Both panels are focused on discussions of "presence," or "how technology broadly (and VR & AR in particular) are impacting artistic and cultural practice." The first features multi-hyphenate novelist (The Beach), screenwriter (28 Days Later) and director (Ex-Machina, Annihilation) Alex Garland in conversation with USC School of Cinematic Arts professor Tara McPherson. That will be followed by a panel comprised of VR pioneer Jaron Lanier and WIRED magazine's Peter Rubin.
Fans of actor/comedian Bill Hader (SNL, The Skelton Twins) will surely not want to miss the festival's special event presentation of his new HBO series, Barry. Hader plays the title character, an ex-Marine turned hitman who travels to L.A. for work and stumbles into an acting class run by a charismatic teacher (Henry Winkler). The series debuted on HBO this past Sunday and SFFILM Festival will show the first three episodes, all of which were helmed by Hader in his directorial debut. Bill Hader, Henry Winkler and writer/producer Alec Berg (Seinfeld, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Silicon Valley) are all expected to attend the presentation.
Cross-published on The Evening Class.
SFFILM Festival, which was known for 60 years as the San Francisco International Film Festival, is gearing up to celebrate its 61st edition from April 4 to 17. When the full line-up is revealed at tomorrow morning's press conference, SFFILM's programming team will have their work cut out for them. That's because in the dozen years I've blogged about the fest, never has so little been announced in advance. While it might not be easy topping last year's 60th anniversary extravaganza, I'm encouraged by what's been divulged thus far. What follows is a close-up look at what we already know, followed by some just-for-fun speculation and wishful thinking about what the rest of the festival line-up might hold for Bay Area cinephiles.
⬤ Out of all the films which premiered at Sundance this year, none aroused more personal anticipatory excitement than Boots Riley's feature filmmaking debut, Sorry to Bother You. Now I'm completely over the moon that it'll be our festival's 2018 Centerpiece, with near-simultaneous screenings happening at both the Castro Theatre and Oakland's Grand Lake Theatre on Thursday, April 12. Oakland-based Riley is best known as one-half of the iconic, revolutionary hip-hop duo The Coup, whose songs include such full-mouth titles as "Me and Jesus the Pimp in a '79 Grenada Last Night," "BabyLet'sHaveABabyBeforeBushDoSomethingCrazy" and "5 Million Ways to Kill a C.E.O." The group gained considerable notoriety for the original cover art of 2001's "Party Music" album, which depicted Riley and Coup co-conspirator DJ Pam the Funkstress (1966 – 2017 R.I.P.) blowing up the World Trade Center. The cover was created before the events of 9/11 and delayed the album's release by several months.
Sorry to Bother You is a scathing socio-politico satire set in the world of telemarketing, with a dystopic, gentrified Oakland as a backdrop. Rolling Stone magazine simply called it "a hundred thousand watts of fuck you." The plan on April 12 is for Riley to introduce the film at the Castro and then head across the Bay to introduce it at the Grand Lake. Riley and special guests (co-star Armie Hammer perhaps?) will then do a Skype Q&A for the Castro audience, followed by a live, in-person Q&A for the Oakland audience. Not incidentally, Sorry to Bother You received considerable funding and creative support through SFFILM artist development programs, FilmHouse Residency and the SFFILM/Rainin Filmmaking Grant. Be advised that the Grand Lake screening sold out less than 24 hours after tickets went on sale.
⬤ Oscar-winning actress Charlize Theron will be feted with a SFFILM tribute at the Castro Theatre on Sunday, April 8. After an on-stage conversation during which she'll discuss her formidable career (Monster, North Country, and most fabulously in recent years, Max Max: Fury Road), the festival will screen Tully, Theron's new film from director Jason Reitman and screenwriter Diablo Cody. Tully is a third-time collaboration between Reitman and Cody, and is their second outing with Theron in the lead, following 2011's Young Adult. Oscar-nominated writer/director Reitman (Up in the Air) will join Theron for an on-stage Q&A following the screening. The movie is slated for general theatrical release on April 20.
⬤ Ten narrative features will compete in the festival's 2018 New Directors Competition. I can highly recommend Rungano Nyoni's I Am Not a Witch, a top favorite amongst the 30 films I caught at this year's Palm Springs International Film Festival. Nyoni's movie premiered in the Director's Fortnight sidebar at Cannes, and is an empathetic, visually striking and acerbically funny satire in which a young village girl is suspected of sorcery and sent off to live in seclusion with other witches. The only other competition film already on my radar is Hlynur Pálmason's Winter Brothers, which won a Best Actor prize at last summer's Locarno Film Festival. This idiosyncratic Danish film is set in the environs of a remote limestone factory and has been compared to the Greek "weird wave" films of Yorgos Lanthimos and others. The eight remaining New Directors Prize entries include works from Cape Verde (Djon África), Sweden (Ravens), Georgia (Scary Mother), France (The Sower), Kyrgyzstan (Suleiman Mountain), Switzerland (Those Who are Fine), Argentina (Tigre) and the USA (Jordana Spiro's Night Comes On).
⬤ Ten films will also compete for the Golden Gate Awards McBaine Documentary Feature Competition. I'm especially looking forward to RaMell Ross' Hale County This Morning, This Evening, a filmic tone-poem centered on an African American community in rural Alabama which garnered terrific reviews when it premiered at Sundance. Two of the doc competition films, Alyssa Fedele and Zachary Fink's The Rescue List and Denali Tiller's Tre Maison Dasan will also be screening as part of SFFILM's "Launch" initiative, which aims to seek out distribution for non-fiction films that are SFFILM Festival world premieres, as well as "represent the values of our city and region" and "advance a culture of change." The Rescue List takes on the issue of forced child labor in Ghana, and Tre Maison Dasan follows the lives of three boys who share the common hardship of having incarcerated parents.
* * * * * * * * * *
When speculating on which other films might make the SFFILM Fest roster, I first look at what's scheduled to pop up in local cinemas during, or shortly after the festival. This year's batch of April releases with potential for fest inclusion are Aaron Katz' Gemini, Chloé Zhao's The Rider, Lynne Ramsay's You Were Never Really Here, Andrew Haigh's Lean On Pete, Ferenc Török's 1945, and last but not least, Sophie Fiennes' Grace Jones: Bloodlight and Bami. I also suspect that a number of films I saw in Palm Springs could also be making SFFILM Festival appearances, including such likely candidates as Laurent Cantet's The Workshop, Xavier Legrand's Custody, Léa Mysius' Ava and Léonor Serraille's Montparnasse Bienvenue.
The following personal 20-film SFFILM Festival wish list is comprised entirely of works that played the international festival circuit in 2017, but have yet to find their way to the Bay Area.
Barbara (France, dir. Mathieu Amalric)
Beast (UK, dir. Michael Pearce)
Casting (Germany, dir. Nicolas Wackerbarth)
Claire's Camera (France/South Korea, dir. Hong Sang-soo)
Everyone's Life (France, dir. Claude Lelouch)
First Reformed (USA, dir. Paul Schrader)
A Gentle Creature (Russia, dir. Sergei Loznitsa)
Godard Mon Amour (aka Redoubtable, France, dir. Michel Hazanavicius)
Hannah (France/Italy, dir. Andrea Pallaoro)
Jeanette, The Childhood of Joan of Arc (France, dir. Bruno Dumont)
Joaquim (Brazil, dir. Marcelo Gomes)
The King (US, dir. Eugene Jarecki)
Lover for a Day (France, dir. Philippe Garrel)
Makala (France, dir. Emmanuel Gras)
A Man of Integrity (Iran, dir. Mohammad Rasoulof)
Mrs. Hyde (France, dir. Serge Bozon)
Razzia (France/Morocco, dir. Nabil Ayouch)
Reinventing Marvin (France, dir. Anne Fontaine)
Rodin (France, dir. Jacques Doillon)
See You Up There (France, dir. Albert Dupontel)
Cross-published on The Evening Class.
The Mill Valley Film Festival (MVFF) turns 40 this year and will celebrate that milestone with a program that could be its biggest and best yet. Running from October 5 to 15, MVFF40 boasts yet another spectacular docket of filmmakers (Richard Linklater, Todd Haynes, Dee Rees, Sean Baker, Greta Gerwig) and actors (Holly Hunter, Andrew Garfield, Sean Penn, Kristin Scott Thomas) ready to make a Northern California pilgrimage to promote their autumn Awards Season projects. In total, the line-up encompasses nearly 120 features and 90 shorts from 52 countries – an impressive 43 percent of which were helmed by women filmmakers.
This year's festival is so chock-full of tributes, spotlights, sections, sidebars, panels, workshops and music programs – there's even a Cannabis Culture focus in anticipation of 2018's legalization of recreational weed – that it would be a fool's errand to try and survey it all in one preview. For me, the most exciting thing about MVFF is finally catching the wealth of new films that premiered earlier in the year at major international festivals like Berlin, Cannes and to a lesser extent, Sundance. What follows is a festival-by-festival glance at which movies I'm most hotly anticipating at MVFF40.
Sundance
By the time MVFF rolls around, most of Sundance's prestige titles have already played the Bay Area or, as is often the case these days, gone directly to Netflix streaming. The exceptions tend to be films with massive critical acclaim, which prompts their distributors to squirrel them away for awards season roll-out. One such movie is Luca Guadagnino's Call Me By Your Name, an Italian-set, coming-of-age drama starring Armie Hammer as a 24-year-old doctoral student who sets off on a love affair with his employer's 17-year-old son. It's one of the best-reviewed flicks of 2017, with James Ivory's screenplay being singled out for special praise. Unfortunately, the film recently became the target of a hypocritical homophobic tweet by actor James Woods. Call Me By Your Name opens in Bay Area theatres on November 24.
Another title lauded at Sundance was Dee Rees' Mudbound, a gritty familial drama about racism in post-WWII Mississippi. Rees' previous works include 2011's lesbian coming-out tale Pariah and HBO's Bessie Smith biopic. Both Rees and Mudbound will be the subjecy of a special MVFF Spotlight program on October 7 and the movie begins streaming on Netflix beginning November 17. It remains unclear if it will also receive a local theatrical release, meaning MVFF could be our only opportunity to experience Mudbound on the big screen. A third Sundance title I'm excited about is the Georgian film My Happy Family, from the same directors as 2013's magnificent In Bloom.
Berlin
While the 2017 Golden Bear winner On Body and Soul remains curiously M.I.A., nearly every other Berlin prizewinner earned a slot at MVFF40. A Fantastic Woman is Chilean director Sebastián Lelio's follow-up to his international hit Gloria, for which Paulina Garcia won Berlin's 2013 best actress prize. Leilo's tale of a transgender woman dealing with the family of her recently deceased partner won awards for best screenplay, as well as the Teddy Award for best narrative feature – arguably the world's most prestigious prize for LGBT cinema. Berlin's 2017 best actress prize went to Kim Min-hee for her performance in Hong Sang-soo's On the Beach at Night Alone. The film was inspired by Kim's real-life relationship with the married director Hong, which caused a huge public scandal in their home country South Korea. Hong is currently Asia's most prolific arthouse filmmaker, with On the Beach being just one of three movies he's released this year.
Alain Gomis' Félicité was chosen for Berlin's second highest award, the Grand Jury Prize. This music-filled drama centers around a Senegalese bar singer who's attempting to raise money after her son is injured in a car accident. The festival's singular Alfred Bauer Prize, awarded each year to a film that "opens new perspectives on cinematic art," was given to Agnieszka Holland's Spoor. Three of the Polish director's previous films have been nominated for Oscars and this Fargo-like murder mystery set in a wintry mountain village could possibly become her fourth.
I had the chance to preview, and heartily recommend two Berlin titles dealing with the Syrian crisis in radically different ways. Finnish auteur Aki Kaurismäki won the festival's best director prize for The Other Side of Hope, in which an asylum-seeking Syrian mechanic finds refuge working in an oddball restaurant. The director's immediately recognizable style is in full effect, with its acute humanism, deadpan humor, candy-colored cinematography and retro art direction and music. I was somewhat perplexed by its aloof ending. In sharp contrast, Philippe Van Leeuw's intense and at times unbearably brutal In Syria gives viewers a front row seat to that country's civil war horrors. Incomparable Palestinian actress Hiam Abbass (The Lemon Tree, The Visitor) stars as the matriarch of the last family to remain in a Damascus apartment building under blockade. The film is set during a 24-hour period and the action never leaves the building's confines. Best known as a cinematographer (he shot Bruno Dumont's The Life of Jesus), this is only Van Leeuw's second outing as writer/director. In Syria won the Audience Award in Berlin's Panorama sidebar and was easily my favorite of the MVFF40 films I previewed. If you miss it at MVFF, the film screens twice at this month's Arab Film Festival.
Another Berlin entry I can recommend is Élise Girard's Strange Birds, which builds on a recent mini-trend in French cinema for self-contained, enigmatic films that are barely feature length (e.g. Nights With Theodore, A World Without Women, Vincent). Lolita Chammah stars as Mavie, a reticent young woman from the provinces who tumbles into a job at a Parisian bookstore. The owner is Georges, a mysterious misanthrope (veteran Jean Sorel, Belle de Jour), who seems to have plenty of money despite a complete absence of customers. When his shady past comes home to roost, Georges goes on the lam, leaving Mavie to strike up a friendship with Roman (Pascal Cervo, 4 Days in France), a possible anti-nuclear terrorist she meets at a screening of Satyajit Ray's Charulata. All of this so-called "action" is rendered in a wistful, tongue-in-cheek fashion. Directorial flourishes run the gamut from voiceover conversations that may or may not be imaginary, to iris shots employed for scene transitions and a running gag of dead sea gulls falling out of the sky. Paris itself is lovingly rendered by cinematographer Renato Berta. Franco-cinephiles probably know that Lolita Chammah is the daughter is Isabelle Huppert and producer/director Ronald Chammah. The latter makes a rare on-screen appearance in Strange Birds as a dead body being dragged out of George's bookstore.
Despite receiving mixed reviews at Berlin, I'm very much looking forward to catching The Party, Sally Potter's first new film in five years. Shot in B&W and in "real/reel" time, this acidic black comedy set during a chic London dinner party boasts a ridiculously beguiling cast that includes Kristin Scott Thomas, Bruno Ganz, Timothy Spall, Emily Mortimer, Cillian Murphy, Patricia Clarkson and Cherry Jones. It was announced at the festival press conference that Ms. Thomas, who'll be in town for the October 6 Opening Night screening of Darkest Hour (where she plays Mrs. Winston Churchill), plus her own MVFF tribute on October 7, will stick around one extra day so that she can attend the October 8 showing of The Party. Rounding out MVFF40's line-up from Berlin are a pair of promising films from its Panorama sidebar, Song Chuan's Ciao Ciao from China, and Brazilian entry Vazante from director Daniela Thomas.
Cannes
The Cannes Film Festival's top three prizes are the Palme d'Or, the Grand Prix and the Prix du Jury. Amazingly, MVFF40 managed to score all three. This year's Palme went to Ruben Östlund's The Square. I was a huge fan of his previous film, 2014's Force Majeure, and am therefore keen to catch this provocative satire centered around a Stockholm art museum director. The Square is also scheduled to open at Landmark's Embarcadero Cinema on November 10. The festival's second highest honor was awarded to Robin Campillo's exuberant BPM (Beats Per Minute), which is set during the AIDS crisis in 1989 and deals with the rise of Paris' ACT UP chapter. The film also won the festival's FIPRESCI prize and Queer Palm. Although Campillo is best known for co-writing most of Laurent Cantet's screenplays, including 2008's Palme d'Or winner The Class, his two previous directorial efforts They Came Back and Eastern Boys are well worth seeking out. For those who miss BPM at MVFF40, it opens at Landmark's Embarcadero Cinemas on October 27. Lastly we have jury prize winner Loveless from Oscar-nominated director Andrey Zvyagintsev (2014's Leviathan). Zvyagintsev is possibly Russian's greatest contemporary filmmaker (along with Sergei Loznitsa) and his new work focuses on an acrimonious divorce and the disappearance of a couple's 12-year-old son. It's worth noting that The Square, BPM and Loveless are all 2018 Oscar submissions from their respective countries of origin.
From elsewhere in Cannes' main competition, MVFF40 has programmed In the Fade from noted German-Turkish director Fatih Akin (Head On, The Edge of Heaven). Mixed reviews didn't stop the festival from awarding its Best Actress prize to Diane Kruger, who plays a woman seeking revenge against the neo-Nazis that killed her husband and son. Cannes' Palm Dog Award was initiated in 2001 for the year's best canine performance and 2017's winner was Einstein, for his role as "Bruno" in Noah Baumbach's The Meyerowitz Stories. Baumbach's latest work unites Adam Sandler, Ben Stiller, Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson as a dysfunctional NYC family. The film opens at Landmark's Embarcadero Cinemas on October 13, the same day it begins streaming on Netflix. The remaining Cannes prizewinner making its local debut is Ecumenical Jury Award recipient Radiance. The new age-y, sentimental-borderline-maudlin films of Japanese director Naomi Kawase are an acquired taste I've yet to acquire.
The only Cannes competition title offered for preview was Todd Haynes' Wonderstruck, which the festival was kind enough to screen at San Francisco's magnificent new Dolby Theatre. Based on a novel by Brian Selznick (who also wrote the screenplay), Wonderstruck marvelously conflates two storylines set 50 years apart, both concerning a hearing-impaired child who runs away to NYC. While a number of critics have disparaged the film as mawkish, I for one fell completely under its sway. At the very least, Wonderstruck's technical achievements are nothing short of sublime. The production design and art direction are to die for, especially the evocation of 1977 Manhattan and the NY Museum of Natural History in 1927. Sandy Powell's costumes will no doubt earn her a 12th Oscar nomination and Carter Burwell's electric guitar-flavored score is one of his best. Haynes' ongoing collaboration with cinematographer Ed Lachman continues to be one of the most fruitful in contemporary cinema, and Affonso Gonçalves' editing adroitly juggles the two parallel storylines. Wonderstruck screens once at MVFF40, as part of an in-person tribute to Haynes on October 13. The film's U.S. theatrical roll-out begins one week later.
Perhaps the best reviewed film at Cannes, with a current 100% Rotten Tomatoes freshness rating, was one that screened outside of any sidebar or competition. Faces Places links the talents of 89-year-old French auteur Agnès Varda and 34-year-old French photo-muralist JR as they travel the countryside producing outsized, outdoor photo murals of people they encounter. The film seems a shoe-in for a Best Documentary Feature Oscar nomination, which would be doubly sweet considering that AMPAS will be giving Varda an honorary Oscar this year. Faces Places opens at Landmark's Embarcadero Cinemas on October 27.
Another Cannes documentary that drew considerable praise is Barbet Schroeder's The Venerable W, which I had the chance to preview and strongly recommend. The film is a disturbing profile of Wirathru, the Myanmar monk whose racist, anti-Muslim views have exacerbated the country's genocide against its Rohingya Muslim minority. Schroeder has declared The Venerable W as the third part of a Trilogy of Evil, following 1974's General Idi Amin Dada and 2007's Terror's Advocate (the latter concerns Klaus Barbie/Carlos the Jackal/Khmer Rouge lawyer Jacques Vergès). It sadly and effectively demonstrates how Buddhism can be manipulated and used for fucked-up purposes just like any other religion on earth. In one telling birds-of-a-feather sequence, Wirathru warns that "in the U.S. if people want to maintain peace and security, they must choose Donald Trump." Given recent events in Myanmar, The Venerable W is even more urgent than when it premiered at Cannes back in May. Screenings of the film will be preceded by a 14-minute short, Where Are You At, Barbet Schroeder?, in which the director reflects on Myanmar's genocide through the filter of his own life-long dedication to Buddhism.
Moving on to Cannes' various sidebars, I'm super excited about Sean Baker's The Florida Project, which premiered in Director's Fortnight. Baker's previous film Tangerine was my second favorite movie of 2015, and his latest is said to be another empathetic valentine to America's marginalized. This time his focus is on the denizens of a run-down motel outside Orlando's Disney World wherein Willem Dafoe has garnered considerable praise for his portrayal of the motel's crustily benevolent manager. Happily, Sean Baker is expected at both MVFF40 screenings, which occur just days before its October 13 Bay Area theatrical debut at Landmark's Embarcadero Cinemas. Also hailing from Director Fortnight is Claire Denis' Let the Sunshine In, which was the sidebar's opening night film. Juliette Binoche stars in this wry comedy about a divorced woman seeking true love, and she's supported by an impressive cast that includes Gérard Depardieu, Nicholas Duvauchelle and Valeria Bruni Tedeschi. A third film culled from the DF roster is Jonas Carpignano's A Ciambra, which Italy has selected as its 2018 Oscar submission.
MVFF40 has also gathered three intriguing titles from Cannes' Un Certain Regard sidebar. The one with the biggest buzz and critical acclaim is Valeska Grisebach's Western, a culture clash drama that pits resistant local yokels against a group of boorish Germans brought to Bulgaria to build a water power plant. Then in Annarita Zambrano's After the War, a former Italian terrorist residing in France with his teenage daughter is forced into hiding in order to evade extradition back to Italy. The third UCR selection at MVFF40 is Cecilia Atan and Valeria Pivato's The Desert Bride, an Argentine film starring the terrific Paulina Garcia (Gloria, Little Men) as a cautious urbanite who discovers potential transformation in her new rural locale.
Frameline, aka "the world's longest-running and largest showcase of queer cinema," celebrates its 41st edition from June 15 to 25. This year's 147 films from 19 countries are split almost evenly between features and shorts, with an unprecedented 40 percent coming from women filmmakers. Here are thoughts on a dozen I had the chance to preview, with additional spotlights on others I'm hoping to catch during the festival proper.
One of my favorite film genres to watch at Frameline are LGBTQ "celebrity" documentaries and biopics. Frameline41 gets off to an auspicious start when Jennifer Kroot's The Untold Tales of Armistead Maupin screens on opening night. The film solidifies Kroot's reputation as one of our best cinematic LGBTQ biographers, and compares favorably with her previous bio-docs on George Takei (To Be Takei) and the Kuchar Brothers (It Came From Kuchar). Her new film traces writer Armistead Maupin's unexpected path from conservative great-great-grandson of a Confederate general, to author of the internationally beloved "Tales of the City." Stops are made along the way to frankly discuss such things as his sexual friendship with, and ultimate outing of, actor Rock Hudson.
Kroot's main competition in the LGBTQ bio-doc biz is Jeffrey Schwarz, whose acclaimed films Vito, I Am Divine and Tab Hunter Confidential all played Frameline. He's back this year with The Fabulous Allan Carr, a look at the outsized, hedonistic life of the man who produced Grease, the Broadway musical of La Cage aux Folles and everyone's fave campy disco romp, Can't Stop the Music. Speaking of fabulous, was anyone ever more deserving of that identifier than cartoonishly big-buxomed Jayne Mansfield, an actress perhaps best known for her grisly death as for her starring roles in 50's cult classics like The Girl Can't Help It and Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? I've been a rabid fan since childhood, which is why Mansfield 66/67 is the film I'm most anticipating at Frameline41. Directors David Ebersole and Todd Hughes' work promises to survey Mansfield's life and oeuvre, with heavy emphasis on her relationship with Anton LaVey, founder of San Francisco's Church of Satan. John Waters, Peaches Christ and Kenneth Anger, whose essential scandal tome "Hollywood Babylon" is graced with Mansfield's cover portrait, are among the film's talking heads.
Another noteworthy film biographer with a new movie at Frameline41 is gadfly British documentarian Nick Broomfield (Kurt and Courtney, Biggie and Tupac, Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer). His Whitney: Can I Be Me was one of the big hits at this spring's Tribeca Film Festival, garnering great reviews for its provocative examination of Whitney Houston's troubled life and career. Why is this film at Frameline? Apparently, Houston was a closeted bi-sexual who was in a decades-long relationship with friend and personal assistant Robyn Crawford, even during her marriage to Bobby Brown. Frameline41's Centerpiece Documentary focuses on another singer, Mexican ranchera interpreter Chavela Vargas. Harry Vaughn's tantalizing program notes describe Vargas as a "pistol-packing, cigar-smoking, tequila-downing, women-loving" performer who had affairs with Ava Gardner and Frida Kahlo. Moviegoers may know her voice and image from films by Pedro Almodóvar (Flower of My Secret), Alejandro González Iñarrítu (Babel) and Julie Taymor (Frida). Chavela is co-directed by Catherine Gund, whose portrait of choreographer Elizabeth Streb, Born to Fly, was a highlight of Frameline38. Elsewhere in the line-up of biographical films on famous (or in these cases, infamous) LGBTQ folks, I'm looking forward to the narrative features Tom of Finland and My Friend Dahmer, the latter an imagining of the serial killer's high school years based on a best-selling graphic novel (co-starring Anne Heche as his mother!)
In addition to Untold Tales, I had the chance to watch five other Frameline41 docs and all are recommended. The most memorable is Quest, Jonathan Olshefhski's empathetic, serenely powerful study of an African-American family and their Philadelphia neighborhood during the Obama years. The reason for the film's Frameline inclusion doesn't become apparent until roughly two-thirds through, when it's revealed that the Rainey family's teenage daughter PJ is lesbian. PJ's loss of an eye following a neighborhood shooting is one of Quest's major story arcs. The film is scheduled to appear on PBS' P.O.V. series later this year in an edited form, but trust me, you'll want to experience every possible minute of this remarkable family's eight-year journey.
Two other Frameline41 docs centered on family are Abu (Father) and Small Talk. The former is director Arshad Khan's fascinating account of growing up gay in a once-liberal Pakistani family, where the parents gradually transition to fundamentalism after emigrating to Canada. Khan incorporates a wealth of home video footage with animation and Bollywood clips that reflect back on his own story with poignancy and humor. Then in Small Talk, Taiwanese filmmaker Hui-Chen Huang seeks answers about her painful relationship with Anu, her butch lesbian mother who was emotionally and physically absent during childhood. The film comes alive at its mid-point, when Huang interviews several of her mother's ex-girlfriends. Their descriptions of Anu as a drinking, gambling, generous-to-a-fault bon vivant contrast sharply with the dour, reticent woman we observe in the movie. Small Talk won the prestigious Teddy Award for best documentary at 2017's Berlin Film Festival.
Documentaries about LGBTQ cultural and political history are always of special interest to me. Andrea Weiss' Bones of Contention is a tragic and compelling memorial to queer folk who were persecuted, imprisoned and oftentimes buried in unmarked mass graves during Francisco Franco's fascist reign in Spain. Revered poet Federico Garcia Lorca is thought to be buried in one such grave, and quotations from his work are used as a framing device throughout the film. In a rare moment of levity, Bones of Contention reveals that "booksellers" was the coded euphemism used for lesbians, who were afforded the dubious "luxury" of slipping under the fascists' radar simply because they weren't thought to exist. During the festival, I'm hoping to catch two films documenting LGBTQ repression and emerging activism in the 1950's. Josh Howard's The Lavender Scare takes on gay witch-hunts that arose following President Eisenhower's 1953 signing of an executive order banning homosexuals from federal employment. Fergus O'Brien's docu-drama Against the Law covers roughly the same era in the UK, honing in on the story of pioneering activist Peter Wildeblood.
Those with an affinity for LGBTQ culture's edgier edges won't want to miss Queercore: How to Punk a Revolution. Yony Leyser's fast-paced and informative doc about queer punk-dom begins at ground zero with the scene's invention by Toronto musician-artist G.B. Jones and filmmaker Bruce La Bruce. Through a series of zines and especially La Bruce's groundbreaking 1991 debut feature No Skin Off My Ass, the duo dreamt up a non-existent phenomenon that became a self-perpetuating reality. Aided by nifty graphics and animation, Leyser's film highlights such seminal touchstones as Queer Nation, the anti-assimilation movement and Riot Grrrl. The parade of talking heads is nothing short of astounding, with La Bruce, Justin Vivian Bond, Lynn Breedlove (Tribe 8), Jon Ginoli (Pansy Division), Kim Gordon (Sonic Youth), Kathleen Hanna (Bikini Kill), Penny Arcade, Peaches, Patty Schemel (Hole) and especially Canadian artist-filmmaker Scott Treleaven (1996 doc Queercore: A Punk-u-mentary), all offering their singular takes upon the movement. And just when you start to think, "where the hell is John Waters," there he is bringing up the rear. On a side note, one wonders why La Bruce's latest film The Misandrists, is M.I.A. at Frameline41.
Amongst the roster of international narrative features, I was especially taken by three from Latin America. This year's Centerpiece: World Cinema presentation is Ernesto Contreras' lush and lyrical I Dream in Another Language, in which a linguist travels to a remote Mexican jungle village to document a barely extant dialect. The problem is the language's two remaining practitioners no longer speak to each other due to a decades old conflict involving sexual attraction. A moment or two of ill-fitting melodrama and an excess of sea-frolic-ing detract little from the overall intelligence of this lovely film tinged with magic realism. I Dream in Another Language won an audience award at this year's Sundance.
I also heartily recommend Carlos Lechuga's Santa & Andres. Set in Cuba in the early 80's, the film keenly observes the evolving relationship between a gay writer – one who spent eight years in prison for being "counter-revolutionary" and is now banished to a remote countryside shack – and a seemingly hardened young female Communist party member assigned to keep tabs on him. In addition to its gripping, humanist storyline, the film boasts extraordinary performances from Eduardo Martinez and Lola Amores in the title roles. In Julia Solomonoff's Nobody's Watching, we're offered a remarkably different kind of story about immigration to the U.S. Guillermo Pfening, who won the Tribeca Film Festival's best actor prize, plays an Argentine telenovela star trying to relaunch his career in NYC without much success. With his tourist visa about to expire, he tenuously couch-surfs and takes on odd jobs, including a stint as nanny for a close friend's baby. Meanwhile, he receives frequent phone calls, and an in-person visit, from his married and closeted ex who wants him back in Buenos Aires. As Tim Sika summarizes in his Frameline capsule, Nobody's Watching "observes with an outsider's eye the subtle boundaries that define class, race and opportunity in contemporary America." Director Solomonoff returns to Frameline for the first time since 2009's memorable The Last Summer of La Boyita.
In four decades of attending Frameline I can't remember there ever being a film from Armenia, let alone a compassionate and thoughtful one centered on FTM transitioning. Pouira Heidary Oureh's Apricot Groves begins and ends with an identical POV shot of someone being wheeled into surgery by a chador-covered woman speaking words of comfort in Farsi. The unseen patient in this flash-forward is Aram, an Iranian-Armenian "man" who has come to Armenia's capital of Yerevan from Los Angeles to ask for his fiancé's hand in marriage. He's accompanied by his gregarious older brother and after a strained meeting with the bride's family, the siblings drive to the Iranian border for an unexplained purpose (albeit one that's foreshadowed in the film's opening – it helps if you know Iran is a world leader in sexual reassignment surgery). Apricot Groves features handsome widescreen cinematography, an effective regional-flavored score and a hypnotic performance by actor Narbe Vartan as Aram. The final international feature I'm recommending is Francis Lee's God Own Country, which I caught at the recent SFFILM Festival. Lee aptly won Sundance's World Cinema directing prize for this Brokeback Mountain-influenced tale about a closeted, hard-drinking Yorkshire sheep farmer's volatile relationship with a Romanian itinerant worker. The film's steamy sex scenes should look particularly glorious up on the Castro Theatre's gigantic screen.
The biggest surprise about Frameline41's World Cinema line-up is that there's only one entry from France. Luckily, it's a film I've read terrific things about and am delighted to have the chance to see. Jérôme Reybaud's 4 Days in France is described as a sexy road movie in which a 36-year-old Parisian leaves his boyfriend and hits the backroads of rural France, using his Grindr app to find anonymous sex. Unbeknownst to him, his boyfriend is also using Grindr to stalk and keep track of his movements. Although it's not from France, I'm also hoping to check out the French-language Canadian feature Those Who Make Revolution Halfway Only Dig Their Own Graves, which not only has the longest title at Frameline41, but also the longest running time at 183 minutes. Finally, I'm hoping not to miss the Showcase presentation of John Trengove's The Wound, a rare example of LGBTQ narrative filmmaking from sub-Saharan Africa. The film is a gay love story set against the backdrop of Ulwaluko, a ritualistic circumcision ceremony practiced by South Africa's Xhosa community. Director Trengove created controversy recently when he withdrew The Wound from the opening night slot of Tel Aviv's TLVFEST, at the request of BDS South Africa. (Frameline has dealt with its own issues over Israeli governmental support over the years). The film has also proven to be controversial in its homeland.
