SFFS/New People Cinema Takes Off

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

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

(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

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

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.