tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25313459045285804272024-03-15T18:09:53.178-07:00Hell On Frisco Baywatching all kinds of films in San Francisco theatresBrian Darrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17693169310367670898noreply@blogger.comBlogger923125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2531345904528580427.post-15948394989632624722019-04-23T09:51:00.000-07:002019-04-23T12:41:17.913-07:00SFFILM Day 14: Asako I & II<i>The <a href="https://sffilm.org/calendar/">62st San Francisco International Film Festival</a> holds its final screenings today. Each day during the festival I've posted about a festival selection I've seen or am anticipating.</i><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKqn7y64LFvX9rLUsFSXZhlhF5VLDAqcNbOLZtbDgKnhHU72BxJkROkch2dkkEXMcHHqmSZue_7gCX17x1rdALtLF0ywQu1ntmDI_RbAJXNloQzWSAVVTTrCj5ktYVpTYegcxl0Q8xqwyO/s1600/asakoi%2526ii.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="667" data-original-width="1000" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKqn7y64LFvX9rLUsFSXZhlhF5VLDAqcNbOLZtbDgKnhHU72BxJkROkch2dkkEXMcHHqmSZue_7gCX17x1rdALtLF0ywQu1ntmDI_RbAJXNloQzWSAVVTTrCj5ktYVpTYegcxl0Q8xqwyO/s400/asakoi%2526ii.jpeg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A scene from Ryûsuke Hamaguchi's film<span style="font-size: 12.8px;"> </span><b style="font-size: 12.8px;"><i>Asako I & II</i></b><span style="font-size: 12.8px;">, playing at the 2019 San Francisco International Film Festival, April 10-23, 2019. Courtesy of SFFILM.</span></td></tr>
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<b><i><a href="https://sffilm.org/event/asako-i-ii/">Asako I & II</a></i></b> (JAPAN/FRANCE: Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, 2018)<br />
playing: 3:00PM today at the Theater at the Victoria Theatre<br />
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Since seeing this last Wednesday I've been telling everyone who cares to listen that it's my favorite feature film of this year's festival. A common response is to ask what I thought of director Hamaguchi's prior <i style="font-weight: bold;">Happy Hour</i>, a 5-hour drama that played SFFILM (then still SFIFF) three years ago, and I have to sheepishly admit that I missed it at the festival and only got through the first hour or so of that one while trying to watch on a tablet at home (via the <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/sffilm/id1090372663?mt=8">SFFILM app</a>); though I was enjoying it I felt I was cheating to watch on such a small screen. So I was thrilled that not only was I able to fit a big-screen viewing of <i style="font-weight: bold;">Asako I&II </i>into my schedule, it delivered on everything I hope for in a new narrative movie: the distinct style of an "auteur" voice, a plot that kept surprising me at almost every turn (and the glaring exception of an inevitable development was handled in a way I could never have predicted), and satisfying explorations of contemporary quandaries, both specific (in this case to Japan) and universal.<br />
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I know I'm being coy about the plot and even the formal details of <i style="font-weight: bold;">Asako I&II</i>. Forgive me; it's the last day of the festival and I'm running out of steam a bit. I do want to say that, though the SFFILM <a href="https://sffilm.org/event/asako-i-ii/">blurb</a> compares it to a certain cinephile touchstone film that I won't name here, I never once thought of that film (one of my favorite, most frequently viewed films) while watching Hamaguchi's two hours fly by. Instead what came to mind were 1930s delights like <i style="font-weight: bold;">The Prisoner of Zenda</i> or <i style="font-weight: bold;">Thirty Day Princess</i>. That gives a better picture of the kind of energy I saw on screen.<br />
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In an ideal world, I'd be able to see today's final screening of <i style="font-weight: bold;">Asako I&II</i>. Sadly I've got other commitments during its showtime. The film does have a distributor, <a href="http://grasshopperfilm.com/film/asako/">Grasshopper Film</a>, but it's a small enough outfit that I wouldn't count on a Frisco Bay theatrical release. So go today if you can!<br />
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<a href="https://sffilm.org/calendar/">SFFILM62 Day 14</a><br />
Other festival options: I can also recommend <i style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="https://sffilm.org/event/the-hidden-city/">The Hidden City</a></i>, a completely non-verbal immersive documentary about tunnels and other spaces beneath the streets of Madrid; it plays 6:00PM at the Roxie. Also at the Roxie at 8:30PM is the latest from <i style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="https://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2013/09/our-nixon-2013.html">Our Nixon</a></i> and <i style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="https://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2016/04/nuts-2016.html">NUTS!</a></i> director Penny Lane, It's called <i style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="https://sffilm.org/event/hail-satan/">Hail Satan?</a></i> and apparently a lot of people like the idea of ending their festival with it, because it's at RUSH status meaning you'll need to wait in line for a ticket. If you don't want to wait, it'll be opening at the Roxie for a <a href="https://www.roxie.com/ai1ec_event/hail-satan/">commercial run</a> in just over a week.I mean, I guess that's a wait too, but you won't have to do it standing up the whole time.<br />
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Non-SFFILM option: Tonight the <a href="http://www.castrotheatre.com/p-list.html#apr23">Castro Theatre</a> hosts a Jackie Chan double-bill: new DCPs of the original Cantonese versions of <i style="font-weight: bold;">Police Story </i>and <i style="font-weight: bold;">Police Story 2</i>.Brian Darrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17693169310367670898noreply@blogger.com61tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2531345904528580427.post-44215544029929402022019-04-22T17:12:00.001-07:002019-04-22T17:22:44.231-07:00SFFILM 62 Day 13: The Labyrinth<i>The <a href="https://sffilm.org/calendar/">62st San Francisco International Film Festival</a> is almost over; last night was the official "closing night" but repeat screenings continue today and Tuesday, April 23rd. Each day during the festival I've been posting about a festival selection I've seen or am anticipating.</i><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhYZDttrGzfT4Z89TsQpKbsLvsP7M5zS990nnjTHAAzMezrNCi6Ke5kv-ZkI4IOvdvGnY1zeQTooy4g3h-z6ABOx1JUSG7-_ksK9hKv56Z857Tal0g_PV14nCs4LCzfJzLKdPsV9vFDsq2/s1600/the+labyrinth.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="298" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhYZDttrGzfT4Z89TsQpKbsLvsP7M5zS990nnjTHAAzMezrNCi6Ke5kv-ZkI4IOvdvGnY1zeQTooy4g3h-z6ABOx1JUSG7-_ksK9hKv56Z857Tal0g_PV14nCs4LCzfJzLKdPsV9vFDsq2/s400/the+labyrinth.jpeg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A still from Laura Millán's <b style="font-size: 12.8px;"><i>The Labyrinth</i></b><span style="font-size: 12.8px;">, playing at the 2019 San Francisco International Film Festival, April 10-23, 2019. Courtesy of SFFILM.</span></td></tr>
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<b><i><a href="https://sffilm.org/event/shorts-5-new-visions/">The Labyrinth</a></i></b> (COLOMBIA/FRANCE: Laura Huertas Millán, 2018)<br />
playing: 6:00PM today at the Roxie, as part of the <a href="https://sffilm.org/event/shorts-5-new-visions/">Shorts 5: New Visions</a> program.<br />
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It could be a quirk of my own personal perception, but to me it feels like in the past few years the nation of Colombia has been undergoing an uptick in motion picture production and/or international distribution, possibly tied to the Foreign Language Oscar nomination of Ciro Guerra's <i style="font-weight: bold;">Embrace of the Serpent</i> from 2015. Guerra's follow-up (for the first time sharing co-directing credit with editor & producer Cristina Gallego) <i style="font-weight: bold;">Birds of Passage </i>became the first Latin American film ever to open the Director's Fortnight at Cannes last year, and showed at the Mill Valley Film Festival before a Frisco Bay commercial release earlier this year.<br />
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This year's SFFILM program boasts three Colombian productions or co-productions, as many as from any other majority-Spanish speaking country besides Mexico. Though the three screenings of the Vanguard selection Lapü have all passed, there's still one more festival screening of <i style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="https://sffilm.org/event/monos/">Monos</a></i>, from the Dark Wave festival section, and <i style="font-weight: bold;">The Labyrinth</i>, one of the longest and most fascinating of the shorts in the <a href="https://sffilm.org/event/shorts-5-new-visions/">New Visions</a> program. It's an experimental documentary from a filmmaker associated with the Sensory Ethnography Lab that gave brought previous San Francisco International Film Festival audiences gems like <i style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="https://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2013/04/leviathan-2012.html">Leviathan</a></i> and <i style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="https://twitter.com/HellOnFriscoBay/status/460542776904396802">Manakanama</a></i>. <i style="font-weight: bold;">The Labyrinth </i>doesn't jump out at the viewer as akin to those highly-conceptual features, but rather uses a syncretic approach to materials that allow ideas to bury themselves into the viewer's mind, to be awakened at an unexpected future moment.<br />
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It's an oblique portrait of Medellín Cartel drug trafficker Evaristo Porras Ardila, who built a replica of the Carrington Family mansion from <i><b>"Dynasty"</b></i> in the Tres Fronteras region of the Amazon where Colombia's Southernmost point touches Peru and Brazil, as told by one of his Porras's former workers named Cristóbal Gómez. Huertas Millán combines a voiceover from Gómez with intercut images of the ruin of the real, recreated mansion and the original, <a href="https://carringtondynasty.fandom.com/wiki/The_Mansion">patchworked mansion</a> as filmed by Emmy-nominated cinematographer Michel Hugo (and/or his fellow <i style="font-weight: bold;">"Dynasty"</i> DPs). The ruin images feel straight out of a visit to Angkor Wat or another truly ancient fallen city, and when contrasted against televised icons of Reagan-era wealth feel like the rotting interior of an entire economic system. The latter half of <i style="font-weight: bold;">The Labyrinth </i>makes more mystical turns into the connections between the jungle and states of altered consciousness. It's a powerful work that was justly praised on its tour of major experimental film festival showcases such as Locarno, Toronto's Wavelengths, the New York Film Festival's Projections, etc.<br />
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<i style="font-weight: bold;">The Labyrinth </i>is joined by a selection of moving image works by underground artists from around the world in the <a href="https://sffilm.org/event/shorts-5-new-visions/">New Visions</a> program. More than one also contrast mediated televisual images with more personal footage to provocative effect: Akosua Adoma Owusu's <i><b>Pelourinho, They Don’t Really Care About Us</b></i> is a Ghanaian maker's look at another South American country, bringing into her 16mm film world both a 1926 letter from W.E.B. DuBois to the Brazilian president and shots from Spike Lee's music video for a Michael Jackson song (the same one also featured prominently in a scene in another SFFILM selection, now a <a href="http://realscreen.com/2019/04/22/midnight-traveler-the-seer-and-the-unseen-win-doc-awards-at-sffilm/">Golden Gate Award</a> winner, <i style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="https://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2019/04/sffilm-62-day-9-midnight-traveler.html">Midnight Traveler</a></i>) shot in the favelas of Rio. The critic <a href="https://www.moderntimes.review/above-us-about-us-two-new-documentaries-from-rotterdam-2019/">Neil Young</a> has written extensively and passionately about this piece. Another similar hybrid is local filmmaker Sandra Davis's <i style="font-weight: bold;">That Woman</i>, which intercuts the 1999 ABC broadcast of Barbara Walters interviewing Monica Lewinsky (complete with late-breaking interjections of news about the death of Stanley Kubrick) with scenes of a re-enactment shot in the San Francisco Art Institute's Studio 8, with George Kuchar as Walters interviewing a Lewinsky look-alike. Given that Kuchar died over seven and a half years ago, I understand why <a href="https://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2019/02/jonathan-marlows-2018-eyes.html">Jonathan Marlow</a> followed an impulse to list it in my blog's <a href="https://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2019/01/i-only-have-two-eyes-2018.html">repertory round-up</a>; he notes that it was "recently completed" by Davis (its local premiere was last summer at <a href="http://canyoncinema.com/2018/07/23/free-8618-that-woman-a-salon-with-sandra-davis/">16 Sherman Street</a>) but the presence in the cast of a man who died (too young) over seven and a half years ago makes it feel older than its completion date suggests. Yet now seems like the perfect moment to release a short that would have taken on very different resonances two or three or ten or fifteen years ago. (I don't know if it was shot that long ago; it could've been anywhere from 1999 to 2011 by my initial reckoning).<br />
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Add in strong work like Zachary Epcar's <i style="font-weight: bold;">Life After Love</i>, Courtney Stephens' <i style="font-weight: bold;">Mixed Signals</i>, Sun Kim's <i style="font-weight: bold;">Now and Here, Here and Then</i> and Ariana Gerstein's <i><b>Traces with Elikem</b></i>, and this is the strongest New Visions program I've seen at SFFILM in several years. Perhaps that's only sensible in the first year in the past quarter-century that the festival has cut its presentation of new experimental shorts from two programs down to one, as I <a href="https://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2019/04/sffilm-62-day-7-confidence-game.html">discussed</a> last week, but I wouldn't want to read too much into it. Perhaps it's just a program more aligned with my own personal taste. Which is why I was surprised to see that the <a href="https://twitter.com/HellOnFriscoBay/status/1120087982885576704">Golden Gate Awards</a> shorts <a href="https://sffilm.org/2019-festival-jurors-and-gga-screeners/">jury</a> decided to go outside of the New Visions category to award the festival's $2,000 cash prize for a New Visions work to a short that had been placed in the Animated Short category: Urszula Palusińska's <i style="font-weight: bold;">Cold Pudding Settles Love</i>. Definitely one of the stranger entrants in the Animated Shorts competition, it is hard to compare against a crowd-pleasing laugh machine like Claudius Gentinetta's <i style="font-weight: bold;">Selfies</i>, which won the Animated Short <a href="http://www.animationmagazine.net/events/sffilm-golden-gate-award-winners-selfies-named-best-animation/">GGA</a>. While I don't know if the jury's category-confounding selection is unprecedented for the Golden Gate Awards, it's certainly unusual. It makes me glad that <i style="font-weight: bold;">The Labyrinth</i> as well as Epcar's <i style="font-weight: bold;">Life After Love </i>and Stephens' <i style="font-weight: bold;">Mixed Signals </i>will at least get another chance to screen for Frisco Bay audiences during the June 7-9 <a href="http://www.sfcinematheque.org/screenings/crossroads/">Crossroads Festival</a> held by SF Cinematheque at SFMOMA and just announced this morning. I'm not sure if that festival still has an audience award prize, and if so I'm certain it's not going to come with $2000, but at the very minimum these films can extend their reach to more viewers.<br />
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<a href="https://sffilm.org/calendar/">SFFILM62 Day 13</a><br />
Other festival options: With just two more days in the festival, everything is now down to it's final screening, so today's your last festival chance to see anything that happens to be playing. I can recommend <i style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="https://sffilm.org/event/the-load/">The Load</a></i>, which I wrote about yesterday, most highly (it plays the Victoria at 3:30PM), and Jennifer Kent's <i style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="https://sffilm.org/event/the-nightingale/">The Nightingale</a></i> with some major reservations, not so much regarding its brutal violence (although if you don't want to watch that I certainly don't blame you), but the moments near the end of the film that strain credulity after the believably bleak outlook adopted from the early scenes. That one screens at the Roxie at 8:30PM.<br />
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Non-SFFILM option: The Castro Theatre (which incidentally has a good portion of its May offerings on its <a href="http://castrotheatre.com/coming-soon.html">website</a>, including a day-long screening of a new DCP of Sergei Bondarchuk's 7-hour <i style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="https://prod3.agileticketing.net/websales/pages/info.aspx?evtinfo=444386~e5cdb48e-5c15-4ffe-bdf9-177dc932f5bf&epguid=3d7ce4e6-ae5e-4086-902c-4784dd17902c&">War & Peace</a></i> May 25) tonight launches a pretty cinephile-friendly final week and change before the San Francisco Silent Film Festival opens May 1st. Tonight's World War I-themed <a href="http://castrotheatre.com/p-list.html#apr22">double-bill</a> pairs a 35mm print of Peter Weir's rarely-revived 1981 classic <i style="font-weight: bold;">Gallipoli</i> with a 3D presentation of Peter Jackson's recent documentary <i style="font-weight: bold;">They Shall Not Grow Old</i>. Other 35mm prints playing there this week include Joseph Losey's <i style="font-weight: bold;">Boom!</i>, David Lynch's <i style="font-weight: bold;">Mulholland Dr.</i>, and a day stuffed with films starring Italian actor Ugo Tognazzi, including films by auteurs Elio Petri, Bernardo Bertolucci, Dino Risi and Marco Ferreri, all presented in prints brought in by the <a href="http://www.cinemaitaliasf.com/44ynaygmyfdr3a0lw8yjhlpye3oxyq">Italian Cultural Institute</a>.Brian Darrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17693169310367670898noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2531345904528580427.post-14867794130196354002019-04-21T12:44:00.000-07:002019-04-21T12:44:39.384-07:00SFFILM 62 Day 12: The Load<i>The <a href="https://sffilm.org/calendar/">62st San Francisco International Film Festival</a> is almost over; tonight's the official "closing night" but repeat screenings continue through Tuesday, April 23rd. Each day during the festival I've been posting about a festival selection I've seen or am anticipating.</i><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKMRPNk5sCLp1_jiJddWNwM7_kAtrXfphDl6lOkiQQsq4rXnTjHV0mIhG2xoQGwjigSCy-v1S1qaFe1I0tIxQSRUvCanJJlHjiIlTeSWGqdMSL4va7vm-tJI1MSZAekBBtau-huQXy1RLj/s1600/theload.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="901" data-original-width="1600" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKMRPNk5sCLp1_jiJddWNwM7_kAtrXfphDl6lOkiQQsq4rXnTjHV0mIhG2xoQGwjigSCy-v1S1qaFe1I0tIxQSRUvCanJJlHjiIlTeSWGqdMSL4va7vm-tJI1MSZAekBBtau-huQXy1RLj/s320/theload.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A still from Ognjen Glavonic's <b style="font-size: 12.8px;"><i>The Load</i></b><span style="font-size: 12.8px;">, playing at the 2019 San Francisco International Film Festival, April 10-23, 2019. Courtesy of SFFILM.</span></td></tr>
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<b><i><a href="https://sffilm.org/event/the-load/">The Load</a></i></b> (SERBIA/FRANCE/CROATIA/IRAN/QATAR: Ognjen Glavonic, 2018)<br />
playing: 6:00PM today at BAMPFA & 3:30PM tomorrow at the Victoria.<br />
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I went into <i style="font-weight: bold;">The Load</i> knowing almost nothing other than the information above and the fact that it's part of the SFFILM New Directors Golden Gate Awards competition, which other than undergoing a re-branding a several years back (it used to be sponsored by a vodka brand and called the SKYY Prize) has probably been the most consistent corner of San Francisco International Film Festival programming since I started attending twenty years ago. That year Jia Zhang-ke's feature-length debut <i style="font-weight: bold;">Xiao Wu </i>a.k.a. <i style="font-weight: bold;">Pickpocket </i>took home the prize, and since then other winning films have included Pedro González-Rubio's <b><i>Alamar </i></b>and Bo Burnham's <i style="font-weight: bold;">Eighth Grade</i>. Only directors on their first or second "narrative" feature are eligible for this award, so it's inevitable that all but the most deeply knowledgeable viewers won't have heard of any of them before the competition slate is announced. It turns out that 34-year-old Glanovic was not a completely unknown quantity to close festival observers, as he's made documentaries before including at least one that has played at the Berlinale.<br />
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I'm glad I went into <i style="font-weight: bold;">The Load </i>with so little foreknowledge. Part of this motion picture's effectiveness is derived from the position of unknowing that its lead character played by Croatian actor Leon Lučev, a truck driver tasked with bringing an undisclosed cargo across the border of Southern Serbia into Belgrade. Knowing little more than he does is a highly effective strategy for keeping a viewer's attention gripped, wondering what might be revealed. If that's not your style of movie-watching feel free to read the excellent review of <i style="font-weight: bold;">The Load</i> in <a href="https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review-the-load-offers-an-oblique-portrait-of-the-toll-of-war/">Slant</a>, or the interview with Glanovic in <a href="https://www.filmcomment.com/blog/interview-ognjen-glavonic/">Film Comment</a> before watching. In the meantime I'll make a few comments about an interesting aesthetic strategy employed in the movie that I'll try to avoid bringing anything at all spoiler-ish into.<br />
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Several times throughout <i style="font-weight: bold;">The Load</i>, our naturally-solitary driver encounters someone along his travels who makes some impact on his progress, and rather than simply confining these "external" characters' screen time to their interaction with the protagonist, Glanovic chooses to linger on their activities after their encounter before cutting back to Lučev. At first these moments are disorienting, appearing to launch into a "network narrative" structure for the movie. But after repetition of the structural technique makes it clear that Glanovic has something else in mind for these momentary fragments, they become clearly vital to his method of isolating his main character from the world he inhabits, a thematic underlining that gives ever more power to <i style="font-weight: bold;">The Load</i>'s reflection on Serbia's past and its at-best-incomplete reconciliation. Of all the features I've seen at SFFILM this year, this is the one I feel will be most likely to reward a second viewing. Luckily there are two more showings scheduled during the festival.<br />
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<a href="https://sffilm.org/calendar/?tribe_paged=1&tribe_event_display=list&tribe_sffilm_date_start=Sun%2C+Apr+21&tribe_sffilm_date_end=Sun%2C+Apr+21">SFFILM62 Day 12</a><br />
Other festival options: I can recommend the final SFFILM showing of <i style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="https://sffilm.org/event/the-edge-of-democracy/">The Edge of Democracy</a></i> to anyone who (like myself, before I saw it Friday) has felt confused by Brazil's political history over the past couple decades. Though a Netflix doc, it justifies its presence on the big screen with some very dynamic drone photography and more visceral protest footage. It screens at BAMPFA today at 12:30PM with the director in person. Today's also the last day to see Irene Taylor Brodsky, whose debut <i style="font-weight: bold;">Hear and Now</i> was among my favorite documentaries seen at <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20080820190158/http://daily.greencine.com/archives/003205.html">Sundance</a> way back in 2007, introduce her latest <i style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="https://sffilm.org/event/moonlight-sonata-deafness-in-three-movements/">Moonlight Sonata: Deafness in Three Acts</a></i>. She and her doc will screen at SFMOMA at 6:00PM.<br />
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Non-SFFILM option: The Stanford Theatre launched its Doris Day program on Friday, and today's the final day they're showing two of her most auteur-centric films, Alfred Hitchcock's <i style="font-weight: bold;">The Man Who Knew Too Much</i> and Gordon Douglas's <i style="font-weight: bold;">Young At Heart</i>, together on a 35mm <a href="https://stanfordtheatre.org/aboutWeek.html">double-bill</a>. The <a href="https://stanfordtheatre.org/calendars/Doris%20Day.html">full program</a>, all in 35mm prints as is the Stanford's m.o., runs five days a week through May 23rd and includes <i style="font-weight: bold;">My Dream is Yours</i> with its famous Friz Freleng animation sequence, <i style="font-weight: bold;">The Pajama Game</i>, co-directed by the late great Stanley Donen, and Andrew & Virginia Stones' <i style="font-weight: bold;">Julie</i>, shot largely in Northern California, mostly near Carmel where Day lives to this day.Brian Darrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17693169310367670898noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2531345904528580427.post-11369509430981127272019-04-20T00:30:00.000-07:002019-04-20T11:42:49.222-07:00SFFILM 62 Day 11: Wisconsin Death Trip<i>The <a href="https://sffilm.org/calendar/">62st San Francisco International Film Festival</a> is in its final weekend; it runs through Tuesday, April 23rd. Each day during the festival I'll be posting about a festival selection I've seen or am anticipating.</i><br />
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<tr><td><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvTe5FI_nJBjRhCxhOEyvEoJKshIc3OYu7cBkybNmP05Y1SR6PTzFkpBRkmyd-7kroxTcEYdufQzW4M5SkkoYuQhpWwjLcS9-zSVKYNT0Rf0qTPo_0j11Z8W-qvhm_mTAsqpWozEDZNoeC/s1600/wisconsindeathtrip.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="965" data-original-width="1600" height="192" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvTe5FI_nJBjRhCxhOEyvEoJKshIc3OYu7cBkybNmP05Y1SR6PTzFkpBRkmyd-7kroxTcEYdufQzW4M5SkkoYuQhpWwjLcS9-zSVKYNT0Rf0qTPo_0j11Z8W-qvhm_mTAsqpWozEDZNoeC/s320/wisconsindeathtrip.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px;">A scene from James Marsh's <b style="font-size: 12.8px;"><i>Wisconsin Death Trip</i></b><span style="font-size: 12.8px;">, playing at the 2019 San Francisco International Film Festival, April 10-23, 2019. Courtesy of SFFILM.</span></td></tr>
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<b><i><a href="https://sffilm.org/event/bbc-arena-mel-novikoff-award-wisconsin-death-trip/">Wisconsin Death Trip</a></i></b> (UK: James Marsh, 1999)<br />
playing: 4:00PM at BAMPFA<br />
<br />
So far this year I've been able to post daily about SFFILM festival films I've already seen, whether at an advance <a href="https://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2019/04/sffilm-62-day-2-high-life.html">press screening</a>, a <a href="https://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2019/04/sffilm-62-day-5-winters-night.html">festival showing</a> or at a <a href="https://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2019/04/sffilm-62-day-4-grand-bizarre.html">different film festival</a> or <a href="https://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2019/04/sffilm-62-day-3-sisters-brothers.html">another circumstance</a>. Today I'm focusing on a film I've never seen before but have been wanting to for nearly twenty years. When <i style="font-weight: bold;">Wisconsin Death Trip </i>first screened at the San Francisco International Film Festival in the year 2000 I was out of the country, and for some reason I never caught up with it during its Frisco Bay commercial release a year later, even when it played a successful run at my then-neighborhood theatre the <a href="https://www.cinemasf.com/balboa/">Balboa</a>. So when I heard SFFILM was to show it again this year, as part of its Mel Novikoff Award tribute I was thrilled. Some were not so thrilled with this choice; my friend Lincoln Specter was skeptical of the award going to a television institution in the first place and <a href="https://bayflicks.net/2019/03/21/laura-dern-claire-denis-claude-jarman-and-john-c-reilly-at-the-sffilm-festival/">said</a>:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The <a href="https://sffilm.org/event/bbc-arena-mel-novikoff-award-wisconsin-death-trip/">Mel Novikoff Award</a> is supposed to go to a person or institution that “has enhanced the film-going public’s appreciation of world cinema.” In the past, this meant someone who has helped others find a love of classic cinema. But this year, it’s going to <i>BBC Arena</i>, a British series of documentaries that may help people understand the world around them; but I doubt they’ll make them love classic cinema.</blockquote>
Perhaps because of my excitement about today's 35mm showing, I just had to leave a comment on Lincoln's site, which I'll reproduce here:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
It’s true that quite a few (the vast majority, perhaps) of the prior Mel Novikoff Award recipients are best known for increasing “classic” cinema appreciation, as you put it. But quite a few recipients aren’t known <i>just</i> for that: Roger Ebert, Jim Hoberman, San Francisco Cinematheque, etc. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
At any rate, BBC Arena has produced and/or shown documentaries about Orson Welles, Akira Kurosawa, Kenneth Anger, John Cassavetes, Hedy Lamarr, Clint Eastwood, Nicholas Roeg, Peter Sellers, Dirk Bogarde, Ingmar Bergman, and more individuals that many would consider important to “classic” cinema. </blockquote>
I'd also add that the San Francisco International Film Festival has long had a tradition of screening made-for-television works from around the world, mostly of TV movies, documentaries or episodes that would have a very difficult time showing up on American television or other US screens of any sort. Sometimes they'd show television works that went on to become classics or semi-classics, like David Lynch's amazing <i style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="https://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2013/05/twin-peaks-pilot-1990.html">Twin Peaks: Pilot</a></i> or Lars Von Trier's <i style="font-weight: bold;">The Kingdom</i>. Other times the festival showing would one of the few ever to occur in the United States outside greymarket tape-trading networks, if that. They even used to have Golden Gate Awards categories for Best Made-For-Television works (although the nominees weren't always shown at the festival proper, as I noted <a href="https://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2018/04/sffilm-61-day-2-barry.html">last year</a> sometimes television work can be notoriously difficult to clear the rights to screen in any kind of cinematic environment).<br />
<br />
I'm not always totally thrilled at SFFILM's enthusiastic partnering with streaming services for its content in the past few years, as these distribution channels are generally pretty mainstream and when SFFILM programs a Netflix title it gives up a slot to something that Frisco Bay audiences will have a harder time ever seeing. But who am I to talk when my top two films on my <a href="http://sensesofcinema.com/2019/world-poll/world-poll-2018-part-2/">Best of 2018</a> commercial release list included two Netflix titles that I caught in theatres, including one that I missed at the festival but might not have prioritized in cinemas later had I not heard good buzz on it a year ago this time.<br />
<br />
Anyway, made-for-television or not, I'm happy <i style="font-weight: bold;">Wisconsin Death Trip </i>is part of the festival this year and that I'll be able to catch it screened in 35mm at one of my favorite theatre spaces in use by SFFILM this year: BAMPFA.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://sffilm.org/calendar/?tribe_paged=1&tribe_event_display=list&tribe_sffilm_date_start=Sat%2C+Apr+20&tribe_sffilm_date_end=Sat%2C+Apr+20">SFFILM62 Day 11</a><br />
Other festival options: Early this morning SFFILM members get a crack at an upcoming release whose title will be announced just prior to the show. Two years ago I was thrilled to learn from my seat in the audience that I was about to see the latest by Cristian Mungiu, <i style="font-weight: bold;">Graduation</i>, which has seemed ever more relevant in the wake of the Operation Varsity Blues scandal. No idea what this year's <a href="https://sffilm.org/event/festival-member-screening/">Member's Screening</a> title will be, only that it'll happen 10:00AM at the Victoria. At noon, SFMOMA will host the <a href="https://sffilm.org/event/claude-jarman-jr-george-gund-iii-award-intruder-in-the-dust/">George Gund III Award</a> presentation to former San Francisco International Film Festival director Claude Jarman, along with a 35mm showing of the excellent Clarence Brown racism drama <i style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="https://sffilm.org/event/claude-jarman-jr-george-gund-iii-award-intruder-in-the-dust/">Intruder in the Dust</a></i>; Jarman acted in the film as a child and had great stories to tell when this film screened at Noir City several years ago; I'm sure he'll have much more to say today, and seeing a Clarence Brown film today could help you get in gear for the re-premiere of his long-forgotten (by those of us who are not named Kevin Brownlow) <i style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="https://prod3.agileticketing.net/websales/pages/info.aspx?evtinfo=436751~d9133282-4896-49aa-be18-b053ee8cefc3&epguid=7ecd8d33-d7d0-46b0-a62a-af16bcbe6fc6&">The Signal Tower</a></i>, which screens as part of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival in twelve days.<br />
<br />
Non-SFFILM option: Tonight's <a href="http://www.othercinema.com/">Other Cinema</a> program at Artists' Television Access is an etremely timely one, both in regards to current events and to SFFILM's current run. On the former front, David Cox is presenting an illustrated lecture on images of jailed non-journalist Julian Assange in cinema. On the latter front, Other Cinema curator Craig Baldwin has selected a short called <i style="font-weight: bold;">The Seen Unssen</i> by Mariam Ghani, whose feature-length <i style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="https://sffilm.org/event/what-we-left-unfinished/">What We Left Unfinished</a></i> screened earlier in the festival, and a is world-premiering a new piece called <i style="font-weight: bold;">Immaculate Concussion</i> by local collagist Kathleen Quillian, whose <i style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="https://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2019/04/sffilm-62-day-7-confidence-game.html">Confidence Game</a></i> is in competition for a Golden Gate Award and which I wrote a <a href="https://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2019/04/sffilm-62-day-7-confidence-game.html">bit</a> about earlier this week.Brian Darrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17693169310367670898noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2531345904528580427.post-68504918617131394792019-04-19T15:20:00.001-07:002019-04-19T15:22:40.301-07:00SFFILM 62 Day 10: Midnight Cowboy<i>The <a href="https://sffilm.org/calendar/">62st San Francisco International Film Festival</a> is entering its final weekend; it runs through Tuesday, April 23rd. Each day during the festival I'll be posting about a festival selection I've seen or am anticipating.</i><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A still from John Schlesinger's <b><i>Midnight Cowboy</i></b><span style="font-size: 12.8px;">, playing at the 2019 San Francisco International Film Festival, April 10-23, 2019. Courtesy of Park Circus.</span></td></tr>
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<b><i><a href="https://sffilm.org/event/midnight-cowboy-50th-anniversary-screening/">Midnight Cowboy</a></i></b> (USA: John Schlesinger, 1969)<br />
playing: 8:45PM at SFMOMA<br />
<br />
I haven't seen <i style="font-weight: bold;">Midnight Cowboy </i>since watching it on videocassette as a teenager, but my dim memory of it is that it's quite good, probably the best of the late-1960s Best Picture winners. I've put off revisiting it for years, even passing up 35mm screenings to my later regret. Now it's available on DCP format, and will be screening tonight that way tonight along with a personal appearance by director John Schlesinger's partner Michael Childers, has just given an excellent <a href="https://48hills.org/2019/04/midnight-cowboy-michael-childers-sffilm/">interview</a> for the 48Hills website. Though Childers' official credit on the film was "assistant to the director" he played a big role in the film, including being key to populating a Greenwich Village party sequence with Andy Warhol's factory superstars as extras. He was also set photographer, which I assume is behind the unusual look to the above still provided to press by the film festival; if it's not a production still taken by Childers I'll be a for-real-cowboy's uncle! Tonight will surely be filled with wonderful behind-the-scenes stories from filming.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://sffilm.org/calendar/?tribe_paged=1&tribe_event_display=list&tribe_sffilm_date_start=Fri%2C+Apr+19&tribe_sffilm_date_end=Fri%2C+Apr+19">SFFILM62 Day 10</a><br />
Other festival options: Today's the day YBCA will be screening a nine-hour version of BBC Arena's <i style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="https://sffilm.org/event/night-and-day/">Night and Day</a> </i>for FREE to any visitors to its Lobby Gallery that wish to watch, whether for a few minutes or for as long as they desire. It's also the last day to see a festival screening of Qiu Sheng's controversial <i style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="https://sffilm.org/event/suburban-birds/">Suburban Birds</a></i>, which plays the Roxie tonight at 9:00 PM (though it will also get a commercial release there in <a href="https://www.roxie.com/ai1ec_event/suburban-birds/">May</a>). Tonight also is the night of the festival's annual pairing of silent films with modern-day rockers, in this case two members of Warpaint will accompany digital projections of four <a href="https://sffilm.org/event/warpaint-live-score-films-by-maya-deren/">Maya Deren</a> shorts at the Castro at 8:00PM. I'm torn about recommending this program after my utter exasperation at the last such SFFILM match-up; I couldn't take more than fifteen minutes of seeing a 35mm print of Yasujiro Ozu's masterpiece <i style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="https://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2018/04/sffilm-61-day-8-i-was-born-but.html">I Was Born, But...</a></i> projected in the wrong aspect ratio through a lens intended to make the image smaller on the screen, so as not to compete so much with its musical accompanists' stage antics. And don't get me started on the music itself, which had essentially nothing to do with the onscreen action (although I'm told by someone who stayed throughout the entire presentation that they finally synched up a bit for the final reel, at least). I have a hunch that tonight's presentation will be better than that; the fact that it's only a couple members of band has me guessing they won't just use it as an opportunity to play their usual tunes, but that they'll arrange something specific to Deren's image. On the other hand, Deren was, unlike Ozu in 1932 or any of the filmmakers featured in the upcoming (less than two weeks away!) <a href="http://www.silentfilm.org/festivalevents/festival-2019">San Francisco Silent Film Festival</a>, a filmmaker unused to having her films accompanied by music other than what she chose for them. All accounts I've found indicate that she preferred to screen <i style="font-weight: bold;">At Land</i> and <i style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="https://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2013/09/a-ritual-in-transfigured-time-1946.html">Ritual in Transfigured Time</a></i> with no music at all. She never considered <i style="font-weight: bold;">The Very Eye of Night</i> complete enough to screen until it was given a score by her future husband Teiji Ito, who also composed a score for <i style="font-weight: bold;">Meshes of the Afternoon</i> that she approved many years after its original release. Still, the thought of seeing Deren's images projected large on the Castro screen is pretty tempting.<br />
<br />
Non-SFFILM option: Most Friday nights throughout the year the Mechanics Institute Library in San Francisco's Financial District hosts a (digital) screening and discussion of a movie selected by one of my favorite local film writers, Michael Fox. Tonight this series, called <a href="https://www.milibrary.org/events/cinemalit-film-series">CinemaLit</a>, brings in film historian <a href="http://www.matthewkennedybooks.com/">Matthew Kennedy</a> to screen and discuss one of my favorite Preston Sturges films, <i style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="https://www.milibrary.org/events/cinemalit-great-mcginty-1940-apr-19-2019">The Great McGinty</a></i>, which I've written about fairly extensively <a href="https://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2013/11/the-great-mcginty-1940.html">before</a>. Next week it's an Edward G. Robinson vehicle directed by John Ford, <i style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="https://www.milibrary.org/events/cinemalit-whole-towns-talking-apr-26-2019">The Whole Town's Talking</a></i>. That one I haven't seen.Brian Darrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17693169310367670898noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2531345904528580427.post-17210250199796967372019-04-18T12:21:00.000-07:002019-04-19T09:58:17.660-07:00SFFILM 62 Day 9: Midnight Traveler<i>The <a href="https://sffilm.org/calendar/">62st San Francisco International Film Festival</a> is over half done; it runs through April 23rd. Each day during the festival I'll be posting about a festival selection I've seen or am anticipating.</i><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A scene from Hassan Fazili's <b><i>Midnight Traveler</i></b><span style="font-size: 12.8px;">, playing at the 2019 San Francisco International Film Festival, April 10-23, 2019. Courtesy of SFFILM.</span></td></tr>
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<b><i><a href="https://sffilm.org/event/midnight-traveler/">Midnight Traveler</a></i></b> (USA: Hassan Fazili, 2019)<br />
playing: 3:00PM today at the Theater at Children's Creativity Museum and 5:30PM tomorrow at BAMPFA.<br />
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This is, like yesterday's pick <i style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="https://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2019/04/sffilm-62-day-8-aniara.html">Aniara</a></i>, another "Hold Review" title, for which I can only write 75 words until a commercial release occurs (it's distributed by <a href="http://oscilloscope.net/films/">Oscilloscope</a>). Here's my stab:<br />
<br />
What'll you see in this wrenching autobiographical documentary about filmmakers fleeing Afghanistan to the EU through Iran, Turkey, Bulgaria and Serbia? Daughters of a landlocked nation enjoying their first tides. A mother summoning the resources to fulfill her family’s needs under extremely harsh conditions. A father questioning his overcommittment to his profession. Ugly anti-immigrant sentiment up close. A broken international refugee system & its harrowing consequences for millions. What'll you do? That's up to you.<br />
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So that's the movie, which was funded in part through SFFILM's Documentary Film Fund grant. I believe last night's showing, the local premiere, was somehow the first time I'd attended the first SFFILM showing of a feature-length film funded through the organization's robust granting programs. There was a good deal of deserved pomp and circumstance for this moment, and in fact it was the first screening this year I've attended with now-outgoing SFFILM Executive Director <a href="https://www.indiewire.com/2019/04/noah-cowan-stepping-down-sffilm-1202055011/">Noah Cowan</a> present. He doesn't appear to be phoning in his final few weeks as a lame duck ED; he seemed very much in his element interviewing <i style="font-weight: bold;">Midnight Traveler</i>'s co-producer/editors Emelie Coleman Mahdavian & Kristina Motwani, and hosting a post-screening panel with them as well as with Sarah Leah Whitson of the Middle East and North Africa Division at Human Rights Watch. Today and tomorrow's screenings are expected to have Mahdavian & Motwani on hand as well, though not Whitson.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://sffilm.org/calendar/?tribe_paged=1&tribe_event_display=list&tribe_sffilm_date_start=Thu%2C+Apr+18&tribe_sffilm_date_end=Thu%2C+Apr+18">SFFILM62 Day 9</a><br />
Other festival options: Today's the final showing of another documentary with a similar title: <i style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="https://sffilm.org/event/midnight-family/">Midnight Family</a></i>, about Mexico City ambulance drivers; it plays 6:00PM at the Children's Creativity Museum theatre shortly after <i style="font-weight: bold;">Midnight Traveler</i> ends. Just to keep things extra-confusing. (At least they're saving <i style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="https://sffilm.org/event/midnight-cowboy-50th-anniversary-screening/">Midnight Cowboy</a></i> for tomorrow). Tonight's also the final SFFILM show of another Documentary Film Fund recipient about refugees and asylum seekers, this time set much more close to home, as it follows four newcomers to San Francisco. <a href="https://sffilm.org/event/unsettled-seeking-refuge-in-america/"><i><b>Unsettled: Seeking Refuge in America</b></i></a> screens 8:00PM at the Grand Lake Theatre in Oakland.<br />
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Non-SFFILM option: At 7:30PM tonight at Artists' Television Access, moving image artist Roger Beebe will be on hand to present a <a href="http://www.sfcinematheque.org/screenings/one-big-box-begets-another-films-by-roger-beebe/">program</a> of work made in the past five years, some of it brand new, including a performance piece for four simultaneously running 16mm projectors called <i style="font-weight: bold;">Lineage (for Norman McLaren)</i>. Who says SFFILM has the monopoly on world premieres this week? Beebe is in town thanks to <a href="http://www.headlands.org/">Headlands Center for the Arts</a> in Marin, where he is currently participating in a residency. The screening is a co-presentation between that organization and SF Cinematheque, as is a screening of work by fellow Headlands resident <a href="http://www.headlands.org/event/screening-peter-burr/">Peter Burr</a> next Thursday at the same venue. The rest of the SF Cinematheques' <a href="http://www.sfcinematheque.org/calendar/">Spring calendar</a> includes two <a href="http://www.sfcinematheque.org/screenings/cinematheque-co-presentations-at-san-francisco-silent-film-festival/">co=presentations</a> with the <a href="http://www.silentfilm.org/homepage/gallery/festival-2019">San Francisco Silent Film Festival</a> (namely, a DCP of Alexander Dovzhenko's rural masterpiece <i style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="https://prod3.agileticketing.net/websales/pages/info.aspx?evtinfo=436750~d9133282-4896-49aa-be18-b053ee8cefc3&epguid=7ecd8d33-d7d0-46b0-a62a-af16bcbe6fc6&">Earth</a></i> and a 35mm print the earliest so-called "feature length" film ever shown by SFSFF, Francesco Bertolini, Adolfo Padovan & Giuseppe de Liguoro's 1911 version of Dante's <a href="https://prod3.agileticketing.net/websales/pages/info.aspx?evtinfo=436764~d9133282-4896-49aa-be18-b053ee8cefc3&epguid=7ecd8d33-d7d0-46b0-a62a-af16bcbe6fc6&" style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">L'Inferno</a>. Both films will be accompanied by music by the Matti Bye Ensemble, members of whom were themselves Headlands Center for the Arts residents several years ago. And if that's too much interconnection for you to handle, try this one: the final currently listed upcoming SF Cinematheque <a href="http://www.sfcinematheque.org/screenings/triple-consciousness-films-by-akosua-adoma-owusu/">show</a> is another co-presentation, this time with Oakland's The Black Aesthetic, of work by Akosua Adoma Owusu, including last year's SFFILM selection<i style="font-weight: bold;"> Mahogany Too</i>. No indication if her 2019 SFFILM selection <b><i>Pelourinho, They Don’t Really Care About Us </i></b>will be included in the program as well.Brian Darrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17693169310367670898noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2531345904528580427.post-9352138790062867892019-04-17T14:36:00.000-07:002019-04-17T14:36:21.354-07:00SFFILM 62 Day 8: Aniara<i>The <a href="https://sffilm.org/calendar/">62st San Francisco International Film Festival</a> began a week ago and runs through April 23rd. Each day during the festival I'll be posting about a festival selection I've seen or am anticipating.</i><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGEt8P56GS-r1i48UNKs1wBx2a5TUuRTgyyFaMp7AiqKdTojKG4vxu0OX2nScPhoskK98fi0yoRKoSqsA0pC3Sk0_687NfS5ejG9d4zH4URf1H1Yog5VAJHjxQzWvFX1mk-TeEUM0k9Rkb/s1600/aniara.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGEt8P56GS-r1i48UNKs1wBx2a5TUuRTgyyFaMp7AiqKdTojKG4vxu0OX2nScPhoskK98fi0yoRKoSqsA0pC3Sk0_687NfS5ejG9d4zH4URf1H1Yog5VAJHjxQzWvFX1mk-TeEUM0k9Rkb/s320/aniara.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A scene from Pella Kågerman & Hugo Lilja's film <b><i>Aniara</i></b>, playing at the 2019 San Francisco International Film Festival, April 10-23, 2019. Courtesy of SFFILM.</td></tr>
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<b><i><a href="https://sffilm.org/event/aniara/">Aniara</a></i></b> (SWEDEN/DENMARK: Pella Kågerman & Hugo Lilja, 2018)<br />
playing: 8:45PM tonight at the Roxie.<br />
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I can't say that much about <i style="font-weight: bold;">Aniara</i> because it's on the list of "Hold Review" titles at this year's SFFILM Festival, in light of its commercial release by <a href="https://www.aniarafilm.com/">Magnolia Pictures</a> to theatres and streaming platforms precisely one month from today. (Though I'm not sure which Frisco Bay venues it might show up in; it's nowhere to be found on the <a href="https://www.landmarktheatres.com/san-francisco#upcoming">coming soon page</a> of the local Landmark Theatres, the traditional stomping grounds of most Magnolia theatrical releases) Anyway, here's the brief capsule review that I'm allowed for a "Hold Review" title:<br />
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The first feature-film version of a 62-year-old poetic saga by a Swedish Nobel <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Martinson#cite_note-12">laureate</a>, Aniara depicts a spacecraft full of émigrés headed to Mars until a collision spins it into the galactic void. Eschewing a falsely "timeless" aesthetic, the action occurs in a relatable near-future culturally similar to today's Europe (questionable music taste included). Hard sci-fi concepts like beanstalks and artificial gravity are prioritized over <a href="http://cinema-scope.com/cinema-scope-online/aniara-pella-kagerman-hugo-lilja-sweden-discovery/">character development</a> but the cinematic trajectory’s haunted me for days.<br />
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<a href="https://sffilm.org/calendar/?tribe_paged=1&tribe_event_display=list&tribe_sffilm_date_start=Wed%2C+Apr+17&tribe_sffilm_date_end=Wed%2C+Apr+17">SFFILM62 Day 8</a><br />
Other festival options: Your last festival chances to see a couple of features I've been hearing good things about are today. In this case the culprits are <i style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="https://sffilm.org/event/the-death-of-dick-long/">The Death of Dick Long</a></i>, playing at 3:00 at the Children's Creativity Museum Theatre, and <i style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="https://sffilm.org/event/a-faithful-man/">A Faithful Man</a></i>, showing at 6:00PM at YBCA. The latter showing is, at this writing, at RUSH status, meaning you'll need to wait in line for a ticket. No such line necessary however for Hong Kong action movie <i style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="https://sffilm.org/event/project-gutenberg/">Project Gutenberg</a></i>, having its single festival showing 7:30PM tonight at the Castro.<br />
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Non-SFFILM option: BAMPFA isn't 100% given over to SFFILM showings this week; today it also hosts the penultimate installment of its lecture/screening series devoted Japan's most decorated active auteur, Hirokazu Kore-eda. Kore-eda's latest feature <i style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="https://bampfa.org/event/shoplifters">Shoplifters</a></i> won last year's top prize at the Cannes Film Festival, and screens today after a sure-to-be substantial introductory lecture by Marilyn Fabe, starting at 3:00PM. A 35mm print of his first narrative feature <i style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="https://bampfa.org/event/in-focus-maborosi">Maborosi</a> </i>screens next Wednesday, April 24th at the same time, and both movies will be part of a package of lower-priced, lecture-less Kore-eda <a href="https://bampfa.org/program/hirokazu-kore-eda-reprise-screenings">reprise screenings</a> happening next month (<i style="font-weight: bold;">Maborosi</i> during the <a href="https://prod3.agileticketing.net/websales/pages/list.aspx?epguid=7ecd8d33-d7d0-46b0-a62a-af16bcbe6fc6&mdy=5%2F2%2F2019&">Silent Film Festival</a>, so you might not want to put off a viewing of that one if you can possibly make it to an afternoon matinee.)Brian Darrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17693169310367670898noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2531345904528580427.post-81437650202457533992019-04-16T05:30:00.000-07:002019-04-16T18:45:52.681-07:00SFFILM 62 Day 7: Confidence Game<i>The <a href="https://sffilm.org/calendar/">62st San Francisco International Film Festival</a> began a week ago and runs through April 23rd. Each day during the festival I'll be posting about a festival selection I've seen or am anticipating.</i><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A scene from Kathleen Quillian's<span style="font-size: 12.8px;"> </span><i style="font-size: 12.8px;"><b>Confidence Game</b></i><span style="font-size: 12.8px;">, playing at the 2019 San Francisco International Film Festival, April 10-23, 2019. Courtesy of SFFILM</span></td></tr>
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<b><i><a href="https://sffilm.org/event/shorts-4-animation/">Confidence Game</a></i></b> (USA: Kathleen Quillian, 2018)<br />
playing: 8:30PM today at the Roxie as part of the <a href="https://sffilm.org/event/shorts-4-animation/">Shorts 4: Animation</a> program<br />
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Some of my favorite things seen so far at SFFILM this year have been shorts. Madeline Anderson's <i style="font-weight: bold;">I Am Somebody</i>, for instance, screened as part of her Persistence of Vision Award presentation Saturday, was a rousing, formally inventive half-hour documentary about a 1969 hospital workers' strike in Charleston, South Carolina, that included footage of Coretta Scott King orating in support of the strikers just a year after her husband's assassination. On a completely different tack, the latest nine-minute mindfuck from Guy Maddin and his recent co-directors Galen and Evan Johnson is called <i style="font-weight: bold;">Accidence</i>, and it's probably my favorite new Maddin work in dozen years, starting as a <a href="http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/2014/03/26/the-grand-budapest-hotel-wes-anderson-takes-the-43-challenge/">planimetric</a> riff on <i style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="https://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2013/05/rear-window-1954.html">Rear Window</a></i> and turning quickly into something much more diabolical. It was the warm-up for each screening of <i style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="https://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2019/04/sffilm-62-day-4-grand-bizarre.html">The Grand Bizarre</a></i> over the past few days.<br />
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But tonight I'll finally begin to start watching some of the Golden Gate Awards-eligible shorts at the festival. The <a href="https://sffilm.org/event/shorts-4-animation/">Shorts 4: Animation</a> program includes ten separate pieces representing seven North American and (mostly Eastern) European countries. Six are by women animators, including the only one by a filmmaker whose work I'm already familiar with: Kathleen Quillian. Her piece <i style="font-weight: bold;">Confidence Game</i> made its local debut on a program that I was able to attend a year ago at Craig Baldwin's notorious Other Cinema (where, incidentally, she'll be premiering another new work this coming Saturday) and I liked it enough to place it on my list of top 20 shorts as part of <a href="http://sensesofcinema.com/2019/world-poll/world-poll-2018-part-2/">Senses of Cinema</a>'s latest World Poll. I've written a bit about Quillian's work before, for instance on the occasion of her 2011 piece <a href="https://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2014/09/fin-de-siecle-2011.html"><b><i>Fin de Siècle</i></b></a> screening at a 30th Anniversary marathon presentation at Artists' Television Access. But <i><b>Confidence Game</b></i> feels like another leap forward for her. Her tendency to center objects in the frame, when repeated against various collage backdrops, gives the piece a hypnotic effect that I'm certain is completely intentional, given the thematic interest in cults of personality that the work is clearly expressing. She ends <i style="font-weight: bold;">Confidence Game</i> with an almost psychedelic finale that includes stroboscopic flashing backgrounds, so be forewarned if that sort of thing gives your senses too much of a workout.<br />
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I haven't made a terribly close comparison, but it seems like there are more shorts programs in this year's SFFILM than I've ever seen in 20 years of attending. In addition to Shorts 4: Animation there the usual Golden Gate Award contender programs devoted to shorts <a href="https://sffilm.org/event/shorts-7-youth-works/">by</a> and <a href="https://sffilm.org/event/shorts-6-family-films/">for</a> youngsters. The usual <a href="https://sffilm.org/event/shorts-1/">two</a> <a href="https://sffilm.org/event/shorts-2/">programs</a> of GGA-nominated documentary and narrative shorts have been expanded to <a href="https://sffilm.org/event/shorts-3/">three</a>, and the <a href="https://sffilm.org/event/shorts-5-new-visions/">New Visions</a> program of experimental and form-expanding works appears to be quite strong this year, with new work by Akosua Adoma Owusu, Zachary Epcar, Laura Huertas Millán, Sandra Davis, etc. The New Visions section of the Golden Gate Awards was on the chopping block twenty-five years ago, and saved only due to an outcry from the local experimental film community. You can read a bit about that in this excellent <a href="https://history.sffs.org/media_assets/pdf/Rachel%20Rosen%20Oral%20History%20Interview.pdf">interview</a> between Russell Merritt and SFFILM artistic director Rachel Rosen.<br />
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One program that's gone missing this year, after nearly as long, is the annual co-presentation between SF Cinematheque and the Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA). This was another set of experimental short films, differing from the New Visions program in various ways over the years. Perhaps because it was an out-of-competition program it tended to involve more 16mm and sometimes even 35mm prints, more work by established artists (though not exclusively so), and more flexibility in terms of the recency of completion; sometimes a program would include a new restoration of a short film made decades prior among a program of new works, and sometimes even the new works weren't always so new, having traveled on the generally slower experimental film festival circuit for a few years before making their way to their first San Francisco and Berkeley screenings. One might argue the need for two programs of experimental work at the festival has been made unnecessary by the sprouting of new festivals devoted entirely or almost entirely to such work: <a href="http://www.sfcinematheque.org/festival/crossroads-2019/">Crossroads</a>, <a href="http://www.cameraobscurafilmsociety.com/">Camera Obscura</a> and <a href="http://www.lightfieldfilm.org/">Light Field</a> come quickly to mind. But I'm not as certain of the stability of all these younger organizations when compared to the venerable San Francisco International Film Festival, and more importantly I think there's a lot of value in SFFILM's long-standing "big tent" approach to bringing together different, sometimes fractuous communities together to see each other's work and have discussions about it. The loss of one program, even one that's run for 24 years straight, doesn't destroy that but it puts a damper on it.<br />
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I'm curious to know the reason for the loss of this program. I wasn't satisfied by the answer I got when I asked about it at SFFILM's program announcement press conference in March. I was told the reason for the change is because the festival wanted all the shorts programs to feature works in competition. That doesn't seem to hold water though, because of the existence of the <a href="https://sffilm.org/event/shorts-8/">Shorts 8</a> program, bringing together two of three Netflix-owned shorts. Both are out-of competition even though the third Netflix short, <i style="font-weight: bold;">Life Overtakes Me</i>,appears in the <a href="https://sffilm.org/event/shorts-1/">Shorts 1</a> program and is Golden Gate Award eligible. There must be some other reason.<br />
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Anyway, the festival has more than made up for absence of the SF Cinematheque/BAMPFA program in quantity at any rate, by highlighting shorts in their <a href="https://sffilm.org/event/madeline-anderson-pov-award-short-films/">Persistence of Vision Award</a> presentation, to the shorts presented in last night's <a href="https://sffilm.org/event/an-evening-with-kahlil-joseph/">Evening With Kahlil Joseph</a> and in the Friday night live music presentation that I talk a bit about in the last paragraph of this post. Read on...<br />
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<a href="https://sffilm.org/calendar/?tribe_paged=1&tribe_event_display=list&tribe_sffilm_date_start=Tue%2C+Apr+16&tribe_sffilm_date_end=Tue%2C+Apr+16">SFFILM62 Day 7</a><br />
Other festival options: Today's the final screening of the Vanguard section of SFFILM, <b><i><a href="https://sffilm.org/event/lapu/">Lapü</a></i></b>, about the Wayuú people, who also feature in the recent crime saga <i style="font-weight: bold;">Birds of Passage</i>. It screens 4:00PM at YBCA, followed by the final festival showings of the Uruguayan feature <i style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="https://sffilm.org/event/belmonte/">Belmonte</a> </i>at 6:15PM, and finally Mariam Ghani's documentary on the re-opening of Afghanistan's national film archive, <i style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="https://sffilm.org/event/what-we-left-unfinished/">What We Left Unfinished</a> </i>at 8:30PM. I've heard good buzz on all three so it might be a good place to camp out for the afternoon and evening.<br />
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Non-SFFILM option: A terrific set of 16mm shorts comes to the Coppola Theatre at <a href="https://lca.sfsu.edu/events/2019-04-17-013000-2019-04-17-033000/818887">San Francisco State University</a> at 6:30 tonight. There's animation (Sally Cruikshank's <i style="font-weight: bold;">Quasi at the Quckadero</i>), documentary (the Miles Brothers' <b><i>Mt. Tamalpais and Muir Woods Railway</i></b>), found footage classics (Arthur Lipsett's <i style="font-weight: bold;">Very Nice, Very Nice</i> and Bruce Conner's <i style="font-weight: bold;">Valse Triste</i>) and live-action based experimental films (Bruce Baillie's <i style="font-weight: bold;">Mass for the Dakota Sioux</i> and Maya Deren's <i style="font-weight: bold;">A Study in Choreography for Camera</i>, which is<i> not</i> among the Deren shorts screening digitally with a new, live soundtrack replacing <a href="http://www.japanimprov.com/indies2/tzadik/musicformaya.html">Teiji Ito</a>'s scores at the <a href="https://sffilm.org/event/warpaint-live-score-films-by-maya-deren/">Castro</a> Friday), showcasing some of the diversity of treasures in the J. Paul Leonard Library collection at SFSU. This collection was the source for one of my favorite film screenings so far this year; it holds one of two known prints of SFMOMA Art In Cinema curator Frank Stauffacher's own filmed mini-masterpiece <i style="font-weight: bold;">Sausalito</i>, which showed in late January at <a href="https://bampfa.org/event/films-frank-stauffacher">BAMPFA</a> with Stauffacher's widow Barbara Stauffacher Solomon on hand to discuss its filming and reception among other topics. Though <i style="font-weight: bold;">Sausalito</i> is not among tonight's showings, it will hardly be missed in such a strong line-up (I vouch for five of the six films and perhaps if there's a large enough turnout future screenings from the J. Paul Leonard Library collection might be organized. Best of all, this program is FREE to all!Brian Darrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17693169310367670898noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2531345904528580427.post-74718261062556392832019-04-14T08:49:00.000-07:002019-04-14T12:57:22.432-07:00SFFILM 62 Day 5: Winter's Night<i>The <a href="https://sffilm.org/calendar/">62st San Francisco International Film Festival</a> began Wednesday night and runs through April 23rd. Each day during the festival I'll be posting about a festival selection I've seen or am anticipating.</i><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A scene from Jang Woo-jin's <i><b>Winter's Night</b></i>, playing at the 2019 San Francisco International Film Festival, April 10-23, 2019. Courtesy of SFFILM.</td></tr>
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<b><i><a href="https://sffilm.org/event/winters-night/">Winter's Night</a></i></b> (SOUTH KOREA: Jang Woo-jin, 2018)<br />
playing: 5:30PM today at BAMPFA in Berkeley, and Monday, Apr 15 at 8:30PM at the Children's Creativity Museum Theatre.<br />
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Have you ever had one of those weird nights? The ones where you can't sleep and you end up doing things you never would under ordinary circumstances? If not, perhaps you've been caught up in someone else's weird night, which can end up making your own night pretty weird anyway.<br />
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The third film from 34-year-old director Jang Woo-jin (and the first I've had the chance to see) <i style="font-weight: bold;">Winter's Night</i> takes this premise and gives it a uniquely Korean spin. It turns out Hong Sangsoo doesn't have a monopoly on comedies about soju-infused middle-aged men unable to control their feelings for unavailable women. I was a little disappointed that SFFILM this year declined to program either of Hong's most recent efforts, <i style="font-weight: bold;">Grass</i> or <i style="font-weight: bold;">Hotel By the River</i>, making Frisco Bay four feature films behind the prolific auteur's output (unless I've somehow overlooked a showing of <i style="font-weight: bold;">The Day After </i>or <i style="font-weight: bold;">Nobody's Daughter Haewon</i> in a local venue.) But putting that disappointment aside, <i style="font-weight: bold;">Winter's Night</i> provides a fresh perspective on some of the same material Hong works with, and quite a bit of other material as well. In fact, there's enough different that I wouldn't even bring up Hong at all, if the comparison didn't feel invited by Jang's chosen setting, the tourist-centric Kangwon Province that provided the backdrop and the title for Hong's <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=FtqUAxsisk0C&dq=%22power+of+kangwon+province%22+%22adam+hartzell%22&q=kangwon#v=snippet&q=kangwon&f=false">second feature film</a>, and by the casting of Seo Young-hwa, a veteran of at least six Hong films including prior SFFILM selections <i style="font-weight: bold;">Hill of Freedom</i> and <i style="font-weight: bold;">Right Now, Wrong Then</i>.<br />
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Seo plays Eun-ju, wife to the aforementioned middle-aged man Heung-ju (played by Yang Heung-ju), spending time together on a vacation to the region important to their mutual history more than thirty years ago, when he was fulfilling military service and she was traveling from Seoul to visit him. After visiting a thousand-year-old mountain temple she realizes in a taxicab that she'd left her phone behind. They return to look for it but are still unsuccessful by the time the temple's closed for the night and, after Eun-ju's aborted attempt to sneak onto the grounds, the couple resigns to staying overnight at the handiest guesthouse. There seems to be an eerie aura at this place, and it's not just the LED lights flooding the nearby frozen waterfall. The couple keep getting separated, and running into other unexpected denizens of the dark, including a seeming set of younger doppelgangers, and one of Heung-ju's old flames, whom he drunkenly makes passes at after an excruciating karaoke session.<br />
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Ultimately <i style="font-weight: bold;">Winter's Light</i> is a very accomplished example of the established "slow cinema" movement that seems to be waning from local festival screens when compared to its relative dominance 10-15 years ago. Jang has an intriguing concept, a middle-aged couple being tested by unusual, if not quite extraordinary, circumstances, and he keeps it fun and fresh by highlighting the comedy of situations more akin to the ironic stance of a Tsai Ming-Liang than to a ponderous Tarkovsky. In one scene, Heung-ju frantically searches for his wife, inquiring with a local innkeeper, when suddenly she steps into the frame as if she's been watching him all along. "Don't lose her again, you clumsy man!" is the inkeeper's droll response. Jang often transitions between scenes by inserting frames of a series of traditional Korean paintings that, upon accumulation over the film started reminding me of the famous <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Bulls">ox-herding pictures</a> associated with a strand of Zen Buddhism. I'd be curious to view <i style="font-weight: bold;">Winter's Light</i> again with these ancient prompts for contemplation in mind.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://sffilm.org/calendar/?tribe_paged=1&tribe_event_display=list&tribe_sffilm_date_start=Sun%2C+Apr+14&tribe_sffilm_date_end=Sun%2C+Apr+14">SFFILM62 Day 5</a><br />
Other festival options: The festival has been really pushing the Castro's noontime showing of <b><i><a href="https://sffilm.org/event/photograph/">Photograph</a></i></b> with its star Nawazuddin Siddiqui in attendance; I guess word hasn't gotten out to the Bollywood-loving community as pervasively as happened when Shah Rukh Khan appeared there a couple years ago and I got to see firsthand the closest thing to Beatlemania I suspect I'm ever likely to experience. Either that or Siddiqui's not quite the draw that SRK is; I know him mostly from Ashim Ahluwalia's 2012 "<a href="https://www.dailypioneer.com/2014/sunday-edition/the-hindie-cinema.html">Hindie</a>" film <i style="font-weight: bold;">Miss Lovely</i>, but I guess he's probably made more fans in movies like <i style="font-weight: bold;">Gangs of Wasseypur</i> and <i style="font-weight: bold;">The Lunchbox</i>, the latter of which was, like <i style="font-weight: bold;">Photograph</i>, directed by Ritesh Batra. After that show, the Castro will make way for an award presentation to Laura Dern and a screening of <i style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="https://sffilm.org/event/laura-dern-tribute-trial-by-fire/">Trial By Fire</a></i>, with its director Edward Zwick also expected to attend. Finally, I've been hearing good buzz on the Argentinian feature <i style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="https://sffilm.org/event/rojo/">Rojo</a></i>, including from my friend Michael Hawley, whose festival <a href="http://film-415.blogspot.com/2019/04/sffilm-festival-2019.html">preview</a> is the best I've found, as usual, even though he's no longer even living in Frisco Bay! It screens at BAMPFA at 8PM, after <i style="font-weight: bold;">Winter's Night</i> wraps up.<br />
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Non-SFFILM option: Today's the final day of the all-35mm <a href="https://stanfordtheatre.org/calendars/Hitchcock%202019.html">Stanford Theatre</a>'s annual Alfred Hitchcock series -- sort of. While <i style="font-weight: bold;">Psycho </i>and <i style="font-weight: bold;">The Trouble With Harry </i>showing today for the final times (a late afternoon and an evening show each) marks the end of the schedule published in late February, the venue has recently announced its first-ever <a href="https://stanfordtheatre.org/calendars/Doris%20Day.html">Doris Day series</a>, to open next weekend with prints of two of her mid-1950s films <i style="font-weight: bold;">Young At Heart</i> and <i style="font-weight: bold;">The Man Who Knew Too Much</i>. The latter of course is a Hitchcock title as well, thus extending the Master of Suspense's grip on Palo Alto's jewel of a theatre for one more week. Though I wouldn't expect the 97-year-old Day to make the trip up from her Carmel home to attend any of these showings, I do hope to see at least one of the films she made with Frank Tashlin (ideally <i style="font-weight: bold;">Glass Bottom Boat</i>) in the program somewhere, and hopefully not the same weekend as the <a href="https://prod3.agileticketing.net/websales/pages/list.aspx?epguid=7ecd8d33-d7d0-46b0-a62a-af16bcbe6fc6&mdy=5/1/2019&">San Francisco Silent Film Festival</a>.Brian Darrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17693169310367670898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2531345904528580427.post-35633450096217823332019-04-13T00:07:00.000-07:002019-04-13T00:07:08.463-07:00SFFILM 62 Day 4: The Grand Bizarre<i>The <a href="https://sffilm.org/calendar/">62st San Francisco International Film Festival</a> began Wednesday night and runs through April 23rd. Each day during the festival I'll be posting about a festival selection I've seen or am anticipating.</i><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A scene from Jodie Mack's <i><b>The Grand Bizarre</b></i>, playing at the 2019 San Francisco International Film Festival, April 10-23, 2019. Courtesy of SFFILM.</td></tr>
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<b><i><a href="https://sffilm.org/event/the-grand-bizarre/">The Grand Bizarre</a></i></b> (USA: Jodie Mack, 2018)<br />
playing: 3:30PM today at BAMPFA in Berkeley, and Monday, Apr 15 at 8:45PM at YBCA.<br />
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Although I was able last November to see a digital projection of this film (SFFILM audiences will be treated to a 35mm print at each screening) and placed it on my <a href="http://sensesofcinema.com/2019/world-poll/world-poll-2018-part-2/#16http://sensesofcinema.com/2019/world-poll/world-poll-2018-part-2/#16">list</a> of my five favorite undistributed features of 2018, I don't feel up to the task of writing much of a review. Not when a critic as perceptive and eloquent as <a href="https://letterboxd.com/msicism/film/the-grand-bizarre-2018/">Michael Sicinski</a> has already written three terrific paragraphs about Mack's latest. Let me excerpt a few sentences:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Mack’s film is whimsical, features some sick beats (including a riff on the Skype theme), and is so personal that it ends with the artist’s own sneeze. But the fact that it may be the most purely pleasurable film of the year shouldn’t prevent us from appreciating its exigency. <b><i>The Grand Bizarre</i></b> is a film about embracing all the colors and patterns of the wide, wide world, and in that regard, it’s exactly the film we need right now.</blockquote>
I must confess I don't love <i style="font-weight: bold;">The Grand Bizarre</i> as much as Mack's previously-longest opus, <i style="font-weight: bold;">Dusty Stacks of Mom</i>, but that's surely in large part because I'm just inherently more fascinated by the world of rock poster distribution than that of colorful textiles. But even I can recognize that there's a bit more thematic "heft" to this project, not just because it's a bit longer, but also because it's more international in scope at a time when the need to reach out across borders seems greater than ever. For anyone with an open mind about the parameters of what an animated feature can be (<i style="font-weight: bold;">The Grand Bizarre </i>descends from the lineage of Norman McLaren's landmark <a href="https://www.nfb.ca/film/neighbours_voisins/"><b><i>Neighbors</i></b></a>, but ends up with a far more radical approach to narrative), it's one of the real must-sees of this year's festival.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://sffilm.org/calendar/?tribe_paged=1&tribe_event_display=list&tribe_sffilm_date_start=Sat%2C+Apr+13&tribe_sffilm_date_end=Sat%2C+Apr+13">SFFILM62 Day 4</a><br />
Other festival options: Expect more traditional animation techniques to be on display at the Castro Theatre's 10AM <a href="https://sffilm.org/event/shorts-6-family-films/">Shorts 6: Family Films</a> program; I attended last year's set for the first time with my young nephew, and we both had a great time seeing a mixture of the latest cartoons, documentaries and short narratives with definite kid-appeal. This year's group includes the Oscar-nominated <i style="font-weight: bold;">One Small Step</i>. Another animation program is aimed more for adults: <a href="https://sffilm.org/event/shorts-4-animation/">Shorts 4: Animation</a>, having its first showing 5PM today at the Roxie. But to make that you'll have to miss the Persistence of Vision Award presentation to African-American documentary pioneer <a href="https://sffilm.org/event/madeline-anderson-pov-award-short-films/">Madeline Anderson</a> at SFMOMA. No animation expected in this set, but expect a wonderful conversation with a veteran filmmaker finally getting her due.<br />
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Non-SFFILM option: In memory of the April, 18, 1906 earthquake and fire that reshaped San Francisco, the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum is devoting its weekly Saturday 16mm film screening showcase to films that shed light on this tragic event. First, a pair of documentaries shot by the Miles Brothers, <a href="http://www.silentfilm.org/archive-by-year/2006-festival/the-brothers-who-filmed-the-earthquake">one</a> shortly before and <a href="http://www.silentfilm.org/archive/san-francisco-1906">one</a>, recently re-discovered, shortly after the destruction. After an intermission, they'll show one of the best of the surviving early features starring Lon Chaney, Sr., <i style="font-weight: bold;">The Penalty</i>, which was filmed in 1920 throughout a rebuilt San Francisco (a wonderful website devoted to its filming locations is found <a href="http://reelsf.com/the-penalty-1920">here</a>).Brian Darrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17693169310367670898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2531345904528580427.post-31542156374532696662019-04-12T15:26:00.001-07:002019-04-12T15:26:08.937-07:00SFFILM 62 Day 3: The Sisters Brothers<i>The <a href="https://sffilm.org/calendar/">62st San Francisco International Film Festival</a> began Wednesday night and runs through April 23rd. Each day during the festival I'll be posting about a festival selection I've seen or am anticipating.</i><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">John C. Reilly and Joaquin Phoenix star in the Western <b><i>The Sisters Brothers</i></b>, playing at the 2019 San Francisco International Film Festival, April 10-23, 2019. Courtesy of SFFILM.</td></tr>
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<b><i><a href="https://sffilm.org/event/john-c-reilly-tribute-the-sisters-brothers/">The Sisters Brothers</a></i></b> (FRANCE/SPAIN/USA/ROMANIA/BELGIUM: Jacques Audiard, 2018)<br />
playing: 7:00 tonight only at the Castro<br />
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A year and a half ago, attending a <a href="https://sfopera.com/1718season/201718-season/goldenwest/">SF Opera</a> production inspired me to wonder on <a href="https://twitter.com/HellOnFriscoBay/status/935225355689869312">twitter</a> why there have been so many great movies made about the Klondike Gold Rush, from Chaplin's <a href="http://www.silentfilm.org/archive-by-year/2010-festival/salmons-talks">canonical classic</a> to my personal favorite, <i style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20080418081003/http://www.girishshambu.com/blog/2008/02/uncanny-overlaps.html">The Far Country</a></i>, to more recent entries like <i style="font-weight: bold;">Dawson City: Frozen Time</i>, but none (that I've seen) devoted to the famous California Gold Rush of 1848-1855 that played such an important role in the growth of Northern California cities and towns, including of course San Francisco. I noted that I hadn't seen Michael Winterbottom's <i style="font-weight: bold;">The Claim</i> (a former San Francisco International Film Festival closing film) but that I understand it's set later than the real height of the era, that Antonia Bird's Sierra horror movie <i style="font-weight: bold;">Ravenous</i> is set before the era, and that I'm not a particular fan of Clint Eastwood's <i style="font-weight: bold;">Pale Rider</i> (being filmed with Idaho standing in for the Sierra foothills being the least of the problems I had with it on a single viewing, though I'd be open to revisiting it, especially if a 35mm prints came around sometime.) Others suggested Robert Altman's <i style="font-weight: bold;">McCabe & Mrs. Miller</i>, which is great but set in Washington State, and Thomas Carr's <b><i>The Forty-Niners</i></b>, which I haven't seen for myself. I'll certainly allow that there may be a forty-niner movie as good as <i style="font-weight: bold;">The Gold Rush</i> or <i style="font-weight: bold;">The Far Country</i>, but that I simply have yet to run across it.<br />
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But assuming I haven't just failed to strike the right mother lode, I'd guess the main reason for a comparative lack of great gold fever movies set in the Golden State than in The Land of the Midnight Sun is because the later can be easily visualized by filmmakers because of the <a href="https://centuryfilmproject.org/2016/09/15/gold-rush-scenes-in-the-klondike-1899/">contemporaneous actualities</a> that were made during the period; the California Gold Rush of course predates the invention of the motion picture by several decades. But though 1840s & 50s California may have lacked movie cameras, there was certainly no lack of dramatic situations. So it's rather ironic that the first relevant movie I saw since composing that twitter thread was based on a book <a href="https://nationalpost.com/afterword/book-review-the-sisters-brothers-by-patrick-dewitt">praised</a> by some reviewers for <i>eschewing</i> deep historical research. I would call <i style="font-weight: bold;">The Sisters Brothers</i> a pretty good California Gold Rush movie, not a great one disproving my original position. Again, it's not really such a problem that it includes severe historical inaccuracies like including a scene at Folsom Lake, which didn't exist before Folsom Dam was erected in 1955 (just a hundred years or so too late). But its various plot threads don't ever really feel like they add up to that much.<br />
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That doesn't mean it's not a gorgeous film, or that it doesn't contain wonderful performances, including a terrific dramatic turn from John C. Reilly, an actor I first took note of in Paul Thomas Anderson's early drama <i style="font-weight: bold;">Hard Eight</i>, but who is much better known these days for his ability to carry comedies like <i style="font-weight: bold;">Walk Hard: the Dewey Cox Story</i> and <i style="font-weight: bold;">Cyrus</i>. In fact I saw <i style="font-weight: bold;">The Sisters Brothers</i> on one of the Castro Theatre's semi-perverse double-features, in this case with <i style="font-weight: bold;">Step Brothers</i>, also starring Reilly. And I'm not surprised to see that, of these two fraternal features, SFFILM was always more likely to pick the more (though not entirely) serious-minded one to accompany its award presentation to an underappreciated actor. I always applaud efforts to bring more Westerns to the big screen, and <i style="font-weight: bold;">The Sisters Brothers</i> is certainly at least as good as any new ones I've seen in the wake of <i style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="https://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-lone-ranger-2013.html">The Lone Ranger</a></i>. And how can an organization that calls its annual prizes the Golden Gate Awards pass up a chance to show a movie like this at this moment, which <a href="https://www.lrb.co.uk/v35/n03/rebecca-solnit/diary">Rebecca Solnit</a> identified as a modern-day San Francisco Gold Rush six years ago, and which hasn't felt any less like a boom town since?<br />
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<a href="https://sffilm.org/calendar/?tribe_paged=1&tribe_event_display=list&tribe_sffilm_date_start=Fri%2C+Apr+12&tribe_sffilm_date_end=Fri%2C+Apr+12">SFFILM62 Day 3</a><br />
Other festival options: For those of us dying to hear more Stuart Staples music after last night's screening of <i style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="https://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2019/04/sffilm-62-day-2-high-life.html">High Life</a></i>, today's biggest must-see may be the first of two festival showings of <a href="https://sffilm.org/event/minute-bodies-the-intimate-lives-of-f-percy-smith/"><b><i>Minute Bodies: The Intimate Lives of F. Percy Smith</i></b></a>, an investigation of the early-cinema non-fiction pioneer probably best known for his 1908 film <i style="font-weight: bold;">The Acrobatic Fl</i><i style="font-weight: bold;">y</i>. Not only is Staples (a.k.a. the lead <a href="http://cstrecords.com/tinderscores/">Tinderstick</a>) the musical guide for this "<a href="https://sffilm.org/2019-festival-vanguard/">Vanguard</a>" section selection, he's credited as its director. It shows at YBCA tonight, followed by the first festival showing of <b style="font-style: italic;"><a href="https://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2011/04/sfiff54-day-4-useful-life.html">A Useful Life</a> </b>director Federico Veiroj's latest <i><b><a href="https://sffilm.org/event/belmonte/">Belmonte</a></b></i>.<br />
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Non-SFFILM option: On the subject of great mining movies, one of my very favorite things seen at last year's SFFILM edition is making a return appearance tonight only: Robert Greene's brilliantly re-enactment-heavy (and I normally loathe re-enactments) documentary about labor history in an Arizona mining town, <i style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="http://proxysf.net/events/?item=8050">Bisbee '17</a></i>. This FREE outdoor showing launches the Spring series of Friday night screenings at <a href="http://proxysf.net/blog/?item=8057">ProxySF</a> in Hayes Valley; other SFFILM alumni in this set include <i style="font-weight: bold;">The Miseducation of Cameron Post </i> April 26th and <i style="font-weight: bold;">Matangi/Maya/M.I.A. </i>May 10.Brian Darrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17693169310367670898noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2531345904528580427.post-64389026786719964052019-04-11T14:55:00.001-07:002019-04-11T15:03:06.796-07:00SFFILM 62 Day 2: High Life<i>The <a href="https://sffilm.org/calendar/">62st San Francisco International Film Festival</a> began last night and runs through April 23rd. Each day during the festival I'll be posting about a festival selection I've seen or am anticipating.</i><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A still from Claire Denis's <i><b>High Life</b></i>, playing at the 2019 San Francisco International Film Festival, April 10-23, 2019. Courtesy of SFFILM.</td></tr>
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<b><i><a href="https://sffilm.org/event/claire-denis-tribute-high-life/">High Life</a></i></b> (FRANCE/GERMANY/UK/POLAND/USA: Claire Denis, 2018)<br />
playing: 8:00 tonight only at the Victoria<br />
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I was able to see an advance screening of <i style="font-weight: bold;">High Life</i>, which opens for at least a week-long engagement tonight at theatres around San Francisco, as well as screening at the San Francisco International Film Festival. But I don't think <a href="https://www.vulture.com/2019/04/claire-denis-high-life-interview.html">Claire Denis</a>, responsible for amazing films such as <i style="font-weight: bold;">Beau Travail</i>, <i style="font-weight: bold;">Friday Night</i> and <b><i>35 Shots of Rum</i></b>, is expected to be on hand for any of the showings at the Embarcadero, Kabuki, etc. The first tickets I bought to a festival event this year, long before my press credentials were confirmed, was to see one of my very favorite working directors appear at a SFFILM event along with a showing of her latest; at least two previous attempts to bring Denis to the festival or a festival-sponsored event (in 2011 and 2018) were fruitless but tonight should mark the long-awaited ripening of that strawberry.<br />
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Strawberries figure into <i style="font-weight: bold;">High Life</i>, which features several key scenes in a garden tended by the prisoners living aboard a spacecraft heading directly toward a black hole. Like Denis's <i style="font-weight: bold;">L'Intrus</i> (like the aforementioned trio, also a film that made its local premiere at the San Francisco International Film Festival) it's the kind of enigmatic, expectation-confounding movie that defies being reviewed after having been seen only once, although <a href="https://a24films.com/notes/2019/04/first-impressions-high-life">Durga Chew-Bose</a> has made an excellent first stab. (I'm assuming her article's title indicates she hadn't seen <i style="font-weight: bold;">High Life</i> more than once before writing it.) It's part of why I'm so glad to get another chance tonight. I suspect many Frisco Bay Denis fans for whom tonight's screening is their first will want to make time during the festival to attend another, non-festival, showing somewhere. I'm an advocate of balancing film festival attendance with other screenings, which is why my daily fest picks will always include a "Non-SFFILM option" paragraph at the bottom.<br />
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I've heard grumblings from Denis aficionados about the festival's choice of venue for tonight's event; the Victoria is not a year-round cinema space and it has in some past years proven less than satisfactory in its presentation quality, especially in the sound department. If last year's presentation of <i style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="https://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2018/04/sffilm-61-day-5-first-reformed.html">First Reformed</a></i> there is any indication, however, such fears should be relatively unfounded. Like Paul Schrader's feature (one of my <a href="http://sensesofcinema.com/2019/world-poll/world-poll-2018-part-2/#16">favorites</a> of last year) also distributed by A24, <i style="font-weight: bold;">High Life</i> revels in the digital video aesthetic, never attempting to mimic celluloid filmic textures. Denis and her director of photography Yorick Le Saux create a cool, synthetic aesthetic to establish <i style="font-weight: bold;">High Life</i>'s setting. It's also entirely in English (many people calling it her first English-language feature are forgetting how much of <i style="font-weight: bold;">Trouble Every Day </i>is uttered in English, but even that film had a few subtitled moments) thus making the sight-line issues from certain spots in the theatre less problematic. And unless the 2019 sound set-up isn't as good as what the Victoria had installed for <i style="font-weight: bold;">First Reformed</i> and other 2018 festival screenings, I expect we'll be able to hear Juliette Binoche's, André Benjamin's and Robert Pattinson's dialogue as well as we did Amanda Seyfried's, Cedric the Entertainer's and Ethan Hawke's last year. The same should go for Stuart Staples/Tindersticks' music compared to Brian Williams/Lustmord's.<br />
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Between the guest and the movie, you can see why I had to feature <i style="font-weight: bold;">High Life </i>as my daily pick of the festival. The only drawback is that the show has long since gone to RUSH status, meaning that advance tickets for the public have all sold and anyone who wants to get a ticket tonight will have to wait in a line in hopes of a lucky break. My experience with SFFILM RUSH lines is that it's rare that you need <i>that</i> much luck however; an hour or so of waiting ought to do it. But given the rarity of a Denis in-person appearance in Frisco Bay, I'm not sure the standard advice will hold this time. Luckily, my daily always include other promising festival options. Read on...<br />
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<a href="https://sffilm.org/calendar/?tribe_paged=1&tribe_event_display=list&tribe_sffilm_date_start=Thu%2C+Apr+11&tribe_sffilm_date_end=Thu%2C+Apr+11">SFFILM62 Day 2</a><br />
Other festival options: This year's SFFILM edition includes four films screening in 35mm prints, and two of them are tonight. One, Tamara Jenkins' under-discussed <i style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="https://sffilm.org/event/laura-linney-tribute-the-savages/">The Savages</a></i> is showing as part of a Laura Linney tribute, and like <i style="font-weight: bold;">High Life</i> is currently at RUSH status. The other, Jodie Mack's inventive animated experimental documentary <i style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="https://sffilm.org/event/the-grand-bizarre/">The Grand Bizarre</a> </i>is the only brand-new 35mm film screening at the festival; it shows 6PM tonight at YBCA and has two more future festival screenings.<br />
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Speaking of RUSH status, tonight's <a href="https://bampfa.org/event/first-night-nerves">BAMPFA</a> screening of <i style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="https://sffilm.org/event/first-night-nerves/">First Night Nerves</a></i> is the only one of three festival showing of this particular movie NOT currently at RUSH status. Director Stanley Kwan (perhaps best known for his Ruan Ling-yu biopic <i><b>Centre Stage</b></i>) is expected to be in attendance.<br />
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Non-SFFILM option: If you missed local artist and educator Jeremy Rourke's 2017 hybrid animation/documentary/performance work <i style="font-weight: bold;">I'll Be Around</i> when he staged it a year and a half ago, you simply have to go to <a href="http://www.atasite.org/?p=12970">Artists' Television Access</a> tonight at 8PM to see him re-stage it. It's a site-specific piece so it's better to see it at ATA than anywhere else it might be performed. Here's a short review from <a href="https://blinkingeyeblog.com/2017/12/16/ill-be-around/">Kristin Cato</a>.Brian Darrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17693169310367670898noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2531345904528580427.post-7905793288913191982019-02-21T16:13:00.000-08:002019-02-21T16:13:24.212-08:00I Only Have Two Eyes 2018*<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5Kfjtm3ARqvL_XuEMXQ6RXxwjAmay4ctm85F7h3Q5YpVB6EGeNPGHFyGOmtHmh5U5xJZo6xFa_SRCDJUeH_II4NrT8VzVxMOv9bvwnQACemd3NPr2H6biM0c7dpcD5q5X3ACEuPFWuTKb/s1600/holygirl2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="759" data-original-width="1433" height="336" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5Kfjtm3ARqvL_XuEMXQ6RXxwjAmay4ctm85F7h3Q5YpVB6EGeNPGHFyGOmtHmh5U5xJZo6xFa_SRCDJUeH_II4NrT8VzVxMOv9bvwnQACemd3NPr2H6biM0c7dpcD5q5X3ACEuPFWuTKb/s640/holygirl2.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Screen capture from HBO DVD of <b><i>The Holy Girl</i></b></td></tr>
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The past two or so years have been full of life changes for the proprietor of this blog. After well over a decade scraping together a living by working in part-time positions, I secured a full-time position working in an academic library in late 2016. In mid-2017 I moved in with my incredible girlfriend (filmmaker, photographer and installation artist <a href="http://www.kerrylaitala.com/">Kerry Laitala</a>) and our two tuxedo cats, Sherlock and Watson. Kerry I got married in her Maine hometown in July, 2018. The elation from these wonderful highlights have been somewhat tempered, of course, by far darker events, including the deaths of friends and family members, and the day-to-day dispiriting melancholy of living in a rapidly-transforming city that nonetheless still feels like some kind of oasis in the hellscape that our nation has become under our federal political regime.<br />
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Which is all to say, though I still try to take advantage of the unique screening opportunities offered in the Bay Area (here's a <a href="http://sensesofcinema.com/2019/world-poll/world-poll-2018-part-2/#16">rundown</a> of my favorite newer moving image works of last year), making time to blog at Hell On Frisco Bay has become a comparatively low priority; I didn't even run my annual survey of the best repertory presentations this time last year, interrupting <a href="https://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2017/02/i-only-have-two-eyes-10.html">a</a> <a href="http://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2016/02/i-only-have-two-eyes-2015.html">ten</a> <a href="http://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2015/01/i-only-have-two-eyes-2014-edition.html">year</a> <a href="http://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2014/01/i-only-have-two-eyes-2013.html">streak</a> <a href="http://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2013/01/i-only-have-two-eyes-2012.html">of</a> <a href="http://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2012/01/i-only-have-two-eyes-2011.html">collecting</a> <a href="http://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2011/01/i-only-have-two-eyes-2010.html">and</a> <a href="http://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2010/01/i-only-have-two-eyes-2009.html">posting</a> <a href="http://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2009/01/i-only-have-two-eyes-2008.html">cinephile</a> <a href="http://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2008/01/2007-i-only-have-two-eyes.html">reactions</a> to a year of viewing films from the past in the cinematic spaces of the present.<br />
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But I'm back with another great set of lists from perceptive viewers of time-tested classics and unearthed gems during the year 2018. And I've even invited folks to name favorites from 2017 as well, to make up for my uncompiled year. That's why I'm calling this year's iteration "I Only Have Two Eyes 2018*"- the asterisk indicating that a few of the following links (marked with an *) will lead to lists (or in one case, a single title) of films seen in 2017 as well as 2018. This will be the "hub page" for this year's project, and the list of participants below will grow every day until I publish my own list.<br />
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<a href="https://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2019/02/monica-nolans-2018-eyes.html">02/06/19</a>: Monica Nolan, <a href="http://www.monicanolan.com/author.html">author</a> and contributor to festival program guides<br />
<a href="https://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2019/02/john-slatterys-2018-eyes.html">02/07/19</a>*: John <span style="background-color: white; color: #26282a;">Slattery, a <a href="http://www.zweenworks.com/">filmmaker</a> based in Berkeley</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #26282a;"><a href="https://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2019/02/lucy-lairds-2018-eyes.html">02/07/19</a>: Lucy Laird, a <a href="https://lucylaird.com/">writer, editor</a>, and co-producer of <a href="https://sf.nerdnite.com/">Nerd Nite San Francisco</a></span><br />
<a href="https://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2019/02/david-robsons-2018-eyes.html">02/08/19</a>: David Robson, proprietor of the <a href="http://houseofsparrows.blogspot.com/">House of Sparrows</a> blog<br />
<a href="https://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2019/02/jesse-hawthorne-fickss-2018-eyes.html">02/08/19</a>: Jesse Hawthorne Ficks, educator, writer and host of <a href="https://www.midnitesformaniacs.com/events/past/">MiDNiTES FOR MANiACS</a><br />
<a href="https://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2019/02/joel-shepards-2018-eyes.html">02/09/19</a>: Joel Shepard, independent film programmer; his <a href="http://joelshepard.tumblr.com/">blog archive</a> is well-worth perusal<br />
<a href="https://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2019/02/claire-bains-2018-eyes.html">02/09/19</a>: Claire Bain, San Francisco-based <a href="http://personbain-index.blogspot.com/">artist</a><br />
<a href="https://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2019/02/terri-sauls-2018-eyes.html">02/10/19</a>: Terri Saul, Berkeley-based artist and writer<br />
<a href="https://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2019/02/carl-martins-2018-eyes.html">02/10/19</a>: Carl Martin, who maintains the invaluable <a href="http://www.filmonfilm.org/filmcalendar/">Bay Area Film Calendar</a><br />
<a href="https://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2019/02/michael-foxs-2018-eyes.html">02/11/19</a>: Michael Fox, who writes for <a href="https://www.kqed.org/author/mfox">KQED Arts</a> & hosts screenings at the <a href="https://www.milibrary.org/events/cinemalit-film-series">Mechanics' Institute</a><br />
<a href="https://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2019/02/ian-rices-2018-eyes.html">02/11/19</a>*: Ian Rice, part of the ATA@SFPL curatorial committee behind screenings like <a href="https://sfpl.org/index.php?pg=1036390301">this</a><br />
<a href="https://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2019/02/frako-lodens-2018-eyes.html">02/12/19</a>: Frako Loden, educator and writer for <a href="https://www.documentary.org/users/frako-loden">www.documentary.org</a> and elsewhere<br />
<a href="https://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2019/02/ben-armingtons-2018-eyes.html">02/12/19</a>: Ben Armington, ticket-selling maestro for <a href="http://boxcubed.org/">Box Cubed</a><br />
<a href="https://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2019/02/lincoln-spectors-2018-eyes.html">02/13/19</a>: Lincoln Spector, who founded and continues to maintain the venerable <a href="https://bayflicks.net/">Bayflicks</a> site<br />
<a href="https://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2019/02/jonathan-marlows-2018-eyes.html">02/14/19</a>*: Jonathan Marlow [<a href="https://www.cabinetic.com/">PARACME</a> | <a href="https://www.cafilm.org/contact/">CALIFORNIA FILM INSTITUTE</a> | <a href="http://arbelosfilms.com/distribution/">ARBELOS</a>]<br />
<a href="https://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2019/02/michael-hawleys-2018-eyes.html">02/14/19</a>: Michael Hawley, cinephile and blogger at <a href="http://film-415.blogspot.com/">film-415</a><br />
<a href="https://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2019/02/my-2018-eyes.html">02/21/19</a>: Brian Darr- that's me!Brian Darrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17693169310367670898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2531345904528580427.post-4451924452448675882019-02-21T16:00:00.002-08:002019-02-21T17:03:23.103-08:00My 2018 Eyes*<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
I'm oh-so pleased that I was able to convince sixteen other cinephiles to allow me to publish their <a href="https://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2019/01/i-only-have-two-eyes-2018.html">lists</a> of favorite repertory/revival screenings seen in San Francisco Bay Area cinemas and other exhibition spaces. Though I don't use this blog space for much anymore (if you want my latest quick thoughts on the Frisco Bay cinema scene and a few other topics I encourage you to check my <a href="https://twitter.com/HellOnFriscoBay">twitter feed</a>), I'm proud that I can still occasionally use it for something I think is still valuable: a collective "thank you" to the people who make Frisco Bay a still-vital site for audience re-appreciation of the world's cinematic heritage. </div>
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My own cinema-going year in 2018 was just about as exciting as ever, despite it being the first full year that I removed an active 35mm revival venue from my moviegoing itinerary; please read the first two paragraphs of <a href="https://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2018/04/the-61st-san-francisco-international.html">this post</a> to learn why I no longer attend the New Mission/Alamo Drafthouse. I do give an early-2017 screening there a nod in my make-up list of 2017 repertory cinema highlights at the very bottom of the piece you're currently looking at.</div>
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As usual, I focused the following selections on films brand-new to me, mostly because I'm usually so much more energized by falling in love with a new-to-me movie for the first time than by even the most fruitful re-visitation of an old friend. Although 2018 brought some very fruitful re-visitations, such as seeing 70mm prints of <a href="https://openspace.sfmoma.org/2018/05/2001-a-space-odyssey-the-70mm-all-photochemical-restoration/"><i><b>2001: A Space Odyssey</b></i></a> and <a href="https://www.ticketweb.com/event/west-side-story-in-70mm-castro-theatre-tickets/8984055"><i><b>West Side Story</b></i></a> (the latter for the first time in that format), and 35mm prints of <a href="https://dothebay.com/events/2018/7/11/filmworker-eyes-wide-shut"><i><b>Eyes Wide Shut</b></i></a> and <i><b><a href="https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/3210656">Shadow of a Doubt</a> </b></i>(again, the latter for the first time in that format), all at the Castro, or revisiting <b><i><a href="https://bampfa.org/event/satantango-3">Sátántangó</a> </i></b>in 35mm at BAMPFA and viewing an IB Technicolour print of <a href="https://bampfa.org/event/all-heaven-allows-9"><i><b>All That Heaven Allows</b></i></a> at the same venue. I even saw, under not-to-be-disclosed circumstances, a collector-held original-release IB Tech print of the <a href="http://www.thecinephiliacs.net/2015/05/episode-59-brian-darr-end.html">first film</a> I ever fell in love with as a young child, which was quite the nostalgia trip. But in most every way I appreciated all the following screenings even more:</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4D3fhvVyC3LZ8cEtjBVbbwo3QDw1WS153sIeY9wmm5uLx8CnaS508EWDLmD7i-jLOEMoTM854Jf82i2VfRdEFlrcLYL5-TbQs5g-NqGXN_-UId12pelCQdiLbWspZYQ2aHQ_J3d1d_8Zj/s1600/alexandernevsky.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="664" data-original-width="866" height="489" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4D3fhvVyC3LZ8cEtjBVbbwo3QDw1WS153sIeY9wmm5uLx8CnaS508EWDLmD7i-jLOEMoTM854Jf82i2VfRdEFlrcLYL5-TbQs5g-NqGXN_-UId12pelCQdiLbWspZYQ2aHQ_J3d1d_8Zj/s640/alexandernevsky.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i style="font-weight: bold;">Alexander Nevsky </i>screen capture from Janus DVD</td></tr>
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<b><i>Alexander Nevsky</i></b>, February 16, 2018</div>
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Though this list is made up about equally of films I'd barely if ever heard of before they appeared on a local repertory calendar and films I've been wanting to see for many years, this early-year <a href="https://bampfa.org/event/alexander-nevsky-5">BAMPFA</a> presentation not only fit squarely in the latter category, it was perhaps the most prominent and long-standing example of it. My desire to see <i><b>Alexander Nevsky</b></i> preceded my cinephilia, going back to my youthful days as a Sergei Prokofiev-loving prospective music major. My mother sang in the San Francisco Symphony Chorus when they accompanied it at Davies Symphony Hall in the 1990s, while I was attending college in the Midwest. Having missed that chance, I kept hoping for a reprise to be my first experience with Sergei Eisenstein's sync-sound debut, but upon seeing the Symphony's cinematic programming moving away from foreign-language masterpieces featuring music composed by concert-hall regulars, in favor of Hollywood hits, I decided to give up on such dreams and take the first 35mm opportunity I could get, which ended up being this extremely stirring screening. I'm actually glad I first saw this extraordinary 1938 work of form & emotion in a setting in which the music did not threaten to overwhelm image any more than it occasionally does, but then the push-pull of the two Sergeis in its creation is one of the most dynamic aspects of a film that shouldn't be categorized only as anti-Nazi propaganda, though it is of course that too.</div>
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<b><i>Merrily We Go To Hell</i></b>, March 14, 2018</div>
No single 2018 series at the always-35mm Stanford Theatre in Palo Alto matched 2017's <a href="https://stanfordtheatre.org/calendars/Warners%202017.html">spotlight</a> on five decades of Warner Brothers films in its breadth of satisfying films from various eras & genres, but the follow-up focus on <a href="https://stanfordtheatre.org/calendars/Paramount%201930-1935.html">1930-1935 Paramount</a> was at least as welcome, for its willingness to unearth more rarities (and to also include cartoons, in this case mostly featuring Betty Boop instead of Bugs Bunny). I caught five of the series double-bills including a knockout pairing of Mitchell Leisen's barely-known debut <i><b>Cradle Song</b></i> with Josef von Sternberg's severely underrated <b><i>An American Tragedy</i></b>. But the single-best new discovery for me of the set was director Dorothy Arzner's 1932 <i><b>Merrily We Go To Hell</b></i> starring Frederic March essentially reprising his Jekyll & Hyde role but through the avatar of a Depression-era dipsomaniacal journalist, and with Sylvia Sidney excelling in the audience-stand-in role of a young woman who falls in love with him. The film is proof that the appeal of Pre-Code Hollywood goes well beyond the "naughtiness" that often gets played up in promotions of the era's films, and that these early talkies were elegant vehicles for discussions of serious social problems in a serious (yet no less entertaining) way that tended to dissipate once the Hays Code became generally enforced in 1934.<br />
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<b><i>Road House</i></b>, May 18, 2018<br />
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Another surprisingly serious take on the deleterious effects of alcohol, this time focused less on the over-indulgers than on the capitalists battling each other to control profits from one town's drunks, smuggled into the skin of a corny 1989 action movie in which a beautifully be-mulletted Patrick Swayze plays a nationally-renowned bouncer. (I clearly do not travel in the correct circles to know if such a characterization has any basis in reality). Ben Gazzara plays the corrupt local kingpin and Sam Elliott has a role not so far-removed from the one he's currently up for a <i style="font-weight: bold;">A Star Is Born</i> Oscar for. On one level this Razzie-nominated movie hits you repeatedly over the head with all the most shopworn cliches of Rehnquist-era cable-television staples, but on another level it perfects and transcends all the cliches, becoming a ballet of bodies in motion that was staggering to behold on the <a href="https://www.roxie.com/ai1ec_event/crazy-for-swayze-to-wong-foo-road-house-35mm/">Roxie Theater</a> screen. I don't know anything about Rowdy Herrington, but for these 114 minutes he became my favorite director, and I can't ask much more from a movie.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4R8Cjcj_aR2dM8kjrI6SCufLhCVN4zkcH5PTneoH_5q-nIwxaIo8yKCRZNrO6POErG3nqtVeFcwhGOCvrHzgPiOngOMX1O-TUYkRsTkxw4-1a4ET-OoL7GFC0as9ERzpph7sSQfMo4KtX/s1600/Hearst14.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="575" data-original-width="1022" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4R8Cjcj_aR2dM8kjrI6SCufLhCVN4zkcH5PTneoH_5q-nIwxaIo8yKCRZNrO6POErG3nqtVeFcwhGOCvrHzgPiOngOMX1O-TUYkRsTkxw4-1a4ET-OoL7GFC0as9ERzpph7sSQfMo4KtX/s400/Hearst14.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i style="font-weight: bold;">Patty Hearst </i>screen capture from MGM DVD</td></tr>
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<b><i>Patty Hearst</i></b>, May 25, 2018<br />
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It appears May was a particularly strong month for 35mm prints of late-1980s American films with a touch (or more) of the exploitation film about them; just a week after <i style="font-weight: bold;">Road House</i> I saw Paul Schrader's 1988 docudrama about <a href="http://hearstcastle.org/history-behind-hearst-castle/historic-people/profiles/william-randolph-hearst/">the inspiration for <i style="font-weight: bold;">Citizen Kane</i></a>'s granddaughter and her infamous kidnapping into the Symbionese Liberation Army. But <i style="font-weight: bold;">Patty Hearst</i> makes its artfulness far more apparent, especially through Natasha Richardson astonishing performance and Bojan Bazelli's immersive cinematographic techniques. It didn't debut at Cannes for nothing, even if it didn't garner any prizes. Maybe it should have; for me it stands at least as high as Schrader's best-directed features like <i style="font-weight: bold;">Blue Collar</i>, <i style="font-weight: bold;">Mishima: a Life in Four Chapters</i> and <i style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="https://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2018/04/sffilm-61-day-5-first-reformed.html">First Reformed</a></i>. Filmed locally in large part, <i style="font-weight: bold;">Patty Hearst</i> was part of a brilliantly-packaged set of films wrangling with "San Francisco's dark decade" that served as hangover to the Summer of Love at <a href="https://ybca.org/whats-on/sf-dark-decade">Yerba Buena Center for the Arts</a>; most unfortunately this was one of the final series programmed at YBCA by Joel Shepard before he and curatorial assistant David Robson were misguidedly dismissed by this shadow-of-its-former-self arts organization that appears bent on hastening its complete assimilation into the orbit of the nearby convention spaces that, like YBCA itself, rest on land that was until that "dark decade" home to more low-income residents than perhaps any other neighborhood in town. Tragically for cinephiles, YBCA's film program essentially doesn't exist any longer, replaced only by rentals from festivals and other organizations like <a href="http://www.sfcinematheque.org/calendar/">SF Cinematheque</a>, the latter a partnership I understand Shepard in one of his last acts encouraged to be continued in his absence.<br />
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<b><i>The Lighthouse Keepers</i></b>, May 31, 2018<br />
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The San Francisco Silent Film Festival continues to expand, this year for the first time moving its opening night to a Wednesday and running a full day of programming on a Thursday. That day wasn't easily-skippable stuff for cinephiles either, unlike some previous years' weekday programming choices; it included the <a href="https://prod3.agileticketing.net/websales/pages/info.aspx?evtinfo=364759~d9133282-4896-49aa-be18-b053ee8cefc3&epguid=1822aae7-3fda-46c4-8940-081224f26742&">Amazing Tales From the Archives</a> program and two of my favorite films seen previously only in highly-compromised video copies: Carl Dreyer's <b><i><a href="http://silentfilm.org/archive-by-year/2018-festival/master-of-the-house">Master of the House</a></i></b> and Yasujiro Ozu's <b><i><a href="http://silentfilm.org/archive-by-year/2018-festival/an-inn-in-tokyo">An Inn In Toyko</a></i></b>. But the day ended with an eye-popping visual hurricane by a filmmaker I'd long wanted to acquaint myself with for the first time: Jean Grémillon, represented at the festival by his second feature film <i style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="http://silentfilm.org/archive-by-year/2018-festival/the-lighthouse-keepers">The Lighthouse Keepers</a></i> from 1929. Presented in a rare 35mm print from the National Film Archive of Japan of all places, this cinematic approximation of an injured island-dweller's increasingly frenzied mental state also benefited from a dose of only-at-a-festival psychogeography. Set and shot on the Britanny coast, the film was accompanied perfectly by pianist Guenter Buchwald, who (I later learned) drew upon his young experiences living in and playing traditional music of that region. Buchwald has been a gifted SFSFF mainstay since 2013, but for me this was by far the best showcase for his talents I've seen, bettering even last year's SFSFF screening of Lubitsch's <i style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="http://silentfilm.org/archive-by-year/2017-festival/the-doll">The Doll</a></i> and that afternoon's Ozu presentation. (No coincidence, I suspect, that SFSFF percussionist Frank Bockius joined him on all three of these accompaniments; Bockius's contribution to <i style="font-weight: bold;">An Inn In Tokyo </i>particularly made me hanker to hear him anchor an entire score on his own sometime; perhaps another Ozu since he's typically so difficult to accompany). <i style="font-weight: bold;">The Lighthouse Keepers</i> cemented the festival's first jam-packed Thursday as the day to beat for the rest of the weekend, and though <b><i><a href="http://silentfilm.org/archive-by-year/2018-festival/mother-krauses-journey-to-happiness">Mother Krause’s Journey to Happiness</a></i></b> on Friday, <a href="http://silentfilm.org/archive-by-year/2018-festival/no-mans-gold"><b><i>No Man’s Gold</i></b></a>, <i><b><a href="http://silentfilm.org/archive-by-year/2018-festival/trappola">Trappola</a></b></i> and <b><i><a href="http://silentfilm.org/archive-by-year/2018-festival/the-saga-of-gosta-berling">The Saga of Gösta Berling</a></i></b> on Saturday, and perhaps especially the <a href="https://prod3.agileticketing.net/websales/pages/info.aspx?evtinfo=364776~d9133282-4896-49aa-be18-b053ee8cefc3&epguid=7ecd8d33-d7d0-46b0-a62a-af16bcbe6fc6&">Serge Bromberg</a> presentation and Stephen Horne accompanying Soviet phantasmagoria <b><i><a href="http://silentfilm.org/archive-by-year/2018-festival/fragment-of-an-empire">Fragment of an Empire</a></i></b> on Sunday tried to give it a run for its money, I don't think any of them quite succeeded.</div>
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<b><i>Sisters</i></b>, June 28, 2018<br />
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The Castro Theatre is probably the ideal venue for any film festival aiming to bring revived classics to a large and appreciative audience, as proven not just by the aforementioned Silent Film Festival but also Noir City (where I had great first-time screenings of films like <i style="font-weight: bold;">Address Unknown</i>, <i style="font-weight: bold;">Jealousy</i>, <i style="font-weight: bold;">Bodyguard</i> and <i style="font-weight: bold;">The Underworld Story</i>), Frameline (which hosted a moving presentation of a newly digitized <i style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="https://www.frameline.org/festival/film-guide/buddies">Buddies</a></i>) and Cinema Italia SF (which included a rare showing of <i style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="https://prod3.agileticketing.net/websales/pages/info.aspx?evtinfo=390994~5f3806a2-f489-4d15-9d58-c956ccef3198&epguid=ac1a2009-b847-4637-8848-da0ee8d006fe&">A Special Day </a></i>in a Mastroianni marathon). But I'm equally appreciative when the venue screens, between its festival four-walls and second-run showings of recent multiplex and arthouse fare, great repertory selections programmed in-house. Some of 2018's highlights along these lines included my first big-screen viewing of John Boorman's <b><i>Deliverance</i> </b>and my long-awaited first-ever viewing of Frances Ford Coppola's <i><b>One From the Heart</b></i>. Very enjoyable, but neither as gleefully enjoyable as my first-ever viewing of the breakthrough film by another New Hollywood director who happens to share my first name. I don't think that's the reason I find I have a particular affinity for Brian De Palma's films (well, not all of them, but the ones that hit me hit deeply) as I was a <i style="font-weight: bold;">Carrie </i>fan before I knew or cared what a director was. At any rate, <i style="font-weight: bold;">Sisters</i> was a film I'd wanted to see for many years but, like <i style="font-weight: bold;">Alexander Nevsky</i>, was willing to wait to catch in ideal circumstances. The <a href="https://dothebay.com/events/2018/6/28/psycho">Castro Theatre</a> in 35mm, surrounded by sparsely-assembled but devoted Margot Kidder mourners, fit that bill. On <a href="https://twitter.com/HellOnFriscoBay/status/1012747673928065024">twitter</a> afterward I called it "the last horror movie of the pre-Roe v. Wade era", which may or not be technically true but feels spiritually so. At any rate, it's the earliest De Palma film I've seen that clearly has his Hitchcock-infused brand stamped clearly upon it.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyLZ8e4Vn3ViggP8pV5-wOoEEGvLUpbdEmM16hcoPg7fMbHiMPLC45EMsTloFyI2Km0Tsh_LRDenzaduvjV6K_DmNMaCg1CKYW8CaOlDW3TLX7orbI7FIIYd4hvzNpy-bW9P5bXwWpvORZ/s1600/amomentofinnocence.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="591" data-original-width="1077" height="218" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyLZ8e4Vn3ViggP8pV5-wOoEEGvLUpbdEmM16hcoPg7fMbHiMPLC45EMsTloFyI2Km0Tsh_LRDenzaduvjV6K_DmNMaCg1CKYW8CaOlDW3TLX7orbI7FIIYd4hvzNpy-bW9P5bXwWpvORZ/s400/amomentofinnocence.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b><i>A Moment of Innocence </i></b>screen capture from New Yorker Video DVD</td></tr>
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<b><i>A Moment of Innocence</i></b>, September 6, 2018<br />
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How did I let myself go so long as a cinephile without seeing this metacinematic masterpiece made the year I first began actively turning my eyes toward non-mainstream cinema, 1996? I guess my excuse is that I was then still taking baby steps and films like <i style="font-weight: bold;">Lone Star</i> and <i style="font-weight: bold;">Dead Man</i> were my idea of "non-mainstream". Iranian cinema wasn't on my radar screen until a couple years later, and though I did enjoy early films by Mohsen Makhmalbaf like <i style="font-weight: bold;">Boycott</i> and <i style="font-weight: bold;">The Cyclist</i> when I caught up with them on home video, I never dove deeply into his complete filmography. So I was very glad for BAMPFA's Autumn <a href="https://bampfa.org/program/between-politics-and-poetry-makhmalbaf-film-house">showcase</a> of films directed by Makhmalbaf as well as his wife and two daughters. I'd actually seen most of the womens' films before, but none of the five by Mohsen programmed; I was able to catch up with three of them, all via imported 35mm prints: his Istanbul-filmed <i style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="http://time%20of%20love/">Time of Love</a></i>, the also-amazing <i style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="https://bampfa.org/event/salaam-cinema-1">Salaam Cinema</a></i> and <a href="https://bampfa.org/event/moment-innocence">this</a> investigation into the very hows and whys of making and re-making cinema. It's the kind of film that recalibrates your understanding of the arbitrariness of lines between professional and amateur, of spectator and maker, of documentary and fiction, etc. And the titular "moment" is just perfection. There was talk of a follow-up series of Abbas Kiarostami films coming to BAMPFA soon (perhaps this year?) but with the political impediments to bringing Iranian films into the US under the current culture-hostile regime, I'm not sure how likely that has become; I'm told a November screening of Dariush Mehrjui's <i style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="https://bampfa.org/event/cow-2">The Cow</a></i> was hindered when the new DCP was confiscated by our customs officials and BAMPFA was forced to track down an inferior transfer already within US borders to screen.<br />
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<a href="https://www.thelab.org/projects/2018/9/1/a-sentimental-punk-an-incomplete-kurt-kren-film-retrospective-19561996">Forty-six films by Kurt Kren</a>, September 22-23, 2018<br />
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Located just one block from the 16th & Mission BART station, <a href="https://www.thelab.org/info/">The Lab</a> is a crucial performance and art space that in recent years, under the direction of Dena Beard, has become an increasingly important square in the quilt of local film exhibition, especially of the "bubbling up from the underground" sort. In 2017 the venue hosted Frisco Bay's only guaranteed all-celluloid film festival, <a href="http://www.lightfieldfilm.org/2017-program">Light Field</a>, and a <a href="http://www.lightfieldfilm.org/2019-program">March 2019</a> iteration has been unveiled as well. It was also venue for a years-in-the-making near-complete two-evening retrospective of the films of Vienna-born experimentalist Kurt Kren, with introductions by archivists, scholars and people who knew the filmmaker before he died in 1998. I don't know if I've ever had quite this kind of intensive immersion in a moving image artist's work before; one Saturday afternoon I'd seen just a single Kren film in my lifetime (<b><i>31/75: Asyl</i></b>) and less than thirty-six hours later I'd seen almost all of them. The forty-five that were new to me can't be summed up in a sentence or a paragraph as they ran the gamut of approaches and effects, and I didn't even like all of them; some went way over my head and others (especially the naked body-, food-, and fluid-filled "Action Films" documenting Otto Mühl performances in the mid-1960s) were varying degrees of repulsive. But finding that films as singular as <b><i>2/60: 48 Heads from the Szondi-Test</i></b> and <b><i>47/91: A Party</i></b> or <b><i>36/78: Rischart</i></b> and <b><i>46/90: Falter 2</i></b>, or <i style="font-weight: bold;">18/68: Venice Destroyed</i> and <b><i>32/76: To W+B</i></b> came from the same individual's camera was almost unbelievable and rather inspiring. I think my very favorite of the films was <i><b>3/60 Trees In Autumn</b></i>, a kind of skyward update of Oskar Fischinger's <i style="font-weight: bold;">Walking From Munich to Berlin</i> that I was very glad to see again amidst a handful of Kren films a month and a half later at <a href="https://bampfa.org/event/underground-international-kurt-kren-and-tomonari-nishikawa">BAMPFA</a>, alongside work by a modern-day filmmaker whose work owes much to Kren's: Tominari Nishikawa, whose <i style="font-weight: bold;">Lumphini 2552 </i>felt particularly connected to this botanical strand of Kren's work, as well as its use of its year of creation in its title as Kren always did (in the case of the Nishikawa the year number is the Thai solar calendar equivalent of 2009). Almost every major experimental film screening organization in town (besides <a href="http://othercinema.com/calendar/">Other Cinema</a> I guess) had a hand in the Kurt Kren weekend; it was co-organized by <a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/1641527916096531/">Black Hole Cinematheque</a>, Megan Hoetger & Canyon Cinema, the latter of which also put on contending highlights in its salon series (seeing <a href="http://canyoncinema.com/2018/05/05/canyon-cinema-salon-with-sky-hopinka-51118/">Sky Hopinka</a> present Peter Rose's <i><b>The Man Who Could Not See Far Enough</b></i> among other works was extremely memorable). And the community sponsors included SF Cinematheque, via which I also saw great 16mm revivals like <b><i><a href="http://www.atasite.org/2018/09/27/jack-chambers-the-hart-of-london/">The Hart of London</a></i> </b>and<b> <a href="http://www.sfcinematheque.org/screenings/infrared-program-3/"><i>All That Sheltering Emptiness</i></a></b>, and BAMPFA, whose Fall <a href="https://bampfa.org/program/alternative-visions-2018">Alternative Visions</a> series provided me with great big-screen experiences with new-to-me films by <a href="https://bampfa.org/event/poor-little-rich-girl-0">Andy Warhol</a>, <a href="https://bampfa.org/program/alternative-visions-2018">Stan Brakhage</a>, Enrique Colina & other <a href="https://bampfa.org/event/ism-ism-ism-recycled-film-latin-america">Latin American avant-gardists</a>, while <a href="https://bampfa.org/program/first-person-cinema-marie-menken-margaret-tait-and-ute-aurand">First Person Cinema</a> did the same with 16mm works by Ute Auraund, Margaret Tait & Marie Menken. It will take a similarly collective effort on a larger scale to save The Lab and the other non-profit organizations, writers and artists that make use of the historic <a href="https://48hills.org/2019/02/save-redstone-building/">Redstone Labor Temple</a> from displacement in the face of the current real estate speculation boom in San Francisco. Please sign a <a href="https://www.change.org/p/london-breed-keep-the-redstone-labor-temple-a-community-center-b717122b-f62c-43cd-8468-1ae187c2d12c?recruiter=922941673&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=share_petition&recruited_by_id=9dcdd7c0-fe72-11e8-8b53-8f39ebbc7da4&utm_content=fht-14041715-en-us%3Av6">petition</a> and/or attend a FREE <a href="https://www.change.org/p/london-breed-keep-the-redstone-labor-temple-a-community-center-b717122b-f62c-43cd-8468-1ae187c2d12c?recruiter=922941673&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=share_petition&recruited_by_id=9dcdd7c0-fe72-11e8-8b53-8f39ebbc7da4&utm_content=fht-14041715-en-us%3Av6">event</a> if you want to be involved in keeping this space available for amazing events like the Kren immersion for the foreseeable future!<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitkyQ-lJghtzJ2N7rftqn_w_CaRJ-UYFB6zbIa6uqCphLO6gFe4oIRliZbkUrSH8aD48Or9-qo2HQNi2dguKMY-aGAFBCH3nLBGgT6jEI-7anNoFHlOe4FO0cAvK5WsjjeW6_nHvU9nFSF/s1600/thegoddess.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="571" data-original-width="727" height="313" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitkyQ-lJghtzJ2N7rftqn_w_CaRJ-UYFB6zbIa6uqCphLO6gFe4oIRliZbkUrSH8aD48Or9-qo2HQNi2dguKMY-aGAFBCH3nLBGgT6jEI-7anNoFHlOe4FO0cAvK5WsjjeW6_nHvU9nFSF/s400/thegoddess.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i style="font-weight: bold;">The Goddess</i> screen capture from Music Box DVD of <b><i>The Story of Film: an Odyssey</i></b></td></tr>
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<b><i>The Goddess</i></b>, October 21, 2018<br />
<br />
Another opportunity for diving into the filmography of an under-screened moving image artist was provided in the screening room at SFMOMA, which made Bengali auteur Satyajit Ray the focus of the seventh iteration of its recent <a href="https://www.sfmoma.org/event/series/modern-cinema-satyajit-ray/">Modern Cinema</a> collaboration with SFFILM. I'm told the current "<a href="https://www.sfmoma.org/event/series/modern-cinema-jia-zhangke/">eighth season</a>" was programmed by SFMOMA's Gina Basso on her own, and future sets such as a summer 2019 spotlight on book-to-film adaptations will be all hers as well, part of a much-welcome expansion of the screening program at San Francisco's most prominent artistic institution. But if the Ray series was the last of these triannual partnerships, it was apropos, as SFFILM's San Francisco International Film Festival provided the U.S. premiere and two prizes for Ray's debut <i style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="http://history.sffs.org/films/film_details.php?id=3802&search_by[2]=2&search_by[2]=2&search_by[2]=2&search_by[2]=2&search_by[2]=2&search_by[2]=2&search_by[2]=2&search_by[2]=2&search_by[2]=2&search_by[2]=2&search_by[2]=2&search_by[2]=2&search_by[2]=2&search_by[2]=2&search_by[2]=2&search_by[2]=2&searchfield=satyajit%20ray">Pather Panchali</a> </i>as part of its inaugural festival in 1957. It was also extremely valuable to someone like me, who'd seen a little more than a handful of Ray's films but was able to double my exposure to his work in the space of three weekends. New favorites included some of his delvings into the darker corners of post-colonial Indian society such as <i style="font-weight: bold;">The Big City</i>, <i style="font-weight: bold;">The Coward</i>, <i style="font-weight: bold;">Company Limited </i>and <i style="font-weight: bold;">The Middleman</i>, but I think the most powerful of them all was <i style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="https://www.sfmoma.org/event/goddess-devi/">The Goddess</a></i>, also frequently referred to as <i style="font-weight: bold;">Devi</i>. Arguably as cynical as any of those four but in a period setting rather than a contemporary one, this 1960 piece takes religion as its central theme and has the benefit both of Sharmila Tagore's magnetic screen presence and a sumptuous visual design unmatched in any Ray film I've seen other than (perhaps) <i style="font-weight: bold;">The Music Room</i>. It was the new-to-me highlight of one of 2018's deepest auteurist dives, just as <b><i><a href="https://www.sfmoma.org/event/spook-who-sat-door/https://www.sfmoma.org/event/spook-who-sat-door/">The Spook Who Sat By The Door</a> </i></b>was the new-to-me highlight of a very solid summer series focusing on African-American directors, and <b><i><a href="https://www.sfmoma.org/event/chocolat/">Chocolat</a></i></b> of an emotionally-fraught set of films by Claire Denis and her cinematic ancestors. It was during this February series that SFMOMA's lead projectionist <a href="https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/5371-paul-clipson-1965-2018">Paul Clipson</a> unexpectedly died, leaving a gaping abyss in the middle of not only the Bay Area film community, but in the wider circle of interlocked international communities of experimental film and music performances in which Paul traveled. Less than a week after his death SFMOMA organized a memorial tribute in which the five 16mm prints of Clipson's own magnificent film work held by <a href="http://canyoncinema.com/catalog/filmmaker/?i=447">Canyon Cinema</a> were presented to a mourning public. Though I'd had the great pleasure of knowing Paul for several years, and seen dozens of screenings of the prolific artist's work in various contexts, I had never before seen one of his greatest single-channel masterpieces <i style="font-weight: bold;">Union</i> before; it's a stunner and perhaps deserves its own slot on this list, but somehow it feels more appropriate to honor a 35mm screening of a gorgeous Indian film, projected by Paul's protégés in the SFMOMA booth where he seemed so at home.<br />
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<b><i>The Emperor's Nightingale</i></b>, December 15, 2018<br />
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Frisco Bay cinemas provided a good number of director retrospectives that I unfortunately was unable to take advantage of as thoroughly as the previously-mentioned Kurt Kren or Satyajit Ray concentrations. Most of them were held at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, which is conveniently closer to BART in its now-three-year-old "new" location, but inconveniently tends to spread its series programming out across weeks, months, or even (in the case of a 2018-long Ingmar Bergman focus) a whole year. I'm sure this pleases the majority of BAMPFA customers, especially those who live in Berkeley and don't particularly relish seeing more than one movie a day, but still aspire to catching every screening in a given series. But as someone who lives across a bridge and likes to save time and BART fare, I miss being able to see more than one film in a series on a single trip, something that used to happen occasionally at the old Bancroft Way location, but now seems to occur only when a filmmaker is in town (like <a href="https://bampfa.org/program/afterimage-ulrike-ottinger">Ulrike Ottinger</a> next month). On the other hand, I now am more likely to sample at least one program in almost every series programmed, at the expense of honing in on one or two per calendar. In 2018 I caught just a couple films in BAMPFA's <a href="https://bampfa.org/program/subtle-subversion-films-alain-tanner">Alain Tanner</a> series (I particularly liked <i style="font-weight: bold;">The Middle of the World</i>), their <a href="https://bampfa.org/program/anxiety-identity-films-lucrecia-martel">Lucrecia Martel</a> restrospective (<i style="font-weight: bold;">The Headless Woman</i> was wonderful to revisit), and their <a href="https://bampfa.org/program/frederick-wiseman-documentary">Frederick Wiseman</a> spotlight (<i style="font-weight: bold;">Belfast, Maine</i> was a highlight), while finding time for just a single film apiece in hefty programs dedicated to <a href="https://bampfa.org/program/aki-kaurism%C3%A4ki-films-other-side-hope">Aki Kaurismäki</a> and <a href="https://bampfa.org/program/luchino-visconti-cinema-struggle-and-splendor">Luchino Visconti</a> (<b><i>La vie de Bohème</i></b> and <i style="font-weight: bold;">Conversation Piece</i> both knocked me out), and just one program from a series dedicated to Czech animator <a href="https://bampfa.org/program/puppet-master-films-jiri-trnka">Jiří Trnk</a>a. <b><i><a href="https://bampfa.org/event/emperor%E2%80%99s-nightingale">The Emperor's Nightingale</a></i></b>, the main attraction in this two-film program, was quite simply one of the greatest stop-motion animation films I've ever seen, by a filmmaker I'd been barely familiar with previously and might not have sampled if this showing hadn't landed on a day in which two programs from other series tempted. Based on this 1949 film, it's clear that Trnka created an absolutely unique style influential to but not fully assimilable by descendents like Jan Švankmajer and Arthur Rankin Jr., and that (as I noted in a post-screening <a href="https://twitter.com/HellOnFriscoBay/status/1074365910884876288">tweet</a>) "calling it ‘puppet animation’ is too limiting, when lighting, lenswork and even film grain itself are as crucial the illusion of movement in this Fabergé world."<br />
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Because I didn't run a "I Only Have Two Eyes" survey at this time last year, I also present (without commentary) my favorite repertory/revival screenings of 2017:<br />
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<b><i>The Limits of Control</i></b>, February 15, 2017, Alamo Drafthouse at New Mission Theatre<br />
<b><i>Goshogaoka</i></b>, February 18, 2017, <a href="https://www.sfmoma.org/event/goshogaoka/">SFMOMA</a><br />
<b><i>Los Ojos</i></b>, <b><i>I Change I Am the Same</i></b>, <b><i>Filmmaker</i></b>, <b style="font-style: italic;">Rumble </b>&<b style="font-style: italic;"> Peyote Queen</b> among others, March 2, 2017, <a href="http://canyoncinema50.org/events/upcoming-events/3217-after-dark-extended-cinema/">Exploratorium</a><br />
<b><i>Angels of Sin</i></b>, March 5, 2017, <a href="https://bampfa.org/event/les-anges-du-p%C3%A9ch%C3%A9-4">BAMPFA</a><br />
<b><i>Until They Get Me</i></b>, June 23, 2017, <a href="http://psychotronicpaul.blogspot.com/2017/06/starting-tonight-20th-annual-broncho.html">Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum</a> with Frederick Hodges accompaniment<br />
<b><i>Marie Antoinette</i></b>, June 25, 2017, <a href="https://www.roxie.com/ai1ec_event/double-lost-translation-35mm-marie-antoinette-35mm/">Roxie</a><br />
<b><i>Captain Horatio Hornblower</i></b> with <i style="font-weight: bold;">One Way Passage </i>& <i style="font-weight: bold;">Rabbit Hood</i>, August 23, 2017, <a href="https://stanfordtheatre.org/calendars/Warners%202017.html">Stanford</a><br />
<b><i>Phantom Lady</i></b>, October 2, 2017, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/1914933188780690/">Castro</a><br />
<b><i>Sweet Charity</i></b>, November 11, 2017, <a href="https://www.ybca.org/whats-on/sweet-charity">YBCA</a><br />
<b><i>Spite Marriage</i></b>, December 3, 2017, <a href="https://rafaelfilm.cafilm.org/mont-alto-spite-marriage/">Rafael Film Center</a> with Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra accompaniment</div>
Brian Darrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17693169310367670898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2531345904528580427.post-5103730154831203932019-02-14T16:00:00.000-08:002019-02-14T16:00:13.854-08:00Michael Hawley's 2018 Eyes<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
<i>The San Francisco Bay Area is still home to a rich cinephilic culture nurtured in large part by a diverse array of cinemas, programmers and moviegoers. I'm honored to present a selection of favorite screenings experienced by local cinephiles in 2018. An index of participants can be found <a href="https://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2019/01/i-only-have-two-eyes-2018.html">here</a>. </i></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
<i>Eleven-time IOHTE contributor Michael Hawley is one of only three people (including myself) who have contributed to every single one of my (nearly) annual "I Only Have Two Eyes" repertory round-ups. Sadly, he moved out of state shortly after we attended the last screening on this list together, so this will likely be his last year contributing. But he still keeps his eye on the Frisco Bay screening scene and even wrote about it once since departing, at his <a href="http://film-415.blogspot.com/">film-415</a> blog.</i></div>
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2018 Favorite Bay Area Revival-Repertory (listed in order
seen)<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b><i>Quiet Please, Murder</i></b> (1942, dir. John Francis Larkin, 35mm,
Castro Theatre, <a href="https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/3210655">Noir City</a>) <o:p></o:p></div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvRKLZoGbZnmmxISZKlpZ49epUMiKiT6PTr9NIjho1stmprHikN6kik9FIzMnf7DzkFpuKTeQ38dmmuvKQGkPo0sFuIKT-Zmha6ojkffPCiQbLLqlAMrE6L76WYbYrypTQdLQrqEUPyLIA/s1600/woodstock.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="395" data-original-width="1439" height="174" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvRKLZoGbZnmmxISZKlpZ49epUMiKiT6PTr9NIjho1stmprHikN6kik9FIzMnf7DzkFpuKTeQ38dmmuvKQGkPo0sFuIKT-Zmha6ojkffPCiQbLLqlAMrE6L76WYbYrypTQdLQrqEUPyLIA/s640/woodstock.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i style="font-weight: bold;">Woodstock</i> screen capture from Warner DVD</td></tr>
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<b><i>Woodstock</i></b> (1970, dir. Michael Wadleigh, 35mm, <a href="https://bampfa.org/event/woodstock-1">Pacific FilmArchive</a>, with in-person intro by Country Joe McDonald, preceded by 1967 KQED
short, <b><i>A Day in the Life of Country Joe & the Fish</i></b>, digital, with director
Robert Zagone in person)<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b><i>Flesh and Fantasy</i></b> (1943, dir. Julien Duvivier) and <b><i>Destiny</i></b>
(1944, dir. Reginald Le Borg and Julien Duvivier), (both 35mm, Castro Theatre,
<a href="https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/3210657">Noir City</a>)<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b><i>Trouble Every Day </i></b>(2001, dir. Claire Denis, 35mm, <a href="https://www.sfmoma.org/event/trouble-every-day/">SFMOMA</a>, in
conjunction with SFFILM, series "Claire Denis: Seeing is Believing")<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b><i>Wicked Woman</i></b> (1953, dir. Russell Rouse, 35mm, Castro
Theatre, <a href="https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/3210671">Noir City</a>)<o:p></o:p></div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2WVrAN3k8oJ_gzo7-uDnxapINJptFItQ6NRG-QAtiMKhMpJFeXTn04B-EUMUGDMKWAItEeHQSHiEi7YD3sF1ImPYrWjXIs2znXggv98YiIs80pKH5_ics7mXskEJ1cOi1SoWXFN0qcqAp/s1600/reddesert.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="777" data-original-width="1431" height="216" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2WVrAN3k8oJ_gzo7-uDnxapINJptFItQ6NRG-QAtiMKhMpJFeXTn04B-EUMUGDMKWAItEeHQSHiEi7YD3sF1ImPYrWjXIs2znXggv98YiIs80pKH5_ics7mXskEJ1cOi1SoWXFN0qcqAp/s400/reddesert.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i style="font-weight: bold;">Red Desert</i> screen capture from Criterion DVD</td></tr>
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<b><i>Red Desert </i></b>(1964, dir. Michelangelo Antonioni, DCP,
<a href="http://www.cinemaitaliasf.com/michelangelo-antonioni">Instituto Italiano di Cultura</a> series "Michelangelo Antonioni at the Castro
Theatre")<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b><i>Cold Water</i></b> (1994, dir. Olivier Assayas, DCP, <a href="https://www.roxie.com/ai1ec_event/cold-water-leau-froide/">Roxie Cinema</a>)<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b><i>Eight Hours Don't Make a Day</i></b> (1972-1973, dir. Rainer Werner
Fassbinder, DCP, <a href="https://bampfa.org/program/r-w-fassbinder%E2%80%99s-eight-hours-don%E2%80%99t-make-day">Pacific Film <o:p></o:p></a></div>
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<a href="https://bampfa.org/program/r-w-fassbinder%E2%80%99s-eight-hours-don%E2%80%99t-make-day">Archive</a>)<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b><i>Battling Butler </i></b>(1926, dir. Buster Keaton, DCP, Castro
Theatre, <a href="http://www.silentfilm.org/archive/battling-butler">San Francisco Silent Film Festival</a>)<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b><i>Car Wash </i></b>(1976, dir. Michael Schultz, 35mm, <a href="https://www.sfmoma.org/event/car-wash/">SFMOMA</a>, in
conjunction with SFFILM, series "Black Powers: Reframing Hollywood,"
with Michael Schultz in person)<o:p></o:p></div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOWJ0SgsbRt9RLvqOFhvVvWxeFu1LWfrQVAaG1czK4fjbqcHf5sHFtKy3AXMDn97b0omkw5qBguSH8ktSyDXEsDiyl63cH7u3JFXigtvQWZVCMEJzEP0IcpHf7Piyx153HzDfWTEZDyMdi/s1600/sheworeayellowribbon.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="715" data-original-width="925" height="492" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOWJ0SgsbRt9RLvqOFhvVvWxeFu1LWfrQVAaG1czK4fjbqcHf5sHFtKy3AXMDn97b0omkw5qBguSH8ktSyDXEsDiyl63cH7u3JFXigtvQWZVCMEJzEP0IcpHf7Piyx153HzDfWTEZDyMdi/s640/sheworeayellowribbon.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i style="font-weight: bold;">She Wore A Yellow Ribbon</i> screen capture from Warner DVD</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<b><i>She Wore a Yellow Ribbon</i></b> (1949, dir. John Ford and <b><i>The
Quiet Man </i></b>(1952), both in 35mm at the <a href="https://stanfordtheatre.org/calendars/Summer%202018.html">Stanford Theatre</a>)</div>
Brian Darrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17693169310367670898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2531345904528580427.post-15387419317031528642019-02-14T09:35:00.001-08:002019-02-14T09:35:32.777-08:00Jonathan Marlow's 2018* Eyes<div style="background-color: white; color: #26282a;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i style="color: black;">The San Francisco Bay Area is still home to a rich cinephilic culture nurtured in large part by a diverse array of cinemas, programmers and moviegoers. I'm honored to present a selection of favorite screenings experienced by local cinephiles in 2018. An index of participants can be found <a href="https://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2019/01/i-only-have-two-eyes-2018.html" style="color: #e1771e;">here</a>. </i></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #26282a;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i style="color: black;"><br /></i></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>First-time IOHTE contributer Jonathan Marlow </i></span><span style="color: #26282a;"><i>[<a href="https://www.cabinetic.com/">PARACME</a> | <a href="https://www.cafilm.org/contact/">CALIFORNIA FILM INSTITUTE</a> | <a href="http://arbelosfilms.com/distribution/">ARBELOS</a>] didn't exactly color within the lines in compiling this list, but I'm pleased he's placing local showings into a wider context. He also includes a screening from 2017, which he hopes will reprise in 2019.</i></span><br />
<br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="color: #26282a; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2rqCwgx51nyphyphenhyphenz8hbZsrUof6r38_n3BsfYx6uQk0fGYMbrLHa_flBjCVHASjc0iwhr4Fvg7DVTn3wxSAq-P7gBE-F9xsp2tqqd5X2sEX947j2GUVHdljXjPIEZnvkYQBzcZM3J1PVm1C/s1600/2001.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="527" data-original-width="1051" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2rqCwgx51nyphyphenhyphenz8hbZsrUof6r38_n3BsfYx6uQk0fGYMbrLHa_flBjCVHASjc0iwhr4Fvg7DVTn3wxSAq-P7gBE-F9xsp2tqqd5X2sEX947j2GUVHdljXjPIEZnvkYQBzcZM3J1PVm1C/s400/2001.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i style="font-weight: bold;">2001: A Space Odyssey</i> screen capture from Music Box DVD of <b><i>The Story of Film: An Odyssey</i></b></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="color: #26282a;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Rarely one to let guidelines apply, a handful of non-Bay Area-centric selections are represented below. I would be entirely remiss if I did not bend otherwise agreeable rules to include these absolute highlights, accordingly (with everything thereafter listed alphabetically).<br clear="none" /><br clear="none" />In keeping the whole assortment to ten, I removed such mainstays as <b><em>2001</em> </b>at the Castro Theatre and everything from Noir City (as I was out-of-town for the duration, unfortunately). I will briefly mention here one from December which I sadly missed, much as I adore it: <em><b>Exit Smiling</b></em> (at the Day of Silents).<br clear="none" /><br clear="none" />Honourable mention: anything whatsoever screened by Jesse Hawthorne Ficks. Dishonourable mention: the continued absence of Joel Shepard from YBCA. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br clear="none" />-----</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I<br clear="none" /><br clear="none" /><i><b>Elégia</b></i> [<i><b>Elegy</b></i>] (1965) dir. Zoltán Huszárik<br clear="none" /><a href="https://www.kurzfilmtage.de/archiv/legendary-shorts/2018/">Internationale Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen</a>, Oberhausen, Germany <br clear="none" />digital restoration<br clear="none" /><br clear="none" />** Oberhausen has an extensive archive of its past award-winners and last year they opted to screen recent restorations. I knew little about the film (nor its filmmaker) in advance but I haven't stopped thinking about it since. Absolutely stunning in every way!<br clear="none" /></span></div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIjHgUEYesiLa619PgP4QdSauxwy7UPotWg2_BNtogocKjDqNhB2B3vI2-h7q9uKQj6fsoChQ0B4EAlWmAPK_Yo4s-FfAGZXaGdVGuZP0HjnP94TuLKHoTUlmYwbpAK2w4YmIWkM9bmi_j/s1600/uprisinginjazak.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="479" data-original-width="581" height="164" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIjHgUEYesiLa619PgP4QdSauxwy7UPotWg2_BNtogocKjDqNhB2B3vI2-h7q9uKQj6fsoChQ0B4EAlWmAPK_Yo4s-FfAGZXaGdVGuZP0HjnP94TuLKHoTUlmYwbpAK2w4YmIWkM9bmi_j/s200/uprisinginjazak.png" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i style="font-weight: bold;">Uprising in Jazak</i> screen capture from excerpt at <a href="https://zilnikzelimir.net/uprising-jazak">zilnikzelimir.net</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">II<br clear="none" /><br clear="none" /><i><b>Ustanak u Jasku</b></i> [aka <i><b>Uprising in Jazak</b></i>] (1973) dir. Želimir Žilnik<br clear="none" /><a href="http://flahertyseminar.org/2018-seminar/">Flaherty Film Seminar</a>, Hamilton, New York<br clear="none" />16mm</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #26282a; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br clear="none" />** Although Žilnik's work is relatively well-known in some circles, this shorter film is not. It truly should be seen by everyone--and fortunately can be found online as well albeit in somewhat inferior quality--as a masterpiece of resistance and human ingenuity.<br clear="none" /> </span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #26282a;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">-----</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #26282a; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 16px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br clear="none" />III<br clear="none" /> </span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #26282a; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i><b>The Parallax View</b></i> (1974) dir. Alan Pakula</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #26282a; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://nwfilmforum.org/events/local-sightings-2018-puget-soundtrack-evening-star-parallax-view/">Local Sightings</a> [NWFF], Seattle, WA</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #26282a; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Paramount digital preservation copy<br clear="none" /><br clear="none" />** Nothing spectacular in the particular visual presentation (except that a digital master needed to be created at my own expense). The draw was the musical pre-show (and thereafter) with Amanda Salazar, John Massoni, Dale Lloyd and myself, a "super group" of players from different cities playing together for the first (and perhaps last) time ever.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #26282a; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 16px;">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWFB5saCXKR62eGfQ47xkIgP34SvEzDX7rfLB9rSik2cwyOoFsuqROKyLrF4nhsFjXPvyxcrGxFMpAe01_-dEr33luWblSyCvKxu9dtoKKmYmyN-c2l-FFMGEkWEF6R8AXEZtx5dRztCWN/s1600/infernalcauldron.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="783" data-original-width="1047" height="476" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWFB5saCXKR62eGfQ47xkIgP34SvEzDX7rfLB9rSik2cwyOoFsuqROKyLrF4nhsFjXPvyxcrGxFMpAe01_-dEr33luWblSyCvKxu9dtoKKmYmyN-c2l-FFMGEkWEF6R8AXEZtx5dRztCWN/s640/infernalcauldron.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i style="font-weight: bold;">The Infernal Cauldron</i> screen capture from Flicker Alley DVD <i>Georges Méliès: First Wizard of Cinema</i> <i>(1896-1913)</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br clear="none" />IV<br clear="none" /> </span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #26282a;">
<div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b><i>Le chaudron infernal</i> </b>[aka <i><b>The Infernal Caldron and the Phantasmal Vapors</b></i>] (1903) dir. Georges Méliès</span></div>
<div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://prod3.agileticketing.net/websales/pages/info.aspx?evtinfo=364776~d9133282-4896-49aa-be18-b053ee8cefc3&epguid=7ecd8d33-d7d0-46b0-a62a-af16bcbe6fc6&">San Francisco Silent Film Festival</a></span></div>
<div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">35mm duo-print projected as DCP</span></div>
<div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">** What happens when you take two negatives shot by two cameras side-by-side (for sensible purposes difficult to explain with any brevity) and print them together? Unintentional 3D (with master showperson Serge Bromberg)!</span></div>
</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #26282a; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 16px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #26282a;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">-----<br clear="none" /><br clear="none" />V<br clear="none" /> </span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #26282a; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i><b>The Last Movie</b></i> (1971) dir. Dennis Hopper</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #26282a; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://rafaelfilm.cafilm.org/alex-cox-presents/">Smith Rafael</a></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #26282a; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Arbelos 4K digital restoration</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #26282a; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<br /></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #26282a; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">** Hopper's unfairly maligned and too-little-seen follow-up to <em><b>Easy Rider</b></em>, lovingly restored by Craig Rogers at Arbelos! A great year for restorations, admittedly, with Barbara Loden's extraordinary <em><b>Wanda</b></em> returning to screens last year as well.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #26282a; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<br /></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #26282a;">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcTKFAqiWcj_YcP_WxUAL_9WaEKi6br3wx8VCSziXO4knkgJEFPjViOplKk-O9WQ3gfXOlq94ZHJqLP6LLMJbinTImkHRbtMwlfSJSqFqvedBLoaP4KvuHTLrm8xCFiWvcigAADPDph2KX/s1600/midsummernightsdream.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="431" data-original-width="554" height="248" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcTKFAqiWcj_YcP_WxUAL_9WaEKi6br3wx8VCSziXO4knkgJEFPjViOplKk-O9WQ3gfXOlq94ZHJqLP6LLMJbinTImkHRbtMwlfSJSqFqvedBLoaP4KvuHTLrm8xCFiWvcigAADPDph2KX/s320/midsummernightsdream.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b><i>A Midsummer Night's Dream</i></b></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">VI<br clear="none" /> </span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #26282a;">
<div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i><b>Sen noci svatojánské</b></i> [aka <i><b>A Midsummer Night’s Dream</b></i>] (1959) dir. Jiří Trnka</span></div>
<div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://bampfa.org/event/trnka-midsummer-nights-dream">Pacific Film Archive</a></span></div>
<div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">35mm<br clear="none" /><br clear="none" />** Irena Kovarova curated this exhaustive touring Trnka program and the PFA brought a fair portion of the series to our neighbourhood. [My only disappointment was that no other institution stepped-in to present the handful of films missing from the complete set (despite our repeated encouragements to participate).]</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">-----</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br clear="none" />VII<br clear="none" /> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i><b>Sphinx on the Seine</b></i> (2009) dir. Paul Clipson</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/2232305777095260/">Camera Obscura | Fourth Annual Report</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">16mm wild-sync</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">** Undoubtedly an emotional peak of the recent Camera Obscura arrived early with a screening of Paul Clipson's <em>Sphinx</em>... with Seth Mitter projecting and I wild-syncing Jefre Cantu Ledesma's score. Between this and a brief tribute to Robert Todd (with Lori Felker) the following day, it was a woeful weekend of quiet reminiscence and reflection.</span></div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8aqtK0LfCR_pzzAV5VzNHpOOqUeWN2USL2M9qRXmT6z_KpIWutoFBj7bRlxeHnHHdvef0Z1dHwqXxFRKwJO9E61oacI2e9XRtozmBnW-a4qR8-RUHLOpmqV_TWrQx-uvXS1PVpU8tKbiw/s1600/thatwoman.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="368" data-original-width="500" height="293" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8aqtK0LfCR_pzzAV5VzNHpOOqUeWN2USL2M9qRXmT6z_KpIWutoFBj7bRlxeHnHHdvef0Z1dHwqXxFRKwJO9E61oacI2e9XRtozmBnW-a4qR8-RUHLOpmqV_TWrQx-uvXS1PVpU8tKbiw/s400/thatwoman.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i style="font-weight: bold;">That Woman</i> image from <a href="http://canyoncinema.com/2018/07/23/free-8618-that-woman-a-salon-with-sandra-davis/">Canyon Cinema</a> website</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">VIII<br clear="none" /> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i><b>That Woman</b></i> (2018) dir. Sandra Davis</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #26282a; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://canyoncinema.com/2018/07/23/free-8618-that-woman-a-salon-with-sandra-davis/">Canyon Cinema Salon</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">[digital]</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">** Although Sandra Davis only recently completed this hybrid non-fiction/dramatic re-enactment (and, therein, not a revival whatsoever), <em><b>That Woman</b></em> presents an ideal opportunity (among its other ample merits) to see the painfully missed George Kuchar (as Barbara Walters, no less)!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br clear="none" />-----<br clear="none" /><br clear="none" />IX<br clear="none" /> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i><b>36.15 code Père Noël</b></i> [aka <i><b>Game Over</b></i>] (1989) dir. René Manzor</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Alamo Drafthouse [“Terror Tuesday”]</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">c0-hosted by Kier-La Janisse</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">AGFA 2K digital restoration<br clear="none" /><br clear="none" />** A proto-<em>Home Alone</em> in French? Indeed! Whatever you might imagine this to be, it is everything you'd suspect and ever-so-much more.</span><br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKzboLZax_h-qmSRvD_ywXZdSntoi2nFy2wPFY_loo68D0ntE79Qe8MsKBKRAGbbuHQy0f3YwQcWvUjwoSQmuWTh8tkx4CJLL0GYxByntFDzxcsZXb6bW1F8pQ8GBAvci5UY27kfqAhhvG/s1600/inventionfordestruction.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="503" data-original-width="691" height="290" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKzboLZax_h-qmSRvD_ywXZdSntoi2nFy2wPFY_loo68D0ntE79Qe8MsKBKRAGbbuHQy0f3YwQcWvUjwoSQmuWTh8tkx4CJLL0GYxByntFDzxcsZXb6bW1F8pQ8GBAvci5UY27kfqAhhvG/s400/inventionfordestruction.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i style="font-weight: bold;">Invention for Destruction </i>scree capture from <a href="https://vimeo.com/256882892">digital restoration trailer</a></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">X<br clear="none" /> </span></div>
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<div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><em><b>Vynález zkázy</b></em> [aka <i><b>Invention for Destruction</b></i>] (1958)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://rafaelfilm.cafilm.org/film-club/">Rafael Film Club</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Muzeum Karla Zemana 4K digital restoration<br clear="none" /> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">** I travelled to Prague to fetch the DCP of this (and another) outstanding Zeman film for a pair of screenings at the Smith Rafael Film Center. Well worth the expedition to see the audience reactions to his outstanding work!<br clear="none" /> </span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">-----</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">foreshadow ahead: 2019</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i><b>Filibus</b></i> (1915) dir. Mario Roncoroni</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">** I first had the opportunity to see this extraordinary film at the 2017 <a href="http://www.silentfilm.org/archive/filibus">San Francisco Silent Film Festival</a>. The wonderful folks at Milestone Films have been working on a restoration which (ideally) should screen locally in the months ahead.</span></div>
Brian Darrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17693169310367670898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2531345904528580427.post-26815748920548203052019-02-13T09:17:00.000-08:002019-02-13T09:17:01.429-08:00Lincoln Spector's 2018 Eyes<i>The San Francisco Bay Area is still home to a rich cinephilic culture nurtured in large part by a diverse array of cinemas, programmers and moviegoers. I'm honored to present a selection of favorite screenings experienced by local cinephiles in 2018. An index of participants can be found <a href="https://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2019/01/i-only-have-two-eyes-2018.html">here</a>. </i><br />
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<i>Ten-time IOHTE contributor Lincoln Spector writes under <a href="https://bayflicks.net/">Bayflicks</a>, where a more extensive version of this list was </i><span style="background-color: white;"><i>originally published <a href="https://bayflicks.net/2019/01/01/my-15-best-moviegoing-experiences-of-2018/">here</a>.</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><i style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></i></span></span>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYJhWt3WMczpfU7PFW8iiQDAMJv4x-LyQ7vOytiouhp_nUQq3LfzNUWGNuUHNhWcILdF7TvqjADbviLVVvNlTzpyU8f_eeFExnsS5gk6kMSO26YCQT9at6h4XCy3dQyF7k0cF5BZGOBXOs/s1600/WatermelonMan.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="363" data-original-width="661" height="174" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYJhWt3WMczpfU7PFW8iiQDAMJv4x-LyQ7vOytiouhp_nUQq3LfzNUWGNuUHNhWcILdF7TvqjADbviLVVvNlTzpyU8f_eeFExnsS5gk6kMSO26YCQT9at6h4XCy3dQyF7k0cF5BZGOBXOs/s320/WatermelonMan.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i style="font-weight: bold;">Watermelon Man</i> screen capture from <i style="font-weight: bold;">How to Eat Your Watermelon in White Company (& Enjoy It) </i>streaming on <a href="https://sfpl.kanopy.com/video/how-eat-your-watermelon-white-company-and-en">Kanopy</a></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><i style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://bayflicks.net/2018/07/23/a-day-of-two-film-festivals/"><span id="goog_1492413882"></span>Watermelon Man</a></i></span><span style="background-color: white;">, </span><span style="background-color: white; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-style: initial; box-sizing: border-box; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: all; transition-timing-function: ease-in-out;">Modern Cinema/Black Powers: Reframing Hollywood</span><span style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">, <span style="border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-style: initial; box-sizing: border-box; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: all; transition-timing-function: ease-in-out;"><a href="https://www.sfmoma.org/event/series/modern-cinema-black-powers">SFMOMA</a></span></span><span style="background-color: white;">,<a href="https://www.blogger.com/"><span id="goog_1492413883"></span></a> archival 35mm print</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;">My stepfather worked on Melvin Van Peebles’ only studio movie, so the experience of seeing it again was especially entertaining. </span><em style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><b>Watermelon Man</b></em><span style="background-color: white;"> is a very funny movie, and a very pointed one. A white, a middle-aged, middle-class bigot (Godfrey Cambridge in whiteface) wakes up to discover that he’s suddenly turned black. The print looked glorious.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://bayflicks.net/2018/06/05/tom-mix-sherlock-holmes-buster-keaton-serge-bromberg-san-francisco-silent-film-festival-part-2/" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s; vertical-align: baseline;">Serge Bromberg Presents…</a></span><span style="background-color: white;">, </span>San Francisco Silent Film Festival<span style="background-color: white;">, </span>Castro<span style="background-color: white;">, DCP</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;">Serge Bromberg is not only an important film preservationist; he’s also a great showman – even in English, which is not his native language. This very fun program consisted almost entirely of early 3D films, with a focus on George Méliès’s accidentally stereoscopic movies. Just delightful. And, of course, Bromberg </span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYMdzg_3ImQ&feature=youtu.be">set a piece of nitrate film on fire</a><span style="background-color: white;">.</span></span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjElRI5qdj6lKs9jtpPYjVaxF4HVlAyLYFpVaJXu9ZHMBHzSR33hga8QfHySJPXqKbbC6LX13jrCqXXSXkLcgopWeThzYBoDyoCiEl9QWkCwSe-Hyj0fSPyntt5eQsLX6Um0tey8m3zlq8-/s1600/thebigheat.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="692" data-original-width="914" height="242" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjElRI5qdj6lKs9jtpPYjVaxF4HVlAyLYFpVaJXu9ZHMBHzSR33hga8QfHySJPXqKbbC6LX13jrCqXXSXkLcgopWeThzYBoDyoCiEl9QWkCwSe-Hyj0fSPyntt5eQsLX6Um0tey8m3zlq8-/s320/thebigheat.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i style="font-weight: bold;">The Big Heat </i>screen capture from Columbia DVD</td></tr>
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<span style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://bayflicks.net/2018/02/05/closing-this-years-noir-city/" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s; vertical-align: baseline;"><i>The Big Heat</i></a></span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">, </span><a href="https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/3210671" style="font-family: inherit;">Noir City</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">, </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">Castro</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">, DCP</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;"><br />A cop commits suicide, and the first person the new widow calls is a mob boss. The mob runs the unnamed city and the police do what they’re told – except for the one honest detective assigned to the case (Glenn Ford). I waited years to see Fritz Lang’s morally ambivalent noir. The digital restoration looked damn near perfect.</span><br />
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</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s; vertical-align: baseline;"><i><a href="https://bayflicks.net/2018/01/08/movies-ive-recently-seen-call-me-by-your-name-the-last-jedi-a-matter-of-life-and-death/">A Matter of Life and Death</a></i></span><span style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: all; transition-timing-function: ease-in-out;"> (aka <b><i>Stairway to Heaven</i></b>) & </span></span><span style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-style: inherit; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s; vertical-align: baseline;">The Red Shoes</span><span style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: all; transition-timing-function: ease-in-out;">,</span></span><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><a href="https://allevents.in/san%20francisco/a-matter-of-life-and-death-4k-the-red-shoes/2042948989259454">Castro</a><span style="background-color: white;">, DCP & 35mm</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;">A Michael Powell/Emeric Pressburger double bill. In </span><em style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><b>Matter of Life and Death,</b></em><span style="background-color: white;"> a British bomber pilot (David Niven) who should have died survives, creating a serious problem for heaven’s bureaucrats. But the pilot is newly in love and refuses to enter the afterlife. The great cinematographer </span><a href="https://bayflicks.net/2011/07/27/cameraman-the-life-and-work-of-jack-cardiff/" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s; vertical-align: baseline;">Jack Cardiff</a><span style="background-color: white;"> mixed color and black and white in ways that seem impossible with 1940s technologies. I’ve seen the other film, </span><em style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><b>The Red Shoes</b>, </em><span style="background-color: white;">many times, and it just keeps getting better. Although both films were digitally restored, only </span><em style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><b>Matter</b> </em><span style="background-color: white;">was on DCP; </span><em style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><b>Shoes</b> </em><span style="background-color: white;">was in 35mm. Some four months later, I saw an original, Technicolor nitrate print of </span><em style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><b>The Red Shoes</b></em><span style="background-color: white;"> at the </span><a href="https://bayflicks.net/2018/05/12/last-saturday-at-the-nitrate-picture-show/" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s; vertical-align: baseline;">Nitrate Picture Show</a><span style="background-color: white;">.</span></span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjU0SS5I6hRltp3fzIre4ORUFlyHhlqjwUC0j8_DTEtWPurlvqQdbcytwJlNPmCmw_0r2pL0IgHQ_gEcpYJcFsksBwPJ-f_7RkPEJb0u0m5OtO4Q3mLtgUuTfHGgn4SRO4a8wa6li95K4sw/s1600/allthatheavenallows.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="603" data-original-width="1085" height="354" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjU0SS5I6hRltp3fzIre4ORUFlyHhlqjwUC0j8_DTEtWPurlvqQdbcytwJlNPmCmw_0r2pL0IgHQ_gEcpYJcFsksBwPJ-f_7RkPEJb0u0m5OtO4Q3mLtgUuTfHGgn4SRO4a8wa6li95K4sw/s640/allthatheavenallows.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i style="font-weight: bold;">All That Heaven Allows</i> screen capture from Cohen Media DVD of <b><i>What Is Cinema?</i></b></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://bayflicks.net/2018/03/26/all-that-heaven-allows-at-the-pfa/" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s; vertical-align: baseline;"><i>All That Heaven Allows</i></a></span><span style="background-color: white;">, </span><a href="https://bampfa.org/event/all-heaven-allows-9" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s; vertical-align: baseline;">BAMPFA</a><span style="background-color: white;">, vintage Technicolor IB print</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;">I’m not one of those cinephiles who gets excited at every screening of a 35mm print. But when it’s a vintage Technicolor IB print…well, that’s exciting. And it was the print, more than the movie, that drew me to see this 1955 romantic drama starring Jane Wyman and Rock Hudson. The movie was pretty good too, and historically fascinating with its story of people trying to break out of ’50s conformity. You can read </span><a href="https://bayflicks.net/2018/03/26/all-that-heaven-allows-at-the-pfa/" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s; vertical-align: baseline;">my full article</a><span style="background-color: white;"> on the film and Technicolor’s technology.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://bayflicks.net/2018/06/05/tom-mix-sherlock-holmes-buster-keaton-serge-bromberg-san-francisco-silent-film-festival-part-2/" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s; vertical-align: baseline;"><b><i>Battling Butler</i></b></a></span><span style="background-color: white;">, </span>San Francisco Silent Film Festival<span style="background-color: white;">, </span><a href="http://www.silentfilm.org/archive/battling-butler">Castro</a><span style="background-color: white;">, DCP</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">Buster Keaton gives one of his most complex and subtle acting performances, while still being extremely funny. He plays a spoiled rich kid who pretends to be a professional boxer to impress his girl, and matures in the process. The spectacular stunts we expect from Keaton are smaller and more intimate here, but they’re still impressive and very funny. The Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra provided a wonderful musical accompaniment.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://bayflicks.net/2018/12/02/my-report-on-the-day-of-silents/" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s; vertical-align: baseline;"><i>Exit Smiling</i></a></span><span style="background-color: white;">, </span>San Francisco Silent Film Festival’s Day of Silents<span style="background-color: white;">, </span><a href="http://www.silentfilm.org/archive-by-year/2018-a-day-of-silents/exit-smiling">Castro</a><span style="background-color: white;">, 35mm </span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">print</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;">The screamingly funny, beautiful, and all-around loveable Beatrice Lillie should have become a major film star; the camera just loves her. Thanks to her abilities, this backstage comedy makes you laugh from beginning to end. With Franklin Panghorn at his gayest. </span>Wayne Barker<span style="background-color: white;"> did a wonderful job on piano; he even kept us entertained when the screen went blank and the projectionist had to fix something.</span></span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiLqBFXf3Yml_iIIv0Bzw1gvDf0IVkfz0gw2neFzwiCOX6OvBVctkStvWXN_XwU8vl3yQyZMxIDd99p-lBUjKH09FHRn8AeIdVyqoMIeaOqL5j0o317SbiXxztSqc1dNu_zv_rv_OdV3SY/s1600/tobeornottobe.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="709" data-original-width="941" height="241" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiLqBFXf3Yml_iIIv0Bzw1gvDf0IVkfz0gw2neFzwiCOX6OvBVctkStvWXN_XwU8vl3yQyZMxIDd99p-lBUjKH09FHRn8AeIdVyqoMIeaOqL5j0o317SbiXxztSqc1dNu_zv_rv_OdV3SY/s320/tobeornottobe.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i style="font-weight: bold;">To Be Or Not To Be</i> screen capture from Warner DVD</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-style: inherit; font-weight: normal; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://bayflicks.net/2018/04/15/a-great-scholar-and-a-very-bad-mom-saturday-at-sffilm-festival/">Mel Novikoff Award</a>: Annette Insdorf &</span><span style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-style: inherit; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s; vertical-align: baseline;"><i>To Be or Not To Be</i></span><span style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">, </span><span style="background-color: white;">SFFILM</span><span style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">, </span><span style="background-color: white;"><a href="https://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2018/04/sffilm-61-day-11-to-be-or-not-to-be.html">SFMOMA</a>, 35mm print</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;">Columbia University film professor Annette Insdorf discussed cinema, her life, and her expertise on Holocaust films, answering questions from Anita Monga and then the audience. Then they screened an unfortunately poor 35mm print of Ernst Lubitsch’s 1942, dark, brilliant, anti-Nazi comedy, </span><em style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><b>To Be or Not to Be</b> </em><span style="background-color: white;">(you can read </span><a href="https://bayflicks.net/2013/08/21/laughing-at-hitler-my-blu-ray-review-of-to-be-or-not-to-be/" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s; vertical-align: baseline;">my Blu-ray review</a><span style="background-color: white;">). Nevertheless, the audience enjoyed it immensely.</span></span><br />
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<a href="https://eatdrinkfilms.com/2018/12/23/2001-a-projection-odyssey-big-screen-small-screen-70mm-digital/" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><i>2001: A Space Odyssey</i></span></a><span style="background-color: white;">, </span>Castro<span style="background-color: white;">, 70mm; </span>Metreon IMAX Theatre<span style="background-color: white;">, 70mm; </span>Castro<span style="background-color: white;">, 4K DCP</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">Yes, three separate screenings of the same film, months apart, tie for my my best moviegoing experience of 2018.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://openspace.sfmoma.org/2018/05/2001-a-space-odyssey-the-70mm-all-photochemical-restoration/">Castro</a>, 70mm</span><span style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">:</span><span style="background-color: white;"> In May, I saw Christopher Nolan’s “unrestored” version projected on the very large (but not huge) screen at the Castro. I had lost my love of this film over the decades, but with this presentation, I </span><a href="https://bayflicks.net/2018/05/21/after-revisiting-2001-i-put-it-on-my-a-list/" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s; vertical-align: baseline;">fell in love with it all over again</a><span style="background-color: white;">.</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://www.imax.com/News/2001-A-Space-Odyssey-in-IMAX">Metreon</a> IMAX Theatre, 70mm:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><em style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><b>2001</b></em><span style="background-color: white;"> was designed to be shown on a giant, curved screen – something the Castro cannot provide. The huge, slightly-curved screen of the Metreon’s IMAX theater provided something closer to the original experience. Again, it was Nolan’s version, this time on an even bigger 70mm IMAX frame.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://dothebay.com/events/2018/12/28/2001-a-space-odyssey-70mm-vs-4k">Castro</a>, 4K DCP</span><span style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">:</span><span style="background-color: white;"> This time, the Castro screened Leon Vitali’s new digital restoration. The colors were better, and there were no scratches or vibrations.</span></span>Brian Darrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17693169310367670898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2531345904528580427.post-84017772549985220972019-02-12T16:29:00.000-08:002019-02-12T16:28:59.980-08:00Ben Armington's 2018 Eyes<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
<i>The San Francisco Bay Area is still home to a rich cinephilic culture nurtured in large part by a diverse array of cinemas, programmers and moviegoers. I'm honored to present a selection of favorite screenings experienced by local cinephiles in 2018. An index of participants can be found <a href="https://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2019/01/i-only-have-two-eyes-2018.html">here</a>. </i></div>
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<i>Eleven-time IOHTE contributor Ben Armington sells tickets to many bay area film festivals from his perch at <a href="http://boxcubed.org/">Box Cubed</a>, .</i><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsYdeHJK-XzYtznI2h7-TpYmkzXdzUh-mpBotbwP5YY6NLejIi8iZldCAU5kXQnvxc1PevgIMHluLfQb0ZY8fi6JD1txVvPjD_qzLtOcR5ZLpPQOnW_513ZoHhntMN8H8gkRVQcIBIJKZf/s1600/eighthoursdontmakeaday.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="709" data-original-width="971" height="291" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsYdeHJK-XzYtznI2h7-TpYmkzXdzUh-mpBotbwP5YY6NLejIi8iZldCAU5kXQnvxc1PevgIMHluLfQb0ZY8fi6JD1txVvPjD_qzLtOcR5ZLpPQOnW_513ZoHhntMN8H8gkRVQcIBIJKZf/s400/eighthoursdontmakeaday.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Screen capture from Criterion DVD of <b><i>Eight Hours Don't Make A Day</i></b></td></tr>
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1. <b><i>Eight Hours Don’t Make A Day</i></b> - Alamo Drafthouse <br />
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This was a day-long screening of all five episodes of R.W. Fassbinder’s 1972 tv series. I enjoyed it as an arch anti-soap opera, at times tender and cruel, and also as an early expression of Fassbinder’s digestion of Douglas Sirk’s hollywood melodramas into his own filmmaking practice (much as Alfonso Cuaron’s last three films show a deepening mindmeld with Andrei Tarkovsky’s work). I would have happily stayed in my seat for five more episodes. <br />
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2. <b><i>Chameleon Street</i></b> - <a href="https://www.sfmoma.org/event/chameleon-street/">SFMoMA</a>, Modern Cinema: Black Powers Series <br />
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I’d been hearing about Wendell B. Harris’ 1989 indie film for years and never got around to watching it and am I glad I finally did because it is as great as it’s reputation promises. Packed with the delightful sense of invention, cine-craziness, and anarchic wit that characterized the french new wave films in the ‘60s. <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6AePEKp-3UUEGztRKHjxtfcm9kGG0L5hymYGzwoOjM-Fw96k57jImBrBBfuCsKRl0MP-WFeCkoOpTUcR4vP0zmtaia9zlszQ8MCd-D4GDcFt7CSgmEmFy3OWrQT7eG2jJ0yD2DKomDcZ2/s1600/snake+eyes.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="1127" height="267" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6AePEKp-3UUEGztRKHjxtfcm9kGG0L5hymYGzwoOjM-Fw96k57jImBrBBfuCsKRl0MP-WFeCkoOpTUcR4vP0zmtaia9zlszQ8MCd-D4GDcFt7CSgmEmFy3OWrQT7eG2jJ0yD2DKomDcZ2/s640/snake+eyes.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i style="font-weight: bold;">Snake Eyes</i> screen capture from Paramount DVD</td></tr>
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3.<i style="font-weight: bold;"> Snake Eyes</i> - Alamo Drafthouse <br />
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A locked room mystery wrapped in a neon-burnt noir laced with jittery veins of betrayal and corruption. I’d seen and enjoyed this 1998 Brian DePalma joint on video years ago, but seeing it on the big screen revealed an infinitely better film than I remembered. Won a plum place on my list for the exhilarating opening set piece sequence alone.<br />
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4. <i style="font-weight: bold;">Duel</i> - <a href="https://dothebay.com/events/2018/7/3/double-feature-jaws-duel">Castro </a><br />
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An early effort by Hollywood blockbuster maestro Steven Spielberg that plays like Sam Peckinpah directing a Hitchcock script. Spare and diabolically tense, the film keeps raising the stakes without sacrificing plausibility, simple and brilliant. <br />
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5. <i style="font-weight: bold;">Light of Day</i> - <a href="https://www.roxie.com/ai1ec_event/light-of-day/">Roxie </a><br />
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Paul Schrader film from 1987 about growing up, growing apart, and rock & roll, with careful delineation of character and place. I found it very moving.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_KszOMyQ5m4MVsHDXaGvwrPJ8iDiC9kmFuISi1KYm8jGGnNMJ5SMjlyJm5LpjZ3PzA92qx-dELn4MUPpSBU4ybQ3NOPUNjBXtymscQ_tWpBqyVBfb8euoGCaE133pGQIb1NHXT284J2UK/s1600/identificationofawoman.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_KszOMyQ5m4MVsHDXaGvwrPJ8iDiC9kmFuISi1KYm8jGGnNMJ5SMjlyJm5LpjZ3PzA92qx-dELn4MUPpSBU4ybQ3NOPUNjBXtymscQ_tWpBqyVBfb8euoGCaE133pGQIb1NHXT284J2UK/s320/identificationofawoman.png" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Screen capture from Criterion DVD of <b><i>Identification of a Woman</i></b></td></tr>
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6. <i><b>Identification of A Woman</b></i> - <a href="https://bampfa.org/event/identification-woman-1">BAMPFA</a><br />
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Profoundly strange and wonderful late period Antonioni that incorporates the tropes and plot of the urban giallo into his own concerns of disconnection and ennui. One scene where an inexplicable fog overtakes a car with the lead characters, and the plot, was especially haunting.<br />
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7. <b style="font-style: italic;">No Fear, No Die</b> - <a href="https://www.sfmoma.org/event/no-fear-no-die/">SFMoMA</a>, Modern Cinema: Claire Denis series <br />
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I got to see a bunch of films in this series and loved them all, but this is the one that stuck with me the most, a 1992 film about immigration, family, humiliation,and frustration set in the shadowy and drab world of underground cockfighting, starring the incomparable duo of Issac de Bankole and Alex Descas.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVxAmbycZGKy2NM0tTXUmQUNUIna90HWJrP8aJwLXZw8CBpmQQk37n9Pv2OsCD_UBWogWAF6DDxCLS7xgFlzhJ9J_m57z5-eOGu5blcwVSCo5v4h7EjWHaQ24uMj9dLjdFsL8RkUkiD3-e/s1600/malanoche.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="731" data-original-width="965" height="242" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVxAmbycZGKy2NM0tTXUmQUNUIna90HWJrP8aJwLXZw8CBpmQQk37n9Pv2OsCD_UBWogWAF6DDxCLS7xgFlzhJ9J_m57z5-eOGu5blcwVSCo5v4h7EjWHaQ24uMj9dLjdFsL8RkUkiD3-e/s320/malanoche.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i style="font-weight: bold;">Mala Noche</i> screen capture from Wolfe Video DVD of <b><i>Fabulous: The Story of Queer Cinema</i></b></td></tr>
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<b><i>Mala Noche</i></b> - <a href="https://www.roxie.com/ai1ec_event/10th-anniversary-of-milk-35mm-mala-noche-35mm/">Roxie</a>, Midnites for Maniacs Gus Van Sant Tribute <br />
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Like <i><b>Chameleon Street</b></i>, this is a film that i’d been hearing about forever and finally got to see and very much enjoyed. Often sublimely dream-like and very funny, it also contains perhaps the most honest portrayal of what it’s like to be young and in love and not loved back: obnoxiously horny, obsessive to the point of boring your loyal friends, prone to not-always-the-wisest decision-making. <br />
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<b><i>Drag Me To Hell</i></b> - Alamo Drafthouse<br />
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I’m a big fan of how Sam Raimi puts together an action sequence: gallopingly propulsive yet precisely detailed, Raimi manages to keep the viewer orientated within the frame while keeping the gas pedal pressed maniacally to the floor in terms of pacing. This film, his 2009 follow up to the Spiderman films, is some kind of pinnacle of his craft because it’s almost all action sequences, even most of the dialogue scenes. <br />
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<b><i>Godfather Part III</i></b> - <a href="https://dothebay.com/events/2018/7/8/the-godfather-trilogy">Castro</a><br />
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The unloved final chapter of Francis Ford Coppola’s crime saga was magnificent on the big screen, a final twist of the knife for the themes of betrayal, corruption, family, and the limits of control worked through in the previous two films. And, despite what you may have heard, Sofia Coppola is great in it.Brian Darrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17693169310367670898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2531345904528580427.post-47072024664601212422019-02-12T11:52:00.000-08:002019-02-12T11:52:03.280-08:00Frako Loden's 2018 Eyes<div class="separator" style="background-color: white; clear: both; line-height: 1.3em; margin: 0px 0px 0.75em;">
<i><span style="font-family: inherit;">The San Francisco Bay Area is still home to a rich cinephilic culture nurtured in large part by a diverse array of cinemas, programmers and moviegoers. I'm honored to present a selection of favorite screenings experienced by local cinephiles in 2018. An index of participants can be found <a href="https://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2019/01/i-only-have-two-eyes-2018.html" style="color: #e1771e;">here</a>. </span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: inherit;">Five-time IOHTE contributor Frako Loden is an educator and writer, at <a href="https://www.documentary.org/users/frako-loden">www.documentary.org</a>, <a href="https://eatdrinkfilms.com/?s=frako+loden">Eat Drink Films</a> and elsewhere.</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">1. <a href="https://bampfa.org/program/bergman-100-tribute-liv-ullmann">The</a> <a href="https://bampfa.org/program/bergman-100-silence-god">year</a>-<a href="https://bampfa.org/program/bergman-100-early-years">long</a> <a href="https://bampfa.org/program/bergman-100-summer-interlude">Ingmar</a> <a href="https://bampfa.org/program/bergman-100-emerging-style">Bergman</a> <a href="https://bampfa.org/program/focus-ingmar-bergman">centenary</a> <a href="https://bampfa.org/program/bergman-100-discoveries-rarities">program</a> <a href="https://bampfa.org/program/bergman-100-late-works">at</a> <a href="https://bampfa.org/program/bergman-100-full-circle">Pacific Film Archive</a>. I barely attended it—concentrating mostly on the remarkable 1940s
films—but it spurred me to watch all the Bergman DVDs I've collected and never
watched. I was astonished by my virgin viewings of <b><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Winter Light</i> </b>and the long-form version of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><b>Fanny and Alexander</b></i>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i style="font-weight: bold;">Le Trou</i> screen capture from Cohen Media DVD of <b><i>My Journey Through French Cinema</i></b></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">2. The Jacques Becker retrospective, also at <a href="https://bampfa.org/program/jacques-becker">Pacific Film Archive</a>. I did a completely inadequate writeup for it—I've still only touched
the surface of this French master's genius and look forward to repeat
screenings. I'm grateful for the 20-minute analysis of Becker's work in<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Bertrand Tavernier's <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://bampfa.org/event/my-journey-through-french-cinema">My Journey Through French Cinema</a></i></b>,
a masterwork in its own right.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">3. The "<a href="https://bampfa.org/program/documenting-vietnam">Documenting Vietnam</a>" series at PFA. The brief <b><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://bampfa.org/event/interviews-my-lai-veterans">Whitesburg Epic</a></i></b> (Appalshop, 1971) questions the citizens of a
small Appalachian town, suggesting that young people with nothing to do go to
war, especially when the town thinks that it's a good idea. The grueling
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://bampfa.org/event/interviews-my-lai-veterans">Interviewswith My Lai Veterans</a></i></b> (Joseph Strick, 1970) lays bare the toll on five
young soldiers forbidden to talk about their experience of this pivotal
civilian massacre. Frederick
Wiseman's 1971 <b><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://bampfa.org/event/interviews-my-lai-veterans">Basic Training</a></i></b> shows how individual personalities and independent
thinking are erased during the prelude to sending these boys off to war.
Other documentaries
were even more brutal and timely: Peter Gessner's 1966 <b><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://bampfa.org/event/winter-soldier-0">Time of the Locust</a></i></b> and the Winterfilm Collective's 1972 <b><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://bampfa.org/event/winter-soldier-0">Winter Soldier</a></i></b>. The latter documents
a speak-in organized by Vietnam Veterans Against the War in Detroit, as one
bearded and longhaired veteran after another, GIs and officers alike, testify
to the cruelty and dehumanization of their fellow soldiers. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkejORqDl6662MfdNUgSCK5p1f6loJAuBx0UFwQ-hFrhLtJ8bYqW-oH_uchxi2Pu-kEz512k8yOGeXZZ2673DCqkjyE8Qog_JwTh2RwJnpz9dDl6HPyM-LhJ65koynPb5_sda3DYw_0laH/s1600/Gosta+Berlings+Saga.AGILE.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="395" data-original-width="445" height="284" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkejORqDl6662MfdNUgSCK5p1f6loJAuBx0UFwQ-hFrhLtJ8bYqW-oH_uchxi2Pu-kEz512k8yOGeXZZ2673DCqkjyE8Qog_JwTh2RwJnpz9dDl6HPyM-LhJ65koynPb5_sda3DYw_0laH/s320/Gosta+Berlings+Saga.AGILE.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 12.8px;"><b><i>S</i></b></span><i style="font-weight: bold;">aga of Gö</i><i style="font-weight: bold;">sta Berling</i> image from San Francisco Silent Film Festival</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">4. The San Francisco Silent Film Festival, which for over 20
years has stayed at the pinnacle of the local film-festival pantheon with its
attention to the best prints and brilliant live musical accompaniment. After
its five-day run this summer, scenes from the French <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://silentfilm.org/archive-by-year/2018-festival/the-lighthouse-keepers">Lighthouse Keepers</a></i></b> (Jean
Grémillon, 1929) and the Swedish <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://silentfilm.org/archive/the-saga-of-gosta-berling">Saga of Gösta Berling</a></i></b><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>(Mauritz Stiller, 1924) still play in
my head. Even more recently, the December Day of Silents continued to astonish
with Jean Epstein's 1923 <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://silentfilm.org/archive-by-year/2018-a-day-of-silents/coeur-fidale">Coeur Fidèle</a></i></b> and my introduction to
the young Beatrice Lillie in Sam Taylor's 1926 farce <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://silentfilm.org/archive-by-year/2018-a-day-of-silents/exit-smiling">Exit Smiling</a></i></b>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">5. Wendell B. Harris, Jr.'s 1989 <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Chameleon Street</i></b> at
SFMOMA's "<a href="https://www.sfmoma.org/event/series/modern-cinema-black-powers/">Modern Cinema: Black Powers</a>" series. What an amazing film!
It really hasn't dated in its themes, techniques or cultural references. There
are mentions of "black Barbie," obsession with Marvel Comics
("my Thor voice"), Cocteau's <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><b>Beauty
and the Beast</b></i> and Edith Piaf. It ends with a re-telling of the fable of the
scorpion and the frog, which is no different from the lyrics of the song
"The Snake" that Donald Trump likes to repeat in speeches to his
base. The film is based on the true story of Detroiter William Douglas Street,
Jr. (played by Harris himself), a con man and impersonator who over the years
pretended to be a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Time </i>magazine
reporter, surgeon and civil rights attorney. At the beginning of the film, a
psychiatrist notes Street's "complementarity": the ability to inhabit
whatever persona someone else wants him to be. He knows all the tricks of being
something that he isn't. It's a way of getting back at, or simply surviving in,
the white world that won't let him do things legitimately. He has to be a
trickster, a con artist. It's a major form of code switching. He doesn't just
use his "white voice" (like in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><b>Sorry
to Bother You</b></i>)—he uses a kind of "white self," or at least a
black self that doesn't threaten the white powers that be and that gives him
entrée into their circles of privilege.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i style="font-weight: bold;">Personal Problems</i> screen capture from Kino DVD</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">6. Bill Gunn's 1980 <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Personal Problems</i></b> at the Alamo
Drafthouse, adapted from an idea by
writer Ishmael Reed (who at the Q&A established himself as the most righteously
curmudgeonly guy in the world, even managing to slag James Baldwin). This film,
by the director of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><b>Ganja and Hess</b></i>,
was considered lost because it was never aired on public TV as planned. Now
restored and starring culinary anthropologist and writer Vertamae
Smart-Grosvenor, who in a later career celebrated Gullah food and culture, we
can see Gunn's influence on Spike Lee's films in its inspired improvisations
and confrontations between aggrieved and angry people. Perhaps more than that,
it's a rare, deeply humane look at the private lives of black people. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />Brian Darrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17693169310367670898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2531345904528580427.post-52905625970390241692019-02-11T18:39:00.000-08:002019-02-12T16:22:04.854-08:00Ian Rice's 2018* Eyes<div style="background-color: white;">
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<i>The San Francisco Bay Area is still home to a rich cinephilic culture nurtured in large part by a diverse array of cinemas, programmers and moviegoers. I'm honored to present a selection of favorite screenings experienced by local cinephiles in 2018. An index of participants can be found <a href="https://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2019/01/i-only-have-two-eyes-2018.html">here</a>. </i></div>
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<i>First-time IOHTE contributor Ian Rice is part of the curatorial committee putting on ATA@SFPL events at the Noe Valley library, including an upcoming 16mm screening of Lee Grant's </i><b><a href="https://sfpl.org/index.php?pg=1036390301"><i>The Willmar 8</i></a></b><i> March 5th. </i><span style="text-align: center;"><i>He decided to provide a list of favorites from 2017 as well as one from 2018.</i></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVqZqADL-umWxlRc-ZvhwmKy2YDVvUdXEELs7nfidZFeJOVuADCqh4E74-7A2BCBVYKh14y_ie8tjEPnLYZTpXViClfewgS6Zo8rr-Sk2fwAzgq6s4KkrEpmuje3XuZUOlImCjbq95Dw-A/s1600/softfiction.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="535" data-original-width="715" height="149" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVqZqADL-umWxlRc-ZvhwmKy2YDVvUdXEELs7nfidZFeJOVuADCqh4E74-7A2BCBVYKh14y_ie8tjEPnLYZTpXViClfewgS6Zo8rr-Sk2fwAzgq6s4KkrEpmuje3XuZUOlImCjbq95Dw-A/s200/softfiction.png" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b style="font-size: 12.8px;"><i>Soft Fiction</i></b></td></tr>
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<span style="color: #26282a; font-family: inherit;">Jan 13: <b><i>Soft Fiction</i></b> (<a href="http://canyoncinema.com/2018/01/02/11318-soft-fiction-untitled-art-fair/">Palace of Fine Arts</a>, 16mm) A 2018 continuation of last year’s Chick Strand revelations, this too is a unique masterpiece in her catalogue, from its haunting (and subsequently symbolic) structuralist introduction to its harrowing storytelling and its brilliant musical interludes; it only grew more powerful on a second viewing a few months later. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #26282a; font-family: inherit;">Feb 10:<b><i> I Can't Sleep </i></b>(<a href="https://www.sfmoma.org/event/i-cant-sleep/">SFMOMA</a>, 35mm) Denis structures her narratives more elliptically and ultimately elegantly than most contemporary filmmakers, making them a sort of puzzle whose demands of engagement (similar to Altman’s theory of layered sound) encourage a heightened awareness of details and technique. <b><i>The Intruder</i></b> kept me reinterpreting its design for days and weeks afterward, but the force of the drama of this film - and its intimate, sensual compositions of skin of many colors - give it more of an edge. </span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b><i>The Night of June 13</i></b></td></tr>
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<span style="color: #26282a; font-family: inherit;">Feb 20: <b><i>The Night of June 13th</i></b> (<a href="https://stanfordtheatre.org/calendars/Paramount%201930-1935.html">Stanford</a>, 35mm) An incredible rarity in the Stanford’s Paramount series, there are no especially great stars or auteurist signposts to recommend it - unless, with some justification, one is a Charlie Ruggles completist. It wanders across a small town with great sensitivity toward distinct characters and slowly develops its conflict only to resolve it in a remarkably radical pre-Code conclusion, not so far off from Renoir's<b><i> M. Lange</i></b>.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #26282a; font-family: inherit;">Feb 22: <b><i>Elements </i></b>(New Nothing, 16mm) Several more of her films would show later in the year at a Lamfanti screening the night of the Space-X launch, the same program at which “Antonella’s Ultrasound” received its world premiere, but this Julie Murray short at a Baba Hillman Canyon salon stood apart from those also-excellent works of dread and sex and mutilated found footage as a more lyrical, gorgeous journey through natural landscapes with hypnotic rhythm. </span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i style="font-weight: bold;">Zodiac</i> screen capture from Paramount DVD</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #26282a;">M</span><span style="color: #26282a;">ay 27: <i><b>Zodiac</b></i> (<a href="https://www.ybca.org/whats-on/zodiac">YBCA</a>, 35mm) My last time at the YBCA - at least until management sees the error of their ways, reinstitutes their cinema program and rehires its excellent programming/curatorial and projection staff - this was a brilliant send-off as part of a seamy San Francisco series, one of whose shooting locations I realized afterward was a few blocks’ walking distance away. Its accumulation of small details and slowly-becoming-psychotic performances are hypnotizing. </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #26282a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Jul 22: <b><i>Wieners and Buns Musical </i></b>(<a href="http://minnesotastreetproject.com/events/screening/untitled-cinema-canyon-cinema-stinky-wieners-and-dreamy-beavers">Minnesota Street Project</a>, 16mm) Thanks to an eleventh-hour update on the Bay Area Film Calendar I was able to find out about this year’s Canyon Cinema cavalcade in time to squeeze in several rare masterworks from their catalogue, including pieces by Friederich, Gatten, Brakhage, Benning, Mack, Glabicki and many others seen last year as well at the Exploratorium. This McDowell short was the most fun and perhaps the most radical musical ever filmed, with some of the best low-budget opening titles. It screened again later that year but the sound was much better the first time. </span></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i style="font-weight: bold;">Commingled Containers </i>screen capture from Criterion DVD "By Brakhage"</td></tr>
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<span style="color: #26282a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Aug 21: <b><i>Comingled Containers</i></b> (<a href="https://www.roxie.com/ai1ec_event/paul-clipson-filmmaker/">Little Roxie</a>, 16mm) Because Canyon Cinema only has a handful of his films in their catalog, the year’s many well-deserved tributes to Paul Clipson's work ran the risk of overplaying things, especially by the point in the year at which a Little Roxie tribute screening appeared. But the brilliance of this particular night was that it - overseen by a good friend - was curated by Clipson himself, fitting his works into a wide array of others in an incredible dialogue and refreshment of films that had come to feel very familiar. This Brakhage short was one of many masterpieces (including works by Marie Menken and Konrad Steiner among others) I saw for the first time, utterly and unutterably magical in its light and shapes. </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #26282a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Aug 22: <i><b>One from the Heart </b></i>(<a href="https://dothebay.com/events/2018/8/22/blade-runner-one-from-the-heart">Castro</a>, 35mm) The second half of one of the year’s greatest two-venue double features after Todd Haynes’s spellbinding <i><b>Velvet Goldmine</b></i>, I began this viewing feeling like the cinematography (maybe the finest hour both of Vittorio Storaro and of Hollywood studio technique) was far better than the flimsy and insipid narrative but soon had the epiphany that this was (or at least might have been) Coppola’s intention all along - the plot is there merely as the simplest of archetypes to push the mind and eye back toward the power of the image, a different sort of “pure cinema.” </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #26282a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Sep 15: <b><i>The Caretaker's Daughter </i></b>(<a href="https://nitrateville.com/viewtopic.php?t=27062">Niles Essanay</a>, 16mm) Despite discovering a slew of incredible new Laurel & Hardy and Keaton films this year there was something to me more special about getting to know the work of Charley Chase - namely the intricacy and machinations of his plots, which slowly accumulate small details that eventually coalesce into extraordinary gags, as with the pinnacle of this one, a setpiece that anticipates and even outdoes a similar one in Leo McCarey’s later <i><b>Duck Soup</b></i>. </span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjz5gqtrGUGCcLRFxZi3I1YU43lll1xw9a71mC3oQMR8xy8UzprdlOXZMvHEd7afBl9p8c-nT1eIPd3o7803kNG1JEDD8IblW4FyaWUdE0dtx9B3fdKlZsez9Zo_oElkJM8tU-l3j4e2VAo/s1600/thedayibecameawoman.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="619" data-original-width="967" height="204" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjz5gqtrGUGCcLRFxZi3I1YU43lll1xw9a71mC3oQMR8xy8UzprdlOXZMvHEd7afBl9p8c-nT1eIPd3o7803kNG1JEDD8IblW4FyaWUdE0dtx9B3fdKlZsez9Zo_oElkJM8tU-l3j4e2VAo/s320/thedayibecameawoman.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i style="font-weight: bold;">The Day I Became A Woman</i> screen capture from Olive Films DVD</td></tr>
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<span style="color: #26282a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Sep 29: <i><b>The Day I Became a Woman</b></i> (<a href="https://bampfa.org/event/day-i-became-woman-2">PFA</a>, 35mm) An early-in-the-year screening of <b><i>Salaam Cinema</i></b> became a prelude to a wonderful series that encompassed the whole Makhmalbaf family of filmmakers, none of whose work I’d ever seen before and almost all of which was quietly poetic in its storytelling while enchanting in its imagery. This tripartite work by the cinematriarch of the family gets special recognition from me because (among many other things) its middle section features the best depiction of any film I’ve seen of the experience of riding a bicycle, both how it feels to be humming along the road and how it feels to be avoiding other encroaching issues! With Lupino’s <b><i>Hard, Fast and Beautiful</i></b>, further proof that more women should direct sports films.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #26282a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Here's top 2017, in order of screening date only, culled from a <a href="https://letterboxd.com/zannennagara/list/100-essential-repertory-viewings-of-2017/detail/">larger list</a>: </span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #26282a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Jan 14:<b><i> Showgirls</i></b> (<a href="https://www.roxie.com/ai1ec_event/robocop-showgirls/">Roxie</a>, 35mm) </span></span><br />
<span style="color: #26282a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Feb 4:<b><i> Come and See</i></b> (<a href="https://ybca.org/whats-on/come-and-see">YBCA</a>, 35mm) </span></span><br />
<span style="color: #26282a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Jun 18: <b><i>Les enfants terribles </i></b>(<a href="https://bampfa.org/event/les-enfants-terribles-2">PFA</a>, 35mm) </span></span><br />
<span style="color: #26282a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Jul 28: <b><i>Footlight Parade</i></b> (<a href="https://stanfordtheatre.org/calendars/Warners%202017.html">Stanford</a>, 35mm) </span></span><br />
<span style="color: #26282a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Aug 4: <b><i>Election 2 </i></b>(<a href="https://www.sfmoma.org/event/triad-election/">SFMOMA</a>, 35mm)</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #26282a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Oct 14: <b><i>Loose Ends </i></b>(<a href="http://www.atasite.org/2017/10/14/other-cinema-16mm-mothership/">ATA</a>/Other Cinema, 16mm) </span></span><br />
<span style="color: #26282a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Oct 15: <b><i>Crystal Voyager</i></b> (<a href="https://www.ybca.org/whats-on/crystal-voyager">YBCA</a>, 35mm) </span></span><br />
<span style="color: #26282a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Oct 18: <b><i>Chromatic Phantoms</i></b> (<a href="https://bampfa.org/event/films-claudio-caldini">PFA</a>, 3 x Super 8) </span></span><br />
<span style="color: #26282a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Oct 24: <b><i>Take Off </i></b>(<a href="http://canyoncinema.com/2017/10/18/102417-women-take-off/">California College of the Arts</a>, 16mm) </span></span><br />
<span style="color: #26282a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Dec 10: <b><i>Light Music </i></b>(<a href="http://www.lightfieldfilm.org/2017-program-8/">The Lab</a>, 2 x 16mm)</span></span></div>
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Brian Darrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17693169310367670898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2531345904528580427.post-83500376299449594102019-02-11T10:53:00.000-08:002019-02-11T12:52:30.857-08:00Michael Fox's 2018 Eyes<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
<i>The San Francisco Bay Area is still home to a rich cinephilic culture nurtured in large part by a diverse array of cinemas, programmers and moviegoers. I'm honored to present a selection of favorite screenings experienced by local cinephiles in 2018. An index of participants can be found <a href="https://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2019/01/i-only-have-two-eyes-2018.html">here</a>. </i></div>
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<i>First-time IOHTE contributor Michael Fox is a film journalist and critic for <a href="https://www.kqed.org/author/mfox">KQED Arts </a>and the curator and host of the Mechanics' Institute's <a href="https://www.milibrary.org/events/cinemalit-film-series">CinemaLit</a> screening program.</i></div>
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Here is my 2018 list. I promise to get out more in 2019.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhg2nOn0Kpfv8FV_3Ng3bQJvTrk7p1mQAFSXtmg2ktzxnU3JtBQpTaMRJlq6fpxqsKNFGXff7M2WW9_2aTwzWHt6StcLp3swJU_k95QXLhgJi85IZoQLoOk5VpZDrbwx_QM1kMOMZ_Ng6i8/s1600/persona.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="881" data-original-width="1193" height="236" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhg2nOn0Kpfv8FV_3Ng3bQJvTrk7p1mQAFSXtmg2ktzxnU3JtBQpTaMRJlq6fpxqsKNFGXff7M2WW9_2aTwzWHt6StcLp3swJU_k95QXLhgJi85IZoQLoOk5VpZDrbwx_QM1kMOMZ_Ng6i8/s320/persona.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i style="font-weight: bold;">Persona</i> screen capture from Criterion DVD</td></tr>
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1. <i><b>Persona</b></i> (1966) with Liv Ullmann on hand at <a href="https://bampfa.org/event/persona-5">BAMPFA</a>: I spent a little time with the classics in 2018.<br />
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2. <b><i>The Crime of Monsieur Lange</i></b> (1936) at <a href="https://bampfa.org/event/crime-monsieur-lange-0">BAMPFA</a>: Our affections for various directors naturally wax and wane as we get older, but I can't imagine ever falling out of love with Jean Renoir (especially 1930s Renoir).<br />
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3. <b><i>La Dolce Vita</i></b> (1960) at the <a href="https://prod3.agileticketing.net/websales/pages/info.aspx?evtinfo=390995~5f3806a2-f489-4d15-9d58-c956ccef3198&epguid=ac1a2009-b847-4637-8848-da0ee8d006fe&">Castro</a>: Every time I see a Mastroianni film, I'm persuaded all over again that he's the greatest screen actor of all time. <br />
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4. <i><b>Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song</b></i> (1971) at Alamo Drafthouse: Melvin Van Peebles was a bad mutha.<br />
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5. <b><i>The Cameraman</i></b> (1928) at the <a href="https://www.milibrary.org/events/cameraman-1928-jul-20-2018">Mechanics' Institute</a>: Forgive me for including one of my screenings, but few things are as fun as a room full of adults falling for a Buster Keaton film they'd never seen.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiA6QRexvbk2HnD8Cjd1JHqxwzyb6w2agaIo1wP2tUWtZU78UUpql9zUWZRDjcUhR_ZK3TstqyLm88420GAnauFNsIp68hW0hjEMxTdDr3AEJi-_bfW2sV7hfoeodacbr5oGBukD2APC_lI/s1600/Aparajito.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="703" data-original-width="953" height="295" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiA6QRexvbk2HnD8Cjd1JHqxwzyb6w2agaIo1wP2tUWtZU78UUpql9zUWZRDjcUhR_ZK3TstqyLm88420GAnauFNsIp68hW0hjEMxTdDr3AEJi-_bfW2sV7hfoeodacbr5oGBukD2APC_lI/s400/Aparajito.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i style="font-weight: bold;">Aparajto </i>screen capture from Criterion DVD</td></tr>
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6. The Apu Trilogy at <a href="https://www.sfmoma.org/event/apu-trilogy/">SFMOMA</a>: Satyajit Ray made it look so easy—and he was just getting started.Brian Darrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17693169310367670898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2531345904528580427.post-74284658263963176162019-02-10T16:30:00.000-08:002019-02-11T10:26:05.271-08:00Carl Martin's 2018 Eyes<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;"><i>The San Francisco Bay Area is still home to a rich cinephilic culture nurtured in large part by a diverse array of cinemas, programmers and moviegoers. I'm honored to present a selection of favorite screenings experienced by local cinephiles in 2018. An index of participants can be found <a href="https://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2019/01/i-only-have-two-eyes-2018.html" style="color: #e1771e;">here</a>. </i><br /><i><br /></i><i>Ten-time IOHTE contributor Carl Martin is keeper of the <a href="http://www.filmonfilm.org/filmcalendar/">Bay Area</a> and <a href="http://www.filmonfilm.org/filmcalendar/?region=LA">Los Angeles</a> Film Calendars for the Film on Film Foundation, where he also occasionally <a href="http://www.filmonfilm.org/blog/?ID=108">blogs</a>.</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I didn't think I could do it. Did I even see 10 films total in the Bay Area? Yes, enough to produce this:</span></span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjttXCoc9r51Kr9U5eNw_49YZv-3gF4ztDKHRHyyyrrmlCr_oY8iKf71MswG59kb9C8pr1HFGJ-JcGc5C83aQbp0M1LpwxcQ9r_wx2J4w8CFRawh970eEFC3dV2S_lL_SZF6vr_Dpb4hRkV/s1600/overlord.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" data-original-height="534" data-original-width="900" height="189" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjttXCoc9r51Kr9U5eNw_49YZv-3gF4ztDKHRHyyyrrmlCr_oY8iKf71MswG59kb9C8pr1HFGJ-JcGc5C83aQbp0M1LpwxcQ9r_wx2J4w8CFRawh970eEFC3dV2S_lL_SZF6vr_Dpb4hRkV/s320/overlord.png" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;"><i style="font-weight: bold;">Overlord</i> screen capture from Criterion DVD</span></td></tr>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">March 28, <a href="https://www.roxie.com/ai1ec_event/staff-pick-overlord-35mm/?instance_id=25789">Roxie</a>: <b><i>Overlord</i></b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">This d-day account combines insane archival WW2 footage with beautiful new (mid-70's) scenes to present a poetic, personal picture of war's tragedy, confusion, and meaninglessness.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">April 4, New Mission: <i><b>Taxi Zum Klo</b></i></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Many years ago I encountered this on VHS and thought, "Ha ha, taxi to the bathroom... what the heck is this?" (paraphrased.) And i saw some crazy shit i had never seen before. It was interesting enough that it stuck in my brain though. Seeing it again decades later confirmed my hunch that Frank Ripploh's autobiographical, self-referential, elliptical, very explicit film is indeed a very important work of "experimental" cinema as well as classic gay smut!</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">April 16, New Mission: <b><i>To Live and Die in L.A.</i></b></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">A single tracking shot during a car chase is better than most entire movies.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">June 2, <a href="http://www.silentfilm.org/archive/mare-nostrum">Castro</a>: <b><i>Mare Nostrum</i></b></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">A haunting, dreamy tale of maritime intrigue (mostly not at sea if I remember rightly). Guillermo Del Toro stole the ending for one of his crap movies.</span></span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJtWqfeEsL78Ikxm3kGTBrZSh29uiUKgnqv4H00_MoXrqRWENN20UM5jstGKFCKqlQRFebvyZmOe5jAPhqNdB8HCmOk34D-KVZSeZpLJRmgKergxsHfBLhfeS6cH_MAwZe72PXI4w-50fu/s1600/godfatheriii.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" data-original-height="647" data-original-width="1143" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJtWqfeEsL78Ikxm3kGTBrZSh29uiUKgnqv4H00_MoXrqRWENN20UM5jstGKFCKqlQRFebvyZmOe5jAPhqNdB8HCmOk34D-KVZSeZpLJRmgKergxsHfBLhfeS6cH_MAwZe72PXI4w-50fu/s640/godfatheriii.png" width="640" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;"><i style="font-weight: bold;">The Godfather Part III</i> screen capture from Paramount DVD</span></td></tr>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">July 8, <a href="https://dothebay.com/events/2018/7/8/the-godfather-trilogy">Castro</a>: <i><b>The Godfather, Part III</b></i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Most folks dismiss this movie for some reason and it is rarely shown. I'd been waiting to see it for some time. It's really good! Andy Garcia's performance is dynamite, and Sofia Coppola's is unfairly maligned. Themes of power, loyalty, and betrayal over generations carry the film through to its operatic denouement. As for the print, it had succumbed to vinegar syndrome and wouldn't hold focus worth a damn.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">July 18, <a href="https://www.roxie.com/ai1ec_event/sleaze-apocalypse-exploitation-trailer-trash-35mm/">Roxie</a>: <i>Sleaze Apocalypse</i></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I like outrageous trailers so of course I was going to watch this compilation show. They came from Joel Shepard's collection so this is also an excuse to bemoan the loss of his curatorial hand at YBCA.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">August 22, <a href="https://www.roxie.com/ai1ec_event/staff-picks-velvet-goldmine/?instance_id=28867">Roxie</a>: <b><i>Velvet Goldmine</i></b></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I didn't much care for this one on its initial release. Maybe the trailer led me astray. Or maybe the weird Oscar Wilde interlude at the beginning threw me. Indeed the film can hardly keep up with its own ideas. I'm not going to say it's Haynes's masterpiece but it's solid and is full of killer songs i'm largely unfamiliar with.</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br clear="none" id="yiv3486733876yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1547082341008_3832" /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">October 30, <a href="https://www.ticketweb.com/event/donnie-darko-hollywood-knights-castro-theatre-tickets/8831515">Castro</a>: <b><i>The Hollywood Knights</i></b></span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br clear="none" id="yiv3486733876yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1547082341008_3834" /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">My old boss was fond of quoting this one and i finally got to slake my curiosity. Floyd Mutrux, whose debut was the ultra-bleak<i><b> Dusty and Sweets McGee</b></i>, delivers a raunchy ensemble comedy. <i><b>American Graffiti</b></i> as if directed by Robert Altman. It does have a wang to it!</span></span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdu2N9tKdMco0fsCFObtRBrqXNSsqyVVkIIJj5wo8RHSr98rMNW9wY4Io0FCj26nJRv21-dSxwjAqJc-m6ZRSRXAJ8oXA6Du2DWQH_EpMBSl70NoXvaqGRLld5s_bLK3k9cG8awMxiKWm6/s1600/sanshirosugata.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" data-original-height="679" data-original-width="893" height="303" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdu2N9tKdMco0fsCFObtRBrqXNSsqyVVkIIJj5wo8RHSr98rMNW9wY4Io0FCj26nJRv21-dSxwjAqJc-m6ZRSRXAJ8oXA6Du2DWQH_EpMBSl70NoXvaqGRLld5s_bLK3k9cG8awMxiKWm6/s400/sanshirosugata.png" width="400" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;"><i style="font-weight: bold;">Sanshiro Sugata </i>screen capture from Eclipse DVD</span></td></tr>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">December 16, <a href="https://bampfa.org/event/sanshiro-sugata-2018">PFA</a>: <b><i>Sanshiro Sugata</i></b></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br clear="none" id="yiv3486733876yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1547082341008_3846" /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Kurosawa's first film surprised me doubly: I was sure I'd seen it before but hadn't, and it's a good, sure-handed effort. The various devices used to show the passage of time impressed me particularly. I believe I detected a thematic anticipation of<b><i> Yojimbo</i></b> and other later films.</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br clear="none" id="yiv3486733876yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1547082341008_3856" /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">Unknown date, private screening: <b><i>Mosori Monika</i></b></span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br clear="none" id="yiv3486733876yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1547082341008_3858" /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Chick Strand's film starts with a McGraw-Hill logo. Is it possible that this "ethnographic" film was shown to schoolchildren? Would they have caught on to its subtle subversions? A voiceover with a "benign" colonialist perspective is challenged by other voices and images to present a complex portrait of colliding cultures.</span></span>Brian Darrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17693169310367670898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2531345904528580427.post-88095112113592011272019-02-10T09:30:00.000-08:002019-02-10T09:30:10.138-08:00Terri Saul's 2018 Eyes<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
<i style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The San Francisco Bay Area is still home to a rich cinephilic culture nurtured in large part by a diverse array of cinemas, programmers and moviegoers. I'm honored to present a selection of favorite screenings experienced by local cinephiles in 2018. An index of participants can be found <a href="https://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2019/01/i-only-have-two-eyes-2018.html" style="color: #e1771e;">here</a>. </span></i></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i><br /></i><i>Nine-time IOHTE contributor Terri Saul </i><i style="background-color: white;">is a Berkeley-based artist and writer.</i></span><br />
<i><br /></i>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">Out of
all the films I saw with other people in Bay Area cinemas in 2018, there were
only two older films. The others were 2017 films from other countries that
premiered in the US in 2018. As interesting as the festival screenings were, if
I could only pick two films out of all the movies I saw, these two older films
would be at the top of my year-end list.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9a989L1aQVDpN3LD3t2Gpts31LprXUsQTCCeZcX09KJymlhweOQkVoj7vRujfJD0wX1qBFHNvpBxAw_9vclpjrC-uXWFwFW0HpE-GlBMpo5NZksGqWOUHb2glOjFw_5OL0bMTjYafGvcc/s1600/asabovesobelow.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="783" data-original-width="1049" height="238" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9a989L1aQVDpN3LD3t2Gpts31LprXUsQTCCeZcX09KJymlhweOQkVoj7vRujfJD0wX1qBFHNvpBxAw_9vclpjrC-uXWFwFW0HpE-GlBMpo5NZksGqWOUHb2glOjFw_5OL0bMTjYafGvcc/s320/asabovesobelow.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i style="font-weight: bold;">As Above, So Below</i> screen capture from UCLA DVD "L.A. Rebellion: Creating a New Black Cinema"</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<b style="text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><br /></span></b>
<span style="text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">1. <b>As Above, So Below</b></span></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; text-indent: -0.25in;"> (1973, dir. Larry Clark)
screened at the <a href="https://bampfa.org/event/above-so-below">Pacific Film Archive</a> in Berkeley on Wed, 11/14/2018, at 7:00
p.m. preceded by short, <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Everybody Dies!</b>
(2016, dir. Frances Bodomo), followed by an art slideshow and conversation with
Larry Clark, and Ra Malika Imhotep and Jamal Batts with The Black Aesthetic.</span><br />
<span style="color: #343434; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #343434; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">In the opening short, the grim reaper as a matriarch decides
which children live and die as part of a surreal children’s television show. Everybody
dies.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Also
centered on the precarious, the feature,</span><i style="font-family: "times new roman", serif;"> <b>As
Above, So Below</b>,</i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"> is a surreal and spiritual portrait of Black liberation
and rebellion in a Chicago neighborhood, featuring a recovering Marine who
finds compassion and community in a neighborhood coffee shop. Another safe
haven, the neighborhood church, also provides dramatic cover for something else.
Clark says he made the film in his community, by his community, for his
community, and after surveying the audience, concluded it was not made for a
large portion of the people attending the screening.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">As
a layer, the HUAC (House Un-American Activities Committee) soundtrack drones on
in the background, which at first seems to be included for dramatic emphasis,
but is actually an archival tape of US government hysteria and plans for a
forthcoming military occupation of Black neighborhoods.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Clark
asked us to please try to approach the story through the lens of 1973 and not
to project current situations on to it. It was difficult to follow his
instructions, and not apply the early 70s setting to today.</span><br />
<b style="text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"></span></b><br />
<b style="text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"></span></b>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjj6Kr8BwlIBZoYG4ODWdaHDPNJQOdXNglZ5f1V0tsNMc2VMEMJmTIF_EvxBbDXmHYAbXhOq0wPY4aBiEfCI-GUCxcPrDweovgNsnM_e8NpP37IbHLoOMWY6sn8mLAixMJtW5Ll_lY9uQPX/s1600/summerinsanrizuka.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="609" data-original-width="863" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjj6Kr8BwlIBZoYG4ODWdaHDPNJQOdXNglZ5f1V0tsNMc2VMEMJmTIF_EvxBbDXmHYAbXhOq0wPY4aBiEfCI-GUCxcPrDweovgNsnM_e8NpP37IbHLoOMWY6sn8mLAixMJtW5Ll_lY9uQPX/s320/summerinsanrizuka.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Screen capture of <b><i>Summer in Sanrizuka</i></b> excerpt from Academy Video VHS of <b><i>100 Years Of Japanese Cinema</i></b></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="text-indent: 0px;">
<span style="text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">2. </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-weight: bold;">Summer in Sanrizuka</span></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; text-indent: -0.25in;"> (1968, dir. Shinsuke Ogawa)
screened at the <a href="https://bampfa.org/event/battle-front-liberation-japan%E2%80%94summer-sanrizuka">Pacific Film Archive</a> in Berkeley on Thursday, 11/29/2018, at 7:00
p.m.</span></div>
<div style="text-indent: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-indent: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">A
chaotic documentary created by the filmmaking collective Ogawa Pro, follows
radicalized student activists and poor farmers in </span><span style="color: #262626; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Sanrizuka</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">,
fronted by lines of sturdy women linking arms, as they come together to resist
eviction from their land to make way for the Narita International Airport which
was built in </span><span style="color: #262626; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Chiba Prefecture, east of Tokyo and
resisted for a decade.</span></div>
<div style="text-indent: 0px;">
<span style="color: #262626; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-indent: 0px;">
<span style="color: #262626; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Cops and corporations attempt to criminalize people occupying
their own land. Residents, in particular the elderly, find ways to shame them
for doing so. Young and old come together to resist water cannons, land
surveyors, and capitalists, using rocks, shit catapults, sticks, plastic helmets,
hand-towels, and other defensive gear made out of materials available on a farm.
The day-to-day gains and losses are recorded by a crew constantly tasked with
compressing time during the unfolding of a standoff with an unknown trajectory
or endpoint.</span></div>
<div style="text-indent: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-indent: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Partway
through production, the cameraperson is arrested. What follows is a break with
the shooting style of the previous section. For the rest of the doc, a portrait
style emerges as we move closer in and spend moments in stillness, confronting
and in some ways disarming the cops via a camera’s gaze.</span></div>
<div style="text-indent: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-indent: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">This
exchange of one set of eyes for another offers an additional layer of
understanding, pulling the viewer inside the community in a way that only two
eyes and one lens never could.</span></div>
</div>
Brian Darrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17693169310367670898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2531345904528580427.post-35598446926657165302019-02-09T16:32:00.000-08:002019-02-09T16:32:05.988-08:00Claire Bain's 2018 Eyes<i style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The San Francisco Bay Area is still home to a rich cinephilic culture nurtured in large part by a diverse array of cinemas, programmers and moviegoers. I'm honored to present a selection of favorite screenings experienced by local cinephiles in 2018. An index of participants can be found <a href="https://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2019/01/i-only-have-two-eyes-2018.html" style="color: #e1771e;">here</a>. </span></i><br />
<i style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></i>
<i>Four-time contributor Claire Bain is an <a href="http://personbain-index.blogspot.com/">artist</a> based in San Francisco.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZQPDhcHVhOFLZHetrvBqSowNjdwcF-LqenH8fNw3sdVBkWACZJZJS2HVQCtypckxIsrN6Mh44ugRiP0q0PzgbRSTc_oVeS0mTfRHLqqsWE74yJ32W6l_XKtKiCLEORorL7-2EXz1XIDyx/s1600/Calle+Chula.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="194" data-original-width="259" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZQPDhcHVhOFLZHetrvBqSowNjdwcF-LqenH8fNw3sdVBkWACZJZJS2HVQCtypckxIsrN6Mh44ugRiP0q0PzgbRSTc_oVeS0mTfRHLqqsWE74yJ32W6l_XKtKiCLEORorL7-2EXz1XIDyx/s1600/Calle+Chula.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i style="font-weight: bold;">Calle Chula </i>image from <a href="http://www.vdb.org/titles/calle-chula">Video Data Bank</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
“<a href="https://www.roxie.com/ai1ec_event/sflff-have-you-seen-her-la-mision/">Have You Seen Her? La Misión</a>” ...”20th year anniversary retrospective showcase [of] the varied responses to the transformations experienced in the Mission District during the late 1990s dot.com boom....” Roxie / Cine + Más San Francisco Latino Film Festival<br />
<br />
<b><i>Wicked Woman</i></b> <a href="https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/3210671">Castro Theater</a><br />
<br />
<b><i>When the Beat Drops</i></b> (not an old movie, but independent). <a href="https://www.frameline.org/festival/film-guide/when-the-beat-drops">Frameline42</a> LGBTQ Film Festival<br />
<br />
<b><i>Rififi</i></b> <a href="https://dothebay.com/events/2018/3/28/bob-le-flambeur-new-4k-restoration">Castro Theater</a><br />
<br />
<b><i>Black Orpheus</i></b> <a href="https://dothebay.com/events/2018/10/21/i-am-cuba-black-orpheus">Castro Theater</a><br />
<br />
<i><b>West Side Story</b></i> <a href="https://www.sfarts.org/event.cfm?Event_Num=79590">Castro Theater</a><br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_2Ewj52K4kUMsxfHvvImaJlvD7-RXBmGxYJIfSq23nsSFnbWZZHVTMpiFzffBR5Yj4ZU4Djz8XXOeldktpJcchA6qjs_Aj_8T7xrLN2X2Fkr2IpPMe9OJvWDXZul2xaqlDisDMuhon8K-/s1600/zeroforconduct.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="783" data-original-width="919" height="272" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_2Ewj52K4kUMsxfHvvImaJlvD7-RXBmGxYJIfSq23nsSFnbWZZHVTMpiFzffBR5Yj4ZU4Djz8XXOeldktpJcchA6qjs_Aj_8T7xrLN2X2Fkr2IpPMe9OJvWDXZul2xaqlDisDMuhon8K-/s320/zeroforconduct.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i style="font-weight: bold;">Zero For Conduct</i> screen capture from Criterion DVD</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<b><i>Zero for Conduct</i></b> and <b><i>À Propos de Nice</i></b> by Jean Vigo, <a href="https://bampfa.org/event/zero-conduct-2">Pacific Film Archive</a><br />
<br />
<b><i>The Adventures of Robin Hood</i></b> (with Errol Flynn) <a href="https://www.ticketweb.com/event/casablanca-robin-hood-castro-theatre-tickets/8984105">Castro Theater</a><br />
<br />
<b><i><a href="http://www.midcenturyproductions.com/">Marie-Octobre</a></i></b> Roxie Theater<br />
<br />
<a href="https://sfpl.org/?pg=1032162801">All</a> <a href="https://sfpl.org/index.php?pg=1032163101">of</a> <a href="https://sfpl.org/index.php?pg=1034344801">the</a> <a href="https://sfpl.org/?pg=1035421501">ATA@SFPL</a> screeningsBrian Darrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17693169310367670898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2531345904528580427.post-90302456287439864132019-02-09T09:30:00.000-08:002019-02-09T09:30:04.266-08:00Joel Shepard's 2018 Eyes<div class="separator" style="background-color: white; clear: both; line-height: 1.3em; margin: 0px 0px 0.75em;">
<i><span style="font-family: inherit;">The San Francisco Bay Area is still home to a rich cinephilic culture nurtured in large part by a diverse array of cinemas, programmers and moviegoers. I'm honored to present a selection of favorite screenings experienced by local cinephiles in 2018. An index of participants can be found <a href="https://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2019/01/i-only-have-two-eyes-2018.html" style="color: #e1771e;">here</a>. </span></i></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i style="background-color: white;"><br /></i><i style="background-color: white;">First-time IOHTE contributor </i><i>Joel Shepard is an independent film programmer.</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">A pregnant wife and the loss of my longtime job made 2018 an odd, wonderful and challenging year, and my list of notable (not necessarily “best”) rep screenings possibly reflects this... </span><br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4ZugYDD_gJHMnizcpujk7gTgTyumSvBSsLBuhUuUtYuO8W4a6m9NyVZ2ngjVsGBzQqA3zC-S9UTNAJlKcEJRbyn4phFjPYR14XFw0M0gCxqrg0gfThYS6DlD2SB7dZGhzlXHzeRGDKgdV/s1600/Mother+Krauses.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="720" height="222" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4ZugYDD_gJHMnizcpujk7gTgTyumSvBSsLBuhUuUtYuO8W4a6m9NyVZ2ngjVsGBzQqA3zC-S9UTNAJlKcEJRbyn4phFjPYR14XFw0M0gCxqrg0gfThYS6DlD2SB7dZGhzlXHzeRGDKgdV/s320/Mother+Krauses.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Image from <a href="http://www.silentfilm.org/archive/mother-krauses-journey-to-happiness">San Francisco Silent Film Festival</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
1. <b><i>Mother Krause’s Journey to Happiness</i></b> (<a href="http://www.silentfilm.org/archive/mother-krauses-journey-to-happiness">Castro</a>) <br />
<br />
This downbeat drama about the working poor in Weimar Germany was the revelation of the 2018 San Francisco Silent Film Festival.<br />
<br />
2. <b><i>Deliverance</i></b> (<a href="https://dothebay.com/events/2018/10/17/deliverance-the-longest-yard">Castro</a>)<br />
<br />
John Boorman’s poetic meditation on landscape and violence was the highlight of the Castro’s much-appreciated though poorly attended Burt Reynolds tribute series.<br />
<br />
3. <b><i>Zodiac</i></b> (<a href="https://www.ybca.org/whats-on/zodiac">YBCA</a>)<br />
<br />
Still David Fincher’s best film, an overwhelming portrait of minds ruined by the impossibility of resolution.<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqLIyw3U5oUMkX2ckK4quPLnaxzUbVkoO7u5hAS8FXc8RIQMT2auSoxLL8f78e7_JXc9IGJ_VY_DOEbyyQuxx9hrn8HBfj5q0OPIm6Q2vBvQg8A3R6QiJKx2SXCsG5mfdiVbcGlPd3bBUJ/s1600/halloween.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="613" data-original-width="1415" height="275" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqLIyw3U5oUMkX2ckK4quPLnaxzUbVkoO7u5hAS8FXc8RIQMT2auSoxLL8f78e7_JXc9IGJ_VY_DOEbyyQuxx9hrn8HBfj5q0OPIm6Q2vBvQg8A3R6QiJKx2SXCsG5mfdiVbcGlPd3bBUJ/s640/halloween.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Screen capture from Anchor Bay DVD of <b><i>Halloween</i></b></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
4. <b><i>Halloween</i></b> (<a href="https://dothebay.com/events/2018/10/26/the-fog-halloween">Castro</a>)<br />
<br />
Very strange to see this film again, so long after having been completely electrified and terrified by it at the age of fourteen at a neighborhood theater in Edina, Minnesota. On this viewing, the sexism is a little annoying, as is the fact that hardly anything happens until the last reel.<br />
<br />
5. <b><i>Sisters</i></b> (<a href="https://www.sfgate.com/movies/article/De-Palma-s-Sisters-a-key-film-in-Margot-13029018.php">Castro</a>)<br />
<br />
This great and somewhat idiotic slab of gutbucket sleaze with an artsy patina looked superb on the giant Castro screen.<br />
<br />
6. <b><i>Time to Die</i></b> (<a href="https://www.ybca.org/whats-on/time-to-die">YBCA</a>)<br />
<br />
Flawed, but an austere sign of great things to come from the mind of Arturo Ripstein in his first feature from 1966.<br />
<br />
7. <b><i>Car Wash</i></b> (<a href="https://www.sfmoma.org/event/car-wash/">SFMOMA</a>)<br />
<br />
Originally saw this when I was 12 years old at a downtown grindhouse. I found it just mildly amusing, but it brought down the house. It hasn’t aged well. 40 years later it felt like the whitest semi-blaxploitation film of the 70s.<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhf5MCyIp1bV9VEUi-sKx5J_CgHN7m9BxwQgnnsQiQGUnAM99_A4ncHB5-zkD-W0lNuSaXApWgF6FQ7reI3CnP7jO68X6WzvSBJK3kzbNtirftQCyScoqM_HGV7QLFkqQwWEaC9USpd7YKW/s1600/lechantdustyrene.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="621" data-original-width="1437" height="172" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhf5MCyIp1bV9VEUi-sKx5J_CgHN7m9BxwQgnnsQiQGUnAM99_A4ncHB5-zkD-W0lNuSaXApWgF6FQ7reI3CnP7jO68X6WzvSBJK3kzbNtirftQCyScoqM_HGV7QLFkqQwWEaC9USpd7YKW/s400/lechantdustyrene.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b style="font-style: italic;">Le chant du styrène </b>screen capture from Criterion DVD of <b><i>Last Year in Marienbad</i></b><b style="font-size: 12.8px;"><i> </i></b><i style="font-size: medium; text-align: start;"><b> </b></i></td></tr>
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8. <i><b>Le chant du styrène</b></i> (<a href="https://www.sfmoma.org/event/tribute-paul-clipson/">SFMOMA</a>)<br />
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Plastic has never been more beautiful than in this majestic industrial film by Alain Renais, with gleaming cinematography by Sacha Vierny. Presented as part of the Paul Clipson tribute, held in June.<br />
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9. <i>Sleaze Apocalypse</i> (<a href="https://www.roxie.com/ai1ec_event/sleaze-apocalypse-exploitation-trailer-trash-35mm/">Roxie</a>)<br />
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OK, maybe I’m a dick for including my own program on my list, but seriously...this compilation of impossibly rare 35mm exploitation trailers was the hardest-edge and most darkly revealing 80 minutes of film archaeology presented all year.Brian Darrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17693169310367670898noreply@blogger.com0