Hell On Frisco Bay

Exhilarating Sadness

2009-11-06T17:49:00.000-08:00

More than ten years ago, the San Francisco Asian Art Museum, then still located in Golden Gate Park, hosted a retrospective of the work of Taiwanese master filmmaker Hou Hsiao-Hsien. I was preparing an extended trip abroad myself at the time, and missed the entire cycle, but upon my return I often heard Hou's name spoken in hushed tones by local moviegoers, and determined to seek his work out. I began with a viewing of Flowers Of Shanghai, starring Tony Leung as a nineteenth-century opium den father in that port city. I was absolutely entranced by its calm power, even though I was watching it on a videocassette tape. I loved it, but knew I would have loved it even more if shown on a beautiful new print. Helped along by assurances of cinephile friends, I was convinced I had been exposed to one of the great living artists of the medium, and I vowed that I would see any film of his that screened in town in a good 35mm print.

Since then, Hou has completed four newer films (Millenium Mambo, Cafe Lumiere, Three Times, and The Flight of the Red Balloon), and I have been sure to see each of them in Frisco cinemas, more than once if I could. Only one film from his back-catalogue has made it onto local screens during this time: Goodbye South, Goodbye, which the since-departed Manny Farber selected to be screened alongside his appearance at the 2003 San Francisco International Film Festival, where the legendary critic received the Mel Novikoff Award and was interviewed on the stage of the Kabuki Theatre in an intimate afternoon event. It was great, but that was the end if my exploration of Hou's pre-Flowers of Shanghai work.

Until now. The Yerba Buena Center for the Arts has brought a glorious new print of Hou's 1989 film City of Sadness, also starring Tony Leung, this time as a deaf man named Wen-ching, for a pair of twentieth-anniversary screenings this weekend. Of all of Hou's films, City Of Sadness is the one that is often favorably compared to The Godfather, that most often perches atop lists of the great Chinese-language films of all time, and that gets spoken of with perhaps the most reverence. It's all deserved. I attended last night's screening, and I cannot urge my readers strongly enough to make sure to be at the venue's second and final showing on Sunday afternoon. Especially if you have seen City of Sadness only on imported or bootlegged video before (it has never had a commercial release of any kind in this country) you will surely be astonished by the beauty of the print YBCA is showing.

Last night's viewing was introduced by Manfred Peng of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office, who gave a brief but helpful explanation of the political backdrop of City of Sadness. It's considered the first of Hou's "history trilogy" continuing with The Puppetmaster and Good Men, Good Women, all three of which were set against historical events in Taiwan. City of Sadness is set in that late-1940s period between the end of World War II and Japan's relinquishment of the island as one of its colonies, and the 1949 founding of the People's Republic of China. The film was made just a few years after the lifting of Taiwan's ban on mentioning the defining political event of that period, the "228 Incident" or "228 Massacre", still a contentious topic to this day.

I hope that any American politicians or diplomats now involved in relations with Taiwan and China understand the interrelations between various parties involved in 228 and its aftermath well enough to easily identify how all the characters in Hou's film are connected to the event on a single viewing. Even with Mr. Peng's aid, I could not, though I think with more reading on the matter and viewings of the film everything would fall into place for me. However, I do not think City of Sadness demands complete understanding of the events, as it is more about people tragically and capriciously impacted by 228 than it is about the event itself. Hou seems to have made a film where characters' perspectives on the political situation in Taiwan at the time matter less than the effects it has on their lives and those of their loved ones, and so we in the audience do not need to fully comprehend the history in order to comprehend the motivations and the emotions of the film's main players.

Every shot in the film is impeccably framed and lit, each scene impeccably staged, often in a way that stresses the relationship between the weight of history and the ordinary life of citizens living it. For example. As a group of students or intellectuals sit and debate politics, Wen-ching and pretty, young Hinomi (played by Xin Shufen) sit to the side of the room, exchanging notes with each other while a folk song plays on the phonograph. Hou situates his camera in the space between the table of students and the clearly smitten couple. It could be a point-of-view shot from the position of one of the debaters, but that seems unlikely. The students are swept up in their discussion and do not seem to be paying attention to the room's other occupants and their activities. No, this shot isolates the spirited discussion from the would-be lovers' attempts to lead a normal life unhindered by the intrusions of politics. At least for this moment, the two are able to exist in their own world; this sense is accentuated as the sound of the conversation subtly drops out and all we hear are sonorous musical notes as they are released from the record grooves. Wen-ching explains the origin of his deafness at age eight, and how it happened to him so young that it didn't feel like a tragedy.

Hou's own political perspective may be evident throughout the film as well, at least to someone knowledgeable on Taiwanese history. For those of us who are not, we can appreciate his form and technique. He is a master at expressing contrasts of energy, such as the way a violent scene spills out onto a quiet morning street. A scene starts as an interior, as two young men confront each other in a bathroom. Anger escalates until the pair are embroiled in a knife fight, chasing each other down hallways. Hou cuts to an exterior long shot of the town nestled below forested hills. For several seconds there is a decided pause in the violence and the viewer may wonder if it may have ended, but suddenly the combatants are now out on the street, bringing their chaos out into the public sphere. This is not the only scene staged along these lines. The film often gives the viewer opportunities like this to understand how the bloodshed of 228 affected day-to-day life on the island.

I'd be very curious to learn about the production history of City Of Sadness. If it was completely taboo to speak of 228 publicly in Taiwan until just a few years before the film was made (a situation that, by the end of the film, seems symbolically represented by Wen-ching's deafness), then was it Hou himself who chose to be the first filmmaker in his country to take on the topic, or was he approached on the basis of his critically successful earlier films (A Time To Live And A Time To Die, etc.) to apply his sensitive sensibility? These questions and others may be answered as I read more about the film. (Because I want to alert readers to the opportunity to see this new print as quickly as I can, I'm writing this piece relatively "cold", that is, without the benefit of delving into other articles as I usually am wont to do.)

I hope to revisit this film again many times in my life. The second screening at the YBCA is this Sunday, and should take precedence over any other film events happening in town for anyone who has not seen City of Sadness before, no matter their previous experience with Hou or Taiwanese cinema. However, this weekend coincides with Taiwan Film Days at the Opera Plaza, which provides Frisco Bay cinephiles with opportunities to see seven more recent films from the island. And with the Chinese American Film Festival coming to town later this month (featuring John Woo's Red Cliff 2, the allegedly superior sequel to the film opening at Landmark Theatres in November as well), this month is a boon for anyone interested in expanding their understanding of Chinese-language cinema.

Adam Hartzell on Warrior Boyz

2009-11-05T17:37:00.000-08:00

"Film Festival Smackdown" - that's Michael Hawley's budding meme coined for the surfeit of special film screening events here on Frisco Bay in November, which he has admirably attempted to cover in this roundup. Rather than looking at this logjam of festivals as something intimidating, I hope local cinephiles feel comfortable sampling the selections like attendees at an overstuffed thanksgiving of diverse goodness. Take a healthy helping of ethnic appetizers from Latin America, Italy, indigenous North American communities, etc. Select main courses from the substantial offerings from the latest Pacific Film Archive or Stanford Theatre calendars. Wash it down with something from the Prime Pacino '71-75 series at the Castro, and enjoy some animation or "CineKink" for dessert. Or switch up the order of your cinematic meal- it all ends up in the same place, in this case not the stomach but a brain and heart well-nourished by the effects of art and culture.

One of the festivals opening tonight is the Frisco-wide favorite 3rd i International South Asian Film Festival, expanded to four days including two at the Roxie and two at the Castro. Both Hawley and Frako Loden have filed previews of the festival for The Evening Class, and now I'm proud to present Adam Hartzell's take on a 3rd i film called Warrior Boyz, screening tomorrow at the Roxie Theatre. Be sure to check out Hartzell's sf360 preview of Taiwan Film Days, a San Francisco Film Society-sponsored festival opening opening tomorrow at the Opera Plaza Cinema. Adam:

I think it’s is fair to say that, in the mind of the average U.S. citizen, Canada is seen as a Liberal oasis (or, depending on your political predilection, ‘nightmare’). As someone more oasis-leaning, I find much to admire about Canada. But as I’ve done more and more reading of and listening to Canadian media, I’ve found much to nudge away ever so slightly whatever naïve views I previously held about our neighbors to the north.

Ali Kazimi’s documentary Continuous Journey was perhaps my first big oasis evaporator. That documentary was about the Komagata Maru, a ship of 340 Sikhs, 24 Muslims, and 12 Hindus, who as British subjects had every right to settle anywhere in the Empire, were denied entry in Canada and forced to stay in Vancouver Bay for several days while court hearings considered their plight. The film exposed me to Canada’s history of racism, a different image from the multicultural apex I was imagining Canada to be at the time. (In 2006, it was announced that Deepa Mehta was scheduled to make a fictional film about the tragedy, casting Akshay Kumar in the lead role in 2008.)

Similarly, if Bowling for Columbine had you thinking violence was only something Canadians experienced from watching U.S. television shows and movies (shows and movies filled with Canadian actors and filmed in Canadian locales hidden as U.S. cities), Warrior Boyz will have you recasting your Canadian (national) character as well. Like Continuous Journey, it’s a documentary about Sikh-Canadians that is the impetus of this adjustment of Canada as a country.

I had heard about the gang problems in the Sikh-Canadian community of Surrey, British Columbia through an interview with the director of Warrior Boyz on Q - The Podcast on the CBC and an article in The Walrus magazine. Both had me anxious to see this documentary, so I was happy that the folks at 3rd i have brought it to us. (They will also be bringing Director Baljit Sangra to discuss the film after the screening.) The film primarily follows four real-life characters, a Vice Principal and a former gang member each on personal crusades to keep kids from joining gangs or helping them find a way out, and two gang members of polar trajectories. It’s not a brilliant documentary, but it is decidedly engaging, particularly when the former gang member reveals his motivations for joining the gang. He didn’t fall into it like in so many after-school specials. He actively sought his way into gang life. Thankfully, he actively sought his way out before he died.

As powerful is the one active gang member’s inability to look into the camera throughout the documentary. When we first meet him, his accidental gaze at the lens, and by extension us, is the only time he startles, running away from the returned gaze of the camera. It is the strongest statement of all about the paradoxes of gang life. It gives him a confidence that hides the insecurity still visible in his inability to make eye contact with his imagined audience, his existential jury. Even more topical with the recent attack on Jagdish Grewal, an editor of a Punjabi newspaper in Brampton, Ontario, this documentary definitely brings a third eye to an oft-filmed topic, demonstrating the tremendous value festivals like 3rd i consistently provide.

Adam Hartzell: DocFest 2009

2009-10-16T17:50:00.000-07:00

Adam Hartzell reports on three features in the San Francisco Documentary Film Festival, a.k.a. DocFest, opening tonight at the Roxie. More coverage of the 14-day event is available at sf360, at the Evening Class, and at the SF Bay Guardian website and arts & culture blog. Adam:

I have ambivalent feelings about the use of ridicule in documentaries, such as those of Sascha Baren Cohen, Bill Maher or Michael Moore. As much as I might agree with the political views of these filmmakers, we know that the tactic of ridicule can impede efforts to bring people over to other views. Rather than convince people, ridicule can end up causing the other party to be defensive. And in the form of ridicule, any efforts to educate are received instead as condescension. Yet there are individuals and organizations that are not interested in actually furthering debate or illuminating discussion. They seek to obfuscate, to inject disinformation for the sole purpose of confusing people from knowing the factual information. (I’m looking at you FOX/GOP network!) When facing disinformation campaigns, I find ridicule useful to reduce the power that figure or the organization they speak for might illegitimately have. As much as I might feel Bill Maher often goes overboard, when he mocks Glenn Beck with a fake Beck book release entitled Painting with Poop, Maher is homing in perfectly on the insanity of Beck’s idiotic ideas.

Of the three DVDs I screened for the 8th edition of the San Francisco Documentary Film Festival, none were out to ridicule their subjects. They treated each subject with dignity. But if there is any topic that deserves ridicule, it’s the nonsense of the Young Earth Creationists and their efforts to muddy up progress with false claims that the earth is only roughly 6,000 years old.

In this way, I find Todd Gitlin’s The Earth Is Young problematic since it is vulnerable to lending an unwarranted legitimacy to Young Earth Creationism’s fraudulent claims. Real world scientific evidence is stacked against the claims made by Young Earth Creationists in this reel world. They disregard science in order to advocate their pre-ordained beliefs. My concern is that without placing the proselytizing of Young Earth Creationists into context, we risk their views receiving unwarranted respectability. Call me a worrywart, but I’m concerned that by having such scientifically unfounded claims sit there in the democratic vat, the result would lead us towards dormancy on necessary public policy issues, such as our need to address climate change and our need to implement infrastructure changes to address the post-petroleum, post-car future that is soon upon us.

Yet, Gitlin’s documentary is intentionally off-putting, so the approach is not completely problematic since this creeping creepiness throughout the film is the indirect critique that I would rather be more direct. The drone we hear throughout the film, the voice-of-god-like blob cleverly placed amongst the microscopic world of microorganisms, the focus on the mute faces and gesticulating hands, these all add to the overall eerie feel of the documentary underscored by the bizarre claims made by the practitioners. It is this discomforting imprint that stays with me, leaving me not just unimpressed with the proselytizing trying to pass for scientific research, but a bit frightened as well.

For those who like their film-festival experience to overlap thematically, the Young Earth Creationists make an appearance in Joe Winston and Laura Cohen’s film adaptation of Thomas Frank's non-fiction book, What’s the Matter with Kansas? As much as I might disagree with the political views of the Christian Conservatives, I appreciate how the directors refuse to ridicule them here. This allows for a more accurate portrayal rather than the caricatures drawn in some liberal circles. For those who haven’t yet, I suggest reading the book rather than relying on this documentary to inform you. The arguments laid out by Frank regarding how working class conservatives vote against their own economic interests are made more compellingly in the book than the film. But then again, maybe I just have a book-bias when it comes to nonfiction, because there is some action at the end (which I can’t reveal here without spoiling) that underscores Frank’s thesis. What this documentary does do in some ways better than the book is humanize the citizens of an oft-ridiculed state of the union. Plus, since this documentary takes place during the federal midterm election after the publication of Frank’s book, it provides a snapshot of a political shift in Kansas. I don’t think we’re in What’s the Matter with Kansas?’s Kansas anymore, Toto. Kansan Politics have begun to matter a little differently.

The best of the films I caught for this year’s SF DocFest was Patrick Shen’s The Philosopher Kings. Shen focuses his camera on the lives and philosophies of those in what is considered by many as the lowliest of professions, the custodian. Several janitors at several academic institutions are interviewed on their thoughts about their jobs, their futures, life, death, and everything in between. Personal epistemologies are espoused by each of these custodians based on life experience. Shen demonstrates each unique perspective while also drawing life parallels, such as accidents and family histories, along with similar situations specific to janitorial work.

In this way, Shen demonstrates the interplay between ‘structure’ and ‘agency’ put forth by Anthony Giddens. As Andrew Hickey notes of Giddens’ work in Hickey’s contribution to iPod and Philosophy: iCon of an ePoch, this is “An interplay that operates as a negotiation between the structural conditions of existence you find yourself in and the desires you have to express a certain identity” (p 124). The agency found within the structures of their profession is quite evident in The Philosopher Kings, from Melinda Augustus of the University of Florida who engages in self study of the butterflies in the building she cleans, to Corby Baker who finds inspiration for his own artwork in the student projects he dusts at Cornish College of Arts in Seattle.

Locals might recognize the UC Berkeley representative, Michael Seals. But many in the film argue that it is likely locals won’t recognize him, since we often make our janitors invisible. As someone who regularly greets and talks with the janitorial staff at my work, I am often disappointed at the levels others engage in to ignore the presence of those who assure our facilities are presentable and work smoothly. Others seem to walk around them as if they are a poorly placed pillar in the middle of the room by some absent-minded architect, looking away from them as if they are not worthy of everyday salutations. The Philosopher Kings gently addresses the injustices of such invisibility. It is an absolute gift of a film that will hopefully leave audiences with a change in perspective, which is the aim of every good philosopher, and of every good documentary.

Adam Hartzell: Mill Valley Film Festival

2009-10-11T20:19:00.000-07:00

It's happening again. Like last October, when I noted the proliferation of film festivals descending on town, there are more than a dozen Frisco Bay festivals currently running or set to begin in the next month or so. And that's with the disappearance of two significant horror festivals that have bowed out of the pre-Halloween frenzy this year, Dead Channels and Shock It To Me! Check my top of my sidebar on the right side of this screen to see the list of this season's events.

I wish I could attend all of these and write about them, but it's simply impossible. I do regularly link to other online articles on the festivals on my twitter feed, so be sure to follow me (if you're on twitter) or to regularly check the feed if you're not. I try to keep my tweets useful; if you're finding I'm achieving otherwise or have other suggestions of any kind don't hesitate to send me feedback.

One festival already begun, and running for another week, is the 32nd Mill Valley Film Festival, which has been written about by Michael Hawley and by Susan Gerhard, among others. Sadly, this year I haven't been able to see many of the entries. In fact, I've only seen two features, both prior to the festval's lineup was announced. However, they're both masterpieces that deserve to be seen in 35mm prints on the big screen: Johnny To's buoyant Sparrow; whether you're a Johnnie To fan or virgin viewer, you have never seen anything quite like in his oeuvre. I wrote a bit about it in January, and it plays tomorrow (Monday) night at the Sequoia Theatre at 9:30 PM. The other is Pierrot le Fou, Jean-Luc Godard's whirlwind of primary color and revolution, which plays the Smith Rafael Film Center Tuesday at 6PM. Programmed as part of an in-person tribute to the legendary Anna Karina that unfortunately had to be postponed until spring due to "non-life-threatening" injuries recently sustained by the actress, the screenings of Pierrot le Fou and of the North American Premiere of her second film as a director, Victoria, this coming Friday, are noteworthy enough even without an international celebrity in attendance.

Though I really haven't explored the MVFF program for myself, Adam Hartzell has previewed five features from Southern Hemisphere nations, and I'm very thankful to him that he has offered up his thoughts on them. Adam:

The Mill Valley Film Festival is upon us again, providing a lovely excuse to venture out for a Punjabi burrito in the town centre of Mill Valley. As usual, the amount of film choices on offer can be a bit overwhelming, so to whittle it down to a manageable few, I decided to take the MVFF’s focus on Australian and New Zealand cinema as an opportunity to finally read the Australia/New Zealand edition from the 24 Frames series on world cinemas. And being that the Tri-Nations rugby series just finished with South Africa the winners, I decided to check out a few South African films, making up my own Tri-Nations film series

Let’s start off with the losers, Australia. Losers of this year’s Tri-Nations rugby, that is, not of the films I screened. Fiona Cochrane’s Four of a Kind was an intriguing film once I let the story ride. Four of a Kind was a reminder of how I expect a film to ‘look’, because, I had to filter out the low quality production values in order to appreciate what the film had to offer in interlocking storylines. The film follows a murder suspect, a detective, a therapist, and a therapist’s friend as they confront one another’s lies and past lives. The film presents dialogue intermixed with enactments of the dialogue, where the viewer is privileged to actions and words that are not mentioned in the dialogue, allowing for nice layering that peels away ever so slowly near the end. All this provides the viewer with the pleasure of trying to guess at how things will end based on the clues dropped throughout. However, utilizing Blues singer Joe Camilleri to chop up each chapter simply didn’t work for me. I understand his lyrics are meant to heighten the plot, but these recording session intermissions provided more of a disruption for me than an enhancement. Also, I must admit that I’m wondering if I’ve developed an a-musicality for certain musical genres. And I’ve never been a Blues man.

Second place at this year’s Tri-Nations was New Zealand. And both NZ films on offer for this year’s MVFF focus on the Antipodes are enjoyable pieces. Sima Urale’s Apron Strings follows two families. One family consists of two estranged Sikh-New Zealander sisters and the son of one who seeks to find his roots while reconciling his mother and his aunt. The second family are Pakeha (European) New Zealanders, a mother anxious about the changing demographics of her neighborhood and a thirty-something son whose gambling addiction forestalls any attempts to get a proper job and a home of his own. I had first heard about this film from an interview with Urale on Radio National New Zealand. That interview had intrigued me to see this film and I was happy MVFF provided such an opportunity. Although there are better immigration narratives, Apron Strings is still a delightful addition to the genre.

Armagen Ballantyne’s The Strength of Water is definitely the strongest of the five screeners I watched. Wonderfully paced, this film follows the tragedy that erupts when a familiar stranger enters this Maori seaside village and particularly how one young brother grieves through his personal loss. The desperation of a limited economy and limited options highlights what is often ignored in order to propel plots along. And in refusing to deny economic reality, the story becomes much more than just a psychological portrait of a grieving youngster. The Strength of Water is an example of a prime reason I am motivated to attend film festivals, to find out about a gem you had never heard of and are likely to never get a chance to see again.

Yet I get the feeling I’ll get a chance to see Anthony Fabian’s film Skin again. Representing the winners of this year’s Tri-Nations, South Africa, Skin seems made for Oscar bidding. (Most of it is in English, disqualifying it from the foreign-language film entry, so the Oscar efforts will need to be spent in other categories.) Actress Sophie Okonedo of Hotel Rwanda and The Secret Life of Bees plays Sandra Laing, a real-life individual of black phenotypes born of parents of white phenotypes.

For those who need a genetics refresher, phenotypes represent the physical expression of genes, such as red hair, black skin, etc. As for how a child that looks black could come from white parents, the film allows the audience to sit with this confusion initially to allow for suspicions of possible infidelity. However, the genetic reality is presented in a court case. If there are genes of black phenotypes in a family’s genetic tree, these phenotypes could express themselves later down the line of the family tree even if the black child is of parents who present white phenotypes.

Unwilling to accept their daughter looking black, and more so unwilling to confront the racism of South African apartheid and lose their white privilege, her father (played by Sam Neill) campaigns to have his daughter classified as white in South African courts. The disturbing absurdity of this all comes to the hilt in a brief scene at the beginning when we witness young Sandra and her father joyfully celebrate a court decision. However, regardless of Sandra’s legal claims to white privilege, her actual treatment by whites leaves her isolated. After returning home from high school, she finds herself curious about a black delivery man and drawn to the community out of which her father so desperately tried to keep her. Although an interesting story that needs to be told, Skin doesn’t seem like a film that will stay with me as long as The Strength of Water will. Skin wears thin on my eyes like a film vying for an Oscar that I’ve seen before, whereas The Strength of Water is confident in its own skin, impressing me at its own pace, in its own patient structure.

Yet Skin is better than the other South African film on option, Jann Turner’s White Wedding. And disappointingly, White Wedding is the film South Africa has actually submitted for Best Foreign Language Film. It’s not the kind of film that seems to win in that category. White Wedding is just a film that wants to have a little fun along the way to a too easily resolved ending. I don’t have a problem with such films at all. I like a little harmless fun too. But this isn’t the kind of grand film to which we often award prestigious prizes.

A South African road movie, the film follows the groom Elvis as he runs into trouble travelling from Johannesburg via Durban to his wedding in Cape Town. His bride, Ayanda, is tempted in his delay (and his often being out of cell phone range) by the return of a financially successful former beau. Along the way Elvis and his best man find an Irish woman who has stowed herself away in their truck. And later they find themselves stranded in a village full of Afrikaner redneck stereotypes to add further tensions. All these tensions need to be resolved by the end of this road trip. My interest in this film was to watch a film from elsewhere to see how that elsewhere is experienced (or better yet, dramatized) by those who live there. This experience is another reason why I attend film festivals. It allows me to watch another country’s successful mainstream films (White Wedding had a run of eleven consecutive weeks across South Africa), not just the art films.

The five screeners I watched represent the various motivations audiences might have fulfilled by a film festival such as MVFF. Whether you’re looking for the film that slowly grows on you (The Strength of Water), the plot-weaving tapestry (Four of a Kind), the film that doesn’t require all the characters to be white (Apron Strings, The Strength of Water, Skin, and White Wedding), or the Oscar contender (Skin and White Wedding), the Mill Valley Film Festival’s got your preference.

Adam Hartzell: SF Shorts Festival

2009-09-08T22:48:00.000-07:00

After an August with comparatively few film festivals here on Frisco Bay, September is bringing the beginnings of an Autumn onslaught of them. Though the September staple Madcat Women's Film Festival is transitioning from a Frisco Bay-based event to a national touring program this year, a screening on Sept. 16 of festival favorite filmmakers including Kerry Laitala, Samara Halperin & others carries the tradition of El Rio outdoor music & film forward in 2009. The 2nd Annual Iranian Film Festival runs September 19-20 at the SF Art Institute. In San Rafael, the Global Lens Film Series runs September 25th through October 7th, after which the Christopher B. Smith Rafael Film Center becomes one of the venues for the Mill Valley Film Festival. The 32nd annual program for the latter festival will not be fully revealed for another week, but in the meantime the festival has begun teasing us with announced special guest appearances: Clive Owen will be in Marin for the opening night screening of the Boys are Back, and French New Wave icon Anna Karina will be on hand to present her scarcely-seen recent directorial effort, Victoria on October 16th. Jean-Luc Godard's muse will also be represented at the festival by an October 13th showing of one of their most well-known collaborations, Pierrot Le Fou.

But before all this, the Red Vic is just about to play host to the 4th Annual SF Shorts festival, featuring six programs of short films over the next four days. Arya Ponto has a written brief write-up on the program. Here at Hell On Frisco Bay, Adam Hartzell has also previewed a few of the offerings and provides his take:

There’s a wonderful moment of Deaf storytelling that takes place in Cynthia Mitchell and Robert Arnold’s short All Animals. It goes on at length sans subtitles and is mesmerizing. Just a young Deaf woman (actress Sheena McFeely) sitting on the back of a pick-up truck signing with her whole upper body and the space that surrounds it, including the facial expressions so important to all Sign Languages, and the authentic Deaf voice John S. Schuchman has noted is so important to (Hearing) Children of Deaf Adults (aka CoDAs). It truly takes over the film, levitating the viewer trance-like into a completely different film from the larger short film that surrounds it. All Animals involved one of the California Schools for the Deaf. Perhaps the focus on Deaf storytelling germinated from this collaboration or was the very reason for this collaboration.

This subtitle-less scene reminded me of the screening of Deaf director Peter Wolf’s I Love You But... (1994) at the Deaf Film Festival in February of 2003 at the Pacific Film Archive at the University of California, Berkeley, where it was explained that no subtitling or translation via headphones would be provided for Hearing viewers, in order to give Hearing viewers an idea of what it’s like for the Deaf to attend the cinema. Outside of the beauty of signed languages in general, the moment of expressive Deaf storytelling in All Animals is inaccessible to non-ASL fluent viewers just as the dialogue of English-language cinema is inaccessible to Deaf Americans. Rarely are subtitled or close-captioned prints of English-language films available for U.S. theatres and this limits the experience Deaf viewers can have in the cinema. And based on the screener I watched, I’m assuming the spoken dialogue will not be close-captioned at the Red Vic screening, making this film only partially accessible for the Deaf community. Whether or not that’s an oversight or due to limited funding options, I don’t know. But since the Deaf storytelling is so prominent, it appears its inaccessibility to me and other non-ASL fluent viewers is intentional. Yet in spite of that ‘inaccessibility’, I am still deeply affected by it.

Unfortunately All Animals also utilizes what Gallaudet University professor Jane Norman refers to as a ‘gimmick’ of Hearing-centric films where the sound is cut off as a false attempt to lead us into the Deaf character’s experience of the world. As the Hearing character notes when discussing the Opera, Deaf people do not experience the world in total silence, for vibrations are felt through other parts of the body. Such sensation of sound through the vibrations of the body is not the same as through the ear, but such is not total silence either. The sappy (but I love it nonetheless) Japanese Deaf film I Love You (Osawa Yutaka and Yonaiyama Akihiro, 2000) demonstrates this beautifully, but to write how it represents sound as ‘heard’ by Deaf people would be to ruin the tear-jerking moment up to which the film builds, so I’ll leave you to the difficult search to find that film to see how such clichés can be avoided.

Along with being a calling card for directors, actors, and others film industry folk to garner future projects, short films can also be a space for experimentation, which makes All Animals both compelling in its highlighting of Deaf storytelling, and disappointing in its reliance on an overused Hearing trope of Deaf characters. Of the few films I was able to see for the festival, nothing else jumped out at me as ‘experimental’, but the animated films The Mouse That Soared by Kyle T. Bell and Prayers for Peace by Dustin Grella both kept me transfixed by their drawings, Bell’s through digital rendering and Grella’s through the washing on and off of dreamy charcoal images.

Another film I was able to watch was Molly Snyder-Fink and Kiran Goldman’s Fast As She Can. With Usain Bolt dashing through the headlines as of late for his World Record 100 meter time of 9.58 seconds at the recent World Championships in Berlin, it’s nice to see a short film focusing on the amazing female athletes of Jamaica. Although there is some repetitive narration early on, the short serves its subjects and the topic well by showing the constant training in which these women engage and the encouragement and support many provide for these endeavors. The details of their training regimen offer a counterpoint to the speculative ‘reasons’ that are often given to Jamaican track and field success. In this way, we can see the self-serving claims of the yam seller in the film who claims ‘it’s the yams’ just as we doubted Mars Blackmon when he proclaimed ‘It’s gotta be the shoes!’ More disturbingly, but not mentioned in the film, sometimes the hard work that propels the success of black athletes is downplayed by the Pat Buchanan-esque racist assumptions about their bodies. And now these athletes must also confront the constant suspicion of doping, based, as a San Jose Mercury News reporter admits in the documentary, on little evidence outside of the record-breaking record-breaking. Everyone is looking for the secret to their success as if it were one simple thing proving their prejudices, rather than a complex network of things.

And like that journalist, I will proclaim on the little evidence of these four shorts that it looks as if the Red Vic will have much on offer for those with the heavily-concentrated attention spans and precise mental-compartmentalizing that short film watching requires.

Miyazaki Midnights & Matinees (and more)

2009-09-04T17:10:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite films of the year so far is the latest animated feature from Hayao Miyazaki, Ponyo on the Cliff By the Sea, also know as just Ponyo. Made by a near-septuagenarian, and perhaps aimed primarily for children just barely old enough to sit still for a movie, this Japanese re-imagining of Hans Christian Andersen holds the power to captivate a childless 30-something willing to be awash in Miyazaki's visuals, whether depicting the crashing of furious waves as a Hokusai woodcut come to life, or the simple process of serving a bowl of ramen to a little girl who has never eaten noodles before. Miyazaki's inked lines are more robust than ever, and his gentle-handed ecological message perfectly apropos for his pre-school protagonist Sosuke, who understands the import of the chain of events he has set off less completely than audiences of any age will, yet it better able to make a crucial narrative leap of faith than a more world-weary individual might. He provides an inspirational model for us all.

Some Miyazaki fans seem to be, at least mildly, disappointed in Ponyo in comparison to the master's other animated films. I can't understand almost any of their arguments, and I can't help but wonder if some are registering disagreement less with the film itself than with the Disney Corporation's decision to release the film only in a dubbed version, in contrast to their making Howl's Moving Castle available to theatres both an English-dubbed and a Japanese-language version with English subtitles. Sprited Away, too, was sent on the festival circuit in a Japanese version before its theatrical release with American voice artists providing the soundtrack.

I've watched both versions of Ponyo. First I saw a 35mm print of the Disney-dubbed version; though I was mildly bothered by Liam Neeson's distinctive tones, and Cate Blanchett's essential reprisal of her Galadriel role, their Ponyo characters are relatively minor and I was so overwhelmed by Miyazaki's fluid animation and florid imagination that they couldn't mar the experience in any meaningful way. The other voice actors submerged their star personae and were unrecognizable to me until the end credits. In sum it was a terrific dub job; nothing like the distracting celebrity voice-fest of the Miramax Princess Mononke dub. Watching a friend's Japanese Ponyo DVD import with English subtitles shortly afterward was nearly as wonderful, but I'm glad it was not my first experience with the film. In fact the dub translation was slightly superior in a few instances, as I confirmed with a native Japanese speaker. The only major improvement was the end-title song, which Disney turned from a sweet farewell to the film into a groan-worthy techno remix involving its stable of pop singers.

In any language, Ponyo is absolutely something to see on the big screen if you can, and if you live in Frisco that's still possible, at least for another week, as it continues to play at the Balboa Theatre until Thursday. Miyazaki fans holding out for the subtitled DVD, you'll thank yourself for taking the opportunity to see it in a cinema. If you want to display your original-version-purist credentials, take the rare opportunity to watch the Japanese-language version of Miyazaki's Spirited Away this November when it plays four midnight shows and a matinee in Frisco Bay theatres. Both the Clay here in Frisco and the Piedmont in Oakland have included the 45th San Francisco International Film Festival's audience award-winning film in their autumn lineup of cult favorite screenings. The Clay shows it November 6th & 7th, and the Piedmont on November 13th & 14th, with an additional 10 AM screening on the 15th.

Other midnight movies coming to Landmark theatres this season include This is Spinal Tap, the Wiz (featuring Michael Jackson as the scarecrow, of course) the original release cut of Donnie Darko, the Graduate, the Shining, and more. Check the Landmark After Dark website. And though the Bridge will no longer be the site for full summer seasons of Peaches Christ's Midnight Mass series, the horror hostess will present a one-off screening of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 there on October 24th.

Meanwhile, the Red Vic on Haight Street has a midnight hit on its hands as well these days. The Room, Tommy Wiseau's enigmatically awful, but clearly rather expensive passion project, has been packing in viewers and solidifying screen-talkback rituals the last Saturday of every month all summer. The tradition, as revealed in the latest Red Vic calendar, is planned to continue this fall with shows on September 26th and October 31st (come in costume as one of the characters for additional fun.)

Finally, my friend Jesse Ficks has been hard at work putting together his season of MiDNiTES FOR MANiACS shows at the Castro. Tonight he's playing Risky Business, Fast Times at Ridgemont High and the Last American Virgin in a set entitled "Cocky White Guys". October 2 is "Bite Nite", pairing the Santa Cruz-set the Lost Boys with Katheryn Bigelow's Near Dark, which I've never seen (for shame!) And November 6th is called "Love Kills", with True Romance, Natural Born Killers and a ~~midnight~~ MiDNiTE screening to be determined. Looking at the thematic pattern, I bet it'll be something written by Quentin Tarantino. Though Jesse has been known to have unexpected surprises up his sleeve.

Adam Hartzell: Say My Name

2009-08-29T12:19:00.000-07:00

Fall is almost upon us. We movie-lovers know it because Johnny Ray Huston's rep film roundup for the SF Bay Guardian's Fall arts Preview is out, with tons of clickable links to most of the major and minor film festivals, repertory series, and special events of the season. But August isn't quite over yet, and this weekend has at least a few Frisco film events worth coming in from out of the heat. Huston's own Beyond ESPN series at the Yerba Buena Center For the Arts wraps up tomorrow with Football as Never Before, a proto-Zidane film featuring the Manchester United legend George Best. The other night I saw there Visions of Eight, a lovely documentary of the 1972 Munich Olympics directed by Kon Ichikawa, Arthur Penn, Milos Forman, and five others. The series was written up by Adam Hartzell for sf360.

More recently, Hartzell wrote up a preview of the focus on Kim Longinotto at this weekend's Women Make Movies Film Festival for that site; he'd also written on the documentary filmmaker here a few years back. And now, I'm very pleased to present his write-up on another documentary playing tomorrow at the Women Make Movies festival:

Sadly, for those outside of the Hip Hop Nation, juxtapositions of women and Hip Hop are more likely to lead towards thoughts of booty-shaking than rhyme-making. Nirit Peled’s documentary Say My Name, (screening at the Roxie Theatre on Sunday August 30th as part of the Women Make Movies Film Festival) should correct that viewpoint for the casual viewer. But it provides an equal service for those heads with full Hip Hop cred. With so many female MCs dropping knowledge and dope lyrics one after the other, even the most diehard fan’s understanding of Hip Hop can’t help but be changed. Hip Hop is not just a man’s world. Like so much else in this world, men just dominate it. Say My Name is a call for recalibration of the control masculine rhetoric has within and around Hip Hop.

As Tricia Rose has noted in her latest book The Hip Hop Wars: What We Talk About When We Talk About Hip Hop ...And Why It Matters, Hip Hop does need to reroute where it has been headed. The misogyny (which walks intimately hand-in-hand with homophobia) is one of the areas on which Hip Hop needs to come correct. The most infamous incident of this is the image of the credit card being swiped through a dancer’s thronged buttocks in the video for “Tip Drill” by Nelly. (A clip of which makes a brief appearance in Peled’s documentary.) This video sparked a protest at the historically black Spelman College where Nelly was coming to support a bone marrow registry drive as part of his charity work to help leukemia patients. Nelly cancelled his appearance rather than accept a meeting with campus leaders to face the music of the critiques of his music. Beyond such visuals as in “Tip Drill”, there are lyrics of equal disrespect. Rose advocates for a redirection away from the nihilistic lyrics while also asking us to keep in mind that Hip Hop is not alone in purveying such societal ills. As Michael Jeffries notes in his contribution to Home Girls Make Some Noise: Hip Hop Feminism Anthology (HHFA), the mainstream shorthand of Hip Hop as “...the prime criminal in the business of pop cultural female misogyny, all but excus[es] other musical genres and cultural products.” And in spite of the misogyny easily found in the videos late at night on BET, there are women MCs trying to reframe the game so that women have entry points into Hip Hop other than ass first. Through the likes of female MCs speaking for themselves in Peled’s documentary, “ ...Young women fans”, according to Eric Darnell Pritchard and Maria L. Bibbs in HHFA, “are finding that there is a place for them in Hip Hop culture, and they do not have to settle for the role of a male rapper’s sex object or helpmate in order to have a presence.” We need to be “turning up the noise”, as Jeffries says, on the women Hip Hop artists being dampened by the nihilistic, which is exactly what is accomplished in the documentary Say My Name.

The reach in this documentary is impressive considering Peled is from Holland. Although interviews with certain luminaries are missing, (Queen Latifah and Missy Elliot being the major lacunae), Peled was able to provide ample time for elder stateswomen such as MC Lyte and Monie Love. These are women whose lyrical skill was matched with a tonal texture that made an imprint on this writer’s young mind growing up. Particularly intriguing is the section on Roxanne Shanté, the rapper brought in to recite the lyrics to the infamous response record to UTFO’s single “Roxanne, Roxanne” entitled “Roxanne’s Revenge”. (This was the ‘unofficial’ response record. UTFO produced their own response called ‘The Real Roxanne’.) The ethical disagreements over reciting lyrics written by others, the place of verbal battling in Hip Hop, and the disposability of some players in the industry all are underscored by the saga of this Roxanne. Erykah Badu is one of the more recent Hip Hop luminaries whose commentary serves the documentary very well. She has some poignant things to say about motherhood and the female beauty ideal. As if hearing Marlo David Asikwe (in HHFA) when she laments that black women Hip Hop artists do not attend to “the mothering body” with the same level of attention as the sexual body, Peled brings attention to the mothering Hip Hop body. This segment is quite significant regarding how motherhood can inspire (as well as disrupt) the careers of these female MCs.

Regional Hip Hop genres are also represented, from the rapid fire lyrics of British Grime to the socially conscious creed of Detroit’s Invincible. (The presence of Invincible also allows for a lesbian voice, although whispered at those familiar with Invincible rather than shouted out explicitly in the documentary.) When Peled represents the ‘Dirty South’ with the Georgia Girls, her footage of them performing in a high school gymnasium touches on the significance of high schools to the Atlanta variant Hip Hop. “...The high school”, notes Jocyelyn A. Wilson in HHFA, “works as a key environment for developing relationships that contribute to the strong network ties of the southern hip-hop community of practice.”

So much is touched on in a short 73 minutes. Aspects I haven’t mentioned include how the ghetto environment is a point of inspiration, but also something that can hold some artists back. And being held back is part of the overarching theme of Rose’s powerful critique The Hip Hop Wars. The harmful trends in Hip Hop, the misogyny and other forms of violence and nihilism, are holding back those who most need to be propelled forward. One way to propel forward is through documentaries such as Peled’s where women are launched into the discourses of Hip Hop rhetoric, negotiating their own terms. As Pritchard and Dibbs explain, “...As for many youth hip-hop is a clear way of making meaning and receiving/imparting knowledge in a way that is relevant to their cultural, economic, social and political realities.” To turn away from the enticing beat is to also turn away from the most vital means youth have presently to express themselves. Say My Name is a desperately needed call and response to reclaim a female space for Hip Hop. Bring the noise, indeed.

24 City

2009-08-22T10:55:00.000-07:00

Rejoice! The new Pacific Film Archive calendar for September & October is available online. Included are series focusing on undershown auteurs William Klein, Ermanno Olmi, and Julian Duvivier (I've seen one film apiece from these gentlemen, each quite solid). The Alternative Visions series starts back up again on Tuesdays, and is joined by tributes to avant-garde heavyweights Bill Viola and Robert Beavers, both of whom will appear in person, the latter in conversation with the legendary critic P. Adams Sitney. There's also a massive set of British crime films, a few titles overlapping with the ones being brought to the Castro Sep. 11-16, but you'll have to attend both venues to see them all.

Those may be the most high-profile series of the season, but the upcoming months will also be dotted by smaller series, one-shot events, and the reliable "non-series" A Theatre Near You, which returns director Jia Zhang-Ke's film 24 City to the site of his extensive retrospective one year ago. 24 City is also playing the Camera 3 in San Jose this week, inspiring me to dust off an unpublished capsule I wrote earlier this year after seeing the film at the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival (well before the director's controversial decision to pull out of the Melbourne Film Festival this summer). Here it is:

* * * * *
As Chinese director Jia Zhang Ke's stature on the international film festival circuit has increased with each release, his films have blurred the line between fiction and documentary in ever more intriguing ways. Perhaps because, as his auteur status has attracted attention from a censorious government that once officially disapproved of films like Xiao Wu and Unknown Pleasures, it's these frictions that provide Jia's best outlet for critique.

Jia's latest film 24 City takes the form of a documentary about the dismantling of a munitions factory code-named "420" in pre-earthquake Chengdu, to make way for a ritzy condominium complex. Interviews with former workers, conducted mostly in long, static shots, join together in an oral history going back generations. The clanging and hammering sounds of the factory's final, self-destructive task are often heard in the background. Sequences are bridged together by brief skits or by city-poems. Songs re-appropriated from films such as John Woo's 1989 The Killer and Peter Chan's 2005 Perhaps Love underscore the connection between recent Chinese history and its pop culture mirror.

But documentary conventions are questioned by the director's decision to have actors play interview subjects. Is the factory saleswoman who recalls how workplace gossip quashed her first love affair a Joan Chen look-alike, as she says she is? Or is she actually Joan Chen? (answer: yes.) By crossing the imaginary boundary between "real" and "constructed" cinema, Jia turns nostalgia into barely-veiled dissent, and creates a testimony filled with contradictions appropriate for our modern age.

Adam Hartzell: SF Jewish Film Festival Preview

2009-07-20T21:51:00.000-07:00

Adam Hartzell writes on the 29th San Francisco Jewish Film Festival:

There's an oft-repeated story that Bret McKenzie and Jermaine Clement (otherwise known as Flight of the Conchords) were turned down for funding by New Zealand public television because their humor was "Too Wellington". That is, their humor would be missed by everyone outside of the nation's capital. (I've heard this story most often on Radio National New Zealand, their NPR equivalent, but here's a citation of someone else who cites the rumor.) Ironically, it took the U.S., a country that many argue enforces mediocrity by requiring entertainment to be constrained within the confines of what 'Middle America' would find interesting, to see that the world was way more Wellington than New Zealand public television ever realized.

The mistake made by that rumor of an ill-fated bureaucratic choice is that people will have trouble relating to difference. In this way, a mundane mainstream must be reached because too much fringe causes too much confusion. This is why we ended up with so many TV shows and films based in San Francisco where everyone is white and nobody is Gay. J Lo had to be a white wedding planner because everyone knows there ain't no Latinas in San Francisco. But there are media that show the lie to that argument, TV shows and films that demonstrate that people from diverse backgrounds can appreciate stories from experiences other than a white Protestant lens. TV shows from the very beginning of TV like The Goldbergs show the window-sized holes in these arguments.

If you are not now yelling inside your head 'Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg!' after reading that reference, you are like me before seeing Aviva Kempner's documentary Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg. Kempner's documentary is screening at this year's San Francisco Jewish Film Festival (the 29th edition, held from July 23rd through August 10th this year) along with a special screening of a collection of episodes from The Goldbergs TV show. This is all part of Kempner receiving the festival's Freedom of Expression Award for her contribution to Jewish Cinema. I was unaware of Gertrude Berg's pioneering radio, TV, and stage-work and that The Goldbergs was considered the progenitor of the TV sitcom.

Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg challenges the belief that people can't relate to backgrounds different from their own by bringing past fans of the show, an African American and a Greek Orthodox American, who found the aspects of Jewish culture portrayed on The Goldbergs transferable to their own lives, their own families. As much as I enjoy this documentary, I do have peccadilloes about the use of stock images in the documentary that are disjointed enough from the narration that they throw me off it. For example, during one narration of a young adult Berg driving in a car with her father, the generic stock footage is of a man driving without a young female passenger in the seat next to him. Perhaps we are supposed to impose an image of Berg into the seat, but without any person in the actual seat, it distracted more than complemented the narration for me. A few seconds later we are meant to impose Berg walking alongside the car with images of no one walking along the side of the car (and too fast for someone to 'walk' along side at that). I know this can be seen as poetic license, asking the viewer to enter the film by filling up the stock image with an image of Berg, but it didn't work for me. Regardless of these moments where the documentary lost me, Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg is an otherwise engaging doc that reveals much for both those familiar with Berg's work and those previously ignorant like me.

Victoria Day (David Bezmozgis, Canada, 2009) may pose a similar challenge to folk theories espousing limitations on how much difference audiences, particularly U.S. audiences, can accept. English Canadian films are often discouraged from emphasizing their Canadian locality because such is believed to prohibit opportunities for distribution below the 49th parallel. To even name a film "Victoria Day" implies you've given up on your neighbors to the South. (Although intended to celebrate Queen Victoria's birthday in English-speaking Canada, Victoria Day has been appropriated in cultural practice to note the beginning of summer and, like many holidays, as an excuse to drink. Both appropriations are will utilized in this film.) But there is absolutely no reason why the trials of 16-year-old Ben Spektor can't resonate here in the U.S. Ben is played expertly by Mark Rendell, who will also be a lead character in Year of the Carnivore, the upcoming directorial debut of Sook-yin Lee from the CBC's Definitely Not the Opera. A begrudging effort to assist someone he despises leads him down a road of ambiguous responsibilities. Along the way, we are witness to thankfully non-clichéd portrayals of triads between Ben and his two friends and Ben and his Russian-émigré parents. This is a wonderfully subtle, impactful film.

Let me end where the SFJFF begins, with their opening film Hey Hey It's Esther Blueburger (Cathy Randall, Australia, 2008). I missed an opportunity to see this film during my last trip to Melbourne when it was playing in the Camberwell suburb where I was staying.. And after watching (on DVD) this wonderful film in my apartment in the Richmond District (appropriately enough, a district of San Francisco believed to have been given its name from an Australian who felt it reminded him of his former Melbourne neighborhood of Richmond), I'm so grateful to SFJFF for giving me another chance to see it. The film follows an awkward teenage year of Esther Blueburger. Shunned for her odd behavior by the privileged pack at her private school, she finds herself embraced for such by the rebels at a public school she secretively attends. Interspersed with surreal moments of imagination, this is not an Améliesque romanticism of fantastic whimsy. (Mind you, I love Amélie. But too much romanticism, especially when imposed on youth, can pose problems. For a strong argument against emo-overshare, checkout Craig Shuftan's wonderful new book, and wonderfully titled, Hey Nietzche, Leave Them Kids Alone!, published by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's publishing house. Tricia Rose's The Hip Hop Wars is a powerful companion book to Shuftan's since she presents an equally strong critique of romanticism's doppelganger, nihilism.) Esther, played strikingly well for a young debut by Danielle Catanzariti, battles against the cliques and confinements of teenage life. She eventually makes choices that result in her becoming that which she previously fought against, providing her an opportunity to take the very responsibilities she wished others would take. A slightly atypical coming-of-age film, I found myself embracing this gem from a country whose national cinema has been lacking in the eyes of my Australian friends. (Although everyone is raving about Aboriginal director Warwick Thornton's debut Samson and Delilah, so things could indeed be looking up down under.)

In fact, I found myself tremendously engaged with all three selections I screened prior to the beginning of SFJFF this Thursday. So if these three are any sign of what's on offer for the rest of the selections, this year's SFJFF should be the best I've ever attended.

Thanks Adam! The 29th San Francisco Jewish Film Festival opens at the Castro Theatre this Thursday, July 23rd and stays at that venue for a week. On August 1st, screenings move to the CinéArts theatre in Palo Alto, and to the Roda Theatre in Berkeley. Finally, the festival wraps up at the Jewish Community Center back here in Frisco August 8th and 9th, and at the Rafael in San Rafael August 8-10.

Silent Film Linking, Part Two

2009-07-16T23:38:00.000-07:00

My San Francisco Silent Film Festival weekend, Continued from Part One:

After missing most of the morning archival program (described here) and catching Bardelys the Magnificent with the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra (profiled in this podcast), it was time to settle in for perhaps the least-known feature in the program.

Wild Rose was directed by Sun Yu, perhaps the most highly-regarded of directors from Shanghai's silent film era, which extended well into the 1930s. Apparently the first Chinese director to have learned about filmmaking in the U.S., several of his films (not Wild Rose) have been released on DVD in the past few years. Still, his is still not exactly a household name, even among silent film buffs. Festival Writers Group members Victoria Jaschob and Aimee Pavy prepared a highly informative program essay and slideshow, respectively, which provided helpful context regarding the conditions in Shanghai under the Kuomintang in 1932, when Wild Rose was made. Most of us in the West have almost no knowledge of the filmmaking of this period, though the San Francisco Silent Film Festival is doing its part to try to rectify this, having now programmed three Chinese features in the past ten years and released the other two in DVD editions as well.

I hope Wild Rose follows the Peach Girl and the Goddess into home video availability. It's quite a lovely blend of 30's-style "realism", romanticism and patriotism, and features dreamy art deco sets and a pair of charismatic leads. The hero is Jin Yan, billed by the festival as a "Rudolf Valentino of China". Jin's widow Qin Yi was brought to the festival and interviewed on-stage by festival advisor Richard Meyer, who has just published a book on the star that includes a more in-depth interview. The female lead, Wang Renmei, is really the film's central character, however. In her excellent festival write-up, Donna Hill likens her to Mary Pickford, which seems pretty accurate. The plot has been summarized handily by Jason Wiener.

From an aesthetic standpoint, Wild Rose bears signs of director Sun's interest in Frank Borzage. Like his film Daybreak (a film I have not yet watched, but that Miriam Bratu Hansen analyzes in the Fall 2000 Film Quarterly), it contains an allusion to Seventh Heaven in the form of a cutaway staircase shot, but there's also something very Borzagean about the relationships between characters. I was reminded of films like No Greater Glory and Three Comrades, both of which were made by Borzage after Wild Rose was completed. The likelihood that the Utah-born auteur was influenced by a Chinese film seems non-existent, and I'd rahter explore the idea that Borzage and Sun were kindred spirits across cultures, than chalk the connections up to coincidence.

Thanks to a much needed early dinner break, I missed the introduction to the next film, Josef Von Sternberg's Underworld. It was given by the Film Noir Foundation's esteemed Eddie Muller, and thankfully it has been transcribed by Michael Guillén at the Evening Class. I also missed the short film shown beforehand, but found a balcony seat just in time for the opening credits of the feature. My second time viewing this gangster film template in 2009, following a Pacific Film Archive screening six months ago, it was reconfirmed as more than just genre archaeology but a stirring, pleasurable film in its own right. Stephen Horne's score was another triumph for the pianist. Horne made appropriate use of jazz-age stylings but perhaps the action scenes were the most memorably accompanied. Generous with tone clusters at the left end of the keyboard, his simulated gunshots resonated in the hall without overwhelming the on-screen excitement. I recall that PFA accompanist Judith Rosenberg also proved her affinity for Sternberg in her music for his silents earlier this year, and I would love to see the Silent Film Festival give her a chance to perform at a grand piano in the Castro one of these years. In the meantime, she'll be taking on Sternberg's debut film the Salvation Hunters again August 16 when it plays as part of the PFA's Treasures From the UCLA Festival of Preservation series.

Stay tuned for part three...

Silent Film Linking, Part One

2009-07-13T23:00:00.000-07:00

It's the day after the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, and the blogosphere is already filling up with reactions from attendees. Now, to attempt to collect these links and contextualize them within my own experience of the festival. I attended nearly everything, and had a grand time watching films, mingling with friends, and luxuriating in the Castro Theatre. And somehow I find I have the energy to begin a blow-by-blow.

Friday night's opening film was Douglas Fairbanks as the Gaucho, the film in the program I was most familiar with, having seen it multiple times on DVD while preparing the slide show presentation seen on screen as the audience filled the Castro seats, and the 2 1/2 page essay I wrote for the festival's program guide. Of all the many sources I consulted in my research on Fairbanks, there is perhaps none I leaned on more heavily than Jeffrey Vance and Tony Maietta's biography of the superstar. So it felt particularly fitting for these "silent partners" to introduce The Gaucho (as it is more informally known), as well as give a running commentary track over technicolor outtakes of Mary Pickford's cameo as a Marian apparition screened prior to the feature. Michael Guillén has posted a recap of the duo's introductory remarks, and even excerpts from my essay. Thanks, Michael!

It turns out I was less familiar with the Gaucho than I had thought. Seeing it projected beautifully and grandly on a huge cinema screen revealed details I had overlooked in close study of the DVD. Of all the films in this year's festival, this one must have contained the most shots with multiple threads of action happening simultaneously. The upshot of this is that seeing its images tower above me convinced me that it's an even better, richer film than I had previously judged it to be. I hope the new MOMA print doesn't retire back into the archive for good after this screening; this film deserves to be seen in any theatre where silent film lovers congregate. More reactions to this showing of the Gaucho have been published at six martinis and the seventh art, and at Jason Watches Movies.

This screening of The Gaucho premiered a new score by the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra, which has been a favorite of the SFSFF since 2007. Last year, this quintet performed for the Kid Brother, Harold Lloyd's greatest film. They perform that score again tomorrow night at the Rafael Film Center in Marin, which was the first Frisco Bay venue to bring them in. Their scores are well worth hearing more than once, and if you've never seen the Kid Brother it's an absolute must, deserving to stand with the best of Chaplin and Keaton in the pantheon of silent comedy masterpieces. If you miss that, however, the Kid Brother plays again at the California Theatre in San Jose on July 24th, with Dennis James performing at that venue's sadly-underutilized organ. James also will perform at the California on August 7th for Fairbanks' 1926 swashbuckler the Black Pirate. The rest of the summer weekend at that theatre are devoted to 70mm films (talkies, natch) from the 1960s.

After staying too late at the festival's opening night party, I overslept Saturday and made it to the Castro only in time to catch the very tail end of the free Amazing Tales From the Archives presentation, where I heard Stephen Horne play piano for an Edison short, How the Hungry Man Was Fed. Horne has caused something of a sensation at each of the SFSFF events he has attended, providing knockout accompaniment to often-dark films like a Cottage on Dartmoor, Jujiro, and the Unknown. But when performing for a brief comic piece like this one, I become curious to hear what he'd come up with for a feature-length comedy. Anyone with me?

The next presentation was with the Mont Alto orchestra again, accompanying a long-missing link in King Vidor's oeuvre, Bardelys the Magnificent, previewed by David Jeffers of the SIFFblog. A fine action picture with noteworthy photography, including a vertigo-inducing fall from a balcony, the presentation was notable for two main reasons: it was the West Coast debut of a title that had been considered a "lost film" for decades, and it was the festival's first experiment in screening a feature in DigiBeta rather than 35mm. With no-one willing to assume responsibility for the cost of transferring the recently re-discovered print to 35mm, the "film" is only viewable in digital form. Again, Michael Guillén has details from David Shepard's introduction. The image looked clean if somewhat contrastry on that screen. Vidor's vision may have been suggested, but I for one was unable to forget that I was watching through a layer of technological remove. SFSFF acting artistic director Anita Monga makes a great point about the difference between DVD and 35mm screenings in this recent sf360 interview:

Just because I have a postcard of the Vermeer’s "The Milkmaid" doesn’t make me not want to see it in at the Rijksmuseum. Au contraire, it whets my appetite.

I hope that enough appetites are whetted by the digital screenings and DVD release of Bardleys the Magnificent that the powers that be determine that there's sufficient demand to justify the cost of returning the picture to its celluloid magnificence.

Here's Part Two

Adam Hartzell: Plaza of the Pavements

2009-07-10T01:52:00.001-07:00

Brian here. Some months make me remember why I call this blog "Hell on Frisco Bay". June was a busy, stressful month for me, mostly outside the world of moviegoing, and so far July has been less stressful but even busier. Clearly, one of the things that has gone by the wayside in this time has been my ability to maintain this blog as a reliable and timely pointer to the myriad of terrific film events happening here on Frisco Bay. I'm keeping a better log of the latest local film screening announcements on my Twitter Stream, and you don't even have to register for anything to read it. But my time and energy for writing longer pieces for this site seems to be temporarily at a low ebb, even as practically every venue on my sidebar has a summer schedule well worth blogging about, even on-again, off-again cinemas like the Paramount in Oakland and the California in San Jose. Click the links to the right of this text and see.

Of course, the Silent Film Festival is opening this evening, and I am pleased to have a pass, some time off from work, and hopefully the stamina to see every program like I did last year. I certainly have the enthusiasm, built up over the past few months thanks to my connection with the festival, explained here. More previews of the festival are popping up everywhere, from authors such as Richard Von Busack, Thomas Gladysz, Carl Martin, Dennis Harvey and Michael Hawley.

Another preview of the festival films here at Hell On Frisco Bay seems extraneous. Which is why I'm also filled with enthusiasm to publish this piece by my good friend Adam Hartzell, on the 17th Street Plaza, which ought to enhance this year's festival experience as it lies mere inches from the line into the Castro Theatre that snakes around the corner of Castro and 17th Streets. Fascinatingly, this reclamation of space from motorized vehicle traffic is connected to the era during which silent films had their heyday. After reading, you may find the connections Adam makes resonating with your viewing of the masterful Underworld, with its depictions of police officers and getaway cars, or of So's Your Old Man, in which W.C. Fields plays an inventor of an automobile part. Adam will explain:

In spite of the fact that we sit in a theatre, often reclining in a fairly comfy chair, for many film-goers, cinema is not a passive activity. Hence the needs for a term like ‘film-goer’ which illuminates the more active process of watching cinema. Many of us prepare for the films we seek by reading about them or engaging in conversations about the films, either face to face with friends or in the comments section on blogs like these. Following the screening, we return to those spaces, the text on a page of a blog or the face of a friend, in order to sort out what we just actively saw.

This year’s San Francisco Silent Film Festival (running from July 10th through the 12th) allows for a unique opportunity for examining active cinema. If you can’t make it to Pordenone, Italy, the San Francisco Silent Film Festival is the second best stop for those who find silent film as invigorating as any talkie. In this way, the Silent Film Festival is a festival acted upon by cinema-goers. And when this season’s patrons seek to break their silence inside the theatre and talk about the film outside the theatre, they have a new space in which to have that conversation.

As usual, the Silent Film Festival will be taking place at the cinematic temple that is the Castro Theatre. But this year, halfway up the block where 17th street nudges between Castro and Market Street, is the recently established "17th Street Plaza" (an alternate name for it is "Castro Commons"), a retrofitting of a street into a pedestrian plaza where people can cross at their leisure, as well as sit, talk, read, watch, and eat. Taking a cue from the long term plans of New York City to transforms spaces such as Times Square into pedestrian paradises, San Francisco’s Pavement to Parks project states on its website that it "...seeks to temporarily reclaim unused swathes and quickly and inexpensively turn them into new public plazas and parks."

I must disagree with San Francisco Pavement to Parks (SFP2P) referring to these spaces as 'unused'. In actuality, they are indeed 'used', just not as the modern day city planner intended them to be. To the city planner, spaces like where 17th meets Castro and Market are supposed to be streets. In our present day, this means a public space where cars are privileged and pedestrians are corralled into the crosswalk if permitted to cross at all. But SFP2P has taken note of how San Franciscans have been re-thinking certain urban spaces, where pedestrians have re-oriented streets from their previous plans, where cars have discarded these thoroughfares from their choice of options. The area where 17th meets Castro and Market was an area dominated by pedestrians, an epicenter of the queer geography that, roughly 50 years ago, began re-mapping Eureka Valley into the gay enclave we now know as the Castro. It is at this ambivalent intersection where pedestrian confidence has been so pronounced that cars began to use the street less and less. Seeing that the pedestrians had made the street theirs, SFP2P made what was unofficial official and inaugurated the Pavement to Parks projects with the 17th Street Plaza. Now we have a space where people can sit, people can wonder, with only occasionally having to be aware of the launching of another inbound run of the nostalgic beauty that is the F Market Street Railway fleet.

Part of what I've found to be a problem with some of the film festivals in San Francisco is that they haven’t had have a place to fall out of the theatre. The Castro Theatre’s outside atrium crowds up quickly, leaving some of us feeling a need to get out of the right-of-way of the pedestrians, disrupting the flow of conversation for the ease of pedestrian flow. Out-of-town festivals I’ve been to, such as The Far East Film Festival in Udine, Italy or the Woman’s Film Festival in Seoul, have a public space at the ready for those who wish to carry their film-fueled conversations outside of the cramped spaces of the lobby without having to worry about moving along.

So this year I’m curious what the 17th Street Plaza will add to the already wonderful experience of the SF Silent Film Festival. How will the patrons appropriate this space? Will it be used as a space for cross-town friends to meet before queuing up for a screening? Will it be used as an impromptu lecture hall where signifying gestures will reveal ones thoughts, from the apathetic shrug of the shoulders to the full arm wailing rant or rave? Will it provide a space for kids to run around before or after the family-friendly fare on offer? (This year it’s Disney’s Oswald The Lucky Rabbit) Will it be a place to sip coffee from The Cheeseboard in order to stay alert for the next screening, or nosh on a bagel from Posh Bagel so one isn’t distracted by ones stomach growling? Or will it be a resting space for the lonely cinephile to reflect on where in their personal canon they will place what they’ve just seen?

What’s particularly poignant about the 17th Street Plaza placement outside the Silent Film Festival is what was going on in the U.S. at the time some of these films were initially screened, how cars were beginning to claim manifest destiny of city streets. Cars and streets have become so synonymous in our mental frames that the real history of streets as contested spaces between pedestrians and cars has been forgotten. It took University of Virginia’s Peter D. Norton to excavate that history for me. In his informative book Fighting Traffic: The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City (The MIT Press, 2008), he reveals a surprising history of "bloody and sometimes violent revolution" that took place on city streets before they became the sole domain of automobiles in the 1930’s. Although we expect downtown businesses to resist plans to de-car Market Street, accepting their beliefs that such would adversely affect their profits in spite of recent studies demonstrating exactly the opposite, in the 10's and 20's of the 20th century, businesses were not fans of the automobile. Nor were police, since it often fell on them to direct traffic, and even the emerging field of traffic engineers initially found cars to be more a nuisance than a convenience. (Consider this quote underscoring the pedestrian’s traditional rights to the streets from a New York City judge in 1923, "Nobody has any inherent right to run an automobile at all." Such sounds like sacrilege, if not ludicrous, today.) The Progressive Movement of the late 19th and early 20th century that led to the necessary safety regulations in industry and the unnecessary prohibition of alcohol, also sought to severely restrict cars from acting like they had any claim to city streets. (Symbolic measures taken were monuments for children killed by automobiles erected in major cities like Baltimore, Pittsburgh, and St. Louis. Along with photos of these monuments, Norton also includes propaganda fliers denouncing 'motordom', as the automotive industry was often referred to at the time, as basically child-killers.) It wasn’t until the automobile industry metaphorically connected the automobile with the concept of 'freedom' that our streets were envisioned as first and foremost for the car, placing responsibilities upon pedestrians (looking both ways, children not playing in the street, etc) that were never imposed upon pedestrians before. As Norton notes, "jaywalking", began as a term for people who blocked pedestrians from their right of way! Now the term, thanks to the efforts of the Boy Scouts and public safety week campaigns suggests a pedestrian is overstepping boundaries. (In our very own San Francisco in 1920, a safety campaign was implemented where jaywalkers were pulled from the street and immediately forced to face mock outdoor trials in order to teach them to feel shame about an activity that was, at the time, perfectly normal.)

Now as we begin the 21st century, the pedestrian is joining the critical mass cyclist in reclaiming the streets for active transport. As a result, cities have also begun a process of rethinking city streets. This is a result of the environmental concerns we were unaware of in the early part of the 20th century, the health benefits addressed by engaging in more active forms of transport, and the sociological needs to reconnect after suburbanization and digital technology increasingly isolate us from one another. We don’t want the bloody revolution Norton notes from our past. And SFP2P has taken care to lessen the possibility of conflicts between modern day motordom and pedestrians. In re-visioning spaces, they have thought ahead about possible obstacles. For example, concern about complaints of parking space loss led to SFP2P implementing an increase in parking around the upcoming "Guerrero Park" project. With The 14th Annual Silent Film Festival being the inaugural silent film festival for the 17th Street Plaza, here’s hoping this represents a roundabout where a significant portion of our city streets will return to the pedestrian promenades they were at the heyday of silent film.

Thanks Adam! Hopefully the discussion of the festival, and of the relationship between pedestrians and automobiles, will spill into the streets, and into the following comments section!

Adam Hartzell's Oshima Reading Guide

2009-06-03T01:21:00.000-07:00

Brian here. Lots of cinematic happenings on Frisco Bay this week! The Another Hole In The Head festival of indie horror, sci-fi and other genre film opens Friday at the Roxie; it's been heavily previewed by Jay Blodgett, though I liked Coming Soon more than he did I think. The SF Film Society Screen at the Kabuki cranks into gear again starting the same day with a week-long booking of Carlos Saura's Fados. But for me, the most exciting events occur in Berkeley at the Pacific Film Archive, where critic and programmer James Quandt will be in attendance for two evenings of screenings in the Nagisa Oshima retrospective that began last weekend. I shamefully have only seen two Oshima films so far (at least one of them, Death By Hanging is clearly a masterpiece even to a newbie like myself). But since my buddy Adam Hartzell is one of the most devoted fans of this living legend that I'm aware of, I'm absolutely thrilled that he has offered to provide a guide to navigating the Oshima ocean that this retrospective may appear to be, and to share with Hell on Frisco Bay readers. He shows me up starting from his first sentence, using the proper Japanese name order (surname first, personal name second) that I haven't trained myself to adopt. Here's Adam:

The Pacific Film Archive is in the realm of Oshima Nagisa for the next month and a half. James Quandt of the Cinematheque Ontario has done the hard work of rounding up the prints and rights to screen a all but one of Oshima’s feature films, along with a couple his documentaries. Having taken his series on the road, we had to wait until the end of the run to get our chance to see Oshima films rarely screened anywhere in North America before, let alone the Bay Area, such as Three Resurrected Drunkards, or films screened occasionally, but since they aren’t available on (English-subbed) DVDs yet, one is completely reliant on screenings to re-view them, such as two of my favorite Oshima films Death By Hanging and Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence. (Why that latter film is not on DVD with English subtitles yet is completely confounding since it features David Bowie and composer Ryuichi Sakamoto in a sublimated Gay love story and also features Beat Takeshi.)

But rather than recommend more films from the series, I wanted to take this time to recommend a reading list instead. So here are the books in my library that I recommend you seek out to help you formulate your own theories and questions while watching a treasure trove of Oshima’s oeuvre on hand this early summer.

Maureen Turim – The Films of Oshima Nagisa: Images of a Japanese Iconoclast (University of California Press, 1998)

This is the definitive book on Oshima and the one that has made me so anxious for this retrospective. Turim discusses so many films to which I have yet to have access. But thanks to Quandt and the PFA, I can now compare Turim’s arguments with what I see when watching, A Town of Love and Hope, Shiro Amakusa, the Christian Rebel, Pleasures of the Flesh, A Treatise on Japanese Bawdy Songs, Diary of a Shinjuku Thief, Three Resurrected Drunkards, Dear Summer Sister, and the documentary Yunbogi’s Diary. (Two other films I have yet to see that will be screening, but not addressed in Turim’s book, are Band of Ninja and Double Suicide: A Japanese Summer.) Thanks to Quandt and PFA, I can revisit films I once owned on VHS, Cruel Story of Youth, The Sun’s Burial, Violence at Noon, In the Realm of the Senses, and Empires of Passion after which I can then revisit Turim’s commentary. (I say ‘once owned’ because money concerns recently had me cashing them in at Amoeba. So if you want to snag them, they are likely still there. Thankfully, I held on to Max Mon Amour, Oshima’s fully French-funded film that features actress Charlotte Rampling playing an upper-class woman who has begun an affair with a chimpanzee. Sadly, this is the only Oshima feature film not on offer at the retrospective Quandt has compiled.) I can also revisit both film and theory with Night and Fog in Japan, The Catch, Death by Hanging, Boy, The Ceremony, the Man Who Left His Will On Film, and Oshima’s contribution to the British Film Institute’s Century of Cinema project, 100 Years of Japanese Cinema, films that had previously shown at the PFA, SFMoMA, and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. (Gohatto will also be part of the retrospective; it was released in the Bay Area but it was made after Turim’s book was published.)

Oshima Nagisa – Cinema, Censorship and the State: The Writings of Oshima Nagisa (The MIT Press, 1992)

Or perhaps you want to become acquainted with Oshima’s own words on his own films. If so, then you’ll definitely want to check out Cinema, Censorship and the State. In this collection of Oshima’s writings you will find valuable complimentary commentary on Oshima’s trips to impoverished South Korea, (this was pre-economic-miracle, when South Korea was nothing like it is today), a nice companion piece to the screening at the retrospective of the documentary Yonbogi’s Diary. Also, invaluable to the screening of In the Realm of the Senses, is Oshima’s commentary on the obscenity trial that followed that film. Ironically, it appears it was never screened, ehem, uncut in Japan until 2000.

And speaking of In the Realm of the Senses, if you haven’t heard it spoken of before, it is Oshima’s take on the Abe Sada story. If you’re a film fanatic, you surely have already heard about the significant moments that occur within this film. But spoiler ethics keep me from going into too much detail. Let me say this though. Do not go with a date, unless you are very, very comfortable with that person. Also, don’t bring your parents or grandparents. Finally, let me say, as a man, I have seen this film roughly five times, and although I can keep my eyes open during the mid-climaxes, I have yet to be able to keep my eyes open at the final climax. I agree with many who argue In the Realm of the Senses is not just a glorified porno flick. (In Japanese, it’d be better to compare this film to a ‘Pink Film’, which are considered separate from what most of us intend by the moniker ‘porno’.) Many consider it a film of high quality and one that makes significant commentary on the encroaching Japanese empire of the time in which the film is set. The British Film Institute felt similarly, and included In the Realm of the Senses in its film monograph series. Joan Mellon does the honors for this monograph and includes a nice short overview of Oshima’s work and themes. Another British publishing house, Wallflower Press, includes an essay on In the Realm of the Senses by Samara Lea Allsop in The Cinema of Japan and Korea, part of their 24 Frames world cinema series. (This is where I’m obligated to say I also have an essay in the same book. Mine is on Hong Sangsoo’s The Power of Kangwon Province (1998). And this is also where I’m obligated to apologize for the personal plug.)

Finally, before or after the PFA’s screening of The Catch, you might want to read the Oe Kenzaburo story on which the film is based. Oe, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1994, is my favorite fiction writer. I have read every book by him that has been translated into English. His novel A Personal Matter is one of the few books I’ve read more than twice. (Another is Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling. And the reason I was so strongly drawn to both authors was limned when I read Oe’s Rouse Up O Young Men of the New Age. Ironically, it’s not the William Blake reference of the title that stuck out for me but the confirmation in the novel that the ethical quandaries of the Abraham and Isaac story were indeed a concern throughout Oe’s oeuvre.) 'The Catch' is a story that explores the theme of racism as transference where a Japanese village’s psychosexual issues are thrown upon an African-American soldier whose plane crashes into their village during World War II. The translation I have of ‘The Catch’ is actually entitled 'Prize Stock', a title I find more in sync with the story’s theme, and is found in a wonderful collection of Oe's short stories entitled Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness (Grove Press, 1994).

So there are some titles to checkout either at the library or one of the many independent bookstores in the Bay Area to enhance the already wonderful experience the Pacific Film Archives is providing for us cinephiles.

Silent Film Festivals

2009-06-01T23:31:00.000-07:00

The San Francisco Silent Film Festival has revealed its full program lineup for the 14th annual edition of its summer celebration of a glorious age of filmmaking. The festival runs July 10-12 at the Castro Theatre. For the third year in a row, I've been a member of the festival's research and writing group, each of us charged with writing an essay and/or compiling a slide show to accompany one of the films selected by the festival programmers. My film this time around has been the Gaucho, the penultimate silent film produced and starred by Douglas Fairbanks, the original cinematic swashbuckler. For the past few months I've dug deeply into "Doug" (as his fans nicknamed him), reading biographies, articles and essays, and watching seventeen of his thirty-eight silent films (six of which are presumed lost), including all the films contained on the recent Flicker Alley DVD release (now available at the SF Public Library). The Gaucho is not on that set, though it is available on DVD through Kino. Still, it's one of the least-seen of his costume adventure films, even though it was a hit at the time of its original release, and showcases a terrific feature debut performance by Lupe Vélez, the so-called "Mexican Firecracker".

The Gaucho is the festival's opening-night film, and it should be a delightful way to open a weekend of beautiful restored prints from around the world, live performances by silent-film music specialists, and general merriment. The Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra will be appearing, for the third time at the festival, premiering a brand-new in-period score to the film. The screening is co-presented by the Mexican Museum, quite appropriately since though the film is set in a picture-book version of the Argentine Andes, many of the film's actors and extras in addition to Vélez were in fact of Mexican descent.

My essay will be available as part of a complimentary program guide presented to everyone who attends the festival. It may also appear online at some future date; the festival has recently begun making essays from certain previous programs available on its website. My essays for the festival's screenings of Teinosuke Kinugasa's Jujiro in 2008 and William C. de Mille's Miss Lulu Bett in 2007 are among those currently viewable, though I highly recommend browsing the archive and reading essays by all the writers in the group; they are intended to be equally useful for people who have seen the films in question, and for those who haven't.

In addition to the Gaucho, this year's festival includes nine feature films, two presentations of shorts and rare fragments (a set of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoons, and the annual free Amazing Tales From the Archives presentation), and almost every feature will also be preceded by a short film featuring a silent film star celebrating her centennial year in the cinema in 2009: Mary Pickford. I can particularly recommend two films I've seen at the Pacific Film Archive, but which should be particularly stunning on the Castro's towering screen: Josef Von Sternberg's prototypical gangster film Underworld, and Victor Sjostrom's most famous film the Wind, starring Lillian Gish.

I have not yet seen the other features, but I am extremely excited to see the version of Fall of the House of Usher directed by French critic-turned-filmmaker Jean Epstein, and the Chinese film Wild Rose, directed by Shanghai's perhaps most notable auteur of the era, Sun Yu. Wild Rose stars Jin Yan, the Korean-born matinee idol who played opposite tragic Ruan Ling-yu in the 2000 SFSFF film the Peach Girl. His widow Qin Yi will be in attendance at the screening.

Terry Zwigoff, maker of Crumb, Ghost World and Bad Santa has been invited to provide the "director's pick" this year, following up on Guy Maddin's selection the Unknown last summer. Zwigoff will present W.C. Fields in what is generally regarded as the comedian's finest silent film, So's Your Old Man. The festival will bring its first-ever film from the Czechoslovakian silent film industry, Erotikon by Gustav Machaty, who would later make Hedy Lamarr famous worldwide when directing her nude scene in Ecstasy. Also from Eastern Europe is the late-night pick co-presented by MiDNiTES FOR MANiACS, Aelita, Queen of Mars, a big-budget science fiction film made in the Soviet Union.

Douglas Fairbanks is not the only swashbuckler in the lineup, as John Gilbert plays one in Bardleys the Magnificent, a King Vidor film that had been considered a "lost film" until a short while ago when it was rediscovered and transfered to a digital presentation format; this will be the festival's first time showing one of its programs on anything other than celluloid, as there is no projectable film print available anywhere in the world. Finally, the weekend closes as it opened, with a Lupe Vélez starring role, only this time she plays the title character: Lady of the Pavements, one of D.W. Griffith's last and least-known features today, and said to be reminiscent of German Street Films of the 1920s.

Loyal attendees of the Silent Film Festival will recognize the names of the musicians coming to perform at the festival: Dennis James at the Mighty Wurlitzer, aided by Mark Goldstein providing electronic effects for Aelita (it seems the Wind will also include special sound effects as well; this is no gentle breeze). Pianists Philip Carli (So's Your Old Man), Stephen Horne (Fall of the House of Usher, Underworld and the archive presentation program), and Donald Sosin. Sosin will play for Wild Rose, for the Oswald program (and those who remember how he encouraged a delightful form of audience participation during last year's animation matinee Adventures of Prince Achmed will know that this should be a good match up), and for Lady of the Pavements. For the latter, Sosin's wife Joanna Seaton will provide a vocal performance in the spirit of the film's original 1929 presentation in a part-talkie form. And in addition to the Gaucho, the Mont Alto orchestra will provide scores to Bardleys the Magnificent and Erotikon. Then, two days after the festival ends, in San Rafael, they will perform to Buster Keaton's the Cameraman at an event put on by a wholly different organization, the California Film Institute, who introduced this quintet to Frisco Bay audiences several years before they began playing at the SFSFF.

Yes, the San Francisco Silent Film Festival is not the only game in town for fans of watching silent films in a cinema setting with live musical accompaniment; in Fremont, the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum has weekly screenings every Saturday of the year except for the weekend of the SFSFF. This weekend is Charlie Chaplin Days in Niles, an excuse for a screening of the Kid as well as a slew of Chaplin shorts at the museum theatre. And on June 26-28 the museum hosts its own three-day film festival, the 12th Annual Broncho Billy Silent Film Festival named for the cowboy star who made Niles the base of operations for his filmmaking nearly 100 years ago. This year the Broncho Billy festival follows last year's centennial commemoration of the Edison Trust with a focus on independent studios that defied the at-the-time majors. Some of these independents became major studios themselves; a program devoted to the beginnings of Paramount opens the festival, and another showcasing early Universal (including a screening of Erich von Stroheim's Foolish Wives) closes it. In between, there are programs devoted to less-remembered companies such as Thanhauser, Ince, and the American Film Company, as well as a program of comedies introduced by "Baby Peggy" herself, and a selection of Frisco Bay-made silents.

And to get everyone involved in the celebration of "independent" filmmaking, not just fans of silent-era film, the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum is bringing (gasp!) talkies to its screen on other June evenings; specifically, independently-produced films by modern-day Frisco Bay filmmakers. I have never heard of the Weekend King, shot in Niles and playing this Friday June 5th, and I don't believe I'd ever seen a Scary Cow production before learning the production company would be featured with a screening on June 21st. But I'm very glad that Frisco Bay residents will on Friday June 12th have another shot at seeing the terrific debut feature Around the Bay from Alejandro Adams, who I interviewed on the occasion of its last local cinema screening at last year's Cinequest festival in San Jose. And I'm excited for the opportunity to hear Frisco Bay indie filmmaking legends John Korty and Les Blank present films and clips in a homey, intimate space. Blank's Garlic Is As Good As Ten Mothers, surely the definitive documentary about Nosferatu's least favorite garnish, is planned to play with the director in person on Friday, June 19th. The screening is not advertised as being in "Smellaround" but neither was the screening held four years ago at the Castro where I swear my nose was sensing delicious aromas before the film was half over. Will we one day talk about "scentless" films like we now talk about "silents"?

Up at the Castro

2009-05-31T23:59:00.000-07:00

On Friday, the Castro Theatre began showing the latest Pixar film, Up, directed by Pete Docter (who previously made Monsters, Inc.) I saw it there, and here are eight reasons why I think it's the ideal Frisco Bay venue in which to watch:

1. The Wurlitzer organ which plays before the evening screenings. When I attended the organist performed well-known Disney themes by the likes of the Sherman Bros. and other songwriters. Though Disney and Pixar are now joined at the hip (or at least the knee) Up thankfully contains no tacked-on pop songs intended to add to an Oscar nomination haul. Yet its music score composed by Michael Giacchino is nonetheless essential. Hearing the organ beforehand may also evoke the silent movie era for modern audiences- quite appropriate given that Up, even more than bleepity-blooping Wall-E, has an early sequence that deserves to be compared to the most accomplished visual storytelling of the silent era.

2. The Castro is playing the film in 3-D, which, yes means paying extra for the new-fangled glasses, but it certainly adds to the experience, even if it's not essential to appreciating the film. If you don't care at all about stereoscopic gimmickry, or prefer viewing a 35mm print, the Presidio provides an opportunity for viewing without the 3-D surcharge. At any rate, the Castro ticket price makes it Frisco's second-cheapest option for viewing in 3-D, outside of certain matinee screenings at the Sundance Kabuki.

3. I really don't want to do more than hint about the content of Up, but I think it's not spoiling a key surprise to say that the film begins with a clever "Movietown" newsreel showing the exploits of an intrepid explorer, hero to our protagonist Carl, who sits in a darkened theatre looking up at the screen with his thick-rimmed glasses and aviator goggles on. It's an ingenious device to create cinema audience identification with the character; we are placed in his position from the outset, and as we're adjusting our 3-D glasses he's adjusting his goggles. As we're delighting to the images on screen, so is he. The sequence also works as a time bridge, placing us in the distant past- perhaps the late 1920's or early 1930's. Needless to say, the scene in Up is not set in a multiplex but in a single-screen theatre, and the technique is certain to work better the the latter than the former. Though the Century Theatre in Corte Madera, a fine venue in its own right, is also a single-screener on Frisco Bay in which to fully experience this dreamworld transference, it was built in the 1960s. Dating from 1922, the Castro is by far the best simulator of Carl's experience around.

4. The respectful audiences. Even when playing mainstream fare, the Castro draws a more informed, enthusiastic crowd than you're likely to find at the shopping malls. Part of this may be a function of attending opening weekend in a Frisco Bay venue, not so far from Pixar's Emeryville headquarters. Were all those people staying to sit and clap the credits just fans, or were they supporting their friends and co-workers who'd had a hand in Up's creation?

5. Perhaps the interest in seeing a new 3-D film in Frisco's grandest remaining cinema will get folks excited about seeing revival films in 3-D. The last time the Castro brought out the silver screen, the dual projectors, and prints of terrific fare such as Dial 'M' For Murder and Robot Monster was a few years ago. Might a successful Up run inspire another such series?

6. Not enough quality animation graces the Castro screen, period. Sure, we had the live-action/stop motion hybrid the Lost World (which Up clearly references) earlier this month thanks to the SF Film Society, and a somewhat recent $5 Tuesday night offering was a bill of out-of-copyright Fleischer Brothers films. But there are whole worlds of animation that would be wonderful to view on that screen. My own first visit inside the Castro's hallowed halls was during Spike & Mike's animation festival, but now both that event and the folks who tour The Animation Show use other Frisco Bay venues. Why not a Hayao Miyazaki fest in conjunction with his upcoming visit to Frisco Bay in July? Or a Tex Avery night at the Castro? Animation-heads need opportunities to be reminded how great a venue it is for our beloved medium. The next two and a half weeks provide many; here's hoping there's more to come.

7. The Castro is the venue where Frisco Bay Herzog fans were able to see the White Diamond, one of the best films the Bavarian auteur has made in the past couple of decades. I wrote a bit about that screening in a piece for Senses of Cinema back in 2005. Don't try to tell me that Up and the White Diamond are not brethren, if in a slightly oblique way. Credit Robert Davis for noticing it.

8. Finally, and perhaps most surprisingly, Up seems particularly poignant in light of last week's news event which rocked California, and the Castro district perhaps especially hard. Though he is responding to an advance screening that took place last Tuesday, and goes further into plot detail than I personally feel comfortable sharing with readers who have not seen the film yet (he doesn't reveal anything from beyond the first twenty-five or so minutes, but as these were my favorite minutes of Up I'm still feeling conservative at this point), Arya Ponto has eloquently made a connection that I feel is worth highlighting. Somehow, it seems unexpectedly appropriate that the day after Up's Castro run ends on June 17th, the theatre is given over to the 33rd Frameline festival, which has been nicely previewed by Michael Hawley. Perhaps Frameline fans coming in from out of town might want to arrive a day early to catch Up in a unique venue.

Adam Hartzell: Night And Day

2009-05-20T23:55:00.000-07:00

For those of us stuck in Frisco Bay, eyeing online coverage of the current Cannes Film Festival, a sense of frustration can quickly set in. Often it takes a year or more for even the highly-critically-regarded titles of the world's most prestigious film festivals to make it to local theatres. Some titles never make it here at all. The best way to console ourselves is to...see other films that are new to local screens or rarely shown. The Yerba Buena Center for the Arts screening room is a great place to do just that. Can't wait for Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds to come to Frisco? At least you can watch the 1978 exploitation film that inspired it's title (though perhaps not the misspelling), next week. And this week, the next-to-newest film from another filmmaker with a film playing the French Riviera. Who better than Adam Hartzell to whet the appetite a little? Adam:

Hong Sangsoo’s latest film, Like You Know It All was released this past weekend in South Korea in concert with a screening at Cannes. Although cinephiles in San Francisco will have to wait to know all about that film, we can take pleasure in Hong’s oeuvre of displeasure this weekend with Yerba Buena Center for the Arts screening of Night and Day, beginning its short run this Thursday.

Those familiar with Hong’s work will see the recurring themes as clear as night and day in Night and Day. Once again we have come hither, go thither gestures between ambivalent lovers, lovers whom we are definitely not intended to find admirable. Carrying onward with Woman on the Beach, Hong brings equal treatment to his male and female portrayals in Night and Day, highlighting the bad in both. In this 8th return to those Hongian themes, we have a painter named Sung-nam (Kim Yeong-ho) who has left South Korea for Paris in order to avoid arrest for the victimless crime of smoking marijuana. Away from his wife, Sung-nam happens upon an old flame. (Hong's films are full of re-encounters.) But rather than the bed-and-retreat, rinse-repeat pattern we’ve come to expect of all main male characters in Hong’s films, Sung-nam strays in ironic ways from this past lover. When he meets a young painter perpetrating talents at Beaux Arts, Hyun-joo (Seo Min-jung), however, that old Hong character pathology rears its pathetic head again.

Tension of the sexual and socially awkward variety is what makes Hong's cinematic worlds go round. Characters behave with borderline nihilistic intensions, which may rile some viewers as Hong’s drunken men rile strangers when drinking. But with every 'repeat' Hongian moment, such as Sung-nam getting something caught in his eye just like Sang-kwon in The Power of Kangwon Province or the obligatory day trippin', Hong has ventured slightly off his well-trodden paths in Night and Day. Sung-nam's aforementioned momentary chastity is one divergence. The drinking scenes are decidedly different as well, blinks of the bug-invaded eye in Night and Day when compared to earlier fixated stares in works such as Turning Gate.

So if you found yourself growing as tired of Hong as Hong's women sometimes do with his men, Night and Day might have you returning to Hong like, well, Hong's women sometimes do with Hong's men. If you have yet to see a Hong film, Night and Day might be the perfect introduction. And for those of you like me who continue to find much to mine in Hong's musings on the pathetic in all of us, Night and Day won't fail to show you how we fail others and ourselves.

Sean McCourt: The Boys

2009-05-19T12:44:00.000-07:00

Last year, Sean McCourt interviewed for Hell On Frisco Bay the director of the English Surgeon, a documentary currently playing at the Red Vic. And on Friday, another doc that Sean caught but I missed will open on Frisco Bay (at the Metreon). Here's Sean:

Although Robert and Richard Sherman might not be household names today, chances are it would only take a fraction of a second for someone listening to one of their songs to instantly recognize it and immediately be transported back to their youth, all while singing along to every word.

For 50 years now, the Sherman Brothers have been writing some of the most well-known and beloved music ever produced for film, television, stage and even amusement parks. Ranging from Mary Poppins and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang to Winnie The Pooh and "It’s A Small World," the output of the two musically gifted siblings has been absolutely astonishing—and because of the fact that they have produced so much work together over the years, and the tunes are almost universally upbeat and inspiring for children, the true story behind their tumultuous personal relationship with one another is doubly fascinating.

The Boys: The Sherman Brothers’ Story is a new documentary looking at the lives of these two award-winning men, produced and directed by their two sons, cousins Jeffrey and Gregory Sherman, who didn’t know each other growing up even though they only lived a few blocks away from one another.

The world premiere screening of the deeply moving film took place in San Francisco on April 25th at the theater in the Letterman Digital Arts Complex, George Lucas’ new high-tech headquarters in the Presidio, the former army base that will also be home to the new Disney Family Museum later this year.

The packed event, part of the 52nd annual San Francisco International Film Festival, brought out all sorts of film-goers, ranging from small children to grandparents, including a sizable group from Disney that filled the middle section of the seating area.

Composed of several different types of cleverly woven together footage, including current interviews, clips from films, vintage behind the scenes home movies, personal family photos and more, The Boys starts out by giving some background on Robert and Richard Sherman’s family, particularly their father, the famous Tin Pan Alley songwriter Al Sherman.

Providing a backdrop for some of the brothers’ early influences, the documentary makes it clear that the two always had different personalities and interests, which were only widened when the elder Robert went off to fight in World War II and was wounded in combat. His physical injuries and the emotional scars from his time in the European portion of the conflict are slowly brought up over the course of the film, shedding light on his outlook on life, particularly when it is revealed that he was among the first Americans to liberate the Dachau concentration camp near the end of the war. He is clearly still haunted by what he saw, and he talks about how creating joyful art helped "make the horror go away."

Robert and Richard Sherman, now 83 and 80, respectively, are interviewed separately throughout the film, with Robert now living in London, while Richard still resides in Southern California. Many of the sequences segue from current interview footage to nicely rendered, almost three-dimensional restored photos from the past, while the interviews continue as voice-overs.

In addition to interviews with the Sherman Brothers and their sons, the film features words and thoughts from other family members and several people who have worked with them or admired their songs over the years, including Dick Van Dyke, Julie Andrews, John Landis, Angela Lansbury and Ben Stiller, who served as an Executive Producer on the project.

Tracing the story of their music career back to when they were getting ready for college, the film details how Robert had already made up his mind to major in writing, while Richard wasn’t sure what he wanted to do until one day while walking down the street he found himself with a tune running through his mind that he didn’t know where it had come from. Running home to the family piano to figure out how to play the melody he heard in his head, his father walked in on him, asked what he was doing, and when he was told, he immediately suggested to his son that he should become a music major.

After the two graduated and moved back to southern California, they shared an apartment, living together out of economic necessity, with both concentrating on their own muses—Robert on writing a novel and poems, while Dick wrote and played music. One day their father suggested they work together on something, which they did; their first published song was "Gold Can Buy You Anything But Love," recorded by the legendary Gene Autry.

The documentary shows how this was the impetus for their continued teamwork, and then details The Sherman Brothers’ first big break with Disney, when they wrote "Tall Paul" for Annette Funicello in 1959.

Both brothers obviously still love Walt Disney and appreciate the opportunity that he gave them; as they talk about their first meeting with him, and how they got their job, they start to choke back tears a bit, and later on in the film they do the same when recalling the last time they saw Disney before he passed away in 1966. They relate the story of going to a movie premiere with him, and that at the end of the night, he came up to them and said, "Keep up the good work, boys"—something that he had never done before.

In a further touching tribute to Disney, the documentary then shows a still photo of him, with the camera panning towards the sky where a drawing of Mickey Mouse is crying. The scene then shifts to home movies of Disney throwing seeds to a flock of birds, all while the song "Feed The Birds" from Mary Poppins is played. Richard Sherman explains that Disney always asked them to play that particular song if they were in his office at the end of the week, that it was one of his favorites.

Among the interesting background stories and insider’s looks into how the some of the songs they wrote were originally created is one about how Jeff Sherman came home one day from school to find his father struggling to work on a new song for Mary Poppins. Robert Sherman looked up from his work, and asked how his son’s day had been, who related that he and the other students had to have a vaccination. Robert then asked if it was given through a shot, to which Jeff replied that they had "just taken a spoon and poured the medicine over a sugar cube" for them to eat. A current shot of Jeff imitating his father is then shown, nodding his head in thought, and then saying, "A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down…"

Many, many other clips from movies and songs are used throughout the lively 100 minute film, including Charlotte’s Web, Bedknobs and Broomsticks, Snoopy Come Home, The Jungle Book, and "The Tiki Tiki Tiki Room."

Interwoven into these wonderful snippets of their work is a gradual attempt at explaining the story behind the Sherman Brothers’ eventual personal estrangement—the case for one reason in particular is not made, but rather it seems that years and years of little things building up led to their current situation, among the factors being marital problems, financial considerations, and the general outward personalities of the two—who continue to work together across a long distance, thanks to advances in technology—but they just can’t seem to reconnect on a personal level for themselves, or for their families.

At the end of the documentary, the two filmmaker cousins show their trip to the recent premiere of Mary Poppins The Musical, and in voice-overs discuss how they had hoped that through the making of the Boys, they could convince their fathers to reconcile and re-form their personal relationship. A sequence of the two brothers greeting each other cordially on the red carpet is shown, but then one of the sons comes back on to finish the narration, saying "unlike a Sherman Brothers song, not all stories have a happy ending."

After the screening, Richard, Jeff and Greg Sherman appeared in person for a question and answer session, walking to the front of the theater to a standing ovation.

One of the questions posed for Richard Sherman asked about how he felt when he was riding "It’s A Small World," or was in a place where one of their songs was being played, and people were enjoying it, but didn’t know that he was one of the people who had created it. He said he a good answer for that, that he would share a story from his childhood—when he went to a big football game with his father, during halftime the marching bands came out and played "You Gotta Be A Football Hero," a song that his father had co-written. The crowd was all cheering along and clapping to the song, and as a kid he asked his dad how he felt, to which his father replied "It feels good, kiddo."

Richard Sherman then looked around at the audience at the Letterman Theater, smiled, and said, "That's how I feel, it's feels good!"

Another question asked of the two filmmakers was what they had learned while making the documentary. Jeff Sherman, Robert’s son, began talking about how he really started to get to know his father, but he started getting a little overwhelmed, and had to choke back tears. Richard chimed in, saying, "See, we Sherman’s are an emotional bunch!" which drew supportive applause.

Shortly thereafter, the three were talking about all of the people that helped them with the film, and Richard mentioned that two of the people in the picture had recently passed away after filming their interviews—he then started choking up himself, and he said, "See?"

Jeff Sherman then looked at his cousin, and said, “You’re next!” Greg looked over at him, back at the audience, and then grinned a little, pointing at his head, quietly staying, “Sports scores…sports scores,” giving away the fact that he was trying to think of other things to stop the flow of tears coming.

Overall, The Boys is a very well made documentary, and is a must see for anyone who grew up listening to the Sherman Brothers’ unforgettable songs, though it may not be entirely suitable for young children due to some of it’s highly emotional scenes.

The Boys: The Sherman Brothers’ Story opens May 22nd at the AMC Metreon in San Francisco.

You Don't Know Him From Atom

2009-05-15T02:24:00.000-07:00

After barely a week to recover from the San Francisco International Film Festival, the parade of rare screenings has started up again, with a two-week series of obscure film noir titles screened in 16mm at the Roxie starting last night, and a six-days of gems by Nick Ray, Andrzej Zulawski, Abel Ferrara and more, collected under the title Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, at the Castro. The Yerba Buena Center For the Arts continues a terrific early-summer calendar with new films by Phillipe Garrel and Hong Sang-soo and older films starring Laurel & Hardy, Fred Williamson and more. The Pacific Film Archive is closed for now, but will reopen May 29th with the first salvo in this much-anticipated stop on the Nagisa Oshima touring program.

But there's also a surfeit of promising titles to catch up playing commercial runs at the local arthouses. One of these, Adoration, opens today at the Embarcadero here in Frisco and at the Elmwood near the Berkeley/Oakland border. Adam Hartzell caught the film and has written a piece on it, beginning with a personal reflection on its director's first name:

My appreciation for Armenian-Canadian director Atom Egoyan comes from a unique place. Like many a high school kid anxious about their identity, I decided that doing something funky with my name would help me make my mark. So I began spelling my name with a backwards capitol 'D' (which I don’t know how to actually do here, so you’ll have to flip the 'D' in your head). Adam Ant was my favorite artist at the time and he did the same thing. However, this had to stop when one day my sophomore English teacher took me aside after class and asked me if I was dyslexic.

I didn’t want to have that happen again. But I still wanted to make a mark through my name. I was a lucky kid in that I could jump around from clique to clique. I had a fairly natural athletic ability, so I started on the Ohio-obligatory gridiron football team. I was also fairly smart in the sense that I knew what the teachers wanted me to know, the key to surviving industrial scholastics unscathed. Yet in spite of this cynicism to how knowledge was commoditized in high school, I still aspired for knowledge. I saw how 'nerds' were treated in pre-Geek-Chic pop culture and wanted to jam what I saw as the ill-minded promotion to dumb down the commons.

One way I wanted to do this was through my letter jacket. The point of the letter jacket was to advertise your success on the playing field, be it football, track, or even golf. I wanted to put chemistry and math on mine. I wanted to subvert the dominate paradigm. Sadly, my parents wanted to divert their son from being a freak, so that never happened. They were the ones paying the bill so they nixed that one. In compensation, I decided to start spelling my name A-T-O-M, rather than my given spelling.

Everyone in my high school knew everyone else’s business. So everyone knew I spelled my name that way. When I got to university I found myself surrounded by quite a few Adams, so I began spelling my name out. 'Hi, my name’s ATOM, that’s A-T-O-M, not A-D-A-M' was how I introduced myself. It sounds dorky, but, thankfully, I had a personality that could make it work, at least for the people who mattered to me, those people who became my friends. Since dorm-living was required for all first year students, people began to hear about this guy who spelled his name 'A-T-O-M'. I’d meet a new person who’d say upon meeting me, 'Oh, you’re A-T-O-M Adam'. And that’s how people began just calling me, 'A-T-O-M'. Later on, it was shortened to 'A.T.', which melded nicely with the fact that my middle initial is 'T'.

And then one day I was walking along the Delmar Loop in St. Louis and came upon a poster advertising an upcoming flick at the Tivoli Theatre. It was called The Adjuster and was directed by someone who also spelled his name 'Atom'. I was shocked, shocked, SHOCKED!!! This Egoyan character stole my name! Distraught, I was worried.. 'If this guy’s successful, people might think I’m copying him?!' My youthful hubris, a nice way of saying my bullshit, was busted. I protested by not going to see the film.

I still haven’t seen it. However, I have seen Ararat, The Sweet Hereafter, and Family Viewing, thoroughly enjoying each. So I think I’ll get around to seeing The Adjuster one day. The peculiar psychological space that places Egoyan in my mental matrix is fitting since his films are such a psychological and metaphysical treat.

Egoyan’s latest film comes to the Bay Area this weekend, Adoration. Egoyan again features his wife, Arsinee Khanjian in a major role. This time she plays a high school French and Drama teacher with an agenda for 'The Method' which provides a method for revealing her agenda. Her student Simon (Devon Bostick) is the ruse for her muse. Simon had lived with his Uncle Tom (Scott Speedman) since the 'accidental' death of his parents. Uncle Tom's character development is wonderful. We get to know Uncle Tom through his daily work tasks, the monotony, the slights, the subtle humiliation. We can see why he would be willing to become an unwitting player in this drama of layered truths and lies.

Egoyan’s films are the perfect festival films. Adoration was selected for Cannes last year and for the San Francisco International Film Festival this year. They are slow-paced, yet never lethargic. They softly reveal layers of plot and character, aspects for which many of us flock to festivals. Egoyan’s artifice works rather than grinds against our enjoyment because in displaying artifice, Egoyan is investigating how we perform ourselves, an often visited topic of Egoyan’s oeuvre. He has been interested in how we mediate ourselves for some time, from the video works in Family Viewing to the The-Brady-Bunching of live video chatrooms on Simon’s computer in this film. The way internet video is incorporated into the story is particularly engrossing as we watch Simon immerse himself in stories that are frightening to behold, stories he has become a part of in his youthful willingness to ‘lie’ (or is he?) to play with the truth. Here Egoyan touches on the frightening paths we might find ourselves drawn towards and how the web makes those paths, hypothetical before the internet, so much easier to take.. Rather than shock us graphically, it is the dialogue that traumatizes Simon and the viewer of this viewer.

The film is powerful, but not perfect. As is often the case with films, I can’t make my case for a major flaw in the film without ruining one of the reveals. So, as cryptically as possible, let me say this - whereas the performances around truth throughout the film allow for ambiguity, one point of the film is presented as real when no one could have possibly been there to testify to its truth, nor was there any medium through which the truth could have been extended.

This doesn’t ruin the film for me. It just tempers my appreciation so as not to engage in my own adoration of Egoyan. It’s still a lovely film in spite of this flaw. And it’s clear Egoyan will be the most famous person to ever spell his Adam A-T-O-M. I’ve grown to accept that reality.

Thanks, A.T.! -Brian

SFIFF52 Day 15: Unmade Beds

2009-05-07T02:00:00.000-07:00

The 52nd San Francisco International Film Festival ends tonight. Each day during the festival I've been posting about one film I've seen or am hotly anticipating.

Unmade Beds (UK: Alexis Dos Santos, 2009)

playing: 7:00 PM tonight at the Castro, followed by a closing night party at Mezzanine.
festival premiere: Sundance 2009
distributor: IFC theatrical release expected later in 2009.

Well. It's been a good festival, but it must come to a close. Thus, the closing night film. Usually I skip out on these, opting instead in recent years for a sprawling Egyptian melodrama or a noirish Béla Tarr conundrum to close out my festival. This time I hope to go back to sample the gala selection at the Castro, which I'd been curious about since reading Robert Davis rhapsodize in Utah. I was able to catch it at a press screening, but it only made me eager to see it again, on a larger screen with a festive crowd.

The film is called Unmade Beds, and it's Argentinian director Alexis Dos Santos's follow-up feature to his 2007 Frameline success Glue. Set amidst non-concentric circles of young hipsters of East London, the film focuses particularly on a pair of transplants trying to navigate relationships. Michael Hawley has briefly encapsulated the premise, so let me add a few words about the film's tone. Santos's integration of an indie rock sensibility and soundtrack with real-as-a-dream handheld camerawork threatens to seem twee, but never in fact crosses into that territory. Instead it builds to a quietly exhilarating conclusion that seems perfect for a lead-in into a closing night party. If I had a different song in my head than Hawley did as I left the screening room, that's because there's a plethora of terrific ones for your hippocampus to choose from.

SFIFF52 Day 15
Another option: Claustrophobia (HONG KONG: Ivy Ho, 2008), which Brian Hu makes sound very intriguing.
Non-SFIFF-option for today: Pull My Daisy (USA: Robert Frank, 1959) at SFMOMA with two other of Frank's films, on a program kicking off a large retrospective of the director at the museum.

SFIFF52 Day 14: Photograph of Jesus

2009-05-06T02:00:00.000-07:00

The 52nd San Francisco International Film Festival ends tomorrow, May 7th. Each day during the festival I've been posting about one film I've seen or am hotly anticipating.

Photograph of Jesus (UK: Laurie Hill, 2008)

playing: 2:00 PM this afternoon at the Kabuki, with no more showtimes later in the festival.
festival premiere: seems to have been Tampere Film Festival 2009
distributor: available online at Getty Images and elsewhere, but a chance to see it on the big screen again? Unlikely.

This evening is the Golden Gate Awards ceremony, in which the SFIFF's competition winners are announced in the many categories offered, from documentaries, to made-for-television films, to short works. Earlier in the afternoon will be the public's final chance to see a category of in-competition shorts screen together, with some of the filmmakers expected to be in attendance. A program entitled A Thousand Pictures presents the seven films up for the Animated Short GGA. Jay has written up the program in its entirety; as you can see it's a collection diverse in both technique and tone, with near-abstract pieces competing against surreal narratives and animated documentaries.

The piece from the set that I enjoyed most was one of the latter documentaries, the brief and comic Photograph of Jesus. In it, photo archivist Matthew Butson recounts on the soundtrack (alongside a bouncy musical track) some of the more "difficult" requests his institution (the Hulton Archive in London) has to contend with. Things like, people wanting them to find a photograph of Jesus or of a yeti or of a dozen men posing together on the moon. In a world where photography has become so ubiquitous, it's become difficult for many people to instinctively understand the historical limits of what the technology has been able to capture. Confusion is compounded by the proliferation of non-photographic images; many of us instinctively feel we know what Jesus or a yeti should look like, and director Laurie Hill employs this iconic status of images in her cut-out style animated accompaniment to Butson's interview. I found it all absolutely hilarious, partly because I once worked in a photo archive, but mostly because these researcher requests, and the archive's responses, are genuinely funny. If you can't make the final festival showing of A Thousand Pictures, Photograph of Jesus can be viewed on the Getty Images website, as the film was created in response to a contest. It won then; will it win its category tonight as well?

SFIFF52 Day 14
Another option: Can Go Through Skin (THE NETHERLANDS: Esther Rots, 2008) I was impressed by the daring ambiguity and expressionistic sound design of this feature debut, showing a woman's collapse and attempted rebuild after a brutal, random assault. On the whole I'm not sure it handles its material with the appropriate delicacy, but others I've talked to call it their favorite of the festival so far. David Hudson rounds up reactions from New York.
Non-SFIFF-option for today: My Winnipeg (CANADA: Guy Maddin, 2007) at the California Theatre in lieu of the Pacific Film Archive. It's the last of the semester for the latter venue's Film 50 series of screenings for students but with tickets available to the public. It screens with a 16mm Canyon Cinema short entitled Alpsee.

SFIFF52 Day 13: The Lost World

2009-05-05T02:00:00.000-07:00

The 52nd San Francisco International Film Festival is in the home stretch; it runs through May 7th. Each day during the festival I've been posting about one film I've seen or am hotly anticipating.

The Lost World (USA: Harry O. Hoyt, 1925)

playing: 8 PM tonight at the Castro, with no more showtimes later in the festival.
distributor: The print comes from George Eastman House and various cuts of the film (not this more complete one, I understand) are available on DVD, but there's nothing like seeing a silent movie in 35mm with live musical accompaniment.

Yesterday I wrote a bit about festival fatigue, but I was mostly joking at the time. What a difference a day makes. Now I'm truly exhausted, but am optimistic that tonight's screening will pull me out of my funk for the duration. How can it not? It's a presentation of a not-to-be-taken-seriously silent film, combined with a performance by what is currently my favorite rock-and-roll band to experience live. The film is the Lost World, a dinosaur adventure that was a milestone of early special effects achievements that I've heretofore only seen excerpted. The version the festival is screening was discovered by archivist-historian Jan Horak in Czechoslovakia and, according to my sources, is the most complete available as it even contains original intertitles missing from home video editions.

The band is Dengue Fever, and I've seen them a half-dozen or so times since first attending an Amoeba Records in-store performance several years ago. At that time they were playing covers of Cambodian "garage rock" tunes from the pre-Khmer Rouge era. These catchy, surf-music-infused songs are still a principle part of their repertoire, but they have branched out to include Khmer-language originals, English-language covers, and instrumentals in various stripes of danceable. Now they're the main musical attraction at their largest Frisco Bay venue yet, the 1400-seat Castro. The group spokesman Zak Holtzman has granted two terrific interviews, at sf360 and the Evening Class, which give a hint of the band's approach to scoring their first silent film. If their melodic energy can't lift my mood and put me back on the festival track, I'll be shocked.

One note: I've been warned that in its complete form the Lost World is one of those silent-era films that remind us that 1925 was also an era of severe ignorance in many areas, and I'm not just talking about popular understandings of paleontology. I'm told the film includes a character meant to be Brazilian, but portrayed as if a confirmation of Jim Crow stereotypes of Blacks. I'm glad the festival is showing the film uncensored, as it's well worth reminding modern audiences that Hollywood once had no compunction against perpetuating prejudices we find completely unacceptable today. They were unacceptable then, too, but the moviemaking machine was generally unfazed by voices of protest as long as each gear was generating revenue. Perhaps one can look at tonight's screening in part as a celebration of a certain amount of progress in this arena.

SFIFF52 Day 13
Another option: Still Walking (JAPAN: Hirokazu Kore-eda, 2008) I can't believe I haven't included a single East Asian film in these daily recommendations up until now. This paradoxically-titled film was one of my most-highly anticipated of the festival and I'm smarting from having to at the last minute skip the other night's screening with director in attendance. Andrew Schenker makes me all the more rueful, though I believe the film does have a US distributor.
Non-SFIFF-option for today: Old Joy (USA: Kelly Reichardt, 2006) at the Red Vic; for me, Reichardt's Wendy and Lucy surpassed this previous feature as a character study with the Pacific Northwest as one of the main characters, but if you haven't seen this one it's just as essential, with a score by Yo La Tengo and a terrific performance by Will Oldham.

SFIFF52 Day 12: Home

2009-05-04T02:00:00.000-07:00

The 52nd San Francisco International Film Festival is in its final few days; it runs through Thursday, May 7th. Each day during the festival I'm posting about one film I've seen or am hotly anticipating.

Home (SWITZERLAND/FRANCE/BELGIUM: Ursula Meier, 2008)

playing: 6:00 PM tonight at the Kabuki, with no more showtimes later in the festival.
festival premiere: Cannes 2008
distributor: None that I'm aware of in this country. Do buyers think this is too hot for American arthouses and DVD subscription queues to handle?

Festival films can be intense. Many of them in succession can border on grueling. After a week and a half of watching serious-issue documentaries, grim fairy tales, men in trouble, women in the middle of a nervous breakdown, and youth gone wild, you might be looking for a chance to breathe, to watch something light and airy. Why aren't they playing that doc on A Chorus Line again? I skipped it on day 4, not realizing I might need a dose of musical comedy to fortify me through the rest of the festival.

Truthfully, a dark film can be like a burst of light if it's made with the evident care and precision of a master. I'm up for seeing one of those at any point in my festival fatigue. For me, Home fit the bill. It's hard to believe that its director, Swiss-born Ursula Meier, had never made a feature before, so confident is its unity of content and form, so complicated its shooting must have been.

Home is a genre-defying film shot on an abandoned stretch of Bulgarian tarmac. One scene evoked an unlikely connection to another SFIFF52 title, Zift, even before the director revealed the site's true location in the q-and-a. It could really be anywhere. A family has fled urban living to establish a free-spirited life in a house mere feet off the shoulder of the highway. We're introduced to them first in a manic night hockey game shot (by cinematographer Agnes Godard) very tightly on the actors. It's the consistency of their character arcs that holds the film together throughout drastic changes in their setting and in tone; sometimes it feels like a comedy, other times drama, action thriller, or even horror.

The prepubescent son is the only one in the family who appears to have an interest in exploring their countryside surroundings. His older sisters are like day and night; one is the only member of the family to knock before entering the communal bathroom, and the other spends her days sunbathing on the front lawn, smoking and getting ogled by the garbage man while listening to The Young Gods. Dad, played by Olvier Gourmet, is more of a jazzbo, always trying to turn the moment into an opportunity for play. The family's den mother is the hardest to pin down of the pack; Isabelle Huppert plays her as a sympathetic enigma.

They experience a massive upheaval when they suddenly must co-exist with a brand-new stream of traffic due to the re-opening of the road. The near-constant presence of speeding cars presents challenges that few families would be prepared to face, but this one does, taking their lifestyle adaptations to their logical conclusion. I don't really want to give away more plot information than that, but I do want to reiterate that it's all shot and edited with impressive acuity, especially considering the logistical challenges that must have been faced with a fleet of 90-kph vehicles racing by the set and actors for much of the shooting.

Reportedly one critic said that Home was "made by someone who loves John Ford but has seen too many Bergman movies." This quote (which I haven't been able to google up; must have been on television) gets at the ways the film is packed with both psychological truth and with overarching, metaphorical meaning. How it's crafted in an almost classical style, on a large canvas, yet feels much like an intimate character study presented in three distinct acts. But I'm biased; I loved the film from beginning to end. For a well-expressed dissenting view of the direction Home takes in its final act, be sure to check Benito Vergara out.

SFIFF52 Day 12
Another option: For the Love of Movies: the Story of American Film Criticism (USA: Gerald Peary, 2009) A documentary that's surely gonna be not too depressing: it's about the state of film criticism in this country. Sf360 link. Wait, did I just say "not too depressing"?
Non-SFIFF-option for today: the Wild Child (FRANCE: François Truffaut, 1970) at the Red Vic. The first Truffaut I ever saw, nearly twenty years ago, and I haven't rewatched it in the intervening decades. But I do remember it making a big impression on me back then.

SFIFF52 Day 11: Once Upon A Time In The West

2009-05-03T02:00:00.000-07:00

The 52nd San Francisco International Film Festival is wrapping up its final weekend; it runs through Thursday, May 7. Each day during the festival I'll be posting about one film I've seen or am hotly anticipating.

Once Upon a Time in the West (ITALY: Sergio Leone, 1968)

playing: 12:30 PM this afternoon at the Castro, with no more showtimes later in the festival.
distributor: Yes, it's on DVD, but come on! How can screens much smaller than a railroad car do justice to this big, big film? And who knows when the next time the print prepared by the Film Foundation might come back around town?

Dennis Harvey has written a terrific piece on this film and its director at sf360, and Carl Martin has a few words on it in his restoration round-up. I doubt I have any great personal insights on Once Upon a Time in the West that others haven't already made common knowledge. I'd just like to add that it's my personal favorite of Leone's films, and among my favorite Westerns of all time.

Westerns are one of those signature American inventions, like Jazz and personal computers, whose very existence reveals a great deal about this country. Some are politically problematic, it's true, but many of the best ones (OUATITW included) are more nuanced in their explorations of American individualism, race, gender, and human relationships with the natural environment, than the average left-leaning Blue Stater is likely to recognize without a little education in the genre. I had the same prejudices myself a mere ten years ago, yet I consider myself even more of a lefty now than I was then.

Thus, Westerns screen all too rarely in the Frisco Bay area for my liking. The Castro shows some on occasion; Johnny Guitar will play May 20th as part of the theatre's "Women on the Verge" series. The Pacific Film Archive shows some, usually in director retrospectives; their new May-June calendar includes a good one, Gunman's Walk, as part of a Phil Karlson series. The Stanford shows them a bit more regularly; their current John Wayne film series includes two of my other all-time favorites on a May 8-10 double-bill: Fort Apache and the Searchers. But compare even this to the amount of classic and rare film noir that gets shown on local screens (for example, the Roxie's upcoming I Wake Up Dreaming series May 15-28) and it's rather pathetic. So I very much appreciate that the SFIFF has decided to bring a Western as part of their package of archival screenings. I hope the Castro is bustling and that popcorn sales are brisk, signaling to local repertory bookers that they ought to show more of the same!

SFIFF52 Day 11
Another option: Nights of Cabiria (ITALY: Frederico Fellini, 1957), with Rialto Pictures and Film Forum director Bruce Goldstein in discussion with Anita Monga as he follows her in receiving the Mel Novikoff award- nearly always my favorite of the SFIFF award presentations each year.
Non-SFIFF-option for today: Come and See (USSR: Elem Klimov, 1985) at the Rafael Film Center, introduced by Sean Penn. This harrowing World War II picture plays something like Tarkovsky's My Name is Ivan after colliding with an ultraviolent 1970s exploitation picture. It's screening as part of the Rafael's 10th anniversary "Films of My Life" celebration. UPDATE 5/4/2009: Turns out the screening is tonight; sorry for the mix-up!

SFIFF52 Day 10: A Week Alone

2009-05-02T02:00:00.000-07:00

The 52nd San Francisco International Film Festival is in its final weekend; it runs through Thursday, May 7th. Each day during the festival I'll be posting about one film I've seen or am hotly anticipating.

A Week Alone (ARGENTINA: Celina Murga, 2008)

playing: 6:15 PM tonight at the Kabuki, with two more showtimes later in the festival.
festival premiere: Venice 2008
distributor: on the festival's "hold review" list, possibly indicating future distribution, but I haven't been able to determine the company releasing it yet.

The "hold review" thing is kinda funny in an online context, given one can read a New Yorker like R. Emmett Sweeney beautifully summarize this film with only a click or a quick google search. But I'm at least equally impressed by Maya writing for the Auteurs a 75-word review of A Week Alone among a tour-de-force of SFIFF capsules. Between the two of them, I'm not sure I have much add, other than my measured recommendation:

A Week Alone is a quiet film that brings the viewer into the restless isolation of privileged youth. Without adult supervision, children can attempt to test social standing within their clique, or else withdraw into introspective or idle activity. Director Celina Murga uses the motif of the remote control to indicate the kids' limited power, then gives way to images of gates and barriers. Alliances are made manifest during the inevitable climax.

SFIFF52 Day 10
Another option: Summer Hours (FRANCE: Oliver Assayas, 2008) David Hudson rounds up the reactions from its screenings in New York last fall.
Non-SFIFF-option for today: The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On (JAPAN: Kazuo Hara, 1987) at the Pacific Film Archive, with director Hara in attendance. The Film of the Month Club discussed the film in depth a year ago.

SFIFF52 Day 9: 35 Shots of Rum

2009-05-01T02:00:00.000-07:00

The 52nd San Francisco International Film Festival is halfway over; it runs through May 7th. Each day during the festival I'll be posting about one film I've seen or am hotly anticipating.

35 Shots of Rum (FRANCE: Claire Denis, 2008)

playing: 7:00 PM tonight at the Clay, with two more showtimes later in the festival.
festival premiere: Venice 2008
distributor: Cinema Guild theatrical release expected in New York, and hopefully here in Frisco as well.

Just about every cinephile I've talked to about the SFIFF program has the same thing to say when I've asked what new film in the program they're most eager to see: 35 Shots of Rum by Claire Denis. If you don't know her or her work yet, check out this resource for approaches to catching up. I think it must be the perfect storm of a respected auteur who has still not received her due in this country, a four-year absence of new Denis work on local screens, and a particularly well-received film that seemingly has been a highlight of just about every other film festival in the world. If I ask myself the same question, I have the same answer, and I guess for the same reasons. I don't pretend to be a leader rather than a follower here at Hell On Frisco Bay.

I already have a ticket for Wednesday's screening, but might just see 35 Shots of Rum tonight as well, at its first festival showing. I'm anticipating it more fervently than anything other than perhaps the Dengue Fever/Gordon Willis pairing next Tuesday, and the latter anticipation is at least as much for the extra-filmic experience as it is for the film itself. I hope my expectations, high as they are, are not dashed.

I must admit I've done very little reading on the film in preparation for seeing it; sometimes I like to let a trusted director take me by the hand into her cinematic world as uninformed of details as possible. When a perusal of the SFIFF program guide sparked a mental exercise in which I tried to identify the three filmmaker references in a written description that I think provide the least help for me in determining whether or not to see an unfamiliar film, I came up with Eric Rohmer (code for "talky, but good"), David Cronenberg (code for "this may be a horror film but don't dismiss it if your not a fan of that genre") and Yasujiro Ozu (code for "quiet" or maybe "transcendental", neither of which I find particularly appropriate labels for Ozu's frequently misunderstood work). It was not an intentional slight to the SFIFF notes written by Judy Bloch, as I had not even skimmed her piece to see that she'd name-dropped two of these three in it. For me, Denis is name enough to know I want to see a film.

SFIFF52 Day 9
Another option: Our Beloved Month of August (PORTUGAL: Miguel Gomes, 2008), a demanding but ultimately satisfying cine-relexive work by a young filmmaker. Jeffrey Anderson says more.
Non-SFIFF-option for today: Notorious (USA: Alfred Hitchcock, 1946) at the Paramount in Oakland, where five dollars gets you entry into a true Art Deco palace, along with cartoon, newsreel, and organist. And the feature just happens to be Hitchcock's greatest black-and-white film, in my opinion.