SF DocFest: An Honest Liar

The Roxie Theatre was packed Sunday night for the SF DocFest screening of An Honest Liar, an entertaining & provocative profile of magician & paranormal skeptic The Amazing Randi. The 85-year-old Randi has had serious medical problems in the past few years, so it was exciting to notice him taking a seat in the row behind me shortly before the movie began. The film tells the story of his career, with a particular focus on his notoriety as a debunker of pyschic claims. We see many clips of his TV appearances, as well as present day interviews with him & his colleagues. Footage of faith healer Peter Popoff, exposed by Randi here in San Francisco, is intense. Also fascinating are the hoaxes Randi perpetrated on scientists studying psychic phenomena. Surprisingly, the filmmakers got an interview with Uri Geller, who boasts how Randi has been unable to destroy his career. The film's other thread touches on his life with Deyvi Peña, his partner for over 25 years. The audience applauded a scene showing their wedding last year. In a twist that's almost too good to be true, the relationship turns out to harbor a deception at its core.

The festival audience gave Randi an enthusiastic standing ovation when he went to the front of the auditorium for the Q&A. Also present were co-director Tyler Measom, editor Greg O'Toole, interviewees Alec Jason & Adam Savage, & Mr. Peña. Randi was as quick & funny as he appears in the film, & he was happy to share with us how Uri Geller manages to bend spoons. He also stayed after the event, happily posing for fans outside the Roxie. The film plays once more at the festival tonight.

§ An Honest Liar
Dirs: Tyler Measom & Justin Weinstein, 2014, USA, 90 mins.

SF DocFest 2014
OSA, Sat, Jun 7, 7:15 PM
Roxie Theatre, Sun, Jun 15, 7:00 PM
Roxie Theatre, Tue, Jun 17, 7:00 PM

SF DocFest: Wicker Kittens

On Saturday afternoon I saw an SF DocFest program of 3 light & enjoyable films about unlikely obsessions. The feature Wicker Kittens tracks 4 teams entering the Jigsaw Puzzle Contest at the Saint Paul Winter Carnival, the largest such competition in the country. Teams of 4 race to complete a 500-piece jigsaw puzzle, winning bragging rights & an award shaped like a puzzle piece. It's not quite a spectator sport, but it's a bracing social activity for the mostly female participants. We see team members showing off their puzzle collections & gathering at each other's homes for strategic practice sessions. They're all good Mid-westerners by refusing to acknowledge being hard-core competitors. We also get a behind-the-scenes look at the hapless competition organizer's not-quite-adequate preparations. For some reason there are no post-game debriefings, & the camera operator sometimes zooms in & out repeatedly, causing motion sickness.

Wicker Kittens was preceded by 2 shorts also involving unusual contests. Cherry Pop tells the story of a fabulous show cat of 80s & 90s, in an exuberant style befitting her era. This red Persian with a small grouchy face lived better than you do. Strike profiles Bill Fong, a league bowler in Texas whom even his colleagues describe as an obsessive bowling machine. One night in 2010 it looks like he's on his way to bowling 3 perfect games in a row, & it becomes a turning point in his life. The film has a tight visual style & includes a cool tracking shot of a bowling ball rolling down the lane.

The festival audience was sparse. Perhaps all the sports fan were busy with the World Cup or the Giants. The program repeats Tuesday night at the Roxie.

§ Wicker Kittens
Dir: Amy Elliot, 2014, USA, 52 mins.

Cherry Pop: The Story of the World’s Fanciest Cat
Dir: Kareem Tabsch, 2014, USA, 11 mins.

Strike: The Greatest Bowling Story Ever Told
Dir: Joey Daoud, 2014, USA, 13 mins.

SF DocFest 2014
OSA, Sun, Jun 8, 12:30 PM
Roxie Theatre, Sat, Jun 14, 2:30 PM
Roxie Theatre, Tue, Jun 17, 7:00 PM

SF DocFest: Jingle Bell Rocks!

Friday night at SF DocFest, I saw Jingle Bell Rocks!, an unexpectedly sincere look at record collectors & musicians lovingly obsessed with Christmas music. It starts with Canadian filmmaker Mitchell Kezin himself, seen at the top of the film manically tearing through bins of Christmas CD & LPs at the Los Angeles Amoeba. He has no interest in parodies or songs that mock the holiday. He's in pursuit of the genuinely earnest, be it about the sadness & disappointment of the season, the Vietnam War & racism, or UFOs & nuclear missiles.

We see Mr. Kezin crossing the United States & Canada, interviewing collectors, producers, radio personalities & musicians, all of whom sound like they are talking comfortably with an old friend. John Waters points out to his visitors the Christmas decorations adorning his electric chair, & Run DMC describes sampling Clarence Carter's naughty "Back Door Santa" for "Christmas in Hollis." I found musician Wayne Coyne to be a strangely captivating speaker. It's delightful to see Mr. Kezin give his interviewees a wrapped Christmas present at the end of his visits.

Festival programmer Jennifer Morris advised the audience to wait for an outtake placed at the end of the closing credits. Mr. Kezin attended the screening, & about a dozen people remained for the Q&A afterward. We learned that the film took 8 years from conception to completion, partly because Mr. Kezin realized that he got the best interviews when talking with his subjects during the holiday season, so he would sometimes have to wait a whole year to film them. As I entered the theater, I was randomly selected to receive a poster for the movie, which the genial Mr. Kezin signed for me after the show. The movie plays again at the festival on Monday night.

§ Jingle Bell Rocks!
Dir: Mitchell Kezin, 2013, Canada, 93 mins.

SF DocFest 2014
OSA, Sun, Jun 8, 7:15p
Roxie Theatre, Fri, Jun 13 9:15 PM
Roxie Theatre, Mon, Jun 16 9:15 PM

SF DocFest: Ivory Tower

Monday night at SF DocFest I saw Andrew Rossi's Ivory Tower, a wide-ranging critique of higher education in the US. It's a sound bite documentary, containing snippets of inteviews with academics, students, parents, administrators & politicians. The film covers a lot of of stories, including the history of public education, the rise in tuition & student debt, the shift of education from a public good to a consumer good & the emergence of online courses, to name just a few. It adds up to a compendium of urgent issues rather than a specific argument.

Footage of students in luxury accommodations & at notorious party schools makes going to university look like a holiday cruise, while the study hall for Harvard's freshman computer science class looks like a sinister hive mind. The film's most dramatic storyline tracks students at Cooper Union who take over the president's office to protest the end of the school's tuition-free policy. I liked seeing alternatives to the 4-year university, such as Deep Springs College, whose curriculum is split between student-directed academics & manual farm labor. The uncollege movement refashions school as a tech startup.

One angry audience member could not refrain from uttering his opinions aloud & had to be sushed early on. The film may have left the DocFest audience depressed, since its ending was met with dead silence. Festival founder Jeff Ross & David Sapp of the ACLU led a discussion about some the film's issues afterward. Ivory Tower plays again at the Oakland School for the Arts on Sunday, June 15th at 5p. It also opens theatrically in the Bay Area starting June 20th.

§ Ivory Tower
dir: Andrew Rossi, 2014, USA, 97 mins.

SF DocFest 2014
Roxie Theatre, June 9, 9:15p
OSA, June 15, 5p

SF DocFest: Don’t Call It Frisco!

Monday night I was at the Roxie Theatre to see Don't Call It Frisco!, an SF DocFest program of short subjects about the Bay Area. There was an impressive turn-out, & we saw 11 films, with many of the filmmakers in attendance. The subject matter is appropriately wide-ranging. In Demolition: Troll, we get a glimpse of the troll statue once welded to the old span of the Bay Bridge to ward off earthquakes. I was a bit unnerved by Last Stop Santa Rosa, a peek into an animal hospice full of severely sick & disabled pets. In Sunnydale Kids, children from Visitacion Valley who have never seen the ocean spend a day at the beach learning to surf. The filmmaker probably has enough here for a much longer film.

Piano Heights does a nice job capturing the spontaneous joy generated when a piano is pushed to the top of Bernal Heights for a flash mob concert. It was disappointing to learn during the Q&A that the event ended when the police confiscated the piano. Filmmaker Meg Smaker impressively refuses to sensationalize or dehumanize the subjects of her documentary Methel Island, about the drug user community of Bethel Island. The compilation ended with a jolting history of MLB player Glenn Burke & the invention of the High Five. I'm not a sports fan, so I was startled to learn its connection with gay history.

The enthusiastic festival audience applauded each film & even cheered occasionally. A few minutes into Ahh.... San Francisco the film stopped & had to re-started. The young nephew of one of the filmmakers was the most eager questioner during the Q&A, though his guardian made him leave the theater during Pistols to Porn, a look at Kink.com's residency in the San Francisco Armory.



This program will be repeated at the Roxie Theatre on Sunday June 15th at 4:45p

§ SF DocFest 2014
Don’t Call It Frisco!
(Shorts Program)
Monday, June 9, 7p
Roxie Theatre

Demolition: Troll
Dir: Megan McHugh, 2014, USA, 10 minutes

Ahh… San Francisco
Dir: Barrett Edmonds, 2014, USA, 12 minutes

Driving BART
Dir: Ethan Bresnick, 2014, USA, 5 minutes

Last Stop Santa Rosa
Dir: Elizabeth Lo, 2014, USA, 5 minutes

Sunnydale Kids
Dir: Adam Warmington, 2014, USA, 4 minutes

Jackie Jones and Her Dancing Cat
Dir: Jean Pesce, 2014, USA, 7 minutes

Piano Heights
Dir: Darryl Kirchner, 2014, USA, 6 minutes

Methel Island
Dir: Meg Smaker,  2014, USA, 12 minutes

Pistols to Porn
Dir: Meg Smaker,  2014, USA, 6 minutes

Rules of the House: Burning Man Gift Culture
Dir: Dan Porras, 2014, USA, 9 minutes

The High Five
Dir: Michael Jacobs, 2014, USA, 10 minutes