SFIFF Wrap-Up

Even though I didn't get to the 57th San Francisco International Film Festival until day 6, I managed to see a fair number of films & had a great time.

Films: 11
Live events: 1
Q&As: 1
Times I had an empty seat next to me: 2
Parties: 1
Happy hour lounge visits: 7
Tweets: 27

§ The 57th Annual San Francisco International Film Festival
Apr 24 - May 8, 2014

SFIFF: Art and Craft

At one of the last screenings of the San Francisco International Film Festival, I saw Art and Craft, a fascinating documentary about the curious case of art forger Mark Landis, whose donations of faked art works to museums across the country constitute a con on multiple levels, even though he's technically doing nothing illegal. It's great fun getting to know the charming & eccentric Mr. Landis, who talks candidly about his family, his deceits & his history of mental illness. He creates a fake Picasso for the camera, using embarrassingly simple means. The film amusingly pits him against Matthew Leininger, a former museum registrar who is obsessed with tracking down his forgeries. When an exhibition of Mr. Landis's work opens at the University of Cincinnati, there's an entertaining showdown between the two, & the delighted festival audience applauded Mr. Landis's parting shot. The Noir-ish score by Stephen Ulrich is wonderful at establishing the film's atmosphere of intrigue.

Director Jennifer Grausman attended the screening & did a Q&A. The film was shot over a 3 year period, starting in 2011. We learned that Mr. Landis goes to bed at 5p & gets up at midnight. He often wanted to film at 4 in the morning. Ms. Grausman suspects that there are way more Landis forgeries in museum collections than Mr. Leininger has found (& yes, San Francisco is on the list). She also informed us that the film will be released theatrically in the fall.

This was the only festival screening I attended that did not start on time. A technical snafu prevented the staff from letting us into the theater until 20 minutes past the scheduled time, & the festival audience waited patiently in the hallway. There was appreciative applause once the film got rolling, half an hour late.

§ Art and Craft
Directors: Sam Cullman, Jennifer Grausman, Mark Becker
USA, 2013, 89 mins.

§ The 57th Annual San Francisco International Film Festival
May 4, 2014, 6:00 p.m.  Sundance Kabuki Cinema
May 5, 2014, 8:40 p.m.  BAM/PFA
May 8, 2014, 8:15 p.m.  Sundance Kabuki Cinema

SFIFF: Return to Homs

Wednesday evening I was at the San Francisco International Film Festival to see the Syrian documentary Return to Homs. It was filmed in the sieged city of Homs over the period 2011 to 2013 & puts the viewer directly in the middle of the fighting, alongside a group of hardscrabble rebels. The footage is intense & unflinching. Homs looks like a city that's had an atomic bomb dropped on it. We're taken through bombed-out buildings & inside grizzly surgery rooms & allowed to witness battles & deaths in the streets. I felt the confusion & claustrophobia of being in a war zone.

The film sticks to reportage of the immediate plight of the rebel fighters. Focus eventually settles on a young man named Basset, first seen rousing mobs of men during exuberant street protests, then as the leader of armed rebels. He's handsome, athletic, impassioned & a show-off. His tenacity & increasing dedication to the war, even after he is repeatedly wounded, made me more & more fearful of him, & I took a long walk in the cold air after the movie was over.

§ Return to Homs
Director: Talal Derki
Syria, Germany, 2013, 87 mins.

§ The 57th Annual San Francisco International Film Festival
May 4, 2014, 9:00 p.m.  Sundance Kabuki Cinema
May 6, 2014, 6:30 p.m.  BAM/PFA
May 7, 2014, 6:15 p.m.  Sundance Kabuki Cinema

SFIFF: Golden Gate Awards

Last night the San Francisco International Film Festival announced the winners of the Golden Gate Awards, given to filmmakers exhibiting at the festival. The juried awards come with cash prizes from $500 to $10,000. Not all the winners were present, but those that were got to deliver an Oscars-style thank you speech to the crowd & have an official picture taken with their award certificate. Filmmaker Sara Dosa was clearly thrilled to win in the Bay Area Documentary Feature. Three local high school students accepted awards in the Youth Works category with poise. The event was held at Rouge | Nick's Crispy Tacos, & I did my best Quentin Crisping by going through the taco line twice.


Golden Gate Awards Winners
New Directors Prize: History of Fear, Benjamín Naishtat
Special Jury Recognition: White Shadow, Noaz Deshe; The Amazing Catfish, Claudia Sainte-Luce
Jury: Filmmaker Magazine Editor-in-Chief Scott Macaulay, Fandor cofounder Jonathan Marlow and writer Ella Taylor.

Golden Gate Award Documentary Feature Winners
Documentary Feature: The Overnighters, Jesse Moss
Bay Area Documentary Feature: The Last Season, Sara Dosa
Special jury recognition: Return to Homs, Talal Derki
Jury: filmmaker Rob Epstein, journalist Nathan Heller, and Film Society of Lincoln Center Co-Executive Director Lesli Klainberg.

Golden Gate Award Short Film Winners
Narrative Short (tie): The Birds' Blessing, Serge Mirzabekiantz; So You've Grown Attached, Kate Tsang
Documentary Short: The High Five, Michael Jacobs
Animated Short: The Missing Scarf, Eion Duffy
Bay Area Short (tie): Santa Cruz del Islote, Luke Lorentzen; No One but Lydia, Rob Richert
New Visions Short: Numbers & Friends, Alexander Carson
Jury: journalist Jonathan Kiefer, author Vendela Vida and filmmaker Diana Williams.

Family Film Winners
Family Film: The Dam Keeper, Robert Kondo, Dice Tsutsumi
Family Film Honorable Mention: The Numberlys, William Joyce, Brandon Oldenburg
Jury: teacher Donna Lee, writer Nicki Richesin and artist Jeena Wolfe.

Youth Works Winners
Youth Work: Epitaph, Charles Blecker
Youth Work Honorable Mention: Bay Area Girls Rock Camp, Lily Yu, Judy Lee, Jeremiah Mellor
Jury: Davis Avila, Sophie Edelhart and Julia Pollak, all local high school students.

§ The 57th Annual San Francisco International Film Festival
Golden Gate Awards Ceremony
Wednesday, May 7, 9p, 2014
Rouge | Nick's Crispy Tacos

SFIFF: Stephin Merritt with The Unknown

Tuesday night I saw the silent film The Unknown, starring Lon Chaney & Joan Crawford, with live musical accompaniment by Stephin Merritt & Daniel Handler. This was one of the live events presented at the San Francisco International Film Festival. It was good to see The Unknown, which I'd never seen before. The creepy love story features Chaney as a supposedly armless circus performer & Crawford as the love interest. The festival projected a clean 35mm print.

Stephin Merritt, sitting at the corner of the stage, accompanied the movie with a continuous ukulele solo, which seemed an odd choice. The ukulele does not have much dynamic range, & his tuneless vamping sounded more or less the same for every scene. I thought it a weak response to the movie, which is lurid & gratifyingly sadistic. Local author Daniel Handler sat on the opposite side of the stage watching the movie, though he did contribute some notes on the accordion to punctuate the movie's climactic final scene. Mr. Merritt came on and off stage without acknowledging the audience, which I found rude.

The Unknown was preceded by Guy Maddin's Sissy-Boy Slap-Party, a very silly black & white short which has been perfectly described elsewhere as "Jean Genet meets the Three Stooges." Mr. Merritt played the bongos to accompany it, & I liked the distinctively gruff voice he used to supply the film's dialogue. He instructed us, "When you see a slap, clap!" The festival audience was impressively good at doing so.

There was a good turnout at the Castro Theatre, & the audience was in a good mood for both films. I wish I'd arrived earlier to hear more of David Hegarty on the Castro's organ before the show.

§ The Unknown
Director: Tod Browning
USA, 1927, 63 mins.
Accompanied by Stephin Merritt & Daniel Handler

§ Sissy-Boy Slap-Party
Director: Guy Maddin
Canada, 2004, 6 mins.

§ The 57th Annual San Francisco International Film Festival
Stephin Merritt With The Unknown
Tuesday, May 6, 8:00pm
Castro Theatre

SFIFF: Burt's Buzz

On Tuesday I caught the San Francisco International Film Festival screening of Burt's Buzz, a documentary profiling Burt Shavitz, the founder of Burt's Bees personal care products & the iconic bearded face on their packaging. Now in his 70s, he lives the same spare, backwoods existence in Maine that he adopted 50 years ago, after abruptly leaving a job as a photojournalist in New York. We see him puttering around his modest property & being interviewed about the peculiar shape of his life. Though emotionally inaccessible, he has a folksy charisma. I could completely identify when he said, "A good day is when no one shows up & you don't have to go anywhere." The film's most amusing sequences show him on an inane but jolly promotional tour for Burt's Bees in Taiwan. It's heart-rending to see him Skype his beloved dog while on the road.

Mr. Shavitz long ago sold his stake in the company, & Burt's Bees is now a subsidiary of Clorox. I was baffled & frustrated that Mr. Shavitz seems not to understand the significance of his being a corporate brand icon. The film includes interviews with several associates, none of whom quite know what's going on in his head either. Roxanne Quimby, Mr. Shavitz's former partner, who may have cheated him out of 200 million dollars, is conspicuously not among the interviewees. The use of the Tom Waits song "All the World is Green" at the end of the film is almost too perfect.

§ Burt's Buzz
Director: Jody Shapiro
Canada, 2013, 88 mins.

§ The 57th Annual San Francisco International Film Festival
May 3, 2014, 4:30 p.m.  Sundance Kabuki Cinema
May 6, 2014, 1:15 p.m.  Sundance Kabuki Cinema

Bloggers at SFIFF

We're in the home stretch of the San Francisco International Film Festival, which ends May 8th with a screening of Alex of Venice, at which actor Don Johnson will be present. There are over 160 films, plus live events, so it's impossible to get a grasp of it all, but here are a few independent voices providing on-going coverage: The embarrassingly well-informed Brian Darr is selective yet thorough. I run into Art Hound just about every time I'm in the festival lounge, & I'm sure she's seen even more films than she lets on. Jason Wiener's enthusiasm is intimidating, but he describes well the experience of attending the festival with a press badge.

§ The 57th Annual San Francisco International Film Festival
Apr 24 - May 8, 2014

SFIFF: Three Letters from China

Monday evening I was at the sold out SF International Film Festival screening of Three Letters from China, Swiss filmmaker Luc Schaedler's documentary overview of contemporary China. This succinct film is in 3 parts, each profiling individuals in a different part of the country. We see them go about daily tasks as they talk about their lives & concerns. In arid northern China an uncertain future weighs heavily on the family of a struggling farmer & his married son, who has left home for a dirty industrial mining job. In a picturesque village in southern China, the Cultural Revolution still casts a long shadow on the inhabitants. The filmmakers have a great find in 19-year-old Chen Chaomei, who parties & works as a waitress in the huge metropolis of Chongqing on the Yangtze River. Her father's family have always been fishermen, & her parents even live on a rickety fishing boat, but she sees no place for herself in their world. She's a free-spirit, living on her own & unashamed of her independence & her androgenous presentation. I really want to know what she'll be up to in 5 years.

The screening was introduced by festival programmer Audrey Chang, who told us that this is the final installment of the director's trilogy of films about Asia. Ms. Chang also read us the director's statement.

§ Three Letters from China
Director: Luc Schaedler
Switzerland, 2013, 80 mins.

§ The 57th Annual San Francisco International film Festival
April 29, 2014, 1:30 p.m.  Sundance Kabuki Cinema
May 3, 2014, 6:30 p.m.  BAM/PFA
May 5, 2014, 6:30 p.m.  New People Cinema

SFIFF: Eastern Boys

Late Sunday night I saw the contemporary French drama Eastern Boys at the SF International Film Festival. Festival programmer Sean Uyehara introduced the film as a homoerotic thriller. A complacent middle-aged business man pickups up a young hustler in Paris's Gard du Nord station, then finds himself pitted against a gang of thuggish Eastern European youths. The plot-driven film is divided into 4 enigmatically titled chapters & culminates in a complicated show-down in a suburban hotel, overcrowded with immigrant families. Weapons are never wielded, but the movie's acts of violence have impact because they seem plausible. The acting is direct. Danil Vorobyev is vivid & scary as the psychopathic gang leader, & Edéa Darcque is a striking presence as a hotel manager who takes her job very seriously.

The screening was at rush, & festival staff did crowd control by admitting the audience into the New People Cinema in cohorts of 10. There were occasional titters, so the audience may not have found the movie entirely convincing. It runs well over 2 hours, so the theater got quite warm by the end.

§ Eastern Boys
Director: Robin Campillo
France, 2013, 128 mins.

§ The 57th Annual San Francisco International Film Festival
April 30, 2014, 9:10 p.m.  BAM/PFA
May 2, 2014, 6:00 p.m.  Sundance Kabuki Cinema
May 4, 2014, 8:45 p.m.  New People Cinema

SFIFF: Of Horses and Men

Saturday night at the SF International Film Festival, I saw Of Horses and Men, an Icelandic film by Benedikt Erlingsson. It's a collection of interlocking vignettes taking place in a small rural community in Iceland, where horses mediate social standing, survival, death & even sex for the inhabitants. The miniature stories are harsh but grimly funny & reflect a proudly tough-minded view of life. An especially visceral episode in which a man saves his own life in a snowstorm could have come from an Icelandic saga.

The film's captivating opening sequence records the Icelandic horses' beautiful manes & almost comically fastidious, high-stepping gait. The animals look pony-sized but are clearly sturdy. They witness all the events in the film, & everything happens in accord with the countryside's stark but majestic landscape.

There is not much dialogue, though we get to hear 7 different languages over the course of things. I liked the movie's score, which includes solemn choirs as well as rustic, Celtic-sounding dance music. The screening I attended was full, & there was laughter as well as gasps of surprise & apprehension. Some audience members were a bit traumatized by what happens, & the people on both sides of me covered their faces with their hands at some point.

§ Hross í oss (Of Horses and Men)
Director: Benedikt Erlingsson
Iceland/Germany, 2013, 81 mins.

§ The 57th Annual San Francisco International Film Festival
May 2, 2014, 4:30 p.m.  Sundance Kabuki Cinema
May 3, 2014, 8:45 p.m.  Sundance Kabuki Cinema
May 5, 2014, 6:00 p.m.  Sundance Kabuki Cinema

SFIFF: Salvation Army

Late Friday night at the SF International Film Festival, I saw Salvation Army, a film by first-time director Abdellah Taïa, based on his own autobiographical novel of the same name. The main character is first seen as a teenage boy, growing up in Morocco in a poor family. He seems to have 7 siblings, though I'm not sure I counted them all. He is so expressionless that I was not able to read his character, other than his obvious estrangement. We see that he fetishizes his adult brother & engages in sex with older men.

The movie mystified me. Though attractively photographed, it is a lot of long, slow takes without dialogue or music. I felt sure that everything on screen was meaningful to the director, but for me most scenes provided little information, & I was unable to fill in the gaps. The story makes an abrupt jump of 10 years before its seemingly arbitrary ending, which left the festival audience silent & nonplussed. The theater was nearly full. So far my festival experience has run smoothly. Audiences are let into theaters a half-hour before showtime, everyone receives a ballot to rate the movie, & the shows start on time.

§ Salvation Army (L'armee du salut)
Director: Abdellah Taïa
France/Morocco/Switzerland, 2013, 82 mins.

§ The 57th Annual San Francisco International Film Festival
May 2, 2014, 9:00 p.m.  Sundance Kabuki Cinema
May 4, 2014, 8:30 p.m.  BAM/PFA

SFIFF: The Great Museum

Thursday evening at the SF International Film Festival I watched The Great Museum, a captivating behind-the-scenes look at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. The film shows preparations for the re-opening of the museum's Kunstkammer in 2013 & is shot Frederick Wiseman-style, without narration & without explicitly identifying its subjects. It observes & reveals rather than explains.

The museum appears as an elite world. I felt like I was getting privileged glimpses of everything, from the work of the conservators to marketing meetings to the silent deliberations of fussy curators. I loved the thrilling tracking shot of an archivist using a kick scooter to travel through a series of long rooms. In one excruciating sequence, we see beads of sweat form on the forehead of a restorer as he manipulates the delicate innards of a 16th century mechanical ship. A tense meeting of museum guards exposes closed circles within the museum itself. Recurring peeks into the office of a long-time curator coalesce into a gentle story by the end of the film.

The festival screening was full. Before the film started, a woman repeatedly demanded that the air conditioning be turned on, "to get some air circulating, because we're all middle-aged here." Near the end of the film, a man in the back row, who probably has difficulty behaving in public, made comments aloud about Habsburgs & Germans.

§ Das große museum
Director: Johannes Holzhausen
Austria, 2014, 94 mins.

§ The 57th Annual San Francisco International Film Festival
April 26, 2014, 6:30 p.m.  New People Cinema
May 1, 2014, 7:00 p.m.  Sundance Kabuki Cinema

Happiness

Wednesday I was at the SF International Film Festival for a screening of Happiness, a new film by Thomas Balmès, shot in Bhutan. Happiness is listed as a documentary, though to me it looked like a slow-moving narrative film. We see life in the isolated mountain village of Laya through the eyes of an 8-year-old boy. His family are poor yak herders, & there is really no place for him. His mother puts him in a local monastery, but it is a useless institution. Almost the only thing the villagers talk about is the arrival of electricity & TV, which we see happening in the background.

The movie is full of beautiful panoramic shots of stark mountain scenery, though the villagers themselves seem indifferent to the landscape. The film also records the women's distinctive clothing & conical hats, as well as the mother's daily chores of spinning yarn & weaving. We get a glimpse of children standing in neat rows at a school assembly, & there is a visit to the city to buy a television. For some reason the only thing on Bhutanese TV is the WWE.

I saw Happiness at a midday screening with a patient & attentive audience. The largely female crowd reminded me of a weekday matinee at the Symphony.

§ Happiness
Director: Thomas Balmès
France, Finland, 2013, 80 mins.

§ The 57th Annual San Francisco International Film Festival
April 27, 2014, 12:15 p.m. Sundance Kabuki Cinema
April 30, 2014, 1:00 p.m. Sundance Kabuki Cinema
May 2, 2014, 6:30 p.m. BAM/PFA

The Trip to Italy

On Tuesday I was at the SF International Film Festival to see The Trip to Italy, Michael Winterbottom's sequel to his road movie The Trip. British comedic actors Steve Coogan & Rob Brydon, playing slightly fictionalized versions of themselves, are on another newspaper junket, this time through Italy. They drive a Mini, stay at boutique hotels, eat fancy gourmet meals & take in spectacular scenery. Their easy friendship expresses itself through their competitive banter, filled with celebrity impressions & riffs on Hollywood cliches. Mr. Brydon's version of Gore Vidal is hilariously spot-on. The situations & acting feel so natural that it seems like the movie made itself. Occasional nods to the melancholy of middle age & wispy subplots involving infidelity & parenting keep the film from being entirely sybaritic. Even though the film is visually all about the natural beauty of Italy, the operatic background music comes from the very Germanic Richard Strauss.

The line for the show went around the block, & the audience filled the largest auditorium in the Kabuki Cinema. There was much oohing & aahing over the beautiful locales & plates of food. I think I got most of the jokes, though I had to look up Mo Farah when I got home. The film was introduced by festival programmer Rachel Rosen, who said she hoped we weren't hungry. The film did not make me hungry, but it did make me wish for a glass of crisp, cool white wine.

§ The Trip to Italy
Director: Michael Winterbottom
UK/Italy, 1014, 115 mins.

§ The 57th Annual San Francisco International Film Festival
April 29, 2014, 6:30 p.m. Sundance Kabuki Cinema
May 2, 2014, 1:30 p.m. Sundance Kabuki Cinema

SFIFF57: Opening Press Conference

Last week I attended the San Francisco International Film Festival's opening press conference, which was held under an outrageous chandelier at the Fairmont Hotel. Noah Cowan, the SF Film Society's 4th Executive Director in as many years, briefly touted the Film Society's educational & grant programs, then festival programmers Rachel Rosen, Rod Armstrong, Audrey Chang & Sean Uyehara gave a general rundown of festival events.

Opening night film is The Two Faces of January, an international thriller based on a Patricia Highsmith novel. The centerpiece film is Palo Alto, a film by yet another Coppola, based on a book by James Franco. Mr. Franco, who already did a good job publicizing the film last week, is also represented in the festival as the director of Child of God. The closing night film, Alex of Venice, is another film from an actor, Chris Messina.

Richard Linklater will attend for a 3rd time, receiving the Founder’s Directing Award & presenting Boyhood, which was shot with the same cast over a span of 12 years. Live events include Thao Nguyen accompanying short films, including Charlie Chaplin’s The Pawnshop, & Stephin Merritt accompanying the silent horror film The Unknown, starring Lon Chaney. Hasan Minhaj will appear in an evening of stand-up comedy.

The documentary Return to Homs was mentioned several times during the press conference. Bob Weir is expected at the screening of the documentary The Other One. All that Jazz, Manila in the Claws of Light & Queen Margot are being shown in newly restored versions. All About the Feathers is the 1st film from Costa Rica to play at the festival. I'm glad that The Trip to Italy, a follow-up to Michael Winterbottom's entertaining The Trip, is on the program.

3 films have been added since the printed schedule came out: Begin Again, Calvary & The One I Love. During the Q & A, a journalist asked if there were any films "made under dire conditions."

§ 57th San Francisco International Film Festival
April 24–May 8, 2014

§ Opening Press Conference
Tuesday, April 1, 2014, 10:00 am
Fairmont San Francisco