SFIFF58 Wrap-Up

Had a fine time at the 58th San Francisco International Film Festival. For whatever reason, I saw mostly documentaries. All but one of my shows started more or less on time. I also managed a festival party trifecta, which I believe is a personal best. I was continually impressed by the dedicated festival-goers who start lining up outside the Kabuki, often in chilly weather, an hour or more ahead of time.

Films: 12
Live events: 1
Q&As: 10
Audience ballots submitted: 9
Times I had an empty seat next to me: 3
Parties: 3
Festival lounge happy hours: 5
Tweets: 43
Instagrams pics: 11

§ 58th San Francisco International Film Festival
April 23 - May 7, 2015

SFIFF58: Experimenter

Last Thursday I attended closing night of San Francisco International Film Festival at the Castro Theatre. Executive Director Noah Cowan introduced the evening & announced that the audience poll winners were The Dark Horse & the documentaries Romeo is Bleeding & T-Rex. The closing night feature was Experimenter, Michael Almereyda's light-weight biopic about social scientist Stanley Milgram. Mr. Almereyda was present to introduce his film & called it "a small movie about a vast subject."

The story starts with Milgram's controversial "Obedience to Authority" experiment in 1961 & follows his career through his unexpected death in 1984. If you know a bit about Milgram already, there is no new information, but it's nice that the movie also includes the many benign experiments he carried out after the obedience study. Episodes of his professional life are interspersed with domestic scenes about his marriage, to give the movie some slight emotional content.

Peter Sarsgaard portrays a dry & wry Milgram. He sometimes addresses the audience directly, & the movie contains several similarly playful moments. We might see an elephant following Milgram down a hallway or an obvious rear projection used for the background. I was amused by scenes containing deadpan impersonations of Dick Cavett, Ossie Davis & William Shatner.

Following the screening, Director of Programming Rachel Rosen conducted a Q&A with Mr. Almereyda, actress Winona Ryder, who played Milgram's wife, & Alan Elms, who was Milgram's real-life assistant. Mr. Almereyda told us that Mr. Elms was the 1st person he contacted in researching the film. Mr. Elms attested to the accuracy of the film & said that actor Jim Gaffigan's portrayal was very close to the real-life James McDonough, who played the experiment's victim. Mr. Almereyda told us that the film was shot in 20 days & that he got the idea for Milgram talking to the camera not from Ferris Bueller but from Milgram's own films, in which he often did the same thing. An audience member said she was confused about a scene taking place on Halloweeen, & Mr. Almereyda apologized for not making the continuity clear. The evening ended with the festival's closing night party at Mezzanine, near Mint Plaza.

§ Experimenter
Director: Michael Almereyda
2015, USA, 98 mins.

§ 58th San Francisco International Film Festival
May 7, 2015   7:00 p.m.   Castro Theatre

§ Closing Night Party
9:00 pm, Mezzanine
444 Jessie Street

SFIFF58: Kronos Quartet Beyond Zero: 1914-1918

Last Wednesday evening I attended a live event at the San Francisco International Film Festival, featuring the Kronos Quartet performing music by Aleksandra Vrebalov, accompanied with a film by Bill Morrison. Ms. Vrebalov's 45-minute piece memorializes World War I. It unfolds in long, sustained passages that at times evoke sirens, wailing or insect noises. A harsh middle section depicts relentless tramping or marching. At the end of the piece, the violinists leave their chairs & softly strike 2 hanging cylindrical bells. The Kronos Quartet gave an incisive, proficient performance. The piece also incorporates recorded sounds of sirens, human speech & chanting. The 1st thing we hear is an eerie recording of a high, keening soprano, which we later found out was a 1916 recording of an Armenian song, with Bartok at the piano.

In a reversal of the usual process, Mr. Morrison created his film to match the music. It's all archival World War I footage. We see military parades, training exercises, troops out in the field & airplanes in the sky. All the footage is badly decomposed, & the images seem to be decaying before our eyes. The film & music fit together well to create a grim & ghostly mood.

Festival programmer Sean Uyehara conducted a Q&A with the musicians afterward. 1st violinist David Harrington said this is the 1st time they have played the piece in a movie theater & joked that the smell of popcorn was just great. Cellist Sunny Yang told us that the music is so physically demanding that she has change her bow grip partway through the percussive middle section in order to keep going.

Drew Cameron, a papermaker & Iraq War veteran, joined the Q&A to tell us about the Combat Paper Project, which turns military uniforms into paper for art works. Mr. Cameron had his talking points down & pointed out that the borders of Iraq were drawn after the fall of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I. The line for this event began forming at least an hour before, & the audience was attentive & respectful.

§ Kronos Quartet Beyond Zero: 1914-1918
A Work for Quartet with Film
Kronos Quartet
Aleksandra Vrebalov, composer
Bill Morrison, filmmaker
2014, USA, 60 mins.

§ 58th San Francisco International Film Festival
May 6, 2015   6:30 p.m.   Sundance Kabuki Cinemas

SFIFF58: Deep Web

Last Monday night I attended the San Francisco International Film Festival screening of Deep Web, Alex Winter's up-to-the minute documentary about Silk Road, the online black market, & Robert Ulbricht, the man recently convicted of being its founder & owner. Mr. Winter uses the story of Silk Road to raise issues of anonymity, privacy, freedom from government coercion & the war on drugs. Interview subjects include journalists, cryptography experts, lawyers, law enforcement, anarchist hackers & former Silk Road administrators. It's hard to miss the poster of Ed Snowden in the office of WIRED journalist Andy Greenberg or to disagree when EFF lawyer Cindy Cohn asserts that "An observed life is not a free life."

Deep Web is also a work of advocacy. It portrays Mr. Ulbricht as a benign & idealistic young man who wants to make the world a better place. Though he is not interviewed for the film, we get to know him through family photos, personal videos & testimonials from his family, friends & colleagues. The movie strongly hints that the government violated Mr. Ulbricht's 4th Amendment rights. The festival audience laughed when security expert Nicholas Weaver characterized the government's account of how it found the Silk Road servers as "vaguely connected to the truth."

Following the screening, journalist Susie Cagle showed slides of her illustrated coverage of Ulbricht's trial, which she described as "absurd theater." Her account suggests that the judge's ignorance of technical issues played to the advantage of the prosecution. Festival programmer Sean Uyehara then led a discussion with director Mr. Winter, EFF lawyer Ms. Cohn & Ms. Cagle. We learned that Mr. Winter destroyed all his source material as soon as the film was finished, so that there could be nothing to subpoena. The quotable Ms. Cohn asserted that this is a golden age for government surveillance & that it is hard to get a fair trial when the government won't give away how it finds out things.

The screening was full, & I sat in the balcony of the Kabuki Cinema, where a lot of people were eating. Keanu Reeves was in attendance, though I did not spot him. He narrates the film, which includes a bit of computer animation recalling The Matrix. He was also reported to be at Dosa across the street afterward.

§ Deep Web
Director: Alex Winter
2015, USA, 91 mins.

§ 58th San Francisco International Film Festival
May 4, 2015   9:00 p.m.   Sundance Kabuki Cinemas
May 6, 2015   2:00 p.m.   Sundance Kabuki Cinemas

SFIFF58: The Iron Ministry

On Monday afternoon at the San Francisco International Film Festival, I saw The Iron Ministry, a film consisting entirely of footage shot aboard China's railway system between 2011 & 2013. The film is structured as if we were on one continuous train ride, & it's part cinematic poem & part observational documentary. The film begins with an eerie, abstract sequence consisting of the scraping sounds of the train & indistinct shapes rocking in darkness. In long takes, the camera moves through a wide range of environments on the trains, from overcrowded cars carrying farmers with baskets full of fresh meat & vegetables, to modern 1st class carriages with barely any passengers. In one scene, the camera wends its way through a car at floor level, so we can see the variety of footwear worn by riders. Another shot follows a broom as it sweeps passengers' trash into a huge mound.

The film has no commentary, but director J.P. Sniadecki captures small, telling vignettes. Early on, a motor-mouthed little boy delivers a brilliant, scatalogical parody of the train announcements. We witness a vaguely confrontational conversation between 2 Muslim & 2 Han Chinese men. A man without an ID, who seems to be an ethnic minority, is taken off the train. 2 women warily discuss salaries, jobs & age. Sometimes we hear Mr. Sniadecki off-camera speaking Mandarin as he interviews people directly. A friendly railroad employee is suddenly nonplussed when he learns his voice is being recorded. The general impression is of a society experiencing rapid change.

The festival screening was full, & I sat next to a Chinese-speaking couple. 2 people nearby me checked their cellphones during the movie.

§ The Iron Ministry
Director: J.P. Sniadecki
2014, China/USA, 83 mins.

§ 58th San Francisco International Film Festival
April 24, 2015   7:00 p.m.   Sundance Kabuki Cinemas
April 25, 2015   4:00 p.m.   Pacific Film Archive Theater
May 4, 2015   4:00 p.m.   Sundance Kabuki Cinemas

SFIFF58: Golden Gate Awards

Last night, at a party at Rouge | Nick's Crispy Tacos, the San Francisco International Film Festival announced the winners of the Golden Gate Awards, given to films playing at the festival. Winners received a framed certificate & cash prizes from $250 to $10,000. Before presenting the award for each category, the jurors read a short statement noting the outstanding qualities of the winner. Local high school students were jurors for the youth awards.

The atmosphere of the award ceremony was light & clubby. Most awardees were not present, but the person accepting the award for Cailleach corrected the pronunciation of the film's title & another expressed thanks for the recognition that the festival gives to independent filmmakers. While I was in line waiting to get into the party, a woman walking by demanded to know what the party was for, who got to attend & what was the best film to see at the festival. At the end of the evening I had a conversation with someone who was an extra in Milk & had a memorable time dressed as a 70s hippie for scenes shot in the Castro.

§ The Golden Gate Awards New Directors
Winner: Sworn Virgin, Laura Bispuri (Italy/Switzerland/Germany/Albania/Kosovo)
Jury: producer & BFI Senior Production Executive Lizzie Franke, writer & filmmaker Ryan Fleck, producer Laura Wagner.

§ Golden Gate Awards for Documentary Features
Documentary Feature Winner: Western, Bill Ross IV, Turner Ross (USA)
Special Jury Recognition: Of Men and War, Laurent Bécue-Renard (France/Switzerland)
Bay Area Documentary Winner: Very Semi-Serious, Leah Wolchok (USA)
Special Jury recognition: T-Rex, Drea Cooper, Zackary Canepari (USA)
Jury: filmmakers Kristine Samuelson & Robert Greene, journalist Susan Gerhard.

§ Golden Gate Awards for Short Films
Narrative Short Winner: The Chicken, Una Gunjak (Germany/Croatia)
Documentary Short Winner: Cailleach, Rosie Reed Hillman (Scotland)
Animated Short Winner: A Single Life, Marieke Blaauw, Joris Oprins, Job Roggeveen  (Netherlands)
New Visions Short Winner: Discussion Questions, Jonn Herschend  (USA)
Bay Area Short First Prize Winner: The Box, Michael I Schiller (USA)
Bay Area Short Second Prize Winner: Time Quest, John Dilley (USA)
Jury: filmmakers Grace Lee & Jonathan Duffy, curator Liz Keim.

§ Golden Gate Award for Family Film
Winner: The Story of Percival Pilts, Janette Goodey, John Lewis (Australia/New Zealand)
Family Film Honorable Mentions: Lava, James Ford Murphy (USA) & One, Two, Tree, Yulia Aronova (France/Switzerland)
Jury: Arts Education consultant Amy Balsbaugh, third grade teacher at Grattan School Susan DesBaillets, Head of Education and Community Programs at The Walt Disney Family Museum Hillary Lyden.

§ Golden Gate Award for Youth Work
Winner: Two and a Quarter Minutes, Joshua Ovalle (USA)
Youth Work Honorable Mention: The Off / Season, Lance Oppenheim (USA)
Jury: local high school students Diana Garcia, Ramses Mosley-Wise & Sean Rossiter, with adult supervisor Lisa Landi, producer of Film School Shorts at KQED.

§ Golden Gate Awards
58th San Francisco International Film Festival
Wednesday, May 6, 2015, 9p - 11p
Rouge | Nick's Crispy Tacos

SFIFF58: Monte-Cristo

On Sunday afternoon, the San Francisco International Film Festival held their Mel Novikoff Award event, this year featuring Lenny Borger presenting the 1929 silent epic Monte-Cristo. The festival publicity calls Mr. Borger a writer, translator & film sleuth, & he is apparently the go-to man when you need English subtitles for French films. Scott Foundas, Chief Film Critic at Variety, interviewed Mr. Borger onstage, focusing on his translation work. We learned that Mr. Borger taught himself French by translating the songs of Jaques Brel & that the hardest things to translate are slang, especially in film noir.

Though he lives in Paris, Mr. Borger still sounds like he's from Brooklyn, & he was a charmingly old school raconteur. He told anecdotes about hilariously inaccurate subtitles & was frank about his experiences working with Godard, whom he thinks "contemptuous of the public." He also gave us background on the restoration of Monte-Cristo, which he worked on. The film & its director, Henri Fescourt, currently have no reputation, even in France. Fescourt was a director of popular serials, including a 6-hour version of Les Misérables.

We then saw Monte-Cristo, an opulent adaptation of The Count of Monte Cristo, running over 3 1/2 hours. I enjoyed the movie's suspenseful storytelling, rich settings & visual style. Every shot was a composed picture, with the characters arrayed purposefully in the space. The acting is relatively free of oversized silent movie gestures. The shots of real clipper ships are spectacular, & the crowd scenes have a bustling realism. There's a wonderful scene at the opera where the camera pans across a row of boxes whose occupants are more interested in the audience than the show.

The film ran with a recorded orchestral soundtrack by Marc-Olivier Dupin. His sensuous symphonic score gave the film an exotic atmosphere, & the use of viola & double bass solos was distinctive. The intertitles are all in French, so Mr. Borger did a live translation, though the soundtrack's orchestra sometimes drowned him out. There was one intermission, & altogether the event lasted just under 5 hours. This was less well attended than other festival screenings I've been to. I had empty seats on both sides of me in the balcony.

§ Monte-Cristo
Director: Henri Fescourt
1929, France, 218 mins.
Restoration: 2006

§ Mel Novikoff Award: Lenny Borger: Monte-Cristo
May 3, 2015   1:00 p.m.   Sundance Kabuki Cinemas

SFIFF58: A German Youth

On Saturday I attended the late night screening at the San Francisco International Film Festival of A German Youth, a documentary about the "first generation" of the Baader Meinhof Gang. The film is rigorously constructed using only archival footage from the period, from the 1960s through the death of Ulrike Meinhof in 1976. We see protest footage, news programs & TV debate shows, & the movie does a good job showing the evolution of Ulrike Meinhof from a workers' rights advocate to a radical militant. We also see just how intense & exhausting she was.

In their early days, Baader Meinhof members resembled left-wing hipsters, & director Jean-Gabriel Périot includes their exuberantly silly, stick-it-to-the-man student films. The documentary startlingly ends with excerpts from a Fassbinder film, in which Fassbinder has a heated kitchen table argument with a woman who is apparently his mother. The film is in French & German & is very talky, & I found it wearying to keep up with the subtitles & the often abstract political debates.

Mr. Périot was in attendance & did a Q&A afterward. I was impressed that the theater was nearly full & that audience members had well-informed questions about the subject. We learned that Mr. Périot started this project 10 years ago & spent a lot of boring hours searching student archives & watching old TV footage to find clips for the movie. When asked what he wanted viewers to come away with, he averred that the film does not present a point of view but only asks questions. He revealed that he was inspired to make the documentary by that Fassbinder clip at the end, saying, "It was important to me because it was impossible to understand."

§ A German Youth (Une jeunesse Allemande)
Director: Jean-Gabriel Périot
2015, France/Germany/Switzerland, 92 mins.

§ 58th San Francisco International Film Festival
April 25, 2015   2:00 p.m.   Pacific Film Archive Theater
May 2, 2015   9:30 p.m.   Sundance Kabuki Cinemas
May 5, 2015   6:00 p.m.   Sundance Kabuki Cinemas

SFIFF58: Very Semi-Serious

The San Francisco International Film Festival screening of Very Semi-Serious, an entertaining documentary about The New Yorker cartoonists, was at rush on Friday night, & audience anticipation was high. The film profiles Cartoon Editor Robert Mankoff, as well as a dozen cartoonists whose drawings appear in the magazine. Mr. Mankoff comes across as naturally humorous & the right person in the right job. The most interesting scenes show him critiquing the work of hopeful cartoonists at his Tuesday cartoon meetings, which are open to anyone & designed to attract new talent. I got a vicarious thrill out of seeing the offices of Condé Nast, though it was hard not to have doubts about the authenticity of Mr. Mankoff's hapless assistant.

The film's subjects range from George Booth, who sold his 1st drawing to The New Yorker in 1964, to the peculiarly soft-spoken Ed Steed, who looks like he's 16. He saw his 1st New Yorker cartoons only a couple of years ago & thought, "I could do that." The filmmaker was clearly drawn to Liana Finck, whose cartoons are initially too odd for the magazine. When Mr. Mankoff comments on her shy demeanor, she replies, "It might be Asperger's." Emily Flake calls out the magazine's glaringly obvious lack of diversity when she sums up the cartoons as "stupid cracker shit."

Cartoons, sometimes lightly animated, are generously peppered throughout, & all of them got big laughs from the festival audience. Brief moments of pathos are provided by a reference to 9/11 & scenes of Mr. Mankoff's & his wife looking sad as they discuss a recent family tragedy, whose details are left deliberately vague.

Director Leah Wolchok was in attendance for the Q&A, along with Mr. Mankoff & 2 of her associates, who might have been editor Nels Bangerter, & producer Deborah Shaffer. Ms. Wolchok was breathlessly excited to be presenting the movie. She used to work in San Francisco & clearly had a lot of friends in the audience. We learned that Mr. Mankoff initially declined her request to make a movie about him but agreed when she came back after having raised some money & filmed several of the cartoonists.

§ Very Semi-Serious
Director: Leah Wolchok
2015, USA, 86 mins.

§ 58th San Francisco International Film Festival
May 1, 2015   6:30 p.m.   Landmark's Clay Theatre
May 3, 2015   4:15 p.m.   Pacific Film Archive Theater
May 5, 2015   6:30 p.m.   Landmark's Clay Theatre

SFIFF58: Added Films

2 more films have been added to the schedule of the 58th San Francisco International Film Festival, which runs through Thursday. Winter Sleep is a Turkish drama set in Cappadocia & is a winner of the Cannes Film Festival's Palme d'Or. It will be screened Tuesday, May 5th at 7:30p at the Kabuki. Krisha is a debut film & SXSW award-winner set in Texas. It plays Wednesday, May 6th at 6:30p at the Clay.

The festival's closing night at the Castro features Experimenter, a movie about Stanley Milgram's controversial lab study of obedience to authority. Expected to attend are director Michael Almereyda, star Winona Ryder & a former assistant to Milgram, Alan Elms.

SFIFF: 3 1/2 Minutes, Ten Bullets

Wednesday evening I attended a screening of the documentary 3 1/2 Minutes, Ten Bullets, which is a close-up look at the 1st trial of Michael Dunn, a Florida white man convicted of shooting & killing Jordan Davis, an unarmed black teenager, during an argument over loud music. The 3 1/2 minute altercation is limned through tightly edited trial footage, phone calls, media reports, interviews with Mr. Davis's parents & friends &, most frighteningly, by a security camera video that captured the sound of the gun shots. There is a lot of crying in the film. Tense courtroom scenes alternate with quieter moments showing the parents of Mr. Davis awaiting the outcome of the trial. Mr. Dunn's casual racism is apparent, & you could feel the festival audience's disbelief at his insistence that he is the victim. Footage of protestors & audio clips from local talk radio give us a picture of the community response. The film has slick opening credits & crisp aerial views of Florida freeways, as well as a dreamy interlude showing Mr. Davis's father at a swimming pool.

Immediately following the screening, Executive Director Noah Cowan introduced Lucia McBath, the mother of Jordan Davis, & she received a standing ovation when she walked to the front of the theater. Ms. McBath is now a civil rights activist & gun safety advocate. Also present were Alison Parker, Director of Human Rights Watch's US Program, & producers Bonni Cohen, Minette Nelson & Orlando Bagwell. Mr. Cowan led them in a high-level discussion about gun violence & stand your ground laws. Ms. McBath is strongly motivated by her religion, & she told us her work is about "changing the heart of man." I noticed only one other African American in the audience, apart from Ms. Davis & Mr. Bagwell. I happened to sit next to a woman who is on the board of the festival, & she made me very sorry that I missed the festival's Black Panthers documentary.

§ 3 1/2 Minutes, Ten Bullets
Director: Marc Silver
USA, 2015, 98 mins.

§ 58th San Francisco International Film Festival
April 29, 2015   6:45 p.m.   Sundance Kabuki Cinemas
May 6, 2015      4:00 p.m.   Sundance Kabuki Cinemas
May 7, 2015      5:30 p.m.   Sundance Kabuki Cinemas

SFIFF: City of Gold

Last Saturday evening I joined a line at the Kabuki Cinema that went around the block for City of Gold, a new documentary about Jonathan Gold, the Pulitzer Prize-winning food critic for the LA Times. The rumpled Mr. Gold comes across as a critic for the people, as we see him drive around LA in a Dodge pickup, adventurously eating anywhere, from food trucks to modern French restaurants. He shows a warm enthusiasm for everything, even places he hates. We're made to feel like we're just hanging out with him while he's out to lunch with Calvin Trillin or at home with his family.

The film contains excerpts from Mr. Gold's reviews, interviews with food writers & chefs & nice stories about the small, hard-working restauranteurs that he has made successful by writing about them. The festival audience laughed at the look of fear that glazes over the face of the chef at a fancy restaurant when the critic walks in with a party of 6. It's also fun seeing footage of Mr. Gold playing cello in a punk band back in the day. Like Mr. Gold's reviews, the movie is really about Los Angeles itself, which is presented as a colorful & vibrant hive of ethnic enclaves.

Director of Programming Rachel Rosen conducted a Q&A with filmmaker Laura Gabbert & Mr. Gold after the screening. Ms. Gabbert told us she was able to gradually approach Mr. Gold about being the subject of the film because both their kids go to the same school. She shot the film on & off over a period of 5 years. The ending credits show Mr. Gold cooking at home with his family, & it was nice to learn that he actually cooks for his family most days before he goes out to work. Of course all the audience wanted to know was where Mr. Gold was going to eat while he was in San Francisco. I sat next to a dedicated festival-goer who was seeing 8 films over the weekend & was primarily interested in documentaries.

§ City of Gold
Director: Laura Gabbert
USA, 2014, 91 mins.

§ 58th San Francisco International Film Festival
April 25, 2015   6:30 p.m.   Sundance Kabuki Cinemas
April 28, 2015   9:15 p.m.   Sundance Kabuki Cinemas

SFIFF: What Happened, Miss Simone?

Last Friday night I was at the Castro Theatre for the San Francisco International Film Festival's presentation of the documentary What Happened, Miss Simone? There was a full house & a delay of over 20 minutes, so twice the audience began rhythmic clapping. Executive Director Noah Cowan introduced filmmaker Liz Garbus & announced that Tavis Smiley would conduct the Q&A.

Ms. Garbus already has a riveting subject & does a nice job presenting the full arc of Nina Simone's life & career, using archival footage, photographs, interviews, diary entries & recreations of Simone's childhood in the Jim Crow South. Concert films of Simone's trance-like performances are so compelling that I sometimes wanted the rest of the movie to stop so I could hear more of her music. I loved seeing her stop mid-song to demand that an audience member sit down during a 1976 Montreux concert.

Andrew Stroud, Simone's husband & manager, is the film's heavy, & Lisa Simone Kelly, Nina Simone's daughter, is frank about abuse in her family & her mother's emotional volatility. 2 daughters of Malcolm X appear as interviewees, looking & speaking like royalty.

In the Q&A, Mr. Smiley rolled the desired answers into his questions, & audience questions were more like comments, leaving little room for Ms. Garbus's replies. While waiting for the movie to start, I had a delightful conversation with the lady seated next to me who lived in New York City as a child & recalled regularly seeing Greta Garbo in the park.

§ What Happened, Miss Simone?
Director: Liz Garbus
2014, USA, 102 mins.

§ 58th San Francisco International Film Festival
April 24, 2015, 6:00 p.m.
Castro Theatre
SFIFF: What Happened, Miss Simone?

SFIFF: Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine

The 58th San Francisco International Film Festival opened last Thursday night at the Castro Theatre, with Alex Gibney's new documentary Steve Jobs: The Man In The Machine. Executive Director Noah Cowan & Director of Programming Rachel Rosen introduced the screening, & Mr. Gibney was in attendance.

The film walks us from Jobs's teenage interest in computers through the spontaneous memorials that appeared at Apple stores when he died. We get plenty of archival footage & pithy interview clips from colleagues & journalists, as well as a bit of animation. Though the film covers a lot of ground, Mr. Gibney presents no new information. It was interesting to hear from Chrisann Brennan, the mother of Jobs's daughter Lisa, & fun to see a 1980s commerical for the Sony Walkman. The festival audience particularly enjoyed Apple manager Andy Grignon's reminiscence of the nerve-racking atmosphere behind the scenes of the 1st iPhone demo.

The film is narrated by Mr. Gibney & is also a personal essay in which he asks why there was such a public outpouring of grief when Jobs died. After all, Steve Jobs was famously a jerk in both his professional & personal life, & Mr. Gibney reminds us that Apple can cheat on its taxes, exploit workers in foreign countries & backdate executive stock options like the best of them. He suggests that the devices that Jobs created are so personal that users see themselves in them, & so users were sad when Jobs died because it meant there would be no more devices like these.

Mr. Gibney pointedly turned on his iPhone at the start of his Q&A with Ms. Rosen immediately following the screening. He described his interview style as "more like Columbo than Sherlock," & we learned that he approached Apple for the film, but the company with the world's largest public valuation said it "didn't have the resources" to help him.

I ended my evening at the festival by attending the opening night party, which was held at Madame Tussaud's in Fisherman's Wharf. Many of the waxworks are of movie stars, so the venue makes sense, but I found the statues creepy, & I feared being mistaken for a waxwork myself.

§ Steve Jobs: The Man In The Machine
Director: Alex Gibney
2015, USA, 127 mins.

The 58th San Francisco International Film Festival
April 23, 2015, 7:00 p.m.
The Castro Theatre

SFIFF58: Romeo is Bleeding

This week I attended a preview screening of Romeo is Bleeding, a documentary about an East Bay youth arts program created in response to deadly gang violence in Richmond. The film centers on Donté Clark, the smart & persevering leader of a group of teenagers who are mounting a production of Romeo & Juliet. In their version, the feuding families are rival gangs of North & Central Richmond, & the cast's own urgent & angry spoken word poems replace Shakespeare's speeches. The collegial atmosphere of the preparations is apparent, though we only get small glimpses of the actual play in performance. The film has an elaborate sound design, crisp photography & a strong sense of place. A floating camera sometimes gives us views above BART trains & neighborhoods. I liked a sequence in which the camera accompanies D'Neise Robinson, the high school student playing Juliet, on her tedious nighttime commute home after a rehearsal.

Romeo is Bleeding has its official premiere at the San Francisco International Film Festival this month, at a special event at El Cerrito High School, where the play documented in the film was performed. Mr. Clark will attend the premiere, as well as festival screenings at the Kabuki & the PFA. Jason Zeldes, the film's director, will attend the premiere & Kabuki screenings.

§ Romeo is Bleeding
Director: Jason Zeldes
2015, USA, 93 mins.

§ 58th San Francisco International Film Festival
April 29, 2015, 7:30 p.m.  El Cerrito High School
May 1, 2015, 6:30 p.m.  Sundance Kabuki Cinemas
May 3, 2015, 2:00 p.m.  Pacific Film Archive Theater

SFIFF58 Opening Press Conference

Yesterday morning the San Francisco Film Society held the opening press conference for the 58th San Francisco International Film Festival, which runs April 23 to May 7. Executive Director Noah Cowan gave us an overview of this year's films & events, along with programmers Rachel Rosen, Rod Armstrong, Sean Uyehara & Audrey Chang.

The printed program groups over 180 films under blurry categories like "Masters," "Global Visions" & "Vanguard" but is difficult to navigate. There is definitely a strand about technology, starting with opening night film Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine, a new documentary by Alex Gibney. Mr. Gibney will also be interviewed onstage in a separate Cinema Visionaries event. Alex Winter's documentary Deep Web explores the trial of Silk Road owner Ross Ulbricht. Special effects master Douglas Trumbull will discuss new immersive cinema experiences in a State of Cinema talk, & Nonny de la Peña will talk about using technology to create immersive journalism.

Guillermo del Toro & Richard Gere are among the special guests receiving awards. Performance artist Miranda July will do a live event involving audience participation. The Kronos Quartet will accompany a film constructed from World War I footage. Films about music include a Brian Wilson biopic & documentaries about Nina Simone & The Residents. The documentaries City of Gold, about food critic Jonathan Gold, & Very Semi-Serious, a look at The New Yorker's cartoonists, should be entertaining. Monte-Cristo, a 3-and-a-half-hour French silent film from 1929, will be presented with a recorded soundtrack as part of an afternoon with subtitler Lenny Borger.

Ms. Rosen announced 3 films not in printed program: Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, The Overnight & Ride, with Helen Hunt acting, directing & writing. Mr. Cowan tried to end the event without a Q&A, but a few media representatives piped up with questions anyway. I felt sorry for the publicity staff, who had to check in attendees using a multi-page list that did not have our names in alphabetical order.

§ Festival Website | Film Finder | Calendar | Program Guide PDF | Tickets

§ Opening Press Conference
March 31, 2015
The Crown Room of the Fairmont San Francisco

§ 58th San Francisco International Film Festival
April 23 - May 7, 2015