SF Silent Film Festival: Tales from the Archives

Jack's Joke. 1913.
Edison Kinetophone.

I started my 2nd day at the SF Silent Film Festival with Amazing Tales from the Archives, a free program of highly informative presentations by film preservationists. A chipper George Willeman, from the Library of Congress, talked us through one of his pet projects: resurrecting Edison Kinetophone films. The technology involved synchronizing phonograph cylinders with projectors via a mechanical cable & pulley system. Mr. Willeman summed it up as "too damned complicated," & it failed in the market. He showed us his discovery of the 1st microphone accidentally appearing in a shot, & we saw absurd single-take films of singing blacksmiths & shouty actors.

Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi, of EYE Filmmuseum in Amsterdam, gave a slide lecture about the life of Jean Desmet, an early 20th century serial entrepreneur & film exhibitor, whose archive of films, movie posters, photographs & documents form the EYE's Desmet Collection. Ms. Rongen-Kaynakçi is especially interested in his business correspondence, which provides details like the cost of a Bechstein piano for his cinema. She is also interested in his investment in a patented "cloud projector," which would have projected giant ads onto clouds, in the manner of the Bat-Signal.

Lastly, Heather Linville, of the Academy Film Archive, told us the astonishing story of Idris Welsh, who, as a 6-foot tall teenager, joined up with a certain Captain Wanderwell in 1922, adopted the moniker Aloha Wanderwell, & led a fleet of Model T's on a round-the-world tour. Along the way, she shot, edited & appeared in a series of travel films & eventually ending up in Hollywood. The Captain himself was charged with the enslavement of a minor, which he resolved by marrying Aloha. She went on to continue shooting travelogues & presenting her films to audiences in person. I could not understand why I had never heard of her & why no one has yet made her biopic. She even had a pet monkey called Chango.

Ms. Linville ran many excerpts of the travel films as she spoke. One alarming clip showed a motorcade of Model T's driving straight up the stairs of the Great Wall of China. Pianist Donald Sosin provided gentle, unobtrusive accompaniment to the films. Even though this was weekday morning, there was an impressive audience turnout.

§ Amazing Tales from the Archives
George Willeman, Library of Congress
Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi, EYE Filmmuseum
Heather Linville, Academy Film Archive
Music by Donald Sosin, piano

San Francisco Silent Film Festival 2017
Friday June 2 2017, 10a
Castro Theatre

A Date with Destino

Saturday afternoon I attended a talk at the Walt Disney Family Museum about the aborted collaboration between Salvador Dali & Walt Disney. Dali worked at the Disney Studio for 8 months in 1945/46, producing over 150 art works, including 6 paintings, for an animated short called Destino, which was eventually shelved in 1948. Around the time of the production of Fantasia 2000, Roy Disney resurrected Destino as a low-budget, high-prestige project & convinced Paris-based animator Dominique Monféry to create a 5-and-a-half minute film based on Dali's drawings & Disney artist John Hench's original storyboards.

Ted Nicolaou, curator of the museum's current exhibit about Dali, & Dave Bossert, Destino's associate producer, showed slides & told stories of the film's production with warm enthusiasm. Listening to Mr. Bossert, I experienced the vicarious pleasure of hearing someone who really loves his job. He amused the audience with his story of attending the 2003 Oscars & then attempting to take his limo up to the drive-through window of In-N-Out Burger. It was fascinating to learn that Dali's artwork was stolen by a Disney employee in 1969 then recovered from a Long Beach gallery, though a few items are still missing.

The talk concluded with a screening of Destino. Its use of CGI & cross-dissolves instead of full motion animation already looks dated, & the film does not feel like an artifact from the 1940s. It's most authentic element is the sound track, taken from an old LP recording, heard with all its clicks & pops. The scenario is clearly a love story & the imagery recognizably Dali-esque, including clocks, melting faces & ants crawling on a hand. Apparently Dali was interested in American baseball, but when a woman's head turns into a ball which is then batted into the distance by a baseball player, the gesture does not read as romantic. At one point bicyclists with baguettes on their heads appear, but the animators later discovered that the baguettes should have been rocks. The audience of mostly older adults knew a lot about Disney already & made appreciative noises whenever specific Disney lore was mentioned.

§ Talk | A Date with Destino
Ted Nicolaou and Dave Bossert
Sat, Sep 5, 1pm
Walt Disney Family Museum

§ Destino (2003)
Dominique Monféry, dir.
USA, 2003, 7 mins.

Rising from the Ashes

Thursday evening at the Presidio Officers' Club, I attended an informative & engaging presentation by film restorer Rob Byrne about the recent restoration of When the Earth Trembled, a 1913 melodrama featuring a climactic sequence taking place during San Francisco's 1906 earthquake. Mr. Byrne began with the film's ambitious producer, Siegmund Lubin, a Polish immigrant who came to America as an optician & then became an early film industry pioneer. He made his 1st movie in 1897 & proceeded to build a major film company based in Philadelphia. He produced, distributed & exhibited his own films, as well as making movie cameras & projectors. Then in 1914 a fatal film explosion started a fire that destroyed everything. Disappointingly, he closed the business & returned to being an optician. Of the over 5,000 films he produced, fragments of just 200 survive.

The current restoration combines 3 different prints, & Mr. Byrne showed us the intricate spreadsheet used to track every shot in the film across all the versions. He demonstrated the differences between the sources with a neat visualization that shows all 3 versions running side by side, revealing the gaps & variations in quality. At the end of the presentation we got to see the restored earthquake sequence. The production used collapsible sets that could only be shot once, so the destruction is quite real. The audience winced audibly when it saw Ethel Clayton, Lubin's leading lady, get hit in the face by a falling chandelier, in what appears to be an unintentional mishap.

Mr. Byrne shared many fascinating details about the reconstruction, such as intertitles that had to be translated from Dutch back into English & hidden frames specifying tint colors. When the real 1906 earthquake occurred, Lubin sent cameraman John Frawley to San Francisco, & some of Frawley's footage of the actual fire are in the film.

Everyone at the presentation received a half-second strip of film from the earthquake scene. I was amazed to learn that even though the reconstruction is all done digitally, a film negative is still made as the final archival artifact. Afterward, Mr. Byrne explained to me that film is simply cheaper & more permanent than digital storage. The restored When the Earth Trembled will play at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival on May 29th.

§ Rising From The Ashes: Resurrecting the 1913 Silent Film When the Earth Trembled
May 14 at 7:00 pm - 8:00 pm
Presidio Officers’ Club

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: 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

The Mechanics' Institute's Industrial Fairs

Last week, Mechanics' Institute librarian Taryn Edwards gave a slide lecture about the 31 industrial fairs hosted by the San Francisco Mechanics' Institute in the period 1857 - 1891. We learned that in 1848 the population of San Francisco was just 800, but it boomed rapidly in the 1850s to well over 50,000. Most things still had to be imported into California, so these fairs promoted the production & consumption of local goods.

Ms. Taryn is a perky historian & presented many entertaining facts that made the era sound a lot more fun than today. The 1st fair in 1857 took place where the Crocker Galleria is now, in a pavilion with a canvas roof that was the largest building in California at the time. Visitors saw a range of products, including machinery, clothing, wine, beer & paintings. The fair had its own song, a skating rink, a hedge maze & a post-exhibition ball that was attended by 1,000 people. The dogged Ms. Taryn managed to identify 3 African-American exhibitors & noted that 25% of the exhibitors were women, even though women made up a far smaller proportion of the general population.

I liked seeing the bunting-filled photos by Carleton Watkins of subsequent fairs & learning about the 4,000 pound cheese on display in 1864. By the 1860s, San Francisco was already being viewed as a gateway to trade with Asia, & products from Japan were exhibited. After 1906 the fairs stopped being daily news & dropped from local history.

The lecture was well-attended & seating was cramped. Refreshments were available. An attendee brought along a stunning quilt made from silk cigar wrappers that was stitched by her great-grandmother. The quilt is in beautiful condition & has been on the Antiques Road Show, but the owner admitted to me that a museum conservator who has seen it is appalled by the way she currently handles it.

§ Before the PPIE: The Mechanics’ Institute and the Development of San Francisco’s “Fair Culture” (1857–1909)
A lecture & slideshow by Taryn Edwards
Thursday, April 16, 2015 - 6:00pm
The Mechanics' Institute

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

Maker Faire Bay Area Town Hall Meeting

Tuesday evening I was at the Maker Faire Town Hall Meeting, a general meeting & mixer for exhibitors at the up-coming Maker Faire, taking place May 16th & 17th in San Mateo. This is the fair's 10th year, & Maker Media has done a tremendous job of building an affluent, family audience, which in turn is attracting major corporations. This year there will be a soft opening on Friday afternoon, which raises the bar for exhibitors who want to participate fully.

Dale Doughtery, the fair's exuberant founder, addressed the gathering & pointed out that most everyone present was white. The Bay Area version of the Maker Fair is less diverse than New York's, & he wants to change this.

The event took place in a workshop space in The Palace of Fine Arts Exhibition Hall, which Maker Media is rebranding as the Innovation Hangar.

§ Maker Faire Bay Area Town Hall Meeting
February 24th, 2015, 7p
Maker Media Lab
The Palace of Fine Arts Exhibition Hall

§ Maker Faire Bay Area
May 16 & 17, 2015
San Mateo Event Center

Scott McCloud at Books Inc.

Earlier this month I saw cartoonist Scott McCloud on the San Francisco stop of his book tour for The Sculptor, his new 500-page graphic novel. Mr. McCloud became a darling of web & interactive designers in the 1990s, when Understanding Comics, his book about sequential art, came out. Author Robin Sloan moderated the event, interviewing Mr. McCloud, then conducting a Q&A with the audience.

Extra chairs had to be brought out for the SRO crowd of around 75 people. They were of varying ages & most seemed to be fans. Mr. McCloud is a cheerful speaker & had fun discussing ideas brought up by the audience. Regarding digital platforms, he told us to "design for the device" rather than reformat the same information for different devices. He replied eagerly to questions about the "longevity of value" & "text as object." He also explicated the conceptual difference between Japanese manga, which puts the reader inside the action, & European comics, which are based on theater & whose characters never turn their backs to the audience.

I didn't learn much about the new book, other than that it explores themes related to art & artistic creation. A projector was set up, but it was only used to show one page of the book & a photo of Mr. McCloud's late father-in-law, who was a model for one of the story's characters.

§ Scott McCloud with Robin Sloan at Books Inc. Opera Plaza
Monday, February 9, 2015 - 7:00pm

Ernst Ostertag, Röbi Rapp and Der Kreis

Earlier this month, I attended an appearance at the Main Library by Ernst Ostertag & Röbi Rapp, the real-life couple whose story was told in Der Kreis, a charming Swiss film about the gay emancipation association Der Kreis, active in the 1950s & 1960s. Historian Gerard Koskovich interviewed the 2 men, who both spoke elegant English, exuded warmth & seemed very at much ease. The 2 came from very different social backgrounds & were very frank in relating details of their early lives. We learned that the social events hosted by Der Kreis, such as Christmas parties & an annual ball, were extremely important for the members, who basically all led double lives & were often socially isolated. Even at these gatherings, people were referred to by aliases or membership numbers & rarely by their real names. Messrs. Ostertag & Rapp are still activists & told us how diversity in hiring is currently an issue for Swiss companies. Mr. Ostertag asserted that parents' acceptance of a gay child needs to start while it is in the womb.

The event took place in a small circular room with a Baroque-style mural depicting figures climbing toward the sky. There were around 40 people in attendance, mostly baby boomers, & it felt like an intimate gathering. A few people used the Q&A to share personal stories & got a bit emotional during the telling.

§ The Circle: An Evening of Conversation with Ernst Ostertag & Röbi Rapp
Gerard Koskovich, interviewer
Gay & Lesbian Center, Main Library
Tuesday, 2/10/2015, 6:00p

Opera Parallèle: An Evening with Sister Helen Prejean

Last month, as part of the run-up to Opera Parallèle's performances of Dead Man Walking this weekend, Temple Emanu-El hosted an evening of discussion & music with Sister Helen Prejean & composer Jake Heggie. The event did a good job priming audiences for the themes of the opera.

Mezzo Frederica von Stade set a solemn, introspective mood with a song by Mr. Heggie on a text by Sister Prejean, accompanied by Mr. Heggie on the piano & flutist Julie McKenzie. In the 1st discussion panel, lawyer Elisabeth Semel brought up the link between race & the death penalty, specifically regarding the race of the victim versus the perpetrator. Jeanne Woodford, a former warden of San Quentin who oversaw 4 executions, questioned the effectiveness of the death penalty & brought up the high cost of pursing death penalty cases.

Sister Prejean might have an unassuming appearance, but she is an eloquent speaker & a determined personality. She is very supportive of art & literature taking social issues to the public & immediately welcomed the idea of turning Dead Man Walking into an opera. We heard that in her 1st phone call to Jake Heggie, she told the composer, "I don't know boo-skat about opera!" She also wanted to be sure that he didn't write "any of that twelve-tone stuff." She sees the opera ultimately as a story of redemption.

The event had a large turn out, & the audience was especially still & quiet for the "Forgiveness" duet from the opera performed by sopranos Kristin Clayton & Nicolle Foland, who both communicated the text clearly. We also heard mezzo Catherine Cook's earthy, grounded sound in another short excerpt. The 90-minute event concluded with Cantor Roslyn Barak performing Ravel's "Kaddish." She sang with control & colored her voice nicely. I wished there could have been more music.

§ Dead Man Walking: Art & Social Justice

Welcome: Cantor Roslyn Barak

Heggie/Prejean "Primary Colors" from The Deepest Desire
Frederica von Stade, Mezzo-Soprano; Julie Mckenzie, flute,
Jake Heggie, piano

PART ONE: Dead Man Walking and the death penalty
Speakers: Sister Helen Prejean, Elisabeth Semel, Jeanne Woodford

Heggie/McNally "Forgiveness" from Dead Man Walking
Kristin Clayton, Nicolle Foland, Sopranos; Jake Heggie, piano

PART TWO: Dead Man Walking and the arts community
Moderated by Brian Staufenbiel
Sister Helen Prejean, Frederica Von Stade, Catherine Cook, Jake Heggie, Nicole Paiement

Heggie/McNally "Don't Say A Word" from Dead Man Walking
Catherine Cook, mezzo-soprano; Jake Heggie, piano

PART THREE: Questions from the Audience
Moderated by Brian Staufenbiel  

Closing: Rabbi Jonathan Singer
Ravel "Kaddish" from Deux Melodies Hebraiques
Roslyn Barak, soprano; Jake Heggie, piano

Temple Emmanu-El, San Francisco
7 p.m. January 21, 2015

World’s Fair on Film

Events are taking place all over the city this year to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition. Thursday night I was at the Officers' Club in the Presidio, where Anita Monga, artistic director of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, presented an hour-long program of films documenting the World's Fair. The best footage came from a 1933 compilation that was discovered in a junk shop. The film shows a parade of floats on opening day, a joint visit by Thomas Edison, Henry Ford & Luther Burbank, mock military battles, stunt flying, camel races, sumo wrestlers & a light show mimicking the northern lights, to name just a fraction of the attractions. It all looks way more fun than anything going on in the city today.

This was the 1st World's Fair to use film as a marketing tool, & Ms. Monga showed us a sickly sentimental promotional film starring a little girl dressed as a fairy who emerges from the Portals of the Past in Golden Gate Park. We also saw the 1915 short Mabel and Fatty Viewing the World's Fair at San Francisco, in which the comedians are weirdly fascinated with the instruments of torture onboard a convict ship.

Other snippets included a glimpse of Charlie Charlie among a crowd of visitors waving to the camera, a tinted film of the fair's spectacular nighttime light displays & a bizarre clip revealing that preemies were exhibited. The audience applauded shots of the Ferry Building lit up with the year "1915".

Frederick Hodges accompanied live on the piano, playing a variety of jaunty tunes that fit the period & the images. We heard the Ride of Valkyries when a group of sailors appeared rowing a replica Viking ship.

The event was free, but I was not the only one who did not realize we were supposed to register for a free ticket online. When I arrived at the Officers' Club, I joined a line of ticketless attendees, & by the time we were let into the room, it was standing room only. A few people dressed in period costume.

§ World’s Fair on Film: San Francisco 1915
Presidio Trust & San Francisco Silent Film Festival
Feb 19, 07:00PM – 09:00PM
Presidio Officers' Club

John Lahr at Mechanics' Institute

Critic John Lahr is on tour promoting his new biography of Tennessee Williams & on Monday spoke at the Mechanics' Institute. Rather than read from the book, he gave a free-form talk. I didn't quite follow his convoluted history of the battle to publish an "authorized" Williams biography, but we heard many anecdotes about Lady Maria St. Just, a trustee of Williams's estate, who resorted to blackmail & even resectioning the playwright's letters with a razor blade. Mr. Lahr's book is apparently a sort of follow-up to an earlier biography by Lyle Leverich, a San Francisco theater manager whom Tennessee Williams named as his official biographer. Lahr's book starts with the Broadway opening of The Glass Menagerie & interprets all the plays in the context of Williams's emotional state.

It was nice to hear Mr. Lahr say that he never had a bad day at the New Yorker, where he has been senior drama critic for over 20 years. In the Q & A, he became very animated when panning the Young Vic's recent production of A Streetcar Named Desire. I planned to buy a copy of the book at the event but then balked at the $44 hardcover price.

§ Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh
An afternoon with author John Lahr
Monday, October 06, 2014 - 12:30pm
Mechanics' Institute

APE 2014 (Sunday)

Sunday afternoon I was back at the Alternative Press Expo & saw lots of original artwork. I enjoyed looking at the beautifully taut, thin-lined drawings in artist Aaron Zonka's sketchbook. I wasn't the only one who was gaping in amazement at illustrator's Mike Lee's exquisite, tiny drawings, made with the sharpened point of a mechnical pencil lead & containing no lines. It was fun hearing stories about being on the expo circuit from comics artists Tony Breed & Lonnie Mann.

At the Queer Cartoonists Panel, moderator Justin Hall proudly noted that MacArthur Genius Grant recipient Alison Bechdel was on his 1st panel 11 years ago. This year's panelists got into an amusing discussion about rabbits when Rick Worley explained his reasons for portraying himself as a giant cartoon rabbit. Sara Lautman claimed that there is a rabbinical tradition in which homosexuals are punished by being reincarnated as rabbits. She had even more provocative things to say about the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

All the attendees were awed by a woman in the front row who live-sketched the entire panel.

§ APE 2014
Alternative Press Expo
Oct. 4 & 5
Fort Mason Center

APE 2014

The Alternative Press Expo, a marketplace for independent comics, publishing & art, is taking place this weekend at Fort Mason, back at its original San Francisco location. This is also the last year it will be run by Comic-Con. Next year it reverts back to the San Jose-based SLG Publishing.

The expo occupies one of the large pavilions, with programs taking place in the adjacent firehouse. I caught most of cartoonist Jason Shiga's presentation, in which he playfully demonstrated the ingenious mechanisms of his interactive comics, inspired by the choose-your-own-adventure books he read as a child. I was amazed by the intricate paper gears he devised for an unrealized comic whose panels rotate into view. At the end of the event he scanned the audience to make sure there were no children, then gave us a sneak preview of a future issue of Demon, his 720-page black comedy. The episode was replete with foul-mouthed denunciations of everything from literature to Disneyland.

A lot of glossy books & accomplished drawing were on offer in the expo hall, & the eager vendors all had their sales pitches down. When I stopped to admire the bold, 6-color silkscreen illustrations in Estrella Vega's paleontology-themed art books, she immediately handed one to me so I could see how it unfolds into a 3-dimensional shape. It is good to know that Last Gasp has published a picture book about that enchanting German Christmas tradition of the Krampus. When I stopped to chat with cartoonist Geoff Vasile, he reminisced rousingly about his first time at APE & wondered why I didn't go by my on-line moniker all the time.

§ APE 2014
Alternative Press Expo
Oct. 4 & 5
Fort Mason Center

Paul Yarbrough & Friends

Wednesday evening I was at this season's 1st Salon at the Rex, featuring violist Paul Yarbrough of the Alexander String Quartet, with mezzo Kindra Scharich & pianist John Parr. Mr. Parr, long associated with the SF Opera, has just started as head of music staff at the Deutsche Oper Berlin. Mr. Yarbrough explained he hoped to highlight the similarities of Schumann's writing for the viola & the voice & played the picturesque Märchenbilder, followed by Ms. Scharich in 6 songs from Liederkreis. Ms. Scharich then sang 2 dolorous songs by Dowland, immediately followed by Mr. Yarbrough's performance of a dark, ominous Britten piece based on those songs. The program concluded with all 3 musicians in 2 Brahms songs for alto, viola & piano.

Mr. Yabrough's playing has a nice bite to it, & he communicated the troubled, agitated mood of the Britten piece well. Ms. Scharich sings with ease, & her voice is pleasant, clean & calm. She has good dynamic control & scaled her voice to the small space. I liked the hearty sound she made in Schumman's "Waldesgesprach", & her voice was a good fit for the Dowland. She was soothing in the Brahms, with Mr. Yarbrough playing the low notes on his viola with warmth. Mr. Parr's playing was crisp, though he sometimes seemed disconnected from the other performers.

The program lasted about 75 minutes & had a sociable atmosphere & supportive audience. Mr. Yarbrough even called out to a friend in the audience before launching into the final Märchenbilder. In the Q & A, Mr. Yarbrough brought up relevant biographical background for the music by Britten & Brahms.

§ Salon at the Rex
Paul Yarbrough, viola
Kindra Scharich, mezzo-soprano
John Parr, piano

R. Schumann (1833-1897)
Märchenbilder, Op. 113
Nicht schnell
Lebhaft
Rasch
Langsam, mit melancholischem Ausdruck

Selections from Liederkreis, Op. 39
In der Fremde
Intermezzo
Waldesgesprach
Mondnacht
Wehmut
Frühlingsnacht

J. Dowland (1563-1626)
If My Complaints Could Passions Move
Flow My Tears

B. Britten (1913-1976)
Lachrymae: Reflections on a song of Dowland, op. 48a

J. Brahms (1810-1856)
Zwei Gesänge, Op. 91
Gestillte Sehnsucht
Geistliches Wiegenlied

Wednesday, October 1, 2014
6:30pm
Hotel Rex

Mari Naomi at City Lights

Last week I was at City Lights bookstore to see Mari Naomi on the San Francisco stop of her book tour for Dragon's Breath and Other True Stories, a compilation of her autobiographical short story comics for The Rumpus. Ray Shea, who wrote the book's introduction, started off the event by reading one of his own short stories, a rueful autobiographical vignette about drugs & lost love. Ms. Naomi did a slideshow reading of 3 stories from her book & provided a few additional gossipy footnotes along the way. She then talked a little about getting the book published & answered a few questions from the audience. She told us that in LA a man tried to hit on her in the middle of her reading, & she admitted that she & her mother have factual disagreements regarding her story about the death of a bunny-eating snake.

The event took place in a cozy upstairs room of the bookstore & was standing room only. I had a seat against a bookshelf at the back of the room. When I reached behind my head for a random book to read while waiting, I of course happened to grab On the Road.

§ Dragon's Breath and Other True Stories
MariNaomi
City Lights Booksellers
Wednesday, September 24, 2014, 7:00 P.M.

Silent Autumn

Last weekend I had a great time at the SF Silent Film Festival's 1-day Silent Autumn event at the Castro Theatre, where I saw 3 of the 5 programs. Author Donna Hill gave a breathless introduction to The Son of the Sheik, Rudolph Valentino's last movie, & told us that Valentino spent the enormous sum of $15,000 on his own costumes. This was my 1st time seeing the film, & I found it entertaining & perhaps even a bit self-parodying. Special effects shots in which Valentino appears on screen simultaneously as both father & son are seamless. A chase scene over desert sands on horseback has an authenticity that is still spectacular.

The Alloy Orchestra, a trio of musicians playing percussion, clarinet, accordion and electronic keyboard, premiered their original score, which has an appropriately oriental atmosphere & is percussion-heavy & dark. It matched the action closely, though I sometimes felt it missed the film's occasional humor. The performance was loud & lively & received an enthusiastic ovation. The keyed-up audience applauded Valentino's 1st appearance on the screen & when he straightened out the iron bar bent by The Sheik.

The next show was a diverse program of 14 shorts compiled by the British Film Institute & representing what movie-goers saw in cinemas on the cusp of World War I. Newsreel footage included glimpses of Emmeline Pankhurst, the Austro-Hungarian royal family & Ernest Shackleton, who shows off the dogs he is taking on his Antarctic expedition, though the product placement for Spratt's Dog Cakes is rather unfortunate. A travelogue of Egyptian street scenes & monuments was evocative.

It was fun seeing a bubbly Florence Turner in Daisy Doodad's Dial, a remarkably silly comedy involving a face-pulling competition & containing an impressive multiple exposure shot. I also enjoyed discovering the brazenly idiotic Lieutenant Pimple and the Stolen Submarine, a low-budget comedy whose makers were unashamed of their cardboard sets & couldn't be bothered to crop spectators out of the frame when shooting along the Thames Embankment

Donald Sosin accompanied on piano & did a good job matching each film's mood. His jaunty playing felt appropriate to the period. Mr. Sosin also did a sort of reverse lip-synching when he sang along to a song & dance film that once had a synchronized sound disc.

After a 2 hour dinner break I returned for Buster Keaton's The General. The theater was packed, & it was a terrific experience seeing the movie with such a fired up audience. Board President Robert Byrne pointed out Keaton's granddaughter, Melissa Talmadge Cox, & her son in the audience. John Bengtson, film detective extraordinaire, introduced the screening & told us anecdotes about the friendly relationship that developed between the film crew & the residents of Cottage Grove, Oregon, where The General was filmed.

The Alloy Orchestra was back to play their original score for the film, which was percussion-heavy & went into a weighty, chugging mode whenever a train was in motion. The music was loud, often drowning out the audience's laughter, but it amped up the film's dynamism. The energetic performers received a cheering ovation at the end.

§ Silent Autumn
San Francisco Silent Film Festival

1:00 PM
The Son of the Sheik
(USA, 1926, 81 minutes)
Musical accompaniment by Alloy Orchestra.

3:30 PM
A Night at the Cinema in 1914
(USA/UK, 1914, 85 minutes)
Musical accompaniment by Donald Sosin

7:00 PM
The General
(USA, 1926, 75 minutes)
Musical accompaniment by Alloy Orchestra.

Saturday September 20 2014
Castro Theatre

East German Cinema

I'm glad that last week a friend suggested we go to Oddball Films for a presentation on films from East Germany. Author Jim Morton announced at the start that all our preconceptions about East German cinema were wrong, & he proved it with a clip reel from over a dozen films, culled from his East German Cinema Blog. The excerpts began with a children's fairy tale film boasting psychedelic colors & imagery, & the show was jammed with similarly flagrant displays of imagination.

An extravagantly surreal scene from Die Legende von Paul und Paula references eavesdropping Stasi & shows the title couple making love in a style befitting Burning Man. My film companion & I immediately wanted to see the whole thing. The even more bizarre Ursula, a co-production with Switzerland, has Jesus carrying his cross through a 16th century battlefield in which the combatants use machine guns as well as bows & arrows.

A black & white opera film of Der fliegende Holländer is done in the style of a classic horror movie & looks excellent. A storyline from Automärchen (Motoring Tales) seems to be The Little Shop of Horrors, but instead of a man-eating plant, there's a man-eating car. Other unlikely clips included German hula dancers in blackface, a skinhead biker gang & a fabulously fun 1980s gay bar. Some Germans in the audience helped translate a racy song by Kurt Demmler that accompanies a marionette puppet performing a strip tease.

The compilation ended with several scenes from Im Staub der Sterne (In the Dust of the Stars), a beautifully photographed science fiction film, apparently set in the universe's weirdest 70s disco, where the landscape includes trampolines, giant snakes & people dancing like ancient Egyptians.

The event was at capacity, meaning that about 40 people were packed into a funky corner space of Oddball's archives. When we arrived, an old NBC news report was running, showing Daniel Schorr reporting the construction of the Berlin Wall. My movie companion came well-equipped with a bottle of red wine and 2 stemmed glasses, then pulled out a jar of cocktails peanuts halfway through the show.

§ Cinema Soiree with Jim Morton on East German Cinema
Oddball Films
Thurs. Sep. 18 - 8PM