6 posts tagged “sfiff2007”
They had hoped to announce the films at the press conference, then 10 days before the festival began, but the names of the films weren't released until a few days into the fest. The six films would be available for a day for up to 100 downloads.
Unfortunately, that is understandable. While technology has been changing rapidly, most theatrical distributors won't pick up a film which has been available online nor will most television channels.
The Key of G was available on Jaman only outside of the US and Canada because it will be on PBS in October. Sundance made some of the short films they showed available for free online and/or for $2 on itunes. After he was on a panel at SFMOMA in February, I asked Jay Rosenblatt why he didn't include his Sundance short I Just Wanted to Be Somebody (which will also screen at Frameline in June). He said his film was being considered by a cable channel which wouldn't have permitted it to be shown online. Filmmakers may also only have festival rights to footage and music in their films before they are picked up for distribution or television.
And while Jaman is a great service (I've been beta testing it for a few months), it does require registration and downloading a player. And the files are large, around a gig or more (though they download relatively quickly on a fast
internet connection). Tribeca has also been offering free films for about a week each with no limit on downloads (one film is still available through the 9th and another through the 11th). Still, one film was downloaded 128 times, one 106 times, and another 63 times according to Jaman's most downloaded page.
The SFIFF50 film All in This Tea was downloaded almost 80 times in one day. When I asked Les Blank last week why he participated, he said, "Why not?" He said he was experimenting with online distribution including making his 1973 film, Dry Wood, available at the free streaming site, Folkstreams.
More theatrical distributors and television outlets should have that attitude. Seeing a film online may help build an audience in theaters and on television. When Sundance asked the filmmakers of The Tribe to put it online as part of the 2006 festival, they were hesitant. But being online actually helped their DVD sales (when they had to have Sundance take the film down during Tribeca last year, sales went down).
Next year, I hope the festival will also make short films available (they are smaller downloads) and make the feature films available for a longer time.
This year's Centerpiece film, Delirious (French site even though it is not a French film), explores some similar themes. Steve Buscemi plays a photographer obsessed with getting the celebrity "shot heard 'round the world." It was directed by Tom DiCillio who also made Living in Oblivion (amazingly, the 1995 website is still online). Delirious screens tonight at the Kabuki at 7 pm. It is sold out, but there will be rush tickets if you get there early enough. If you see it when it is released theatrically, make sure you stay until the end of the credits.
Isild Le Besco gives an even better performance in a film at this year's festival, A Parting Shot, which screens tonight at 7 pm at the Clay, and at the Kabuki on Monday at 1:30 pm, Tuesday at 6:30 pm, and Thursday at 4:30 pm.
but I wanted to let people know that All in This Tea by Les Blank and Gina Leibrecht is available as a free rental on Jaman until sometime Friday or 100 copies have been downloaded (as of 4 pm on Thursday, it has been downloaded 32 times).
It will be released on DVD when they've raised about $20,000 (half of that for music rights). Donations can be made online (scroll down to the Tea Project).
Blank's 1973 film Dry Wood, "a glimpse into the life, food, and Mardi Gras celebrations of black Creoles in French Louisiana, featuring the stories and music of 'Bois Sec' Ardoin and Canray Fontenot," is available for free streaming online at Folkstreams.
Blank will receive the 2007 Edward MacDowell Medal. Past winners have included Thornton Wilder, Robert Frost, Alexander Calder, Edward Hopper, Eudora Welty, Georgia O'Keeffe, Stan Brakhage, Joan Didion, Chuck Jones, Merce Cunningham, and Steve Reich.
The satellite screenings continue this year with Fabricating Tom Zé at El Rio tonight (tickets are only $5). Tom Zé says at the beginning of the documentary that concerts are boring. His performances and this documentary on him are anything but boring. Zé is part of the Tropicália movement in Brazil (Carlos Basuldo talked about Tropicália at the SF Art Institute in January - scroll down on their podcast page to listen to it). NPR profiled Zé last year. There won't Ze's traditional five encores tonight, but you can get some of his music which is available from David Byrne's Luka Bop label.
Although El Rio is mostly a music venue, they do show films including the Hub Collective's free Televising the Revolution Radical Film Series which takes play on the fourth Tuesday of every month (the next is on May 22nd at 8 pm).
Also, tonight through Thursday, May 3rd, films from Rob Nilsson's Nine@Night series will be shown in Justin Herman Plaza starting at 7 pm. Also, four of his films will be available for a limited time on Jaman starting on May 7th (I'll write more about the SFIFF Jaman films soon).
There also are two screenings of Jon Else's Wonders are Many: The Making of Doctor Atomic at 7 pm and 9:30 pm on Sunday, May 6th at Intersection for the Arts (tickets are $5 at the door). Some photos from Sunday's Castro screening. Stanley Nelson's Jonestown: the Life and Death of People's Temple which was shown at Intersection last year was on PBS last month and is now out on DVD.
Notes to a Toon Underground is a program of animated films accompanied by 11 musician including Jason Lytle (Grandaddy) and Jamie Stewart and Caralee McElroy (Xiu Xiu). It takes place at the Castro on Saturday, May 5th at 8:30 pm. Kimberly Chun writes in the Guardian about animator Kelly Sears.
When the film was shown at the Berlin Film Festival, Maddin wrote about the over 1800 people who were going to see it :
There are many more music related films and events, but I'll just mention the delightful Vitus which plays on Sunday, May 5th at noon at the Clay (the video above is an interview with the director and star).I hope against hope I may quell all their trepidation. Silent film is arid, they fear. Silent film is corny, they fear. Silent film is slow, stale and black & white, they fear. The possibility of a glute-deadening boredom is what preys on their minds most.
So I have recruited allies for what I like to call “boredom insurance”: live orchestral accompaniment (always good for securing the audience’s goodwill) playing an original wall-to-wall score; a narrator of exquisite Scanditalian flutiness in the person of Isabella Rossellini; three Foley artists producing more than 600 live sound effects; and an authentic castrato from Winnipeg who can produce the most unearthly and unlikely warblings from within his roughly hewn, adult and completely hairless torso.All of them will be visible to the audience as silhouettes feverishly working to cast out their night sabbath spells from the stage directly in front of the unspooling images of my misbegotten film. I’m counting on a supernatural fusion of these live elements and the ghostly projections to supply the spark of life that will re-animate silent film once and for all and make believers of the skeptics. Please pray for my soul!
The San Francisco International Film Festival opens Thursday night at the Castro and runs through May 10th, but the celebration of the festival's 50th anniversary began earlier this year with a launch of a website devoted to the history of the oldest film festival in the United States.
In March, sf360 editor Susan Gerhard, creative director Miguel Pendás, photographer Pamela Gentile, and History Project Coordinator Jennifer Preissel gave a presentation on the site at the Apple Store (more photos).
It is possible to search for any film or guest, and there are Great Moments stories on Les Blank (who is showing All in this Tea this year), Jack Lemmon, Jack Nicholson, Mary Pickford, Abbas Kiarostam, The Talking Heads, and many others.
The story on Bette Davis includes a PDF of her letter to the festival which includes her suggestions for film clips (with a brief comment on each movie). There is an MP3 of Davis, and more MP3s of other guests in the Closeups section.
There are also videos (a player is linked from the the Closeups section). There are short clips including last year's sold out tribute at the Castro to Werner Herzog, and an excerpt from Tilda Swinton's State of Cinema address (the full text is online - this year Peter Sellars is giving the address on Sunday at 4 pm at the Kabuki).
There are also trailers from past years, and a short film by Christian Bruno and Sam Green (who is a judge
this year for the documentary short Golden Gate Awards), Pie Fight '69.
The Our History section includes oral histories from Jerry Mander (author of Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television and a publicist for the fest in the early sixties), Jeannette Etheredge (the owner of Tosca Cafe), and others. Etheredge is scheduled take part in a special edition of the Porchlight storytelling series, Five-O: Stories and Images from 50 Years of the SF International at the Kabuki on Tuesday, May 8th at 6:30 p.m. People can contribute their own stories about the festival in the Collective Memory section of the site.
There will be more stories and history during The True Story of the World: On the Road at 50, at the Kabuki on Monday, April 30 at 6:30 pm. Peter Coyote, Diane DiPrima, and Michael McClure will discuss Kerouac's book which was published the same year the festival started.
The Chronicle has a page which includes Ruthe Stein's short pieces on each year of the festival and other coverage. B. Ruby Rich (who talked about the importance of film festivals in her 2004 State of the Cinema address) interviewed the festival staff about the history of the fest for sf360.
