12 posts tagged “sfiff50”
Strange Culture is playing at the Roxie and the Rafael through Thursday, September 27th. It will be at the
Cinema Village in New York from October 5th to 18th (check the website for other places it will be shown).
It tells the story of artist Steve Kurtz's arrest in 2004 weaving together documentary, segments with Tilda Swinton and other actors, and animation. I saw Kurtz talk about his art at SFMOMA in March and saw the film at the San Francisco International Film Festival in May (photos).
Lucy Gray interviewed Kurtz and director Lynn Hershman Leeson in March and interviewed her again recently.
DocFest opens at the Roxie on Friday and runs through October 10th and the Mill Valley Film Festival opens at the Rafael and other theaters on October 4th and runs through October 14th. I'll be writing about both festivals.
Show us a Polaroid picture.
I heard several people say the best cinematic experience they've had in a long time was at the San Francisco International Film Festival live performance of Brand Upon the Brain (photos). The theatrical release won't be the same, but with no foley artists or live musicians, it will be easier to pay attention to the quick cuts of the film.
Maya Lawson (on the screen above) will be at the Saturday, June 16th San Francisco screenings at 4:45 pm and 7:30 pm the Lumiere.
Guy Maddin wrote that one of the reasons he made Brand was to get more people to see silent films.
At the San Francisco screening, he said the first time he saw a silent film with live music was at the San Francisco film festival in the 80s. Hopefully some of the people who see Brand will go to the San Francisco Silent Film Festival at the Castro July 13th - 15th.
The opening film at the festival, the Golden Door, directed by Emanuele Crialese and starring Vincenzo Amato also opened in San Francisco this weekend.
Update: It is now at both the Opera Plaza and Balboa. Co-direcotr Richard Berge will do a Q&A after the 4 pm Saturday, June 9th show at the Opera Plaza, after the 6:30 pm show at the Balboa and he will introduce the 8 pm show. On Sunday, June 10th, he will do a Q&A after the 3:50 pm show at the Balboa and introduce the 6:30 pm show. Subscribe to the Balboa's newsletter for updates.
The documentary, based on the book of the same name by Lynn Nicholas, focuses on the massive theft of art by the Nazis which continues to have an impact today. It doesn't ignore the impact of the Allies telling the story of the military's Monuments Men (including Taper) who worked to protect the culture of the cities in the path of the war.
Michael Guillén interviewed Berge and Cohen. Cohen, Nicholas, and Taper were also on Forum this morning. Co-producer Robert Edsel has a blog on issues related to the film. There are more video clips from the film online.
Cohen was executive producer of Wonders are Many which also screened at SFIFF, and Newnham directed Sentenced Home which has been airing this week on Independent Lens on PBS.
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.
She talked about the difficulty she was having raising funding for her next film on the history of the last 30 years of Peru told through the stories of waiters, bartenders, and small shop owners. When she said it was much worse for documentaries in Europe now, Anderson said it is still much better than in the US.
Forever, her film on the Père-Lachaise Cemetery is in Paris where Chopin, Oscar Wilde, Jim Morrison, Marcel Proust, Alice B. Toklas, Gertrude Stein and many others are buried, was screened. Max Goldberg wrote about the documentary for the Bay Guardian. It will be shown again at 7 pm on Wednesday, May 2nd at PFA (which had a retrospective of her films in 2003).
It will be released in September by First Run Films which has distributed several of her films. She said a DVD box set of her films will be out next year.
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.
International Film Festival tonight at the Castro (one of the best theaters in the country). Strange Culture is playing
at 6 pm and Wonders are Many screens at 9 pm.
Steve Kurtz, the subject of Strange Culture gave a talk about his work with the Critical Art Ensemble at SFMOMA in March and then Lynn Hershman Leeson showed a few scenes and outtakes from the documentary about Kurtz and the government's Kafkaesque criminal prosecution of him.
Jon Else's the Wonders are Many tells story of the creation of the atomic bomb and the creation of the opera, Doctor Atomic. At a workshop at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism (where he chairs the documentary program), he said a lot of new material has come out since the Day After Trinity was released in 1981. Doctor Atomic even uses the text of recently declassified material as part of the libretto and Wonders includes footage of atomic tests which have never been seen before.
Composer John Adams and director Peter Sellars (who is also giving the State of Cinema address Sunday at 4 pm at the Kabuki) will be at tonight's screening. Judy Stone wrote about Wonders for the LA Times and Michael Fox interviewed Else for SF360. I interviewed Else about his previous documentary on opera, Sing Faster.
Both fillms are showing several other times at the festival.
