Last Life In The Universe (2003)

WHO: Thai director Pen-Ek Ratanaruang directed this.

WHAT: An often dreamlike tale of a shy, fastidious library assistant named Kenji (played by Tadanobu Asano) who has fled Japan for Bangkok in order to escape his yakuza family ties. A random accident leads to an encounter with a slovenly extrovert named Noi leads to an "opposites attract" romance between the pair. But there are bound to be complications...

Last Life In The Universe is probably Pen-ek's most widely admired film, and it forms a pivot point in his career. After making three plot-heavy, purely Thai films that proved his versatility in directing individual scenes with aplomb, he had never really put together a film that was completely structurally satisfying. With his fourth film, the director accepted international financing and both a foreign star (Asano) and cinematographer (Christopher Doyle, best known for his collaborations with Wong Kar-Wai). Though all these complications threw off his confidence during filming, the finished product found him a natural at maintaining a more languid pace and visually depicting his characters' interior emotions. Since this, he's made four more films that represent varied attempts at elaborating on this stylistic success.

WHERE/WHEN: Screens at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts tonight only at 7:30 PM.

WHY: I was pleasantly surprised that YBCA curator Joel Shepard, while interviewing Pen-ek from the stage following last Thursday's opening to the six-film retrospective of his work, mentioned my name and the name of this blog while quoting the passage I borrowed for my recent post on Headshot. Thanks Joel, not just for the plug but for putting together a series like this that allows us to fill in gaps from this undervalued director's career, and revisit old favorites like Last Life in the Universe. After hearing Pen-ek talk about his films both publicly and in an interview I was able to conduct before he flew out of town, I'm more eager than ever to see my own personal favorite films on the big screen once again. I'm still in the midst of transcribing the interview but I'll keep readers posted when it's ready to be unveiled. In the meantime, enjoy the four remaining films in this series; Joel mentioned that the retrospective required the importing of 35mm prints from Europe as his work is no longer distributed in that form in the United States (and some of it, like this coming Sunday's Ploy, probably my second-favorite of his films, was never distributed in this country to begin with.)

Since this particular film is a Japanese co-production, it seems a worthwhile moment to mention that the next YBCA screening series will be an eight-title selection of genre films made at the Shintoho studio between 1956 and 1960. It kicks off May 9th with Ghost Story of Yostuya, directed by supernatural specialist Nobuo Nakagawa the year before he made his most famous film, Jigoku (a.k.a. Hell). None of these will be shown on film, I'm told, because there simply are no projectable and/or English-subtitled prints available anywhere in the world.

HOW: Last Life in the Universe screens from a 35mm print.

No Day Off and the Jeonju Digital Project

Eric Khoo's No Day Off introduces us to Siti, a 24-year-old woman who uproots herself from her home in Sulawesi to attend a two-month training institute on another Indonesian island, so that she can become a live-in maid in one of the world's per capita richest countries, the city-state Singapore. She leaves behind a husband, a new baby and a mountain of debt, which she hopes she will be able to pay off by sending her salary home to the family. However, Siti's debts will grow before they shrink, as the recruiter, trainer and placement service demand such a large cut of her first year's worth of paychecks, that she'd barely be able to afford busfare downtown, even if she did have a maid's day off. As the title indicates, she doesn't; her entire existence is shown to be structured for the convenience and whim of the three distinct families she slaves for over the course of this 39-minute video work.

We catch nothing more than fragmentary glimpses of these employers, as the camera is always trained either on Siti or on the houses and objects she must attend to. The Singaporeans in the film are for us no more than disembodied voices, making demands on or insulting Siti in a language she barely understands. The first family is English-speaking and imperiously wealthy; a bottle of wine costs them more than their maid's salary. As alienating and confining as their mansion must feel to Siti, at least she doesn't have to subsist on unfinished scraps from their dirty dishes, as she does at her second set of employers, a financially struggling Chinese-speaking family that eventually cannot afford to pay her at all. Siti's third and final placement is in the home of a terminally ill father and his often-absent daughter. By far the most benign of the three employers, this household speaks a language Siti can comprehend (presumably Bahasa Melayu, one of Singapore's four official languages, and which I understand is similar, if not essentially identical, to the lingua franca of neighboring Indonesia.) A genuine bond is developed between the maid and the dying man, but it only makes more heartbreaking the moment when Siti must stand by emotionless as the daughter mourns her loss.

No Day Off takes on aspects of a polemic, evidenced by Khoo's insertion of title cards bearing data on the proliferation of the maltreatment of Singaporean immigrant maids between certain segments of the narrative. But, because of the matter-of-fact, diaristic storytelling (each scene is marked by a timestamp indicating how many days Siti has been away from her home and son) it's a remarkably humane one, not a surprise from the director of the lovely Be With Me. Siti's story becomes the empathetic stand-in for all the situations aggregated into the data Khoo periodically presents.

Khoo's short is one of thirty-six thus far commissioned by South Korea's Jeonju Film Festival, each a digital "film" created on a low budget by a one of the modern era's most intriguing filmmakers. The new batch of commissions premieres in Jeonju in April, and includes shorts by Jean-Marie Straub, Claire Denis (who is getting a full retrospective at the Pacific Film Archive next month), and José Luis Guerín. All thirty-three of the other shorts commissioned over the past eleven years of the festival have been screening at the Yerba Buena Center For The Arts screening room over the past week or so. No Day Off plays this Saturday at 7PM, along with shorts by Thailand's Pen-ek Ratanaruang (Last Life in the Universe, Nymph) and Kazakhistan's Darezhan Omirbaev (Kairat, Kardiogram). Later in the weekend there will be entries by Pedro Costa, Eugène Green, Hong Sangsoo, and six other acclaimed filmmakers.

Unlike my friend Adam Hartzell, I haven't been able to attend each and every one of these screenings, but I have seen a sampling, including a rare few that have screened locally before this year. Hong's Jeonju-set Lost in the Mountains was seen at last spring's San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival, and feels connected to the three vignettes that make up his latest feature Oki's Movie (I caught this excellent Hong film in Toronto, and hope it appears soon at a Frisco Bay festival or other venue). The version of Shinya Tsukamoto's Haze that screened Thursday night as part of the YBCA series is a condensed (though hardly less intentionally grueling) version of the hour-long existential horror movie that was presented here by IndieFest back in 2006. Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Worldy Desires screened at YBCA a couple years ago as well, and I was very pleased to be able to revisit it in anticipation of the week-long release of Apichatpong's outstanding, entrancing new feature Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives at the San Francisco Film Society's dedicated screen at the Kabuki theatre, surely this season's theatrical release most eagerly awaited by the cinephiles in my circles. Worldly Desires takes place on a film set using day-for-night technique in the jungle, just as Uncle Boonmee uses day-for-night filters to achieve a sense of the eternal.

What the Jeonju project provides its filmmakers with is a kind of carte blanche they might have trouble obtaining in the increasingly commercialized world of film financing. The results are as varied as the directors themselves, but what they all surely have in common is that they represent a distillation of the fundamental desires each harbors as an image-maker. In the case of Eric Khoo, and perhaps also of James Benning, whose Pig Iron is a compelling single-shot portrait of the back end of a German steel factory, a socio-political point can be made, whether about immigrant labor or the environmental impact of our species' industrial processes. In the case of Apichatpong, or of Tsai Ming-Liang, whose A Conversation With God is a documentary compilation of Tawianese religious rituals and urban landscapes, the opportunity to purposefully create low-budget video work helps put into relief the filmmaker's approach to 35mm feature filmmaking. In all cases, these filmmakers' works are scarcely if ever shown here on Frisco Bay, which makes YBCA's initiative in showcasing the Jeonju Digital Project a real boon for local cinemagoers.

Hong Kong Trilogy: Preschooled Preoccupied Preposterous (2015)

A scene from Christopher Doyle's HONG KONG TRILOGY: PRESCHOOLED PREOCCUPIED PREPOSTEROUS playing at the 59th San Francisco International Film Festival, on April 21 - May 5,2016. Courtesy of San Francisco Film Society

WHO: Christopher Doyle is known as the cantankerous but visionary cinematographer behind the camera for Zhang Yimou's Hero, Gus Van Sant's Psycho, Pen-ek Ratanaruang's Last Life in the Universe, Fruit Chan's Dumplings and the majority of Wong Kar-Wai's directorial oeuvre. But he's also a director in his own right. On this film he's credited as cinematographer, director and writer.

WHAT: I haven't seen this one yet so I'll excerpt a chunk of critic Michael Sicinski's Cinema Scope review from when it screened at last Fall's Toronto Film Festival:

This experimental nonfiction film—one can’t really call it a documentary, for various reasons—is easily Doyle’s finest work as an auteur, probably because he hasn’t saddled himself with the laborious task of following a narrative. Instead, Hong Kong Trilogy is an impressionistic consideration of three different contemporary populations in HK.

The first part allows a loosely knit group of children to speak of their interests, dreams and fears (bullying, animals, hip hop, Jesus, etc.) Part two is a somewhat more focused look at the Umbrella Movement, Hong Kong’s iteration of Occupy. Not only was it unusually successful, but the participants were much more invested in creating an alternate vision of a working society than other, more anarchist versions of the movement. (This is partly due to Hong Kongers having one clear rallying point: full voting rights.) The final section deals with the elderly, in particular a speed-dating service. This permits Doyle to cast a glance at the city’s more active seniors, providing a youth-to-old-age structural arc.

WHERE/WHEN: Screens tonight only at 6:45 at the Alamo Drafthouse New Mission, presented by the San Francisco International Film Festival.

WHY: I don't usually like to dwell on films I wish SFIFF had decided to bring, but seeing Hong Kong Trilogy: Preschooled Preoccupied Preposterous on today's schedule reminds me of the most glaring omission from their line-up, given its absence from Frisco Bay screens up until now. It's Portuguese director Miguel Gomes's tripartite adaptation of Arabian Nights, and I'm not so surprised the festival deigned not to show it, as its structure and length (3 two-hour-plus movies that run a total of 382 minutes) would likely mean it'd have to take the place of three other programs in the festival. I just hope it finds its way to some local screen, and thought SFIFF was a good bet as it had shown a previous Gomes feature Our Beloved Month of August back in 2009. Doyle's triptych will have to suffice as a substitute for my desire for a three-part cinema experience.

HOW: Digital projection.

OTHER SFIFF OPTIONS: It's a comparatively light day for festival screenings, with BAMPFA closed as a venue and much of the staff preoccupied with the Film Society Awards Night at Fort Mason. But tonight is the final showing of Italian veteran Marco Bellochio's Blood of My Blood, of the Brazilian prizewinner Neon Bull, and of political documentary Weiner.

NON-SFIFF OPTION: Purple Rain screens at the Castro Theatre twice tonight, at 7PM & 9:30. With the untimely passing of Prince, everyone seems to want to see this film on the big screen right now, with screenings selling out this past weekend at the Roxie and this week at the New Parkway. But the Castro has 1400 seats so you may have a shot at getting into this one.

24th SFIAAFF Preview

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The blog-friendly publicity department of the SF International Asian American Film Festival, which runs from March 16-26, kindly let me attend its press screenings over the past couple weeks. I was able to fit four into my schedule.

Wisit Sasanatieng has just been named one of the "three most important Thai directors" in a poll on www.thaicinema.org. His new film Citizen Dog, like his directing debut (still shelved from any US release) Tears of the Black Tiger, takes its gaudy color palette from the film posters, programs, hand-painted promotional stills and other ephemera that remain from the 16mm film production era of the Thai movie industry which lasted until the early 1970s. But instead of the genre pastiche that Wisit's previous film was, Citizen Dog is loosely structured through the cast of eccentric Bangkok characters country bumpkin Pod encounters while stumbling through a series of jobs hoping to defy the prediction his toothless grandma cackles at him as he leaves the family farm: "If you get a job in Bangkok, you will surely grow a tail!"

Luckily Pod (played by Mahasamuth Boonyarak, who I was not surprised to learn is actually a bass player in a rock band; he's got something of a pop star look) is quite unlike the rest of Bangkok's citizens. He's set apart from the crowd in an early sequence in which he's shown moving about town in crowds of people all singing the film's theme song, some quite soulfully, while he glances around at them quizzically. (Another memorable musical sequence comes in the form of a recitative rap song explaining Granny's reincarnation as a gecko clinging to Pod's lamp.) He also has a singular, unrequited devotion to Jin (Saengthong Gate-Uthong) a quirky cleaning woman he meets while employed as a security guard. I suspect this romance thread in the film, along with Pen-ek Ratanaruang's dryly bemused voice-over, is the origin of the many comparisons to Amelie Wisit's film has garnered. The time we spend with Jin reveals her to have an instinct for romantic self-sabotage similar to Amelie's. But from Pod's point of view, his romantic goals are thwarted not by his own lack of confidence but by the craziness of Bangkok and its absolutely bizarre residents. And indeed the unexpectable flourishes of the writer/director's imagination are the real selling point of Citizen Dog. Read all the plot synopses of this film you want beforehand, but I'm certain there will still be plenty of surprises for you when you actually see it. There's just so much crammed into the running time that no synopsis could cover it all without practically rewriting the screenplay. As of yet without a US distributor, Citizen Dog plays the Castro Theatre March 17 and the PFA March 18.

Linda Linda Linda is perhaps even more fun. It's another in the current cycle of films exploring Japan's teenage subcultures, but unlike my experience watching Kamikaze Girls, Go or All About Lilly Chou-Chou, my interest never flagged and I never sensed director Nobuhiro Yamashita reaching for a sentimental or "shocking" cliche. He drops the audience into the very richly detailed galaxy that is Shibazaki High School counting the days to the upcoming school festival and the accompanying rock and roll talent showcase held in a gymnasium-cum-stage. It took a few scenes for me to find my bearings, but soon after I did I was completely won over by these characters. Kyoko, Nozomi, and Kei need to find a vocalist for their Blue Hearts cover band, and to spite a former bandmate they pick the Korean exchange student, Son. They're not exactly striving against all odds to learn catchy Ramones-esque songs like "Linda, Linda", but rather there's a realness to their struggles competing for practice time at the school's pop music club room, dealing with hopeful and ex-boyfriends, and, for Son especially, figuring out how to fit in. By the end of the film you may just have to struggle not to get up and dance along in the aisles (not only is it a fire hazard as we've all been reminded by Sarah Vowell, but it also blocks the view of your fellow moviegoers. So restrain yourself.) Linda Linda Linda plays Friday, March 17 at the PFA and Wednesday, March 22 at the Kabuki.

The other two I saw were among the films passed over by the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television in its selection of China's latest Oscar submission in favor of the Promise, which failed to be nominated.

Despite uprooting the setting from Austria to pre-Communist China, Xu Jinglei's Letter From an Unknown Woman is actually more faithful to Stefan Zweig's 1922 tale of romantic obsession than Max Ophuls' revered 1948 version. But perhaps it's most interesting to read Xu's film politically, as Jiang Wen's intellectual playboy character is surrounded by symbols of Westernization, transforming the heroine's infatuation into a manifestation of what might have been called "capitalist thought" after 1949.

Kekexili: Mountain Patrol tells the grippingly true story of a Beijing journalist who travels to the remotest corner of Tibet where the chiru, or Tibetan antelope, is being wiped out by poaching. The film's plot is filled with ethical ambiguities that hooked me in as tightly as a classic Hollywood noir or Western can. It's refreshing to see increasingly layered films like this one coming out of mainland China's film industry.

Though both films are set for US distribution, only Kekexili: Mountain Patrol has its Frisco theatrical release dates: April 21-27, right in the middle of the Film Society's film festival. If you're like me and you tend to be locked into festival mode at that time, avoiding the arthouses like the Lumiere and Act I/II, make an effort to see the film at its March 20th Kabuki screening.

Of course, Landmark would schedule its most enticing calendared programs for the weeks when another major festival, the SFIFF, will be running. Following Kekexili: Mountain Patrol at the Lumiere will be Carol Reed's 1948 the Fallen Idol April 28-May 4. The Act I/II will get the Confomist that week instead. The rest of the current Landmark calendar, I have to say, doesn't inspire me much. I've already seen the Devil and Daniel Johnston (at IndieFest 2005) and though I'd definitely recommend it to people who wish they knew a bit more about this Daniel Johnston guy they keep hearing about, I'm unlikely to prioritize a repeat viewing.

Four Lists of 53rd SFIFF Titles

The San Francisco Film Society publicly unveiled the full line-up of the 53rd edition of its annual SF International Film Festival yesterday. The full program is available online. I'm in the midst of a cross-town move: as I write this sentence I'm sitting on a hardwood floor in a room without chairs. But as the SFIFF is the average Frisco Bay cinephile's most feverishly anticipated showcase of new films each year, I don't want to forego a weigh-in on this year's program before tickets start going on sale outside the film society membership circle tomorrow (April 1st- by the time you read this, probably today!). Once I settle into my new place I hope to post some more extended thoughts on the lineup overall, as it looks from this pre-festival distance. But for now, the fallback of any blogger: listing.

Spread-The-Love; I've seen these four films before and can recommend them. Highly.

Intermission in the Third Dimension is one of two confirmed short films playing as part of animator Don Hertzfeldt's April 23 tribute and Persistence Of Vision Award presentation, though "surprises" are promised as well. The other, I Am So Proud Of You has eluded me thus far, as I've been waiting for a good opportunity to see it projected on film as nature intended it. Presumably the shorts accompanying this Hertzfeldt tribute will be shown in 35mm prints, to counter the irony that this animator who works exclusively in the material world of film, without the assistance of computer technologies, has amassed through Rejected, Billy's Balloon, etc. a great following of fans who have only seen his films bootlegged on the internet.
Julia, Erick Zonca's long-awaited 2007 follow-up to 1998's the Dreamlife of Angels, is not as nearly perfect as the latter film, but it features a colossal must-see performance by Tilda Swinton. It plays at the Castro Theatre May 1st as Mel Novikoff Award winner Roger Ebert's selection to accompany his on-stage tribute. Errol Morris, Philip Kaufman, and others are expected to attend the on-stage tribute as well.
the Music Room is easily the greatest of the five Satyajit Ray films I've seen thus far in life. Made in 1958 between installments of Ray's famed "Apu Trilogy", it plays in a new restored print at the Castro May 1 and the Pacific Film Archive May 2.
Utopia, Part 3: the World's Largest Shopping Mall was a short film that premiered at Sundance 2009 and that I caught at the Exploratorium several months ago. It's a mind-blowing meditative piece lingering in the space of a titanic, but nearly deserted, China mall. On April 25, this short will be incorporated, along with other images and a live performance aspect, into Utopia In Four Movements Sam Green and Dave Cerf's contribution to the festival's Live & Onstage" sidebar.

Follow-The-Leader; I don't have to read the catalog descriptions to know I want to see these films; their directors have proven their track records with me to the point where I'll try to see any new film they put out.

Around A Small Mountain by Jacques Rivette, French New Wave master behind Celine And Julie Go Boating.
Cyrus by Jay and Mark Duplass, who have made (along with many terrific short films) only two features but one of them was the Puffy Chair and the other was Baghead.
The Darkness of Day by Jay Rosenblatt, the recently-appointed program director for the SF Jewish Film Festival's 30th anniversary edition this summer, but more pertinently to my interest in watching this, the found-footage maestro behind the likes of Human Remains and Prayer. This film appears in the shorts program Solitude Standing.
Ghost Algebra by Janie Geiser, whose short-form shadowboxes such as Immer Zu and the Fourth Watch have me begging for more. It plays on the shorts program Something Like A Dream.
Nymph by Pen-ek Ratanaruang, whose last film to play local screens was the wonderful Last Life In the Universe.
Senso by Luchino Visconti; not a new film of course but a new restoration of the 1954 Italian classic beloved by Martin Scorsese and others.
Vengeance by Johnnie To, whose prior film Sparrow was, I felt, his best in years. No faint praise.
White Material by Claire Denis, who made (arguably) the best new film in last year's SFIFF, 35 Shots of Rum.
Wild Grass by Alain Resnais, another great survivor of the French New Wave heyday. Je t'aime, Je t'aime was a highlight of a recent retrospective of his past work at the Pacific Film Archive.

Follow-The-Followers; When I linked to the Film Festival program website on twitter yesterday, I was the lucky beneficiary of more than a dozen recommendations from some of my twitter friends from the East Coast, who had seen SFIFF films at previous festivals such as Toronto. One title proved divisive amidst this crowd, but otherwise this relative outpouring of responses served as a validation of the SFIFF selection team's programming acumen. I'd like to share their collective tips with my blog readers here:

Air Doll was the divisive title, but Hiokazu Kore-eda fans and detractors alike may be interested in the opportunity to engage with the director in a q-and-a session following the film's screenings, as Kore-eda is listed among the international guests expected to attend the festival.
Alamar, a Mexican feature competing for the New Directors Prize. Director Pedro Gonzalez-Rubio is also expected to attend the festival.
Between Two Worlds from Sri Lanka is Vimukthi Jayasundara's follow-up to The Forsaken Land, which played on the currently-in-limbo SFFS Screen a year and a half ago. He is on the expected guests list as well.
A Brand New Life, once again from a New Directors Prize contender expected at the festival, Ounie Lecomte.
Colony, a documentary on disappearing honeybee popoulations made by Ross McDonnell and Carter Gunn.
Everyone Else, Marin Ade's second feature, a German relationship drama coming particularly highly-lauded in the twitterverse.
Father Of My Children by Mia Hansen-Løve, who also directed 2008 SFIFF title All Is Forgiven.
Hadewijch, the latest from controversial French auteur Bruno Dumont. Said to be the kind of film to turn around negative opinions of Dumont, which I confess I share.
Henri-Georges Clouzot's Inferno, a documentary constructed from the reportedly jaw-dropping footage surviving from Clouzot's uncompleted 1964 big budget film starring Romy Schneider. Clouzot directed Wages of Fear and Quai des Orfevres, of course, and this presentation was put together by Ruxandra Medrea and Serge Bromberg- the latter perhaps best known to Frisco cinephiles for presenting programs of early French film at the 2001 SFIFF and the 2007 SF Silent Film Festival, where he lit a fragment of nitrate film on fire on the Castro stage.
I Am Love, starring Tilda Swinton and directed by Luca Guadagnino, who apparently drew inspiration from his fellow Italian forebear Luchino Visconti; the sole screening of this selection comes directly after the screening of Visconti's Senso at the Castro.
Last Train Home, a documentary on Chinese mass migrations directed by Lixin Fan, who is expected to attend the festival.
Lebanon, an Israeli film set inside a tank during the latter country's 1982 invasion of the former. Director Samuel Moaz is expected to be on hand.
Lourdes, Jessica Hausner's film about a wheelchaired pilgrim to the legendary French shrine (which Mary Pickford, among many millions of others, is said to have visited). SylvieTestud plays the pilgrim.
Northless, another New Directors Prize competitor from Mexico. Rigoberto Perezcano joins the list of directors currently expected to attend the festival.
The Oath, a documentary by expected festival guest Laura Poitras, that focuses on two former associates of Osama bin Laden.
La Pivellina, an Austrian/Italian co-production. If it wins the New Directors Prize it will be first time two co-directors will share the festival's honor.
The Portuguese Nun, directed by American-born transplant, now a very well-regarded French filmmaker, Eugène Green. I've been wanting to see one of his films for several years now, and this is the first Frisco Bay opportunity I've noticed.
To Die Like A Man, speaking of Portuguese, is a portrait of a drag queen made by Lisbon auteur João Pedro Rodrigues, who made Two Drifters and O Fantasma.
Woman On Fire Looks For Water, a recommendation that didn't come directly to me, but from Daniel Kasman via Ryland Walker Knight. It's directed by Woo Ming-jin, whose feature debut Monday Morning Glory had its world premiere as part of the Malaysian focus of the 2005 SFIFF.

Odds-And-Extras; Other titles I'm seriously intrigued by, for one reason or another. This is just a start; I'll be keeping my ears pricked for more buzz on the selected films

Afterimage. I keep missing screenings of Kerry Laitala's stereoscopic short films. This is her latest; attendees of the animated shorts program The High Line (which also includes new work by Kelly Sears, Jonas Odell, Martha Colburn, Lewis Klahr, and more) will be provided 3-D glasses at the door. Sight unseen, it's sure to be more interesting than the recent Alice In Wonderland, or How To Train Your Kraken, or whatever that one was called.
All About Evil. I expect this locally-made horror premiere to be the first to sell-out once tickets go on sale. That is, if the Film Society members haven't snapped up all the available Castro seats already. Joshua Grannell has yet to prove himself as a filmmaker in my book, judging by the short films I've seen. However, stakes were higher for this first feature that includes performances by Mink Stole and Natasha Lyone, and creative contributions from a good chunk of Frisco Bay's creative community. Even if the movie doesn't match expectations the pre-show is certain to be a must-watch for any self-respecting Peaches Christ fan.
Gainsbourg (Je T'aime...Moi Non Plus). I'm a biopic skeptic but the subject (Serge Gainsbourg, naturally) and the director (Joann Sfar, better known to some for his involvement in the current Francophone comics renaissance) certainly pique my interest.
The Little White Cloud That Cried. Guy Maddin's shorts are always worth a look and sometimes end up among my favorite films of a festival. This one, a Jack Smith tribute, sounds divine. On the shorts program Pirate Utopias along with films by Martha Colburn, Bill Morrison, the Zellner Brothers, Max Hattler, and more.
Nénette. Nicholas Philibert, director of the documentary To Be And To Have (I've seen no other of his films) has found a fascinating-sounding subject for his latest doc: an aged orangutan living in a Paris zoo.
20,000 Leagues Under The Sea. Unlike the last couple SFIFF pairings of silent film and live rock soundtrack, I'm not particularly familiar with the chosen musician this year- I've never seen Stephin Merritt perform in person, and I only have one of his albums (Holiday). But I can't resist the fact that he's involving regular Castro Theatre pre-film organist David Hegarty in his mix, and I'm more than game to see the 1916 adaptation of Jules Verne's adventure novel on the big screen, having never seen it before at all.
Wake In Fright a.k.a. Outback. This newly-restored 1971 Australian thriller stars Donald Pleasance and was featured in the recent documentary Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation! (Don't mean to shout, the exclamation point is part of the title.) It was directed by Ted Kotcheff, who would go on to make Who Is Killing The Great Chefs Of Europe?, the original John Rambo movie First Blood, and Weekend At Bernie's, and who is on the festival's expected guests list. How can I pass that up?

Invisible Waves (2006)

WHO: Pen-ek Ratanaruang directed, Tadanobu Asano starring, and Christopher Doyle in the cinematographer role.

WHAT: After the unexpected international success of Last Life in the Universe Pen-ek re-teamed with  his aforementioned collaborators from that film and, armed with financing from pre-sold distribution deals in many territories where Last Life had audiences anxious for more, made an art film on a larger canvas than he'd ever tried before. Shooting in Hong Kong, Macao, Bangkok and post-tsumani Phuket ("not the Phuket for tourists we're familiar with. It's more like the weird corners of Phuket we've fished out to the screen") not to mention an eerily empty cruise ship, and utilizing a pan-Asian cast including Korean, Thai, Hong Kong and Filipino actors as well as its Japanese star, Invisible Waves is by far Pen-ek's most elaborately international production.

But when the film was premiered at the Berlin film festival in 2006, reviews were mixed at best. Theatrical distribution in the US was first postponed, and finally (at least in San Francisco) foregone entirely. All of Pen-ek's prior features had screened somewhere locally, if only at a film festival, but Invisible Waves to this day has never played in a Frisco Bay cinema. I eventually succumbed to watching a DVD rented from Le Video and found the film to be a charming and fascinating admixture of film noir with the calm, dreamlike atmosphere of Last Life in the Universe, with a dose of Tati-esque humor thrown in for good measure (I believe Tati's Trafic is the most appropriate predecessor to cite). I suspect the generally poor critical reception for the film might be traced to the broken-English that dominates communication between characters, even more than in Last Life. This was an intentional strategy on the director's part; he was even quoted as casting his performers for their poor English skills. But I can see why some reviewers, especially those with ideas about 'great performances' still steeped in the theatrical tradition, might find it off-putting. Anyway, I'm excited to finally get a chance to see it on the big screen.

WHERE/WHEN: Tonight only at 7:30 PM at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

WHY: There are only two films remaining in the YBCA's Pen-ek retrospective, Invisible Waves and the one that got me interested in Thailand's cinema when I was living in that country in 1999-2000: 6ixtynin9. What else is on the docket for Frisco Bay fans of the cinema of ASEAN countries? As far as I'm aware the only other Thai moving image work screening publicly locally in the near future is Apichatpong Weerasethakul's video installation Emerald, which continues for just a few more days at the Berkeley Art Museum. 

That museum's conjoined institution the Pacific Film Archive is bringing Dutch Indonesian documentarian Leonard Retel Helmrich to Berkeley this weekend for screenings of his trilogy Eye of the Day, Shape of the Moon and Position Among the Stars. Indonesia is also the setting for one of two South-East Asian oriented documentaries in the San Francisco International Film Festival's Asian line-up: The Act of Killing, which comes endorsed by Werner Herzog and a slew of critics who saw it in Toronto, Berlin and other festivals. The other is the Cambodian/local co-production A River Changes Course. Both are scheduled to screen in San Francisco and Berkeley, the latter with director Kalyanee Mam present at some or all of her screenings. 

The San Francisco Global Vietnamese Film Festival comes to the Roxie on the last weekend of April, and includes a screening of Norwegian Wood, the latest by that country's most prominent auteur export Tran Anh Hung. And not to leave out arguably the most vibrant cinematic production scene in the region, the Philippines, the YBCA has just announced a sequel to last year's successful New Filipino Cinema festival for the first weekend in June; plenty of time to prepare and practice learning your Himala from your Hirana.  

HOW: Invisible Waves screens from a 35mm print.

Headshot (2011)

WHO: Pen-ek Ratanaruang wrote and directed this. He's coming to town this weekend; his first visit to San Francisco, apparently.

WHAT: The latest feature by the Thai director is, I believe, his first shot digitally. (UPDATE 4/7/13: it's his second after Nymph, as it turn out.) His usual cinematographer Chankit Chamnivikaipong used the famed Red One camera for this so-called "Buddhist neo-noir" piece about a Bangkok policeman who gets embroiled in a world of gangsters, corruption and conspiracy against his will. He receives a headwound which leads to an unusual form of brain damage in which his vision is turned upside down. Luckily, the audience doesn't get too many disorienting point-of-view shots from this topsy-turvy perspective. One gently humorous scene involving a television set reminds us that when the world around us (or even just our perception of it) has been upended, it's comforting to at least be able to spend some time watching images on a screen that don't make us feel completely out-of-sync with reality. This might be a good summation of Pen-ek's motivation for filming in the first place; in a 2009 interview recently published in the book Southeast Asian Independent Cinema he stresses his desire to make films that connect him to like-minded audiences around the world who are alienated by the fare that dominates international cinema screens. A quote:

Lonely people tend to like my films a lot. Happy people don't seem to get my films. When I meet someone who says she liked my films, ninety percent of the time she prefers funerals to weddings, and its also a fan of Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits, Bob Dylan, and Nick Cave, like myself. 

WHERE/WHEN: Screens tonight only at 7:30 at the Yerba Buena Center For the Arts screening room. Pen-ek is expected to attend.

WHY: This screening kicks off a six-title retrospective of most of Pen-ek's feature films (his promising debut Fun Bar Karaoke and his third film Mon-Rak Transistor, which seems more and more to be the biggest stylistic and thematic anomaly in his filmography, are omitted) at YBCA, including the local premiere screenings of his three films which inexplicably never screened in the Bay Area. There has been a good deal of worthwhile press for this event, including articles by Valerie Soe, Cheryl Eddy and Jonathan Kiefer. Though one might expect films that other venues have passed on to be markedly inferior to the ones that have played here; I bet the average uninitiated attendee of this series wouldn't be able to guess that Ploy failed to make it into any local festivals while Nymph succeeded, or that 6ixtynin9 had a week-long run here but Invisible Waves didn't. (Last Life in the Universe remains Pen-ek's most fully satisfying film and it won't be a surprise to anyone that it's had the most Frisco Bay cinema showtimes of all his works).

It's a good reminder that there's a lot more to program a cinema or a festival than just sussing out quality. The fiscal states, marketing plans, or simple whims of distributors, sales agents, or filmmakers themselves can have more impact on whether a given film screens here than the best efforts of the smartest programmers can. It's important to remember this during the week of the San Francisco International Film Festival's announcement. If you follow the goings-on at other festivals around the country and the globe, there's surely a film or two (or more) that you were practically certain would/could/should appear at SFIFF this year. I like to channel such frustrations into hopes that another programmer might give the film a shot at another nearby venue. If, for example, you wonder why Carlos Reygadas's Cannes 2012 entry Post Tenebras Lux has yet to rear its head locally, be heartened that YBCA's Joel Shepard is bringing it in May 30 through June 1st.

HOW: Though the rest of this series is sourced from 35mm, Headshot was shot digitally and will be screened that way.

What I'm Thinking About This Week

Ten years ago at this time I was living in Chiang Mai, Thailand, teaching English at a local high school. It seems like such a long time ago, but the impact of spending a year and a half living and working in a foreign country did so much to change my perspectives on the world, and my place in it, that I still feel very close to the experience. I'm sometimes wistful that I've lost touch with all of my former students and fellow teachers, and indeed most of the friends I made while living abroad, but returning to my native city where I've resided ever since, has not made me feel as if I've completely lost touch with Thailand. I cherish my mostly-fond memories of the country, and still try to keep up with major current events there, as depressing as they often may be (as they have been lately).

Cinema has been a major component of my feeling of connectedness. While in Chiang Mai I first tried my hand at criticism, penning a monthly video review column for a local English-language news magazine catering to the British/Australian/North American ex-patriot community. At the time, I wrote mostly about the latest Hollywood films, because they were the ones widely available in rental shops. It was easy to experience the cultural artifacts of my own culture while abroad. Now I'm lucky to live in a place where I can more than just vicariously experience some of the benefits of Thai cinema's resurgence and global emergence over the past decade or so. Between all of the film festivals and alternative screening venues that exist here on Frisco Bay, there are usually a few opportunities a year, and sometimes as many as a half-dozen or more, to view Thai films in 35mm prints on the big screen; of these I've missed only a scant few over the past decade. I've been able to keep relatively current with the work of directors I was first exposed to during my time in the Land of Smiles- Wisit Sasanatieng, Nonzee Nimibutr and Pen-ek Ratanaruang (the latter's latest Nymph was not among the best films I saw at the latest San Francisco International Film Festival, but I was extremely pleased for the opportunity to view it, and particularly its nearly-supernatural opening camera move, in a cinema in my own town.) I've been able to discover from afar the work of newer talent like Uruphong Raksasad, who makes his digital quasi-documentaries in the region of Thailand I'm most personally familiar with, or Anocha Suwichakornpong, whose Mundane History was my most truly transcendent highlight of the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival earlier this year.

The constant Thai cinematic presence over these years as a Frisco guy who left some small piece of his heart in Thailand, however, has been Apichatpong Weerasethakul, who ten years ago was seeing his first feature film, Mysterious Object At Noon, travel the global festival circuit. I first heard his name in 2001, shortly before the film played to a small audience at the Pacific Film Archive. Since then, thanks to the SFIFF, SFIAAFF, and other local venues tapped into international cinephile dialogue, I've been able to watch most of his film and video work, much of it repeatedly. How much of a debt do I owe my affection for and fascination with Apichatpong's filmmaking to my stint in Thailand? I can't be sure, but it's been heartening to feel like I've been following this still-young director over the past decade as his visibility has increased among film-lovers everywhere. I was so thrilled and surprised on Sunday, when his latest feature Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives won the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival, the first such win for an Asian film since films by Shohei Imamura and Abbas Kiarostami shared the honor in 1997. Of course I have not yet seen Uncle Boonmee (although I was delighted to see his companion short video piece Letter to Uncle Boonmee at the SFIAAFF in March) and perhaps I'll even find it a letdown compared to his three masterful 35mm features, Syndromes and a Century, Tropical Malady, and Blissfully Yours. But I feel glad that this high-profile win will surely secure a chance for Frisco Bay Apichatpong fans to see the film eventually, and hopefully sooner than such an opportunity would otherwise be likely to occur.

In the meantime, I'm all the more excited to plunge into the viewing opportunities that have been laid upon my table. One certainly doesn't need to be an Apichatpong Weerasethakul admirer to be excited by chances to see Andy Warhol films, but it supplies another reason; Apichatpong has often named Warhol, along with Frisco Bay experimental film legend Bruce Baillie, as favorite filmmakers and key inspirations for his work. SFMOMA will screen confirmed Apichatpong favorite The Chelsea Girls on July 8. And the longest-running lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender film festival in the world, Frameline, has announced as part of its upcoming program next month a large-scale focus on Andy Warhol. It consists of screenings of a new documentary, Beautiful Darling, the Life and Times of Candy Darling, Andy Warhol Superstar, a clips lecture by Ron Gregg, and two programs of shorter Warhol films selected by Gregg, including Vinyl, which adapted Anthony Burgess's a Clockwork Orange with Gerard Malanga six years before Stanley Kubrick did it with Malcolm McDowell.

In addition to the Warhol films, Frameline selections I'm anxious to see include I Killed My Mother by Xavier Dolan and Spring Fever by Lou Ye, both of which come highly regarded by those who have seen them at festivals over the past year, and Géza von Radvány's 1958 version of Madchen In Uniform, screening as an archival selection. Frameline veterans from Cheryl Dunye to François Ozon to Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman each will have new films presented at this year's festival, but the full range of filmmaking, from documentary to short form to a robust selection of South America's New Queer Cinema cannot be adequately summarized in a paragraph of preview, so I urge you to browse the full schedule before finalizing your festival plans. I know I will.

June's going to be a crowded month of filmgoing however, even with Sex In The City 2 virtually* dominating the Castro Theatre from now until Frameline opens there June 17. After a near-month of hiatus, the Pacific Film Archive reopens this weekend. The venue's regular projection space (at least until 2014 or so) at 2575 Bancroft Way has its first screenings of the summer tomorrow evening, when a double feature of Whistler films you may or may not have seen at the Roxie's I Still Wake Up Dreaming B-noir festival, play. As does the 1975 King Hu martial arts extravaganza The Valiant Ones. The latter kicks off a remarkable series of recent acquisitions to the PFA film collection, which reminds us that Berkeley's most-revered film exhibition venue has roots much deeper than mere exhibition. (So that's what the 'A' stood for!) Films by Hayao Miyazaki, Agnès Varda, Alberto Gout, Robert Gardner, Judy Irving and others round out the eclectic series. Tributes to Mexican science fiction, the Romanian New Wave and the Residents ensure a little something for everyone, but surely the centerpiece of the PFA's summer is the complete Akira Kurosawa retrospective being held in honor of the 100th anniversary of his birth.

Completists are already drooling over the chance to see rarities like Sanshiro Sugata I & II and the Quiet Duel on the big screen, but Berekely is not the only place to get an A.K. fix in June. On this side of the bridge, the Embarcadero will screen a new print of Kurosawa's most famous color film, Ran for a week beginning June 4th. And four of the master's most noirish black-and-white films will play in 35mm prints at the still-new VIZ Cinema at Post and Webster Streets that same week: Drunken Angel, Stray Dog, the Bad Sleep Well and High and Low are the titles, not a samurai sword among them. The VIZ lineup for June is truly jawdropping for those of us who can't get enough classic Japanese cinema. After a week of Kurosawa films, the Japantown venue will bring four Yasujiro Ozu films including his most-widely-acknowledged masterpiece Tokyo Story, his following film Early Spring, and two earlier films I've been wishing to see return to Frisco Bay since I missed them during his PFA centennial six and a half years ago: The Only Son and Record Of A Tenement Gentlemen. As if that weren't enough, VIZ will screen four Kenji Mizoguchi masterpieces (I confidently say this not having seen all of them) June 19-24: Sisters of The Gion (pictured above), Ugetsu Monogatari, Street of Shame and Utamaro and His Five Women (the one I haven't seen yet). This is a truly special set of twelve films VIZ is bringing in June, each with multiple playdates, so go to as many as you can while you can, and tell your friends, if you want to encourage future screenings of Japanese classics on this side of Frisco Bay, where they've been pretty scarce in recent years.

VIZ Cinema, which until recently focused on screening the films of its affiliated DVD label almost exclusively, is obviously stretching its programming muscles, and if this keeps up it will rapidly become one of the most exciting venues on Frisco Bay. Also to play there in June are two programs with a South Asian, rather than East Asian, focus: 3rd i's Queer Eye, an outpost of LGBT films presented by the folks who bring the South Asian Film Festival to town every November, and the locally-made Indian diasporic film Bicycle Bride.

What else is happening in June? The previously-mentioned "I Still Wake Up Dreaming" series experienced rush line level crowds for some of its 35mm screenings, as well as some technical difficulties in the sound quality of certain of the 16mm prints it showed, so programmer Elliot Lavine and the Roxie Theater decided to reprise some of the affected films from June 4. I wholeheartedly recommend the June 6th double-bill in particular, featuring the two best films I saw at the festival: Phil Karlson's luckless boxer nailbiter 99 River Street, and the sultry policier Cop Hater. Everyone seemed to love the cameo-studded rat pack gangster film Johnny Cool but me; it plays June 4 if you want to see for yourself. (For me, it couldn't live up to its theme song.) The Fearmakers, Jacques Tourneur's 1958 expose of the communist infiltration of Washington, D.C. publicity firms is not among the director's great films, but it's an interesting time capsule worth a look in 35mm; it plays June 6th along with a 35mm print of Nightmare, which I missed the first time around. I also missed the three 16mm prints that suffered the worst sound problems, and which will play on a triple-bill June 7th, for free for those who attended their prior screenings and for $11 for the rest of us. Gustav Machatý's Jealousy sounds the most intriguing of the trio.

Oakland's Paramount Theatre begins its summer film series the same weekend, with a June 4 screening of the late Lynn Redgrave's defining film Georgy Girl. Other films scheduled to screen at Frisco Bay's largest, most opulent (if intermittently-utilized) movie palace are the original King Kong July 9, E.T. July 23, and the great Howard Hawks film To Have And Have Not August 6. The Rafael Film Center will play the 1937 Prisoner of Zenda as a special presentation with Oscar winners Craig Barron and Ben Burtt on June 13. SFMOMA screens Clint Eastwood's first directorial effort Play Misty For Me June 10. And the Red Vic has a new calendar on the streets with its usual combination of second-run, repertory, and special event bookings. The documentary on influential filmmakers George and Mike Kuchar (the latter of whom gets a rare solo show at Artists' Television Access June 5) called It Came From Kuchar makes its landing June 14 & 15. Bong Joon-ho's Mother plays June 16 & 17 (his The Host plays the PFA June 18), the sheepherding documentary Sweetgrass appears July 12 & 13, and Banksy's Exit Through The Gift Shop closes the door on this particular calendar August 6-9. Along with the theatre's annual anniversary screenings of Harold and Maude (July 25-28) the Red Vic celebrates its 30th year of operation by showcasing three winners of a recent audience poll of its favorite repertory films. The winners: Alejandro Jodorowski's El Topo (August 1 & 2) takes the bronze, Dead Man (August 3 & 4) the silver, and Stanley Kubrick's Lolita (July 18 & 19) the gold. I'm a deep admirer of all three of these not-quite-canonized films. Congratulations to Red Vic patrons on your discerning and non-conforming taste!

The Stanford Theatre in Palo Alto still has a few more weeks left on its appetizing current calendar, which ends with a Josef Von Sternberg double-bill (Morocco and The Devil Is A Woman) June 16-18. The day after that, another southerly film venue plays another Sternberg film, this time one of his most highly-regarded silent films, the Last Command. The Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum, tucked in a lovely corner of Fremont, will present that Oscar-winning film with Jon Mirsalis providing musical accompaniment on Kurzweil synthesizer. It's part of the Silent Film Museum's busiest month of the year; the first weekend in June is given over to Charlie Chaplin Days, honoring the most well-known actor to have worked in Niles back when Hollywood's supremacy as California's movie-making hub was not yet secure. The Gold Rush and other Chaplin films will screen. The final weekend of the month brings a festival named for a cowboy star who was every bit as well-known as Chaplin in his day, but has become something of a footnote today. This year's 13th Annual Broncho Billy Silent Film Festival features seven different programs of features and short subjects starring figures once famous to all, but now forgotten to most moviegoers, such as Wallace Reid, J. Warren Kerrigan, and G.M. "Broncho Billy" Anderson himself. An early (1920) King Vidor-directed film, the Jack-Knife Man promises to be a high point of the weekend.

Frisco's own Silent Film Festival has announced its program as well; expanded to a four-day event for its 15th edition, the festival has really outdone itself in lining up well-known and rare silent films, musicians, and special guests for the July 15-18 event. I will surely have more to say on this festival in the weeks to come, but in the meantime, Lincoln Spector has covered some of the highlights. This marks the sixth time I've contributed a contextual essay for the festival's program booklet, a copy of which will be handed to every attendee at the Castro that weekend. "My" film, this time around, has been Dziga Vertov's magnum opus Man With A Movie Camera, which will screen on Sunday afternoon, July 18th, with the Alloy Orchestra performing its critically-acclaimed musical score based on Vertov's 1929 instructions. Familiarizing myself with the history of early Soviet film-making, and sorting through the mountains of material written on Vertov in particular, has made for one of the most challenging and rewarding research projects I've attempted yet. I hope that the end-products (a pre-screening slide show, as well as the essay) prove valuable to festgoers. I have no doubt that the screening and musical performance will be entertaining and eye-opening for people who have already seen Man With A Movie Camera, and for those who haven't. If there was ever a film that deserves repeat viewings, this is it.

While looking through libraries and archives, trying to better understand the conditions under which Vertov's films were screened for the public in his day, I found a collection of program notes from The Film Society Of London which thrust my imagination back into early 1930s art-cinema exhibition. The Film Society had been founded in 1925 by Anthony Asquith, George Bernard Shaw, John Maynard Keynes, and H.G. Wells among other original members. In early 1931 the group screened Man With a Movie Camera on a program with a Silly Symphony (Artic Antics), a set of color (excuse me, colour) photography tests from British and American companies, an Austrian puppet play (The Dragon Prince), and a section of Alberto Cavalcanti's Little Red Riding Hood. Later that year, the same venue played Vertov's first sound film, Enthusiasm with the director personally in attendance; this was two days prior to Charlie Chaplin's famous pronouncement: "Never had I known that these mechanical sounds could be arranged to seem so beautiful...Mr. Dziga Vertov is a musician. The professors should learn from him not quarrel with him." In late 1935 Vertov's following film Three Songs About Lenin screened on a bill with Cavalcanti's GPO documentary Coal Face and Len Lye's Kaleidoscope among other short subjects.

I find it thrilling to learn such details about a bygone era of cinephilia, in which leading playwrights, novelists, and economists rubbed shoulders with animators, documentarians, film technologists, and avant-garde filmmakers from home and abroad. I do wonder what the membership requirements of The Film Society of London were like-- did one have to be a living legend to gain access, or are those simply the member names that have been handed down to us? Is there an equivalent of that activity today amidst the film festivals and venues right here in this town? I know that there are others who would disagree with me, but I just love that the SF Silent Film Festival programs films of diverse types, from all the corners of the world it can, alongside the justly classic and unjustly obscure entertainments from the Hollywood studio era. An 'us vs. them' attitude about independent and foreign filmmaking no doubt existed among some American film producers of the era, but in some corners of film appreciation, it feels like boundaries (national, stylistic, genre, etc.) are being patrolled more fiercely than ever. The Film Society Of London appeared to smash these kinds of barriers in its day, and from what I understand, early programming at places like SFMOMA did the same in the 1930s, mixing the avant-garde, documentary, an popular animation from various countries of origin, all on the same program.

Eighty years ago feels like a world away, but another little discovery made it seem just a little bit closer: on the back of the program for the Three Songs of Lenin screening was a list of films that had their British premiere at The Film Society in 1934-5, and it included (along with Jean Vigo's Zero For Conduct and Basil Wright's Song of Ceylon) a title I saw at the Pacific Film Archive a year and a half ago, Douro by Manoel de Oliveira. A silent, poetic documentary that was clearly made by a man who was then a young contemporary of Walter Ruttmann, Joris Ivens, and Vertov, Douro is almost certainly the only remaining silent-era debut film made by a director who is not only still living, but still making films, at 101 years of age. And here was his name listed amidst those of long-dead filmmakers who it's hard not to think of as belonging to a long-dead era.

While Oliveira's latest film just debuted alongside Apichatpong's in Cannes (Dennis Lim found the pair comparable highlights), his previous one is poised to make its first appearance here on Frisco Bay, also in June, at pretty much the only major local film venue I haven't yet mentioned in this post, the Yerba Buena Center For the Arts. Called Eccentricities of a Blond Hair Girl, on June 24, 26 & 27 it wraps up what looks to be an extremely strong month at the venue that has allowed me to see more Apichatpong Weerasethakul films than any other. No, YBCA hasn't announced plans to screen Uncle Boonmee yet, but they will be showing, in addition to the Oliveira, three films any serious cinephile will probably want to experience: Harmony Korine's Trash Humpers June 3-6, Brillante Mendoza's Kinatay June 12-13 (both of which have been among the most contentious new films of the past year's film festival circuit) and Catherine Breillat's wonderful Bluebeard June 17-19. If Apichatpong, Korine, Mendoza and Breillat can be counted as contemporaries of Oliveira (and why not), and Oliveira was a contemporary of Vertov, Vigo and Chaplin, then the boundary between contemporary and "old" cinema is obliterated. What a refreshing thought!