Terri Saul on Donkeyote

Image from Donkeyote provided by SFFILM

Today is the final day of the 60th San Francisco International Film Festival, and though there are a couple programs currently at RUSH status, you can still buy tickets to most of today's slate and avoid having to wait in line to see if you can obtain a seat. The Roxie seems to be the most popular of the festival's three remaining venues, as I can attest after attending an audience-packed shorts program there last night. The venue's 4PM screening of Donkeyote, Chico Pereira's Golden Gate Award competitor (though not among the award-winners) is your last chance to see a 60th San Francisco International Film Festival film at the venue without braving the RUSH lines for Shorts 2 (including the GGA winning Univitellin, In the Wake of the Ghost Ship and American Paradise) or Endless Poetry. I haven't seen Donkeyote yet but local artist, writer & annual contributor to my "I Only Have Two Eyes" repertory round-up Terri Saul has and offered to write a short capsule for publication here. Here's what she says:

Manolo, 78-year-old errant knight (and Pereira’s uncle) sets out with his best friend, a donkey, Gorrión to take a long walk across Spain as a precursor to retracing the Trail of Tears. The man-donkey friendship is shown via shallow close-ups of the donkey’s grizzled chin as he nudges our man onward. Competing for Most Stubborn Rover they both suffer the consequences of a chase. The drunken reciting of ancient poetry in a Spanish shepherd’s dialect and the singing of a workers' song offset Western frontiersman tropes. Our picaresque crew at times becomes so displaced that we, by comparison, feel sorted.

Thanks so much, Terri!

Tomorrow the Roxie hosts an enticing 16mm archival anomalies program presented by Craig Baldwin and screens the insane Nicholas Cage movie Vampire's Kiss; other upcoming bookings there include the SF Green Film Festival (including a 35th anniversary, 35mm screening of Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill director Judy Irving's nuclear documentary Dark Circle), MiDNiTES FOR MANiACS screenings of Bring In On/Revenge of the Cheerleaders (the latter an amazing grindhouse gem with a screenplay by Nathaniel Dorksy), Blue Velvet/Peyton Place and The Fifth Element/Run Lola Run, a large David Lynch celebration, and much more.