SFFILM 62 Day 11: Wisconsin Death Trip

The 62st San Francisco International Film Festival is in its final weekend; it runs through Tuesday, April 23rd. Each day during the festival I'll be posting about a festival selection I've seen or am anticipating.

A scene from James Marsh's Wisconsin Death Trip, playing at the 2019 San Francisco International Film Festival, April 10-23, 2019. Courtesy of SFFILM.

Wisconsin Death Trip (UK: James Marsh, 1999)
playing: 4:00PM at BAMPFA

So far this year I've been able to post daily about SFFILM festival films I've already seen, whether at an advance press screening, a festival showing or at a different film festival or another circumstance. Today I'm focusing on a film I've never seen before but have been wanting to for nearly twenty years. When Wisconsin Death Trip first screened at the San Francisco International Film Festival in the year 2000 I was out of the country, and for some reason I never caught up with it during its Frisco Bay commercial release a year later, even when it played a successful run at my then-neighborhood theatre the Balboa. So when I heard SFFILM was to show it again this year, as part of its Mel Novikoff Award tribute I was thrilled. Some were not so thrilled with this choice; my friend Lincoln Specter was skeptical of the award going to a television institution in the first place and said:

The Mel Novikoff Award is supposed to go to a person or institution that “has enhanced the film-going public’s appreciation of world cinema.” In the past, this meant someone who has helped others find a love of classic cinema. But this year, it’s going to BBC Arena, a British series of documentaries that may help people understand the world around them; but I doubt they’ll make them love classic cinema.

Perhaps because of my excitement about today's 35mm showing, I just had to leave a comment on Lincoln's site, which I'll reproduce here:

It’s true that quite a few (the vast majority, perhaps) of the prior Mel Novikoff Award recipients are best known for increasing “classic” cinema appreciation, as you put it. But quite a few recipients aren’t known just for that: Roger Ebert, Jim Hoberman, San Francisco Cinematheque, etc. 

At any rate, BBC Arena has produced and/or shown documentaries about Orson Welles, Akira Kurosawa, Kenneth Anger, John Cassavetes, Hedy Lamarr, Clint Eastwood, Nicholas Roeg, Peter Sellers, Dirk Bogarde, Ingmar Bergman, and more individuals that many would consider important to “classic” cinema. 

I'd also add that the San Francisco International Film Festival has long had a tradition of screening made-for-television works from around the world, mostly of TV movies, documentaries or episodes that would have a very difficult time showing up on American television or other US screens of any sort. Sometimes they'd show television works that went on to become classics or semi-classics, like David Lynch's amazing Twin Peaks: Pilot or Lars Von Trier's The Kingdom. Other times the festival showing would one of the few ever to occur in the United States outside greymarket tape-trading networks, if that. They even used to have Golden Gate Awards categories for Best Made-For-Television works (although the nominees weren't always shown at the festival proper, as I noted last year sometimes television work can be notoriously difficult to clear the rights to screen in any kind of cinematic environment).

I'm not always totally thrilled at SFFILM's enthusiastic partnering with streaming services for its content in the past few years, as these distribution channels are generally pretty mainstream and when SFFILM programs a Netflix title it gives up a slot to something that Frisco Bay audiences will have a harder time ever seeing. But who am I to talk when my top two films on my Best of 2018 commercial release list included two Netflix titles that I caught in theatres, including one that I missed at the festival but might not have prioritized in cinemas later had I not heard good buzz on it a year ago this time.

Anyway, made-for-television or not, I'm happy Wisconsin Death Trip is part of the festival this year and that I'll be able to catch it screened in 35mm at one of my favorite theatre spaces in use by SFFILM this year: BAMPFA.

SFFILM62 Day 11
Other festival options: Early this morning SFFILM members get a crack at an upcoming release whose title will be announced just prior to the show. Two years ago I was thrilled to learn from my seat in the audience that I was about to see the latest by Cristian Mungiu, Graduation, which has seemed ever more relevant in the wake of the Operation Varsity Blues scandal. No idea what this year's Member's Screening title will be, only that it'll happen 10:00AM at the Victoria. At noon, SFMOMA will host the George Gund III Award presentation to former San Francisco International Film Festival director Claude Jarman, along with a 35mm showing of the excellent Clarence Brown racism drama Intruder in the Dust; Jarman acted in the film as a child and had great stories to tell when this film screened at Noir City several years ago; I'm sure he'll have much more to say today, and seeing a Clarence Brown film today could help you get in gear for the re-premiere of his long-forgotten (by those of us who are not named Kevin Brownlow) The Signal Tower, which screens as part of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival in twelve days.

Non-SFFILM option: Tonight's Other Cinema program at Artists' Television Access is an etremely timely one, both in regards to current events and to SFFILM's current run. On the former front, David Cox is presenting an illustrated lecture on images of jailed non-journalist Julian Assange in cinema. On the latter front, Other Cinema curator Craig Baldwin has selected a short called The Seen Unssen by Mariam Ghani, whose feature-length What We Left Unfinished screened earlier in the festival, and a is world-premiering a new piece called Immaculate Concussion by local collagist Kathleen Quillian, whose Confidence Game is in competition for a Golden Gate Award and which I wrote a bit about earlier this week.