10HTE: Michael Hawley

The San Francisco Bay Area is still home to a rich cinephilic culture nurtured in large part by a diverse array of cinemas, programmers and moviegoers. I'm honored to present a selection of favorite screenings experienced by local cinephiles in 2016. An index of participants can be found here.

Ten-time IOHTE contributor Michael Hawley runs the blog film-415.

2016 Favorite Bay Area Revival/Repertory Screenings

Blow Job screen shot from Music Box DVD of The Story of Film: An Odyssey

Blow Job (1963 USA dir. Andy Warhol)
Andy Warhol's Silver Screen: Rarities & Restorations, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

I expected to be bored, but instead found myself strangely captivated by this infamous Warhol silent in which the camera coolly observes the face – and only the face – of a young man (DeVeren Bookwalter) angelically lit from above, as he receives a titular off-screen BJ. Shot in high contrast B&W, the exquisite new 16mm print made it easy to savor the way light plays over the planes of his expressive and continually moving face. Eventually one notices how the eyes only become visible when the head tilts back and how his pouty upper lip remains perpetually hidden in shadow. After 25 minutes a pair of arms finally rises in sweet surrender, followed by five minutes of cigarette smoking. The End. On the same double-bill was My Hustler, a 1965 two-reeler gab-fest that benefitted greatly from its astoundingly clear audio. In the first section, a gay man and his fag hag neighbor dish the Dial-a-Hustler (Paul America) lounging on the beach below. Mr. America returns in reel two as he and another hustler (Joseph Campbell) shower, shave and preen whilst discussing the finer points of their trade. I was also lucky enough to catch Warhol's The Life of Juanita Castro (1965) and The Velvet Underground Tarot Cards (1966) as part of this YBCA series.

Hospital (1970 USA dir. Frederick Wiseman)
Frederick Wiseman Restorations: Three Confrontational Classics, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

Although I found plenty to admire in Titicut Follies (1967) and High School (1969), both part of this 35mm restorations trio, it was Wiseman's riveting portrait of NYC's Metropolitan Hospital that really shocked my senses. I was particularly taken by the hospital staff's compassion and advocacy for their mostly low-income and indigent clientele – and I'm fully convinced it wasn't just an act for the camera. Inone memorably intense sequence, a staff psychiatrist valiantly pleads by phone with the city's Department of Welfare to obtain help for an underage African-American transgender prostitute.

Until the End of the World screen shot from Magnolia DVD of Steve Jobs: the Man in the Machine

Until The End of the World (1991 Germany dir. Wim Wenders)
Wim Wenders: Portraits Along the Road, Pacific Film Archive

While I really dug this dystopian road movie 25 years ago in its 158-minute iteration, there's even more tolove now in this gorgeous 4K restoration of Wenders' five-hour director's cut, shown at the PFA with a 30-minute intermission. The film's prescience is staggering, with automobile GPS, facial ID software and inter-personal video communication all part of its near-futuristic milieu.

Loulou (1980 France dir. Maurice Pialat)
Love Exists: The Films of Maurice Pialat, Pacific Film Archive

After seeing a reunited Isabelle Huppert and Gérard Depardieu in 2015's In the Valley of Love, it was grand going back 35 years to watch them in the prime of youthful magnificence. In Pialat's slice-of-life examination of class conflict, Huppert plays a young woman who leaves her priggish husband (Guy Marchand) for Depardieu's loutish ex-con. Favorite line: "I'd prefer a loafer who fucks to a rich guy who bugs me!"

Under Age (1941 USA dir. Edward Dmytryk)
I Wake Up Screaming (1941 USA dir. Bruce Humberstone)
The Girl and the Monster (1941 USA dir. Stuart Heisler
I Wake Up Dreaming, Castro Theatre

This line-up of trashy 1941 Film Noir – courtesy of esteemed, soon-to-be ex-San Francisco programmer Elliot Lavine – was THE triple-bill of 2016. In Under Age, two down-on-their-luck sisters fall into a scheme by which hitchhiking women coax businessmen to a chain of rest stops where they're swindled by waiting gangsters. Then in I Wake Up Screaming, a publicity agent is accused of murdering the waitress he's transformed into an A-list celebrity, with a fantastically menacing Laird Cregar as the police inspector out to frame him. I was surprised by a scene in which Betty Grable and Victor Mature hide out in a 24-hour "Adults Only" movie theater. I guess that was already a thing back in 1941? Then in the ultimate cake-taker The Girl and the Monster, a man about to be wrongly executed asks a scientist to transplant his brain into a gorilla so he can seek revenge against the mobsters who prostituted his sister. Yes, you read that correctly.

Multiple Maniacs (1979 USA dir. John Waters)

I hadn't seen Waters' first synch-sound film in over 30 years so this Janus Films 4-K restoration was a true like-a-virgin experience. So many things I had forgotten – Divine's hilariously fevered interior monolog in the church scene, the climactic chase through the streets of Baltimore, the re-enactment of Jesus' multiplying of loaves and fishes (canned tuna and trashy white bread). It was a special thrill seeing it in Alamo Drafthouse's main auditorium with Waters on hand to do the intro honors.

A Woman of the World screen shot from Janus DVD of The Love Goddesses

A Woman of the World (1925 USA dir. Malcolm St. Clair)
21st San Francisco Silent Film Festival, Castro Theatre

Of the 14 programs I caught at this year's SF Silent Film Festival, I had the most fun watching Pola Negri as a tattoo-sporting Italian countess scandalizing a small American hamlet. The image of Negri horsewhipping the local district attorney who wants to run her out of town is now lovingly seared upon my brain. Two additional SFSFF highpoints were Shooting Stars, which marked the debut of brilliant British director Anthony Asquith (A Cottage on Dartmoor), and René Clair's farcical The Italian Straw Hat.

The Beatles at Shea Stadium (1966 USA)
Castro Theatre

This miraculous 4K restoration of the Fab Four's legendary 35-minute Shea Stadium concert was a bonus feature at screenings of Ron Howard's new documentary, The Beatles: Eight Days a Week – The Touring Years. (The doc was concurrently streaming on HULU, minus the Shea concert). Thanks to its being shot with 14 cameras, the viewer experiences everything from the band's dazed sprint out onto the field, right up through their being whisked away by security post-concert. Most importantly, the songs can now be heard clearly over the stadium's 55,000 screaming fans. My favorite moment saw John and George convulsing with laughter while singing back-up on "I'm Down," the concert's final number.

So This is Paris (1926 USA dir. Ernst Lubitsch)
San Francisco Silent Film Festival's A Day of Silents, Castro Theatre

My fave silent film discovery of the year was this clever and breezy marital infidelity romp featuring four first-rate actors I'd never heard of and an orgiastic Charleston dance sequence that's gotta be seen to be believed. This one-day marathon of silent cinema goodness also featured Sadie Thompson with Gloria Swanson (who kept reminding me of Kristen Stewart!), the Alloy Orchestra accompanying Eisenstein's Strike, and the first-ever Oscar winner for Best Actor (Emil Jannings in 1928's The Last Command.)

Scarlet Street screen shot from Kino DVD

Scarlet Street (1945 USA dir. Fritz Lang)
Noir City 14, Castro Theatre

Edward G. Robinson gives a delicately sympathetic performance as a put-upon hubby and Sunday painter who gets mixed up with a prostitute (Joan Bennett) and her pimp boyfriend (Dan Duryea). It's easy to see why Fritz Lang considered this his favorite of the films he made in Hollywood. The movie wrapped up an impressive Saturday afternoon triple-bill that included 1944's The Lodger starring (once again) the great Laird Cregar as a surrogate Jack the Ripper, and 1944's Bluebeard featuring John Carradine as a women-murdering Parisian puppeteer. Noir City 14 also afforded me worthwhile revisits of Michael Powell's The Red Shoes and Peeping Tom, as well as Antonioni's Blow-Up.

10HTE: Lucy Laird

The San Francisco Bay Area is still home to a rich cinephilic culture nurtured in large part by a diverse array of cinemas, programmers and moviegoers. I'm honored to present a selection of favorite screenings experienced by local cinephiles in 2016. An index of participants can be found here.

Three-time IOHTE contributor Lucy Laird is the operations director for the SF Silent Film Festival, co-boss at Nerd Nite San Francisco, and writer of the occasional program note for local festivals.

In chronological order:

Image from Film Grimoire; chose it because WE HAD BEEN WAITING so long for the PFA to re-open!

2/3/2016 The Seventh Seal (1957) at the still-off-gassing-paint-and-carpet-glue-new Barbro Osher Theater at BAMPFA

There was no way I could miss the first “regular” public screening at the PFA. Having heard tales of the before-my-time, not-built-for-cinema Gund Theater’s glory days and having worked in and fallen in love (nothing like a pre-code series to fan the flames) at the “temporary” field-house structure on Bancroft Avenue, I knew this latest iteration had a lot to live up to. Yes, this Bergman was a bit somber for a celebration, but Barbro Osher charmed the audience with her introductory remarks, setting the scene for this: the screen makes generous use of its space (suddenly taking up much more of the wall’s square footage, hurrah!), the audience gasps (or was that just me?) as the masking makes way, the Swedish master takes over, and I see this film for the first time for my third time and the PFA’s fifth time on its third screen!

Screen capture from youtube.

2/6/2016 Douglas Sirk’s The Tarnished Angels (1957) at the PFA’s Cinema, Mon Amour series

Cinemascope, black-and-white perfection. I remember renting it on VHS from Santa Monica’s great (and thankfully not quite late) video store, Vidiots, back in the early aughts, and cursing my stupidity at not waiting until it came to a theater near me in 35 to see it for the first time. But I’d just read Sirk on Sirk, so perhaps you can understand. It’s a film about loneliness and love and stunt flying, the compulsive circling of Robert Stack’s character around the pylons a bit like us cinemaniacs, circling back around to our favorite theaters, convinced the next screening—or the next—will be our most thrilling.

3/4/2016 Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) at the New Mission

Technically a revival screening, no matter that it was only a few months out of the theater before it circled back again. This was my first time at an Alamo Drafthouse, but I quickly became a convert to the slightly-too-slick anti-device and -talking pre-show admonitions. Thankfully, George Miller’s dystopian crank-fest was loud enough to dampen any of my newbie annoyance at the (excellent, though pricey!) service of food and drink. Let the record show that earplugs were inserted about 10 minutes into this particular film and I then ate it up, along with a milkshake. Delicious and lived up to the hype—both the movie and the theater!

Image from MoMA

5/14/2016 Twilight (no, not THAT one) aka Crepúsculo (1945), part of the PFA’s Mexican Film Noir series

Gorgeous, overwrought, a denouement on a bridge that knocked the wind outta me, and a darn fine soft-titling job from a brave soul in the booth. Wish I’d gone to more of these Mexican noirs…

5/22/2016 The Red Balloon (1956) as part of BAMPFA’s free Family Day

I’d been reading my 4-year-old daughter the children’s book version (made up of stills from the film), but it had been years since I’d seen this, so we went with some friends. Still potent, still moving, still or moving, but there’s nothing like experiencing Ménilmontant avec Pascal, on the run through the petite alleyways, only wide enough for a boy and his balloon, watching with kids not yet old enough for subtitles.

Image from cageyfilms blog

And then I came back later on 5/22 for Antonio Pietrangeli’s I Knew Her Well (1965), one of the PFA’s (ir)regular 4K digital restoration screenings

I couldn’t help thinking I’d’a watched the heck out of this whilst in my obsessed-with-Jean-Seberg phase 20 years ago, because Stefania Sandrelli is just as compelling and has better hair—and her character works as a fabulously dressed cinema usher! What sad fun she and this film are.

6/3/2016 Behind the Door (1919) at the Castro Theatre, part of the 21st SF Silent Film Festival

I don’t have time to preview all the films we show at the Silent Film Festival, and I’m sure glad I didn’t spoil Behind the Door by distractedly watching a digital copy of it ahead of time. Perverse, beautiful, uncanny, and made all the more so with Stephen Horne live, at a late-night screening of a brand-new, tinted 35mm print, this was the rare SFSFF film I made time to watch all the way through DURING the festival, to-do lists be darned! And now here’s my unabashed plug: watch the trailer, then pre-order the DVD/Blu-ray from Flicker Alley

Image from Theater of Guts blog

9/24/2016 White Dog (1982), part of the series Samuel Fuller: A Fuller Life at the Smith Rafael Film Center

Another of those “How can I have not seen this yet?!” films, White Dog, with its complicated history and cult following, is a movie that I’d wanted to view for the first time on the big screen. But it was oh-so-worth the wait. Such a weird and sinister atmosphere, combining some really shoddy lighting set-ups and acting (I’m looking at you, Kristy), but somehow all the better for those faults. And on Art House Theater Day, and with Fuller’s wife and daughter on hand for a post-screening Q&A, and—I later found out—in a 35mm director’s cut snagged in a twist of fate by a private collector friend. How lucky we are to live here and have access to these experiences! So why was the theater so empty? Your only excuse would be that you decided to see it at the Roxie instead.

10/23/2016 Annie (1982) singalong at the Castro Theatre

Why didn’t anyone tell me that there are GIGANTIC areas of screen covered up by the singalong lyrics? Yes, this was my first singalong experience, so maybe that’s old news. And the bags of stuff everyone gets? The bang-snaps and the glow sticks and the candy and the bubbles? Well, I was a sucker for it all, especially that goodie bag, which kept my kid happy during the (many) charmingly boring parts of this John Huston film that I remember LOVING as a kid. I think I still love it and happily belted out the stupid tunes. This is my kind of expanded cinema.

Image courtesy contributor

11/2/2016 Joshua Grannell (aka Peaches Christ)’s talk at Nerd Nite @ the Alamo Drafthouse New Mission Theater, part of the Bay Area Science Festival

This is a bit of a cheat because a) this isn’t strictly a movie, and b) I was involved in programming this show that combined a little bit of science, a little bit of cinema, cocktail robots, and a celebration of the New Mission Theater’s 100th anniversary—but I did not book Mr. Grannell, whose bawdy, and brilliant slideshow/lecture on the history of the Bay Area’s cult film scene really livened up the proceedings. Thank Christ for Peaches!

10HTE: Sterling Hedgpeth

The San Francisco Bay Area is still home to a rich cinephilic culture nurtured in large part by a diverse array of cinemas, programmers and moviegoers. I'm honored to present a selection of favorite screenings experienced by local cinephiles in 2016. An index of participants can be found here.

First-time IOHTE contributor Sterling Hedgpeth runs a stamps & cinema blog called The Filmatelist, from which he's allowed me to re-post (with different images) from this entry.

Dumbo screen capture from Disney DVD

We’ll start with Dumbo (Sharpsteen, 1941) at the Paramount in Oakland, on absolutely stunning 35mm. Although the emcee called it original (which it couldn’t have been, because that would have meant nitrate stock), it certainly was a crisply struck print that had not seen much circulation. Combine the divine “Pink Elephants on Parade” sequence with the most gorgeous Art Deco palace in the Bay Area, and it was a great way to start the year.

Also in January were some memorable titles at Noir City at the Castro, and for me, the highlight was a first viewing of Mickey One (Penn, 1965), a glorious jazz-tinged fever dream of a film, with an assist from legend Stan Getz. Disjointed, bizarre, singularly unique and punctuated by a live dance routine from burlesque goddess Evie Lovelle.

Soon after, the PFA had an excellent Maurice Pialat series, but I suspect that the power of his Under the Sun of Satan (1987) was magnified by it being bookended (quite by coincidence) with two other contemporary films I saw the same week that also explore religious faith, fanaticism and hypocrisy: Pablo Larrain’s The Club and Avishai Sivan’s Tikkun. In Pialat’s fantasy-fueled acid bath Passion Play, he posits the possibility that religion may be the most oppressive to the truly devout. Overall, a provocative accidental trilogy.

The Beguiled screen shot from Universal DVD

Some fun Gothic films ran their course at the Yerba Buena Arts Center that summer, and the highlight was my first time seeing The Beguiled (1971) on the big screen. Still Don Siegel’s best, Clint Eastwood plays a Yankee fox trying to subvert and seduce a Dixie henhouse. The thick hothouse atmosphere and sexual tension played beautifully through Siegel's lighting and the insidious plotting and character power plays. Still a remarkable film (soon to be remade by Sofia Coppola).

Though a relatively recent movie, I have to include the Triplets of Belleville (Chomet, 2003) screening at the Taube Atrium in the SF Opera House because Benoît Charest was there with a jazz combo to perform his exquisite score live, including saws, bikes, and trashcans as percussion instruments. A terrific experience.

2016 was the first year the Alamo Drafthouse in the Mission was open, and the best part of their programming is the late night Mon-Wed screenings. My first dip into that pool was a packed show of Two-Lane Blacktop (Hellman, 1971), which I’ve seen several times in the theater, but never tire of the gearhead culture, the meditative structure and lack of urgency (for a racing film!) and Warren Oates’s phenomenal turn as GTO. My year was relatively short on roadtrips but this went some way to sating my wanderlust.

The Shining screen capture from Warner DVD

In my backyard at the Parkway, there was an irresistible double bill of the cuckoo-bananas conspiracy theory documentary Room 237 (Ascher, 2012) followed by a screening of the focus of its subject, The Shining (Kubrick, 1980) itself. Rarely does a year go by when I don’t see some Kubrick on screen (I also revisited Paths of Glory and Spartacus at the Smith Rafael Film Center for Kirk Douglas’s 100th birthday), but a bonus this year was an excellent exhibit on Kubrick at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in SF with some amazing artifacts from his career, including the typewriter and hedge maze model from this film.

Also at the Smith Rafael was a Sam Fuller weekend (with his widow and daughter in attendance), where the biggest revelation for me was his Tokyo noir House of Bamboo (1955), a beautifully stylized genre piece whose gangster trappings and compositions appeared to anticipate the marvelous Seijun Suzuki, whose career was starting around the exact same time. As you’d expect, Robert Ryan is in top form and the climax on a rooftop amusement park is a standout.

Destiny screen capture from Kino DVD

And finally, two silent films, both firsts for me. At the Silent Film Festival at the Castro, Destiny (1921), the earliest film I’ve seen by Fritz Lang and a glorious anthology of stories where Love must face down Death. It was wonderful seeing Lang’s visual imagination in bloom, anticipating the superb special FX and supernatural wonders of his next few years in Germany. Months later, over at the Niles Essanay Film Museum, the buoyant energy of underrated actress Bebe Daniels was on full display in the fizzy comedy Feel My Pulse (La Cava, 1928), about a hypochondriac heiress looking for rest at a health sanitarium which is actually acting as a front for bootleggers (led by a very young William Powell). A hilarious comedy and secret gem.

So that’s 10 features, but since I saw over 60 archival shorts in the theater last year, I’ll give an honorable mention to two with Buster Keaton, still silent in the autumn of his career. I saw The Railrodder (Potterton, 1965) at an Oddball Film Archive screening, featuring Buster traveling across Canada on an open-air mini-railcar, a playful reminder of his other great train film The General, but in sumptuous color. And around the same time, the Smith Rafael Film Center played Film (Schneider, 1965), one of Samuel Beckett’s few forays into film and a wonderful existential metaphor with Buster showing that age had not changed the expressiveness of his body in motion. A sublime pairing. Here’s looking forward to another year of familiar films and new discoveries.

10HTE: Carl Martin

The San Francisco Bay Area is still home to a rich cinephilic culture nurtured in large part by a diverse array of cinemas, programmers and moviegoers. I'm honored to present a selection of favorite screenings experienced by local cinephiles in 2016. An index of participants can be found here.

Nine-time IOHTE contributor Carl Martin blogs and runs the Bay Area Film Calendar (and even a new L.A. offshoot) for the Film on Film Foundation.

The Lodger screen capture from Fox DVD

january 30: the lodger @ the castro (noir city)
not the hitchcock version of marie belloc lowndes's jack the ripper story but john brahms's, starring laird cregar, whose talent dwarfed his girth. it was early in the year, but i remember still the meticulously, evocatively detailed sets, fully fleshed-out performances in the minor roles even, and a poetic sensibility that made a virtue of the unacceptability of showing explicitly a murder victim's terminal blood-gush. screened later in the evening: scarlet street, a movie i was sure i'd seen but hadn't, and what a movie!

march 9: black vengeance, aka poor pretty eddie @ the new mission
a new (old) venue, and stabs at genre and extrageneric rep programming. terror tuesdays took off, not as much weird wednesdays. there was some chaff, but damned if there wasn't hidden wheat! both the film's titles prime us for the lowbrow, but as we should know by now, exploitation films often harbor social commentary, and this one does in spades (and from a feminist perspective).

march 23: defending your life @ the roxie
albert brooks's films are rarely screened. previously i'd only seen the lackluster looking for comedy in the muslim world. i hope this is more typical of his work. poignant, personal, and funny.

Under the Cherry Moon screen capture from Warner DVD

june 9: under the cherry moon @ the castro
we all know purple rain is great. but it took a death for anyone to dare bring back utcm (or track down the also-excellent sign "☮" the times) prince treats the twentieth century as he does his sexuality. there is no anachronism; he panchronistically cherry-picks the best each era has to offer.

september 15: meshes of the afternoon in 16mm @ oddball archives (another one bites the dust)
oh sure, i'd seen it before, but this time its revolutionary dream logic really swept over me. poetic perfection. it played with a wonderful program of paul clipson films.

october 5: an american werewolf in london @ the castro
john landis always seemed terribly overrated to me. kentucky fried movie is a winner but that's because it has that z-a-z magic. animal house is ok. the blues brothers gets too big for its britches (and dan aykroyd is one of the worst actors). starting with the travellers' well-drawn camaraderie, on through the stereotypical depiction of english village life, to the burgeoning relationship between patient and nurse, and beyond, aawil crams in humor, romance, and pathos, while walking that tightrope between the real and the psychological that is strung through all the best horror films, and it works splendidly. to top it off, landis has included the best film-within-a-film and one of the best dreams-within-a-dream (along with meshes?). i'm glad i finally caught up with this shockingly good movie.

Lucifer Rising screen capture from Fantoma DVD

october 25: lucifer rising in 16mm (private screening)
i had a chance to re-watch this kenneth anger masterpiece and realized i had in fact never seen it and OH DAMN it's like a little satanic 16mm baraka.

november 11: if you can't see my mirrors, i can't see you in 16mm @ the lab (light field festival)
this film was made in 2016 so it breaks the rules but alee peoples's work reminds me of the playful spirit of some "artist-made" films of the '60's and '70's. this one plays with how objects enter the frame, and with our expectations.

november 21: a divided world (private screening)
part of what made this screening special was its serendipity, but i won't go into the details of that. arne sucksdorff shot animals as if they were humans and vice versa. as in many of his films, we don't see the humans here. but rarely has the intersection of nature and artifice been so breathtakingly photographed.

49th Parallel screen capture from Criterion DVD

december 4: 49th parallel @ pfa
i caught up with a number of powell-pressburgers i hadn't seen before (and re-watched the utterly fab i know where i'm going). here, laurence olivier has a lot of fun playing a fronch caneddian but then disappears as we move on to another wonderful canadian setting and set of characters. can it be that the nazis are the anti-protagonists of this film, as at each encounter they find their ideologies challenged and their numbers reduced? or is canada itself the hero? trust p&p to find still-exciting ways to reinvigorate narrative formulas. in a propaganda film no less.

10HTE: Philip Fukuda

The San Francisco Bay Area is still home to a rich cinephilic culture nurtured in large part by a diverse array of cinemas, programmers and moviegoers. I'm honored to present a selection of favorite screenings experienced by local cinephiles in 2016. An index of participants can be found here.

Two-time IOHTE contributor Philip Fukuda is a volunteer for various local film festivals.

Elevator to the Gallows screen capture from Criterion DVD

Wicked Woman (Russell Rouse, 1953, USA). I Wake Up Dreaming series, Castro Theatre. As part of Elliot Lavine's last "I Wake Up Dreaming" series in San Francisco, he screened Wicked Woman, one of my favorite noirs. Tall, blond Beverly Michaels has both Richard Egan and Percy Helton wrapped around her finger. Or does she?? It's a pleasure to see the great character actor Percy Helton get so much screen time, too.

Earlier in 2016, Elliot Lavine also presented his last Pre-Code festival at the Castro Theatre. The Cheat (George Abbott, 1931, USA) pits glamorous Tallulah Bankhead against evil Irving Pichel. It's got gambling, partying and adultery in addition to mysterious Oriental customs. This was not a strong vehicle for Bankhead, but I found it fascinating to see her as a young ingénue who finds herself in way over her head.

Behind the Door (Irvin Willat, 1919, USA). San Francisco Silent Film Festival, Castro Theatre. This film was a revelation and goes far beyond what even the later pre-code films would consider acceptable. With its themes of graphic sex and taxidermy (!), Behind the Door was a stunner and my favorite film in last year's Silent Film festival.

Strike (Sergei Eisenstein, 1925, USSR. A Day of Silents, Castro Theatre. I enjoyed Eisenstein's first feature of strikers in pre-revolutionary Russia. Things don't go well for the proletariat, and not much has changed in 100 years. As relevant today as it was in 1925. The Alloy Orchestra provided superb accompaniment.

A Brighter Summer Day screen capture from Criterion DVD

A Brighter Summer Day (Edward Yang, 1991, Taiwan). Pacific Film Archive. I've managed to miss all the 35 millimeter screenings in the Bay Area over the past several years, so I thought I'd better catch this digital screening, or not see it at all theatrically. Edward Yang's masterpiece portrays life in 1950s Taiwan, concentrating on teenagers and gangs, but also covers the troubles the older generation faced.

The Mother and the Whore (Jean Eustache, 1973, France). Alamo Drafthouse. Although this theater concentrates on first-run Hollywood fare, the Alamo runs several repertory programs in addition to screening neglected classics. And The Mother and the Whore is an absolute treasure of French cinema. Jean-Pierre Léaud, now in his 20s, still plays a disaffected youth with sex and philosophy on his mind.

Crossroads (1976) and Easter Morning (2008) (Bruce Conner, USA). Bruce Conner: It's All True exhibit, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. 2 short films shown as part of the exhibit. As a multi-disciplinary artist (paintings, drawings, sculpture and film), Bruce Conner frequently used found objects in his work. In Crossroads, Conner used footage of the atomic testing at Bikini Atoll from 27 different angles. Projected in slow motion, the mushroom cloud first appears beautiful, but as the images progress, I was struck by the sheer horror of it. Easter Morning, Conner's last film is a meditative collage of nature and religious images. Both films featured wonderful musical scores by Terry Riley and Patrick Gleeson in Crossroads and Terry Riley in Easter Morning.

Insiang (Lino Brocka, 1976, Philippines). New Filipino Cinema, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. This drama shows the impoverished life of Insiang and what she has to put up with until she can't take it anymore. What a great tale of revenge. It was a major loss that Lino Brocka died so young.

Grave of the Fireflies screen capture from Sentai Filmworks DVD

Grave of the Fireflies (Isao Takahata, 1988, Japan). Roxie Theatre. For me, this Studio Ghibli animated film, about the struggles of 2 Japanese children in World War II, packs an emotional wallop even though the story is told in flashback and the viewer knows what happens to the protagonist in the first scene. Also, I think that having children doing the voiceover work in the Japanese version heightens the emotional impact.

Elevator to the Gallows (Louis Malle, 1958, France). Opera Plaza Cinema. From the wonderful performances of the two lead actors (Jeanne Moreau and Maurice Ronet), the beautiful night shots of Paris filmed by cinematographer Henri Decaë, the assured direction of Louis Malle, and the music by Miles Davis, Elevator to the Gallows (Ascenseur pour l'échafaud) is perfection all around. 

10HTE: Lincoln Spector

The San Francisco Bay Area is still home to a rich cinephilic culture nurtured in large part by a diverse array of cinemas, programmers and moviegoers. I'm honored to present a selection of favorite screenings experienced by local cinephiles in 2016. An index of participants can be found here.

Nine-time IOHTE contributor Lincoln Spector operates the Bayflicks website. This list is edited from this post on that site.

Chimes at Midnight screen capture from Criterion DVD

8: Great Shakespeare adaptations digitally restored
Pacific Film Archive
4K DCPs

On one glorious day, the PFA screened two unusual Shakespeare adaptations, both of which are great films in their own right. Orson Welles boiled Henry IV, Part 1 and Part 2, with a smattering of dialog from Richard II, Henry V, and The Merry Wives of Winsor, to make the brilliant Chimes at Midnight. Akira Kurosawa rethought King Lear into his last masterpiece, a Japanese fable called Ran. The digital restorations bring both of these films to life – especially Chimes, which until now had never been screened as Welles intended.

7: The Long Voyage Home
Pacific Film Archive
New 35mm preservation print

John Ford, at the peak of his powers, turned four plays by Eugene O’Neill into one coherent story about merchant marines (screenwriter Dudley Nichols and cinematographer Gregg Toland helped a lot, of course). The sailors talk about giving up the sea, but they never do. UCLA recently created a new preservation negative; the print I saw – struck from that negative – was a thing of beauty.

Runaway Train screen shot from Warner DVD of Electric Boogaloo: the Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films

6: Trains on Film
Rafael
35mm & DCP

Film historian David Thomson and poet/novelist Michael Ondaatje took over the Rafael’s main theater for a three-day festival about the mixture of cinema and locomotives. I attended Saturday, and caught a gorgeous print of Shanghai Express, a beautiful, digital presentation of The Lady Vanishes, and a stunning, mouth-watering studio print of Runaway Train. Each movie was preceded by clips from other films, and followed by a discussion with Thomson and Ondaatje.

5: Blood Simple & Criterion
Castro
San Francisco International Film Festival
DCP

The SFIFF celebrated Janus Films and the Criterion Collection with two panel discussions and a screening of the Coen Brothers’ Blood Simple. The event started with film critic Scott Foundas interviewing Criterion’s Jonathan Turell and and Janus’ Peter Becker. Then they screened Blood Simple, newly restored by the two often-collaborating companies. Then the Coen Brothers and cinematographer Barry Sonnenfeld (now a director) came on stage for another panel discussion. Great movie, and great talk, as well.

4: Singin’ in the Rain 
Pacific Film Archive
DCP
My favorite musical contains several of the best dance routines in film history. And when no one is singing or dancing, it’s one of the funniest comedies of the 1950s. I doubt there’s a better piece of pure entertainment. The DCP’s image quality was decent, but I’ve seen better; and the audio was a relatively new 5.1 mix rather than the original mono. But the audience response, with laughter and applause (and one little kid’s “Yeww!” at a kiss), reminded me just how wonderful Singin’ works theatrically.

3: Diary of a Lost Girl
New Mission
Blu-ray

G.W. Pabst made Diary of a Lost Girl in 1929, but its story of sexual hypocrisy seems very appropriate today. Men use attractive women, worship them, then toss them to the curb. And only the women are punished for what the men do to them. Louise Brooks, always brilliant and beautiful, plays a rape victim thrown out by her family and forced to make her own way. The New Mission’s beautiful Theater 1 provided a great venue, and The Musical Art Quintet combined classical music and jazz to carry the emotions and enhance the occasional humor. A presentation from the San Francisco Silent Film Festival.

Image provided by contributor

2: Do the Right Thing
Pacific Film Archive
35mm

For a 27-year-old film, Do the Right Thing feels very much like the here and now. By focusing on a few blocks of Brooklyn over the course of one very hot day, Lee dramatizes and analyzes everything wrong (and a few things right) about race relationships in America. And yet the movie is touching, funny, warm-hearted, and humane. It’s beautifully written, acted, photographed, paced, and edited. The blazingly glorious 35mm print was a revelation, and the PFA’s Meyer sound system found new strength in the original Dolby Stereo Spectral Recording soundtrack.

1: The Italian Straw Hat
Castro
San Francisco Silent Film Festival
35mm

I’ve known about this French silent comedy for years, and when I finally got to see it, I wasn’t disappointed. A man on his way to be married runs into trouble when his horse eats a woman’s hat. If she comes home without her hat, her husband will figure out that she has a lover. And that lover is a short-tempered army officer who insists that our hero find an identical hat immediately. The story is ridiculous, but who cares when the movie is this funny. The laughing audience and the live accompaniment by the Guenter Buchwald Ensemble kept the energy flowing.

10HTE: David Robson

The San Francisco Bay Area is still home to a rich cinephilic culture nurtured in large part by a diverse array of cinemas, programmers and moviegoers. I'm honored to present a selection of favorite screenings experienced by local cinephiles in 2016. An index of participants can be found here.

Five-time IOHTE contributor David Robson is the Film/Video Curatorial Assistant at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. He almost never documents his movie-viewing at his own blog the House of Sparrows, and he cohabitates with those adorable simian cinephiles at Monkeys Go To Movies.

Blow Up screen shot from Warner DVD 

I insist, likely to the point of tedium, that Noir City is at its best when it goes "not quite noir" or even "...wait a minute is this even noir?". Fedora'd purists be damned: expanding the scope of the series into other realms brings a noir perspective to familiar movies that, when it clicks, renders them new. Case in point: the series' final screening of Antonioni's Blow-Up, which played to a packed house that included many of the Noir City faithful, and the often rowdy NC crowd was taken into the movie's confidence, watching the climactic tennis match unfold in rapt silence. It felt like I was seeing this famous, much-debated scene for the first time, and I've never felt an Antonioni movie connect so powerfully with an audience.

About four times a year the San Francisco Symphony accompanies a film screening with its score performed live. And though neither the venue nor its audience seem to understand the differences between these events and regular film screenings it proved the ideal way to experience Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo, giving Bernard Herrmann's score the primary focus. Hearing and seeing the score performed live proved that the story had the scope and depth of an opera, with Herrmann deploying Wagnerian motifs to dizzying ends. Kim Novak's act 3 confession played like an aria in this context, proving my suspicion that a composer of a film (specifically this composer for this film) could be its most powerful auteur.

The conflict of interest prevents me from listing any of the offerings of Yerba Buena Center for the Arts' film program, but I feel I can name a film that screened there prior to my return there: Joel Shepard's entire Gothic Cinema series (link here, please: Gothic Cinema: Darkness and Desire ) was a beautiful cross-section of shadowy horrors, fantasies, and romances, and among its many gems I got to see Jack Clayton's The Innocents for the first time. The gorgeous 35mm allowed it to shine within the context of the series, but even without the support of its fellow Gothics Jack Clayton's tale of a governess protecting her charges from unseen threats was and is clearly a superior picture. Crystalline photography by Freddie Francis, and even the 20th Century Fox logo is tastefully, powerfully deployed at movie's start.

The Matador image provided by contributor 

The 21st century closer of the Castro's Bond and Beyond series paired the lite entertainment of Die Another Day with Richard Shepard's spectacular black comedy The Matador. The latter features a post-Bond Pierce Brosnan in exceptionally sybaritic form as a strung-out hitman, with fine support from Greg Kinnear as a square businessman caught in his orbit and Hope Davis as Kinnear's wise, adoring spouse. It had been a dark horse favorite in 2005, and it was an absolute joy to experience again, its three lead characters returning like cherished friends, David Tattersall's photography capturing an eye-popping palette of colors. Lynn Cursaro pointed out that too rarely does rep cinema venture into the recent past, naming this movie as exactly the kind of hidden gem that are due another shot. Her hilarious posts about the movie in the days following the screening helped extend its spell.

Prince is Dead, Long Live Prince. And much, much gratitude to our friends at the Alamo Drafthouse for scoring the lovely print of Sign O' the Times. The revival of Purple Rain in the wake of Prince's departure was inevitable, but Sign appears to be Prince's greatest cinematic testament, showcasing its star's considerable talent and charisma (and more-than-adequate directing chops, as well) while giving his band plenty of space to stretch out in individual and group moments. The greatest wake of the year.

Speaking of the Drafthouse: Mike Keegan's seized the standard of late-nite grindhouse programming, but my favorite of the films I saw under that aegis was Robert Altman's little-seen and less-regarded OC & Stiggs. It's a bizarrely ramshackle 80s teen comedy that feels like it's going to self-destruct at any second, but the Beast is one of cinema's greatest cars, the King Sunny Ade concert is an incredibly cathartic set-piece, and the obnoxious title heroes are no moreso than any of Altman's other two-against-the-world double-acts. The final freeze-frame seals Altman's affection for them, and our own.

Suture image provided by contributor 

A pair of digital restorations seemed to be dancing across rep venues in tandem, and they both wound up at the Roxie the same week: Mario Bava's Blood and Black Lace was presented with loving care, its digital makeover preserving Bava's gorgeously lurid color schemes and giving Carlo Rustichelli's score a nice boost. Its starkly duo-chrome dance partner, McGehee and Spiegel's Suture, showed none of its age, its Shinoda and Teshigahara-inspired staging rendered with stark clarity.

It's funny how ubiquitous a rarely-seen movie can get, but one doesn't complain. The Vienna series that began in Berkeley at Pacific Film Archive, then went south-west to the Stanford, gave us multiple looks at Powell & Pressburger's Oh Rosalinda!! (And PFA's Powell & Pressburger retro in December gave it yet another curtain call.) Not knowing I'd get another chance I took in the first screening, after which I doubted I'd see a more visually splendid movie in 2016. (I was right.) Anton Walbrook, an actor always well-deployed by the Archer, dove into the Die Fledermaus role with zeal, capped with a polite but weary summation that shook even now, far from Vienna, but resonating with our current wars.

The Vienna series continued into the days after the election. Badly wanting to get away from the ongoing flood of terrible news, I hopped on Caltrain and headed to the Stanford Theatre. Herbert Ross' The Seven-Per-Cent Solution was a movie I'd been longing to see again, and the meeting between Nicol Williamson's Sherlock Holmes and Alan Arkin's Sigmund Freud was a connoisseur's delight. But the scene in which Freud levelled up to destroy an anti-Semite on the tennis court, was what I needed to see that day.

With love and gratitude to all of the programmers whose diligent work makes picking ten difficult, and a particular shout-out to Elliot Lavine, who's about to make Portland, Oregon a better place.

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.

No Home Movie (2015)

A scene from Chantal Akerman's NO HOME MOVIE, playing at the 59th San Francisco International Film Festival, April 21 - May 5 2016. Courtesy of San Francisco Film Society.

WHO: The late, great Chantal Akerman directed, wrote, shot, and co-produced this, her final film completed and released before her October 5, 2015 suicide. She also is credited with doing the sound, and appears on camera as well.

WHAT: I'm only allowed 100 words for this capsule review (perhaps perversely, given all the virtual ink that has been spilled over it). Here goes:

More than a match as bookend for Je, Tu, Il, Elle (Akerman's 1974 rumination on youth & possibility) this methodical "slow cinema" portrait explores memory, domesticity, and the aching paradoxes of our interconnecting technologies. Chantal's sub-prosumer camera films her real & virtual visits with her Auchwitz-survivor mother, demonstrating the familial routines (in multiple senses of the word) that informed her own life and films. The fact that their conversations (about family history, unpeeled potatoes, etc.) are so often funny only sets up the heartbreaking finale, foreshadowed by long stretches of wordless views of empty rooms and the Israeli desert.

WHERE/WHEN: Screens at the Roxie today at 4:00 and the Pacific Film Archive at 12:30 on Saturday, April 30, both screenings part of the San Francisco International Film Festival. It also screens at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts at 7:30 PM each night May 19-21, and 2:30 PM May 22.

WHY: When I wrote about the three (to my knowledge) brand-new screening venues at SFIFF the other day, I left out the Roxie because it had been used as a festival venue for a handful of 2015 screenings, including an underattended but captivating director-in-person screening of Stanton Kaye's 1969 Brandy in the Wilderness. (Also because it isn't screening The Apostate). But I'm pleased that the festival's geographical hop to the Mission has been able to give Frisco's longest-running dedicated cinema a chance to shine under the spotlight of North America's longest-running international film festival. If you haven't been to the Roxie in a while, they've upgraded their digital projection system but still operate 35mm projection in the main theatre (it'll be used to screen Alexandre Larose's brouillard #14 on Wednesday). Though the venue has had issues with noisy neighbors disturbing contemplative cinema screenings in years past, my most recent trips to the venue in the past several months have been thankfully free of such distractions. Hopefully they'll remain so for today's showing of No Home Movie.


To update my previous comments on the Alamo Drafthouse-run New Mission, when I saw Akerman's film there on Friday afternoon I learned that SFIFF screenings in the venue will not include full table service throughout the film, as normal Alamo Drafthouse screenings always do. The full menu is available, but orders are taken before the film begins, and food, drink and bill are all promised to arrive by the twenty-minute mark of a given program, so as to minimize distractions. I barely noticed anyone ordering or delivering during No Home Movie.

This twenty-minute mark coincides with the traditional festival cut-off time for allowing late-arriving (in the case of a non-sold-out show) festgoers into the theatre. There were a couple of late arrivals to No Home Movie, although they came in only a minute or two after the festival trailers ended and the feature began. I noticed this because I was in House 5- all upstairs screenings of festival films show simultaneously in House 3 and House 5. The disadvantage of House 3 is that it's a smaller room with a slightly smaller screen; the disadvantage of House 5 is that the theatre entrance (and corresponding green EXIT sign) is on the same wall as the screen.

HOW: All screenings of this digital work are digital projections. The YBCA screenings are packaged with discounted showings of Marianne Lambert's 2015 documentary on the filmmaker I Don't Belong Anywhere: the Cinema of Chantal Akerman.

OTHER SFIFF OPTIONS: Today's many festival options include a 35mm screening of Monsoon Wedding with director Mira Nair in person at the Castro, the final screening of the (digital) revival of 1955 British crime drama Cast a Dark Shadow at BAMPFA at noon, and the first showing of the 35mm, 16mm and digital program Between Us: Experimental Shorts at 4:15, also at BAMPFA.

NON-SFIFF OPTION: Today at 5PM, legendary cinema scholar Gene Youngblood will be at the San Francisco Art Institute, where underground film legend George Kuchar taught for over half his life (he passed away in 2011). Youngblood will be presenting his latest research project Tarnished Angel (named for a film by one of Kuchar's favorite directors, Douglas Sirk), regarding Kuchar's diary films. I'm not sure if the presentation is a screening, a lecture, or a combination, but it's sure to be a unique look at a crucial figure of Frisco Bay filmmaking history.

The Apostate (2015)

A scene from Federico Veiroj's THE APOSTATE, playing at the 59th San Francisco International Film Festival, April 21 - May 5, 2016. Courtesy of San Francisco Film Society.

WHO: Uruguayan autuer Federico Veiroj directed this as his feature-length follow-up to A Useful Life from 2010. He also co-wrote and co-produced it.

WHAT: I haven't seen, or even heard much about The Apostate yet, but here's a passage on it from Amber Wilkinson's Filmmaker Magazine report from the San Sebastian Film Festival where it screened last Fall:

There’s comedy and plenty to think about, too, in Federico Veiroj’s third feature The Apostate, a wry character study of a man faced with a wall of bureaucracy as he tries to extract himself from the Catholic Church at the same time as facing his own existential demons. The winner of a Special Mention from the main jury and the international critics’ FIPRESCI prize, it is much funnier than the title might suggest. It features a great debut performance from Álvaro Ogalla, loosely riffing on his own life; there’s also a slyly impressive nod to Luis Buñuel, and Veiroj retains a lightness of touch and a warmth that draws you to his hapless hero.

WHERE/WHEN: Screens 8:45 PM tonight at the new BAMPFA (Pacific Film Archive), 8:30 PM Tuesday April 26th at the Victoria, and 3:30 PM Wednesday April 27 at the Alamo Drafthouse at the New Mission, all part of the San Francisco International Film Festival.

WHY: The Apostate is exactly the kind of film I depend on the San Francisco International Film Festival to see. It's a follow-up to a film that failed to get a theatrical release in the Bay Area, but which I loved and which inspired me to delve into a national cinema I knew nothing about. This one has a distribution deal, but one that seems unlikely to give the film a post-festival reprise on Frisco Bay cinema screens. If I'm wrong about that, I doubt I'd be wrong to predict it won't show on a screen larger than some of the smaller ones at the Opera Plaza or 4-Star. Seeing this on a bigger screen at this year's SFIFF is one of my priorities this week.

My choice of screens are three that I've yet to see a SFIFF film at, as I believe they're all brand-new venues for the festival. Of course the Pacific Film Archive has long been a key SFIFF partner, but having moved operations down the hill, a block from the Downtown Berkeley BART station this year, and rebranding more officially as BAMPFA in order to highlight its reunion with the Berkeley Art Museum physical space, it's hardly the same venue where I've seen so many wonderful SFIFF screenings in the past decade or so. Though I expect the same high quality (and popcorn-free) presentation standards that I've experienced at the prior venue and at most of my visits to the new space since it opened a few months ago.

The Victoria is one of San Francisco's oldest surviving theatres, but I've never heard of it used as a SFIFF venue. (Granted my direct history with the festival doesn't even span two full decades of the nearly six the organization has existed, but if the Victoria was used between the festival's 1957 founding and my late-1990s participation, it hasn't been mentioned in the histories I've read, which highlight other historical festival venues like the Metro and the Palace of Legion of Honor). Earlier this month I attended another festival (Crossroads) at the Victoria, and can vouch for the size and quality of the digital projection and sound there (I plan to discuss that venue's 16mm projection in a future post, although it's a moot point during SFIFF as all screenings there are expected to be digital) although not the popcorn, which is some of the worst in the city.

Finally, the Alamo Drafthouse at the New Mission. This is the opposite of BAMPFA's new building for a venerable organization: the New Mission is a very old building that hadn't been used as a cinema for about twenty years before being refurbished and since December 2015 operated by a new (to Frisco Bay) organization: the Texas-based cinema/restaurant chain Alamo Drafthouse. There's no question that Alamo's new presence at Mission and 22nd Street has shifted some of the gravity in San Francisco's screening scene, and there's probably no clearer evidence of this than SFIFF's abandonment of the Kabuki Theatre and the Western Addition/Fillmore/Japantown by making the New Mission its 2016 flagship venue. My first visit to the Drafthouse upon its opening was decidedly mixed- I found the wait-staff very distracting despite their attempts to be inobtrusive while delivering all kinds of food and drink (including very expensive, though admittedly tasty, popcorn) to other patrons. More recent visits have been more pleasant if not perfect; some ninja training must have been put into place, although there are certain seats I will still try to avoid so as not to be frequently bumped or otherwise bothered. SFIFF screenings at the New Mission will NOT be employing the usual Alamo Drafthouse advance-seat-selection method. We'll see how that plays out.

More coverage of the San Francisco International Film Festival is being collected at Keyframe Daily. I'd particularly like to highlight my friend Michael Guillén's interview with SFIFF lead programmer Rachel Rosen.

HOW: All screenings of The Apostate will be digital.

OTHER SFIFF SCREENINGS: Tonight at 6:00 is the sole SFIFF screening of Barbara Kopple's new music documentary Miss Sharon Jones! at the Castro Theatre. Today also marks the first festival screenings of new films by Zhang Yang (Paths of the Soul), Chantal Akerman (No Home Movie) and Hong Sangsoo (Right Now, Wrong Then).

NON-SFIFF OPTION: Not far from most of the other SFIFF venues in the Mission, at 8PM Artists' Television Access is screening several Paul Clipson 16mm and Super-8mm films in their native formats. What's most notable about the showing is that they'll be screened in silence for the first (and possibly last) time ever- Clipson normally works with musicians who provide soundtracks to his films, and it should be a very different experience to see them unspool in a manner more like a Stan Brakhage or Nathaniel Dorsky film. I somehow think Henri Langlois and Jonas Mekas might approve...

I Only Have Two Eyes: 2014 Edition

Screen capture from Warner DVD of Macao

We're already well into the 2015 film-going year, but it's not too late to take time to reflect on the cinematic character of 2014 before it recedes into memory too far. One major release bucked trends by bringing 35mm and 70mm projectors back to life in a few cinema spaces. Otherwise, 35mm screenings of new films all but disappeared from the Frisco Bay screening landscape, with only the 4-Star in San Francisco and the Bluelight Cinemas in Cupertino by year's-end still regularly playing whatever new commercially-available films they're able to track down prints for from the studios still striking them. Remaining film projectors at a place like the Opera Plaza were so under-utilized in the past twelve months that learning that the venue just the other day removed them from all but one of its tiny screening rooms (installing DCP-capable equipment into its two comparatively "larger" houses) felt completely unsurprising and barely disappointing at all to me. It's safe to say that film festivals are no longer a home for 35mm either; as far as I'm aware the only new films that screened in that format at any local fests in 2014 were the throwback short Broncho Billy and the Bandit's Secret at the Broncho Billy Silent Film Festival in June, and Yoji Yamada's The Little House at Mill Valley in October.

Most of the major local festivals have only kept the embers of sprocketed film warm in 2014 either by showing 16mm works by "experimental" artists still employing celluloid, or by showing a few revival titles in 35mm. Indeed, revivals and repertory houses are now where almost all of the action is at for those who like to view light passing through 35mm strips onto screens. Frisco Bay still has venues where this is a major component of programming, as well as a growing contingent of cinema spaces finding creative ways to attract audiences out of their home-viewing patterns (which are shifting themselves) by embracing digital-age developments. I'm eager to see what 2015 will bring to the cinephiliac landscape in San Francisco and its surroundings. Changes are afoot; the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley will be closing midyear to prepare for a move to a new, more transit-connected space; meanwhile the biggest DCP advocate among its programming team has just retired. The Alamo Drafthouse is expected to open its first branch in the region in 2015 as well, at a site within walking distance of several cherished repertory haunts. As highlighted in the new Film-Friendly Links section of the Film On Film Foundation website, Alamo CEO Tim League appears committed to involving 35mm in his company's continued expansion. I'm excited to see how that shakes out.

My annual "I Only Have Two Eyes" survey of local cinephiles' favorite screenings of revival and repertory films may have more mentions of digital screenings than ever for 2014, but as you'll see as I unveil the various contributions over the next week or so, there is plenty of diversity of format, venue, and of course the films themselves, in their selections. I'm so pleased to have gotten a strong turnout for this year's poll, including many participants from the past seven years when I've conducted it, as well as new "faces". Enjoy perusing their lists and comments as more are added!

January 26: Veronika Ferdman, who writes for Slant Magazine, In Review Online and elsewhere.
January 26: Lucy Laird, Operations Director for the SF Silent Film Festival.
January 27: Michael Hawley, who blogs at his own site film-415.
January 27: Jesse Hawthorne Ficks, educator at the Academy of Art & MiDNiTES FOR MANiACS
January 28: Margarita Landazuri, who writes for Turner Classic Movies & elsewhere.
January 28: Ben Armington, Box Cubed Box Office guy for many Bay Area Film Festivals.
January 29: Terri Saul, a visual artist who posts capsule reviews on Letterboxd.
January 29: Lincoln Spector, the proprietor of Bayflicks.
January 30: Michael Guillén, schoolmaster of The Evening Class and contributor to other publications.
January 30: David Robson, editorial director of Jaman and caretaker of The House of Sparrows.
January 31: Jonathan Kiefer, critic for SF Weekly and the Village Voice.
January 31: Adrianne Finelli, artist, educator, and co-curator of A.T.A.'s GAZE film series.
February 1: Haroon Adalat, a designer, illustrator and video editor.
February 1: Maureen Russell, cinephile and Noir City film festival volunteer.
February 2: Ryland Walker Knight, a writer and filmmaker with a new short at SF IndieFest.
February 2: Carl Martin, film projectionist and keeper of the FOFF Bay Area Film Calendar.
February 3: Claire Bain, an artist, filmmaker and writer.
February 4: Brian Darr, a.k.a. yours truly.