SFFILM 62 Day 9: Midnight Traveler

The 62st San Francisco International Film Festival is over half done; it runs through April 23rd. Each day during the festival I'll be posting about a festival selection I've seen or am anticipating.

A scene from Hassan Fazili's Midnight Traveler, playing at the 2019 San Francisco International Film Festival, April 10-23, 2019. Courtesy of SFFILM.

Midnight Traveler (USA: Hassan Fazili, 2019)
playing: 3:00PM today at the Theater at Children's Creativity Museum and 5:30PM tomorrow at BAMPFA.

This is, like yesterday's pick Aniara, another "Hold Review" title, for which I can only write 75 words until a commercial release occurs (it's distributed by Oscilloscope). Here's my stab:

What'll you see in this wrenching autobiographical documentary about filmmakers fleeing Afghanistan to the EU through Iran, Turkey, Bulgaria and Serbia? Daughters of a landlocked nation enjoying their first tides. A mother summoning the resources to fulfill her family’s needs under extremely harsh conditions. A father questioning his overcommittment to his profession. Ugly anti-immigrant sentiment up close. A broken international refugee system & its harrowing consequences for millions. What'll you do? That's up to you.

So that's the movie, which was funded in part through SFFILM's Documentary Film Fund grant. I believe last night's showing, the local premiere, was somehow the first time I'd attended the first SFFILM showing of a feature-length film funded through the organization's robust granting programs. There was a good deal of deserved pomp and circumstance for this moment, and in fact it was the first screening this year I've attended with now-outgoing SFFILM Executive Director Noah Cowan present. He doesn't appear to be phoning in his final few weeks as a lame duck ED; he seemed very much in his element interviewing Midnight Traveler's co-producer/editors Emelie Coleman Mahdavian & Kristina Motwani, and hosting a post-screening panel with them as well as with Sarah Leah Whitson of the Middle East and North Africa Division at Human Rights Watch. Today and tomorrow's screenings are expected to have Mahdavian & Motwani on hand as well, though not Whitson.

SFFILM62 Day 9
Other festival options: Today's the final showing of another documentary with a similar title: Midnight Family, about Mexico City ambulance drivers; it plays 6:00PM at the Children's Creativity Museum theatre shortly after Midnight Traveler ends. Just to keep things extra-confusing. (At least they're saving Midnight Cowboy for tomorrow). Tonight's also the final SFFILM show of another Documentary Film Fund recipient about refugees and asylum seekers, this time set much more close to home, as it follows four newcomers to San Francisco. Unsettled: Seeking Refuge in America screens 8:00PM at the Grand Lake Theatre in Oakland.

Non-SFFILM option: At 7:30PM tonight at Artists' Television Access, moving image artist Roger Beebe will be on hand to present a program of work made in the past five years, some of it brand new, including a performance piece for four simultaneously running 16mm projectors called Lineage (for Norman McLaren). Who says SFFILM has the monopoly on world premieres this week? Beebe is in town thanks to Headlands Center for the Arts in Marin, where he is currently participating in a residency. The screening is a co-presentation between that organization and SF Cinematheque, as is a screening of work by fellow Headlands resident Peter Burr next Thursday at the same venue. The rest of the SF Cinematheques' Spring calendar includes two co=presentations with the San Francisco Silent Film Festival (namely, a DCP of Alexander Dovzhenko's rural masterpiece Earth and a 35mm print the earliest so-called "feature length" film ever shown by SFSFF, Francesco Bertolini, Adolfo Padovan & Giuseppe de Liguoro's 1911 version of Dante's L'Inferno. Both films will be accompanied by music by the Matti Bye Ensemble, members of whom were themselves Headlands Center for the Arts residents several years ago. And if that's too much interconnection for you to handle, try this one: the final currently listed upcoming SF Cinematheque show is another co-presentation, this time with Oakland's The Black Aesthetic, of work by Akosua Adoma Owusu, including last year's SFFILM selection Mahogany Too. No indication if her 2019 SFFILM selection Pelourinho, They Don’t Really Care About Us will be included in the program as well.

SFFILM 62 Day 2: High Life

The 62st San Francisco International Film Festival began last night and runs through April 23rd. Each day during the festival I'll be posting about a festival selection I've seen or am anticipating.

A still from Claire Denis's High Life, playing at the 2019 San Francisco International Film Festival, April 10-23, 2019. Courtesy of SFFILM.

High Life (FRANCE/GERMANY/UK/POLAND/USA: Claire Denis, 2018)
playing: 8:00 tonight only at the Victoria

I was able to see an advance screening of High Life, which opens for at least a week-long engagement tonight at theatres around San Francisco, as well as screening at the San Francisco International Film Festival. But I don't think Claire Denis, responsible for amazing films such as Beau Travail, Friday Night and 35 Shots of Rum, is expected to be on hand for any of the showings at the Embarcadero, Kabuki, etc. The first tickets I bought to a festival event this year, long before my press credentials were confirmed, was to see one of my very favorite working directors appear at a SFFILM event along with a showing of her latest; at least two previous attempts to bring Denis to the festival or a festival-sponsored event (in 2011 and 2018) were fruitless but tonight should mark the long-awaited ripening of that strawberry.

Strawberries figure into High Life, which features several key scenes in a garden tended by the prisoners living aboard a spacecraft heading directly toward a black hole. Like Denis's L'Intrus (like the aforementioned trio, also a film that made its local premiere at the San Francisco International Film Festival) it's the kind of enigmatic, expectation-confounding movie that defies being reviewed after having been seen only once, although Durga Chew-Bose has made an excellent first stab. (I'm assuming her article's title indicates she hadn't seen High Life more than once before writing it.) It's part of why I'm so glad to get another chance tonight. I suspect many Frisco Bay Denis fans for whom tonight's screening is their first will want to make time during the festival to attend another, non-festival, showing somewhere. I'm an advocate of balancing film festival attendance with other screenings, which is why my daily fest picks will always include a "Non-SFFILM option" paragraph at the bottom.

I've heard grumblings from Denis aficionados about the festival's choice of venue for tonight's event; the Victoria is not a year-round cinema space and it has in some past years proven less than satisfactory in its presentation quality, especially in the sound department. If last year's presentation of First Reformed there is any indication, however, such fears should be relatively unfounded. Like Paul Schrader's feature (one of my favorites of last year) also distributed by A24, High Life revels in the digital video aesthetic, never attempting to mimic celluloid filmic textures. Denis and her director of photography Yorick Le Saux create a cool, synthetic aesthetic to establish High Life's setting. It's also entirely in English (many people calling it her first English-language feature are forgetting how much of Trouble Every Day is uttered in English, but even that film had a few subtitled moments) thus making the sight-line issues from certain spots in the theatre less problematic. And unless the 2019 sound set-up isn't as good as what the Victoria had installed for First Reformed and other 2018 festival screenings, I expect we'll be able to hear Juliette Binoche's, André Benjamin's and Robert Pattinson's dialogue as well as we did Amanda Seyfried's, Cedric the Entertainer's and Ethan Hawke's last year. The same should go for Stuart Staples/Tindersticks' music compared to Brian Williams/Lustmord's.

Between the guest and the movie, you can see why I had to feature High Life as my daily pick of the festival. The only drawback is that the show has long since gone to RUSH status, meaning that advance tickets for the public have all sold and anyone who wants to get a ticket tonight will have to wait in a line in hopes of a lucky break. My experience with SFFILM RUSH lines is that it's rare that you need that much luck however; an hour or so of waiting ought to do it. But given the rarity of a Denis in-person appearance in Frisco Bay, I'm not sure the standard advice will hold this time. Luckily, my daily always include other promising festival options. Read on...

SFFILM62 Day 2
Other festival options: This year's SFFILM edition includes four films screening in 35mm prints, and two of them are tonight. One, Tamara Jenkins' under-discussed The Savages is showing as part of a Laura Linney tribute, and like High Life is currently at RUSH status. The other, Jodie Mack's inventive animated experimental documentary The Grand Bizarre is the only brand-new 35mm film screening at the festival; it shows 6PM tonight at YBCA and has two more future festival screenings.

Speaking of RUSH status, tonight's BAMPFA screening of First Night Nerves is the only one of three festival showing of this particular movie NOT currently at RUSH status. Director Stanley Kwan (perhaps best known for his Ruan Ling-yu biopic Centre Stage) is expected to be in attendance.

Non-SFFILM option: If you missed local artist and educator Jeremy Rourke's 2017 hybrid animation/documentary/performance work I'll Be Around when he staged it a year and a half ago, you simply have to go to Artists' Television Access tonight at 8PM to see him re-stage it. It's a site-specific piece so it's better to see it at ATA than anywhere else it might be performed. Here's a short review from Kristin Cato.

Claire Bain's 2018 Eyes

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 2018. An index of participants can be found here. 

Four-time contributor Claire Bain is an artist based in San Francisco.

Calle Chula image from Video Data Bank

“Have You Seen Her? La Misión” ...”20th year anniversary retrospective showcase [of] the varied responses to the transformations experienced in the Mission District during the late 1990s dot.com boom....” Roxie / Cine + Más San Francisco Latino Film Festival

Wicked Woman Castro Theater

When the Beat Drops (not an old movie, but independent). Frameline42 LGBTQ Film Festival

Rififi Castro Theater

Black Orpheus Castro Theater

West Side Story Castro Theater

Zero For Conduct screen capture from Criterion DVD

Zero for Conduct and À Propos de Nice by Jean Vigo, Pacific Film Archive

The Adventures of Robin Hood (with Errol Flynn) Castro Theater

Marie-Octobre Roxie Theater

All of the ATA@SFPL screenings

John Slattery's 2018* Eyes

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 2018. An index of participants can be found here. 

Two-time IOHTE contributor John Slattery is a filmmaker based in Berkeley. He decided to provide a list of favorites from 2017 as well as one from 2018.

The Headless Woman image screen capture from Strand DVD

1.     La Cienaga, Holy Girl, and The Headless Woman - Lucrecia Martel (PFA) Three very strong examples of her masterful filmmaking (even though I am of the very few who would not have great things to say or write about her latest film, Zama). 
2.     Satantango -  Béla Tarr, (PFA) Much more than a great film. Much more. More. 
3.     The Apple - Samira Makhmalbaf, (PFA) I can see what she did – there is little mystery to the mechanics of it. But what she did, and the way she did it, is so, so great!  
4.     The Hart of London - Jack Chambers (Artists' Television Access by San Francisco Cinematheque) A film that remains the single most memorable, shocking, beautiful, haunting and amazing film, for me, of the last few years.   

2017
The First Teacher - Andrei Konchalovsky  (PFA)

Johnny Guitar - Nicholas Ray (PFA)
L’Argent - Robert Bresson  (PFA)
Kevin Jerome Everson and Edgar Arceneaux (PFA)
Los Olividados - Luis Buñuel - (PFA)
Lost Landscapes of Los Angeles (Internet Archive)
What Have I Done to Deserve This? - Pedro Almodóvar, (PFA)

SFFILM 61 Day 2: Barry

The 61st San Francisco International Film Festival began last night and runs through April 17th. Each day during the festival I'll be posting about a festival selection I've seen or am anticipating.

Image from Barry supplied by SFFILM

Barry (USA: Bill Hader & Alex Berg, 2018)
playing: 6:00 tonight only at the Victoria

This is perhaps a perverse choice for the initial daily spotlight from a dedicated cinema blogger who has never seen an episode of Mad Men, Game of Thrones, Orange is the New Black, The Wire, Six Feet Under, or practically any of the marquee titles in the era of "prestige television" that has turned the attention of many potential attendees of thoughtful film presentation toward their home screens with the force of a rare-earth magnet. But this crime comedy series, the first three episodes of which are screening tonight with actors Sarah Goldberg and Henry Winkler (yes, "The Fonz" and the director of Memories of Me and Cop and a Half) expected to attend in lieu of co-creators Hader and Berg, happens to be the only thing playing the festival today that I've had a chance to sample so early in the festival. I spent last weekend in Los Angeles (missing a BAMPFA screening of Salaam Cinema that I later learned was a harbinger of a larger Mohsen Makhmalbaf retrospective there this Fall) and though I didn't go to any movies, my fiancée and I did relax on one of our hosts' comfy couches where she showed us the first (and thus far only available) episode of Barry via her HBO streaming set-up. I wouldn't say I was immediately hooked by the set-up of the eponymous affectless Afghanistan War vet (Hader) being manipulated by an oily opportunist (Stephen Root) to use his savant-like military skills to earn a living as a hit man, but I can't deny enjoying the "worlds collide" frictions that emerge when Barry stumbles into an acting class run by a pricey coach (Winkler) from the "tear-'em-down-to-build-'em-up" school, and befriends one of the more volatile students (Goldberg), and the backstage/showbiz humor hits a little closer to where I live. I'm not sure I'm likely to give up a rare chance to see a foreign film just to catch this on a much bigger screen (even with talent in tow) but if there was nothing else in its slot calling my name, I certainly would consider it, especially knowing how long it will likely take me to get around to watching it as a non-subscriber to HBO.

The paradox of the television vs. cinema debate is that, at least under current conventions in this country, television is prohibited from being legally presented in cinemas while movies screen everywhere from IMAX houses to, eventually (and dishearteningly), smartphones. So the kind of rare opportunity to see a new show that, if it isn't quite on the artistic level of Fassbinder, is certainly destined to be more popular than Eight Hours Don't Make A Day, will surely be of interest to viewers who find more appeal in serialized, character-driven narratives than the kinds of narrative-exploding cinematic attractions I tend to seek out. Who knows, perhaps some TV fans will stick around to check out more of the festival, which is certainly a home for a sort of binge watching they might not be so familiar with.

SFFILM61 Day 2
Other festival options: Speaking of film festival television, as of this writing there are still a few FREE tickets for tonight's 8:45PM screening of BBC/PBS co-production Civilizations: How Do We Look (episode 2) at SFMOMA. I doubt it's crucial to have seen episode 1 before diving into this. It's in fact the only one the SFFILM free events not currently at RUSH status. Today also marks the first festival screenings of titles like The Rider, The Workshop, and Angels Wear White, to name a few I've heard strong advance word about.

Non-SFFILM option: Tonight is Artist Television Access's monthly 8PM Open Screening event, where anyone can show their work to the assembled masses on Valencia Street's last outpost of underground, un-gentrified cinema. A wonderful article on ATA's Open Screenings was published earlier this year in Xpress Magazine.

10HTE: Brian Darr

If you've read the seventeen other contributions to by tenth annual I Only Have Two Eyes project attempting to chronicle a hefty portion of the San Francisco Bay Area's best repertory and revival venues and screenings then you know the scene is still robust even as it constantly shifts, opening up new venues as others shutter or pull back. Now it's time for me to (finally) unveil my own top choices from my 2016 filmgoing as experienced from my seat in the audience among friends and strangers.

As usual, I'm essentially limiting my choices to films I'd never seen before at all, as I particularly value the ability I have in the Bay Area to let my first viewings of great films come in the kinds of environments they were intended for in the first place. It was nearly a half-century ago that Jean-Luc Godard said to Gene Youngblood, "I would never see a good movie for the first time on television." I don't strictly hold to this doctrine but I find my home viewings increasingly compromised and theatrical viewings increasingly precious in this distraction-driven era. I could create a shadow list of viewings of films I'd previously seen on television or in an otherwise-unideal circumstance, which came more alive through a 2016 cinema viewing. (Here's a try: Dumbo at the Paramount, In a Lonely Place at Noir City, I Am A Fugitive From a Chain Gang at the Castro, In the Street at the Crossroads festival, When A Woman Ascends the Stairs at BAMPFA, How To Survive A Plague at YBCA, The Grand Budapest Hotel at the Roxie, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me at BAMPFA, Early Spring at BAMPFA, and Halloween at the New Mission.) But without further ado, here are the ten I'm "officially" picking as my 2016 I Only Have Two Eyes selections. Thanks to all my other contributors, to all you readers, and of course to the venues and the filmmakers, dead or alive, whose work made 2016 another grand one for my continuing cinematic self-education and enjoyment.

Heaven's Gate screen capture from Criterion DVD

Heaven's Gate, February 28, 2016

Though I'll definitely be watching the Oscar telecast this year (with reservations) in the hopes that I get to see my old blog-buddy Barry Jenkins accept (or at the minimum, see some of his Moonlight collaborators accept) an award or two, even with the temptation of seeing a newly-more-relevant cinematic titan, and one of the films that inspired it, on the Castro screen, last year I skipped the show without the tiniest shred of compunction in order to catch an extremely epic double-feature in the aforementioned cinema. San Francisco's grandest screen was the ideal place to finally view Michael Cimino's notorious film maudit, which I'm not so surprised to report is now my favorite of his films made up to that point: his 1980 Heaven's Gate. (I haven't delved into Year of the Dragon through Sunchaser but was less-than-thrilled by his swan-song segment of To Each His Own Cinema). It's a sprawling, misshapen masterpiece full of wisdom and folly and a wagon-load of scenes I will absolutely never forget even if I never watch it again- which I certainly will, especially if a 35mm print of this 219-minute cut shows up somewhere again, as it surprisingly did for this Vilmos Zsigmond-tribute showing paired with the also exceptional America America which provided the Haskell Wexler half of the pairing in honor of two great, now-deceased cinematographers. That Cimino joined those two in the pantheon of departed masters only a few months later and that a President was elected who would certainly hate the pro-immigrant themes of these two films soon after that, makes the showing feel all the more special nearly a year later.

Foreign Correspondent, March 20, 2016

I made it back home from a weekend trip to Alfred Hitchcock's Sonoma County stomping grounds just in time to race to Palo Alto's Stanford Theatre for the final screening of his second Hollywood film, which is my second-to-last of his Hollywood films to view (I still haven't seen Topaz). Perhaps a decade or so ago I made a vow never again to watch a Hitchcock film for the first time on home video, and I've broken it only once since (for his silent Champagne, which I missed at the Castro in 2013 to catch a Stanford showing of The Ten Commandments). I'm glad I didn't and waited for this formative, pure entertainment whose 1940 thrills still feel so visceral on a big screen. I only wish I had been able to make it to the same venue in the fall when it showed the ever-rarer Waltzes From Vienna, which marks the end of the string of his British films (beginning with Juno and the Paycock) which, along with the much-later Jamaica Inn, I haven't been able to catch in a cinema yet and thus remain gaps in my Hitchcography. At least I saw several other excellent films from the Stanford's Vienna-themed series (including Spring Parade and Liebelei) and other great 2016 screenings (Hold Back the Dawn, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, A Midsummer Night's Dream) at my hands-down favorite south-of-San Francisco screening venue.

Black Sunday screen capture from Anchor Bay DVD

Black Sunday, April 7, 2016

A 2002 Yerba Buena Center For the Arts retrospective is where I first became acquainted with the visionary, technically audacious cinema of Italian master Mario Bava, whose films like Kill Baby Kill, Five Dolls For an August Moon and Twitch of the Death Nerve make him my personal favorite international horror director from the period between Jacques Tourneur's and David Cronenberg's peaks in that genre. But I couldn't see everything in that 15-year-old retro, so I'd never before seen his very first feature film as an uncredited writer and a credited director. It's appropriate that I return to the scene of the crime (YBCA) to finally view this eerie and intense 1960 film, which not only made a star out of Barbara Steele but also allowed Bava to emerge with a fully-formed style (honed by years as a cinematographer). YBCA's all-35mm Gothic Cinema series was an overall 2016 highlight, also allowing me a chance to finally see wonderfully spooky films like James Whale's The Old Dark House and Jack Clayton's The Innocents for the first time.

Quixote, May 22, 2016

Bruce Baillie is well-known as the founder of Canyon Cinema. He's also one of my very favorite living filmmakers and I'm so glad I had a chance to finally see two of his major works on 16mm for the first time in 2016. Though it was wonderful to see him down from Washington State introducing a screening of his first film On Sundays at New Nothing Cinema in September, an Artists' Television Access showing of his 1965 Quixote was even more precious. It was introduced by a more recent (though not current) Canyon executive director, Denah Johnston, who also showed a lovely film of her own called Sunflowers as well as the great Study of a River by then-gravely-ill master Peter Hutton, as examples of work inspired by Baillie's unique way of seeing. Quixote turns out to be truly monumental work of the proto-hippie counterculture, on the order of Baillie's post-hippie Quick Billy if not ever greater. Shot all over the American West and edited with the aplomb of the most skillful of the Soviet masters, it's Baillie's grand, righteous, sorrowfully patriotic/anti-patriotic statement all in one. Other 2016 repertory highlights in an experimental vein included 16mm showings of Thad Povey's Scratch Film Junkies' Saint Louise and Gunvor Nelson's Take Off at SOMArts (the latter also introduced by Johnston, the former by Craig Baldwin) and of Scott Stark's Angel Beach, Paul Clipson's Another Void and Rosario Sotelo's Flor Serpiente among other works at A.T.A.; both of these evenings were organized in conjunction with an undersung SOMArts exhibit called Timeless Motion that I had a very small hand in assisting in the installation of. I also loved seeing Ron Rice's The Flower Thief and Pat O'Neill introducing his Water & Power at BAMPFA, Caryn Cline showing Lucy's Terrace and her other films at the Exploratorium, Toney Merritt showing EF and many of his other films and Lynn Marie Kirby showing Stephanie Beroes's Recital at New Nothing, and Ishu Patel's Perspectrum and James Whitney's Lapis among others presented by Ben Ridgeway at Oddball (whose weekly screenings have sadly been put on hiatus). It was another good year in this regard.

Gate of Flesh screen capture from Criterion DVD

Gate of Flesh, May 28, 2016

I like the latest iteration of the Pacific Film Archive, now rebranded as BAMPFA, in its newly-built structure just a block or so from the Downtown Berkeley BART station. I don't love it yet, though, because it can't compete with fifteen years of memories made at the old corrugated-metal building further up the hill. It doesn't help that my approach to cinema-going doesn't seem to mesh quite as well with some of the patterns being established at the new venue; earlier showtimes, a reintroduction of the canon, more DCPs (the latter two may be related), etc. And I'm not quite used to the fact that though there are more seats, there also seem to be more sold-out shows; more than once I've arrived at the venue only to be turned away for lack of space, something that hadn't happened to me, no matter how spontaneous my arrival had been, in about a decade before 2016. But BAMPFA still allowed me to see some wonderful 35mm prints of films I'd never watched before, including several Maurice Pialat films, John Ford's The Long Voyage Home, Nick Ray's The Lusty Men, and a decent sampling of the Anna Magnani series that played in the fall. But my year's happiest personal discovery there was certainly that of Seijun Suzuki's 1964 Gate of Flesh, first released when he was a mere 41 (he's now 93 and counting!) It's a maximalist melodrama set in the world of makeshift brothels of post-war Tokyo at it's bombedest-out, filled with tremendous color and energy and some of the most inventive double-exposures made since the silent era.

Anguish, August 9, 2016

When I first heard in April 2012 that the Alamo Drafthouse was going to be renovating the long-shuttered New Mission Theatre I was living just a few blocks away, and was excited but skeptical that I'd still be living there by the time it arrived. Sure enough, I was evicted and moved across town within two years and the venue didn't open for nearly another two. But I've still found the allure of another repertory venue filling some of the long-standing genre gaps in the Frisco Bay screening ecosystem too strong to resist. Alamo's New Mission has something of a reputation for catering to the gentrifying crowd epitomized by the condos next door whose construction were part of the deal to revive the old "Miracle Mile" movie house, and if you look at the prices of their normal tickets and food-and-drink menu items, it's hard to shake that perception. But the theatre's regular late-weeknight, usually-35mm screenings of our grindhouse cinematic heritage for only $6 a seat makes it a godsend for budget-minded cinephiles. The most successful series seems to be Terror Tuesdays, and though it tends to focus pretty strictly on films from the 1970s, 80s and 90s, I can't deny that's a pretty good time period to focus on when it comes to horror movies. Catalan filmmaker Bigas Luna's jaw-dropping 1987 Anguish fits right into that frame, and I'm SO glad I saw it for the first time in a theatre full of other movie lovers who, like me, didn't seem to know what was hitting them. I don't want to spoil a moment of this unique film experience, but I will say that Alamo programmer Mike Keegan (formerly of the Roxie) gave a pitch-perfect introduction that gave us a sense of the intensity of experience we were in for without tipping Bigas's hand in any way. If I could only pick one viewing experience to highlight on this list instead of ten, Anguish would be very much in the running. I've also enjoyed the Alamo's Weird Wednesday programming (especially Walter Hill's Southern Comfort) and, before the admission price more than doubled from $6 to $14, the Music Monday events (especially Donald Cammell's & Nicolas Roeg's Performance).

Manhunter screen capture from MGM DVD

Manhunter, September 3, 2016

I must admit that of all the active filmmakers I see many of my cinephile friends and admireds discussing with passion, Michael Mann is the one that I have traditionally had the most resistance to joining the cult of. Perhaps I've just seen the wrong films (The Keep must be for the advanced Mann-ophile). His 1986 Manhunter, on the other hand, is most definitely the right film. It revels in an eighties-era dread very different from (and to me, more appealing than) the 1990s guignol of Silence of the Lambs, which it technically precurses even if its shared characters are played by different actors, and does a better job at interrogating the wobbly line between society's desecrators and its guardians than any serial-killer movie I can think of. This was screened as part of Jesse Hawthorne Ficks's MiDNiTES FOR MANiACS series, which by the end of 2016 appeared to have departed from the Castro as its primary home for over ten years (after a healthy early-2000s stretch at the 4-Star) and taking up residency at the Roxie (where Manhunter screened) while occasionally venturing into the Exploratorium or the New Mission. The houses are more reliably packed and the films chosen more frequently diverge from my own personal perception of "dismissed, underrated and forgotten films" (this weekend is a tribute to Hayao Miyazaki, whom I love but whom I have a hard time imagining with those labels), but as Ficks has direct contact with a new generation of moving-image-obsessives in his position as a film history teacher at a local school, I'm willing to defer to his definitions. Especially when it means 35mm prints of great films get shown in nearby cinemas.

Viridana, October 14, 2016

What cinema fan doesn't love Luis Buñuel? Finally getting a chance to see his 1961 excoriating re-entry into filming in his homeland after 29 years, in a beautiful 35mm print, would be a highlight of any year. It's a tremendous, unforgettable film, perhaps Buñuel's most Buñuelian, tackling all his usual themes of hypocrisy, sexual obsession, class conflict, etc. with maximum fervor. As much as I love his Mexican and French filmmaking periods, there is something about his few Spanish films that sets them apart. The screening was held at SFMOMA on the second weekend of its first Modern Cinema series devoted to the Criterion Collection and to Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul (its current series is Werner Herzog and Ecstatic Truth and its next series, in June, celebrates 100 years of Jean-Pierre Melville by grouping his films with those of one of his most ardent director acolytes Johnny To). After sampling the venue with Viridiana I was able to re-watch great films by Victor Erice, Hiroshi Teshigahara, and Apichatpong, who was on hand wearing a Canyon Cinema T-Shirt for certain showings. This series marked the relaunching of SFMOMA's film programming after over three years of expansion and refurbishment; the Wattis Theatre got a mild make-over in comparison to much of the rest of the building, a missed opportunity to provide more legroom between rows compounded by a new problem of noise from stairwalking museumgoers infiltrating the theatre space during museum-hours screenings of quiet films. Luckily Viridiana screened after hours, a new capability of the space now that it has a separate public entrance from the expensive-to-insure galleries, and I found one of the better seats in the house to view it from.  Despite its minor problems, I'm glad to have a key piece of Frisco Bay repertory reinstated after such a long absence.

So This Is Paris screen capture from youtube

So This Is Paris, December 3, 2016

Since instating an annual one-day Winter Event (or sometimes Fall Event) at the Castro Theatre as a supplement to its Summer (now moved to late Spring) multi-day festival more than ten years ago, the San Francisco Silent Film Festival has gradually moved more and more to showing most of the latest restorations and rarely-seen archival gems in the summer while using the opposite end of the calendar to bring out well-known warhorses like The Thief of Bagdad or The General or The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. It's like a little favor to the many out-of-towners who attend the multi-day festival that they tend to shy away from showing too many films at the one-day event that they'll really regret missing. In 2016, however, their December Day of Silents may have been even more enticing to certain silent film fans than the June festival; it was to me. Although the latter let me see terrific unknown films like Behind the Door and a program of (minimum) 110-year-old hand-colored European films as well as re-viewing great work by Ozu, Wellman, Clair, Flaherty, etc, the Day of Silents seemed to be programmed right to my fondest viewing desires: a rare chance to see longtime favorites like Eisenstein's Strike and Von Sternberg's The Last Command on the big screen for the first time, a chance to see Raoul Walsh's wonderful (if sadly incomplete) Sadie Thompson for the first time ever, and more, nearly all of it (excepting an early-matinee Chaplin shorts set) in 35mm prints. The highest highlight, however, was seeing the last and probably the best of Ernst Lubitsch's Warner Brothers silents, So This Is Paris from 1926, with a tremendous piano accompaniment from Donald Sosin. Everyone talks about this film's bravura Charleston dance sequence, justifiably, but the rest of the film is also a supreme delight, spoofing the then-in-vogue romantic sheik figure, engineering a perfectly-interlocking love quadrangle based on the same material as the famous Strauss operetta Die Fledermaus, and suffusing the proceedings with a biting gallows humor. It immediately shoots to the top tier of American silent films most shamefully lacking an official DVD release, alongside Lubitsch's next great film The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg (which I'm not sure how to explain the absence of on my very first I Only Have Two Eyes list from when I saw it at SFSFF in 2007).

I Gopher You, December 10, 2016

The Roxie Theater has really improved its repertory-screening game in my eyes over the past year or so, at least in my eyes. Perhaps it's a competitive response to the appearance of the Alamo Drafthouse a few blocks away. Perhaps it's a function of getting the right personnel in place on its staff and its non-profit board. Perhaps it's connected to the November 2015 passage of the Legacy Business Preservation Fund creation, which the Roxie was able to benefit from starting in August 2016. Perhaps all these factors and more contribute. But though the oldest (first opened in 1909) essentially-continuously-operating movie house in San Francisco, if not a much wider geographic area (it's contested), still has challenges to face, it's facing them not only by using creative tools like their current silent auction and upcoming off-site fundraiser, but also by reasserting itself as an essential piece of the Frisco Bay exhibition quilt through its screenings, more of which involved celluloid in 2016 than had been the case in quite a few years. I personally partook in great events like a September Sam Fuller series, a lovely Les Blank program in March, some of the previously-mentioned MiDNiTES FOR MANiACS showings like Manhunter, and more. None were more purely fun than the two all-35mm programs of Warner Brothers animation brought through the Roxie's monthly Popcorn For Breakfast Saturday morning cartoon showcase enthusiastically and knowledgeably hosted by Amanda Peterson. June's set of selections leaned heavily on the great Chuck Jones, and let me view 35mm prints of classics I'd only seen on TV before like Robin Hood Daffy and There They Go-Go-Go; that it was held twenty-four hours before a Castro Jones tribute made for a deeply-immersive weekend for fans of Termite Terrace's most celebrated director. But the Roxie's December dozen, while not ignoring Jones, gave greater attention to his 1950s studio-mates, particularly Robert McKimson. And the program began with a cartoon by my personal favorite of Jones's under-appreciated co-workers, Friz Freleng, which I'm 99% sure I never saw as a kid and 100% sure I hadn't seen as an adult, much less in a great 35mm print. Freleng's 1954 I Gopher You is the fifth cartoon featuring the hilariously over-polite Goofy Gophers voiced by Mel Blanc and Stan Freburg, and the first in which their nemesis is not an antagonistic pooch but the industrial agricultural system itself. "Mac" and "Tosh" find their farmland food supply raided by the mechanisms of post-World War II production, tracing a truck full of freshly-picked vegetables back to the Ajax processing plant. The mazes of conveyor belts and relentless canning contraptions makes for the ideal playground for Freleng's signature "anticipation gags" in which hearty humor derives from the expectation of the fulfillment of a pattern of violence and/or humiliation against a character. Much like the gophers themselves, this well-oiled machine of a film is seemingly small (at only 7 minutes), but packs a formidable wallop. It's available as a bonus on the Warner DVD of His Majesty O'Keefe, which you can rent at Lost Weekend Video.

10HTE: Adrianne Finelli

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 Adrianne Finelli is a filmmaker & GAZE co-curator.

This chronological list is not presented in any type of rated order as I could not begin to weigh these works in relation to one another.

The Fall of the I-Hotel screen shot from online trainer

1
The Fall of the I-Hotel (1983)
dir. Curtis Choy
Artists'Television Access
Thursday, February 11, 2016

This screening was of the most politically resonant and poetically inspiring films that I have seen in recent years. The Fall of the I-Hotel should be required viewing for everyone living in the Bay Area, as was the preceding short film Anatomy of a Mural (1982) by Rick Goldsmith. The screening was programmed by a team of filmmakers, writers and curators who are rediscovering a local library's film print collection and sharing the best of their findings through free public screenings.

2
L'enfance nue (1968)
dir. Maurice Pialat
Pacific Film Archive
Saturday, February 20, 2016

Naked Childhood (L'enfance nue) was the most emotionally charged narrative film that I saw this year, and its true impact is how it restrains emotion into very palpable realism. The story is complex and simple, the performances are jarringly brilliant, the cinematography is beautifully sincere. I tried to see as much of the Pialat series as possible, he is a master of portraying the human depth of feelings.

3
NFPF PreservationHighlights
presented by Jeff Lambert
Pacific Film Archive
Wednesday, February 24, 2016

Jeff Lambert presented this program of recently preserved films. The screening was full of surprising variety and unexpected gems from the National Film Preservation Foundation. Children Who Labor (1912) by Ethel Browning, Interior New York Subway (1905) and Lyman Howe's Famous Ride on a Runaway Train (1921)—all new to me—were fascinating documents. Plus, it was a real treat to see Sid Laverents's Multiple Sidosis (1970) on 35mm.

That Night's Wife screen capture from Eclipse DVD

4
That Night's Wife (Sono yo no tsuma) (1930)
dir. Yasujiro Ozu
Castro Theatre—San Francisco Silent Film Festival
Friday, June 3, 2016

Perhaps the most beautiful silent film I have ever seen—this particular print was stunning, the texture of the film almost became another character. Ozu cleverly hooks us with a suspenseful, noir-like crime plot and slowly shifts the story's core to an intimate family drama. I never remember crying during a silent film, but Emiko Yagumo's brilliant performance as the mother moved me to tears. I'm sure that the nuanced live musical accompaniment by Maud Nelissen also had something to do with my weepy reaction.

5
Within Our Gates (1920)
dir. Oscar Micheaux
Castro Theatre—San Francisco Silent Film Festival
Saturday, June 4, 2016

I left the Castro feeling like I needed to write a thank you letter to each member of the Oakland Symphony and Chorus for their unforgettable performance. This was my first time seeing Micheaux's Within Our Gates, and getting an African-American perspective from that historical era makes me wish I had seen it during my film studies instead of being shown The Birth of a Nation (1915) repeatedly. In addition, the writing and performances are powerful, and the whole is tremendously haunting considering our current political climate.

6
Water and Power (1989)
dir. Pat O'Neill
Pacific Film Archive
Thursday, September 29, 2016

Filmmaker Pat O'Neill was in attendance for this screening of Water and Power plus several short works. It was a joy to see all of the films in the new PFA theater and to hear the discussion that followed the screening. I was blown away by the whole evening. O'Neill is a master that remains curious and prolific. It was wonderful to also see the exhibition of his artwork in the gallery beforehand. The range of work—painting, drawing, sculpture and installation was remarkable.

Jeanne Dielman screen capture from Criterion DVD

7
Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975)
dir. Chantal Akerman
SFMOMA
Sunday, October 9, 2016

This screening was perhaps the most meaningful film screening of 2016 to me. I had seen Jeanne Dielman before, but this particular time marked my first public screening as a projectionist. I had the honor of sharing the booth and studying under the talented Brecht Andersch. We bonded over having seen the film for the first time in our late teens and the impact it had on us. We collectively mourned the loss of the great Chantal Akerman. It was a very emotional and surreal experience. 

8
La Région Decentrale (2016): A Prepared Projection Performance for Michael Snow's La Région Centrale (1971) by Gibson + Recoder
Exploratorium co-presented with Canyon Cinema
Tuesday, November 7, 2016

This screening happened on Election Day 2016 after spending the day hiking in the Marin Headlands with dear company. I entered the Kanbar Forum with a sinking feeling in my stomach as we were still uncertain of the country's fate, but my fears and anxiety fell away as I became entranced in a visual and aural meditation with a room full of fellow travelers. Sandra Gibson and Luis Recoder presented a live four projector performance that reimaged Michael Snow's three hour La Région Centrale (1971) simultaneously into a quadrant of images that layered the sound from each reel. At the moment that the third projection was introduced the sound transformed into an otherworldly force.

9
Conical Solid (1974)
dir. Anthony McCall
Sutro Baths Cave—Lightfield Film Festival
Sunday, November 13, 2016

Lightfield Film Festival organized one of the most magical film events that I have ever attended. Imagine this—abstract light flickers from a 16mm projector fill a cave of fog and creates forms that touch the bodies flanking its brilliant beam with the sound of the salty waves crashing against the rocks alongside the ruins of the famed Sutro Baths under the biggest supermoon of our lifetime.

Lost Landscapes of San Francisco, 11 screen capture from longnow.org stream of the show.

10
Lost Landscapes of San Francisco, 11
edited by Rick Prelinger
Castro Theatre
Wednesday, December 7, 2016

This was my fifth year attending Rick Prelinger's annual screening of found footage of the San Francisco Bay Area. My husband and I always look forward to the event and love hearing the voices of the community shout out locations, jokes and information, but this year was especially wonderful as we had the rare opportunity to join Rick and Megan Prelinger on stage with our fellow Prelinger Library volunteers. Rick's remarks about the importance of the commons struck a chord with many and the energy of the crowd could be felt throughout the entire theater. It was also a great pleasure to scan some of the featured 8mm and 16mm film footage for Lost Landscapes of San Francisco, 11.

10HTE: Claire Bain

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 Claire Bain is an artist in San Francisco.

At the Castro:

Vertigo screen capture from Universal DVD

Vertigo. Hitchcock's identity kink, featuring great acting by Kim Novak, whose eyebrows were nearly as strange as her doubled character.

Bullitt and Dirty Harry: Rogue cops, chases on foot and by car, spectacular use of San Francisco's geography

Singin' in the Rain

ATA@SFPL: Artists’ Television Access programs library 16mm films and screens them at Noe Valley Branch Library:

Phantomatic Bikes (Andrew Emmons, 1971)
Baggage (Alexander Neel, 1969)
Man and His World (Homer Groening, 1966)
Pas de Deux (Norman McLaren, 1968)
Luminauts (Christian Schiess, 1982)

Banks and the Poor 

Night and Fog screen capture from Criterion DVD

Night And Fog 

USA Poetry: Allen Ginsberg & Lawrence Ferlinghetti 

Other Cinema:

Lise Swenson: a celebration of life and work

ATA (Artists’ Television Access):

Speculation Nation

At the Roxie (French Film Noir series):

Macao, l'Enfer de Jeu

Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927)

20th Century Fox DVD screen capture

WHO: William Fox produced this film and F.W. Murnau directed it.

WHAT: One of those rarities of cinema: a technical marvel with a living, beating heart. As I wrote in my 2009 essay on this film when it screened at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival's Valentine's Day event:

Charles Rosher, one of the top cinematographers in Hollywood, had spent time with Murnau in Berlin serving as an unofficial consultant on Faust, the director’s most effects-laden film to date. Rosher worked alongside Murnau as a student as much as an advisor, learning about the innovative German camera methods that amazed American critics and filmmakers. 

Rosher recruited Ben-Hur cinematographer Karl Struss to help him shoot Sunrise on Rochus Gliese’s elaborate sets. Gliese built a vast indoor city set designed to appear even larger through the use of forced perspective. It cost $200,000—nearly the entire budget of a typical program picture of the day. He also created a studio-bound marsh with an uneven floor that could not accommodate a dolly setup. Instead, tracks were attached to the ceiling and Struss filmed upside-down, a maneuver Rosher had observed on the Faust set. It was only one of many radical techniques used in Sunrise. Nearly every shot in the film involves a striking effect, whether from an unusual light source, a superimposition, or a complex camera movement. Yet each is motivated by allegiance to the story and its emotions. Murnau told an interviewer, “I do not take trick scenes from unusual positions just to get startling effects. To me the camera represents the eye of a person, through whose mind one is watching the events on screen.”

WHERE/WHEN: Today only at the Stanford Theatre at 3:50 PM.

WHY: The Stanford is halfway through its most appealing and ambitious program in at least the past 18 months: a tribute to the twenty year reign of the Fox Film Corporation, which began releasing films in 1915 and ceased in 1935, when it merged with the lesser-known upstart Twentieth Century Pictures. So far the series has brought little-screened films featuring stars such as Clara Bow, Will Rogers, Spencer Tracy, and Janet Gaynor, the luminous star of Sunrise who rose from her roots in San Francisco (where she went to Polytechnic High School and was employed by the Castro Theatre) to become the first Best Actress Oscar winner for this film as well as Seventh Heaven and Street Angel. All three of these masterpieces will be screened at the Stanford in 35mm prints as part of its Silent Sunday series, and I can hardly imagine a better introduction to most of these films if you've never seen them before, or to the Stanford if you've never traveled to Palo Alto to visit it before. Gaynor also features in The Johnstown Flood, the rarest of the Stanford's Silent Sunday offerings (on a double bill with Seventh Heaven December 6th) and Lucky Star, which screens with Murnau's lovely final film made in the United States, City Girl, to close the Fox Film Corporation series December 20th as the Stanford moves into its traditional Christmastime screenings: The Shop Around the Corner, It's A Wonderful Life, etc.

Dennis James, Wurlitzer organist extraordinaire, has been performing live music to all the Stanford's Silent Sundays screenings thus far, and will continue to do so for the final three Sundays of the series. Today he gets a week off, as the Stanford has elected to screen Sunrise not with live music but with the pioneering sound-on-film Movietone score that was prepared for the film's original 1927 release in the United States. This score is beloved by many fans of Sunrise but I find it merely adequate and more interesting as a historical curiosity than as an artistic statement. I'm swayed by Janet Bergstrom's research that indicates it was quite possibly not, as is frequently assumed today, prepared by famous composer Hugo Riesenfeld, who definitely composed the musical score for Murnau's swan song Tabu: a Story of the South Seas. To me, it sounds like a mostly-pedestrian compilation score whose tendency to be overwhelmed by non-musical sound effects destroys some of Murnau's poetic treatment of soundless sound in the film (such as in the scene of George O'Brien reacting to an off-screen dog bark, as pictured above). I always found it interesting that Dennis James has so frequently spoken of his insistence on performing originally-composed scores to silent films for which scholars have found them, but often ignores his own rules when it comes to Movietone or Vitaphone soundtracks, having played his own scores to Sunrise and to West of Zanzibar when at the SF Silent Film Festival in 2009. In the case of Sunrise, perhaps he feels (and if so, I agree) that the Movietone score that premiered in New York is less sacrosanct than the live score performed in Los Angeles would be were it not lost to the sands of time.

In fact more notable on today's Silent Sunday docket is the presentation of the almost universally beloved Movietone score to John Ford's heartbreaking, Sunrise-esque World War I picture Four Sons, which was to the disappointment of many excluded from the 2007 DVD release of the film. Rarely screened in any form, Four Sons will be for many attendees today the real gem of the program; I've only seen it once myself and never in a cinema, but still I can imagine myself being among them despite my deep, abiding love for Sunrise.

Other upcoming Stanford screenings of particular note include the wonderful Me & My Gal this Wednesday and Thursday, my favorite Janet Gaynor talkie (heck, one of my all-time favorite films as well) State Fair on December 18-19, and most unusually a December 4-5 triple bill of the rumored-excellent Zoo in Budapest along with Seventh Heaven/Street Angel/Lucky Star director Frank Borzage's bizarre 1930 version of Ferenc Molnár's play Liliom as well as Fritz Lang's 1934 version (which I have yet to see). The last of these is a real surprise to see on a Stanford calendar, as it's not a Fox film at all but Lang's sole film made in France on his way out of Germany and into Hollywood. In my fifteen years or so of following the Stanford calendars I'm positive this is the first time I've seen a French film booked for a theatre that in my experience focuses exclusively on classic Hollywood and British productions with the two notable auteurist exceptions of Akira Kurosawa and Satyajit Ray. Given that I have to stretch to imagine any other currently-operating Frisco Bay cinemas willing to book a 1934 French film in 35mm, I welcome this development wholeheartedly.

Luckily, although the Liliom/Zoo in Budapest/Liliom bill screens on the same day as the San Francisco Silent Film Festival's December 5th "Day of Silents", it also screens the day before, so it won't be necessary to miss a rare 35mm screening of the Anna May Wong vehicle Piccadilly, or the other offerings at the Castro Theatre that day. I'm excited to revisit Douglas Fairbanks in The Black Pirate, this time with Alloy Orchestra accompaniment and introduced by Tracey Goessel, whose new Fairbanks biography The First King of Hollywood I'm in the midst of devouring. Also to see rare documentary footage of China and a Harry Houdini feature The Grim Game. And if you've never seen Marcel L'Herbier's L'inhumaine on a cinema screen it's worth it for the set design alone. Alloy Orchestra takes on musical duties for that one as well; the rest go to the terrific pianist Donald Sosin.

The Day of Silents is just the first cinephile-catnip program on a December full of goodies at the Castro Theatre. Werner Herzog's Nosferatu the Vampyre with Michael Mann's The Keep, Noir City Xmas pairing The Reckless Moment and Kiss of Death, December 17th Stop Making Sense and Laurie Anderson's Home of the Brave and a twisted Christmas booking of Brazil and Eyes Wide Shut are some of the more enticing all-35mm double-bills there this month. The venue also hosts the annual Lost Landscapes of San Francisco show December 9th and will ring in January with a set of Alfred Hitchcock masterpieces. But even more than all of those, I'm finding myself most excited for a digital presentation of a San Francisco cult classic that deserves to be far better known than it is. I'm speaking of course of Curt McDowell's Thundercrack!, starring (and scripted and lit by) the great underground film icon George Kuchar. It screens twice with director McDowell's sister Melinda and his frequent collaborator Mark Ellinger on hand at (I'm told) both shows, but only the evening show will be hosted by the one and only Peaches Christ. Even if you have no awareness of Thundercrack!, the most entertaining "Old Dark House"-style quasi-pornographic art film ever to get Fox News in a tizzy, this is a rare opportunity to see a Peaches Christ show for less than $20. Mark December 11th on your calendar- in ink!

There's a lot more happening in December at other Frisco Bay venues, but for now I'd better sign off. But in case I don't have time to put up another post before this Tuesday, December 1st, I want to point out that, with the help of other Artists' Television Access volunteers, I'll be helping to present a free 16mm screening of Curtis Choy's untoppably topical 1983 documentary The Fall of the I-Hotel at the Noe Valley Public Library, and I hope you can make it out that evening.

HOW: Sunrise screens on a 35mm double-bill with Four Sons.

Rufino Tamayo: the Sources of His Art (1973)

Image from brief youtube excerpt from the film.

WHO: Los Angeles filmmaker Gary Conklin directed this 28-minute documentary.

WHAT: I wrote this brief blurb on this film for the San Francisco Public Library (SFPL) website:

An investigation of one of Mexico's most intriguing painters, known especially for his use of color (thankfully SFPL's print has retained all of its lovely hues.) Born in Oaxaca and proud of his Zapotec Indian heritage, Tamayo was one of the twentieth century's most prominent artists influenced both by pre-Columbian art and by European modernists such as Picasso. These inspirations, as well as the visual characteristics of Mexico itself, are presented in conjunction with interviews with Tamayo. In addition, Hollywood director John Huston (the Treasure of Sierra Madre, Night of the Iguana) speaks a narration written by Nobel laureate Octavio Paz; director Gary Conklin would later return the favor by documenting the filming of Huston's final Mexico-set feature, Under the Volcano. Conklin has also made film portraits of Gore Vidal, Paul Bowles, and Ed Ruscha.

WHERE/WHEN: Screens 6:30 PM tonight only at the SFPL Noe Valley branch's meeting room.

WHY: I sense that Frisco Bay is feeling a smaller presence of 35mm this September than in any month since the nineteenth century. With the PFA closed as it prepares its move down the hill into downtown Berkeley, with the Stanford shuttered until October for remodeling, and with the Alamo Drafthouse's New Mission location still without a publicly-announced grand opening date, it feels like a moment of uncertainty and waiting. Meanwhile Yerba Buena Center for the Arts is presenting a Neil Young screening series (to be followed by an Architecture & Design doc series) with only one 35mm print (his blown-up-from Super-8 Greendale), and the format is running a distant third (with 13 shows) even at the Castro behind digital shows (well over 20) and 70mm screenings (10 Labor Day weekend Vertigo shows plus 5 of Lawrence of Arabia this weekend = 15). The 4-Star Theatre, the last San Francisco cinema still regularly showing new releases in 35mm, has the digitally-shot Straight Outta Compton, and though the South Bay's BlueLight Cinema is showing 35mm prints of 50% of its current offerings (including four shot-on-video action films and one shot-on-35mm drama by a guy whose films I currently refuse to see), I imagine that percentage will drop in the near future, at least if its kickstarter to raise funds for better digital projectors is successful. Finally, the Paramount in Oakland will be showing a 35mm print of the original Mad Max on Friday, although I've been told to expect the American-dubbed version.

When I can rattle off a month's worth of 35mm showings in the region in a single paragraph, it's pretty clear I'm talking about a waning format, perhaps an "inevitable" transition as a panel at the newly-announced Mill Valley Film Festival seems set to prove. But even if 35mm were to die tomorrow, it wouldn't mean the end of projected reels as long as there were 16mm-centric venues like Oddball Films and the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum and the Exploratorium (which is showcasing a set of brand new 16mm preservations this Thursday) around and thriving. Artists' Television Access (A.T.A.) is another venue which values 16mm projection and which is busier than usual this September; Craig Baldwin traditionally involves 16mm in every one of his weekly Other Cinema programs, and my girlfriend Kerry Laitala will be presenting 3 different multi-projector performances this Friday at her show with Voicehandler at the Valencia Street venue. I highly recommend attending, especially if you missed one or both of their shows at Oddball and Shapeshifters Cinema this past July.

in 2015 I've become involved with a group of A.T.A. volunteers who are spending evenings going through the San Francisco Public Library's collection of 16mm prints, most of them untouched in 20 years or more. The library has a collection of hundreds of films intended for teenage and adult viewers, most of which appear to have been acquired for the collection in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. We're looking at some of the more intriguing-sounding films and putting screening programs together of the best (both in physical and aesthetic quality) prints we're coming across. Our first program screened this past June at the Noe Valley library, and showcased five diverse documentaries, most of them unavailable on any home video format or (as far as we've been able to find) the internet. Our second program, screening tonight, is a little more focused, bringing together two nearly-half-hour films about North American artists. Rufino Tamayo: the Sources of His Art, a color film about a painter, is paired with My Childhood, Part 2: James Baldwin's Harlem, a black-and-white film about a writer of poetry, plays, essays, etc. that was broadcast on television in 1964. In addition to helping to select the films, I wrote short blurbs about both, but as I reprinted the Rufino Tamayo one above, I'll make you follow a link to read what I wrote on My Childhood. I hope you can make it tonight's showing of the two films. Admission is free and there will be an opportunity for discussion afterward.

On strange coincidence I discovered after the pairing of these two films was made. As I noted above, Rufino Tamayo's director Gary Conklin later made an hour-long documentary about the filming of John Huston's final film shot in Mexico, Under the Volcano. The documentary is available through the Criterion Collection edition of the 1984 feature. Well, it turns out that one of the key filmmakers involved in making My Childhood, cinematographer Ross Lowell, also traveled to Mexico to document the making of a John Huston film, namely the 1964 Night of the Iguana. Lowell's 15-minute final product is available on the Warner DVD of the Huston film. Just to add another layer to the coincidence, it was well after we selected these two films to play together tonight that I learned the Castro Theatre would be screening a 35mm print of Huston's first Mexico-set feature (and my favorite of the three), Treasure of the Sierra Madre, on September 27th.

HOW: Rufino Tamayo: the Sources of His Art and My Childhood, Part 2: James Baldwin's Harlem will screen together in 16mm prints from the SF Public Library collection.