Let Fury Have The Hour (2012)

WHO: Antonino D'Ambrosio, making his feature-length documentary debut, interviewing DJ Spooky (pictured above), John Sayles, Shepard Fairey and dozens of other musicians and artists.

WHAT: I haven't seen this doc, which has decidedly mixed reviews, even among a politically sympathetic critical establishment. Its very topic, the creative response to the dismaying conservatism of the Reagan eighties and its aftermath, makes it a shoo-in to be a flop in any location where 2016: Obama's America over-performed according to Rentrak. But how about vice versa? Is it a hit here, where Dinesh D’Souza's piece of political science fiction seriously underperformed?

WHERE/WHEN: Five times daily at the Balboa Theatre, at least through this Thursday.

WHY: When's the last time you went to the Balboa? I'm afraid it's been quite a few months for me. Though I attended quite regularly when I lived in the Richmond District, it's become rare for the venue to show films I'm interested enough to cross town to see. Right now there are two I'm curious about, however: Let the Fury Have the Hour and Zero Dark Thirty. I picked the former to highlight today because it's likely to have a shorter lifespan at this venue (the controversial Katherine Bigelow film is already extended at the Balboa for at least another week.) 

HOW: Like many new documentaries made these days, this a digital distribution. But the Balboa still has old-school film projectors, and in fact is the only place in the city showing Zero Dark Thirty in 35mm.

Adam Hartzell on Three Upcoming Documentaries

I'm slowly recovering from the busiest time of my year, Halloween. I haven't blogged in weeks, haven't tweeted in days, and am just about to get back into my cinephile swing. Today's the right timing, as tonight the new November-December Pacific Film Archive calendar launches with The Unstable Object, the first of four Alternative Visions screenings Wednesdays this month. The Castro Theatre screens four masterpieces in a Nick Ray centennial mini-fest today and tomorrow, and the Roxie chimes in with a fifth Ray (Johnny Guitar) Sunday as part of its Not Necessarily Noir 2 series. And the SF Film Society closes French Cinema Now tonight and opens Cinema By The Bay tomorrow; I'm intrigued by the screening of the 1926 silent The Bat and the films by Lawrence Jordan, Carolee Schneeman, etc. playing the Canyon Cinema spotlight. But my friend Adam Hartzell has just added three more upcoming films to my to-see list, each sampled at the Mill Valley Film Festival last month. Here, Adam writes on the discoveries made in his cinemagoing travels:

In order avoid adding to both our financial and carbon footprint debt, my wife and I have been limiting our plane-dependent vacations to one a year. And we never travel by car anymore. But we still long to 'get-away'. So we've been venturing around the Bay Area, to places that can be reached by ferry, train, or bus. And many of these advanced 'stay-cations' have been for film festivals. We've taken Amtrak to Sacramento for the French Film Festival where we got to see Alex Deliporte's Angèle & Tony and the Audrey Tatou vehicle Beautiful Lies before San Francisco French Cinema Now attendees did this past week. It was also in Sacramento that we got to see the wonderful scene where Je t'aime . . . moi non plus is first heard by Serge Gainsbourg's record company in Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life that opened at the Embarcadero this past weekend. We've also made the Tiburon International Film Festival an annual trip since it's such a green convenience to walk off the ferry right smack dab into the festival.
　
The Mill Valley Film Festival makes it a bit more difficult to travel to on a green stream. They do provide a shuttle from the San Rafael and Mill Valley venues, but we chose films showing in Mill Valley and there wasn't a direct bus from the Larkspur Ferry as far as we could tell, so we grabbed a cab to get to Mill Valley for our overnight stay. (We did take the shuttle to San Rafael in order to take Golden Gate Bus back, however.)
　
Although we didn't plan it this way, all three of the films we caught at MVFF will be released in San Francisco before the year is out. Coming to the Balboa December 2nd will be Jason Cohn and Bill Jersey's Eames: The Architect and The Painter. I had heard about the Charles and Ray Eames's marriage and professional partnership in a past podcast (the name of which escapes me), so I was ready for the most revealing aspect of Cohn and Jersey's documentary; that is, how important Ray Eames's work was to the success of their designs. They were a couple speeding past the Zeitgeist of the 50's, having to negotiate the respect Ray wanted and Charles wanted for Ray within the patriarchal narratives demanded of the times. The television clip where the hostess can't seem to integrate the female half of this couple is a very valuable moment of archival retrieval. Eames: The Architect and The Painter is an example of the value and necessity of what is often called 'revisionist history', a term sadly intended negatively by too many mindless talking heads. Much history is 'revisionist history' in that it is the applying of recently excavated information to create a new narrative that is hopefully more representative of what actually happened and why. In this way, Eames: The Architect and The Painter brings a lathe to refine the record of the impact of the Eames studio. It's no longer just Charles who gets a seat at the table since he wasn't alone in the creation of those seats and tables.

Our Saturday morning show, Being Elmo: A Puppeteer's Journey, was disappointingly lacking in the young folk hoped for as part of the DocFest just past or the Lumiere in SF or Rafael Film Center in San Rafael come December 16th. Or, as my wife suggested, perhaps the kids didn't want the magic of Elmo ruined by seeing the man behind him. The man that brought a voice and aesthetic to Elmo that no other puppeteers were able to bring, Kevin Clash, definitely makes an effort to move his body away whenever he meets kids in real life, as if his contortions are abracadabra gesticulations maintaining the magic. The film is about a dreamer, a geek picked on at school, who works hard at his craft and eventually makes his way to the big leagues as well as the respect of his peers. His parents support is endearing and tantamount to Clash's success, as is the public funding that contributed to Clash's career trajectory. Besides the public television funding that made Sesame Street successful along with the massive research and talent that was part of the Children's Television Workshop that Clash became a part of, military research has a place to play in a particularly puzzling aspect of professional puppetry for young Clash. (I'm going to be vague about it to allow for the pleasure of that reveal.) The public money behind Elmo provided opportunities for artists and researchers to leverage their interests, skills, talents and dreams, resulting in tremendous benefit for individuals, communities and economies. If you're cynical to the joy Elmo has brought to so many children, Elmo did, after all, do more than tickle the economy in all the ancillary products sold.
　
As much as I enjoyed the Eames and Clash documentaries, the best film I saw at MVFF will possibly be the best film I see all year. Judy Lief's Deaf Jam is a celebration of American Sign Language poetry that doubles as a primer of Deaf Culture, triples as a personal story of Israeli and Palestinian friendship, quadruples as a snapshot of the economic impact of our immigration law, and multiplies as many, many other things. This is truly a beautiful, powerful film, providing a mesmerizing experience that I have not had in a theatre for a long time. Lief's dance background is clearly on display in her framing of the hand, body and facial movements that make up the ASL equivalents of phonemes, words, and sentences. She gives us a precise primer on ASL Poetry and thrusts us into the world of ASL Poetry performance by taking the text of subtitles and swirling them around in the translation with such vibrancy that it truly works, rather than coming off as a gimmick. This effort to struggle with how to demonstrate the vitality of ASL through translation even includes a segment where the piece is left respectfully un-translated.
　
Deaf Jam's main subject Aneta Brodski is that charismatic individual many documentarians hope to capture. When we hear the immigration issues she runs up against, you can't help but see how the obstacles financially imposed upon Deaf folks will hit her even harder. Hopefully she will be able to negotiate the college education and later employment she deserves in spite of these obstacles, but you do worry that such a vibrant spirit might be hardened, if not squelched, considering what she will be forced to maneuver around in the future.
　
Screening in a truncated form as part of the Independent Lens series on PBS networks on Thursday November 3rd, Deaf Jam is an example of the tremendous value film festivals can provide through the different lenses they focus onto the world. (And Deaf Jam is another example of the huge benefits provided by public funding - thank you, ITVS!) Even with the chain of transit options we have to step on to get there, MVFF has consistently been a festival worth the journey.

UPDATE 11/3/11: I've just learned from Adam that Eames: The Architect and the Painter will also be opening at the Elmwood in Berkeley and the Rafael in Marin on December 2nd, the same day it comes to the Balboa. I'm glad this documentary is going to be spreading out to various Frisco Bay venues. Is it too much to dream that one or more of them might track down a print of one of Charles & Ray's own wonderful short films (Powers of Ten, Atlas, Blacktop, etc.) to screen prior to the documentary feature?

Five Pleasing Pieces

As June comes to a close, I'd like to take a moment to note that the month has marked five years since I began this blog. At the time I was an underemployed cinephile with a few Senses of Cinema pieces under my belt. Looking for a way to channel my cinephile energies in a locally-oriented cinema-phile way, I decided to start a blog and begin writing. I borrowed the title of a 1955 gangster film (that to this day I still have never been able to see) because I thought it sounded cool, and started posting entries, usually one or two per week. I had no idea whether I would attract readers, but pretty soon indeed I did (I suspect thanks to google and to David Hudson more crucially than any other factors). Thinking of all the super-intelligent friends I've made, both online and "in real life", all thanks to the inter-connectivity of blogging, gives me chills.

I'm no longer under-employed; in fact I work six days a week at two separate and unrelated jobs now. So I don't have the time and energy to post pieces at Hell On Frisco Bay as often as I want and should. I've been able to parlay the blogging into other film-related writing projects, and I still even contribute to Senses Of Cinema on occasion (expect something in the next issue). This inevitably siphons time away from potential blogging. And I've directed a lot of my cinema-phile energies into microblogging; my twitter feed is more than just a valve for releasing the latest breaking news on the Frisco Bay filmgoing scene. It's also something of a distraction from this blog. I'd like to find a way to bring more balance to the two activities; the blog is for better or worse a much sturdier archive than the fleeting tweets, but the latter provide the instant gratifications of being read and passed on with more apparent frequency. It's all a constant work in progress.

A fifth anniversary seems as good a time as any to go back into my archives, including those of the first incarnation of this blog (long story) to find a few pieces that feel, for whatever reason, like they deserve to be spotlighted once more. Though the information on this blog dates quicker than on many, I have written a few things that seem to me to be worth looking at again despite their age. So, here are links to five of my past pieces that I still find pleasing to read; hope you do too. In chronological order:

1. Ten Decades of Frisco In Film. If there's one theatre that inspired me to write more than any other during my first year or so of blogging, it's the Balboa Theatre, which I used to live less than a mile away from, and which for a while was bringing some of the most exciting repertory and calendared programming to town. Neither of those situations is true any longer, as I live in the Mission District and the Balboa has largely become a venue for heavily advertised first-run fare with only the occasional special event (like this Friday's). But in April 2006, they screened the second of two series devoted to films set and/or shot in Frisco, and I used the occasion to talk about some personal favorites in that huge category of cinema.

2. Open Letter. When founding Hell On Frisco Bay I thought I might adopt a more cynical, embittered tone of voice than I naturally fall into. But I quickly realized that I'm more comfortable accentuating the positive, even to the point of verging on Pollyanna-ish-ness (is that even a word?) But even I have a rant in me once in a while, as I perhaps best proved in December 2006.

3. For Those Who Have Seen Tropical Malady. I mean it with that title; if you haven't seen Thai auteur Apichatpong Weerasethakul's 2004 film Tropical Malady, well, first go watch it, then click the link. Though I'm extremely grateful for the time and effort donated from other writers I've been honored to share this space with over the years, and from the film people I've been able to interview, I'm particularly pleased with how this more informal collaboration turned out. In April 2007 I attended an event with a favorite filmmaker present, and reported on it while interjecting my own commentary along the way.

4. Steamboat Buster. I've contributed to a few blog-a-thon events, and generally find they inspire me to be more focused in my writing, and interesting to audiences outside my usual 'beat'. I think I'm proudest of my contribution to Thom Ryan's Slapstick Blog-A-Thon from September 2007. Thom is one I've been lucky enough to meet and converse with in person. He even provided a documentary account of our "irl" encounter.

5. The Cardinal. I don't write reviews these days, not really. It's a form I'm just not all that interested in, not when there are so many talented others out there who really care about preserving, honing, and expanding the craft of review-writing. I usually prefer writing something else a little closer to history than to criticism, or to news than to prose. This piece from December 2009 comes about close as I feel comfortable coming to writing a film review.

Note: image at the top of this post is from Bob Rafelson's Five Easy Pieces, a new print of which is part of the July calendar for both the Castro Theatre and the Pacific Film Archive.

The Lost Patrol (Boris Karloff Blogathon)

The Boris Karloff Blogathon has been running all week over at the superb Frankensteinia blog captained by Montréal cartoon artist and Frankenstein expert Pierre Fournier. I haven't participated in one of these internet-wide flurries of topic-focused writing in quite a while, but I've had great fun participating in them in the past, and even hosted one or two of them myself. I'm essentially too late to join the Karloff party, but the event has at least inspired me to "rescue" a three-and-a-half year old piece I wrote for the now defunct Cinemarati site. That site is now long gone, but individual pieces are still housed at archive.org a.k.a. the wayback machine. Though three and a half years seems like a lot, especially in internet time, I feel like this particular piece, on John Ford's the Lost Patrol holds up despite a few sentences with references to 2006 activities (I tinkered a bit with the last paragraph but otherwise left the piece unedited).

The Lost Patrol doesn't feature Karloff in a starring role, but he plays a very memorable part in the ensemble. I saw the film when the Balboa Theatre ran a three-week series entitled "As Sure As My Name Is Boris Karloff" (be sure to click that link for some great Karloff interview excerpts). It played on a double-bill with the Mask of Fu Manchu and Sara Karloff was on hand to speak about the films and show photographs of her father on Hollywood sets. This terrific series was unfortunately one of the last before the Balboa reverted from a repertory venue to a second-run and occasionally first-run theatre. (Though they still have the odd special event, like Thrillville's presentation of Beach Blanket Bingo next Valentine's Day, and I'm very excited to visit the theatre for this Friday's release of the newest Frederick Wiseman documentary La Danse: the Paris Opera Ballet.)

I also wrote about the Karloff films programmed in this post here at Hell On Frisco Bay. Let us now journey back in time to June 9, 2006, when I originally posted the following review of the Lost Patrol...

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My neighborhood theatre is running a huge Boris Karloff retrospective right now, and the other night I saw a rare print of this early John Ford picture, his first film made for RKO a year before he made the film for which he'd win his first Oscar, The Informer I haven't seen very much of Ford's 1930s work yet, but The Lost Patrol fits right in with what I expect from one of his films from the 40s or 50s. It's not simply another action film; indeed there's long stretches without much real action at all. What it does contain is Ford's common theme of men removed from their homes, trying to survive and find a purpose to their lives. Varied class and ethnic backgrounds, conflicting philosophies, and a Ford-style critique of the problems of the military are also quite evident.

The film is structured something like a modern-day slasher movie. No time is wasted on the set-up: a group of soldiers in the Mesopotamian desert lose their commanding officer to a sniper's rifle and find themselves lost, without a known mission or a convenient way out of their predicament. After a hasty burial in the sand, sturdy Victor McLaglen, a ubiquitous Ford presence, leads the patrol to an abandoned oasis, where the men bicker amongst themselves as they get picked off by their unseen adversaries one by one. Among the ranks are a poetry-minded enlistee played by Reginald Denny, and most memorably, Karloff as the one man in the group who never lacks for a purpose: he is a religious extremist who remembers Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq) as the original site of the Garden of Eden and wants to save the souls of his fellow soldiers, though they're having none of it. The wildly gesticulating fanaticism of Karloff's character at first seems out of place in Ford's universe. He's not just an eccentric like Hank Worden's Mose Harper in The Searchers, but an increasingly threatening presence, imbued with the echoes of his usual boogeyman characters. As the intensity of his zealotry rises by orders of magnitude while his dwindling compatriots become ever more hopeless and "lost", Karloff seems less and less like a character out of another movie, and more like a foreshadowing of the insanity lying in wait for each soldier just over the next dune. The end of the film feels almost like a feverish hallucination for the last remaining soldier, who is reduced to an almost parodically macho pose.

The theatre operator mentioned the particular topicality of the film when introducing it, and I have to agree. Certainly any good film can springboard a myriad of interpretations, but in 2006 [and, sad to say, 2009] a dominant one surely is to see the Lost Patrol as an eerie premonition of this country's current situation in Iraq. The setting, the matter-of-fact hopelessness of the soldiers' situation, the religious element to the conflict, and many other little surprises can't help but reinforce the connection. And anyone with a DVD player can take a look for themselves, as the film was just this week released for the first time on home video along with four other Ford films: the Informer, Mary of Scotland, Sergeant Rutledge and Cheyenne Autumn.

Miyazaki Midnights & Matinees (and more)

One of my favorite films of the year so far is the latest animated feature from Hayao Miyazaki, Ponyo on the Cliff By the Sea, also know as just Ponyo. Made by a near-septuagenarian, and perhaps aimed primarily for children just barely old enough to sit still for a movie, this Japanese re-imagining of Hans Christian Andersen holds the power to captivate a childless 30-something willing to be awash in Miyazaki's visuals, whether depicting the crashing of furious waves as a Hokusai woodcut come to life, or the simple process of serving a bowl of ramen to a little girl who has never eaten noodles before. Miyazaki's inked lines are more robust than ever, and his gentle-handed ecological message perfectly apropos for his pre-school protagonist Sosuke, who understands the import of the chain of events he has set off less completely than audiences of any age will, yet it better able to make a crucial narrative leap of faith than a more world-weary individual might. He provides an inspirational model for us all.

Some Miyazaki fans seem to be, at least mildly, disappointed in Ponyo in comparison to the master's other animated films. I can't understand almost any of their arguments, and I can't help but wonder if some are registering disagreement less with the film itself than with the Disney Corporation's decision to release the film only in a dubbed version, in contrast to their making Howl's Moving Castle available to theatres both an English-dubbed and a Japanese-language version with English subtitles. Sprited Away, too, was sent on the festival circuit in a Japanese version before its theatrical release with American voice artists providing the soundtrack.

I've watched both versions of Ponyo. First I saw a 35mm print of the Disney-dubbed version; though I was mildly bothered by Liam Neeson's distinctive tones, and Cate Blanchett's essential reprisal of her Galadriel role, their Ponyo characters are relatively minor and I was so overwhelmed by Miyazaki's fluid animation and florid imagination that they couldn't mar the experience in any meaningful way. The other voice actors submerged their star personae and were unrecognizable to me until the end credits. In sum it was a terrific dub job; nothing like the distracting celebrity voice-fest of the Miramax Princess Mononke dub. Watching a friend's Japanese Ponyo DVD import with English subtitles shortly afterward was nearly as wonderful, but I'm glad it was not my first experience with the film. In fact the dub translation was slightly superior in a few instances, as I confirmed with a native Japanese speaker. The only major improvement was the end-title song, which Disney turned from a sweet farewell to the film into a groan-worthy techno remix involving its stable of pop singers.

In any language, Ponyo is absolutely something to see on the big screen if you can, and if you live in Frisco that's still possible, at least for another week, as it continues to play at the Balboa Theatre until Thursday. Miyazaki fans holding out for the subtitled DVD, you'll thank yourself for taking the opportunity to see it in a cinema. If you want to display your original-version-purist credentials, take the rare opportunity to watch the Japanese-language version of Miyazaki's Spirited Away this November when it plays four midnight shows and a matinee in Frisco Bay theatres. Both the Clay here in Frisco and the Piedmont in Oakland have included the 45th San Francisco International Film Festival's audience award-winning film in their autumn lineup of cult favorite screenings. The Clay shows it November 6th & 7th, and the Piedmont on November 13th & 14th, with an additional 10 AM screening on the 15th.

Other midnight movies coming to Landmark theatres this season include This is Spinal Tap, the Wiz (featuring Michael Jackson as the scarecrow, of course) the original release cut of Donnie Darko, the Graduate, the Shining, and more. Check the Landmark After Dark website. And though the Bridge will no longer be the site for full summer seasons of Peaches Christ's Midnight Mass series, the horror hostess will present a one-off screening of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 there on October 24th.

Meanwhile, the Red Vic on Haight Street has a midnight hit on its hands as well these days. The Room, Tommy Wiseau's enigmatically awful, but clearly rather expensive passion project, has been packing in viewers and solidifying screen-talkback rituals the last Saturday of every month all summer. The tradition, as revealed in the latest Red Vic calendar, is planned to continue this fall with shows on September 26th and October 31st (come in costume as one of the characters for additional fun.)

Finally, my friend Jesse Ficks has been hard at work putting together his season of MiDNiTES FOR MANiACS shows at the Castro. Tonight he's playing Risky Business, Fast Times at Ridgemont High and the Last American Virgin in a set entitled "Cocky White Guys". October 2 is "Bite Nite", pairing the Santa Cruz-set the Lost Boys with Katheryn Bigelow's Near Dark, which I've never seen (for shame!) And November 6th is called "Love Kills", with True Romance, Natural Born Killers and a midnight MiDNiTE screening to be determined. Looking at the thematic pattern, I bet it'll be something written by Quentin Tarantino. Though Jesse has been known to have unexpected surprises up his sleeve.

Time to Unclog the Backlog

Indiefest is up and running, and as usual Jason Watches Movies is the go-to site to get the latest screening reports. I haven't been this year yet myself. Because I didn't want to miss the scarcely-screened an American Tragedy and Dishonored in the Pacific Film Archive's Josef von Sternberg series, I had to skip the other night's screenings from Indiefest's I Am Curious (Pink) selection of Japanese "pinku" films, and I'll be missing next Saturday's follow-up in favor of the Cat and the Canary at the Silent Film Festival. But I do hope to sample Indiefest selections Woodpecker, Great Speeches From a Dying World and Idiots and Angels if I can. We'll see. February is shaping up to be a very busy month for attractive filmgoing experiences. Following are a list of festivals and screening venues which have (relatively) recently announced new programs over the next several weeks, with a few particular highlights from my perspective.

The Stanford Theatre has a new calendar running through April 27th. This is the premiere Frisco Bay venue devoted almost exclusively to classic Hollywood and British films 4-5 days a week (closed Tuesdays, Wednesdays and occasionally Thursdays this season). Silent films with top organ accompaniment play on select Fridays; in each case well-known titles programmed with a rare and somehow related talkie as second feature, e.g. both versions of Seventh Heaven on March 13th, and King Vidor's silent masterpiece the Crowd with his 1934 Our Daily Bread on March 27th. The venue steps out of the English-language comfort zone with day-long screenings of Satjajit Ray's Apu Trilogy, perfect counter-programming for Oscar weekend for anyone tired of hearing about Slumdog Millionaire. Other noteworthy picks include but are not limited to Edgar G. Ulmer's the Black Cat with Mitchell Leisen's Death Takes a Holiday March 19-20, and Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger's a Matter of Life and Death and a Canterbury Tale April 18-20. Powell & Pressburger's the Life and Death of Colonel Blimp plays April 23-24 with the original British version of Gaslight.

These are not the only chances on the horizon to see Powell & Pressburger's tremendously enjoyable films on large cinema screens in the coming months. Their (to my mind) greatest masterswork I Know Where I'm Going! comes to the Vogue in Laurel Heights on March 1st, and Powell's sans-Pressburger film Age of Consent screens in what's billed as "a pristine archival print" at the Rafael Film Center in San Rafael March 3rd. This is in connection with the Mostly British Film Series held at those theatres February 26th through March 5th. The majority of offerings will be recent films from the U.K. (and/or Australia and Ireland, thus the "mostly" in the series title), such as opening night's Genova by Michael Winterbottom and the much-laureled closer Hunger from artist Steve McQueen. But another retrospective at the Vogue is the Friday February 27th showing of Christopher Nolan's first feature, from 1998, Following. Though its time-jumping narrative is arguably less graceful than that of his first American breakthrough Memento, it's still an intriguing and relatively assured debut that may be even more interesting to view in the light of a subsequent highly successful Hollywood career.

The Balboa Theatre celebrates its 82nd year of operation February 22 at 1PM with a screening of Mary Pickford's final silent film My Best Girl, released in late 1927. At about that time halfway around the world Pickford appeared on screen, without her knowledge, in a film called a Kiss From Mary Pickford. A newsreel camera had captured brief footage of her planting a kiss on actor Igor Ilyinsky while she and her husband Douglas Fairbanks were traveling in the pre-Stalinist Soviet Union. A screenplay fictionalizing this incident was written for Ilyinsky, last seen on Frisco Bay screens in the PFA-programmed Carnival Night, where he plays the crusty-old-dean role in a school pageant film. Here he's 30 years younger and apparently hilarious. I'm excited for this chance to see a Kiss From Mary Pickford at the Castro Theatre, and then a "real Mary Pickford film" from the same year at the Balboa the following weekend.

The Red Vic's current calendar is no longer new anymore, but's it's starting to get really interesting. This week Werner Herzog's Nosferatu the Vampyre remake plays February 11th and 12th, all the better to get us in the mood for original Nosferatu director F.W. Murnau's Sunrise at the Castro on February 14th. At the Red Vic that day, and the day before, is the theatre's annual Valentine's Day booking of Annie Hall. February 22 & 23 is the Muppet Movie (the first, best, and Orson Welles-iest of the Henson movies) and more Henson magic comes April 1 & 2 with Labyrinth. Frisco filmmaker Kevin Epps has a new documentary the Black Rock premiering February 27-March 5, and it will be directly preceded by a one-night stand of his first feature Straight Outta Hunters Point. Arthouse revivals take over the venue for much of March, starting with Brazil on the 6th & 7th, and continuing with Belle de Jour on the 10th & 11th, Stranger Than Paradise on the 17th and Down By Law the following two days, Two-Lane Blacktop on the 25th & 26th, 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her on the 29th & 30th, and finally the Jerk on April Fools Eve. Okay, so perhaps "arthouse" is a stretch for that last item. But on the subject of comedy, I think the Red Vic screening I'm most looking forward to is tonight's midnight showing of one of the most misunderestimated films released during the previous Presidential administration, Pootie Tang. It's part of a Full Moon Midnight series that will next stop at The Room March 11th. Like most people I've never seen Pootie Tang on the big screen, but unlike most I've enjoyed it countless times - under the influence of no illicit substances, mind you - on video. It's almost impossible to make it sound like something worth watching but still its cult following grows for some reason. Sepatown.

SFMOMA's Chantal Akerman series rolls along to its conclusion February 28th, a screening of Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles with Akerman herself in attendance for a post-screening q-and-a. In March and April the museum's screening room gives itself over to a science-fiction series entitled the Future of the Past: Utopia/Dystopia, 1965-1984. It ranges from Godard's Alphaville and Truffaut's Fahrenheit 451 to Michael Radford's 1984 with stops at a Clockwork Orange, Fantastic Planet, Andrei Tarkovsky's Stalker and more.

Finally, more film festivals have announced schedules in the past week or two. There's the Ocean Film Festival Feb. 19-22, with its subject focus on science, ecology and recreation on the world's waters. The Noise Pop Film Festival (Feb. 25- Mar. 1) is another subject-specific festival, gathering music documentaries of interest to the loyal attendees of the live performances that have made Frisco a late-February destination for touring bands and music obsessives for years now. I've never attended these so I can't exactly vouch for them, though they've lasted long enough to be considered successful, and to have attracted loyal supporters.

Almost a year ago I trekked to San Jose to attend a few screenings at the most prominent film festival in the most-populated (at night, anyway) city on Frisco Bay, Cinequest. What felt like a novelty last year may have to turn into a tradition, as there are several films in their program I've been anticipating, and I'm not at all confident all of them will find their way into a more Northerly cinema. Kiyoshi Kurosawa's new Tokyo Sonata, plays Cinequest twice, both times at the beautifully restored California Theatre in downtown San Jose. But I know it's going to be distributed theatrically later this year, and it's expected to be among the films programmed for the San Francisco Asian American International Film Festival when their own schedule is unveiled tomorrow. So I probably won't endeavor to catch it at Cinequest. On the other hand, El Camino from Costa Rica, intriguingly synopsized by David Bordwell, and Alejandro Adams' Canary, his genre film follow-up to Around the Bay, seem like they might be just the sorts of films that play Cinequest but otherwise slip through Frisco Bay cinephiles' fingers this year, no matter how good they are. I hope not, but one can't be too sure and I'm seriously contemplating a road trip on March 1st, when they both play at venues across the street from each other.

So Many Festivals It's Almost Scary

Read of the week: Michael Guillén's piece inspired by the latest issue of the Film International journal, guest-edited by Dina Iordanova. I can't wait to get my hands on this issue myself. Michael cherry-picks quotes from its articles that help crystalize questions modern-day film festivals must tackle in the face of audiences who are finding other ways to see the stock-and-trade of certain kinds of fests; he believes "new strategies must be devised if these festivals are to survive." I half-wish Michael hadn't quoted me -- a big surprise midway into the article -- because it would have kept this paragraph from seeming a bit like an appeal to join a mutual admiration society.

But I'm ultimately glad he pointed to my piece on October's film festival glut here on Frisco Bay, for one because it provides an opportunity to point out that most of November is looking hardly less glutted with appealing festgoing options. DocFest and the SFJFF continue into the month, and I've also already mentioned that third i and the San Francisco Film Society are both bringing festivals the weekend of November 13-16. In addition, the SFFS's Animation Festival leads right into their New Italian Cinema presentation November 16-23, ending with the festival-lauded Gomorrah. After a chance to catch a Thanksgiving breath, it's followed by Quebec Film Week (titles as yet unannounced) December 10-14. 2008 has been the first year that I've sampled the SFFS's fall offerings, at the successfully-inaugurated French Cinema Now where a rare opportunity to see two early films by Arnaud Desplechin has sparked a re-evaluation of the filmmaker on my part. More on that on another day...

Two more November festivals begin on the same date: the Latino Film Festival and the American Indian Film Festival both start on the 7th day of the month. The AIFF has at least one program I really don't want to miss: Kent MacKenzie's the Exiles, a highly-praised 1962 film set in the Bunker Hill district of Los Angeles, that played for a week at the Castro Theatre this summer while I was out of town. The LFF brings the reputedly Guy Maddin-esque La Antena from Argentina and is tributing Gregory Nava's extremely significant El Norte (hopefully in a new 35mm print). More suggestions of titles from either of these festivals would be welcome.

Frank Lee is bringing back his Chinese American Film Festival to the Four Star on November 14-20 with titles including Johnny To's Sparrow, and an additional November 8th Marina Theatre screening of Ganglamedo, a Tibet-themed musical which also plays on the last day of the festival at the main venue.

Looking further into the festival crystal ball, the Berlin and Beyond film festival will run January 15-21, 2009 at the Castro and include an in-person tribute to Wim Wenders along with a presentation of his newest film Palermo Shooting. And it's already time to anticipate Noir City 7 (January 23-February 1st), a "newspaper noir"-themed special edition promising some of the most cynical print-stained newshounds ever to have collected a kill fee. Like Chuck Tatum from Ace in the Hole, or JJ Hunsecker from the Sweet Smell of Success. Lesser-known films from Fritz Lang and Anthony Mann (two apiece) and a repeat Noir City presentation of the 1946 B-picture Night Editor (did Joe Eszterhas see this before he wrote Basic Instinct?) are additional cursory highlights, but this is one festival in which its worth looking beyond the filmmaker pedigrees, so easy is it for all but the most committed noir-heads to feel like they've unearthed a forgotten gem (Night Editor was one such gem from Noir City 4, and I'm glad it's being brought back, this time on the Castro screen.)

In the meantime, other notable screenings and events not connected with film festivals keep popping up on the calendar. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts has announced some more screenings through mid-December, including brand-new 35mm prints of five Alain Robbe-Grillet films (Last Year in Marienbad, which he wrote, and four he also directed) December 4-18. The new Pacific Film Archive calendar starts this weekend with the first films in a tremendous Japanese cinema series, beginning with post-war films from Kon Ichikawa, who died earlier this year, and Akira Kurosawa. Then it continues with screenings of career highlights from most of the major figures of the Japanese New Wave (Shindo, Oshima, Suzuki, Imamura) and beyond. I hope to say more on the November-December PFA calendar soon.

But I'll just wrap up this post with a shout-out to the Balboa Theatre, which is bringing some special-events to the Richmond District just in time for me- I've moved back to this corner of Frisco myself. This Sunday there will be two appearances by animation wizard Richard Williams. He's best known for his Oscar-winning work as animation director for Who Framed Roger Rabbit, but has an extensive filmography in both theatrical and television, feature-length and short-form animation. He also created title designs for films such as Murder on the Orient Express, Can Hieronymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness?, and the 1967 Casino Royale -- and when Friz Freleng's outfit passed the torch after putting together the beloved title sequences for the first three Peter Sellers Pink Panther features, it was Williams who picked it up. Williams will be on hand for a noon show and another at 7PM, though the latter is already listed as sold out. Future special events at the Balboa also include an opportunity to watch Tuesday's election results on the big screen with an enthusiastic crowd (free admission to this one), and on December 10th, the horror host documentary Watch Horror Films, Keep America Strong will have its Frisco premiere (it's shown in Oakland, Sacramento and elsewhere but not in this county yet) with a set of as-yet-unannounced guests in attendance.

Speaking of witch, Happy Halloween!

Marina Theatre

Yesterday was a day for watching superhero films. I went to the 7PM showing of Iron Man at the newly reopened Marina Theatre on Chestnut Street, and then to the 11PM showing of Big Man Japan as part of the San Francisco International Film Festival. It's hard to picture two films tackling the subject of male power fantasy from more completely different angles. I enjoyed watching both and plan to write on them as soon as I have a chance.

But first, a few words on the Marina Theatre, which was opened in 1928 and showed second-run films for thirty-odd years before changing its name to the Cinema 21 and showing first-run engagements. It closed in 2001; the last film I saw there was Shadow of a Vampire and already I'd forgotten what the interior looked like until I peeked at this site. The new version of the Marina Theatre was designed to accommodate the Wallgreens pharmacy that has moved into a large portion of the ground floor. As the smaller of the two screens, both upstairs, is not quite ready for the public, Iron Man is only being shown in the larger, 250-seat theatre. It's probably now the "nicest" of the Lee Neighborhood Theatre screens, not quite as large as that of the Presidio's main house but in a symmetrical room that feels like it was built for showing movies.

Except for one drawback: the screen is a little low, and there's no way for people sitting on the left side of the theatre to exit without crossing in front of it. Which means that shadows of the heads tall people on a restroom run disturb the goal of immaculate projection. Also, for some reason all the house lights went up during the end credits. I know we don't want people tripping over each other as they head for the exits, but might it be possible to find an alternative solution? I like supporting a neighborhood theatre and not a downtown megaplex on the occasions when I want to see a screen-saturated Hollywood movie, but I'm not too crazy about having to strain to read the names of the people who worked on the film (a number of them Frisco Bay residents, as ILM worked on the Iron Man effects). After a while I got sick of it, and left like everybody else, thus missing a Samuel L. Jackson cameo I didn't realize was going to happen.

Iron Man is also playing at another Frisco neighborhood theatre, the Balboa, where tomorrow there will be prizes for people dressed up as their favorite Marvel villain. If only I had time to make that Taskmaster outfit I'd always dreamed of putting together when i was a kid...

Fear of the Dark

NOTE: THIS ENTRY HAS BEEN SALVAGED FROM THIS SITE AND REPOSTED UNEDITED ON 5/15/2008. SOME INFORMATION MAY BE OUTDATED, AND OUTGOING LINKS HAVE NOT BEEN INSPECTED FOR REPUBLICATION. COMMENTS CAN BE FOUND HERE.

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The horror movie is one of the few remaining film genres that can fairly reliably pack audiences into theatres, according to articles like this one. I wonder if a big part of the reason for this is the dependence the genre has on darkness. As nyctophobia is so common among children because of their active imaginations, it may be an instinct to confront (and conquer) buried childhood fears that keeps fans hooked on the imaginings of horror movie directors. And, at least in my experience, only an extremely carefully calibrated home video set-up in a room free of distractions of light and sound can approximate the cinematic void of blackness found in any decent movie theatre. All but the most absolutely absorbing films in the genre lose a great deal of their power to startle, shock, and disturb when viewed within the familiarity of home.

This summer is a good time for discovering or rediscovering alternatives to the re-makes and "family friendly" chillers Hollywood is bringing to multiplexes in Frisco and across the country. You can even build a "history of horror" curriculum, as films from every decade since the development of the talkie are represented. The Yerba Buena Center is holding a 35mm horror series Thursdays in July, including Dario Argento's Four Flies on Grey Velvet July 6 and Donald Cammell's White of the Eye July 27. The Parkway hosts a Thrillville screening of the Incredible Two-Headed Transplant July 13th. The Red Vic shows Night Watch tonight, and 1950's 3-D horror films in late July. Even the Frameline film festival that just began the other night will be presenting some horror in the form of Frameline Award recipient François Ozon's Criminal Lovers at the Roxie June 22nd. And Peaches Christ's 2006 Midnight Mass season at the Bridge begins with the film I've been most wanting for her to program, Night of the Living Dead. It's showing as part of something called "Spooktacular" which appears to be the same program that launched the Castro's first annual Shock It To Me! horror extravaganza last October at the head-scratching hour of 1PM. Much more appropriate is 11:59 PM, June 30, and the next night is one of my favorite midnight movies of all time, Brian DePalma's blood-transfused horror melodrama Carrie. A good night to get some Hawaiian Punch at the concession stand. After this horror blow-out weekend (featuring an appearance by Elvira both nights), the Midnight Mass schedule brings less-scary (or is it just a different kind of scary?) films like Beyond the Valley of the Dolls July 7-8, Showgirls July 21-22, and Death Race 2000 August 5th. Peaches also refrains from screening from video, as has become an increasingly noted practice for midnight movies, except during her annual Underground Short Film Festival (August 20th this year). Video is also how the SF Neighborhood Theatre Foundation's Film Night in the Park will present Hitchcock's post-Kennedy horror template the Birds for free at Union Square September 9th, and classic horror spoof Young Frankenstein at Dolores Park October 7, officially closing out Frisco's extended Summer.

And of course we just completed Another Hole in the Head week at the Roxie, which happily coincided with the week-long break in the Balboa's gargantuan Karloff festival. It wasn't precisely a break, since Karloff's ghost appears in the Spirit of the Beehive, Víctor Erice's stunning, every-frame-like-a-painting meditation on childhood fear and the irresistibility of film images that concluded a run Thursday night. But Erice's masterpiece is certainly something of a stretch as merely a Karloff-related film, like last night's Gods and Monsters which was made twenty years after the star's death. A welcome stretch, as the films add even more diversity to a lineup that's already impressively ranged considering Karloff's image as a horror actor: the theatre's also showing him in comedies the Secret Life of Walter Mitty and the Boogie Man Will Get You (both this Sunday, June 18), gangster films Night World (June 21) and the Guilty Generation, and the tough but nuanced Howard Hawks prison drama the Criminal Code. The latter two will show June 20, accompanied by an appearance from Karloff's Frisco-raised daughter Sara, who last week talked about her father's role in forming the Screen Actors Guild (his union card was #9), debunked his feud with Bela Lugosi, showed home movies (including the only known color footage of his get-up as the Monster in Son of Frankenstein), and answered audience questions between the Mask of Fu Manchu and the Lost Patrol. But indeed the majority of the program is made up of Karloff's horror classics, including all the original Frankenstein pictures that included him in the cast (his first two turns as the Monster play on today's double-bill, while his last, the aforementioned Son of Frankenstein, closes the series June 22 alongside House of Frankenstein, where Glenn Strange donned the monster's costume and Karloff got the mad doctor role), the original the Mummy paired with a lesser-known Egypt-themed film the Ghoul (June 19), and best of all, Edgar G. Ulmer's 1934 teaming of Karloff with Lugosi, the Black Cat (June 21).

On Tuesday, June 6 I caught a triple-bill which showcased the diversity found even within Karloff's horror filmography. First up was the 1936 Frankenstein variant the Walking Dead, in which he gets to play an ordinary, sympathetic ex-con for a while before the character gets unjustly sent to the electric chair only to survive and become a zombified killing machine with a white streak added to his hairdo. As usual, director Michael Curtiz does very well with inherently cinematic setpieces like a shadow-laden jail cell or a piano recital in which Karloff gets to give the evil eye to the men who framed him, but the direction is less inspired when he's filming transitional scenes just trying to move the plot along. And unfortunately, the 16mm print the theatre had secured was judged to be unusable, so the screening was sourced from a 1979 LaserDisc release instead, which softened the deep blacks that undoubtedly should have been present in this German Expressionist-influenced film.

The 35mm black-and-white print for the second film, Robert Wise's 1945 the Body Snatcher, was just about perfect, however. And what a great film, seamlessly stitched together without the dull stretches found in the Walking Dead. It's the tenth I've seen made by producer Val Lewton's RKO unit (the eleventh and last on my checklist is Isle of the Dead, another one starring Karloff that I'd hoped might appear in this series when I first heard about it) during the early-to-mid 1940s. Like I Walked With a Zombie, the Seventh Victim and other Lewtons, it's a thoughtful, classy horror film with an exploitation-style title. In the Body Snatcher Karloff is, if not the source of, than the leech-like enabler of evil in a corner of Old Edinburgh. The third film in the program was a very pleasant surprise: I was expecting to see The Wurdalak, Mario Bava's 41-minute Tolstoy adaptation with Karloff as a vampire hunter bringing his very dangerous work home with him. But I'd come for the last show of the night, and the theatre treated us to the full Black Sabbath (yes, the origin of the heavy metal band's name) triptych it's a part of. Black Sabbath was shown in the Americanized version put together by AIP for a 1964 release, and while the Italian-dubbed version is reportedly superior, this version is surely more appropriate for a Karloff tribute as it features his own voice, not only in the Wurdalak, but in his introductions for all three segments. And it still shows off Bava's highly saturated colors and his visual trademarks: shots framed by lattice works, camera zooms, faces eerily peering through windows, etc. Black Sabbath also was shown in a virtually pristine 35mm print.

Somewhat sadly, 35mm is increasingly becoming a cost-prohibitive option for making and distributing edgy, innovative new horror films these days. I wasn't able to make it to the Roxie for more than three films in the aforementioned Another Hole in the Head festival this year, but two of the three were shot digitally. And, like the problem with viewing horror at home or through a LaserDisc-sourced projection, the digital I've seen still does not reproduce dark enough blacks for my taste. The Blair Witch Project worked in 1999 (I haven't revisited it since) because the digital video footage was convincingly combined with 16mm and carefully blown up to 35mm for its theatrical release, and more importantly because so much of its terror relied on the power of suggestion. But the digital look is a real problem for the Hamiltons, which embraces a 'reality TV' aesthetic seemingly appropriate to its subject matter: a family trying to cope with its special problems (the less you know about the specific horror elements before seeing the film, the better.) Unfortunately, it's just too bright a film to be scary, even when it's really trying to be. Shinya Tsuakamoto's Haze fares better in its use of digital video. Like Blair Witch, much of the horror I experienced stemmed from my imagination, as I concocted all sorts of scenarios to explain the protagonist/victim's claustrophobic predicament. And the extremely closed-in feel Tsukamoto chose to utilize would probably not have been possible to shoot with cameras large enough to hold a reel of celluloid film. I bet the film would be scarier still if screened from a more powerful digital projector than the one at the Roxie, which is perfectly fine for the documentaries its usually used for, but maybe not ideal for a more visceral film like Haze.

I was glad that at least one of the Another Hole in the Head films was shot and presented on 35mm film (in a print that the festival spokesman apologized for as "dark" but I didn't find objectionable). And it was a good film too, combining scares, cultural commentary, and even a few laughs: the Ghost of Mae Nak, the latest riff on a bedtime story known to every adult and child in Thailand. The tale of Mae Naak Phra Khanong, who died in labor while her husband was away at war, but who manifested as a ghost upon his return, has been made into a hit film by the Thai movie industry every few years or so, and since it was as long ago as 1999 that Nonzee Nimibutr's Nang Nak surpassed Titanic as that country's all-time box-office champion (only to be beaten in turn by Prince Chatri Chalerm Yukol's epic Suriyothai in 2001), it's about time for another one. And it makes some sense that a foreigner (British cinematographer-turned-writer-director Mark Duffield) would tackle the next high-production value version; what Thai director would so blatantly ask to be compared to an industry powerhouse like Nonzee?

This was my first time watching a film made in the Thai language by a Westerner, and the outsider perspective definitely leads to certain divergences from what I'd normally expect from a Thai film. In bringing the story into a present-day setting (in which everybody seems just a bit out of date, which matches my experience with certain sections of Bangkok) the film centers on a young couple, Mak and Nak, who find themselves entwined into the legacy of the original Mae Nak when they move into a traditional teak house haunted by an angry ghost. But Mak and Nak do not seem to be aware of the legend, as it gets explained to them (and re-enacted for the benefit of the audience) midway through the film. A universe in which a Thai couple have never heard of Mae Nak Phra Kanong could only be one imagined by a storyteller, but that's okay, as Duffield is a pretty good one and his universe has its own rules. For example, the laws of physics do not necessarily apply to the human body when the opportunity for a cool-looking death scene special effect (and a nod to Yojimbo) presents itself. But, and perhaps it's because I too have experienced Bangkok through outsider eyes, I thought Duffield captured the visual idiosyncrasies of the City of Angels (as the traditional Thai name of the city, Krung Thep, translates to) very well. I got the feeling that he shot scenes at some of the same ferry stops and pedestrian bridges that I passed through myself once or twice, though I know Bangkok is big enough that it's probably not true. I also thought it was interesting that the office of the shady, supernaturally-connected real estate agent was placed in Chinatown, which felt like a rebuttal, intentional or not, to the dozens of Hong Kong films (the Golden Buddha and the Eye being two) in which Thailand is portrayed as a source of crime and/or ghostly activity.

Adam Hartzell on Kim Longinotto

NOTE: THIS ENTRY HAS BEEN SALVAGED FROM THIS SITE AND REPOSTED UNEDITED ON 5/27/2008. SOME INFORMATION MAY BE OUTDATED, AND OUTGOING LINKS HAVE NOT BEEN INSPECTED FOR REPUBLICATION. COMMENTS CAN BE FOUND HERE.

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The SFIFF is coming up on its midway point, and I've been availing myself of its varied opportunities, whether to stargawk at Factotum's Matt Dillion or to try to wrap my head around the Wayward Cloud. To briefly catch up on the press screenings I've been able to attend, I found Ricardo Benet's SKYY Prize contender News From Afar (which plays Apr. 29 and May 2) to be a very worthy and cinematic drama, constrasting the desolate beauty of a drought-plagued region of rural Mexico against the visual poverty of a gray and oppressive Mexico City. The documentary Favela Rising (plays Apr. 29 and May 1), on the other hand, fails to wade through its own audiovisual disorganization to show us more than snippets of its subject, Rio's socially-constructive musical group AfroReggae. And this morning I caught another doc, Adrian Belic's Beyond the Call (plays Apr. 30 and May 4), which I thought could have benefitted from some context beyond its narrow focus but still successfully parachuted me into the world of these three humanitarian adventurers for 82 minutes.

The SFIFF can't be beat this week and next in terms of variety and in-person appearances, but Frisco theatres have stepped up with some formidable counter-programming. The Red Vic has the City of Lost Children tonight and the Passenger Sunday-Monday. The Lumiere has the Fallen Idol for a week starting Friday. The Castro has booked a Stanley Kubrick series this Saturday-Wednesday. And on Monday night before heading to the Edinburgh Castle for International Remix I dropped in to see Barbary Coast, playing as part of the Balboa's Reel SF series that ends tomorrow.

On Friday the Balboa will be starting a week-long run of Kim Longinotto's latest documentary Sisters in Law. (It's the kickoff of the brand-new Balboa calendar spotted around town, which also includes Mongolian Ping Pong starting May 26, a massive Boris Karloff tribute starting June 2, and Jean-Pierre Melville's Army of Shadows starting June 23.) I've never seen a Longinotto film before, but my friend and now three-time contributor to this blog, Adam Hartzell has seen several, thanks to the Pacific Film Archive (which incidentally has released its newest calendar, too). Here's Adam:

The day after booking my recent vacation itinerary, I realized my work had a vacation day the Friday of the week I returned. Immediately I kicked myself, because if I'd have known, I could have scheduled to spend more time in Bangkok visiting the Thai Film Archive under the guidance of my friend Noy Thrupkaew and I could have spent more time at the entire Women's Film Festival in Seoul (WFFIS) rather than just the first half. I eventually felt better when I realized my early return would enable me to see five of the films with Kim Longinotto at the Pacific Film Archives (PFA) that I have yet to see. An added extra was that the jetlag that was keeping me up until 3am came in handy for the 9pm screenings that my up-at-5am work life normally has me struggling to keep my eyes open through. Plus, this enabled me an opportunity to give Longinotto a copy of the WFFIS's program that the film she co-directed with Florence Ayisi, Sisters In Law, opened. Longinotto, much to my appreciation, greatly appreciated this gesture since she hadn't received a program yet from that festival.

As part of their Documentary Voices series at the PFA, curator Kathy Geritz was able to procure films with and attendance of Kim Longinotto as she travels throughout the United States promoting the release of Sisters In Law, the film she directed along with Florence Ayisi. Let me now clarify why I'm using the preposition 'with' rather than 'by', i.e., "films with Kim Longinotto". Longinotto sees her films as collaborations with all involved in the making of the film. More so, when she is working in a language other than English where a translator friend is such an active part of the filmmaking process, she feels uncomfortable in crediting only herself as the director. So she credits as co-directors those who have assisted her in filming via their tireless translation. (In the case of The Day I Will Never Forget (2002), a film I did not see about female circumcision, there were so many women assisting with filming and translating that it became indexically cumbersome to credit each one.) This respect for those working with her carries over to the compassion conveyed towards those individuals who agreed to have these intimate moments of their lives portrayed on screen.

And intimate moments they are when we consider how much about Iran's day to day lives are kept from us, particularly from my fellow U.S. citizens presently as the prophet-complexed administration mis-ruling our country and their complicit media forces seek to justify their desire to bomb Iran because they have the most toys. The powers that corrupt know that if we were to touch on the daily lives of those they fiendishly desire to bomb, we would be even more unwilling to allow such an atrocity to happen than we already are. Both Divorce Iranian Style (1998) and Runaway (2001), each co-directed with Ziba Mir-Hosseini, allow us an opportunity to follow snippets of the lives of Iranian women as they wrestle with limitations in self-definition that the Iranian government imposes upon them. I think I have missed three opportunities to see Divorce Iranian Style and I was thankful to the PFA for providing me yet another chance. Under the Iranian government's interpretation of Islamic Law, a man can divorce his wife without cause, but a woman must have her husband's consent or prove his impotency, insanity, or financial instability. Longinotto and Mir-Hosseini follow the goings on in one particular family courtroom. Unhappy in their marriages for various reasons, we witness several women try to negotiate their way out of these relationships. We witness them plead, demand, haggle, acquiesce, confess and lie to the judges to find liberation from their societal constraints.

Several moments stand out during this powerful documentary. When the judge is asked by a 16 year-old who was married as a 14 year-old to a man who looks like he's in his mid-30's, at what age can a girl be legally married, one can see the serious discrepancies between the written, literal law and the law that feels right when he answers by saying she can be married when she reaches puberty, which can be as early as 9. Longinotto elaborated how she found the judge to be a sensitive, kind man who was often in conflict with the literal law and the unique situation each plaintiff presented. This is why Longinotto and Mir-Hosseini included images of him praying in between cases, because the judge would often need such moments of reflection after all the unsettling matters he must settle.

An Iranian friend of mine whom I told about this moment in the film provided a hopeful story that presents an Iran not as beholden to fundamentalism as is often presented to us. When a friend of hers returned to contest a land dispute, he found himself in a courtroom with a plaintiff who decided to simply read from the Koran, regardless of relevance to the case at hand, to demonstrate he is the more faithful Muslim over that of my Westernized friend's equally Westernized friend. The judge, a mullah like the judge in Longinotto's film, responded with utmost diplomacy, calling out the tactics of the plaintiff as insincere while still showing respect for the Koran by saying something along the lines of 'We appreciate your gesture, but in this court we don't trust those who quote the Koran a lot.' If only we saw more of that judge's emerging Iran in the corporatized U.S. media.

Or if only we saw more of the younger Iranian generation coming up, such as the young girl who is the daughter of one of the female clerks who comes to the court after she finishes her school day. There is a powerful moment in the film when she gets up onto the bench, demands silence, and proceeds to hold court by providing the most astute commentary provided throughout the whole film. She questions the make-believe real men in front of her, asking them why they are not kinder and more respectful of their wives. Never has the cliché 'out of the mouths of babes' been more poignant as this moment where a child presents a better understanding of the women's view than the male judges or female plaintiffs seem to at times.

Runaway follows younger women who, like the older women (although some not that much older, some even younger) seeking divorce, have left their homes for various reasons, often because of abuse by parents or siblings. These runaways seek refuge in a shelter run by women where they can avoid the dangers of the street while efforts are made to re-connect these girls with their families. Although there appear to be avenues for the girls to escape from extremely violent or otherwise detrimental homes, the primary mission appears to be to eventually reconnect these girls with their respective families. One of the interventions involves telling the girls boogeyman stories about the violence that can happen to them out on the street. I'm sure these stories have some truth to them, but I would hope for greater feminist advocacy in this women's space than reinforcement of the patriarchy. A particularly harrowing moment is when an obviously drunk (or high) greatly older brother seeks to advocate for his sister's return as the mother and sister stand silent. The child appears quite discomforted by the scene. Later when she engages in a quick turnaround professing excitement to return home, serious doubts arise over this young girl's future. But the shelter workers have no other recourse outside of getting no-violence guarantees signed, since the law is clearly geared toward keeping families together even if detrimental to individual lives within those families.

Kim Longinotto's commentary before and after the screenings was the best I have heard in recent Q&As. I resoundingly concur with Lys Woods at Synoptique who notes Longinotto's "completely winning persona." Longinotto truly added a great deal to the experience of the viewings, offering fascinating asides, such as her respect for the judge and how they captured the powerful moment of the child playing judge in Divorce Iranian Style. Apparently the child was quite precocious, greatly wanting to be filmed. Longinotto and Zir-Hosseini tried to explain that they wanted to capture a moment as it happened, not something planned. Whether or not the young girl planned the moment at the judge's bench, she saw her moment when Longinotto and Zir-Hosseini finally captured the judge leaving. Confidently striding up to the bench, pounding her tiny, opened hand, she held court for future Iranians should they survive the lethal politics of the Cheney/Rove administration, as, if not clear enough already, I very much hope they do.

The first film Longinotto co-directed, Pride of Place (1976, co-directed with Dorothea Gazidis and where Longinotto is credited as 'Kim Longinotto Landseer', 'Landseer' being a name her father attached to falsely claim that they were related to the famous painter), involved returning to her public (what would be called a private school in the U.S.) boarding school in England. Encouraged by financial necessity to film in black and white, the economic resourcefulness brought an appropriate feel to the dingy, dark, hopelessly unnecessary feel of the school. When we see the headmistress yet again get nasty with the 'stupid' girls, telling them how they have wasted 10 or more minutes on locating someone's blazer, I wanted to scream out at the headmistress, 'No, lady, YOU are the one wasting time!' The girls seem to learn more during their chatting sessions around the classes than studying anything in class. In her commentary, Longinotto spoke of how she admired the rebels she found while filming, and it was the smoking in the woods scene that brought the rare smile found on my face while watching this film, my face otherwise resorting to contorting a grimace at how horrible, or a guffaw at how ridiculous, all the scolding was.

An interesting aspect of Longinotto's commentary was that it provided emotional balance for me. After the two Iranian films, I found myself seeing rows of half empty glasses, lacking the hope I saw after the documentaries done in Japan. But Longinotto reassured me and the audience that there were women doing some amazing work within the constraining parameters. Equally, my half-full glasses were toppled somewhat by the additional information Longinotto provided regarding the documentaries made in Japan.

Dream Girls (co-directed with Jano Williams, 1993) follows the immensely popular Takarazuka Music School and Theater where the Japanese women reverse the Kabuki rule of men playing women characters. Here the women play women and men, and the women playing men are the most avidly followed by women audiences that sell-out most shows. We follow the hazing rituals of the first year that consists of OCD-esque cleaning rituals, walking around the room close to the walls, and opening the door ever so slightly to slip through. I must say that I was a bit prone to find rebellion where others might not in the actors on stage and in the audience watching them. I have been concerned about the recent denigrating commentary about the Japanese housewife fans of "Yonsama", South Korean actor Bae Yong-joon of "Winter Sonata", a South Korean TV serial immensely popular throughout Asia. Rather than showing teenage regression amongst these women fans of both Yonsama and the Takarazuka Theater, I'm wondering, when explored in-depth rather than from tired journalistic frames, if we might find something similar to what Barbara Ehrenreich, Elizabeth Hess, and Gloria Jacobs found in their essay "Beatlemania: Girls Just Want To Have Fun", arguing convincingly that "Beatlemania" provided a sexual outlet for emerging women whose society placed all responsibility for state-sanctioned chastity on them rather than their male counterparts. The de-individuation of the group permitted a space where a young woman "...who might never have contemplated shoplifting could assault a policeman with her fists, squirm under police barricades, and otherwise invite a disorderly conduct charge" (The Audience Studies Reader, Will Brooker and Deborah Jermyn, p. 183). In the case of Dream Girls, might these fans and participants relish this space to expand beyond the gender roles they are confined within, where, for a moment, the women can have the privileges of men and these women as men can both caress and romance the women as they desire to be caressed and romanced? Might these women simply need a space away from men portraying men where they can talk amongst themselves about feelings and thoughts they feel they must hide elsewhere? And to bring this closer to my home, might we find similarities between Japanese housewives and their 'hysteria' for Yonsama and the male players of the Takarazuka Theater and the popularity of "Desperate Housewives", most significantly popular in the States where sexually- and gender-repressing Christian Dominionists have the greatest sway? Repressing people's healthy desires leads to projection on some object and the de-individuation of the mob - so wonderfully outlined in the essay "My Crowd: Or, Phase 5: A report from the inventor of the flash mob" in the March 2006 issue of Harper's Magazine by Bill Wasik - allows for un-self-conscious release of that which is not permitted release elsewhere by society.

Longinotto, and astute audience members, put a bummer on my progressive buzz by reminding me of a few items the film notes. First off, the Takarazuka Music School and Theater was created, choreographed, and overall ruled by men. Second, it is these ruling men who have set the rule that each 'top star' (only a male role-player can be a 'top star') is only permitted a two year reign so as to reign in any feminist ideas she might get in her head from being a he for any longer. Not so ironically, male role-players are mythed within Japanese culture as desirable wives because they 'know' what it's like to be a man. So this most progressively possible of projects still ends up feeding the patriarchy's needs. Still, such spaces won't necessarily stay completely confined within the rules set by others. Gradually women demand similar freedoms men demand from the exhilarations provided by such alternative spaces. Some of them will go back to their home lives and enact positive changes of varying degrees through the inspiration provided by their top star muse.

All this could perhaps better explain the recent cultural shift in Japan that is unnecessarily disparagingly described as para-chan or "parasite singles", (a disparaging moniker chosen by a male sociologist, nonetheless). The phenomenon has been too often discussed as a 'problem' and the focus of this 'problem' has too often been mis-placed on the women alone rather than the political/economic/social factors that make it difficult for a single women to find work, a reasonable rent, and fulfilling relationships in Tokyo. Their only options are either staying with their parents or shacking up with a man to survive. (And in those latter cases, why aren't the men referred to as 'para-chans' since it can be well argued that the men are parasitic in their living off the unpaid labor of their wives? Yeah, we know why male sociologists never think of their fellow men that way.) For those women who want a job and relationship just like men, (or those women who find Japanese society too restrictive to allow for the open Lesbian relationship they desire), staying with their parents seems more palatable than solely tending house for a man they are less than happy with. The dreamspace provided by the Takarazuka Music School and Theater in Japan can't help but seep into our waking worlds as well. Could the phenomenon of Women Alone with Parents - allowing for a non-judgmental, thus more appropriate, term to describe this phenomenon in Japan - be the reasonable depressive response that follows the manic highs of the possible freedoms the Takarazuka Theater envisions? Could this just be the natural slacking when your hopes are squelched for a moment by economic and social inequality?

And might not that hope be found again in ones later years? Such as the hope I found in The Good Wife of Tokyo (co-directed with Claire Hunt, 1993). Kazuko Hohki is a Japanese woman living in Tottenham, England for over 15 years who has returned to her home with her three-person, art rock band Frank Chicken. (Recall David Byrne of the Talking Heads in his oversized suit chopping his forearm with his other hand while commenting on how this is not his beautiful house and tell him this is not his oversized suit either, take it off of him, and then put him in a skyscraper costume and make him sing and chant about the Rockefeller Tower being purchased by the Japanese. That is Frank Chicken.) Turns out Hohki's mother is quite an alternative performer as well, being a leader (with limits, which I'll get to later) in the House of Development, a Japanese mélange of Shinto, Buddhist, Christian, and Tony Robbinsist religions, a congregation of which she runs from her home. We see Hohki's mother minister to her disciples through their laughter and pain as her retired husband reads upstairs and Hohki remembers why she left Japan. I found both Hohki and her mother resilient souls who negotiated different spaces for similar needs to express themselves. Longinotto somewhat tempered the hope I found by adding that the House of Development is run by men and they are the ones who put a stop to Hohki's mother's special leaflet dance displayed during the credits. Plus, Longinotto underscored the moments in the film where Hohki's mother advocates acceptance of a women's plight advised by much of the House of Development's tenets that raze the more fulfilling houses that would otherwise develop were we left to negotiate homes that allowed for more gender equality.

What Longinotto's commentary on both perspectives of the quintessential glass of half water underscores is that each of her films are full of more than we think, positively and negatively. So when those of us in San Francisco head out to see Sisters In Law at the Balboa after eating the fabulous food at the Shanghai Dumpling King and then contemplating the rulings of the Cameroonian Judge Beatrice Ntuba and what they mean for women, men, Muslims, Africa, and the world over coffee at Cafe Zephyr across the street afterwards, keep in mind there is so much more to this story than we will ever know. (Just as there's so much more to enjoy about The Richmond District than the three establishment shoutouts I've made.) We just can't stop with this documentary in hearing, seeing, and experiencing more about our mutual worlds. Longinotto isn't going to stop making these films with women, and I don't see myself ever getting tired of watching them.