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.

Bastards (2013)

WHO: Claire Denis

WHAT: I haven't seen this film yet and I haven't read any reviews yet. I'm sold on seeing this film just on the basis of its director alone; all I really know is that it's her first feature film made on digital video. (Does this mean that White Material will stand as her last shot on film?) But I'm glad to know that, once I've seen the film and an ready to read reviews, David Hudson has been collecting links to them since its first US showing last month.

WHERE/WHEN: 8:30 PM tonight only at the Clay Theatre.

WHY: It's the final day of the San Francisco Film Society's annual French Cinema Now showcase, and some of the heaviest-hitting directors have been saved for last. The day starts with House Of Radio, the newest documentary from the maker of To Be And To Have and many other popular non-fiction imports. That's followed by the weekend's second showing of Anna Novion's Rendezvous in Kirina, which the Film Society gave pride of place on its festival marketing materials. I'm also very excited to see Vic & Flo Saw A Bear, the latest from French-Canadian filmmaker Denis Côté, who made the wonderful Curling in 2010. Bastards closes the program, and then the SFFS does it all again at the Clay next week with its longest-standing mini-festival, New Italian Cinema.

HOW: Digital screening.

Breathless (1960)

WHO: Jean-Luc Godard directed this.

WHAT: Godard's first feature film. Only one of the most famous and influential art/independent/foreign films ever made. A masterpiece that I find grows in stature with each viewing (maybe that's the very definition of masterpiece). David Hudson collected a large number of excellent articles about the film when it had its 50th anniversary in 2010.

WHERE/WHEN: Today only at the Castro Theatre at 7:30 PM.

WHY: Though (at least in 2013) we're not getting anything close in size to the giant Godard retrospective that New Yorkers were able to see last month, at least local cinephiles get to see at least five of Godard's best features in local cinemas this month, four of them on the giant-sized Castro screen. The Castro plays a Godard every Wednesday in November: Breathless tonight, Weekend on a 35mm double-bill with David Cronenberg's Crash on the 13th, Contempt as a newly-prepared DCP on the 20th, and Band of Outsiders alongside Vincent Gallo's Buffalo '66 on November 27th, both in 35mm.

The fifth Godard coming to Frisco Bay is perhaps my favorite of all his films: Vivre Sa Vie, his signature collaboration with his wife Anna Karina, screening as part of the Pacific Film Archive's Fassbinder's Favorites sidebar to its retrospective for that director. That'll be November 22nd, the same evening as the final screening in the PFA's current Agnès Varda series, Cléo From 5 to 7. It's an appropriate pairing because, although Varda last night said she was didn't feel particularly close to the Cahiers du Cinéma crowd (of which Godard must certainly be considered a member), she did recruit him and Karina to perform in the short film-within-film Les Fiancés du pont Mac Donald ou (Méfiez-vous des lunettes noires) appearing in Cléo.

Varda also noted last night that, although she was alone among female filmmakers to gain notice during the 1960s heyday of the French New Wave, she's become heartened that there are so many French women directing, shooting, and taking other once-male-dominated roles in filmmaking nowadays. Of the nine contemporary French films screening in the San Francisco Film Society's French Cinema Now series opening at the Clay tomorrow and running all weekend, female directors outnumber males five to four (only by counting French-Canadian director of Vic & Flo Saw A Bear Denis Côté does the ratio even up to five-five), and the series includes five films shot or co-shot by women cinematographers, including two by Claire Mathon, two by Jeanne Lapoirie, and of course Bastards, directed by Claire Denis and shot by superstar DP Agnès Godard (no relation to Jean-Luc). For a full preview of the French Cinema Now series I direct you to the excellent article by local Francophile and cinephile Michael Hawley.

HOW: Breathless screens in 35mm, on a double-bill with the local DCP premiere of one of Godard's favorite films, Otto Preminger's Bonjour Tristesse. This was the film that inspired Godard to cast Jean Seberg.

Nénette And Boni (1996)

WHO: Agnès Godard was cinematographer for this.

WHAT: Matt Connolly calls this Claire Denis-directed film "not quite as formally or thematically adventurous as some of her work" but I'm not so sure. Just because Nénette And Boni holds up as a straightforward narrative in ways that perhaps L'Intrus cannot, doesn't mean its design and its filming didn't involve just as much experimentation as any of the films in her career. Janet Bergstrom, in her essay "Opacity in the Films of Claire Denis", identifies Nénette And Boni as a turning point in Denis and Godard's visual approach, more suited to "a film about solitary people rather than a group". She notes that longer lenses than the pair had used before

allowed for an oscillation of point of view in which a floating, imaginary vision intersects seamlessly with literal point of view shots or with "objective shots," thanks also to the tremendous variation in strategies between fixed and moving shots, using a camera that rested on the shoulder rather than a Steadycam.

The space between sleep/dreaming and wakefulness is captured more clearly in this film than in perhaps any of Denis's others, an achievement that fans out thematically in many directions as well. And it's perhaps no other element than Godard's camera, taking pictures like the one in the above screen capture (if you don't remember the scene from the film, imagine a soundtrack made by a Krups coffee-alarm), that makes this possible.

WHERE/WHEN: Tonight only at 7:00 at the Pacific Film Archive.

WHY: When Agnès Godard was in town a week and a half ago to present PFA screenings of five of the films she shot, including two for Denis, Michael Fox was able to sit down for an interview in which he asked her which directors she wished she could have worked with had their careers overlapped with hers. Though Godard is perhaps best-known for her work with women (she's shot films for Wim Wenders, Erick Zonca, Claude Berri, André Téchiné, but it's her consistent collaborations with women - Denis, Catherine Corsini, Ursula Meier - are what more cinephiles think of when her name comes to mind) she made a list only of men: Hitchcock, Ozu, Mizoguchi, Renoir, Bresson, Huston and the Lumière brothers. On the other hand, it's hard to think of many women directors who held comparable stature as filmmakers during these film titans' heydays.

At the time I'm posting, you can also hear Moira Sullivan's interview on issue of 1171 of Movie Magazine International by clicking their web site. Sullivan spoke to Godard about, among other things, her latest collaboration with Denis, Les Salauds a.k.a. Bastards, which I hope won't take too long to make it's way to a Frisco Bay theatre.

In the meantime, there are two more Godard-credited films on the PFA summer docket: Ozu tribute 35 Shots of Rum this Friday June 28th, and Jacquot, Agnès Varda's tribute to her husband Jacques Demy, on July 31st.

HOW: 35mm print

Home (2008)

WHO: Agnès Godard was cinematographer for this film directed by Ursula Meier.

WHAT: I haven't seen Home since 2009, when it was one of my very favorite films of the San Francisco International Film Festival that year. It would surely have appeared in the upper half of my Top Ten List that year's-end as well, except that I was restricting that list to films that found week-long commercial releases in the Bay Area; I don't believe Home has ever had another local public screening. Not until tonight.

Here's an excerpt from my own review written a little more than four years ago:

A family has fled urban living to establish a free-spirited life in a house mere feet off the shoulder of the highway. We're introduced to them first in a manic night hockey game shot (by cinematographer Agnes Godard) very tightly on the actors. It's the consistency of their character arcs that holds the film together throughout drastic changes in their setting and in tone; sometimes it feels like a comedy, other times drama, action thriller, or even horror.  

WHERE/WHEN: Screens tonight at the Pacific Film Archive at approximately 8:30 PM, after a presentation by Agnès Godard that begins at 7.

WHY: The PFA begins not only its Dancing with Light: The Cinematography of Agnès Godard series, but its entire summer schedule with tonight's screening. Godard we be on hand tonight and at four more screenings this weekend, showing and discussing four more films directed by Meier, by Erick Zonca, and by her most consistent collaborator Claire Denis. Two more Denis/Godard films round out the program after the cinematographer departs town.

Of the PFA series arriving later this summer, the one with the most relevance to this Godard selection is the extensive Jacques Demy retrospective being held in July and August. Three films made about Demy by the director's widow Agnès Varda will screen as part of this series, and for the best-known one of those, Jacquot, Godard was one of three cinematographers.

HOW: 35mm print following Agnès Godard's "behind the scenes of the art of cinematography in a talk followed by a Q&A with the audience."

Beau Travail (1999)

WHO: Denis & Denis. That is, Denis Lavant directed by Claire Denis.

WHAT: I'm getting ready to roll out my annual "I Only Have Two Eyes" survey of the best repertory screenings as picked by Frisco Bay cinephiles. Last time around, one of the most-frequently chosen films was Beau Travail, and no wonder. It's a truly special film, a lyrical adaptation of Herman Melville set amongst French Foreign Legionnaires stationed in East Africa. I cannot recommend seeing this on a big screen highly enough.

WHERE: The Castro Theatre today and Thursday at 5:00 and 9:00 PM.

WHY: While Holy Motors is driving circles around much of the competition in some of the most influential year-end film polls, and its star Denis Lavant is deservedly getting similar attention, it seems a perfect time to revisit one of his best previous roles. Claire Denis has gotten some interesting French press for her upcoming film recently as well. In other words, if you missed Beau Travail's last Frisco Bay cinema-stand (at the PFA) almost two years ago, you really need to go this time, just to be current. And if you caught it in 2011, you probably are dying to see it again anyway, especially on a screen as large as the Castro's.

HOW: On a 35mm double bill with Samsara.

Terri Saul Only Has Two Eyes

It's impossible for any pair of eyes to view all of Frisco Bay's worthwhile film screenings. I'm so pleased that a number of local filmgoers have let me post their repertory/revival screening highlights of 2011. An index of participants is found here.

The following list comes from artist and writer Terri Saul, who tweets under the handle SisterRye.

2011 Rep House List; Sister Rye

I could write this year's list by mentioning only one director, one series, and one venue –HANDS UP! ESSENTIAL SKOLIMOWSKI- which played from July 22-August 25 at the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, California. I had never heard of Skolimowski until my friend Charles suggested I check him out. His films are what defined my year of movie watching more than any others. Though regretfully, I did miss a few.

Every film I saw last year that wasn't a new release, I saw at the PFA. I'm listing the films in reverse chronological order, starting from the most recent screening and working my way backward.

Although only one of the films he stars in appears on my list, Vincent Gallo both surprised and disappointed in one of the best films I saw this year and one of the worst I suffered through. The first (and an outstanding rare film on my list) is ESSENTIAL KILLING (Poland/Norway/Ireland/Hungary, 2010), directed by Jerzy Skolimowksi. It screened at the PFA on August 20th, at 9pm. Read Skolimowski's comments about the inspiration for making this film (and perhaps why it doesn't screen with much frequency) here. In TROUBLE EVERY DAY (part of the UNDER THE SKIN: THE FILMS OF CLAIRE DENIS, which ran from March 4-April 16) Gallo had to talk and act at the same time, not something he did well in 2001. Both ESSENTIAL KILLING and TROUBLE EVERY DAY were provocative, shocking, gritty, and memorable. I think the reason Gallo was superb in ESSENTIAL KILLING is because he acted without speaking much. A film without dialog is a film that works well for Gallo. The wordless script didn't only benefit Gallo's portrayal of Mohammed, but also was in keeping with the silenced, desperate prisoner on the run in a strange place. Mohammed's ability to communicate, muffled by snow, anomie, confusion, and starvation, in this timely and politically astute piece of humanist drama was whittled down to the narrow features of Gallo's roaming eyes and gnashing teeth. Not unfamiliar territory for Skolimowski, who also chose to have his supporting actress, Emmanuelle Seigner, play a mute woman, silent cinema makes up much of Skolimowski's student films.

The second film on my list is FOUR NIGHTS WITH ANNA (Poland/France, 2008) also directed by Jerzy Skolimowksi. It screened at the PFA on August 5th, at 7pm. The one sentence description of FOUR NIGHTS WITH ANNA on IMDB is enough to drive the curious to watch it, if only for its absurd premise, "A crematorium worker repeatedly breaks into a woman's house at night to help with housework." Skolimowski somehow manages to make the preposterous possible; the crude, sweet; the creepy, charming; and the quotidian, extraordinary. From Jim Emerson writing on Alt Screen, "Four Nights with Anna is one of the great movies about voyeurism (think Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom, Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window, David Lynch’s Blue Velvet, and Krzysztof Kieslowski’s A Short Film About Love, to name a few). As such, it’s also a movie about movie-watching and movie-making" Read the rest of the write-up here.

The third film is THE SHOUT (UK, 1978), yet another by Skolimowski. I watched (and was mesmerized by) THE SHOUT as I sank deeply into my seat at the PFA on July 22nd, at 8:50pm. THE SHOUT was like a good mass-market paperback mystery by a writer who is known and trusted to transport and transform the reader. The use of sound in the film and as a plot device is indescribable and unmatched, best heard in a large space with a good sound system. One of the leading characters, Anthonyn Fielding, is a sound artist. We spend time with him in his recording studio where he traps bugs to hear and collect their reverberations against his microphone. His obsession with the power of sound is shared by his opposing character, Crossley, who brags about possessing a mystical shout. Also, THE SHOUT repeatedly references one of my favorite painters, Francis Bacon. I'm leaving out DEEP END, BARRIER, KING, QUEEN, KNAVE, MOONLIGHTING, IDENTIFCATION MARKS: NONE, and WALKOVER, all worthy of discussion and repeated viewings.

The fourth is 1900 (Italy/France/West Germany, 1976), by Bertolucci, part of BERNARDO BERTOLUCCI: IN SEARCH OF MYSTERY, which ate up a lot of my time between, July 8-August 18. 1900 played, starting at 6pm, on July 16th, and lasted 311 minutes (according to the PFA calendar). I wouldn't have cut one. Although Lincoln Spector says in his review that this wasn't the 5-hour director's cut, but a 4-hour US version. Now I'm wondering which "director's cut" I saw. I remember a brief discussion of the numerous cuts before-hand, but I didn't take notes. It was long and I was glad it was long. One well-known scene in 1900 is the forest ocarina waltz, in which dancers dance to the music of small and large ocarinas, ancient flutes (While discussing this scene with a friend I learned that there's now an iPhone ocarina app that can be played by blowing into the microphone as the mouthpiece of a woodwind). 1900 is one of the most visually musical films I've seen (The composition of each shot seems to dance and divide itself up mathematically, like music), and the most direct when it comes to telling the story of class struggle and class conflict among friends. I'm picking 1900 for my list over THE CONFORMIST, THE LAST EMPEROR, and THE SHELTERING SKY, partly because the last two are so well known and loved and THE CONFORMIST (though stunningly beautiful) didn't leave as much of an epic impression as 1900, although I'm glad I saw it.

Number five is Lisandro Alonso’s debut feature LA LIBERTAD (2001). I'm partially favoring this screening because of the odd short that preceded it and made for a unique film night overall: CHEESE (Mika Rottenberg, U.S., 2008). CHEESE and LA LIBERTAD (Argentina 2001) were featured as part of FIRST PERSON RURAL: THE NEW NONFICTION, which ran from March 26-April 17. LA LIBERTAD was like a view taken in while having nothing to do, or a chore done with loving attention and mindfulness. The camera is allowed to disappear in LA LIBERTAD. The audience is left to fend for itself in the wild solitude of the film. CHEESE just has to be seen to be believed. You won't have to go to art school because you'll give yourself an honorary degree and afterward dream of sustenance, substance, hair, and the feminine ability to create something out of nothing.

The sixth film is BEAU TRAVAIL (France, 1999). I caught BEAU TRAVAIL as part of the previously mentioned Claire Denis retrospective at the PFA, on March 25th, at 9pm. I would like to write an essay about BEAU TRAVAIL, especially the ending, which I won't spoil for you if you haven't seen it. Denis Lavant is amazing as Galoup. BEAU TRAVAIL is an extended dance, a ballet with an eclectic score, a study of the male figure, military limbo, domination, jealousy, competitiveness, colonial anxiety, boredom, and Sisyphean feats, all shot with impeccable attention to light, color, dimensionally, and detail.

Number seven is NENETTE ET BONI (France, 1996), also part of the Denis series. It screened at the PFA on the same night, prior to BEAU TRAVAIL March 25th, at 7pm. Sound and corporeal puns–cheap coffee percolating, kneading pizza dough–make for some startling, sexual and poetic transitions between scenes. Vincent Gallo shows up in this one too, briefly speaking English amid French, and providing comic relief. Tindersticks provides a typical Claire Denis soundtrack. I can't imagine her films without their music. "Tiny Tears" will always remind me of this film.

The eighth film on my list is WHITE MATERIAL (France, 2009), another by Denis, one that was shown early in the series, on March 4th, at 7pm. Michael Koreski wrote well about the film in Reverse Shot here. I haven’t seen any other film that addresses the issue of child soldiers so clearly and with so much tenderness. Everyone in the film is misguided, corrupt, delusional, and seeking short-term pleasure, the freedom of psychosis, or revenge. But the gun-toting children seem mainly driven by hunger, craving for basic comforts, and hero-worship. Denis does an excellent job of critiquing or examining colonialism and the post-colonial, while also laying out some possible responses to finding oneself born or awakening into it on one side or another. The only thread tying all characters together is their commitment to staying in place, rather than fleeing the violence that arrives one day and escalates without pause, although one key difference is the ability to make the choice to leave. Some of the people don’t have that choice, either because of illness and advanced age, youth and poverty, or those driven mad by their situation. Isabelle Huppert’s character is all about stubbornness, almost a play on the word “plantation” as if she had planted her own feet into the soil, like a dominating country would.

Ninth on my list is LA CEREMONIE (France, 1995), by Claude Chabrol, part of SUSPICION: THE FILMS OF CLAUDE CHABROL AND ALFRED HITCHCOCK, January 13-February 25, following the death of Chabrol in 2010. I haven't read A Judgment in Stone, the Ruth Rendell book that LA CEREMONIE is based on, but considering the primacy of plot and social circumstance, it makes sense that LA CEREMONIE is based on her writing. LE BOUCHER should also be on my list, but I chose LA CEREMONIE, probably because it features two of my favorite French actresses, Sandrine Bonnaire and Isabelle Huppert, not to mention Jacqueline Bisset.

Number ten is the film I saw first in 2011, TOUKI BOUKI (Senegal, 1973), directed by Djibril Diop-Mambéty. I was introduced to this film while studying the history of ethnographic and international film as an undergraduate. It was part of the series last year called WORLD CINEMA FOUNDATION: SAFEGUARDING CINEMATIC TREASURES, which ran from January 15- February 10. In the story, friends become divided over a pull to escape hardship, coruption and petty crime and flee to mythical Paris vs. remaining in Senegal and continuing political action. Humiliation and revenge over political differences features strongly, as well as decisions about theft, subservience, tricksterism, magic, and dressing up to pass as European. The film uses magical realism, experimental editing, such as jumpcuts, flashbacks, and jarring cutaways to mysterious and sometimes violent sequences in a way that seems appropriate to its decade. This film, as do many on my list, is critical of capitalism, colonialism, and post-colonial corruption, but also the behavior of those seeking revolution. The use of the Josephine Baker singing "Paris, Paris, Paris!" is unforgettable, and contrasts well with the action on screen. A good summary of the film can be found here.

SFIFF54 Day 12: Claire Denis Film Scores

The 54nd San Francisco International Film Festival is in its final week. It runs through May 5th. Each day during the festival I'll be posting a recommendation and capsule review of a film in the festival.

Tindersticks: Claire Denis Film Scores 1996-2009

playing: at 8:30 PM at the Castro, with no further screenings during the festival.
distribution: not applicable; this is a live event.

For each of my other daily festival previews this year, I've been singling out a single film to focus my writing, even if it's part of a shorts program. Yesterday, the film I wrote on didn't actually show- though its 1935 remake did (what an evening it was!). Today, instead of focusing on a single film, I'm going to talk about a program as a whole. That's because tonight's Tindersticks event won't involve the screening of any film in its entirety; instead, clips from ix films for which the British ensemble has provided musical scores, will be shown at the Castro in versions with music stripped out but dialogue remaining, but accompanied musically by the composers live on the stage.

Dennis Lim has aptly investigated the working relationship between the great French auteur Claire Denis, and Tindersticks, who have provided the score for all of her feature films since 1996's Nenette And Boni (pictured above), save for two: Vers Mathilde, her only documentary in this period, and 1999's Beau Travail which understandably took a different approach to music than Tindersticks might have been able to provide, at least not so early in the collaboration. I'm interested in tonight's event for a number of reasons. Foremostly, because I love most every Denis film I've seen (and thanks to the recent PFA retro that's nearly all of them), have always thought the aural contributions from Tindersticks played a large role in this affection, and want to hear them perform the music live. I'm also curious about the technical side of the event: how is this going to work to have dialogue and image at a music event, or should I say a louder-than-usual musical score at a film event? Will there be improvisation, or will the music be just as heard in the films? Finally, I'm hoping that foregrounding the musical aspect of some of Denis's films for an evening, might help me understand a bit better just what is working in the Tindersticks scores, that makes them seem so unique, and what is their precise contribution to making her films so unique. I'm expecting an evening that will be much-discussed by local cinephiles for many months to come.

SFIFF54 Day 12
Another option: The Journals of Musan (SOUTH KOREA: Park Jung-bum, 2010) I haven't seen this first feature by an assistant director to Lee Chang-dong on the recent Poetry, but Adam Hartzell has called it "poignantly pessimistic", and other reports from festgoers who attended prior screenings have me intrigued.

Non-SFIFF-option for today: Moulin Rouge at the Red Vic. I don't even like this movie, but the fact that it's playing on 35mm at the Red Vic makes it of interest. What else was I going to pick on a Monday? The digital screening of Top Gun playing in every single AMC Theatre across America tonight? (Which might be more popular than expected, after last night's news.) I could mention the double-bill at the Stanford but I already mentioned it on Friday.

On The Air

Yesterday I went to San Jose, where I taped a segment for a new film discussion series hosted by Sara Vizcarrondo of Box Office Magazine and Rotten Tomatoes. Honored to follow in the footsteps of the terrific Slant Magazine critic Fernando F. Croce, who discussed the Hollywood films of Fritz Lang on the first episode of the series, I was recruited to speak about Thai auteur Apichatpong Weerasethakul, presumably because I can pronounce his name without butchering it (having taught English in Chiang Mai for a year and a half has resume applications after all!) I watched his new film Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives twice at the Kabuki last Friday in preparation, and hope to see it again at least once more before it departs from the San Francisco Film Society Screen this Thursday. It will open for a week at the Elmwood Theatre in Berkeley on Friday. I don't want to give away anything I might have mentioned on the program, but I will say this: if you haven't already, you should see Uncle Boonmee too! Watching this on a computer or even a large television screen is simply not going to do justice to Apichatpong's visual strategies, which I feel are so important to the film as a whole.

Another guest interviewd by Vizcarrondo on this episode was local filmmaker Jarrod Whaley, whose new picture The Glass Slipper is part of San Jose's Cinequest Film Festival line-up this year; it plays March 9th and again on March 12th. I have not yet seen The Glass Slipper, but I was impressed by Whaley's feature-length debut Hell Is Other People, as I wrote last year. The episode with Whaley and I in it should be edited and posted by the end of the week; keep an eye on my Twitter feed for a link as soon as it's ready for viewing.

I'm actually not too familiar with much of this year's Cinequest program, in fact, but there are a couple of noteworthy films I've seen that will be playing the last few days of fest. F. W. Murnau's silent Nosferatu, of course, is always a treat on the big screen, and sure to be particularly so at the California Theatre March 11 with Dennis James performing at the organ to a color tinted 35mm print. I know I'm not the only one to feel that Nosferatu is particularly necessary in today's vampire movie landscape; people need to be reminded to feel frightened when they encounter the undead, not lustful.

Another Cinequest film I've had a chance to preview is Raavanan starring India's most famous actres Aishwara Ray Bachchan. She plays Ragini, the wife of a law enforcement official named Dev (played by Prithviraj) who falls into the clutches of his arch-nemesis Veera (played by Vikram), who takes her as a hostage while he mounts a popular insurrection against the government authorities. Of course Ragnini develops a Stockholm-Syndrome-like attachment to her rugged and powerful captor, which raises the stakes on the inevitable confrontation between law-maker and law-breaker. Bound by conventions of Indian popular cinema (plenty of action, musical numbers that stand in for love scenes, an anything-goes approach to filming technique, etc.), Raavanan nonetheless surprised me on more than one occasion, thanks to its toying with audience sympathies for its various characters. It helped that, if I had learned its classical source material prior to viewing, I had forgotten it (i.e., don't look it up unless you're completely unfamiliar with ancient Indian literature or else don't mind missing out on the surprises I was pleased to experience.)

After playing Cinequest, Raavanan will also play at the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival, which opens this Thursday with a screening of West Is West. After 29 years of operations, more than a decade of it under the sure stewardship of former festival director Chi-hui Yang, the programming team for the SFIAAFF now has new faces of leadership in Masashi Niwano and Christine Kwon, who have brought together a set of 108 films and videos, most of them from young Asian and Asian American filmmakers. Though the lineup may include fewer "known-quantity" directors than I've come to espect from this festival, there are a number of new films by relatively established artists that I've admired, leading off with China's critically-acclaimed master Jia Zhang-Ke, whose controversial I Wish I Knew plays twice at the festival, on March 12th at the Kabuki and on the 15th at the Pacific Film Archive. Other filmmakers I'm personally excited for the opportunity to follow are Zhang Lu, whose Grain In Ear impressed me at the 2006 SFIAAFF, and Chang Tso-Chi, whose The Best Of Times was a favorite at the 2003 San Francisco International Film Festival. Their new films are Dooman River and When Love Comes, respectively. Add in new documentaries on Anna May Wong and Mongolian film history, and archival screenings of Charlie Chan At The Olympics (with author Yunte Huang on hand to contextualize that film's complex racial issues) and Nonzee Nimibutr's 1999 hit Nang Nak (the first Thai film I ever saw, and part of a three-film focus on South-East Asian horror), and there's plenty of attractions to fill a film lover's viewing schedule.

The festival's closing night selection should appeal not only to cinephiles but to Frisco Bay's many indie music enthusiasts. It's called Surrogate Valentine, and it's a comedy about a musician performing in coffee houses and other small West Coast venues, and though I must admit I had low expectations going into the press screening (perhaps leftover from the bland taste I had in my mouth from the last SFIAAFF gala presentation I saw, last year's opening night film Today's Special), these were very pleasantly upended. I will publish a full review of Surrogate Valentine after a press embargo lifts this Saturday, when it makes its world premiere at the South By Southwest Film Festival in Austin, Texas, but for now I'll just recommend it. It plays the last SFIAAFF night in San Francisco on March 17th, and the festival's last day in San Jose on March 20.

Fans of Surrogate Valentine's star Goh Nakamura who are intrigued by his prominence in one of the highlighted features might find themselves checking out other SFIAAFF programs as well. Music and film are often seen as competing forms of entertainment, but Frisco Bay's festivals have become saavy about finding ways to involve passionate seekers of out-of-the-ordinary music in their events. In a particularly brilliant move, the San Francisco International Film Festival has announced (among a few other early SFIFF program indications) that the Castro Theatre stage will play host to the Tindersticks on May 2nd, where the group will perform live under a screen showing excerpts from six of the Claire Denis films they've provided the musical score to. This makes attendance at the Pacific Film Archive's current Denis retrospective all the more imperative as preparation for this one-of-a-kind film/music event. Of the six films to be excerpted for this performance, only White Material has already had its PFA screening. Nénette et Boni plays March 25, Trouble Every Day on April 2nd, L'Intrus on April 8th & 9th, Friday Night on April 15, and 35 Shots of Rum on April 16th.

It wasn't so long ago that I considered myself much more of a music aficionado than a cinephile myself. The first film I tried to buy a ticket for at the SFIFF was Iara Lee's electronic music documentary, Modulations. It was sold out, and I ended up seeing it during its theatrical run, and waiting another year before actually attending SFIFF. I've recently been reminded that my first excursions to truly independent movie theatres the Red Vic and the Roxie were facilitated by frequent ticket giveaways from my favorite radio station I've ever regularly listened to, 90.3 KUSF-FM. Without my interest in keeping on top of exciting independent music curated by the KUSF DJs, I might never have gotten into the habit of attending these alternative screening venues. Even after my attention to music became eclipsed by my attention to movies, I became a loyal listener to the Movie Magazine International radio program produced by Monica Sullivan out of the station. It was a great way to keep on top of festivals, revivals, new releases, etc. And yes, they had ticket giveaways on that weekly program as well.

In case you haven't heard about the University of San Francisco's decision to sell off the 90.3 frequency earlier this year, here's a good primer. At the end of last month, I was one of many who sent a letter to the Federal Communcations Commission in Washington, D.C., asking that they deny the premature transfer of the frequency the public had entrusted the University to operate in the interest of the local community (which KUSF had, with great panache, as it hosted over a dozen foreign-language broadcasts and partnered with countless local businesses and non-profit organizations to get the word out on important activities.) While KUSF supporters wait to hear what will happen next on the legal front, they continue to rally support for their cause by organizing events to benefit the cost of fighting the transfer. Tomorrow night, a special screening of the punk rock documentary A History Lesson, part 1 will be held at the 9th Street Independent Film Center, and this Saturday at midnight, a screening of a surprise film (perhaps you can figure it out from this blurb) will be presented at the Red Vic (whose March and April calendars are as strong as any two months at that venue as I can remember). Proceeds from both screenings will go to the Save KUSF campaign. Of course, if you can't make it to either screening, the fight to keep San Francisco airwaves locally-controlled in the face of media consolidation can also be aided with a direct donation.

SFIFF52 Day 9: 35 Shots of Rum

The 52nd San Francisco International Film Festival is halfway over; it runs through May 7th. Each day during the festival I'll be posting about one film I've seen or am hotly anticipating.

35 Shots of Rum (FRANCE: Claire Denis, 2008)

playing: 7:00 PM tonight at the Clay, with two more showtimes later in the festival.
festival premiere: Venice 2008
distributor: Cinema Guild theatrical release expected in New York, and hopefully here in Frisco as well.

Just about every cinephile I've talked to about the SFIFF program has the same thing to say when I've asked what new film in the program they're most eager to see: 35 Shots of Rum by Claire Denis. If you don't know her or her work yet, check out this resource for approaches to catching up. I think it must be the perfect storm of a respected auteur who has still not received her due in this country, a four-year absence of new Denis work on local screens, and a particularly well-received film that seemingly has been a highlight of just about every other film festival in the world. If I ask myself the same question, I have the same answer, and I guess for the same reasons. I don't pretend to be a leader rather than a follower here at Hell On Frisco Bay.

I already have a ticket for Wednesday's screening, but might just see 35 Shots of Rum tonight as well, at its first festival showing. I'm anticipating it more fervently than anything other than perhaps the Dengue Fever/Gordon Willis pairing next Tuesday, and the latter anticipation is at least as much for the extra-filmic experience as it is for the film itself. I hope my expectations, high as they are, are not dashed.

I must admit I've done very little reading on the film in preparation for seeing it; sometimes I like to let a trusted director take me by the hand into her cinematic world as uninformed of details as possible. When a perusal of the SFIFF program guide sparked a mental exercise in which I tried to identify the three filmmaker references in a written description that I think provide the least help for me in determining whether or not to see an unfamiliar film, I came up with Eric Rohmer (code for "talky, but good"), David Cronenberg (code for "this may be a horror film but don't dismiss it if your not a fan of that genre") and Yasujiro Ozu (code for "quiet" or maybe "transcendental", neither of which I find particularly appropriate labels for Ozu's frequently misunderstood work). It was not an intentional slight to the SFIFF notes written by Judy Bloch, as I had not even skimmed her piece to see that she'd name-dropped two of these three in it. For me, Denis is name enough to know I want to see a film.

SFIFF52 Day 9
Another option: Our Beloved Month of August (PORTUGAL: Miguel Gomes, 2008), a demanding but ultimately satisfying cine-relexive work by a young filmmaker. Jeffrey Anderson says more.
Non-SFIFF-option for today: Notorious (USA: Alfred Hitchcock, 1946) at the Paramount in Oakland, where five dollars gets you entry into a true Art Deco palace, along with cartoon, newsreel, and organist. And the feature just happens to be Hitchcock's greatest black-and-white film, in my opinion.