10HTE: Adrianne Finelli

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

Three-time IOHTE contributor Adrianne Finelli is a filmmaker & GAZE co-curator.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That Night's Wife screen capture from Eclipse DVD

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jeanne Dielman screen capture from Criterion DVD

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Carl Martin: IOHTE

The San Francisco Bay Area is still home to a rich cinephilic culture nurtured in large part by a diverse array of cinemas, programmers and moviegoers. I'm honored to present a selection of favorite screenings experienced by local cinephiles in 2015. An index of participants can be found here.

IOHTE contributor Carl Martin runs the Film On Film Foundation's invaluable Bay Area Film Calendar.

Image courtesy Noir City film festival.

January 22, The Castro (Noir City): The Sleeping Tiger.  On this second viewing, Joseph Losey's bold sleight of hand stood out.  What looks like dubious psychology is a misdirection.  As in Ride the Pink Horse (seen later in the year in Elliot Lavine's series at the Castro), at film's end a female character comes to the fore and proclaims her centrality.

March 13, The Castro: Dead People (aka Messiah of Evil).  An ecstatically-shot slice of American Euro-trash.  The print was fragile and it was a privilege to be in its presence.

March 16, private screening: Darby O'Gill and the Little People.  This Disney live-actioner is notable for landing Sean Connery the lead in a certain iconic spy franchise, for its remarkably effective forced-perspective effects, and, if you make allowances for the somewhat watered-down ending and in your mind allow the film to be what it wants to be, for being pretty goddamn devastating.

April 24, The Stanford: Devil and the Deep.  I don't make it down (up?) to Palo Alto much but trust David Packard('s programmers) to turn up delightful obscurities like this.  The titles make a big deal about introducing Charles Laughton, who had made films before, but no matter.  He makes a meal of the scenery in this underwater potboiler. Gary Cooper and Cary Grant are also featured.

Screen capture from Warner DVD

June 1, The Castro (SFSFF): Ben-Hur: a Tale of the Christ.  I also revisited the Wyler (Heston) version, which is quite good, but the Niblo version has it beat.  The color sequences (with boobs!) are breathtaking.  Unusually for the Silent festival, a recorded score (by Carl Davis) was used, but it was brilliant.  To digress, I'm sad that the new restoration of Napoleon will exclude Kevin Brownlow and Davis, and of course that it isn't being done on film.

June 10, The Castro: Body Heat.  No great rarity i guess, but i'd never seen this wonderful and hilarious neo-noir.  Ted Danson's shining moment.

August 12, The Castro: Blue Steel. Kathryn Bigelow, paradoxical lady master of the male gaze, is on a hot streak with her third feature.  Gorgeous print!

August 27, The Castro: Dementia.  A movie from another planet!  Nothing about Dementia fits into a standard narrative of film history. Who are these people who think they can make a feature with no dialogue?  Even Chaplin was making talkies at this point.

October 2, The Castro: Assault on Precinct 13. Laurie Zimmerman is one of many totally badass things about this early John Carpenter slow-burn actioner.  It is Night of the Living Dead with gangs instead of zombies.

And, lastly, 3 small-gauge selections from different shorts programs.
March 5, Exploratorium: The Mysterious Villa (forgotten formats program).  A program of oddball film gauges unearthed this 28mm corker.  Hilarious!
June 18, The Lab: Postcard from San Miguel (See a Rose Hear a Bomb: films by Lawrence Jordan). The promise of the film's title is fulfilled: the beautiful amalgam of image, music, and text (by Garcia Lorca) had me "wishing I was there".

Screen capture from Fantoma DVD

November 9, New Nothing: Puce Moment (Other States: a program of films selected by Paul Clipson).  I must have seen this Anger film before but here its parade of sparkly dresses, brought by the simplest of tricks to life, struck me as a magical cinematic gesture.  The anachronistic psych music (added decades after photography) casts an eerie spell over the proceedings.

IOHTE: Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

"IOHTE" stands for "I Only Have Two Eyes"; it's my annual survey of selected San Francisco Bay Area cinephiles' favorite in-the-cinema screenings of classic films and archival oddities from the past year. An index of participants can be found here.

Contributor Jesse Hawthorne Ficks is the Film History Coordinator at the Academy of Art University and curates/hosts the MiDNiTES FOR MANiACS series at the Castro Movie Theatre, which showcases underrated, overlooked and dismissed films in a neo-sincere manner.

Image provided by contributor

10. The Astrologer (Craig Denney, 1975) The only 35mm print in existence @ The New People Cinema part of "Another Hole in the Head" Film Festival. If only audiences would have allowed the film to work its magic before they started making fun of it. There really is something quite daring and motivated by Denney's descent here.

Image provided by contributor

9.My Fair Lady (George Cukor, 1964) 
One of the most beautiful 171 minutes (11 reels) projected from an anamorphic 2.35:1 IB Technicolor 35mm print ever experienced @ The Castro Theatre

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8. A City of Sadness (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 1989) Perhaps the last time this 35mm will screen in the US, @ Pacific Film Archive

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7. People's Park (Libbie Dina Cohn, J.P. Sniadecki, 2012) Part of Harvard's ongoing experimental documentary film program "Sensory Ethnography Lab" @ The Black Hole (in Oakland)

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6. "Off the Screen: Let Your Light Shine with Jodie Mack" IN PERSON! Watching five beautiful 16mm prints of Mack's masterful collages was utterly inspiring including: New Fancy Foils (2013), Undertone Overture (2013), Dusty Stacks of Mom: The Poster Project (2013), Glistening Thrills (2013), Let Your Light Shine (2013) @ The Exploratorium in Pier 15.

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5. The Violent Men (Rudolph Maté, 1955) and Forty Guns (Samuel Fuller, 1957) Made on either side of John Ford's 1956 masterpiece The Searchers, these two melodrama westerns not only showcased one of my favorite actresses Barbara Stanwyck, the films themselves are now firmly two of my favorite westerns of all time. Screened @ The Stanford Theater.

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4.Two Seconds (Mervyn Le Roy, 1932) Film Noir connoisseur Elliot Lavine gave me an historical beating with this "proto-noir", "pre-code" performance by Edward G. Robinson. Truly left me gasping for air. Screened @ The Roxie Movie Theater part of "I Wake Up Dreaming 2014" series.

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3. Chan Is Missing (Wayne Wang, 1982) As soon as this deeply moving 16mm print ended, I went home and watched it again. Joe and Steve's relationship is truly priceless as are all of the San Francisco insights, which still relate to the city to this day. Screened @ The Yerba Buena Center for the Arts part of Joel Sheperd's "LEST WE FORGET: Remembering Radical San Francisco" film series

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2.Los Angeles Plays Itself (Thom Anderson, 2003) Life changing restored documentary. Sent me spiraling into all sorts of films made in Los Angeles from the "L.A. Rebellion movement" to Gregory Nava's El Norte (Guatemala/Mexico/US, 1983). Watch at any cost. Screened @ The Castro Movie Theatre

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1. Park Row (Sam Fuller, 1952), A Fuller Life (Samantha Fuller, 2013) and Pickup on South Street (Sam Fuller, 1953) Planned on only watching the rare 35mm print of Park Row but ended up staying for the whole mind blowing Triple Bill. Seek out his daughter's documentary. It is beautifully structured by stars reading huge passages from his book. Favorites included Tim Roth, Jennifer Beals, Joe Dante, Bill Duke, James Franco, William Friedkin, Mark Hamill and Buck Henry! While my mother fell in love with Richard Widmark during Pickup on South Street, I fell just as hard for Thelma Ritter as Moe which truly has to be one of the most amazing characters in film history. Screened @ The Castro Movie Theatre (Note the gust of wind that embraced my mother when taking the photo. We're pretty sure that it was Mr. Widmark himself.)

This Charming Couple (2012)

WHO: Alex MacKenzie found this highly-distressed film fragment, and repurposes it as his own work of projector performance by running it through his analytic projector in reverse.

WHAT: I have not seen it, so here is MacKenzie's website description,

A water-damaged educational film, repurposed. Its original message of the risks of entering marriage without fully knowing your partner is visually abstracted, rendering a moral lesson into a shifting landscape of emulsion. Played in reverse, the couple in question slowly move apart, becoming less and less visible as the damage worsens at film's edge

WHERE/WHEN: On a program playing tonight only at the Exploratorium at 7:00 PM.

WHY: I wrote my general thoughts on the place of projector performance in cinema culture earlier this year when Vanessa O'Neill's Suspsension screened at the monthly Shapeshifters Cinema event in Oakland. This past Sunday it was MacKenzie's turn to project his piece Intertidal at the venue. If you missed that show (as I did) you get a second chance at seeing it tonight, along with This Charming Couple and Logbook, at the wonderful new Exploratorium screening space. 

Unfortunately, though they seem to me to be naturally connected, the local avant-garde film community and the archival/early/silent-cinema community are frequently split in two by conflicting screenings occurring at the same time. Tonight begins a two-night stand at the Rafael Film Center of archivist Randy Haberkamp and piano accompanist Michael Mortilla showing first rare Hollywood Home Movies and then The Films of 1913 via a hand-cranked 1909-era projector. These events force choices, and this week is a particularly good example of it.  You can't see both MacKenzie AND Haberkamp/Mortilla tonight, just as you can't see both Haberkamp/Mortilla AND (on the avant-garde side) the presentation of Paul Clipson-curated films in Napa tomorrow. Nor can you see both Clipson's Artists' Television Access screening of his own work AND Oddball Films' presentation of (Mostly) Strange Silents Friday. Nor can you see both the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum's program including Mae Marsh in the D.W. Griffith-scripted Hoodoo Ann AND the free selection of films by Owen Land, Curt McDowell, Luther Price, etc. at the Canyon Cinema Pop-Up at the Kadist Gallery this Saturday. Well, that last one might be strictly possible if you have access to a fast car to get you from SF to Fremont.

Full disclosure: I'm also heavily involved (as in, performing live music) at a screening event tomorrow evening that I think would interest fans of both avant-garde and of early/silent cinema. Check it out if you can!

HOW: On a full program consisting entirely of live 16mm projector performance.

Necrology (1970)

WHO: Standish Lawder made this short film, and makes a brief appearance in it as well. (He's the one smoking in the above screen shot.)

WHAT: It's definitely best not to read about this film at all before seeing it, because almost anything anyone could write about it might give the game away. (Though it's certainly easy to appreciate the film while knowing about its secrets, there's always just one first time...) But in case you've seen it recently and would like to read some good analysis of it, try Ed Howard's write-up.

WHERE/WHEN: Tonight only at 7:00 at the Exploratorium's Kanbar Forum.

WHY: It's hard to believe that the Fall SF Cinematheque calendar is down to only a few last shows, but all of them are unique, only-in-cinema events, at least in part because they involve filmmaker-in-person appearances. Tonight's screening of Necrology and eight other Lawder works will be followed by November 29th's YBCA showing of Nicolas Rey's anders, Molussien with its usual randomized reel sequence, and in December the Exploratorium will host Alex MacKenzie for multi-screen projector performances.

Luckily SF Cinematheque is not the only game in town for experimental film viewing. The Exploratorium shows shorts programs every Saturday afternoon in its still-new screening space, Artists' Television Access hosts Craig Baldwin's Other Cinema and the female-filmmaker-centric GAZE series, the Pacific Film Archive still has a couple screenings left in its Alternative Visions series, and even Oddball Films is known to show the occasional avant-garde classic; this Friday night Bruce Conner's Report makes it onto a John F. Kennedy-themed program. Watching experimental film at home is often the equivalent of looking at a zine full of poorly-photocopied versions of 20th-century paintings, so get out there and see what these films were really meant to look like!

HOW: On a 16mm program of nine short films by Lawder, with the director in person.

Light Year (2013)

WHO: Paul Clipson made this.

WHAT: This brand new work by one of Frisco Bay's currently most prolific experimental filmmakers was commissioned by the Exploratorium as a visual exploration of their new site at Pier 15. The museum's website hosts a video with more information on Clipson's creative process.

WHERE/WHEN: 8:00 tonight only at the Exploratorium.

WHY: The Exploratorium has a busy week of film screenings, with events on Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday as well as tonight.

Clipson also is involved in an upcoming group show at the di Rosa Gallery in Napa, CA, and will be on hand for a live film & sound performance on November 2nd.

HOW: 16mm projection with live score performed by Tashi Wada.

Hand Held Day (1975)

WHO: Gary Beydler made this film.

WHAT: A lovely little time-lapse short film that invites us to observe nature in a unique way. Max Goldberg wrote a wonderful article about Beydler and his films (including this one) in 2010.

WHERE/WHEN: Today only at the Exploratorium on a program playing at noon and 2:00.

WHY: Today is the Exploratorium Fog Festival, a day-long event featuring films, music, and a talk by Sam Green, who premieres a new performance at the museum this coming Wednesday and Thursday nights. These shows kick off a robust October for the Exploratorium's Cinema Arts Program, which runs films each Saturday but also has evening screenings devoted to local filmmakers Ken Paul Rosenthal and Paul Clipson, a showing of the documentary The Institute, and a program of Croatian animation this month.

HOW: Hand Held Day screens in 16mm on a program also including films by Michael Rudnick, Mark McGowan, and Simon Christen, the latter of whom will be on hand for the screenings.

Autumn Spectrum (1957)

WHO: Hy Hirsh made this short film. Hirsch was a friend and contemporary of Harry Smith and Jordan Belson, and would perhaps be as well known as these compatriot animators if his life had not been cut short by a 1961 automobile accident in Paris.

WHAT: "Sensuous reflections in Amsterdam canals". There is very little written about Autum Spectrum in the literature I've been able to come across. Amos Vogel's five-word program note for a March 1959 showing along with films by Robert Breer, Stan Brakhage, etc, is perhaps the most useful I've found, although others have also noted its use of the Modern Jazz Quartet's performance of "Autumn in New York", and its similarity to Dimitri Kirsanoff's 1929 film Autumn Fire. I have not seen the film yet myself, but I've enjoyed the handful of Hirsh films I've seen thus far very much.

WHERE/WHEN: 8:30 tonight at the Exploratorium.

WHY: When the Exploratorium moved to its new Pier 15 site in April after three months of closure following a 44-year stint at its original Palace of Fine Arts location, there was great optimism about the possibilities offered by a brand new space. Many filmmakers and film lovers had great affection for the old McBean Theatre, a geodesic dome constructed within the cavernous old site, and a venue for afternoon and (occasionally) evening screenings of films that "nurture [audience] curiosity about the world around them", in line with the museum's mission statement. Just last December I said "good-bye" to the McBean at a screening of several short experimental films including one of my favorite "old film" discoveries of last year, Barry Spinello's Sonata For Pen, Brush and Ruler. But the promise of a brand-new, ahead-of-the-state-of-the-art screening space with more comfortable seats, better sight lines, and a highly innovative multi-channel sound set-up, even though it was not expected to open until Fall of 2013, made the future of Cinema Arts at the beloved institution seem bright.

This space, the Kanbar Forum, has begun being used ahead of schedule, with little fanfare amongst local cinephiles. Earlier this summer I attended an outdoor screening of rarely-shown films and videos by Charles & Ray Eames, Rock Ross, Thorstein Fleisch, Jessica Oreck, and others on the terrace of the museum, a lovely spot to watch solar-themed shorts on the eve of the summer solstice. Two more outdoor screenings were to follow in July and August, but tonight's showing has, according to the Exploratorium website, been moved to the Kanbar. If so, I'm hoping to check out that space for the first time, and hope it will be the first of many visits to the space. Another screening (a space-themed one) occurs there three times this Saturday, while on September 28th the venue hosts a tantalizing collection of fog-centric films including Gary Beydler's Hand Held Day, which I've been desperate to see since reading Max Goldberg write on it a few years ago. More upcoming Kanbar screenings including local premieres of Exploratorium-commissioned works by Sam Green and Paul Clipson.

With last week's Chronicle article on financial woes at the unique museum resulting in large-scale layoffs, I hope that the Cinema Arts department isn't sunk before it's been given a chance to make much of an impact in its new space.  A comment appearing to be made by an employee on the article leads me to wonder if lower-than-projected attendance figures are the only major reason for the layoffs of longstanding staff, so I'm not going to jump to any conclusions. But I think the Frisco Bay cinephile community would like to do its part to support the venue no matter what the behind-the-curtain problems may be going on, especially when rare and important films like this one are among those being shown there.

HOW: Autumn Spectrum screens as a 16mm projection, on a program of other "films that reflect on the changes in our landscapes—and psyches—as the seasons shift."

Suspension (2008)

WHO: Vanessa O'Neill made this film, and makes up one half of the duo Beige, which will be presenting the film as a live performance

WHAT: Suspension was one of the highlights of the Crossroads festival presented by SF Cinematheque this past Spring. As the program note for the screening/performance said, Suspension "layers a toned and black-and-white reel creating subtle shifts of hue and tone of abstracted seascape."

WHERE/WHEN: Tonight only at 8:00 at the Temescal Art Center in North Oakland.

WHY: Though many moviemakers and watchers have given up on the future of physical film as a production and exhibition medium, I think that "death of film" epitaphs are short-sighted. Ideally, I can imagine film professionals realizing that some of the essential virtues of the motion picture artform are being lost in the current global conversion to digital cinema, and a concerted effort being made to turn back the tide of transformation. In a worst-case-scenario I can picture the death of physical film as a mass production and distribution medium, but a core of committed artists and technicians continuing to keep the reel and projector alive through more artisanal means.

There is already a growing network of film proponents who have taken on the task of developing means of producing and exhibiting film with ever-decreasing reliance on industry. I think the core of this potential infrastructure are the practicioners of "expanded cinema" or "projector performance". People who create or appropriate film works to screen in performance settings, often involving multiple projectors, multiple projectionists, extra-celluloidal interventions, and live musicians and/or sound artists as part of each exhibition, which involves enough improvisation or other performance elements that it's comparable as a one-of-a-kind an event to a music concert.

I was only dimly aware of this piece of the film world as little as three years ago, when I began to explore the scene thanks to venues and performers such as the Pacific Film Archive, SF Cinematheque, Other Cinema and its founder Craig Baldwin, Stephen Parr, Paul Clipson, etc. Last summer saw the opening of a dedicated series devoted to presenting these kinds of performance works to the public- and for free, no less. Shapeshifters Cinema launched with an orgy of projectors screening all kinds of collected films, some as well known as Norman McLaren and Denys Colomb Daunant but most as obscure as they were beautiful. It was a performance by the Cinepimps (Alfonso Alvarez and Keith Arnold, the latter of whom is better known as programmer for the Castro Theatre.) In the past year, Shapeshifters Cinema has brought a wide variety of film peformance practicioners (as well as a few video-based performers) to Oakland for unique monthly shows. Right now they reserve the second Sunday of each month for these events. Tonight it's Kent Long and Vanessa O'Neill performing under the name Beige; Along with O'Neill's Suspension, the duo will perform with Long's lovely 2003 work The Waves, and a pair of completely collaborative pieces: Which Ceaselessly Float Up (which was performed at the New York Film Festival's Views From the Avant-Garde last autumn) and The Pass. Next month Shapeshifters Cinema will screen video work with live musical performance by Kadet Kuhne, who is fresh from a dual-retrospective showcase with Texas Tomboy at Frameline last month, which was my first exposure to her exuberant, clever work.

Another performative video piece, this one involving live narration from its maker, is Love Letter to the Fog, by Sam Green (whom you may have seen perform The Love Song of R. Buckminster Fuller or Utopia in Four Movements). It's had recent screenings on the East Coast including New York City and Waterville, Maine, but had its genesis in Green's Artist-in-Residency at San Francisco's Exploratorium, which just re-opened a few months ago. The museum's Cinema Arts program is up-and-running with regular screenings on certain Wednesdays and Saturdays (including this Wednesday and Saturday), but look further on its web calendar and you can see an October 2nd date for something called Fog City, which I suspect is another name for Love Letter To the Fog or an iteration thereof.

HOW: Suspension will screen with three other works as a multi-projector performance with live sound.

The Two Eyes Of Brian Darr

Thanks for indulging my annual round-up of Frisco Bay cinephiles' favorite repertory/revival screenings of 2012. I hope you've enjoyed reading what I've posted here so far. The full list of contributions can be found here. 

I'm not quite done; this year, I'd asked respondents to name one brand-new film that they saw in a local venue in 2012, in which something about the venue conspired with the film to make for a particularly memorable and enjoyable experience. Not every contributor responded to this request, and  I decided to collect all the responses to this question into a single post, which I'll be putting up soon. 

But for now, here is my own list of ten favorite films from our cinematic past, revived on Frisco Bay cinema screens in 2012, in the order I saw them:

Underworld USA
2012 started off like gangbusters, literally, with the 10th Annual Noir City festival at the Castro Theatre, and particularly with this late (1961; some would say post-) noir by the iconoclastic Hollywood figure Sam Fuller. It immediately became my new favorite Fuller film, as it expresses both his cynical view of the connections between American crime and business, and his tabloid-headline expressionist approach to cinematic language extremely authentically. I now have the perfect starting recommendation for anyone wanting to explore the black-and-white precursors to Scorsese's & Coppola's gangland epics.

Four Nights Of A Dreamer
At the Pacific Film Archive's near-complete Robert Bresson retrospective I was able to plug several of the most yawning gaps in my experience with the French filmmaker. Undoubtedly, his films are challenging and I must admit I've in the past had better luck approaching an initially satisfying comprehension of them in the home video arena, with its pause and rewind buttons, than in cinemas. But these films were made for theatres, and for the first time I finally felt I had a cinematic communion with a Bresson print, truly sensing myself on the right wavelength with the film's every move. Perhaps it's because this 1971 film is Bresson's most impressionist work, or perhaps because I was previously familiar with his source material (Dostoyevsky's White Nights.) At any rate, I'm especially likely to treasure this rare screening as Four Nights of a Dreamer is reputedly troubled with rights issues holding up a proper DVD release. 

Wagon Master
When Quentin Tarantino made recent comments about hating John Ford, both the man and the filmmaker, for his racism, I instantly thought of the Ford films which (unlike, say, Stagecoach), present a far more complicated picture of his racial attitudes than is often acknowledged. Consider Fort Apache, which illustrates the folly of the U.S. Cavalry treating Chiricahuas as nothing more than an enemy army, or The Searchers, in which John Wayne portrays a racist as a kind of victim of his own psychotic, narrow hatred of The Other. Having seen it as recently as March at the Stanford Theatre, I thought of Wagon Master as a vessel for Ford's most explicitly anti-racist statement of them all. The scene in which a Navajo (played by the great Jim Thorpe) is translated (by the late Harey Carey, Jr's character) to proclaim that white men are "all thieves", might not be so remarkable if it weren't for Ward Bond's sympathetic character's agreement with the sentiment. But race is only a part of what this grand, lyrical, often heartbreaking 1950 film is about. Its band of travelers, each holding diverse values and goals but all sharing in the hardships of the road, is a beautiful microcosm for the tolerance and compromise we must learn to cultivate to exist harmoniously in this world.

Napoléon
Insiders have been indicating for a couple years, that we are now seeing the final days of film-as-film screenings. Some people have suggested that the film reel might make a resurgence as did the vinyl record did even after tapes, compact discs and ultimately mp3s threatened to wipe it out. I'm not sure if that's possible, but if it's going to happen we may need to see more creative uses of the film projector in order to realize that its operator (the projectionist) can be an artist equivalent to a great DJ. 2012 was a big year for me to experience multi-projector performances, from seeing the cinePimps and (full disclosure: my girlfriend) Kerry Laitala at Shapeshiters in Oakland, to a dual-projector ephemera duel between Craig Baldwin and Stephen Parr at the Luggage Store, an event poignantly held on the day Andrew Sarris died. Though this face-off had me imagining a beguiling future in which curator, performer and auteur become fused into one role, even it couldn't hold a candle to the Silent Film Festival's Paramount Theatre presentation of (to my knowledge) the first film foray into multi-projector "performance" spectacle: the final reel or so of Abel Gance's Napoléon, which I wrote about here. Though the three projectionists involved in this event were performing an act of 85-year-old reproduction and not new creativity, the precision of their coordination is something any performer might aspire to if they want to truly set audience's eyes agog. 

Four Adventures of Reinette and Mirabelle
Too many of the locations for these "best of 2012" screenings sadly sit dormant already in 2013. New People/VIZ Cinema is one; the year saw the end of the San Francisco Film Society's experiment with turning it into a year-round screening venue. A week-long engagement of this delightful Eric Rohmer film was a real highlight of the year for me; the fact that it's gone unmentioned by other "I Only Have Two Eyes" contributors helps me understand that the state-of-the-art venue never was able to catch on as a repertory venue. Surely I'm not the only one who would consider this 1987 comedy about two young Frenchwomen with opposing but somehow complimentary backgrounds (made piece-by-piece while Rohmer was waiting for the right weather/light conditions for The Green Ray, which SFFS double-billed it with) to be among his high-water-marks, despite its episodic nature. Can't we consider the collections of A.A. Milne to be masterpieces? Mightn't The Martian Chronicles be as great a work as Fahrenheit 451? 

Land of the Pharaohs 
Here's where I really go out on a limb- or do I? I saw a lot of very great Howard Hawks films last year, thanks to hefty retrospectives at the Pacific Film Archive and the Stanford Theatre, but none made such a surprisingly strong impression as this film maudit did on the latter screen. It's the director's 1955 take on Ancient Egypt and the building of the Great Pyramid. I cannot help but wonder how many of the critics, historians, and cinephiles who continue to perpetuate its reputation as the one time the versatile Hawks took on a genre he couldn't handle, have seen it projected in 35mm on a big screen, as it was clearly made to be seen. Though the director was reportedly none-too-fond of it, his frequent screenwriter Leigh Brackett once went on record calling it one of Hawks's greatest films. Whether or not I'm willing to go quite that far on only a single viewing, I feel certain that seeing this visually stunning story of hubris and political machination unfold in Cinemascope above my eyes was one of my greatest film-watching experiences of the year.

Five Element Ninjas
"Someone like Jean-Luc Godard is for me intellectual counterfeit money when compared to a good kung fu film." I don't wholly endorse this quote by Werner Herzog, as I love Godard (on most days, more than I do Herzog), but I can't deny that I got even more pleasure and maybe even more intellectual stimulation from watching this 1982 Chang Cheh tale of vengeance for the first time at the Roxie than I did from rewatching Week End at the Castro earlier in the year. Chang's output is more uneven than Godard's but his best films, and this is one of them I reckon, are as excited about the possibilities of cinema (here he gets some very eerie effects out of fish-eyed pans, and has a simple but brilliant solution to emphasizing ninjas' skills at silence) and steeped in complicated codes (in this case numerology and Chinese-style alchemy) as any canonized art film. I hope hope hope that collector Dan Halsted makes very many future visits to town with more of his rare Hong Kong 35mm prints in hand.

La Cérémonie
Another screening of a brutal masterpiece by a director with the monogram CC. Here it's Claude Chabrol directing Sandrine Bonnaire and Isabelle Huppert to the hilt in a slow-boiling tale of (mostly) quiet class warfare in a French village. There's a methodicalness to Chabrol's depiction of wounded psyches in a feedback loop hurtling toward catastrophe that makes this 1995 film seem like a model for the clinical works of Michael Haneke or Bruno Dumont. But nothing I've seen from either of those mens' ouevres quite approaches what Chabrol is able to coax out of Bonnaire and Huppert here. Like many local cinephiles I frequently find Mick LaSalle infuriating, but I'm so glad his recent book publication created the excuse to play this as part of a Roxie (and Rafael) series of actress-centric French films.

Only Yesterday
It was with great pleasure and a bit of wistfulness that I took nearly-full advantage of the Studio Ghibli series that played this fall at Landmark's Bridge and California Theatres, catching up with all the films that I'd never seen before (except one, My Neighbors the Yamadas) and revisiting most of those I that had. The pleasure is obvious to any fan of Hayao Miyazaki and his cohort; nearly all of these films are wonderful, unique blasts of color in motion, with not-too-saccharine stories that stick with you for days and weeks and months after viewing, even when in such a near-marathon viewing situation. The wistfulness comes from the fact that the Bridge seemed already on its last legs as a viable Frisco Bay venue, and in fact announced its closure a couple months later, and that Berkeley's California Theatre was on the verge of decommissioning its 35mm projection equipment in favor of all-digital equipment shortly after the series ended. Also from the fact that I knew that with this series I no longer have any more unseen Miyazaki features to view for the first time (until his next one anyhow). But to mitigate this, this series turned me into a fan of fellow Ghibli director Isao Takahata (who also has an upcoming film), largely on the basis of my admiration of his 1991 adaptation Only Yesterday, which I saw at the Bridge. As much as I love Miyazaki's fantasy mode, Takahata's realistic approach here is in some ways more impressive; he creates two totally distinct yet believable palettes with the lush rural setting of its lead character's personal awakening, and the more subdued watercolor-style of her extensive childhood memory flashbacks. He even bucked anime tradition in his voice casting, built around the decision to record dialogue before animating rather than post-dubbing as is Japan's animation norm. The result is a film reminiscent in beauty and theme of Kenji Mioguchi's lovely 1926 Song of Home.

Sonata For Pen, Brush and Ruler 
Last but not least, another kind of animation seen in a (less-sadly) decommissioned venue, the Exploratorium's McBean Theatre, a shiny-ceiling-ed dome inside the Palace of Fine Arts that hosted a wonderful array of screenings over that museum's long stay in that cavernous venue. The Exploratorium is gearing up to move to a new location on Pier 15, and promises to have a made-to-order screening space. But no matter how wonderful it is, I know I'll miss certain aspects of the old McBean, and I'm so thankful that the museum's Cinema Arts department hosted a short series of Canyon Cinema films during its last few months open, as a kind of goodbye. I was able to catch the first and third of these programs, and loved getting a chance to see rarely-shown pieces by Alan Berliner, Gary Beydler, Stan Vanderbeek, John Smith (whose films I also got to see at PFA in 2012) and more. But the most astonishing of these was in the December program: Barry Spinello's 1968 Sonata For Pen, Brush and Ruler. Spinello is a painter and experimental musician, but the 16mm film strip serves as his canvas and master-tape. I'd been impressed by a few of his later works before (one of them, Soundtrack, screens at the PFA shortly with the artist in attendance) but Sonata is so exhilaratingly expansive, so joyfully elaborate, and so recognizably the product of one artist's immense effort that I now have a clear favorite of his films. As he once wrote: "It is my brain, and for ten minutes I expect (I hope, if the film is successful) that the viewer's brain functions as my brain." I think it does.