SFFILM 61 Day 7: No Date, No Signature

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

Image from No Date, No Signature supplied by SFFILM

No Date, No Signature (IRAN: Vahid Jalilvand, 2017)
playing: 6:00 tonight at the Children's Creativity Museum, and 8:30 tomorrow at the Roxie.

I'm rather ashamed that my five previous posts highlighting daily San Francisco International Film Festival screenings gave short shrift to the "International" in the event's name. Sure, I mentioned at least one non-US offering in each post's "Other festival options" section (do you read those, by the way?) but the main selection each day up to now has always been an American offering. No more! I've finally been able to catch some recommendable international features playing this year's SFFILM festival, and hope my daily dispatches can help steer interested readers to good work they might not be able to see in circumstances as ideal as the festival's.

No Date, No Signature is an ideal example. Although it's found on the festival's list of "Films With Distribution" circulating around various venues (I picked one up at SFMOMA Sunday before watching The Workshop, an underwhelming French film), I must confess I've never heard of the distributor listed (Distrib Films), and when I check its website I see they're promoting three movies, a Raymond Depardon documentary that had 3 YBCA screenings recently, a Lucas Belvaux movie that screened once in Napa last month, and a third French feature that at the moment has no sign of past or future Frisco Bay screenings. So unless Distrib Films is able to secure more local showdates for an Iranian film than for its French ones, these may be your last chances to see No Date, No Signature on a cinema screen.

And it's something you'd probably want to see that way. The irony is that, as it's a "distributed" film, I'm not supposed to publish a full review during the festival, and wait until its theatrical release here (which may or may not ever occur) to write about it in any depth. So for now, my "capsule" thoughts are that it's a well-done drama in much the same tradition as those of the great Asghar Farhadi, and that if it doesn't quite measure up to the metacinematic intelligence of The Salesman, it includes several strong setpieces that cry out of the big screen, including a confrontation in a chicken processing plant that appeals to my own values as a longtime vegetarian. No Date, No Signature makes a fascinating contrast with SFFILM61's other Iranaian selection, Mohammad Rasoulof's A Man of Integrity. Both are concerned with corruption in Iranian (or any) society, but where Rasoulof powerfully and precisely hammers his theme, to the point that his movie was banned from release within Iran, No Date, No Signature director Vahid Jalilvand takes a more subtle tack, and leaves enough vague that he was able to premiere at the Fajr International Film Festival in Tehran, where Navid Mohammadzaden won a prize for his performance as a struggling family man.

SFFILM61 Day 7
Other festival options: Today YBCA hosts the first of three festival screenings of Purge This Land, the latest from experimental film essayist Lee Ann Schmitt, who brought California Company Town to the festival nine years ago. Today also marks the San Francisco International Film Festival debut of a new (and simultaneously ninety-two year old) venue, the Grand Lake Theater. This ornate movie palace isn't on my list of regular haunts because it doesn't reside near a BART or CalTrain station, but I have on occasion braved AC Transit bus schedules to catch something there, and I've never regretted it. Neither I nor my friend Michael Hawley who has been loyally attending the festival since the 1970s can recall any screenings in Oakland before. And the festival is only taking baby steps in the venue this year, showing a total of three features. Thursday's Sorry to Bother You screening was the first SFFILM to go to RUSH status shortly after tickets went on sale to the general public last month. But as of this writing, neither of tonight's Grand Lake selections, A Boy, A Girl, A Dream or Matangi / Maya / M.I.A. are at RUSH, despite screening in the more intimate, but no less gorgeous, theatre 3. If you want to sample the Grand Lake as a venue this year out of curiosity, or even just to help show SFFILM that an Oakland venue will support screenings even if they're not of Oakland's hottest contribution to cinema since Ryan Coogler, consider these screenings. The movies look like they might be pretty good too.

Non-SFFILM option: Did you know the Grand Lake is able to screen films in 70mm? They're showing Steven Spielberg's latest Ready Player One that way three times today in their biggest cinema, with no futther showtimes confirmed as of this writing.

The Manxman (1929)

WHO: Alfred Hitchcock directed this.

WHAT: The last film Hitchcock made before Blackmail, which was both his last film to be released as a silent film and his first to be released (in an altered version, of course) as a talkie, The Manxman is perhaps the closest the director ever came to making a Frank Borzage-style melodrama along the lines of Lucky Star or The River (both of which were released the same year as Hitchcock's film- was there something in the air?) In fact the director told François Truffaut that it was "not a Hitchcock film", in that he considered it a faithful adaptation of a popular novel by Hall Caine, and not reliant on his own imagination as Blackmail, for instance, had been.

But a close watcher of the director's films would never mistake The Manxman for being someone else's. Not only does it feature three of his favorite actors to work with in this period as the components of its class-conscious love triangle (Carl Brisson from The Ring, Malcolm Keen from The Lodger, and the above-pictured Anny Ondra, who'd return in Blackmail), but the triangle itself echoes the appearance of this structural formulation in many of his earlier films like The Pleasure Garden, The Lodger, Easy Virtue, The Ring, and Champagne. Triangular constructions recur in later Hitchcock films as well, from Dial 'M' For Murder to (albeit perversely) Vertigo.  For these reasons, as well as for Jack Cox's intense, expressionist-influenced photography of the Cornwall-masquerading-as-Mannin locations, this is a must-see for any fan of Hitchcock or of good silent-era storytelling.

WHERE/WHEN: Screens tonight only at the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley at 6:15.

WHY: It's a big Hitchcock week on Frisco Bay and beyond. Tonight's The Manxman screening wrap up a 9-film addendum to the PFA's Spring series devoted to the master of suspense, making a total of 35 of his films screened there in 2013. But that's not all. The Castro is also screening a 70mm print of Vertigo all weekend, for a total of shows, and is following it Wednesday and Thursday with three films by one of Hitchcock's most famous admirers, Brian De Palma, including his particularly Hitch-inspired Dressed To Kill in 35mm.

Meanwhile in Oakland, the Grand Lake has booted The World's End from its main house in favor of a week-long double bill of Casablanca and Hitchcock's Dial 'M' For Murder in digitally-recreated 3D. I have only seen the latter in dual-projector 35mm so I feel spoiled, but I'm definitely curious to see how the digital 3D version that has replaced the film version that has seemingly become unavailable (even to a 3D festival in Hollywood) in today's DCP-loving climate.

Finally, this weekend up in Bodega Bay (normally outside of my blogging reach but too notable not to pass without mention), Tippi Hedren will be signing autographs and appearing as guest of honor at a dinner and screening of The Birds at The Inn a the Tides. Public tours of normally-inaccessible locations and other events will be held in the Sonoma County town over the weekend as well, including appearances by Hedren's child co-star Veronica Cartwright (who later starred in Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Alien among her adult roles).

HOW: The Manxman screens as a DCP. Since last writing about the recently-restored Hitchcock silent films, I've learned that all nine were available to screen on 35mm in Europe (and indeed did this summer in Bologna), but that the five made for the Gainsborough studio are being distributed in the US only digitally. As I recall from watching four of the five at the Castro in June, The Manxman was one of the somewhat less-objectionable digital transfers. It will screen accompanied by Judith Rosenberg at the piano.

The World's End (2013)

WHO: Edgar Wright directed and co-wrote this.

WHAT: I haven't seen this film yet, but I'm very excited to check it out. I liked Shaun of the Dead quite a bit, but turned into a bona fide Edgar Wright fan after seeing it screen along with two of his subsequent films which I'd missed upon general release, Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World and Hot Fuzz, at an epic MiDNiTES FOR MANiACS screening two years ago, with the writer-director at the Castro in person to discuss his career between each film. 

Last month, MiDNiTES FOR MANiACS founder and impresario Jesse Ficks hosted another triple-bill, this time at the Metreon and with both Wright and The World's End/Hot Fuzz/Shaun of the Dead co-writer and lead actor Simon Pegg in attendance. I wasn't able to attend but reports on the event have been trickling out ever since. Someone named Ira, writing at Jason Watches Movies, says that "This last film of the trilogy, all three of which have at least to some extent revolved around drinking and pubs, is inarguably the "drunkest" of the three, and yet, it is also the most sobering." Meanwhile, Nathalie Barringer, recorded some quotes from Pegg and Wright from their q-and-a after The World's End, including this gem from the director:

Growing up in a small town, you start to imagine what's going on between closed doors. I think it made me more of a daydreamer. I can remember saying to my friends, 'every time I come back it feels like Bodysnatchers,' and there's a film in that!

WHERE/WHEN: Screens multiple showtimes daily at the Grand Lake, the Vogue, and probably at your local multiplex as well.

WHY: Did you know The World's End was shot in 35mm? And is currently screening in 35mm at the beautiful Grand Lake Theatre in Oakland? I need to attend the Grand Lake more often. Not only is it a vintage theatre with beautiful decor, as tastefully 'plexed into a four-screen venue as I can imagine (and therefore a world away from a cookie-cutter chain theatre), but it's locally owned and operated, and even retains the ability to show 35mm (and even, as last Fall's booking of The Master proved, 70mm) prints as well a digital. Currently all of its four houses are running films on 35mm: Fruitvale Station on the spacious (former) balcony, Kick-Ass 2 in one of the smaller downstairs rooms, We're the Millers alternating with The Way, Way Back (the latter a digital presentation) in the other small room, and The World's End in the main theatre, where it will be preceded by a Wurlitzer organ performance before the Friday and Saturday evening shows.

If traveling to Oakland is just not your bag, it's possible to see The World's End on DCP elsewhere. May I suggest the Vogue in San Francisco as the best digital option, as it is also locally owned and operated, and a single-screen theatre. Though it converted its projection equipment to state-of-the-art digital earlier this year, I'm told it actually retains the ability to screen 35mm prints on occasion, a fact which helped it snare two of the six mini-festivals that will make up the San Francisco Film Society's Fall Season in the coming months. I'm encouraged that this means we'll be seeing at least a few 35mm titles from Hong Kong and/or Taiwan as part of the SFFS presentations.

HOW: 35mm at the Grand Lake, digital elsewhere.

Jerry And Me (2012)

WHO: Jerry Lewis and Mehrnaz Saeedvafa are the "Jerry" and "Me" of the title: the former a comedy legend, the latter the Iranian-American film scholar (and co-writer, with Jonathan Rosenbaum, of a terrific book on Abbas Kiarostami) who directed this among other her other films and videos.

WHAT: I haven't yet seen this documentary reflecting on Saeedvafa's personal history through the prism of her lifelong relationship with the films of Lewis, from her days watching him dubbed in Farsi during her youth in pre-Revolutionary Tehran to her more recent experiences teaching college courses on him in Chicago. With endorsements from as diverse an array of critics as Scott Jordan Harris, Ehsan Khoshbakht, and Adrian Martin, I'm dying to. A brief excerpt from the review of Jerry and Me by the last of these in the must-read film journal LOLA follows:

Film history, as it has generally been written, only occasionally gives us a glimpse of this kind of shuttle-action across cultures, nations and audiences: a Latin American star such as Carmen Miranda as seen ‘back home’ via the detour of her Hollywood productions; or the cult of certain US actors in Japan. But an entire treasure-trove of spectator experience opens up once we loosen the bounds of territorial belonging, as Saeedvafa does here. It is a different Lewis than the one we are used to encountering... 

WHERE/WHEN: Screens at the Castro Theatre today at 1:15 PM, at the Cinéarts Palo Alto August 7th at 3:50 PM, and the Grand Lake in Oakland August 10th at 1:45 PM, all as presentations of the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival.

WHY: The SFJFF is bigger than ever this year and there's much to intrigue among its 74 films programmed. But if I could only attend one day of the festival, today would be it. If I wanted to make a marathon out of it, I could arrive in the morning for a pair of Israeli road movies and stay all day until the 9PM Frameline co-presentation Out In The Dark. In between there will be two very exciting director-in-person appearances: brilliant New York documentarian Alan Berliner with his new First Cousin, Once Removed and legendary Swedish auteur Jan Troell with his latest The Last Sentence.

This afternoon's screening of Jerry And Me seems particularly important in the light of the fact that the Castro Theatre has released an August calendar filled with many tantalizing viewing options, it's once again a month without a Jerry Lewis film. Unless my memory's failing me, In the many years I've been paying close attention to its programming, not once has a film by or starring Lewis played the Castro. Not even The King of Comedy made it into the venue's 2009 Scorsese series (although a new restoration is said to be making the rounds internationally, so perhaps soon...) This may sound a bit like a cross between noticing the Castro doesn't play enough Adam Sandler or John Wayne films- the nexus of unappealing to San Francisco audiences for aesthetic and political reasons. The venue's size means it needs to appeal to large audiences in its screening offerings, and perhaps steer clear of Lewis's general unfashionability and his retrograde, borderline (and sometimes over-the-border) offensive personal comments about women, gays, and various minority groups over the years. 

But enjoying the films does not equal endorsing the man's outlook. Many cinephiles know that the best of the films Lewis made in the 1950s and 1960s simply cry out to be seen in cinemas, a fact I confirmed for myself earlier this year when I finally experienced his work in 35mm for the first time, on a trip to the Stanford to see the masterful Tashlin-directed Artists And Models. One day I'd like to see Lewis's work as a director (perhaps the Godard-influencing The Ladies Man?) on a big screen; I can't recall an instance of any Frisco Bay theatre screening any of them since Eddie Murphy's 1996 remake of The Nutty Professor inspired Marc Huestis to bring the 1963 original to the Castro with Stella Stevens in attendance (an event that predated my own intense cinephilia). In the meantime, the only chances to see Lewis on the Castro screen have been occasional bookings of It's A Mad Mad Mad Mad World, in which he has a brief cameo. Until today's screening of Jerry And Me, when videoclips from his films and media appearances, (including, yes, even some of his dispiriting public statements) will be viewable presented through the filter of a modern, Iranian-American feminist, washing over that giant screen. And who knows if it might whet an appetite to see the genuine article in 35mm?

HOW: Digital video projection on a program also including Dan Shadur's documentary on Jews in Iran, Before the Revolution.

Fruitvale Station (2013)

WHO: Ryan Coogler wrote and directed this.

WHAT: About midway through Fruitvale Station, the docudrama account of Oscar Grant III's last day or so on earth before being fatally shot on the platform of  the BART stop between Lake Merritt and the Oakland Coliseum, it becomes clear that we're witnessing a series of Grant's goodbyes to his loved ones. We know it. The filmmakers know it. Only the characters don't as their real-life counterparts didn't back on the eve of 2009 when the incident took place, although Grant's daughter Tatiana, as played by Ariana Neal, seems to have a sense of it as she voices her fears for her father as he heads out into the night.

Knowing a tragedy is soon to unfold for the characters in a movie can imbue a movie with the ability to make us pay a different kind of attention than one in which fate is undetermined as narrative progresses. If we like the characters (and thanks to excellent performances by Michael B. Jordan as Grant and Melonie Diaz as his baby mama Sophina, we probably do unless we're the sort of folks who are predisposed not to be able to relate to imperfect people), we want them to experience every moment to their fullest before the inevitable curtain close. This translates to our wanting the filmmakers, led by Coogler, to make the most of every scene and every shot. And frequently Coogler does, helped by the familiarity with location and regional slang that comes with being an Oakland native. The scenes on the BART train heading into Frisco (as the characters call it) walk a lovely line between expressing the exuberance of living in the moment and making the best of a mildly disappointing situation (being stuck in a train car during the strike of the New Year), and performing a celebratory send-off for Grant and for his relationships with friends and family.

But not every scene feels so natural in its expression of a life being wound down, completely unawares. I think the different register of attention a preordained finale invites has invited certain critics to become particularly judgmental of scenes that for one reason or another don't seem to "fit". A scene in which Grant holds a pit bull in its last moments after a hit-and-run has been criticized in particular, for being an incident taken not out of Grant's own life, but Coogler's brother's, and speculatively placed into a blank spot on Grant's known itinerary that day. The scene has been condemned as a manipulation intended to get audiences to sympathize with a drug dealing philanderer as an animal lover, but ignored in the critiques I've read is the visible stain of dried dog blood on Jordan's white shirt, visible for the next several scenes but (as I recall, though perhaps my memory fails me) uncommented on by other characters. One would think he'd change shirts first chance he gets, but instead he puts on another shirt over it, as if wanting to hide the mark from the outside world but keep the life-force of another being close. I'd like to see the film again sometime, if for no other reason than to try to further tease out the significance of this stain.

WHERE/WHEN: Screens multiple times daily at the Grand Lake Theatre in Oakland, the California in Berkeley, the Metreon in San Francisco, with more Frisco Bay theatres expected to be added over the coming weeks.

WHY: Fruitvale Station has, of course, a built-in reason to be worth seeing by Bay Area audiences who are interested in the way that their home (primarily the East Bay, but Frisco gets its moment as well) comes off in a feature film likely to be seen and taken seriously by large audiences around the country and beyond. A film based on a real event, using real locations, and funded in part by the San Francisco Film Society is practically required viewing for anyone interested in the local film community. Thankfully it's worth seeing. 

And then, I can't escape mentioning, is the timing of the film's release with the weekend's announcement of the Trayvon Martin verdict in Florida. There are some undeniable similarities, as well as some stark differences, between the two slayings. Perhaps the biggest similarity between the two tragedies is the desperation for polarized commentators to portray the people at either end of the guns in each case as either a violent thug or a boy scout (albeit one who hadn't rightfully earned his Emergency Preparedness badge). By instinct, I'd rather avoid weighing in on the Martin case myself because I really haven't followed it as closely as everyone else I know seems to have, but this is a situation where a few brief, unoriginal statements (in lieu of the fully-reasoned-out essay the subject deserves) seems less cowardly to me than a false front of neutrality. 

So here goes: I think institutional racism is alive, well, and one of the most horribly pernicious aspects of our society today. I think that the extent of the legality of gun use in this country is absurd from every point of view other than the munitions industry and its (perhaps unwitting) supporters, and that "Stand Your Ground" laws in particular are horribly ill-conceived considering the solid tradition of self-defense in our legal system. Finally, I'm simply appalled by the instinct to turn George Zimmerman into a hero.

HOW: A 35mm print screens at the Grand Lake, while other venues screen digitally. Fruitvale Station was shot on 16mm film. UPDATE 7/18/2013: I've been informed by two separate sources that despite the Film on Film Foundation's listing of Fruitvale Station as a 35mm screening at the Grand Lake, it's in fact showing on DCP.

The Blue Umbrella (2013)

WHO: Saschka Unseld directed this.

WHAT: Toy Story 3. Cars 2. Monsters University. Of the last four feature films made by Emeryville's Pixar Animation Studio, three have been sequels to previously-produced properties, populated by familiar characters, and the fourth represents the studio in its most Disney-esque of milieus- never mind that last summer's Brave was aimed at correcting the princess-passivity of the studio's parent company. There have been lots of technological advancements in the field of computer-generated animation in the meantime, and Pixar has been at the forefront of employing them. But in terms of the look of its films, the studio still embraces a very "cartoony" look- especially in its character designs. That Woody and Buzz, and Mike and Sully, look and move about the same in the 2010s as they did in 1995 and 2001 is probably a very good thing. Nobody really wants more "realistic" versions of these toys and monsters. But the arguable over-reliance on proven characters (next up: Finding Dory in 2015) may indicate a kind of water-treading in Pixar features that seems uncharacteristic of a company that not so long ago had an impressive 3-year run introducing (essentially) original characters in more-or-less exquisitely crafted stories: Ratatouille, Wall-E and Up.

Meanwhile, animation has become ever more a major part of Hollywood's so-called "live action" extravaganzas (Pacific Rim reportedly has 1594 animated effects shots), pretty much all of which try to avoid utilizing "cartoony" looks in favor of photorealistic approaches. Might Pixar want to prove its mettle in producing movies that match- or outdo- the work being done on "bake-off" contenders like Life of Pi and The Avengers? If so, their latest short The Blue Umbrella may give us a taste of directions to come. This sweet tale of an attraction between two colorful umbrellas in a sea of black ones sidesteps the uncanny valley by preventing us from seeing any human faces, but is set in a cityscape so believable that it has frequently been mistaken for a live-action/animation hybrid. In fact it was created entirely through animation, although photographs of San Francisco and New York were used as reference for the ultimate composite. Director Unseld has spoken of a character (named "Lisa") based on an object he saw on the sidewalk while walking in his San Francisco neighborhood. Going by a clue on his tumblr I believe I was able to track it down; if I'm right the object is still there in front of Paragon Cleaners on Bush Street, right at the foot of Dashiell Hammet Alley.

You might ask why an animation company might want to move away from "cartoony" looks when they ply a craft in a long tradition of masters from Winsor McCay to the Termite Terrace crew to Hayao Miyazaki, none of whom have ever needed to convince audiences they were looking at anything other than a cartoon. And perhaps they won't, and The Blue Umbrella will remain a one-off experiment in the Pixar filmography. But though countless styles of hand-drawn animation have been proven acceptable to mass audiences over the years, it's hard to deny that mainstream animated features these days have a tendency to look quite a bit like each other, as if their characters all could exist in the same universe (no matter whether it's Pixar or Dreamworks or another rival producing). It's hard to picture Betty Boop naturally co-existing with Tom & Jerry in the Yellow Submarine universe, but it wouldn't be such an aesthetic stretch to see The Incredibles battling Megamind or Despicable Me if their corporate masters allowed it. At this point I'd be excited for any new direction in the way mainstream feature animation looks, and I'd bet on Pixar being the most likely candidate to lead that way.

WHERE/WHEN: Screens multiple showtimes daily at theatres around Frisco Bay. Today is the last day to see it at the Grand Lake Theatre in Oakland, however. Read on.

WHY: I feature this short today because I believe it's the last chance we'll have to see it screened on 35mm, which is how it's playing at the Grand Lake today. You might wonder why it's important to see a digitally-created short on film, but it appears to be (along with Digital 3D) one of the preferred methods of viewing by Unseld, who says

If you see it in 2D I’d recommend looking out for a cinema that shows it on film because the film grain and the celluloid really adds a whole other dimension into it as well.

HOW: Screens before Monsters University, both digitally everywhere except for at the Grand Lake.