Silent Connections

2011's Academy Award-winning The Artist is long gone from theatres, even discount theatres like the Cinedome 7 in Newark, and is now available on DVD and on the free outdoor movie circuit. Love or hate the film, pretty much everyone can agree that they hope the attention afforded this homage to 1920s Hollywood will translate into resurging interest in genuine silent-era movies among regular filmgoers and the general public. But few types of movies benefit from their presentation in restored prints at motion picture palaces as much as silent films do, especially when they're accompanied by live musicians (which, of course, The Artist wasn't, or should I say, hasn't been yet) as silent films do.

Fortunately, the 17th San Francisco Silent Film Festival begins tonight at the Castro Theatre- not this town's most opulent picture house built during the silent era, but certainly the grandest one that still plays movies. It's something of a homecoming for the SFSFF, which has rented the theatre twice a year since 2005, hosting a big summer extravaganza as well as a one-day winter event. This year the winter event was held at the Paramount in Oakland, and it was a production more ambitious as any the festival has attempted yet: a staging of a 5 1/2 hour version of Abel Gance's Napoléon complete with triple-screen finale and a full orchestra with composer Carl Davis flown in from London to conduct his score. But the festival's return to the Castro after twelve months is more than just a victory lap for Napoléon; it's also perhaps their most ambitious and exciting summer festival yet. Seventeen programs of films made  by at least seven national film industries, set on at least five continents plus the moon, backed by four small orchestras and at least three other expert musicians-- it will be impossible to know if any possible increases in attendance to this already-popular event might be due to interest sparked by The Artist or Napoléon, or just because the line-up is so strong.

If you're contemplating your first visit to the SF Silent Film Festival, be sure to read the Six Martinis And The Seventh Art blog for tips on how to survive the bustling festival atmosphere most comfortably. Those who desire more information about the provenance of the festival's prints than available on the festival website should be sure to read Carl Martin on the subject, bearing in mind he holds no quarter for digital projection or restoration techniques. Though I'm nowhere near as technically knowledgeable as Martin, I share concerns about the ongoing march into a digital-dominated cinephilia, discussed recently at an Italian film festival on a panel described here and available to view here. As I mentioned in my own previous preview, the SFSFF will be screening two of its features digitally (Wings and The Loves Of Pharaoh) and though I wish they were being presented on film, I'm certainly not going to skip these screenings on principle. Perhaps I'll even be convinced of the value of the new technology in certain circumstances.


It seems this year's free Amazing Tales From The Archives program is designed to convince the festival audience of the value of state-of-the-art digital restoration and presentation. As Michael Hawley notes in his excellent festival preview, Grover Crisp did a side-by-side comparison of DCP with 35mm prints in New York earlier this year, and he'll be doing a similar comparison Friday morning. Can we imagine a future SFSFF in which more than one or two programs are presented digitally? It may depend on how the audience reacts to this presentation.

Also on hand at the archival presentation will be Andrea Kalas of Paramount Pictures, which is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year, and prepared a new digital version of its Academy Award-winning Wings as part of the celebration. With no less than five Paramount features on the program, this weekend ought to make a strong case for that studio as the top company in 1920s Hollywood. I'm a huge fan of Paramount's The Docks Of New York, and very curious about The Canadian, The Spanish Dancer, and Mantrap, all of which, I'm pleased, are screening on 35mm.


With so many Paramount silents in the program, perhaps there was no room for a film from another studio celebrating its centennial: Universal. Though most of the silent titles in this month's New York tribute to that studio have played at recent SFSFF editions, I long for a chance to see Paul Fejos's Lonesome on the big screen and hope its recent Criterion DVD release doesn't make local programmers shy away from it. The Pacific Film Archive has its own tribute to Universal on its current calendar (along with retrospectives for Raj Kapoor, Alexsei Guerman, and Les Blank among other series) but no silent films are included. 

Photo courtesy of Alpha-Omega digital GmbH

Silent films do, however, factor into the new Stanford Theatre calendar, which will have four Friday night opportunities to hear organist Dennis James accompany 1920s cinema sprinkled amidst a 7-day-per-week smorgasbord of films made between 1939 and 1964. Two of these are masterpieces previously brought by the SFSFF: The Wind and Seventh Heaven. I have not seen Son Of The Sheik or Way Down East before, but I'm sure audiences who can't get enough Wurlitzer action at the Castro this weekend as James performs for The Loves of Pharaoh and The Mark Of Zorro will want to take biweekly road trips to Palo Alto this summer.


The Castro Theatre itself is about to celebrate its own 95th anniversary, and includes two great late silent feature films, Sunrise and City Lights, as part of its impressively diverse slate of repertory offerings during an impressively-programmed August that I hope will continue in a similar spirit through the rest of the anniversary year. With no word on musical accompaniment for these screenings, it is likely that both will be, like The Artist, sound-on-film presentations of the kind that became popular if by no means exclusive after the arrival of The Jazz Singer in 1927. A third silent film not visible on the above link, but that word seems to be out about elsewhere, is a 35mm presentation of the newly-exhumed color version of A Trip To The Moon by Georges Méliès, which will play with a DCP version of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey on August 26 & 27, with Bruce Conner's astonishing Crossroads on the bill on August 26th only. What a triple-bill for that giant screen!
  

A Trip To The Moon will also screen at the SFSFF this weekend, in color, and it will be accompanied by the extremely talented pianist Stephen Horne (who accompanies five other SFSFF programs this weekend!) This is part of the festival's closing night program, along with Buster Keaton at his most Dziga Vertov-esque in The Cameraman, with Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra providing music. British silent film fan Paul McGann, best known for his acting career in films like Withnail And I and Alien³, will read the text Méliès wrote to accompany A Trip To The Moon at fairgrounds and other 1902 screening venues. He will also be at the festival to narrate Frank Hurley's documentary on Ernest Shackleton's polar expedition, South, in the spirit of Shackleton's own presentations with the film in his day.

It's interesting to note which SFSFF films are co-presented by which local film organizations. Saturday night's The Overcoat is co-presented by both SF Cinematheque and by MiDNiTES FOR MANiAX, which tells me it should appeal both to fans of avant-garde filmmaking and to fans of under-appreciated seventies- and eighties-era gems like Car Wash, Phenomena, Assault On Precinct 13, and Halloween 3: Season of The Witch (to name the next four MiDNiTE movies I'm told to expect at the Castro on August 3, September 14, October 5 & November 2nd, respectively.) I've been hoping to see the film version of The Overcoat since seeing an A.C.T. Production years ago, but I really have no idea what to expect from it now. 

I'm also extremely eager for Sunday afternoon's screening of Erotikon, introduced by Jonathan Marlow of Fandor, and co-presented by the San Francisco Film Society, which usually presents a silent film or two at its own annual film festival or during its year-round calendar of events. So far they haven't shown too many silents on their SF Film Society Screen in Japantown, but they have been screening Mark Cousins' epic documentary The Story Of Film: An Odyssey over the past several Saturdays, with two more to go. And this summer has seen more repertory-style programming at the venue than we've seen in previous months, with more to come in August: Kinji Fukusaku's 2000 cult classic Battle Royale gets its Frisco Bay week-long theatrical premiere August 10-16 and the locally-made 1996 animation James And The Giant Peach plays a matinee August 11. The 1952 portmentaeu film Love in the City, with segments directed by a young Fellini, Antonioni, and five other Italian directors (including the still-living Dino Risi and Francesco Maselli) will screen August 17-23, and perhaps most exciting of all, Robert Bresson's neglected The Devil, Probably shows in a new 35mm print August 3-9.


I'm straining to think of Silent Film Festival connections to the current SFMOMA screening series, at which filmmaker Trent Harris is expected to be present for tonight's screening of his bizarre and brilliant "Beaver Trilogy", for the Yerba Buena Center For The Arts series of photography-connected short films by the likes of Agnès Varda, Arthur Lipsett, Ken Jacobs, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Hollis Frampton, Raul Ruiz, Jean Eustache, and others (also starting tonight), or for the music-centered documentaries sharing a screen at the Roxie tonight, Songs Along A Stony Road and Sprout Wings And Fly, which will also be attended by its filmmakers George Csicsery and Les Blank (respectively). But it's time for me to sprout a decent outfit and fly off to see Wings in a couple hours, so I won't strain any longer. Have a great weekend and hope to see you at the Castro!

Linking Feller, August 2011

I haven't posted here in nearly six weeks (you don't need to hear the excuses), but I don't want to let the month of August go by without a single post- it'd be my first completely blogless month since first starting Hell On Frisco Bay in 2005.

So, without further ado, five links that seem relevant to Frisco Bay cinephiles on this final day of August 2011:

1. The San Francisco Cinematheque has announced its full program on its website. I don't have time right this moment to break down all the deliciousness in the programming, but since today is the 69th birthday of George Kuchar (and his oft-collaborating twin Mike Kuchar), I should definitely highlight the December 8 & 16 screenings of his films, from works as well-known as Hold Me While I'm Naked to those as rare as Aqueerius.

2. "Dan" of Dan's Movie Blog has been far more diligent at writing about the local cinema scene than I have lately. His latest post deals with the sad passing of San Francisco Film Society Executive Director Graham Leggatt, as well as the cloudy futures of the Balboa and the New Parkway, as well as discussing some recent screenings at the Castro,

3. Cheryl Eddy's fall repertory film preview from last week's SF Bay Guardian summarizes nearly all of the local screening venues' and organizations' fall highlights. Yes, Fall starts this week at many of our beloved venues.

4. One Frisco Bay venue Eddy's piece does not cover is the UA Shattuck in Berkeley, which runs a Thursday night repertory series for five dollars a ticket. Here's an article listing all the titles being brought through November. Though a few are digital screenings, most are 35mm prints, some of them of films that rarely get projected these days. Note the September 15th showing of Jacques Tourneur's Curse of the Demon, or the October 27th show of John Carpenter's The Thing. Though other websites indicate to the contrary, tomorrow night's 35mm screening of Metropolis is not a version of the 1927 Fritz Lang silent film, but of the 2002 Japanese animation (and, to my memory, Fifth Element ripoff) by Rintaro.

5. However, according to Kino International, Lang's Metropolis will come to the Castro for one screening only on October 27th. No, not the near-complete cut that's been popping up on Castro calendars for over a year now, but the Giorgio Moroder cut from the 1980s, complete with music from the likes of Freddie Mercury, Pat Benatar and Adam Ant. It's all in preparation for this version's release on DVD & Blu-Ray the following month. It seems strange that Kino is able to put out this version, when they were prevented by German rightsholders from providing Alloy Orchestra as an alternate score for the DVD/Blu release of the "Complete Metropolis" last year. But what do I know about these kinds of wheelings and dealings. Anyway, this seems the apropos moment to provide an extra, fifth-and-a-half link to the site where you can buy a compact disc with the Alloys' complete score, which it's possible to play while watching the DVD at home. I wonder, since the Alloys' first Metropolis score was synced to the Moroder cut, could they make available a version we could play on headphones during the upcoming Castro screening?

Happy Bastille Day at the Silent Film Festival!

Only hours until the San Francisco Silent Film Festival begins, and word comes from the twitter feed of London-based composed Carl Davis, that he will be conducting the Oakland East Bay Symphony as they perform the score to the 1927 Abel Gance film Napoléon as the film unspools on the screen at the Paramount Theatre of the Arts in Oakland. According to the trailer linked to by Davis, the performances will be on March 24, 25, 31, and April 1st, 2012.

This is momentous news for silent film fans, as it represents the first official announcement that two of last year's special Oscar award recipients, Kevin Brownlow and Francis Ford Coppola. have found their way to collaborate after many years of being at odds over the rights to show Napoléon. This article helps explain why the film has not shown in a US cinema in nearly three decades, and why the version restored by Brownlow and scored by Davis has never been seen by American moviegoers.

For my part, I've never seen Napoléon, other than in brief clips like those seen in Brownlow's excellent documentary series (co-produced by David Gill) Cinema Europe: the Other Hollywood. Too young to have known about the screenings put on with Carmine Coppola's score until they'd already happened, and not well-heeled enough to catch this outdoor screening in 1997, I've always sensed that seeing it in a theatre, as opposed to on the VHS tapes available at Le Video and a few other surviving rental stores, would be worth the wait. It's been a long one, but there are only eight more months of it to go!

This announcement more than makes up for the fact that this summer marks the first SF Silent Film Festival since 2005 in which there hasn't been a program devoted to French films (although a few French shorts appear on the festival's sole all-digital program, Wild and Weird, including the hilarious Arthème Swallows his Clarinet.) Happy Bastille Day!

Brownlow, as you may have heard, will be returning to the festival this weekend after being awarded last year, will be back to speak at the 10AM Sunday morning event Amazing Tales From The Archives. Having seen the man speak at length on his love of silent film before, I predict that this is going to be the highlight of the entire festival for many (if not all) of its attendees. And it's free! Thomas Gladysz agrees, and he should know, having been involved in the silent film world far longer than I have. Get to the Castro Theatre early for this one!

Some more articles on or related to the 2011 SF Silent Film Festival, in case you still haven't decided what to watch:

Carl Martin on the provenance of the prints and restorations.
Michael Hawley has a comprensive preview of the line-up.
Dennis Harvey writes about A Nail In the Boot for the SF Bay Guardian and on Shoes for sf360.
J. F. DeFreitas on the line-up, with a special focus on Yasujiro Ozu's I Was Born, But.... (which is the film I wrote on for the program guide. Be sure to arrive at the Friday, 4:15 show a little early to catch the slide show on Ozu that I've prepared!)
It's Silent Film Week at the Fandor Keyframe blog, and I've contributed a piece on Douglas Fairbanks. I can't wait to see him in Mr. Fix-It on Saturday!
The festival's own blog has begun collecting more links as well.

I would also be remiss in neglecting to mention a few other Frisco Bay screenings of note, for those whose budget is too tight to wrap around Silent Film Festival ticket prices. Lech Majewski's incredible digital opera The Roe's Room plays tonight at SFMOMA. The new Stanford Theatre calendar is up, and it includes four Friday evenings of Buster Keaton films accompanied by Dennis James at the Wurlitzer, starting tomorrow night. And the Pacific Film Archive's upcoming weekend is full of rarely-screened but highly-regarded films, most notably a new print of Bernardo Bertolucci's epic 1900.

Shhhhh-owtime!

Two sad pieces of news relevant to this blog started off this shortened week. First, the announcement that San Francisco Film Society executive director Graham Leggat is stepping down for health reasons, after five years of wonderful service to the city's extended film community. He strengthened the city's foremost film exhibition organization in immeasurable ways at a moment when leadership like his was sorely needed, but I also appreciated his rare candor as a contributor to the programming team for the annual San Francisco International Film Festival. He wasn't afraid to publicly admit his favorite film in the festival, even if it was a potentially alienating one to the casual observer. (In 2006 he cited Tsai Ming-Liang's The Wayward Cloud, and this year his pick was Lech Majewski's The Mill and the Cross). Leah Garchik has a good article that details his reasons for departure, and shows us that Leggat's courage is in no way limited to his approach to film programming.

Another sad, if very much predicted, news item was the Red Vic's official announcement that it will definitely be closing July 25th after thirty-one years of operation on Haight Street. This is the first time I've closed one of the parentheses on my "Frisco Cinemas" sidebar list. I recently went through my records to figure that I've seen at least 75 screenings there in the past decade and a half (or so). It sounds like a lot, but right now I'm also thinking of all the films I never got around to seeing when they (in some cases quite frequently) played there. Who's going to bring around prints of Foxy Brown or The Good Old Naughty Days or The Holy Mountain or Stop Making Sense (which I must miss when it plays July 15-16) once the venue is shut? Reminiscences are popping up all over the web, but perhaps the most pointed and poignant is Peter Hartlaub's. Cheryl Eddy's interview with Claudia Lehan is the best article I've seen on the details behind the closure.

I don't want to dwell on negative news though. The reason I won't be able to catch Stop Making Sense at the Red Vic next week is that I'll be celebrating the cinema of the 1900s, 1910s, 1920s and even early 1930s with the San Francisco Silent Film Festival from Thursday night until Sunday night. The festival's own blog has been gearing up for the event for weeks now with its remarkably informative series Film Preservation Fridays. Today's entry is an interview with two of the archivists instrumental in bringing festival opener Upstream to light after decades when even the most knowledgeable John Ford scholars assumed it lost. A must-read.

The San Francisco Public Library is also preparing for the event by spreading an exhibition about silent film in several locations on the fourth and sixth floors of the Main Library. Thomas Gladysz has curated one section of the exhibit, "Reading The Stars", focusing on books about filmmaking and famous filmmakers, and on movie tie-ins, all published during the silent era! Another section, curated by Rory J. O'Connor, looks at silent-era filmmaking in San Francisco and elsewhere around Frisco Bay. A third, on the sixth floor, is devoted to silent-era movie palaces. The library will be hosting two events around the exhibition, which will remain up until August 28th. This Sunday at 2PM the library will host a projected video screening of Son of the Sheik starring Rudolph Valentino. Valentino expert Donna Hill will be on hand to introduce the screening and sign copies of her breathtakingly beautiful book of rare Valentino photographs. Then, on August 7th, Diana Serra Carey, who performed in 1920s films as "Baby Peggy", will talk about her life in Hollywood and screen an as-yet-unnamed short film. Both events are free to the public, as is the exhibition.

I was recruited to get involved in this exhibit in a very small way: by providing a piece of text talking about this year's Silent Film Festival for one of the display cases. Librarian Gretchen Good, who organized the exhibition along with the SFPL exhibitions staff (including Maureen Russell) said it would be fine to publish the text on my blog as well, so here it is, though I couldn't resist jazzing it up with some hyperlinks:

Every summer for the past fifteen years, the San Francisco Silent Film Festival has taken over the Castro Theatre for a weekend of great movies, live music, and the conviviality of silent film fans. The 16th annual festival, held July 14-17, 2011, is their biggest event yet. Thirteen feature films made on four different continents will screen, along with two programs of shorts (one devoted to Walt Disney's first films, one to the earliest special effects films), two free programs of film archivists presenting their latest restorations and unearthings from the vaults, and much more.

Marlene Dietrich, Lon Chaney, Norma Shearer, John Gilbert, Janet Gaynor, George O'Brien, Louise Dressler, Pina Menichelli and Douglas Fairbanks are some of the stars featured in this year's festival films. Well-known classics like F.W. Murnau's Sunrise, Yasujiro Ozu's I Was Born, But..., and Victor Sjöström's He Who Gets Slapped screen along with recently rediscovered films like Allan Dwan's Mr. Fix-It and John Ford's Upstream. Seven musical ensembles and soloists rotate in performing live musical scores to each film, and gather Saturday, July 16th on a panel discussion to talk about the role of music in the silent film world.

Every year the festival gives an award to an organization or individual for "distinguished contributions to the preservation and restoration of world film heritage." This year's award is presented to the UCLA Film & Television Archive at a screening of The Goose Woman. American Sign Language interpreters are on hand for the festival's special-guest introductions and panels. Film lovers travel from far and wide to attend the festival, but the screenings are just as fun for people who have never seen a silent movie before.

Hope to see you at the festival next week!

Surrogate Valentine

As promised in my previous post, a video of me discssing Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives on the new cinema program "Look Of The Week" was posted on Friday. Check it out and tell me what you think. What I didn't know at the time was, the film would be extended for at least another week in San Francisco; it currently screens at the Presidio Theatre in the Marina. Meanwhile, the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival is well under way. I'll be heading to the Pacific Film Archive this evening to attend the award-winning Vietnamese film Bi, Don't Be Afraid, preceded by CAAM director Stephen Gong's discussion with Yunte Huang, author of a fascinating new cultural history/biography of Chang Apana, the real-life inspiration for the Charlie Chan character. A screening of a rare 35mm print of the 1937 film (not discussed in the book, so I'm excited to hear Huang's comments) Charlie Chan At The Olympics is the centerpiece of that talk.


The SFIAAFF is, quite commendably, probably the most conscientious of all Frisco Bay festivals when it comes to placing information about screening formats in their program guide, but there are almost inevitably a few changes that occur after the guide is printed. The Film On Film Foundation calendar has the most up-to-date information on which SFIAAFF (and other locally screening) films are projected on film rather than video. A good 35mm print can help make a mediocre film worth watching, as I remembered Friday night when I watched When Love Comes Friday at the Clay. Although I wouldn't advocate a festival itinerary that totally avoids digital screenings, as that would mean missing out on the terrific festival closer Surrogate Valentine, which would be a shame. It's my favorite of the (admittedly few compared to, say, Michael Hawley) SFIAAFF selctions I've seen so far.

Surrogate Vaentine is named after a song by local acoustic rock up-and-comer Goh Nakamura, who plays an up-and-coming acoustic rocker and guitar teacher named Goh in the movie. The meta-cinematic layering doesn't end there though, as the on-screen Goh is hired to play a "technical consultant" on a feature film made from a friend's screenplay, loosely based on incidents from his own life. Initially, he's asked to teach guitar-playing basics to the film's star, a well-known TV actor named Danny Turner (played by Chad Stoops, making his feature film debut). It soon becomes apparent that Danny is less interested in music lessons than in hanging out and finding clues to playing his Goh-inspired character. He accompanies the performer on a short West Coast tour, getting recognized everywhere for his hospital-soap character, and playing over-eager wingman when he recognizes Goh's attraction to a former flame met on the road.

The morass of plot detail I just recounted only scratches the surface, yet may obscure the fact that, though Surrogate Valentine never lacks a dramatic motor, it's really not a plot-heavy film, but a modern (musical) comedy and a character portrait. As writer-director Dave Boyle plays it out in its brisk 75 minute running time, there's nothing arch about the multi-leveled biographical blurring; rather the stark contrast between Goh and his would-be doppelgänger provides opportunities for a steady stream of satirical humor and pathos. Stoops makes Danny an ingratiating figure as if on excursion from a Todd Phillips bro-fest, while Nakamura portrays himself as the kind of almost stereotypically sensitive, aloof but endearing hipster seen on San Francisco streets more commonly than on San Francisco screens. His romantic interest Rachel (played by Lynn Chen of Saving Face and White On Rice, the latter also directed by Boyle) stands out as the best of a mostly-excellent supporting cast. Goh's world includes the orbits of many varieties of satellites -- from starstruck groupies to aging ex-rockers to the friends who "knew you back when".

Despite authentic location shooting (in Seattle, San Francisco, San Jose and Los Angeles), it's easy to lose track of exactly what leg of the physical journey the wandering characters are on at a given moment, but any such confusion surely mirrors the discombobulation a touring musician experiences while on the road. The essence of the film comes not from its road-movie exoskeleton but from the interior journeys of Goh and Danny, though this is expressed without resorting to the screenwriter-guru-approved clichés. The open ending makes for a more aesthetically satisfying conclusion than found in a typical studio product. The penultimate shot, a close-up of Goh foregrounded against an out-of-focus but entirely static Portrero Hill panorama, provides an example of digital cinematography underlining an emotional state perhaps even more precisely than 35mm film stock could. Ultimately Surrogate Valentine earns more heft through its understatement than one might expect from a fun comedy. And its oblique, never finger-wagging, underlying critique of the shameful Hollywood trend of erasing Asian faces from the stories it wants to repurpose as mass-market entertainments comes off as more effective than a hundred disproportionately bilious critical pans of the Last Airbender could ever be.

Brecht Andersch's Two Eyes

Since my own two eyes were not nearly enough to see and evaluate all the repertory/revival film screenings here on Frisco Bay, I'm honored to present local filmgoers' lists of the year's favorites. An index of participants is found here.

The following list comes from filmmaker/projectionist Brecht Andersch, who writes for the SFMOMA Open Space Blog and who co-founded the Film On Film Foundation:

Ahh..... 2010 is the year I met my cinemaniac Waterloo. After decades of dashing round that hamster's wheel of immediate gratification, I found myself transferred by my Masters to a new, smaller wheel which one could only hope to "traverse" by means of application of fingers to a qwerty-pad. My fingertips have become calloused to match the scars in my heart, and yet the fingers march on and on...

Sadly, I have only a few moments of cine-glory to share with you, but share I've promised, and share I shall.

1) The year began with the heaven-and-hell clash of perhaps the most strangely apt/un-apt double bill I've yet encountered, the PFA's January 23rd pairing of Playtime and Salo. I meant to write a piece on this utopian/dystopian death match, with the resonating, and irresolvable question: which, in fact, was which? But time escaped me, and I was forced to narrow, or at least alter my considered theme. No doubt this was for the best, for such concerns, dragged into the public sphere, can only lead to the dubious but justified rewards of the shamed exhibitionist.

2) My friend Ross Lipman flew into town, in part, for a Sunday, February 28th afternoon screening of his restored versions of the great amateur filmmaker Sid Laverents. I worked up an Open Space post covering this show, as well as Ross's other many exciting activities, and showed up on that glorious sun-graced Sunday to find myself part of an audience of eleven, of which Lucy Laird was another. This was the moment I discovered the power of the press. Who loves the sun? Not I, since it broke my heart... It was a great show anyway, and since then, I sleep days.

3) Again we go with the PFA. On March 6th, I treated my wife to a double feature of Joseph Losey's M and The Big Night for her birthday. Included was the short Youth Gets a Break, which, unlike the features, I'd never before seen. Gents, I gotta tell you -- when you splurge on the little woman's big day in this manner, you won't have to wait 'til heaven to receive your rewards.

4) Later that month, I wrote about the PFA's screenings of Eve and Accident, then savored the narcissistic delusion, as the lights dimmed, that I was in some fashion the ringmaster. Of course, as the light hit the screen in each case I was immediately brought up short -- for in Losey, only the Goddess calls the shots.

5) Not April 1st, but the 2nd and 3rd proved my Fool's Days, or rather nights. On each there was a Cinematheque programmed Jim McBride/Stanton Kaye double bill at Yerba Buena: Fri, the 2nd's was McBride's David Holzman's Diary with Kaye's Georg, and the next night it was Kaye's Brandy in the Wilderness and McBride's My Girlfriend's Wedding. Of these, I'd only seen David Holzman, but that's a film I've watched obsessively since my first screening in '86, appropriately by means of a 16mm print in my own tiny filmmaker's abode. McBride and Kaye were scheduled to be there, and indeed they showed up both nights and did due diligence to all fifteen-or-so people in the audience. The Cinematheque's director, Jonathon Marlow, does things in style, and parties were thrown and catched (or is the term crashed?) by those daring enough to stick their noses amongst their betters. I remember scotch-fueled discussions with Jim and Tracy McBride, as well as one Mr. Brian Darr, and lo-and-behold! Who did I find amongst the crowd other than my hero, Holzman himself -- L.M. Kit Carson! I swiftly made my approach to commence that long-promised "talk about Vincente Minnelli". Yes, for those who're curious, he's indeed a fan... One of my favorite moments of this weekend was standing next to my friend Mindy Bagdon as he reunited with Stanton Kaye after forty-plus years. Mindy had worked for a bit in some kinda cinematographic capacity on Brandy all those years ago, but had never seen it. Imagine his joy and surprise to discover it a semi-masterpiece...

6) A couple of weeks later found me again at Yerba, finally catching up with a film always a block or two ahead of me these past couple decades -- Marguerite Duras's Le Camion. For those who've heard about but haven't seen, it does indeed consist of long conversations between Duras and Gerard Depardieu at a table discussing a proposed screenplay, intercut with images of a camion driving thru the French countryside. I gotta tell you, tho -- that camion's some truck! If Duras were with us today, I'd exhort her to "Keep on Camionin'!"

7) Ryland Walker Knight has already waxed well on our ventures with Brian Darr to southern climes to take in McCarey masterpieces (Make Way for Tomorrow and Ruggles of Red Gap), both of which I'd only seen before on 16mm or video. I'll come down on the side of Make Way for diversity's sake, and because I love to have my heart broken. (But yes, we all need more of Ruggles's joy.)

8) In May and June, in my role as projectionist at SFMOMA, I enjoyed the hell out of warlocking the spindles o' magick for screenings of Model Shop and Play Misty for Me, with all their sun-drenched Californian autocentricity... If Eastwood had kept up the level of Play he'd begun at with Misty (no doubt with help from mentor Don Seigel), he could justifiably be discussed with directors on the level of Jacques Demy on a regular basis. (Sadly, this is not the case.) Demy's film, on the other hand, is fully emblematic of a directorial vision which seems to broaden and deepen with every screening of almost any one of his films...


9) Nine?! Already? Time for to make the mad dash thru all the pictures I really shoulda talked about -- the three days in a row in August I managed to make it out to revisit semi-favorite Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence at the VIZ, Death in Venice (for me one of the great Transcendent Masterpieces of Cinema) at the Roxie, and The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond (again at PFA). It's true I gotta penchant for all that homoerotic farrin' stuff, but what my id's really hankerin' for is just one -- just one measily hour to rampage in the proper heterosexist, fanny grabbin', Tommy-gun tottin' Legs Diamond manner 'til goin' down in my very own glorious blaze of bullets, only to wake and thank my luck stars, that no, indeed, I'm not that wayward mick run amok... Thank God, and thanks very much, Mr. Budd Boetticher. Then there was my 2nd 35mm viewing of House of Bamboo (9/10 PFA), some much later viewings of Dreyer films (Nov. and Dec. at PFA), such as uber-favorites Ordet, and Gertrud (the latter for the first time in 35), and my first-ever encounter with Two People, which, if they had been directed by anyone other than Carl Th., would be considered at least the inhabitants of a minor masterpiece, but instead have to suffer the ignominious status of having been disowned by the severe Dane. There was also that sacred work of degradation, Accattone (12/10), which I hadn't seen for some time, and finally I must make mention of my first-ever viewing of Rolling Thunder (9/2 Roxie, part of Not Necessarily Noir, programmed by Elliot Lavine) amidst my on-going Jacob/Devil wrastlin' match (I'll leave it to you to figure out who was who) with my extended series on the 70's work of Paul Schrader, which came just in time to deliver a key line (both for his oeuvre and my piece): "You learn to love the rope… That’s how you beat people who torture you — you learn to love them."

10) At last we are at our final number which invokes for me a work by that recently departed figure who ranks amongst the Greatest (and most profoundly underrated) of Major American Film Directors. But this isn't the time for your eulogy, Blake (that time will come), but rather to truly wrap up the wrap-up by conducting those readers not yet appropriately alienated by this Big Parade of Vanity thru the most glorious of my gloriest involvements in the local cinematic scene, i.e. those I've been directly involved with in some fashion: there was the FOFF screening of Endless Love (8/22 PFA), with its screenwriter, Judith Rascoe, in attendance; Bay Area Ecstatic, the first show I've been allowed to program and present at SFMOMA (and let me just say in passing I'm very gratified to see mentions of these programs by my fellow wrap-uppers), and last, and by far the most exciting was the 9/29 screening of 1953's The End (at the PFA, as part of the fantastically extensive series conjoined to the book Radical Light). This was a key moment in the project I've been involved with for most of the last year with Brian Darr to investigate, document, and analyze all things having to do with Christopher Maclaine's Very Great Masterpiece. After making contact with Wilder Bentley II, who plays Paul, one of the film's rotating protagonists, we now found ourselves seated next to "Paul" himself for this latest unspooling of The End upon the PFA screen. As the Paul episode came up, I couldn't help surreptitiously glancing back and forth between "Paul"s. This was truly a glorious moment.

Ryland Walker Knight's Two Eyes

Since my own two eyes were not nearly enough to see and evaluate all the repertory/revival film screenings here on Frisco Bay, I'm honored to present local filmgoers' lists of the year's favorites. An index of participants is found here.

The following list comes from writer/filmmaker Ryland Walker Knight, who blogs at Vinyl Is Heavy:

I've noted elsewhere in the sphere of things cinema-related that I held back on my movie-going this last year, for a variety of reasons. To be brief, I might say that life got a little too overstuffed to make the time for films. Or, I made other priorities. In any case, I don't need to bore you with that; the point is that I only made a few pilgrimages that mattered. I made a note of my love for Yang's A Brighter Summer Day over in The Notebook and at VINYL, so I'll table that one for this post.

Here, I'd like to turn to my favorite rep discovery upon my return to the Bay: The Stanford. Granted, I haven't been since last summer, but Brian and I made some trips that paid dividends. We even made one of them a big film nerd event (sup Brecht, SMV, AA, JJL) that involved some amazing guacamole prepared by Sr. Adams, and some odd Hitch hate I've no time for, and a few DVD loans that I've been remiss in attending to and returning to their rightful owner.


In any case, that night we saw Make Way For Tomorrow and Dodsworth, both of which were well worth the trek. Both relics about relics, yet both better than any new movies about giving up love and/or old people. However, my favorite film seen down south was a different Leo McCarey, Ruggles of Red Gap, whose many particulars have regrettably receded in my brain, but whose (excuse me) joie de vivre is everything I love about movies and about life. Put otherwise, its entirety is designed to exemplify the maxim that charity is a synonym for love and it's hilarious. There is an entire scene of Charles Laughton falling on the ground laughing. And, after all, its invocation of Lincoln just makes my little chest want to soar.

Rob Byrne's Two Eyes

Since my own two eyes were not nearly enough to see and evaluate all the repertory/revival film screenings here on Frisco Bay, I'm honored to present local filmgoers' lists of the year's favorites. An index of participants is found here.

The following list comes from film preservationist and researcher Rob Byrne. He blogs at Starts Thursday!: The Art And History of Motion Picture Coming Attraction Slides

Rick Prelinger's Lost Landscapes of San Francisco, 5
Herbst Theatre
Archival celebration of orphan film. Quickly becoming a holiday season tradition. Some of the more amusing segments included public service featurettes describing the wonderful and modern Bay Area Rapid Transit system, and 16mm home movies featuring street scenes in SF neighborhoods.

Kid Boots
Edison Theatre, Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum
A delightful comedy starring Clara Bow and Eddie Cantor. It's always nice to find a little gem that for some reason you've overlooked.

A Trip Down Market Street
Edison Theatre, Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum [screening during 60 Minutes taping]
So great to see film research and archiving making news in mainstream media. David Kiehn and the Niles Film Museum on 60 Minutes! Who could have predicted that?

Rotaie
Castro Theatre, presented by San Francisco Silent Film Festival
Beautifully atmospheric, wonderfully evocative. Loved it, just loved it.

The Passion of Joan of Arc
Oakland's Paramount, presented by SF Silent Film Festival, Pacific Film Archive, and Paramount Theatre
An amazing film anyway, but adding an orchestral ensemble and 200 voices elevated the experience to an entirely different plane.

A Century Ago: The Films of 1910
San Rafael Film Center, presented by California Film Institute
Randy Haberkamp's annual compilation. Marvelously researched and impeccably presented. The program was almost exclusively one-reelers. The two most memorable being The Sergeant, a Selig picture filmed in Yosemite Valley; and Aviation at Los Angeles California, an amazing document of a 1910 air show outside Los Angeles filmed by Essanay.

Diary of a Lost Girl
Castro Theatre, presented by San Francisco Silent Film Festival
Reveals something new every time you see it. Not a surprise that it was never released in the US, nothing would have survived the censor's shears.

Rain or Shine (the sound version)
Pacific Film Archive
Seems too good to be an early talkie, Joe Cook was a revelation, talks faster than Groucho Marx and a great physical comedian as well. One of those films you want to share with other people just so you can see their reaction.

The Shakedown
Castro Theatre, presented by San Francisco Silent Film Festival
Excellent gritty drama directed by William Wyler.

King Kong
Oakland Paramount
Say what you want, seeing King Kong in a packed house in the glorious Oakland Paramount was movie-going (as opposed to "cinema-attending") at it's best - especially when preceded by a cartoon, newsreel, trailers, and a raffle.

Michael Hawley's Two Eyes

Since my own two eyes were not nearly enough to see and evaluate all the repertory/revival film screenings here on Frisco Bay, I'm honored to present local filmgoers' lists of the year's favorites. An index of participants is found here.

The following list comes from cinephile/critic Michael Hawley. He blogs at film-415, where this list has been cross-posted:

The Bay Area continues to be an incredible place to experience repertory cinema. There are few places on the planet where it's possible to see a film every day of the year and not watch a single new release. In 2010 I caught 47 revival screenings at various local venues. Here, in no particular order, are 10 of the most memorable.

Showgirls (Castro Theater)
What better way to celebrate the 15th anniversary of my fave film of the 1990s. Peaches Christ brought an expanded version of her infamous Showgirls Midnight Mass preshow to a sold-out Castro, complete with exploding on-stage volcano and free lapdances with every large popcorn. It inspired me to inaugurate my iphone's movie camera feature and create a YouTube channel to post the results. Apart from Peaches' Castro world premiere of All About Evil, this was the most fun I had at the movies in 2010.

Armored Car Robbery (Castro Theater, Noir City)
I was blown away by this taut and tidy 67-minute slice of obscure 1950 B-Noir about the aftermath of yes, an armored car robbery outside L.A.'s Wrigley Field. It would be brought back to mind months later with the Fenway Park heist of Ben Affleck's The Town. Other 2010 Noir City highlights included the double bill of Suspense (1946) and The Gangster (1948), both starring British ice-skating queen Belita, and 1945's San Francisco-set Escape in the Fog, which begins with a woman dreaming about an attempted murder on the Golden Gate Bridge.


Pornography in Denmark (Oddball Cinema)
There's something weird and wonderful going on each weekend at Oddball Cinema, a funky alternative film venue tucked inside the Mission District warehouse digs Oddball Film + Video. In the spring they screened a 16mm print of this landmark 1970 documentary by local porn-meister Alex de Renzy, which became the first hardcore to show in legit U.S. theaters and be reviewed in the NY Times. Introducing the film was writer/film scholar Jack Stevenson, who was on tour promoting his book, Scandinavian Blue: The Erotic Cinema of Sweden and Denmark in the 1960s and 1970s.

Freddie Mercury, the Untold Story (VIZ Cinema, 3rd i's Queer Eye Mini-Film Festival)
3rd i is best known for the SF International South Asian Film Festival it puts on each November. Back in June they packed SF's snazzy subterranean VIZ Cinema with this revival of Rudi Dolezal and Hannes Rossacher's 2000 documentary – seen in a new director's cut with 43 extra minutes. The audience went nutso at the climax of "Barcelona," Mercury's soaring duet with Montserrat Caballé from the 1986 summer Olympics. Further repertory kudos to 3rd i for bringing an exquisite 35mm print of 1958 Bollywood classic, Madhumati, to the Castro.

Mädchen in Uniform (Castro Theater, Frameline)
A whole lot of LGBT folk must've played hooky from work to catch this mid-day, mid-week revival from 1958 – itself a remake of a 1931 queer cinema classic. Romy Schneider and Lili Palmer are respectively radiant as a student obsessively in love with her boarding school teacher – to the extreme consternation of battleaxe headmistress Therese Giehse. Shown in a gorgeous and rare 35mm print, with the inimitable Jenni Olson delivering a dishy intro. Frameline34's other revelatory revival was Warhol's 1965 Vinyl, in which Factory beauties Gerard Malanga and Edie Sedgwick dance a furious frug to Martha and the Vandellas "Nowhere to Hide." Twice.


The Aztec Mummy vs. The Human Robot (Pacific Film Archive, El Futuro Está Aquí: Sci-Fi Classics from Mexico)
If anything's capable of luring me out of the city on a Saturday night during Frameline, it's bunch of Mexican monster movies from the 50's and 60's. This was double-billed with Santo vs. The Martian Invasion, which had a little too much rasslin' for my tastes. But it boasted a hilarious opening scene in which the Martians explain why they happen to be speaking Spanish. It killed me to miss Planet of the Female Invaders and The Ship of Monsters, also part of this series.

Metropolis (Castro Theater, SF Silent Film Festival)
"When you've waited 83 years, what's another 40 minutes?" Eddie Muller quipped to the antsy, capacity crowd awaiting the Bay Area premiere of Fritz Lang's finally-complete expressionist dystopian masterpiece. In spite of the late start time and disappointing digital format, this was still the repertory event of the year. The Alloy Orchestra performed its celebrated score live and Muller conducted an on-stage conversation with Paula Félix-Didier and Fernando Peña, the Argentine film archivists who discovered the 16mm print of Metropolis with 25 additional minutes. The Alloy Orchestra would return to the fest two days later to perform their heart-stopping score to Dziga Vertov's Man with a Movie Camera.

The Cook/Pass the Gravy/Big Business (Castro Theater, SF Silent Film Festival)
Each year this festival invites a filmmaker to program a Director's Pick – and past pickers have included the likes of Guy Maddin and Terry Zwigoff. This year Pete Docter (Monsters, Inc., Up) assembled a program of three comic shorts titled The Big Business of Short Funny Films, each of them screamingly funny. First, Fatty Arbuckle and Buster Keaton had a go at each other in The Cook, followed by some hysterical nonsense involving feuding families and a prized rooster in Pass the Gravy. Finally in Big Business, door-to-door Christmas tree salesmen Laurel and Hardy declared war on a disgruntled customer, taking tit-for-tat to absurd heights.

The Boston Strangler (Pacific Film Archive, Criminal Minds)
This ranks as my personal discovery of the year. Director Richard Fleischer employs a wry tone and magnificent use of wide and split screen to tell the story of 60's serial killer Albert DeSalvo. A restrained Tony Curtis, whose title character doesn't appear until the midway point, gives what must surely be the best dramatic performance of his career. Oscar ® didn't care. With Henry Fonda, George Kennedy and an early appearance by Sally Kellerman as the one girl who got away. Double-billed with 1944's The Lodger, a compelling Jack the Ripper yarn starring Merle Oberon, George Sanders and Laird Cregar.

Johanna (Roxie Theater)
I was woefully resigned to never seeing Kornél Mundruczó's 2005 filmic opera about a junkie performing sex miracles in a subterranean Budapest hospital, which had never screened in the Bay Area or been released on Region 1 DVD. Then the Roxie answered my prayers by showing a gorgeous 35mm print for two nights in November, double-billed with the director's follow-up, 2008's Delta. Earlier in the month, the Roxie revived 36 Quai des Orfèvres, a gritty and stylish 2004 policier that had also inexplicably gone unseen the Bay Area, despite starring Gérard Depardieu and Daniel Auteuil.

Honorable Mentions
Traffic (1971, dir. Jacques Tati, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts)
Insiang (1976, dir. Lino Brocka, Sundance Kabuki, SF International Asian American Film Festival)
Black Narcissus (1947, dir. Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger, Pacific Film Archive, "Life, Death and Technicolor: A Tribute to Jack Cardiff")
Hausu (1977, dir. Nobuhiko Ôbayashi, Castro Theater)
A Night to Dismember (1983, dir. Doris Wishman, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, "Go to Hell for the Holidays: Horror in December")

SFSFF Weekend Wrap

The San Francisco Silent Film Festival facilitated four tremendous days of cinephilia. So many rare opportunities to see films from the early part of the previous century (and even one from 1898) presented with live musical accompaniment with a knowledgeable and appreciative audience, and to talk to musicians, scholars, offspring of key players in silent filmmaking, and enthusiastic fans, made for a truly overstuffed weekend. I saw every "full-length" film shown, and most of the short films and public presentations as well. Some highlight memories of many from the past weekend:

1. Walking down Castro Street after Sunday's screening of The Shakedown, I saw the familiar face of Leonard Maltin approaching. I had to stop him to quickly thank him for his introduction to the film. In the course of interviewing its director William Wyler's three daughters, Catherine, Judy and Melanie, he spoke of Wyler's second film made outside the Western genre as a good, but not great picture. Watching it, I found the Shakedown to be more than just a terrific entertainment and a showcase for Wyler's developing skills as an inventive filmmaker. In the way it depicts con artists on the show-biz boxing circuit, it's a deeply meaningful look at the way acting a persona can envelop a performer's personal life and self-identity. The resonances of leading man James Murray (also of the Crowd) and his sad biography surely added to this deep feeling. On the other hand, his co-star Barbara Kent is one of the few silent-era players still living today.

I told Mr. Maltin how much I'd appreciated his approach to introducing the film: keeping audience expectations modest, so that we could in a sense "discover" the film's virtues for ourselves. This as opposed to the approach of praising a film to the skies to an audience just before we're about to see it, which seems unnecessary as we're not going to be buying any more tickets to it at that moment, and it may inflate expectations to the point where the film, no matter how good it is, can't measure up. Maltin's smiling response: "It's probably never played so well in its history." Surely a tribute to the receptive festival audience, and perhaps even more to Donald Sosin's virtuosic jazz piano accompaniment (Sosin really outdid himself with his three accompaniments this year, and the Shakedown was his best performance of the three, I felt.) But most of all to the nature of the Silent Film Festival, which is able to create almost utopian presentations of the films selected, by aligning all the right factors: venue, audience, accompaniment, and best available film print.

2. Saturday's presentation Variations On A Theme: Musicians on the Craft of Composing and Performing for Silent Films was not organized quite how I expected, and I'm not sure how the hour would have gone over for an individual ticket buyer, but for those of us with festival passes, it was certainly well worth staying in our seats for. We even got to witness a bit of friendly but sharp disagreement between the panelists! Classical musician/writer/radio host Chloe Veltman seemed natural and confident as moderator, even if a few of her questions to the gathered accompanists betrayed some inexperience with watching silent films with live music (though at least she'd seen the festival screening of The Cook, Pass The Gravy and Big Business that morning). But the best part of the presentation was when the musicians took a couple of questions from the audience. Audience q-and-a is always a crap shoot but in this case the questions elicited responses that got close to the heart of some very real philosophical differences between the panel members.

Authenticity is perhaps the key issue at stake in the variety of approaches taken by different accompanists. Pianist Stephen Horne (or should I say multi-instrumentalist Stephen Horne, as he sometimes plays flute or squeezebox with one hand while the other dances upon the ivories,) spoke up for an approach that privileges an authenticity to the scene and its emotional resonance. By contrast, both Rodney Sauer of the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra, and theatre organist Dennis James argued for an authenticity to music that audiences of the silent era might have been likely to hear when attending a film. Interestingly, these two, whose approaches might appear at first glance to be the most closely aligned amidst the group, engaged in the most contentious exchange of the panel. James argued for fidelity to the original sheet music commissioned by the director or producer of the film, whenever possible. Sauer countered that such cue sheets or scores were often abandoned or otherwise ignored by accompanists after an initial premiere performance or engagement in large cities, which is why his group favors compilations from the repertoire of compositions that would have been familiar to a typical salon orchestra of the 1920s. What became evident is that each accompanist does a certain amount of research into conventions of the time when producing a score, but that none of them are absolute purists in their approach. Even James will make certain allowances for the modern audience in defiance of the instructions of silent-era film music decision-makers. He'll ignore a cue sheet's suggestion of (for example) Rossini's William Tell Overture, because ever since the popularity of The Lone Ranger on radio and television, that theme takes audiences out of the moment. So don't expect to hear that familiar theme when Dennis James plays the Davies Symphony Hall organ to back John Barrymore in the 1920 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde this October 31st.

3. One moment that felt particularly gratifying to this blogger was the unveiling, during the second of two sets of presentations by members of the film archiving community, of a newly-preserved print of a 1912 one-reeler called The Better Man. The film is notable as a rare positive portrayal of a Mexican character in a Western, and features some notably effective camerawork, particularly an unexpected long tilt up a cliffside, revealing just how far one character has just fallen. Apparently the first new print struck from the trove of American films recently discovered in a Wellington, New Zealand film archive, The Better Man is also one of three two films whose preservation was funded through the efforts of the For The Love Of Film blog-a-thon organized by the incomparable Self-Styled Siren and Marilyn Ferdinand this past February. Whether or not even one person donated to the blog-a-thon fund after reading my own written contribution to that online event, I felt a little pride just from my connection to a community that made seeing this film possible.

In truth, everyone who buys a ticket to a Silent Film Festival program can feel pride that they help to support not only the presentation of, but also the preservation of silent films. The festival organizes its own annual fellowship through the L. Jeffrey Selznick school at Eastman House, and unless I misinterpreted what I heard announced from the Castro stage, this year's fellowship recipient will prepare the Douglas Fairbanks feature Mr. Fix-It for preservation, and presentation at the 2011 SFSFF. It's never too early to begin anticipating next year's program, and given that Allan Dwan directed Fairbanks in arguably his two best costume pageant films of the 1920's (Robin Hood and the Iron Mask), I'm excited to see this little-seen Dwan-directed film from Fairbanks's 1910s filmography.

According to the festival's own blog, another title already announced for the 2011 festival is Fritz Lang's second-most-famous science-fiction epic Woman In the Moon. I must have been in the popcorn line or something during this announcement, because I certainly would have remembered had I heard such an ingenious plan. I did hear Anita Monga announce that another Lunar silent, a Trip to the Moon would be forthcoming at the next festival. By then, a hand-colored version of the film will have been subject to a new restoration, and will be exhibited in a 35mm print that shall surely put to shame all of the Georges Méliès films that played from digital projections prior to festival features this year.

Other announcements made from the Castro stage over the weekend:

If you enjoyed The Iron Horse, you'll want to know that another John Ford film, this time a comedy from his F.W. Murnau-influenced phase, will have its "repremiere" at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences on September 1st. Normally I wouldn't mention screenings happening all the way at the Southern end of the state, but since Upstream is one of the films being repatriated from New Zealand along with the Better Man, and because John Ford fans are hoping this screening is a success and leads to more around the country (including, hopefully, here on Frisco Bay) it seems worth noting.

Closer to home, Susan Oxtoby of the Pacific Film Archive announced, as part of her introductory remarks on Man With A Movie Camera at the festival, that the PFA is planning a Dziga Vertov retrospective for that venue, most likely for September-October of 2011. The Alloy Orchestra seems too large and loud a group to fit into the Berkeley venue to provide a reprise of the frantic scoring we heard Sunday afternoon, so my imagination is running wild trying to think of how Vertov's 1929 masterpiece might be accompanied musically there; I've regrettably missed several chances to hear what Judith Rosenberg does with Man With A Movie Camera (though I got a sampling when she performed to a DVD snippet at the SFSFF's press conference back in May), but I'm also very curious about Dennis James's score for the film, last performed here almost fifteen years ago. And then there is recent rumor of a "definitive" soundtrack recording on the horizon. If anticipating screenings more than a year in advance is too exhausting, Frisco Bay Vertov fans will surely be interested in the work of filmmakers his theories inspired, some of whom are sure to be a part of the PFA's focus on Frisco Bay's avant-garde filmmaking history this fall in celebration of the long-awaited release of the Radical Light book. Another filmmaker influenced by Vertov, Jean-Luc Godard, will have his first feature film on local screens for a week starting tomorrow. I've had a chance to see this new Rialto print of Godard's Breathless, with its new and improved subtitle translation unavailable on DVD, and it's certainly the upcoming week's cinematic must-see. Rod Armstrong of the San Francisco Film Society will introduce tomorrow night's screenings at the Embarcadero Center Cinema.

More random notes on the 2010 Silent Film Festival and upcoming related screenings:

The San Francisco Film Museum has posted the photos taken of SFSFF attendees disguised as the Maria Robot from Metropolis this weekend, so take a gander. For those who were shut out of Friday night's screening, the Castro will hold digital screenings of the restoration, albeit without live musical accompaniment, on August 13-15. Also part of the Castro's upcoming August calendar will be a screening of Fritz Lang's most well-known Hollywood film, the Big Heat, on August 30. The Jewish Film Festival is the next organization to bring a silent film with live accompaniment to the Castro, with this Monday's presentation of the 1922 film Hungry Hearts.

I always know I'll see some of my favorite local bloggers at the Silent Film Festival. Michael Guillén, Lincoln Specter, Jay Blodgett, Jason Wiener and shahn, who surely exaggerates when calling me a "local sensation". Then again, I am quoted on my experience watching Häxan by Jeremy Mathews in his article for Moving Pictures Magazine, and a conversation with Adam Hartzell is described in his piece for GreenCine Daily. I guess it's in the nature of being something of a blogosphere gadfly, but I'm a little embarrassed to find my name singled out in so many blog write-ups on the SFSFF when so many of my writers' group colleagues produced superior work on much more difficult subjects. For example, David Kiehn's essay on the Iron Horse is filled with drama and quotes from personal accounts, and avoids at least one oft-repeated but easily debunked myth about the film's masterful final scene. Megan Pugh's essay on the Flying Ace and Monica Nolan's on L'Heureuse Mort must surely be among the most substantial pieces written in English on these two previously-obscure films. I could go on and on. At some point all the essays should be available to read in the Silent Film Festival's website archive.

It was nice to be able to build upon the research I did for the festival for last December's Winter Event when writing an article recently published in the Australian journal Senses of Cinema on West of Zanzibar and its director Tod Browning. Please let me know what you think of the article if you get a chance to read it, either at the e-mail address found on my profile page, or in a comment below. I also recommend highly that anyone who saw Diary of a Lost Girl last Saturday (or, anyone who didn't!) take the time to read a truly remarkable essay on the iconic status of Louise Brooks, published in the same issue. The twenty-fifth anniversary of her death arrives this August 8th.