Ten Intriguing Films

Between April 23 and May 7, the 52nd San Francisco International Film Festival will be bringing nearly 150 films and videos to Frisco Bay, from over 50 countries. No, I didn't go through the program and count them; I'm just taking the word of festival director Graham Leggat, who supplied those numbers in his program guide welcome message. The same message announces plans to build something called the San Francisco International Film Center as part of the Main Post Redevelopment Plan for the Presidio.

At Tuesday's press conference, Leggat talked a little bit more on this project: a plan to build a three-screen cinema to become the home of the San Francisco Film Society's year-round programming. Can Frisco sustain another three screens? What does this do to the Film Society's relationships with existing venues that host SFIFF and other events?

Questions for later, I suppose. Right now I'm still digging through the program guide to figure out a preliminary viewing schedule. With so many films to choose from, I'm tempted to just pick out the films by auteur directors I'm already familiar with, or those that sounded most interesting when described by the programming team at the press conference. Sticking to either of these two strategies is a sure-fire way to miss out on some under-heralded gems. So to fight against that tendency, here's a list of 10 films left un-mentioned by Leggat and his team at the press conference, with pedigrees I know little or nothing about. All images supplied by the festival publicity office.


1. Artemisia

The only Taiwanese production in this year's SFIFF is the feature-length debut by director Chiang Hsiu-Chiung, who in 1991 played one of the sisters in Edward Yang's great a Brighter Summer Day. She has since assisted both Yang and SFIFF regular Hou Hsiao-hsien behind the camera. It has already been announced as the Golden Gate Award winning film in the television narrative category (one of the few GGA categories where the winner is traditionally announced prior to the festival).

2. For the Love of Movies: the Story of American Film Criticism

Fresh from its SXSW world premiere and resultant press attention is this documentary on one of my favorite love-hate topics, the very nature of film criticism. Just after its first festival screening on the afternoon of May 3, there will be a free panel entitled "A Critical Moment", which is expected to draw appearances from John Anderson, David D'Arcy, Jonathan Curiel, Dennis Harvey, Gerald Peary (the doc's director), Mary F. Pols, and Susan Gerhard. And perhaps others.

3. Go Go 70s

Though this review is merely mixed, I'm always interested in seeing what the SFIFF brings from South Korea. Based on a true story, it apparently proves that 1970s soul music could also be Seoul music. (Ooooh- sorry about that.) It also provides the big program guide with its cover image.

4. It's Not Me, I Swear!

Directed by the maker of Congorama, which I sadly missed at the SFIFF two years ago, this film and its protagonist (who sounds a bit like a morbidly precocious Harold) has been making the rounds on the festival circuit, and proves that the Québec Film Week the SFFS organized last December didn't empty that province of all its cinematic product.

5. Mesrine: a Film in Two Parts

Likewise, the Film Society's French Cinema Now series inaugurated last fall certainly didn't come close to exhausting the supply of fest-worthy films from that country. Including shorts and co-productions France is represented by 21 films in this year's SFIFF, nearly as many as last year when a terrific crop including wonderful stuff like the Secret of the Grain and the Romance of Astrea and Celadon played. This year brings films by well-known names like Breillat, Denis, and Assayas, but of the unknown quantities I'm probably most intrigued by Jean-François Richet. Forget that he was involved in that Assault on Precinct 13 remake I didn't see; he just won the César award for Best Director for this two-part crime epic with an all-star cast.

6. Modern Life

The only film on this list made by a director I've seen work by before: Raymond Depardon. In 2005 the SFIFF programmed two of his documentary features: 10th District Court and Profiles Farmers: Daily Life. The latter was the one I was able to fit into my schedule, and though I heard from many that the other one was the better of the two, I was still fascinated enough by Depardon's approach to his rural subject matter, that I'm now excited to view what appears to be a follow-up in a similar milieu.

7. Sacred Places

Now I'm really kicking myself for skipping Chief! at the Pacific Film Archive's Way of the Termite series, still chugging along with entries from Rouch and Resnais this Sunday for example. It was directed by Jean-Marie Teno, as is Sacred Places, a documentary about cinephilia in Burkina Faso that was inspired by a screening of the earlier film at the FESPACO festival. No matter; I hope to see this anyway. Thankfully an early Teno short (Homage from 1987) has been programmed to give us a taste of the Cameroonian filmmaker's early work.

8. Soul Power

If, like me, you're not much of a boxing fan, you might not remember much of the detail of the 1996 documentary When We Were Kings. But you might remember the concert footage of the "Zaire '74" festival that preceded Muhammad Ali and George Foreman's rumble in the general vicinity of the African jungle. Soul Power was constructed from outtakes from the earlier, Academy Award-winning doc, focusing on the concerts and not the fighting. Presumably someone else somewhere is making a film based on the outtakes from Norman Mailer's interview.

9. Tulpan

OK, so this one's got a pretty bona fide pedigree, having won the Prix Un Certain Regard at the last Cannes Film Festival. That's the same award won by Blissfully Yours, Moolaade, and the Death of Mr. Lazarescu, in case you're wondering. But I still know next to nothing about Tulpan; only what I've scanned from this page. Made in Kazakhstan, by a Kazakhstan-born director, though with funding from some other countries, it also opens at local Landmark Theatres the day after the festival ends.

10. The Window

Three Argentinian feature films play the SFIFF this year, and none of them were mentioned from the podium at Tuesday's press conference. An unintended oversight, I'm sure. This one is directed by Carlos Sorín, who pleased festgoers with Historias Minimas in 2003 and the Road to San Diego in 2007. Despite all the positive word-of-mouth these titles (particularly the former) received at the time, I still haven't seen any Sorín film. This may be the year to fix that.

Want more SFIFF pre-coverage as you start blocking out your schedule? Try the Evening Class for information about the Late Show (films still running as the witching hour chimes), or Susan Gerhard for a more general overview.

Québec Film Week -Adam Hartzell

Hi, Brian here. Just a quick introduction this time, without stopping to recommend another unrelated film or series...well, maybe just one, the Alain Robbe-Grillet series currently at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and recently discussed by Carl Martin and Matt Sussman. 'Tis the season for films spoken in French, with English subtitles here on Frisco Bay. The reliably Canada-attuned Adam Hartzell has more to say on another series just around the corner:

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While we weren’t paying attention, our neighbors to the north were having their own election. And according to the CBC's wonderful culture program Q, hosted by former Moxy Früvous member Jian Ghomeshi, one of the issues concerning this year's election was culture and arts funding. Although actual funding had increased under Stephen Harper’s minority government, as Gemini-winning actress Wendy Crewson said on the September 24th edition of Q, "They have increased funding in bricks and mortar. That is where the money has gone. It has not gone to the artists." Although how much this was an issue of concern for the "Tim Horton’s Crowd" (the Canadian voter equivalent of Joe-Six-Pack and his estranged wife the Soccer Mom), people were out in the streets of Montreal and Québec City even before the election was called to put arts funding on the table.

And it makes sense that these two cities in the province of Québec would rally for arts funding, since Québec's French-language films thrive in Québec whereas English-language films can't seem to pull the same percentages in the English-speaking provinces. So those who talk about how Canadian films mostly don't perform will really need to addend themselves. It’s the Anglophonic films that don't perform well. The Francophonic films are doing just fine, merci beau coup.

We in the States rarely get the opportunity to see examples from the Québec film industry, which is why San Franciscans can be so grateful to the San Francisco Film Society, with the assistance of the Québec Government Office in Los Angeles, for putting together the Québec Film Week from December 10-14th (yes, it's not technically a 'week') at the Opera Plaza Cinemas.

SFFS has programmed an ocular octagon of films from Québec. From the child-like gazes of Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalatte's The Fight (2007) and Léa Pool's Mommy Is at the Hairdresser's (2008) to the dystopian adult skews of Stéphane Lafleur's Continental, a Film Without Guns (2007) and Director Denys Arcand's The Age of Ignorance (2006). Adding to the mix of fiction films is the documentary (narrated for us Anglophones by Canadian Donald Sutherland) The Last Continent (2007), Jean Lemire's adventurous nine-month stint witnessing the slow death of the dead of winter in Antarctica brought about by global warming. Rounding out the contemporary films is the personal demons-facing Borderline, directed by Lyne Chalabois (2007) and the devious documentation of doubt, Missing Victor Pellerin, directed by Sophie Deraspe (2006).

Thankfully, SFFS has seen to it that a classic is featured as well, director Claude Jutra's 1971 feature Mon Oncle Antoine. The opening sequence involves the slow development of a snowball fight that appears to involve the entire town. It sits in my mind as one of the most smile-inducing, simple pleasure moments in all of cinema. Lensed by a cinematographer featured at the PFA in 2006, Michel Brault, Mon Oncle Antoine is one of many films from the archives of the National Film Board of Canada that demonstrate what great cinema can result from public support of the arts.

As for the films I have yet to see, I am most anticipating Denys Arcand's The Age of Ignorance. I have seen four of Arcand's films, including the 2003 Academy Award winning The Barbarian Invasions, the "demonstrably operatic" (Peter Harcourt's words in his contribution to The Cinema of Canada) 1986 film The Decline of the American Empire, the less famous treatise on fame that is 2000's Stardom, and my favorite of Arcand's endeavors, Jesus of Montreal from 1989. (Is it just me, or does the downtown side of the Castro Street MUNI underground station remind you of the Montreal Metro scene near the end of Jesus of Montreal?) With a track record like those four films, I anxiously await The Age of Ignorance with studied reverence for a consistently demanding and intellectually fulfilling filmmaker.

In my impatience for San Francisco's Québec film 'week', I might try to distract myself by eating some poutine from Salt House, listening to the Karkwa CD I picked up in Montréal this summer, walking through San Francisco listening to CBC's C’est Le Vie or YouTube-ing Radio Radio video video. (Yes, the latter are not from Québec but Moncton, New Brunswick, but it's still Francophonic even if in their Chiac dialect.) All the more to prepare for what should be a satisfying five days in the intimate venue of Opera Plaza Cinemas.