15 (2003)

WHO: Royston Tan wrote & directed this, his first feature film.

WHAT: Well known to Singapore moviegoers but practically unknown elsewhere is the fact that the city-state has one of the most restrictive motion picture rating systems around. As one of the producers of 15, Eric Khoo, puts it in an interview with Tilman-Baumgärtel (published in his book Southeast Asian Independent Cinema):

I only wish they would bring down the age for R-rated pictures. I don't think anywhere else in the world, you have to be twenty-one to see a film. You can have sex when you are sixteen, but you cannot watch Borat!

Under such conditions, it should be unsurprising that 15 had to endure a record 27 cuts by Singapore censors before it could be released theatrically in the country it was made, And even then, only those over 21 were allowed to watch it. Combined with a ban on local home video release, it meant that teenagers of the age depicted in the film (the title derives from the age of the adolescents we see on the screen- most of them non-actors recruited from real youth gangs) would have to wait six years to be old enough to legally view the film. 

It's perhaps even less surprising that filmmakers like Tan and Khoo (whose first feature as a director was the punk-rock-inflected Mee Pok Man) would begin their feature filmmaking careers with films that pushed censorship boundaries- the most passionate independent artists are often inclined to press against whatever boundary they feel constraining them, and if, as in Singapore, that boundary is the censor's razor they gravitate to material that gives it resistance. 15 features drugs, violence, and full-frontal male nudity, among other screen taboos. No wonder it became one of the most notorious - and internationally popular - films ever produced on the island nation.

WHERE/WHEN: A CAAMFest presentation at the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, tonight only at 7:00.

WHY: CAAMFest is one of the Bay Area's great examples of a film festival loyal to the filmmakers it helps local audiences discover, and to the audiences who appreciate discovering them. Royston Tan's relationship with the festival is a great example. Though the festival hasn't shown every one of his films made over the years, in 2002 (back when it was called the SF International Asian American Film Festival) it screened his short Sons (which is now viewable legally and for free via Youtube), followed up by programming a 35-minute version of 15 the following year. By this time the feature version was in the pipeline and it was screened at the 2004 SFIAAFF; that's where I saw it. I barely remember it so it's clearly time to view it again and the CAAM programmers know it, bringing Tan himself to discuss it and the rest of his career tonight in conversation with Valerie Soe. It's the culmination of a mini-retrospective of Tan's work that also included a festival reprise of his biggest hometown commercial success 881 and the U.S. premiere of his latest film Old Romances. It's great to have the festival bring back its tradition of hosting career surveys of Asian auteurs after a couple-year hiatus.

15 is not the only case of CAAMFest/SFIAAFF screening a short film and later an feature-length remake or sequel version. I'm sure there have been many over the festival history but what comes to mind right now is the 2002 screening of SF Art Institute graduate Michael Shaowanasai's To Be...Or Not To Be?: The Adventures of Iron Pussy III, which foretold a 2004 showing of Shaowanasai's The Adventure of Iron Pussy, co-directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul. I suppose I think of this example because the short video work that preceded Apichatpong's Mekong Hotel at CAAMFest screenings this past weekend, Jennifer Phang's Advantageous, is getting expanded into a feature-length film later this year. It's good news, because although the short is thought-provoking and emotionally powerful on its own, its science-fiction concept feels at times constrained by its 25-minute frame and deserves a larger canvas. Perhaps we'll see it screened at a future CAAMFest...

HOW: 15 shows via a 35mm print.

Double Suicide (1969)

WHO: A film by Masahiro Shinoda

WHAT: The best Japanese film of 1969 according to the annual survey of that country's top film magazine Kinema Jumpo. Directed by one of the last living legends of Japanese cinema, with music by one of my favorite composers of all time (for film or otherwise), Toru Takemitsu. The only reason I haven't seen this already is because I've been waiting to see it in a cinema since foolishly missing such a chance at the San Francisco International Film Festival nearly twelve years ago. Yes I can be a patient man sometimes.

WHERE/WHEN: Double Suicide screens at 7:00 at the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, tonight only.

WHY: I've been writing about Japanese film a fair amount lately. And why not, when there are screening series energizing my passion for it this month? At any moment a drought may come. And in fact, although I'm excited about the recently-announced line-up for the CAAM Fest (formerly known as the San Francisco International Asian-American Film Festival- and I'm so glad I'll never have to type out that mouthful again) which runs March 14-24 at the PFA and other Frisco Bay venues, I notice there are fewer Japanese films than usual at this year's edition of the festival: just one new film screening, Sion Sono's Fukishima-themed drama The Land Of Hope, and a gallery presentation of Astro Boy television episodes. I'll have more to say on the CAAM Fest line-up soon.

HOW: 35mm print from Janus.

Salaam!

written by guest blogger Adam Hartzell:

It is not rare for us to see successive films that deal with similar topics grace our local screens. Be it the possible corporate subterfuge that resulted in the animated films Antz and A Bug's Life being released in the same year or the cultural zeitgeist forming a critical mass of choreographed documentaries about dance like Pina, Joffrey: Mavericks of Dance, and Space in Back of You into Bay Area movie houses this quarter, let alone the So You Think You Can Dance? and Dancing with The Stars TV empires, it's not unusual to find several films in dancing time with the same spirit.
　
But it is a little unusual to have two films come to San Francisco festivals with related themes that have chosen similar titles - Salaam Rugby (Framaz Beheshti, 2010, New Zealand) which came to the San Francisco Iranian Film Festival last year and Salaam Dunk (David Fine, 2011, USA) which comes to Yerba Buena Center for the Arts on March 1st as part of the Human Rights Film Festival. Although "Salaam" is the word for "Peace" in Arabic, it also means 'greeting'. These films work off both those bits of salaam-ness. Sports are often a place for us to find peace from the everyday world thanks to the fully immersive Csíkszentmihályian flow that such pursuits involve. Both films also investigate the introduction of a women's sport to these primarily Muslim countries, Iran and Iraq respectively. Furthermore, 'Salaam' can be purposely bent in its pronunciation to sound like an accentuated phonetic variation on the word 'slam', as if both syllables are dipthong-ed - Saaaaa-laaaaaam!. This phonetic play works for both titles since rugby players slam into each other and b-ballers, well, slam dunk. Outside of salaam, both films highlight the positive benefits sports can bring - fitness, teamwork, regimented schedules, and a forum to display individual excellence.
　
Salaam Rugby distinguishes itself in its greater focus on the difficulties these sports pioneers face when engaging in the scrum of gender politics in modern Iran, where obstacles are placed in front of them to discourage their non-conformist efforts. For example, the only field time the women are allotted is in the middle of the summer days, the hottest time of the day, made even hotter since women in Iran are required to be covered head to toe to wrist, even when playing sports. The best fields and best times on those fields are reserved for men. Yet when they get a chance to play, the rugby pitch can still offer a place for sanctuary from the society that limits their actions off the pitch. (Although I haven't seen Laura Green's short Lady Razorbacks, the brief summary in the program for the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival suggests that this short about Pacific Islander American women rugby players in East Palo Alto also highlights sport as a sanctuary for women.)
　
Although Salaam Dunk does touch on gender issues, such as why the women wouldn't follow the American coach as he went to jog in the public square, an act of impropriety for women in Iraq, this is a minor focus. The film spends more time addressing the political specifics of sectarian conflict in Iraq that this team of young women have been able to transcend along with the perseverance of each of the players striving to do their best on the court and off. These young women initiated the creation of a women's basketball team at The American University of Iraq in Sulaimani. (You will hear many of these women refer to the city as 'Suli'.) Based in northern Iraq, the women are shielded from the violence that occurs mostly in Baghdad. These women are Christian and Muslim, Kurds and Iraqis, the latter groups with tense histories of conflict. (Salaam Dunk doesn't shy away from the complicated context of the U.S interventions in Iraq either, such as how the young women from Baghdad won't mention to people back home that they attend AUIS because of its association with America.) One of the unique aspects of Salaam Dunk is how Fine includes the team's manager Safa in his focus of athletes. Safa doesn't play the game, but she helps coordinate the facilities and equipment required for practices and is a 'mom' to many of the players. As a result, she, an Iraqi Arab, has found herself befriending Iraqi Kurds whom she would have never come in contact with before, (AUIS is in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq), offering hope that Iraq will have future leaders to cool the long history of sectarian tensions.
　
Returning to the similarities that connect these films beyond the titles, they demonstrate the importance of sports in women's lives. Like No Look Pass (which screened at IndieFest in February and will screen at Cinequest this weekend and the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival later in March), it is clear how much sport has provided for these young women in helping define who they are. (In Salaam Dunk, the impact these women have on their American coach is quite endearing.) Yet these sports also need these women if they are to continue to be relevant.
　
Case in point, that unique Australian contribution to the sporting world, Australian Rules Football (AFL). Although AFL is the leading sport of Australia, it does not have the prominent presence in the state of New South Wales where Australia's biggest city, Sydney, resides. In Melbourne, if someone mentions they were 'watching the footy', they mean AFL. In Sydney, they mean NRL (National Rugby League). Although there is an AFL team in Sydney (the Sydney Swans), the AFL brass knew they had to make further inroads in Sydney to maintain their national dominance. So they've crossed the Sydney harbor to the Western suburbs and a new team, the Greater Western Sydney Giants, has been added to the line-up for this year's season, which begins in March. And part of their promotional efforts to encourage some footy faithful to cross this bridge of football codes has been developing a women's Aussie Rules team in the western suburb of Auburn. And that women's Aussie Rules team is made up of Muslim women who have headscarves for headgear.
　
The western suburbs of Sydney are partly known for significant Muslim communities. So to wedge away the footy allegiance many Muslim 'Westies' have towards the Canterbury Bankstown Bulldogs of the NRL, the AFL is utilizing community ambassadors and trading in on the AFL's unique status as the football code with the greatest number of women members - close to 50%, compared to below 40% for the NRL. As an Australia-only sport, the AFL is perhaps more anxious about its viability than a rugby code that has many other countries playing its version of football. So the AFL's calculation that it needs women to maintain viability is an interesting extension on what Salaam Rugby and Salaam Dunk reveal - women need sport as much as sport needs women. Although Nasva Bahfren's radio documentary on this effort by the AFL for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation is excellent and needs no remake, if someone makes a film documentary about the Auburn Tigers women, I bet they'll call it Salaam Footy.

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.

On The Air

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Larry Chadbourne'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 Larry Chadbourne, also of the Film On Film Foundation
Ten Best Rep/Revivals of 2010:

1. The Bad Sleep Well. VIZ Kurosawas. In a year of several tributes on Kurosawa's centennary, this one (sometimes compared to Warners exposés) stood out, and reminded me instead of Stroheim, and late Lang.

2. The Boy With Green Hair, PFA Loseys. Despite some disagreement on how the restorers reproduced the original color, my favorite re-discovery of the series.

3. California Split, Roxie. Not even one of Altman's best, but it brought back the loss to modern American cinema of its greatest talent.

4. The Crimson Pirate, PFA Lancasters. How often do we get to see real Technicolor? Like being a kid on Saturday afternoon, once again.

5. The Godfather, Part III, DVD. Wanted to see something by (or with) Sofia Coppola after Somewhere. Could this Part's lower reputation have to do with the touchy subject of The Vatican's relation to the Mafia?

6. L'Heureuse Mort, Castro. The highpoint of this year's Silent Film Festival.

7. The Housemaid, Castro, Asian American Film Festival. Hopefully there will be more such revivals of classic Korean cinema.

8. Ladies of Leisure, PFA Capras. Especially for Marie Prevost and Lowell Sherman. This series was enlivened by Joe McBride's scholarly presentations.

9. The Light in the Piazza, Stanford. Packard's revival, in conjunction with the Mountain View staging of the musical, which I also saw, allowed me to catch up with an underrated British/U.S. co-production I'd missed since 1962. Though director Guy Green may be worth further study, the key names are the still-vibrant Olivia de Havilland, and producer Arthur Freed, who was partially responsible for the success of the best Vincente Minnelli musicals.

10. Maedchen in Uniform, 1958 version, Castro, Frameline. An example of a remake which arguably improves on the original. Made 27 years later and set 15 years or more earlier than the Weimar classic, this story of school discipline turns into a more sweeping indictment of the whole span of Prussian obedience and militarism, at a time when the Germans were starting to examine their more recent past.

For the record, I saw about 195 older films, 150 in a theatre, 45 on video.

Adam Hartzell'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 Adam Hartzell, who regularly contributes to sf360, koreanfilm.org, and Hell On Frisco Bay:

10 & 9) DIARY OF A LOST GIRL (G.W. Pabst, 1929, Germany) THE FLYING ACE (Richard E. Norman, 1926, USA) - Silent Film Festival at the Castro Theatre in mid-July
　
Of the four films I saw at 2010’s SF Silent Film Festival, these two are the standouts, particularly THE FLYING ACE due to my interest in portrayals of disability, in which a character played by a single-leg amputee finds a clever use for his crutch when (if I recall correctly) chasing a villain.
　
8) SYMPATHY FOR LADY VENGEANCE (Park Chan-wook, 2005, South Korea) at VIZ Cinema in early August.
　
VIZ provided us a chance to revisit THIRST and Park Chan-wook’s Vengeance Trilogy this summer. It was a pleasure to re-visit SYMPATHRY FOR LADY VENGEANCE, more awake this time, since my first viewing was a drowsy one in Toronto. I must ask, though, when will we ever get a chance to see his first two films before JSA?
　
7) BEFORE TOMORROW (Marie-Helene Cousineau and Madeline Piujuq Ivalu, 2009, Canada) at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts as part of a curated FASTRUNNER Trilogy of Canadian First Nations films in early April.
　
This was a film where the discussion with Cousineau afterwards added so much to the film. The YBCA film series makes me so happy so often.
　
6 & 5) M. HULOT’S HOLIDAY (Jacques Tati, 1953, France) & TRAFIC (Jacques Tati, 1971, France) at YBCA as part of a Jacques Tati retrospective in late January/early February.
　
Tati is so much fun. And although nothing compares to a 70mm screening of PLAYTIME, these two films didn’t disappoint. Now onward soon to the Tati screenplay animated in THE ILLUSIONIST.
　
4) WHAT WE TALK ABOUT WHEN WE at the Clay Theatre in mid-March as part of the San Francisco International Asia American Film Festival, a curation of omnibus shorts by Apitchatpong Weerasathakul, Jia Zhang-ke, Tsai Ming-liang, and Hong Sangsoo.
　
Let me sneak this one in here, because film festivals do provide an opportunity for first-run theatres to have a brief flash of repertory-ness. And, come on, Weersathakul, Jia, Tsai, AND Hong!!!??? It’s an Asian all-star omnibus! And possibly my new favorite film by my favorite director, Hong Sangsoo.
　
3 & 2) EARLY SPRING (Ozu Yasujiro, 1956, Japan) & RECORD OF A TENEMENT GENTLEMEN (Ozu Yasujiro, 1947, Japan) at VIZ Cinema as part of a brief Ozu retrospective in mid-June.
　
I will never tire of watching Ozu, so to every SF rep house, feel free to bring his films anytime.
　
1) REFRIGERATOR FETISH: VINTAGE INDUSTRIAL DESIGN FILMS (various ephemeral films) as curated by film archivist Dennis Nyback for a series on Architecture and Design films at YBCA in July and August.
　
Freaking amazing! Underscores how important our film archivists are. The gem of the collection was the sumptuous, dazzling color of the National Film Board of Canada documentary on the making of pencils. Seriously, it’s mesmerizing.

What I'm Thinking About This Week

Ten years ago at this time I was living in Chiang Mai, Thailand, teaching English at a local high school. It seems like such a long time ago, but the impact of spending a year and a half living and working in a foreign country did so much to change my perspectives on the world, and my place in it, that I still feel very close to the experience. I'm sometimes wistful that I've lost touch with all of my former students and fellow teachers, and indeed most of the friends I made while living abroad, but returning to my native city where I've resided ever since, has not made me feel as if I've completely lost touch with Thailand. I cherish my mostly-fond memories of the country, and still try to keep up with major current events there, as depressing as they often may be (as they have been lately).

Cinema has been a major component of my feeling of connectedness. While in Chiang Mai I first tried my hand at criticism, penning a monthly video review column for a local English-language news magazine catering to the British/Australian/North American ex-patriot community. At the time, I wrote mostly about the latest Hollywood films, because they were the ones widely available in rental shops. It was easy to experience the cultural artifacts of my own culture while abroad. Now I'm lucky to live in a place where I can more than just vicariously experience some of the benefits of Thai cinema's resurgence and global emergence over the past decade or so. Between all of the film festivals and alternative screening venues that exist here on Frisco Bay, there are usually a few opportunities a year, and sometimes as many as a half-dozen or more, to view Thai films in 35mm prints on the big screen; of these I've missed only a scant few over the past decade. I've been able to keep relatively current with the work of directors I was first exposed to during my time in the Land of Smiles- Wisit Sasanatieng, Nonzee Nimibutr and Pen-ek Ratanaruang (the latter's latest Nymph was not among the best films I saw at the latest San Francisco International Film Festival, but I was extremely pleased for the opportunity to view it, and particularly its nearly-supernatural opening camera move, in a cinema in my own town.) I've been able to discover from afar the work of newer talent like Uruphong Raksasad, who makes his digital quasi-documentaries in the region of Thailand I'm most personally familiar with, or Anocha Suwichakornpong, whose Mundane History was my most truly transcendent highlight of the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival earlier this year.

The constant Thai cinematic presence over these years as a Frisco guy who left some small piece of his heart in Thailand, however, has been Apichatpong Weerasethakul, who ten years ago was seeing his first feature film, Mysterious Object At Noon, travel the global festival circuit. I first heard his name in 2001, shortly before the film played to a small audience at the Pacific Film Archive. Since then, thanks to the SFIFF, SFIAAFF, and other local venues tapped into international cinephile dialogue, I've been able to watch most of his film and video work, much of it repeatedly. How much of a debt do I owe my affection for and fascination with Apichatpong's filmmaking to my stint in Thailand? I can't be sure, but it's been heartening to feel like I've been following this still-young director over the past decade as his visibility has increased among film-lovers everywhere. I was so thrilled and surprised on Sunday, when his latest feature Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives won the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival, the first such win for an Asian film since films by Shohei Imamura and Abbas Kiarostami shared the honor in 1997. Of course I have not yet seen Uncle Boonmee (although I was delighted to see his companion short video piece Letter to Uncle Boonmee at the SFIAAFF in March) and perhaps I'll even find it a letdown compared to his three masterful 35mm features, Syndromes and a Century, Tropical Malady, and Blissfully Yours. But I feel glad that this high-profile win will surely secure a chance for Frisco Bay Apichatpong fans to see the film eventually, and hopefully sooner than such an opportunity would otherwise be likely to occur.

In the meantime, I'm all the more excited to plunge into the viewing opportunities that have been laid upon my table. One certainly doesn't need to be an Apichatpong Weerasethakul admirer to be excited by chances to see Andy Warhol films, but it supplies another reason; Apichatpong has often named Warhol, along with Frisco Bay experimental film legend Bruce Baillie, as favorite filmmakers and key inspirations for his work. SFMOMA will screen confirmed Apichatpong favorite The Chelsea Girls on July 8. And the longest-running lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender film festival in the world, Frameline, has announced as part of its upcoming program next month a large-scale focus on Andy Warhol. It consists of screenings of a new documentary, Beautiful Darling, the Life and Times of Candy Darling, Andy Warhol Superstar, a clips lecture by Ron Gregg, and two programs of shorter Warhol films selected by Gregg, including Vinyl, which adapted Anthony Burgess's a Clockwork Orange with Gerard Malanga six years before Stanley Kubrick did it with Malcolm McDowell.

In addition to the Warhol films, Frameline selections I'm anxious to see include I Killed My Mother by Xavier Dolan and Spring Fever by Lou Ye, both of which come highly regarded by those who have seen them at festivals over the past year, and Géza von Radvány's 1958 version of Madchen In Uniform, screening as an archival selection. Frameline veterans from Cheryl Dunye to François Ozon to Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman each will have new films presented at this year's festival, but the full range of filmmaking, from documentary to short form to a robust selection of South America's New Queer Cinema cannot be adequately summarized in a paragraph of preview, so I urge you to browse the full schedule before finalizing your festival plans. I know I will.

June's going to be a crowded month of filmgoing however, even with Sex In The City 2 virtually* dominating the Castro Theatre from now until Frameline opens there June 17. After a near-month of hiatus, the Pacific Film Archive reopens this weekend. The venue's regular projection space (at least until 2014 or so) at 2575 Bancroft Way has its first screenings of the summer tomorrow evening, when a double feature of Whistler films you may or may not have seen at the Roxie's I Still Wake Up Dreaming B-noir festival, play. As does the 1975 King Hu martial arts extravaganza The Valiant Ones. The latter kicks off a remarkable series of recent acquisitions to the PFA film collection, which reminds us that Berkeley's most-revered film exhibition venue has roots much deeper than mere exhibition. (So that's what the 'A' stood for!) Films by Hayao Miyazaki, Agnès Varda, Alberto Gout, Robert Gardner, Judy Irving and others round out the eclectic series. Tributes to Mexican science fiction, the Romanian New Wave and the Residents ensure a little something for everyone, but surely the centerpiece of the PFA's summer is the complete Akira Kurosawa retrospective being held in honor of the 100th anniversary of his birth.

Completists are already drooling over the chance to see rarities like Sanshiro Sugata I & II and the Quiet Duel on the big screen, but Berekely is not the only place to get an A.K. fix in June. On this side of the bridge, the Embarcadero will screen a new print of Kurosawa's most famous color film, Ran for a week beginning June 4th. And four of the master's most noirish black-and-white films will play in 35mm prints at the still-new VIZ Cinema at Post and Webster Streets that same week: Drunken Angel, Stray Dog, the Bad Sleep Well and High and Low are the titles, not a samurai sword among them. The VIZ lineup for June is truly jawdropping for those of us who can't get enough classic Japanese cinema. After a week of Kurosawa films, the Japantown venue will bring four Yasujiro Ozu films including his most-widely-acknowledged masterpiece Tokyo Story, his following film Early Spring, and two earlier films I've been wishing to see return to Frisco Bay since I missed them during his PFA centennial six and a half years ago: The Only Son and Record Of A Tenement Gentlemen. As if that weren't enough, VIZ will screen four Kenji Mizoguchi masterpieces (I confidently say this not having seen all of them) June 19-24: Sisters of The Gion (pictured above), Ugetsu Monogatari, Street of Shame and Utamaro and His Five Women (the one I haven't seen yet). This is a truly special set of twelve films VIZ is bringing in June, each with multiple playdates, so go to as many as you can while you can, and tell your friends, if you want to encourage future screenings of Japanese classics on this side of Frisco Bay, where they've been pretty scarce in recent years.

VIZ Cinema, which until recently focused on screening the films of its affiliated DVD label almost exclusively, is obviously stretching its programming muscles, and if this keeps up it will rapidly become one of the most exciting venues on Frisco Bay. Also to play there in June are two programs with a South Asian, rather than East Asian, focus: 3rd i's Queer Eye, an outpost of LGBT films presented by the folks who bring the South Asian Film Festival to town every November, and the locally-made Indian diasporic film Bicycle Bride.

What else is happening in June? The previously-mentioned "I Still Wake Up Dreaming" series experienced rush line level crowds for some of its 35mm screenings, as well as some technical difficulties in the sound quality of certain of the 16mm prints it showed, so programmer Elliot Lavine and the Roxie Theater decided to reprise some of the affected films from June 4. I wholeheartedly recommend the June 6th double-bill in particular, featuring the two best films I saw at the festival: Phil Karlson's luckless boxer nailbiter 99 River Street, and the sultry policier Cop Hater. Everyone seemed to love the cameo-studded rat pack gangster film Johnny Cool but me; it plays June 4 if you want to see for yourself. (For me, it couldn't live up to its theme song.) The Fearmakers, Jacques Tourneur's 1958 expose of the communist infiltration of Washington, D.C. publicity firms is not among the director's great films, but it's an interesting time capsule worth a look in 35mm; it plays June 6th along with a 35mm print of Nightmare, which I missed the first time around. I also missed the three 16mm prints that suffered the worst sound problems, and which will play on a triple-bill June 7th, for free for those who attended their prior screenings and for $11 for the rest of us. Gustav Machatý's Jealousy sounds the most intriguing of the trio.

Oakland's Paramount Theatre begins its summer film series the same weekend, with a June 4 screening of the late Lynn Redgrave's defining film Georgy Girl. Other films scheduled to screen at Frisco Bay's largest, most opulent (if intermittently-utilized) movie palace are the original King Kong July 9, E.T. July 23, and the great Howard Hawks film To Have And Have Not August 6. The Rafael Film Center will play the 1937 Prisoner of Zenda as a special presentation with Oscar winners Craig Barron and Ben Burtt on June 13. SFMOMA screens Clint Eastwood's first directorial effort Play Misty For Me June 10. And the Red Vic has a new calendar on the streets with its usual combination of second-run, repertory, and special event bookings. The documentary on influential filmmakers George and Mike Kuchar (the latter of whom gets a rare solo show at Artists' Television Access June 5) called It Came From Kuchar makes its landing June 14 & 15. Bong Joon-ho's Mother plays June 16 & 17 (his The Host plays the PFA June 18), the sheepherding documentary Sweetgrass appears July 12 & 13, and Banksy's Exit Through The Gift Shop closes the door on this particular calendar August 6-9. Along with the theatre's annual anniversary screenings of Harold and Maude (July 25-28) the Red Vic celebrates its 30th year of operation by showcasing three winners of a recent audience poll of its favorite repertory films. The winners: Alejandro Jodorowski's El Topo (August 1 & 2) takes the bronze, Dead Man (August 3 & 4) the silver, and Stanley Kubrick's Lolita (July 18 & 19) the gold. I'm a deep admirer of all three of these not-quite-canonized films. Congratulations to Red Vic patrons on your discerning and non-conforming taste!

The Stanford Theatre in Palo Alto still has a few more weeks left on its appetizing current calendar, which ends with a Josef Von Sternberg double-bill (Morocco and The Devil Is A Woman) June 16-18. The day after that, another southerly film venue plays another Sternberg film, this time one of his most highly-regarded silent films, the Last Command. The Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum, tucked in a lovely corner of Fremont, will present that Oscar-winning film with Jon Mirsalis providing musical accompaniment on Kurzweil synthesizer. It's part of the Silent Film Museum's busiest month of the year; the first weekend in June is given over to Charlie Chaplin Days, honoring the most well-known actor to have worked in Niles back when Hollywood's supremacy as California's movie-making hub was not yet secure. The Gold Rush and other Chaplin films will screen. The final weekend of the month brings a festival named for a cowboy star who was every bit as well-known as Chaplin in his day, but has become something of a footnote today. This year's 13th Annual Broncho Billy Silent Film Festival features seven different programs of features and short subjects starring figures once famous to all, but now forgotten to most moviegoers, such as Wallace Reid, J. Warren Kerrigan, and G.M. "Broncho Billy" Anderson himself. An early (1920) King Vidor-directed film, the Jack-Knife Man promises to be a high point of the weekend.

Frisco's own Silent Film Festival has announced its program as well; expanded to a four-day event for its 15th edition, the festival has really outdone itself in lining up well-known and rare silent films, musicians, and special guests for the July 15-18 event. I will surely have more to say on this festival in the weeks to come, but in the meantime, Lincoln Spector has covered some of the highlights. This marks the sixth time I've contributed a contextual essay for the festival's program booklet, a copy of which will be handed to every attendee at the Castro that weekend. "My" film, this time around, has been Dziga Vertov's magnum opus Man With A Movie Camera, which will screen on Sunday afternoon, July 18th, with the Alloy Orchestra performing its critically-acclaimed musical score based on Vertov's 1929 instructions. Familiarizing myself with the history of early Soviet film-making, and sorting through the mountains of material written on Vertov in particular, has made for one of the most challenging and rewarding research projects I've attempted yet. I hope that the end-products (a pre-screening slide show, as well as the essay) prove valuable to festgoers. I have no doubt that the screening and musical performance will be entertaining and eye-opening for people who have already seen Man With A Movie Camera, and for those who haven't. If there was ever a film that deserves repeat viewings, this is it.

While looking through libraries and archives, trying to better understand the conditions under which Vertov's films were screened for the public in his day, I found a collection of program notes from The Film Society Of London which thrust my imagination back into early 1930s art-cinema exhibition. The Film Society had been founded in 1925 by Anthony Asquith, George Bernard Shaw, John Maynard Keynes, and H.G. Wells among other original members. In early 1931 the group screened Man With a Movie Camera on a program with a Silly Symphony (Artic Antics), a set of color (excuse me, colour) photography tests from British and American companies, an Austrian puppet play (The Dragon Prince), and a section of Alberto Cavalcanti's Little Red Riding Hood. Later that year, the same venue played Vertov's first sound film, Enthusiasm with the director personally in attendance; this was two days prior to Charlie Chaplin's famous pronouncement: "Never had I known that these mechanical sounds could be arranged to seem so beautiful...Mr. Dziga Vertov is a musician. The professors should learn from him not quarrel with him." In late 1935 Vertov's following film Three Songs About Lenin screened on a bill with Cavalcanti's GPO documentary Coal Face and Len Lye's Kaleidoscope among other short subjects.

I find it thrilling to learn such details about a bygone era of cinephilia, in which leading playwrights, novelists, and economists rubbed shoulders with animators, documentarians, film technologists, and avant-garde filmmakers from home and abroad. I do wonder what the membership requirements of The Film Society of London were like-- did one have to be a living legend to gain access, or are those simply the member names that have been handed down to us? Is there an equivalent of that activity today amidst the film festivals and venues right here in this town? I know that there are others who would disagree with me, but I just love that the SF Silent Film Festival programs films of diverse types, from all the corners of the world it can, alongside the justly classic and unjustly obscure entertainments from the Hollywood studio era. An 'us vs. them' attitude about independent and foreign filmmaking no doubt existed among some American film producers of the era, but in some corners of film appreciation, it feels like boundaries (national, stylistic, genre, etc.) are being patrolled more fiercely than ever. The Film Society Of London appeared to smash these kinds of barriers in its day, and from what I understand, early programming at places like SFMOMA did the same in the 1930s, mixing the avant-garde, documentary, an popular animation from various countries of origin, all on the same program.

Eighty years ago feels like a world away, but another little discovery made it seem just a little bit closer: on the back of the program for the Three Songs of Lenin screening was a list of films that had their British premiere at The Film Society in 1934-5, and it included (along with Jean Vigo's Zero For Conduct and Basil Wright's Song of Ceylon) a title I saw at the Pacific Film Archive a year and a half ago, Douro by Manoel de Oliveira. A silent, poetic documentary that was clearly made by a man who was then a young contemporary of Walter Ruttmann, Joris Ivens, and Vertov, Douro is almost certainly the only remaining silent-era debut film made by a director who is not only still living, but still making films, at 101 years of age. And here was his name listed amidst those of long-dead filmmakers who it's hard not to think of as belonging to a long-dead era.

While Oliveira's latest film just debuted alongside Apichatpong's in Cannes (Dennis Lim found the pair comparable highlights), his previous one is poised to make its first appearance here on Frisco Bay, also in June, at pretty much the only major local film venue I haven't yet mentioned in this post, the Yerba Buena Center For the Arts. Called Eccentricities of a Blond Hair Girl, on June 24, 26 & 27 it wraps up what looks to be an extremely strong month at the venue that has allowed me to see more Apichatpong Weerasethakul films than any other. No, YBCA hasn't announced plans to screen Uncle Boonmee yet, but they will be showing, in addition to the Oliveira, three films any serious cinephile will probably want to experience: Harmony Korine's Trash Humpers June 3-6, Brillante Mendoza's Kinatay June 12-13 (both of which have been among the most contentious new films of the past year's film festival circuit) and Catherine Breillat's wonderful Bluebeard June 17-19. If Apichatpong, Korine, Mendoza and Breillat can be counted as contemporaries of Oliveira (and why not), and Oliveira was a contemporary of Vertov, Vigo and Chaplin, then the boundary between contemporary and "old" cinema is obliterated. What a refreshing thought!

Twenty Years South

Berkeley's Pacific Film Archive has a new calendar out, full of goodies. Oakland's Paramount has plans to show Wait Until Dark, The General and Captain Blood in March. San Rafael is getting a rare Jan Troell retrospective February 27-March 6. Even Sepastapol has its annual documentary festival March 5-7. And here in Frisco we've got a new SF Cinematheque season underway as well as festival after festival after festival: first Noise Pop, then German Gems, then the Disposable Film Festival, and then my own favorite festival of the season, the San Francisco Asian American Film Festival, which has been amply previewed by Michael Hawley. Before you know it, the San Francisco International Film Festival will be around the corner; Frisco Bay's most prominent film festival has already begun announcing festival events, namely the 1916 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea with Stephen Merritt, Daniel Handler & David Hegarty providing musical accompaniment, the presentation of the Kanbar screenwriting award (by John Waters!) to James Schamus, best known for his collaborations with Ang Lee; their film Ride With the Devil, will screen May 1st.

Where does this leave the South Bay? Well, the SFIAAFF does run one weekend of films in San Jose, at the Camera 12. And the Stanford Theatre is still in the first week of a diverse Akira Kurosawa retrospective, including some of his most famous as well as some of his most obscure films, samurai-centered and otherwise. The Seven Samurai plays through Friday, so you haven't missed any of the series (which ends March 30 with Ran) yet.

But you probably live under a rock, or else north of the southernmost BART stops, not to realize that the South Bay's biggest film festival of the year, the Cinequest Film Festival, begins its 20th anniversary program tonight with a screening of international co-production the Good Heart starring Brian Cox. Dennis Harvey of sf360 has written an overview of potential festival highlights, but let me add my own voice to the conversation, even if there's a good deal of overlap between his picks and mine.

Though intriguing films like Bong Joon-ho's Mother and Ilisa Barbsh & Lucien Castaing-Taylor's documentary Sweetgrass are promised to screen in Landmark Theatres around Frisco Bay, the majority of Cinequest films are not guaranteed to play anywhere else locally. That includes what must be the must-see of the festival, French master Alain Resnais's latest Wild Grass scheduled for a single screening on March 4th; though it has a distributor, a local theatrical release date has not been set yet. Babnik, the third feature from Alejandro Adams to play Cinequest in as many years is another important draw for those of us who've been intrigued to see what the maker of Around The Bay and Canary has in store next.

I've seen three of the films playing already. The two silent films Dennis James is slated to accompany behind the California Theatre organ are both seen far too infrequently. Erich Von Stroheim's the Merry Widow does not match his masterpiece Greed in either ambition or impact, but any of Stroheim's films are of serious interest to cinephiles. Ernst Lubitsch's the Student Prince of Old Heidelberg, on the other hand, may just be his greatest (and most delightful) silent film, as anyone who saw it open the 2007 San Francisco Silent Film Festival might be inclined to agree.

I've also seen, on a screener DVD, one of the new films in the lineup, with a title inspired by Jean-Paul Sartre's No Exit. If you're sick and tired of the hip but nowheredly-mobile characters glorified by a certain movement of no-star, low-budget filmmaking that peaked in critical attention a couple ago (yes, that one that rhymes with 'Dumbledore') you may be in the target audience for Jarrod Whaley's Hell Is Other People (fully reviewed by Richard van Busack). There's no way around it: Whaley has created in underground psychotherapist Morty Burnett one of the most pathetic, non-glorified, unappealing characters I've seen on a screen in quite a while. He's likely to truly test an audience's sense of empathy. Though Hell Is Other People doesn't bear enough technical dissimilarity to prevent some observers from distinguishing it from the genre-that-must-not-be-named, those who've been paying close attention might just agree that Whaley has launched a counter-movement of his own, that now just needs a catchy name to spread like wildfire. So then, what rhymes with 'Voldemort'?