The White Rose (1967)

WHO: Jay DeFeo, subject of a current SFMOMA exhibition which will be taken down in just a few days, is also the subject of this brief film, one of the greatest artist portraits I've ever seen.

WHAT: DeFeo's painting The Rose is among the most monumental art works created in San Francisco. She worked on it obsessively for nearly a decade, layering paint upon paint until it bulged off the canvas like a beautiful inflated gland on the wall. By the time a fivefold rent increase forced eviction from her second-story Fillmore Street apartment (a block up from the Clay Theatre) she had applied so many thousands of pounds of paint that removing the piece, which by now was as much sculpture as painting, required cutting away parts of the wall and bringing it down to street level by forklift. Her friend, assemblage artist and filmmaker Bruce Conner, documented her apartment, this surgical extraction of its most vital organ, and its visible effect on DeFeo, editing it into a seven-minute film with a soundtrack of Miles Davis's performance of the "Concierto de Aranjuez" from Sketches of Spain. The result is a masterpiece, both a perfect introduction for a newcomer to Conner's work and a piece that grows richer each time one views it.

WHERE/WHEN: The White Rose screens at SFMOMA's Phyllis Wattis Theater tonight as part of a 7PM program of Beat Era filmmaking that also serves as the opening of the 2013 SF Cinematheque season. It also screens, on its own, at the museum's Koret Visitor Education Center twice today, tomorrow and Saturday afternoons.

WHY: Whether you've already spent time with The Rose during SFMOMA's retrospective, or are planning to do so before it departs from view this Sunday (skipping this rare opportunity altogether is not an option), you will definitely want to watch Conner's film to enrich your perspective. Seeing it tonight as part of the Cinematheque program is for many reasons the optimal way to take it in. In addition to The White Rose, several key works made by other San Francisco Beat-associated artists during the year DeFeo began this painting (1958) will screen. Lawrence Jordan's Triptych in Four Parts, Christopher Maclaine's Beat, and Wallace Berman's sole film, begun in 1956 but like The Rose extended for about a decade after, and entitled Aleph after his 1976 death, are crucial works well-known to students of this era of truly independent filmmaking.

Poet ruth weiss's film The Brink came a bit later in 1961, and according to Kari Adelaide Razdow was shot on Super-8 around the San Francisco Bay Area that year. Local viewers ought to be able to recognize sites such as Baker Beach and Sutro Heights Park, the latter of which was also one of the locations which Brecht Andersch & I identified as used in Maclaine's 1953 The End. Like that film The Brink is anchored by a strong narration, in this case a recitation of a version of a poem of the same title that weiss had published in 1960. Whereas Maclaine is known for his filmmaking while his poetry languishes these days, weiss is fairly well-represented in discussions of Beat-era poetry, and has several books available at City Lights and at the San Francisco Public Library, but is relatively unknown as a filmmaker. Tonight represents a rare chance for a Frisco Bay audience to begin rectifying this, as weiss, now in her eighties, will appear along with her film at tonight's screening. She will also appear at a community tribute to Jay DeFeo this Saturday afternoon, also at SFMOMA.

HOW: I've been told that tonight's screening will be mostly from 16mm prints, including The White Rose. The afternoon screenings are digital video presentations however.

The Two Eyes Of Mark Wilson

If you didn't attend some wonderful repertory/revival film screenings in 2012, you missed out. As nobody could see them all, I've recruited Frisco Bay filmgoers to recall some of their own favorites of the year. An index of participants is found here.  

The following list comes from Mark Wilson, an artist/filmmaker whose work will be included in Gallery Bergen's upcoming exhibition proto-cinematic investigations.

In 2012, it became positively clear that there are now suddenly far fewer opportunities to see 35mm prints, especially from the catalogs of major studios.  This impending scarcity of projected prints influenced many of my film going decisions this year, as one could no longer be assured that that certain films would come around again, to be presented in the medium they were made to be viewed.  I'm not anti-digital, but I feel that works made as film should be shown as film. Digital shouldn't try to imitate and look like film and to that end, it has a long way to go before growing into its own as a medium. I feel digital translations of films are a useful tool for preservation and study, but not a satisfactory cinema experience. There is another essential quality of cinema that needs to be preserved as well, since it's one we truly cannot afford to lose... the experience of community around cinema, going out to see films with friends, sitting among strangers, and often afterwards discussing the works face to face.  Many of the epiphanies that I've had around a film, how the medium makes its meaning, why a director has made an unusual decision, have often been sparked by an observational fragments spoken by others in conversation, which resonate alongside other fragments I've observed, leading to a fuller understanding of the work.  Many of the programs I've attended last year were presentations by organizations such as the Pacific Film Archives (PFA), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), San Francisco Film Society,  Artists' Television Access (ATA), and San Francisco Cinematheque.  These organizations often not only bring us together as a community to view works, but regularly put us in the same room and in dialogue with the artists who have created the films we view.  Artists' Television Access and San Francisco Cinematheque have been doing this as part of their  mission for decades. If you're unfamiliar with either, they have been around, waiting for you to discover the community they offer.  Both organizations are quite small and in need of the support of open-minded cinema enthusiasts, if they're to continue their mission and to grow in a rapidly-changing San Francisco.

Time:      

Everything you may have read or heard about the greatness of the Silent Film Festival's presentation of Napoleon, is to be believed.  I'm sorry if you missed it, because its way at the top of my list of Bay Area film experiences in 2012, and not exclusively for the film, and the accompanying live orchestral score, but also largely in part for way in which the event fully awakened the Paramount Theater itself... an art deco jewel of a film palace brought to life in the name of Cinema.  Napoleon was a complete experience, a film that took you back in time, to the French Revolution,  presented in a vessel powered by the anticipation, excitement, and energy of those in attendance, transporting us back to an age when Cinema was monumental.

Time, or the questioning of our perception of it anyway, was the theme of several films that make my list for 2012.  Chirs Marker's La Jetee at SFMOMA (as well as his Sans Soleil at PFA), prompted another sitting with Vertigo, when the Castro presented it in 70mm.  There was also a Sunday afternoon at ATA when the Right Window Gallery celebrated the 20th anniversary of Anne McGuire's video Strain Andromeda, The a shot-by-shot, end to beginning, re-sequencing of The Andromeda Strain.  This wasn't exactly a screening of the piece, rather a re-presentation of its themes through Ed Halter reading his new essay about the work, and an exhibition of recent watercolors by McGuire, the Square Spiral Series... applications of small squares of color arranged in patterning reminiscent of the spiral of time seen in Vertigo's opening credits.  The first fifteen minutes of the video was also shown (or the last fifteen minutes of the original, if you prefer...)

Restrospectives:  

In 2012, I had the opportunity to thoroughly immerse in retrospectives of filmmakers whose works I make it a point to see every single time they show (simply because it isn't often enough.) Robert Bresson, Nathaniel Dorsky, and Hayao Miyazaki.  Each of these directors create works one can see many times over and still make new, sometimes startling discoveries within.

The Bresson series ran at the PFA, I'd seen all of the works, even the rare prints, more than once, and most many times...  the surprise film for me this time around was the The Devil Probably, not one of my favorites of his prior, but with Bresson sometimes deeper understanding of the work registers more forcefully after a few viewings (later in the year i saw this film twice again in the final days of the San Francisco Film Society's operation of the New People Cinema in Japantown.)

The Pacific Film Archives also presented Afterimage: Three Nights with Nathaniel Dorsky... as three consecutive Sunday evening programs in June, a time of year when a 7:30 start time in Berkeley feels like the late afternoon, a perfect setting for the contemplation of ten films by Dorsky, all made in the past ten years, (programmed in reverse chronological order I should add.)  Compline is the title I'll single out here, Dorsky's last kodachrome film of several decades of work with the stock, in full command of the color palette, contrasts, density, and everything magical that Kodachrome had to offer.

The Studio Ghibli festival featuring most all of Miyazaki's feature length animation work was a summer event that sort of slipped under the radar, yet provided film goers opportunities to see all the works presented in 35mm.  Those screenings were my last visits to the now closed Bridge Theater in San Francisco.  The series repeated the following week at the California Theater in Berkeley.  Porco Rosso has been the favorite of all these works ever since I first saw it on 35mm.  Seeing this film projected on a big screen is essential to appreciating what Miyazaki is doing in animating the crimson red seaplane, its form rendered from all angles as it twists and turns, gliding to and fro against backgrounds of clouds and blue sky, shown from a vantage point which itself is continuously in motion to the degree to which it all nearly becomes abstraction.

 In-Person:

There were notable in-person visits to the San Francisco Bay Area by experimental filmmakers that were the subject of two- or three-program surveys of work.  David Gatten from Colorado/North Carolina accompanied a touring mid-career retrospective of his films curated by the Wexner Center for the Arts.  In person, Gatten is an excellent storyteller... in particular, a ghost story that he shared, served to illuminate his work, Secret History of the Dividing Line.   PFA and San Francisco Cinematheque at YBCA co-hosted surveys of works by Rose Lowder from France, and by Gunvor Nelson from Sweden.   After her screening at YBCA, Lowder shared images of hand drawn charts, which represented field notes of her intricate film making processes, providing insight to the single frame, multiple pass, in-camera, checkerboard technique used to create film images, such as those of sailboats weaving through a field of red poppies, seen in Voiliers et Coquelicots. Nelson's visit was a return, as she had taught influentially at the San Francisco Art Institute for several decades.  Her work is often built around dense layers of personal language, ensuring there'll always be new things to discover in subsequent viewings.  Nelson's clear, delicate, and mischievous sound work, exemplified in Red Shift, has few peers in the realm of independent filmmaking.  

Material:

Barbara Loden's Wanda, screened at SFMOMA as part of their Cindy Sherman Selects series, was shot on 16mm reversal, intended for 35mm release, giving the film a gritty, yet vibrant look, perfectly befitting the narrative.   The print was recently restored directly from the original 16mm reversal materials.  Ernie Gehr's Side/Walk/Shuttle is my favorite film of all time, and I got a good look at it again this past year at the PFA in a new 35mm preservation print (it was originally filmed and presented in 16mm.)  Nineteen-nineties San Francisco has never looked sharper... gravitationally, precariously, clinging to the earth.  Without the technologies of digital, we wouldn't have a hand-colored version of Georges Melies' Trip to the Moon, to look at, so it seems appropriate to cite the Silent Film Festival's digital presentation at the Castro Theatre.  The projection's sharpness of image and richness of coloring seemed perhaps hyper-accentuated, yet properly serving as a reminder of what material we were actually looking at. This translation took little away from Melies' masterpiece (sadly I missed a subsequent presentation of a 35mm print of the restoration at the same theater.)  This year, for the I Only Have Two Eyes project, Brian also invited us to write about one new film wherein some aspect around the presentation worked with the film to create an enhanced cinema experience.  For me it was Jerome Hiler's Words of Mercury, screened in the San Francisco International Film Festival's experimental shorts program Blink of an Eye.  At the PFA, the camera original reversal film was projected, meaning that the very same material that was exposed in the camera was projected to the screen.   From reflected light through camera lens to film crystals, then electric light through film and projector lens to screen...  immediate, and revealing of a stunning spectrum of colors that could be recorded through the layering of exposures on film emulsion.  Inconceivably, that very Ektachrome stock used to make this work, would be discontinued at the year's end.

Community:  

This year I get to write about one of the highlights of my Bay Area film-going experiences of 2011, Mission Eye & Ear.  A series that was organized by Lisa Mezzacappa with Fara Akrami and presented at Artists Television Access, three programs of newly commissioned works, pairing Bay Area composer/musicians with their experimental filmmaker counterparts.  The programs in 2011 were spread throughout the year and because the works were new then, I couldn't list them in last year's contribution to Two Eyes, however, for 2012 I can list this past November's all-day reprisal of the series at YBCA, part of Chamber Music Day events.  All the efforts were amazing, but I felt the highlights were Konrad Stiener's The Evening Red with music by Matt Ingalls, and Kathleen Quillian's Fin de Siècle scored by Ava Mendoza (who also deserves mention for her 2012 colloaboration with Merrill Garbus and tUnE-yArDs, in scoring a program of Buster Keaton shorts for SFIFF.)  I mentioned community at the beginning of this post, and for me this series exactly represents the best of what that means here in the Bay Area.  I've attended and followed performances and work by most of these composers and musicians of the local experimental improv scene for over a decade, and for more than two decades have attended experimental film programs in the Bay Area.  It was incredibly satisfying to experience these new works arising from a collaborative meeting of these two communities of artists.

The Two Eyes Of Ben Armington

If you didn't attend some wonderful repertory/revival film screenings in 2012, you missed out. As nobody could see them all, I've recruited Frisco Bay filmgoers to recall some of their own favorites of the year. An index of participants is found here.  

The following list comes from Ben Armington, Box Cubed chieftain, Roxie pinch hitter, furtive film-goer. 

1. Napoleon (Paramount Theatre, Silent Film Festival) Easily the film event of the year, perhaps of any year. Gance’s storied epic impressed with it’s sustained, crazed inventiveness-- every scene, even every shot of it’s 5 ½ hour runtime felt fired by a red-hot creativity and drive-the-car-over-the-cliff daring. The ending especially reached a hitherto unseen sweaty fugue state of messianic/maniac ecstatical delirium as we were treated to a fusillade of flickering images racing across the fabled triptych screens with the orchestra surging mightily to keep up. Tilt!

2. Grin Without A Cat (PFA, mini-Marker retro) The world is an infinitely poorer place with Chris Marker no longer around, whispering in our mind to look at the image differently, to re-consider the context. This was my second time wading through his awesomely compelling essay-digression on french politics and what the film cleverly calls the “third world war”, and I’m already ready to watch it again. One of my favorite punchlines of the year can be seen in the the sequence about Fidel Castro’s habit for fondling microphones during public speaking engagements. 

 3. Performance (Vogue Theatre, Mostly British Film Festival) Roeg & Cammell’s wigged out doppelganger classic slips a lurid gangster flick a double dip hit of free love utopianism and pretty soon it’s all roads lead to personality Altamont...and something like inner peace. This screening was enhanced by a neighborhood resident’s fireplace, which was close enough to the theatre to fill the auditorium with a thin layer of smoky heat. Or so we were told. 

 4. Rio Lobo/El Dorado (Stanford Theatre, Hawks Retro) Howard Hawks, Leigh Brackett, and the Duke rework their essential western Rio Bravo (itself reportedly a response to High Noon, a movie that Hawks and Wayne were none too fond of) not once but twice! The films were entertaining enough in their own right, but there was a special pleasure to be had tracing the continuities and variations between the films. My first visit to the Stanford, a venue I hope to spend more time at in the future. 

5. Underworld, USA. (Castro Theatre, Noir City X) A tawdry-urban-revenge melodrama, rife with pungent dialogue, ripe characters, and a plot that grips like a noose, from the bare knuckle-tabloid imagination of Sam Fuller. Cliff Robertson plays the hero with a startling heartlessness to his fellow humanity, often evincing disgusted disdain in the form of a mirthless thin-lipped smile to the other characters’ mewling protestations. He makes other no-bullshit seekers in the noir landscape like Lee Marvin in Point Blank or Michael Caine in Get Carter look positively cuddly by comparison. 

6. Wanda (SF MOMA, Cindy Sherman selects series) Terrific film that has been justifiably enjoying word-of-mouth revival love over the past few years and boasts quite a few hip celebrity admirers, like Cindy Sherman and John Waters. Directed, written and starring “actor’s director” Elia Kazan’s ex-showgirl second wife Barbara Loden, the film is that rare bird in that it pulls off a heart-breakingly well-observed character study that feels truly lived in without being signified as autobiographical. Tragically, Loden died before she was able to make another film. 

 7. Crossroads/A Trip To The Moon/2001 (Castro) One of the highlights of the side-winding, illuminating pairings the Castro does so well. I could have done without the really loud Air score laid over A Trip To the Moon, but it was a real treat to see Bruce Conner’s explosions in the sky. 

 8. Xtro (Roxie, Alamo Drafthouse co-presents) Bizarre pod-people movie obliquely dealing with the trauma of deadbeat dad’s return with trippy sci-fi imagery. Playing like E.T. directed by Cronenberg or Zulawski, the movie also finds time to capture London in the swinging 80’s with entertaining fashion photography and saucy au pairs. Also featuring a symbolic panther and full grown man-birth.  

9. On the Silver Globe (YBCA, Zulawski retro) My favorite in the Zulawski retrospective, a lightning bolt of future-medieval imagery and impossibly convoluted plotting that haunts me still. 

10. Year of the Dragon (Castro) Great, filthy 80’s “neo-noir” with Mickey Rourke up to his ears in intrigue in Chinatown. Rourke plays the lead character as a no-nonsense man of action, a strutting peacock, and a needy attention vortex, the type of fellow you may surreptitiously cross the street to avoid running into--- but Rourke manages to make almost magnetic. Director Michael Cimino matches him by piling on the gruesome detail and dramatic cheese.

The Two Eyes of Maureen Russell

If you didn't attend some wonderful repertory/revival film screenings in 2012, you missed out. As nobody could see them all, I've recruited Frisco Bay filmgoers to recall some of their own favorites of the year. An index of participants is found here.  

The following list comes from Maureen Russell, cinephile and film festival volunteer.

It was hard narrowing down this year’s list after my first pick. This list includes a number of interesting films by or about strong women that I hadn’t previously heard of.

1) Napoleon – Paramount Theatre, Oakland  4/1/12 Directed by Abel Gance. 330 minutes.
I’d never seen this film before and it lived up to all the hype. Albert Diudonné as Napoleon was captivating, the music was excellent, and the time went by quickly. Seeing it at the beautiful Paramount and even having a dinner break added to the experience. Ending with the three screen finale – spectacular all in all.

2) Pandora’s Box San Francisco Silent Film Festival – the Castro Restored film
I’d seen this film a number of times, but with the bits of restored footage added back in, along with the fantastic accompaniment by the Matti Bye Ensemble, this film was complete.  

3) Cleo from 5 to 7 – SFMoMA 7/5/12 Phyllis Wattis Theater Agnès Varda, 1962, 90 min., 35mm (nice print) In French with English subtitles.
Part of the SFMoMA’s Cindy Sherman Selects series, varied picks that inspired her photography. (I also enjoyed Seconds 7/19/12 John Frankenheimer, 1966, 35mm) This film takes place in almost real time.  San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

4) Children of Paradise – the Castro  5/21/12 Pathé's new restoration, shown DCP  191 minutes
I was fascinated following the lead actress Arletty and this interwoven story.

5) Daisies – the Roxie – Nov. 28 A new 35mm print. Dir: Vera Chytilová. Starring Ivana Karbanova and Jitka Cerhova. Czechoslovakia. 1966. In Czech w/ English subtitles. 76 min.  

6) Roxie Punk films – SF shorts  7/28/12 Series trailer
This was a great series. San Francisco night – with a large crowd and directors in attendance – was my favorite.

From the event publicity notes: "This Must Be The Place: Post-Punk Tribes 1978-1982 is a series of short films documenting the regional post-punk scenes in the UK, France, Los Angeles/Orange County, San Francisco, Pittsburgh, New York City, and elsewhere. SFMoMA's Gina Basso and Roxie programmer Mike Keegan have curated the most provocative and rarely seen visual documents of that profoundly important period in the history of DIY and underground culture.
"I Can See It And I’m Part Of It: San Francisco Punk Portraits 1978 - 82" In The Red is a slice of life from the perspective of two friends (co-directors Liz Keim and Karen Merchant) who followed the scene at close range.  Dirs: Liz Keim & Karen Merchant. Digital. 1978. 20 mins.
Louder, Faster, Shorter is raw and powerful performance document recorded at the Mabuhay Gardens in March 1978. Bands: UXA, The Dils, The Avengers, Sleepers, and Mutants  Dir: Mindaugus Bagdon. 16mm. 1978. 17 mins.
Bruce Conner segment includes music videos he made during this time: Mongoloid (music by Devo), and Mea Culpa (feauturing music by David Byrne & Brian Eno). Dir: Bruce Conner. Digital. 1977 – 1981."

Also enjoyed as part of the series: Sunday, July 29: Debt Begins At 20 Dir: Stephanie Beroes. 16mm. 1980. 50 mins. Pittsburgh Downtown 81 Dir: Edo Bertoglio. Written by Glen O’Brien. 35mm. 1981. 73 mins. Manhattan

7) Christiane F – the Roxie, 35 mm print, 4/6/12
I hadn’t seen this one in years.

8) The Docks of New York – the Castro – 7/15/12 Presented at the 2012 SF Silent Film Festival USA, 1928. Director Josef von Sternberg great cast George Bancroft (Bill Roberts), Betty Compson (Mae), Olga Baclanova (His wife), Musical Accompaniment: Donald Sosin on grand piano

9) Lawrence of Arabia (1962)– the Castro – 12/30/12
First time for me seeing this; best way to see it on the Castro’s screen. Digital restoration.

10) The Killers (1964) / Point Blank (1967) Noir City – the Castro, Jan 21, 2012. Angie Dickinson in person, interviewed in between films.
I’d never seen either of these films before. Great double feature.

The Two Eyes Of Jonathan Kiefer

If you didn't attend some wonderful repertory/revival film screenings in 2012, you missed out. As nobody could see them all, I've recruited Frisco Bay filmgoers to recall some of their own favorites of the year. An index of participants is found here.

The following list comes from Jonathan Kiefer, a member of the San Francisco Film Critics Circle, whose reviews are collected at jonathankiefer.com.

Five faves, in chronological order:  

1. The Robert Bresson retrospective at the Pacific Film Archive, January-February

2. Napoléon at the Paramount, March

3. Pretty much the entirety of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival at the Castro, July

4. The double bill of La Jetée and Meshes of the Afternoon at SFMOMA, August

5. L’Age d’Or at YBCA, September

No film was screened during Geoff Dyer and David Thomson’s public conversation at Tosca in March, but Tarkovsky’s Stalker, the subject of Dyer’s lively latest book, was happily discussed. 

Chris Marker (1921-2012)

I've only been moved to attempt a filmmaker obituary blog post once before, but learning of Chris Marker's death this morning, just a day after his 91st birthday, compels me to do it again. For a compendium of information and criticism on Marker look no further than the incredible David Hudson, now blogging for Fandor. This piece, although it includes more links I think are well worth clicking, will be more about my personal history with Marker's work than about the man himself.

I've only seen eight films from his prodigious output, but each of them are more than just films to me: they're signposts of my own cinephilia. If there is a single film which transformed me from an essentially passive viewer and consumer of (mostly science-fiction and fantasy) movies as entertainment into someone compelled to learn about motion pictures as a form of artistic expression, it must be Marker's 1962 film La Jetée, which I first viewed on a videocassette borrowed from, I think, Blockbuster Video, after learning it was the inspiration for Terry Gilliam's then-recent 12 Monkeys. I'm not sure if I was hoping that seeing this earlier version would help me figure out some of the time-travel puzzle aspects of the Gilliam film, but La Jetée was like nothing I'd ever seen before- and certainly the first "art film" I'd really connected with. Marker's aesthetic strategy of using still photographs to convey images of narrative might have seemed like nothing more than a cost-saving shortcut to someone with my preconceptions of what a "movie" is, had it not been presented so masterfully. It opened my eyes to the notion that big ideas can actually be dwarfed by a huge Hollywood apparatus (as subsequent viewings of 12 Monkeys demonstrated, although I still am fond of the film) and that sometimes the seemingly simplest techniques can be more awe-inspiring than bombastic special effects.

Purely by coincidence, La Jetée will screen along with Maya Deren's Meshes Of The Afternoon, at a free noontime screening at SFMOMA next Tuesday, as part of the museum's ongoing Cindy Sherman Selects series.

The notoriously camera-shy Chris Marker spied in Wim Wenders' 1985 film Toyko-Ga

Each Marker film I've seen has opened my eyes in another way. Watching his 1985 documentary A.K., on Akira Kurosawa filming Ran, did as much to help me truly understand that film (and its maker)  as finally seeing it in a 35mm print (along with others in a large Kurosawa retro) did a couple years ago. Catching up with his 1977 A Grin Without A Cat reconfigured my conception of political filmmaking, and subsequently catching up with his 1963 Le Joli Mai years later re-reconfigured it. And then there's Sans Soleil. A film about life, death, memory, cinema, Japan, and San Francisco, at least as seen through Alfred Hitchcock's eyes in Vertigo, it's known as Marker's greatest masterpiece, and I have no objection to that. How could I, when I'm as in thrall to Vertigo as any cinephile (I'm thrilled the Castro Theatre is bringing it back in 70mm August 31 through September 3 as I haven't seen it in over a year) and I've been inspired by Marker's tour of its locations to take similar tours to see my city through filmmakers' eyes. A little over a year ago, I was convinced by visiting critic Adam Nayman to join him on a San Francisco International Film Festival-sponsored journey along Jimmy Stewart & Kim Novak's trail hosted by Vertigo expert Miguel Pendas, who writes about Marker's connection to his annual tours in a recent book:

I thought that I knew this Hitchcock film, but Marker opened doors into head-spinning interpretations that would never have occured to me. "The Spiral of Time," he called the film's metaphorical referent in the whirlpool of Madeline's hair, the swirling waters of San Francisco Bay, the tree rings of the Sequoia, the twisting dizziness of Scottie's acrophobia.

While wandering in the Mission Dolores cemetery, Pendas told us of his own opportunity to meet the famously-shy Marker, and Nayman cited Sans Soleil as his favorite film. It was, after all, just as much a tour of that segment of the Marker film that we were making. 

Marker shot at least one other film here on Frisco Bay, however, and it must surpass even Sans Soleil and La Jetée as my own sentimental favorite of the octet of Marker films I'm lucky to have seen. It's called Junkopia, and though running only six minutes in length, it has two credited co-directors, both local filmmakers who had worked on Apocalypse Now for Zoetrope Studios, the local film company which Marker visited during the shooting of Sans Soleil. John Chapman, a local documentarian who made Nicaragua: Scenes From The Revolution died in 1983 while working on a documentary about the island nation of Palau and its nuclear-free constitution. Marker's death leaves Frank Simeone as the last survivor of this Junkopia trio (although Simeone credits himself only as producer, not co-director, on his own website.) 

Growing up here in the seventies and eighties, I fondly recall every time I rode in a car toward Contra Costa County and beyond, the highlight of the drive was the stretch of bayside highway where artists built giant animals and other structures our of driftwood and similar found materials. It seemed that this collection of sculptures was new every time we drove by, like a rotating collection of works displayed in an art museum. But the Emeryville Mud Flats, as this makeshift exhibition site is called, was purged of its wooden wonders many years ago. So when I first saw the Pacific Film Archive's 35mm print of Junkopia before a screening of The Case Of The Grinning Cat, alongside my cinephile cousin visiting from New York City, I was agog that Marker and his cohort had not only documented some of these structures at a point (July 1981) when I might have driven by them myself, but done so extremely artfully. Unlike Marker's other films (at least those I've seen) there is no voice-over narration, and in fact the only words in the film besides the end credits are beginning title cards marking San Francisco's (not Emeryville's) latitude and longitude, and the seemingly-random voices recorded from static-y local radio broadcasts that appear on the soundtrack in the film's final minute or so, paralleling the visual introduction of contexts of so-called civilization: the racing automobiles, the first of the Watergate Towers, etc.

A television broadcast version of Junkopia is viewable at Ubuweb, and the short was also included on the recent Blu-Ray edition of the Criterion Collection edition of Sans Soleil and La Jetée. But seeing it in its native 35mm can't be beat; I'm lucky to have done so twice. The PFA screened their print again in 2010 at their launch of the release of Kathy Geritz/Steve Seid/Steve Anker-edited book Radical Light: Alternative Film & Video in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1945-2000. That book includes a terrific little paragraph on Junkopia written by Michael Sicinski, which I shall now excerpt:

A 35mm evocation by a visitor acutely attuned to the ability of detritus to speak our story, Junkopia is itself something of a castoff, relegated to a line or two in Marker monographs and passed over on the way to Sans Soleil. . . . The film departs from Marker's essayistic style, instead adopting the rhythms of experimental cinema. Still, its status as a standard-gauge court métrage has kept it out of dialogue with the tradition of co-op filmmaking. Is there no place where this film could possibly belong?

I hope it can, like La Jetée, belong on a local screen sometime soon. Any number of Frisco Bay cinemas would be appropriate venues for a proper Chris Marker send-off. If it can be organized anywhere near as quickly as next month's Yerba Buena Center For The Arts tribute to another politically-committed director, Kaneto Shindo, who died shortly after his own 100th birthday this year, I'll be impressed.

Adam Hartzell on Two Architecture Films

The San Francisco International Film Festival begins Friday, and post-festival screenings at festival venues SF Film Society screen, SFMOMA, the Castro and the Pacific Film Archive have recently been announced. We also now know what will be playing at the Stanford and the Yerba Buena Center For The Arts through mid-June. Both of these latter venues have interesting programs happening during SFIFF, and I'm lucky enough to have articles from guest contributors relevant to each. Sterling Hedgpeth wrote here on Howard Hawks before his nearly-finished PFA retrospective began; it reprises with more titles at the Stanford starting Friday. And Adam Hartzell has previewed two films coming to YBCA this week and next. He compares them in the following article:

The Love Song of R. Buckmister Fuller (USA: Sam Green, 2012) photo courtesy of San Francisco Film Society

With the recent release of the Foster + Partners design of the future new Apple headquarters in Cupertino, it’s the perfect time to bring a documentary on architect Norman Foster to the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Spain-based co-directors Carlos Carcas & Norberto López Amado's How Much Does Your Building Weigh, Mr. Foster? plays twice on April 22nd, at 2 & 4 pm as part of a two-film series of new films on architecture at YBCA. (The other film screening is Chad Freidrichs’ The Pruitt-Igoe Myth, but more on that later in the post.) Doubly perfect planning, the film on Foster also provides a nice lead-in to those who were able to snag tickets to the world premiere of documentarian Sam Green’s The Love Song of R. Buckminster Fuller at SFMOMA, part of the San Francisco International Film Festival playing on May 1st at 7pm and 9pm, since the title, How Much Does Your Building Weigh, Mr. Foster?, is a question Fuller asked of Foster. This friendly and eccentric interrogation by Fuller of Foster pushed the latter to realize that in the case of his Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts at the University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK, a disproportionate amount of this building’s weight went unseen. It was an architectural Zen koan to excavate what was hidden beneath the facade.

Although the ethereal floating views of the voluptuous and domineering buildings throughout Foster’s career are wonderful eye candy, (Foster worked in San Francisco very early in his career, but the only buildings completed by his firm in the Bay Area, as far as I know, can be found on Stanford’s campus), what’s more compelling to me about the documentary is what, like Fuller’s question, is left hidden beneath the edits of the documentary. Such documentaries about ‘great’ artists can border on hagiography, partly due to the need to maintain the willing participation of the film’s human subject. The documentary does mention that Foster has his critics, but the criticism is limited to aesthetics rather than practice. Plus, those critics are not permitted to speak for themselves. We are left to hear solely from Foster’s firm, friends, and fans.

How Much Does Your Building Weigh, Mr. Foster? (SPAIN: Norberto  Lopez Arndao & Carlos Carcas, 2011) photo courtesy First Run Features 

As a result, the practice of architecture portrayed in this documentary is limited to the ‘genius’ approach to history, the ‘starchitect’ as city savior, rather than a social history of a larger system. The discussion of the Fred Olson project, which the narrator hangs up on an aural pushpin as "a social utopian project", is the closest it comes to really looking at how buildings demarcate people of all classes. But this focus is flown over like so many of the scenes where Foster pilots around his buildings. This 'genius' approach is problematic when Foster + Partners’ CEO praises Hong Kong for their speed and efficiency at completing projects when compared to Europe. Knowing the concerns many human rights groups have about China’s labor practices, concerns highlighted by the recent auditing of Foxconn Technology Group that was contracted to manufacture Apple’s iPads, this ‘speed’ isn’t necessarily a good thing. When the film's narrator, this time discussing the Beijing airport project, tells us the Chinese laborers worked 'three non-stop shifts around the clock’, we should ask for more evidence that the workers of those shifts were treated and compensated fairly than just Foster's use of the neoliberal buzzwords 'thinking strategically' and 'bold initiatives'. In this case, I don’t see modern Europe’s slower pace when compared to China as something to criticize because it’s more likely that necessary regulations are in place to lessen the occurrence of injuries and deaths along with securing a more sustainable wage (and necessary health benefits) for the folks who actually make the buildings starchitects design.

This section of the documentary is soon followed by a discussion of the Masdar City zero-carbon footprint project in the UAE. (Ironically, a city designed in the exact opposite direction of sustainability as the proposed new Apple headquarters that looks like a UFO from the past isolated from major public transit and demanding further car-dependency.) Along with mentioning nothing about the labor conditions in the UAE that arouse as much concern by human rights groups as in China, this project's green intent contradicts the previously mentioned preference for speed, since our need for speed and convenience is fueled by cheap oil and leads to unsustainable cities and living arrangements. With all that’s missing from this documentary’s lessons in hagiography, How Much Does Your Building Weigh, Mr. Foster? practically requires companion reading material for all the context the film doesn’t provide. Might I suggest the wonderful book Dubai: The City as Corporation by Ahmed Kanna, which I first saw at the University Press Bookstore on Bancroft in Berkeley and later picked up at The Green Arcade bookstore on Market Street. (This is the book from which I pulled evidence of the worker violations in the UAE noted above.) Providing examples from the wider UAE, and briefly mentioning Foster’s Masdar City project, the second chapter of the book, “’Going South’ with the Starchitects” is an insightful examination of how, in spite of all the progressive rhetoric spoken by starchitect firms, the firms end up buttressing repressive regimes. Kanna is not indicting specific architects, (nor do I intend to do that here), but his insightful analysis brings to light the hidden foundations of the rise of the starchitect phenomenon.

How Much Does Your Building Weigh, Mr. Foster? (SPAIN: Norberto  Lopez Arndao & Carlos Carcas, 2011) photo courtesy First Run Features

In the end, all that is unspoken in this question-titled documentary How Much Does Your Building Weigh, Mr. Foster? results in a structure that fails to stand up. As you step away from the floating frame and begin to ask the questions title-as-question doesn’t, the buildings seem less impressive. Perhaps if the film’s title tilted the question slightly to say ‘How Much Is Your Building’s Weight, Mr. Foster?’ the directors may have focused more on the cultural, economic, and environmental impact of the building process rather than simply leaving us to admire the superficial beauty of the buildings.

Thankfully, the second film in the series at YBCA, Chad Freidrichs’ The Pruitt-Igoe Myth, puts much more weight on these social aspects of architecture. (It will screen twice on Sunday, April 29th, at 2 and 4pm.) In fact, everything that is wrong in the structure of How Much Does Your Building Weigh, Mr. Foster? is set right in The Pruitt-Igoe Myth.

For those who haven’t heard of Pruitt-Igoe, it was a large housing project in St. Louis, Missouri completed in 1954. Considered revolutionary for its time, it gave low-income residents infrastructure (plumbing, electricity, etc.) and amenities well beyond what they previously lived with. It quickly fell in to disrepair and became a scary place to live due to high-levels of crime. Twenty decades after it was raised, Pruitt-Igoe was razed.

The Pruitt-Igoe Myth (USA: Chad Friedrichs, 2011) photo courtesy First Run Features

What is so valuable about Freidrichs’s documentary is that it places the Pruitt-Igoe housing projects in the proper complicated historical, political, and social perspective. The stock answers explaining Pruitt-Igoe’s demise have always been a combination of three choices: the un-livability of modernist architecture, the failure of government welfare, and the behaviors of the residents themselves. (As the film demonstrates from archival footage, the racism of the latter ‘answer’ was often explicit in the words of many of the suburban whites towards the primarily black residents.) Through interviews with former residents of Pruitt-Igoe, a sociologists who worked with the residents, and urban historians who have studied Pruitt-Igoe within a broader context, we learn how limiting those stock answers are. Ironically, part of Pruitt-Igoe’s demise was foretold in the law that enabled its creation, the 1949 Housing Act. Although the act provided funding for the creation of Pruitt-Igoe, it relied on the rent paid by residents, all low-income, for upkeep. At the same time, the 1949 Housing Act subsidized the creation of suburbia through roads and other infrastructure. Add to this the redlining housing practices of developers and lenders keeping non-whites out of the suburbs and the suburbs became a publicly subsidized space only accessible for the white middle and upper-middle class. As a result of this white-flight-to-suburbia, (an American creation that represents what urbanist James Howard Kunstler calls “the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world” since it solidified our car/oil dependency that will obstruct our growth in the near future), the jobs followed white middle-class folk to the suburbs. As a result, few jobs were left for the primarily black residents of Pruitt-Igoe, making the upkeep of Pruitt-Igoe nearly impossible to maintain.

That’s just the beginning of what is a dense, insightful documentary on a missed opportunity of good intentions not fully-funded or followed-through. Much of the documentary’s impact comes from the reminiscences of former residents of Pruitt-Igoe who talk of the joy of the early years and the fears of later years. How they speak of the violence of the later years in the projects is particular poignant when some of the young men express how surprised they were by the advice the environment encouraged from their mothers. I’ll leave that aspect in cryptic form since those particular recollections hit you in the solar plexus in that uniquely haptic way that the light and audio from the cinema screen does.

I first heard about this Pruitt-Igoe documentary through the local architecture and design podcast 99% Invisible. Produced by Roman Mars, 99% Invisible quickly made my must-listen list after the best podcast in the world, Radiolab, gave the show props. Along with recommending you peep a listen to Mars before the screening of The Pruitt-Igoe Myth, in spite of how my criticism of How Much Does Your Building Weigh, Mr. Foster? might discourage a viewing, I still recommend watching it before The Pruitt-Igoe Myth. It is the juxtaposing of these two films, one full of pretty pictures and failed analysis, another a well-researched re-rendering of a failed historical moment, that shows you how much more worthwhile and fulfilling a film like The Pruitt-Igoe Myth is compared to the unsatisfying ‘genius’ hagiographic view of history that is How Much Does Your Building Weigh, Mr. Foster?

Mark Wilson Only Has Two Eyes

It's impossible for any pair of eyes to view all of Frisco Bay's worthwhile film screenings. I'm so pleased that a number of local filmgoers have let me post their repertory/revival screening highlights of 2011. An index of participants is found here.

The following list comes from filmmaker Mark Wilson, who has some of his work available at Canyon Cinema.

in 2011, i attended mostly programs of experimental film, at the pacific film archives, san francisco museum of modern art, artists' televison access, san francisco cinematheque, and canyon cinema... seems it was an especially good year for viewing works with those organizations, and in particular, works made in 16mm. i wouldn't have predicted the opportunity to see as many new works in that medium as there were, as well as the return of so many from years past. in keeping with hell on frisco bay's repertory and revival theme for two eyes, this list only includes films made prior to the past year, which were not being presented for the first time. what follows are just some of the many works of "personal cinema" that struck me in one way or another in 2011. the ways in which each of these films moved me are as varied and complex as the works and artists themselves.

Cattle Mutilations (George Kuchar 1983); Daylight Moon (Lewis Klahr 2002): Diary of a Country Priest (Robert Bresson 1951); Flight (Greta Snider 1997); Infernal Cauldron (in 3D! - Georges Melies 1903); Ingenium Nobis Ipsa Puella Fecit (excerpt - Hollis Frampton 1974); Kemia (Silt 1995); Late Spring (Yashiro Ozu 1949); Les Statues Meurent Aussi (Chris Marker, Alain Resnais 1953); Light Years (Gunvor Nelson 1987); Loretta (Jeanne Liotta 2003); Myth Labs (Martha Colburn 2008); Persistence (Daniel Eisenberg 1997); Razor Blades (Paul Sharits 1965-68); The End (Christopher Maclaine 1953); White Rose (Bruce Conner 1967); Yggdrasill Whose Roots Are Stars in the Human Mind (Stan Brakhage 1997)

Maureen Russell Only Has Two Eyes

It's impossible for any pair of eyes to view all of Frisco Bay's worthwhile film screenings. I'm so pleased that a number of local filmgoers have let me post their repertory/revival screening highlights of 2011. An index of participants is found here.

The following list comes from Maureen Russell, San Francisco film festival volunteer and cinephile

2011 was an embarrassment of riches for me, film-wise. I finally saw several classic films I'd never seen before (that it seemed everyone else had), waiting for my big screen opportunity. Good thing I got to a lot of films last year, as the 35mm screenings will be harder to find in the future. And my favorite festivals were as strong as ever- I limited myself to one film from each of them.

1. World On A Wire
I hadn’t heard of this film for television before. I ended up seeing it twice: first at SFIFF, the digital screening at the Kabuki. There was so much to take in visually (plus subtitles) and story-wise, that I had to go again when the Roxie screened it a few months later, on 35mm. The 200 minute film sounded like a challenge to do in one screening (with intermission), but I got lost in the intrigue and loved the color, humor, drama, dashing lead, West German early 70’s fashion, sets, mind-bending story, and figuring out the characters.

2. Toby Dammit, Castro Theatre
SFIFF’s last minute acting award and screening was worth the wait. A fun onstage interview with the still charming Terence Stamp was followed by a seldom-screened masterpiece Fellini film. It was 40 minutes of bliss for me: Edgar Allen Poe, late 60’s Italy, surrealism, horror, Italian sports cars, and Terence Stamp as an alcoholic actor.

3. He Who Gets Slapped, Castro Theatre
The entire SF Silent Film Festival was top notch and it was hard to pick a favorite. While I’m usually wary of films about clowns, this one stars Lon Chaney along with John Gilbert and Norma Shearer. The Swedish Matti Bye Ensemble returned to SF to accompany this Swedish director Sjöström’s MGM film, and the music soared.

4. Angel Face, Castro Theatre
Noir City 9 was another great 10 days of noir. Hard for me to pick a favorite here too, but this one definitely delivered. Director: Otto Preminger.

5. Chinatown and L.A. Confidential, Castro Theatre
Los Angeles neo-noir double feature with two period pieces.
Chinatown, directed by Roman Polanski: I’m one of the people who had never seen Chinatown before (only clips)! I was saving myself for a big screen, and it was worth the wait! Wow.
L.A Confidential, directed by Curtis Hanson: Fantastic character and action driven story from James Ellroy’s novel; Great cast includes Kevin Spacey, Russell Crowe and Guy Pearce. I’d seen this on TV before, but so much better on the big screen and in this double feature.

6. The Devil’s Cleavage
Good thing I chose to go a screening during the PFA's Cult of the Kuchars series. George Kuchar was there to introduce The Devil’s Cleavage, and the actor playing the plumber was in the audience. A beautiful and outrageous film. And George died just months later...

7. David Holzman's Diary, Victoria Theatre
Another film I'd never heard of before. I found out about it as a Fandor free screening with the director (Jim McBride) in person. The film was beautifully shot and so direct that it stays with you, a mockumentary as well as a personal film. And looking at my list, it ties in with #9.

8. The Hunger/Nadja, the Roxie.
I'm not one to pass up a double feature of arty vampire films before Halloween. I remember loving both of these films when they came out, but hadn't seen either in years. They were great together and I appreciated them as much as ever. I was especially pleased to see Nadja screened on 35mm: a beautiful Pixelvision 90’s flick I wish more people could see. And SFMoMA brought Ann Magnuson (who had a memorable minor role in The Hunger to the Roxie for a revealing onstage interview. I even answered one of her trivia questions and got a prize and a hug from Ms. Magnuson!

9. SFMoMA’s Exposed On Film series
The series accompanied SFMOMA’s fascinating Exposed photography exhibit.
Films I caught at the Castro Theatre included Medium Cool, Haskell Wexler, introduced by Haskell Wexler!
and Kids on the Boundaries day triple feature with the haunting Deep End, Jerzy Skomilowski, Streetwise, Martin Bell, (director's restored version) and Pretty Baby, Louis Malle.
AND my first time seeing Lost Highway, David Lynch! I was waiting for a big screen for that one. It did not disappoint.

10. In Search of Christopher Maclaine: Man, Artist, Legend:
Wilder Bentley II, actor, and Lawrence Jordan, filmmaker in person. Curated by Brecht Andersch, presented by Andersch with Brian Darr, SFMOMA’s Phyllis Wattis Theater:
The End, The Man Who Invented Gold, Beat & Scotch Hop by Christopher Maclaine. Trumpit by Lawrence Jordan. Moods in Motion by Ettilie Wallace.
I was not familiar with Christopher Maclaine before, so this was a great introduction. Seeing these films, especially The End, was a great bit of SF History. The onstage interview with men who were there and the cool slide show presented by Brecht Andersch and Brian Darr of their quest for SF locations in The End was topped off by drinks at Vesuvio’s, one of the film’s locations.

Lonely Boy

Most of the specialized cinemas in town have announced their programming for the rest of the year, and some of them (like YBCA) into early 2012. December themes at the Roxie, PFA, Castro & New People include Southen (Dis)Comfort, classic musicals, and François Truffaut.

The screening space at SF Museum of Modern Art has been relatively quiet in the past few months, but December it becomes more active. A three-film series in conjunction with the ongoing exhibit devoted to designer Dieter Rams includes Blade Runner, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and a documentary featuring Rams, Objectified. This Thursday's George Kuchar tribute offers a chance to see restored prints of many of that dearly departed teacher & maker's most influential, beautiful films, including Hold Me When I'm Naked and Wild Night In El Reno.

And today at noon, SFMOMA hosts a free screening of six films selected by Goldie-awarded filmmaker Paul Clipson. Three by Peter Kubelka, one by Nagisa Oshima, one collaboration of Alain Resnais and Chris Marker, and one by the comparatively lesser-known Canadian documentarians Wolf Koenig and Roman Kroitor. Yesterday Brecht Andersch ably previewed the full program on the SFMOMA blog, reminding that I was sitting on an unpublished piece of my own on one of the selections: Koenig & Kroitor's Lonely Boy. Here it is:

The 1962 film Lonely Boy, directed by National Film Board of Canada filmmakers Wolf Koenig and Roman Kroiter, may seem at first glance like a piece of fluff, unworthy of a place in the annals of great documentary history. It's a portrait of pop singer Paul Anka on tour in New Jersey and New York, told through fans-eye views of his concerts, a certain amount of backstage access, and largely self-aggrandizing interviews from Anka and his manager Irvin Field. But it's a testament to the importance and influence of the new technologies becoming available to non-fiction filmmakers in the early 1960s that Lonely Boy looks as familiar and modern as it does to us today. The music and hairstyles may date the film as a fifty-year-old artifact, but the technological (and philosophical)-driven techniques are recognizable as some of the same ones dominant in documentaries of 2011.

When Lonely Boy was made, cameras and sound equipment were becoming available in easily-portable versions. Technologies developed for usage by war photographers and others during World War II became crucial in the development of "civilian" filmmaking. Perhaps none was more crucial than the increased infrastructure for the production and distribution of 16mm film stock, which is only about a quarter the width, resolution and weight of the 35mm standard in use in industrialized film production around the world. Most feature films and studio-produced shorts still used this standard (and indeed, the most lavish productions were now beginning to regularly utilize the even-more cumbersome 70mm film format) but avant-garde and independent work, as well as documentaries, found 16mm cheap and convenient enough that it proliferated. Film stocks were becoming more light-sensitive as well, freeing filmmakers from the necessity of bringing bulky electric lighting equipment everywhere they wanted to shoot.

16mm cameras themselves were more light-weight and portable than ever. I'm not sure there's a single shot in Lonely Boy which uses a tripod or dolly. Zoom lens technology improved significantly, giving filmmakers access to images far beyond the range of previous cameras -- a valuable asset when shooting "in the field." Audio recording equipment had become far lighter and more easily transportable as well, and improvements in synchronization technology meant that for the first time, a modestly-budgeted documentary could capture picture and image simultaneously on location, unshackling filmmakers from the tyranny of the voice-over narration. Interviews could be gathered on the street, or wherever the action was, and not just in a specially-prepared studio.

Though Lonely Boy makes use of all these technologies, providing an easygoing, behind-the-scenes look at a popular star that would have been simply impossible (especially on a NFB budget) only a few years before, perhaps it's most fascinating because it doesn't stick purely to new, often considered "realer" techniques, unlike the Direct Cinema films being made at around the same time with the same kinds of equipment. A key moment of the film is at a concert in New York, filled with female Paul Anka fans. For a time we experience the scene as if we are amidst the crowd, hearing Anka's music only when it cuts through the din of the near-constant youthful screaming. But when Anka brings a young woman up onto the stage with him, the soundtrack smoothly switches from the synchronous sound recording of the event, to the hit record version of the song he's singing, "Put Your Head on My Shoulder." Skillful matching of the camera-captured lip movements to the studio-recorded lyrics reminds us of the role of technology in selling pop music to mass markets, and the pop singer's mandate to sonically recreate a specific performance every night. But the transition also may be read as an entry into the young fan's head, where the sounds of the other concert-goers can be blocked out and only the emotion and the music (its ingrained memory as much or more than its physical sound) exists.