Ritual in Transfigured Time (1946)

WHO: Maya Deren directed this.

WHAT: Coming as it does after her landmark psychodramas Meshes of the Afternoon and At Land, Ritual in Transfigured Time is still an under-appreciated Deren work. Acquarello describes the film's opening in her review:

an animated, approachable female figure (Maya Deren) alternately framed in high contrast against a pair of interchangeable doorways, beckons a seemingly naïve young dancer (Rita Christiani) into a large adjoining room to assist in an implied Sisyphean domestic ritual before being summoned by a striking, cosmopolitan figure (Anaïs Nin) awaiting in an opposite doorway.

WHERE/WHEN: 8PM tonight only at Oddball Films. Seating is limited, so it's best to RSVP by e-mailing or calling ahead at (415) 558-8117.

WHY: The cost of striking and renting 35mm prints is reaching ever-escalating heights. If the Pacific Film Archive 's upcoming complete Pasolini retrospective is being charged the same amounts a friend programming in another North American city mentioned he was quoted to screen some of the Marxist filmmaker's key works, there's no way they're making up the cost in ticket sales the old-fashioned capitalist way. It's no wonder that for-profit venues like the Castro are becoming more reliant on cheaper DCP technology to source their screening content (though its excellent September calendar is thankfully relatively light on repertory titles screening digitally).

As bleak as things might get for continued 35mm distribution, however, I'm optimistic that film-on-film exhibition will not die before audience demand for it does. Networks of archives and collectors who recognize the unique qualities of the film medium will continue the tradition of screening reels of films through mechanical projection equipment. The selection of titles may become more limited geographically, consisting more and more of titles that don't have to be shipped in heavy canisters for thousands of miles, but in a place like the Bay Area, with its many collectors and official and unofficial archives, the number of available titles will still be practically inexhaustible, as long as support from audiences encourages collaboration between local collectors and venues. As the organic food crowd has gravitated to the sustainability of the locavore movement so too can cinephiles encourage a community-based alternative movement to massive and costly distribution. It just needs a good name. Perhaps someone can think of something better than "parokinal" (my awkward mash-up of "parochial" and "kino").

I don't know where the Vortex Room sourced its print of Car Crash last night, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was a local collector. Local collections also form the backbone of programming at both the Niles Essnaay Silent Film Museum in Fremont, CA (which has revealed its September Saturday night schedule, and, via pdf, all its other screenings through the end of October) and the Berkeley Underground Film Society. The Psychotronix Film Festival is giving film purists a rare chance to see 16mm projections at the New Parkway in Oakland this Sunday. Even the Pacific Film Archive sometimes supplements its 35mm programs with 16mm prints of varying provenance; the Wendell Corey series starting there tonight is mostly in 35mm, but includes one DCP presentation (Sorry, Wrong Number) and two 16mm shows (Anthony Mann's The Furies tomorrow night and series closing Elvis vehicle Loving You).

But in San Francisco, Oddball Films is the king of the "parokinal" universe. A vast 16mm archive stored in a Mission loft that also houses its director Stephen Parr, Oddball has been screening selections from its collection weekly for years. Tonight's program curated by Scotty Slade is both typically diverse and notably deep. Entitled "Aligning the Trance Particles", Slade's selection includes experimental films like Ritual In Transfigured Time and Pat O'Neill's 7632 as well as ethnographic documentations like the 1964 Pomo Shaman and even a prize-winning scientific film made by Carol Ballard (of  The Black Stallion and Never Cry Wolf fame) called Crystalization which captures imagery through an electron microscope. I'm planning to go. See you there?

HOW: If tradition holds, all the films in tonight's program including Ritual in Transfigured Time come from Oddball's collection of 16mm prints.

Car Crash (1981)

WHO: Italian cult director Antonio Margheriti directed this.

WHAT: An early eighties car chase film with lead actor Joey Travolta (elder brother to John) behind the wheel and a synthesizer score? Sounds like a slice of action-packed schlock of the most easily digestible order to me. I don't believe it's available on DVD in this country, and I've never seen it (I almost said "of course" but I truly do sometimes go in for this kind of stuff). So here's a clip from a review by John Cooke:

Joey Travolta is as endearingly wooden as an Eric Estrada Chips guise clone extracted from two wheels to four but, unlike his more famous brother in recent years, keeps his spare tire in the back of the on screen vibrant red road rooster for all not to see. The blistering good looks of the car shine on screen as it eats up the road both in and out of chase sequences but it is the scene stealing qualities of John Steiner, as the loopy Kirby, which will delight and raise a smile for all in highlighting what a wonderfully accomplished and consummate character actor he had become by this time in his illustrious career.

WHERE.WHEN: 9PM tonight only at the Vortex Room.

WHY: The last few weeks have seen a flurry of local film organizations announcing their Fall programs, and there's more to come. I've been trying to keep readers of this blog and/or my twitter feed abreast of all the notable screenings but worthy events do slip through the cracks. Neither this week's SF Weekly Fall Arts Preview, and last week's Bay Guardian equivalent had much information you wouldn't already know if you read Hell On Frisco Bay as devotedly as I've been writing it this year, but the latter reminded me of a venue I've rarely mentioned on this blog and have only been to once. I wish The Vortex Room had more than a Facebook page as a linkable online presence, but that prejudice shouldn't prevent me from steering cinema lovers to an intimate space decorated like an Esquivel album cover (check out this Jackson Scarlet article on the venue for images and a description of the space and its philosophy) that plays 16mm prints of films just about no other Frisco Bay venue would dare to.

Their on-film presentations are meticulously recorded in the Film On Film Foundation calendar, but for posterity, the other 16mm titles in their current Antonio Marghereti series running each Thursday of September include 1975's Take A Hard Ride (playing with Naked You Die, the latter presumably digitally) September 12th, 1983's Yor, the Hunter From The Future (playing with The Wild Wild Planet, again presumably digitally) September 19th, and 1979's Killer Fish (playing with Cannibal Apocalypse you get the picture) September 26th.

HOW: 16mm print on a double-bill with another Antonio Margheriti action movie, a James Bond knock-off called Lightning Bolt, which I believe will screen digitally.

Jason Wiener 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 cinephile Jason Wiener, who blogs at Jason Watches Movies; most of the following links take you to his reviews on that site.

Okay, here's my list of my favorite repertory/revival (ya know, "old movie") screenings of 2011. I must stress that these are my favorites and mine alone. I'm in fact sure I saw better movies over the year, but for one reason or another these are the movies that entertained me in a special way. These are also approximately in order, although I could probably move any of them up or down a spot or two. With that said, here we go:

10. THE MOONSHINE WAR (1970) at the Vortex Room, which means I was pretty drunk on Manhattans (my New Year's resolution last year was to drink fewer martinis and more Manhattans--first time I've ever kept my resolution all year). So what I remember most is Alan Alda doing a bad hillbilly accent. That, and the whole town showing up just to watch the final showdown, like this was their weekly entertainment.

9. THE TIME MACHINE (1960) and FORBIDDEN PLANET (1956) at the Stanford Theatre. Aka, the "dumb blondes in sci-fi double feature." Seriously, Yvette Mimeaux and Anne Francis respectively are given nothing to do in these movies other than look pretty and be really dumb (or charitably, really naive). The moral here is that little girls in the 50's and 60's didn't need role models.

8. SOYLENT GREEN (1973) and SILENT RUNNING (1972) at the Vortex Room. Again, I was full of booze, so I kinda snoozed through a bit of the middle of SILENT RUNNING, but they were still both very cool. And the fact that I put dystopian future sci-fi above dumb blond eye candy sci-fi probably says something about me.

7. GASLIGHT (1944) at the Castro, as part of Noir City. Really, I could list all of Noir City here, but part of the fun is picking my favorite. For all the mental torture of Ingrid Bergman, for me I couldn't take my eyes of saucy little 19 year old Angela Lansbury. Something about finding out I'm attracted to Angela Lansbury makes this movie unforgettable.

6. THE KILLERS (1964) at the Roxie, as part of Not Necessarily Noir II. A cool story and I just love seeing Ronald Reagan playing a gangster. Also, let this serve as a plug for this year's Noir City, where it will play on Saturday Night, January 21st, with Angie Dickinson in person.

5. HAROLD AND MAUDE (1971) at the San Jose Women's Club (as part of the Beanbag Film Festival) and again at the Red Vic (as part of its closing weekend). I feel like I should enter a Bay Area cinephile's confessional and say, "Forgive me Father, for I only made it to the Red Vic a few times, and only after I knew it was in a lot of trouble." In any case, HAROLD AND MAUDE has been one of those weird films that I've seen many times, but always far enough apart that I've managed to forget large parts of it (like Maude is a Holocaust survivor) before I see it again. Until 2011, when I saw it twice in a year. Not only did I finally manage to watch it with the knowledge that Maude is a Holocaust survivor, but...well, you can read my review and see that I managed to read a Maude/Hitler romance into her past.

4. THE MAN WHO LAUGHS (1928) at the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum. Again, I could put pretty much everything I saw at Niles on this list, but I had to choose one, and this is it.

3. WORLD ON A WIRE (1973) at the Roxie. Rainer Werner Fassbinder did the MATRIX some 26 years before the Wachowski brothers came up with it. And he did it as a 4 1/2 hour epic made for German TV. Awesome.

2. NOSFERATU (1922) at the California Theatre, with Dennis James on the Wurlitzer organ, as part of Cinequest. I'm generally against the concept of favorites--I think it calcifies an element of my character that should remain fluid. My favorite movie varies with my mood, what I've seen recently, etc. But with that said, NOSFERATU is very often my favorite movie ever. And seeing it on the big screen with Dennis James on the organ is a tremendous treat.

1. THE GREAT WHITE SILENCE (1924, using footage from 1911-12) at the Castro Theatre, as part of the Silent Film Festival. Again, I could've listed the whole festival, but this was far and away the one that impressed me the most. Just looking back and seeing documentary footage from 100 years ago is pretty amazing, and the story of Robert Falcon Scott's fateful attempt on the South Pole is likewise amazing. The King allegedly wanted this footage shown to all English schoolboys to instill in them the strong sense of adventure and British spirit. My snarky half wants to make a crack about how inspiring children onto adventures that end in death isn't necessarily the smartest thing for the empire. But having seen the movie, I understand what the King was thinking.

And that's my top ten. And now for a few (dis)honorable mentions. You can decide for yourself whether they're dishonorable or honorable. These are in no particular order

SUNRISE (1927) at the Castro, again part of the Silent Film Festival. Murnau's masterpiece, of course. The reason it doesn't make my regular list is that the soundtrack was done on solo electric guitar...and that just doesn't work right. But it was interesting, and you can read from my review that it led me to a new interpretation wherein it was a supernatural succubus story. In fact, the full title for this love triangle is SUNRISE: A SONG OF TWO HUMANS. Makes you wonder which one of the three is not human.

PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE (1959) first colorized and in 3-D at the San Jose Rep as part of Cinequest, then in black and white 2-D at the Roxie to end Not Necessarily Noir II. The first time was in fact the world premiere of the 3-D version, and I was there dressed as Vampira (it wasn't pretty, and no I don't have pictures). The second time was with Johnny Legend presenting a whole Ed Wood tribute (including GLEN OR GLENDA, which also could've made this list). I'm pretty sure there wasn't anything all that honorable about either screening, but damn it was fun.

IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE (1946) at the Dark Room, on Bad Movie Night, a traditional part of their War on Christmas. Call me a Grinch, but drunk and cracking wise is the only way I ever want to see this movie again. If I ever have to move away from the bay area, I'd want to live in Pottersville. At least it's better than Cleveland.