10HTE: Michael Hawley

The San Francisco Bay Area is still home to a rich cinephilic culture nurtured in large part by a diverse array of cinemas, programmers and moviegoers. I'm honored to present a selection of favorite screenings experienced by local cinephiles in 2016. An index of participants can be found here.

Ten-time IOHTE contributor Michael Hawley runs the blog film-415.

2016 Favorite Bay Area Revival/Repertory Screenings

Blow Job screen shot from Music Box DVD of The Story of Film: An Odyssey

Blow Job (1963 USA dir. Andy Warhol)
Andy Warhol's Silver Screen: Rarities & Restorations, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

I expected to be bored, but instead found myself strangely captivated by this infamous Warhol silent in which the camera coolly observes the face – and only the face – of a young man (DeVeren Bookwalter) angelically lit from above, as he receives a titular off-screen BJ. Shot in high contrast B&W, the exquisite new 16mm print made it easy to savor the way light plays over the planes of his expressive and continually moving face. Eventually one notices how the eyes only become visible when the head tilts back and how his pouty upper lip remains perpetually hidden in shadow. After 25 minutes a pair of arms finally rises in sweet surrender, followed by five minutes of cigarette smoking. The End. On the same double-bill was My Hustler, a 1965 two-reeler gab-fest that benefitted greatly from its astoundingly clear audio. In the first section, a gay man and his fag hag neighbor dish the Dial-a-Hustler (Paul America) lounging on the beach below. Mr. America returns in reel two as he and another hustler (Joseph Campbell) shower, shave and preen whilst discussing the finer points of their trade. I was also lucky enough to catch Warhol's The Life of Juanita Castro (1965) and The Velvet Underground Tarot Cards (1966) as part of this YBCA series.

Hospital (1970 USA dir. Frederick Wiseman)
Frederick Wiseman Restorations: Three Confrontational Classics, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

Although I found plenty to admire in Titicut Follies (1967) and High School (1969), both part of this 35mm restorations trio, it was Wiseman's riveting portrait of NYC's Metropolitan Hospital that really shocked my senses. I was particularly taken by the hospital staff's compassion and advocacy for their mostly low-income and indigent clientele – and I'm fully convinced it wasn't just an act for the camera. Inone memorably intense sequence, a staff psychiatrist valiantly pleads by phone with the city's Department of Welfare to obtain help for an underage African-American transgender prostitute.

Until the End of the World screen shot from Magnolia DVD of Steve Jobs: the Man in the Machine

Until The End of the World (1991 Germany dir. Wim Wenders)
Wim Wenders: Portraits Along the Road, Pacific Film Archive

While I really dug this dystopian road movie 25 years ago in its 158-minute iteration, there's even more tolove now in this gorgeous 4K restoration of Wenders' five-hour director's cut, shown at the PFA with a 30-minute intermission. The film's prescience is staggering, with automobile GPS, facial ID software and inter-personal video communication all part of its near-futuristic milieu.

Loulou (1980 France dir. Maurice Pialat)
Love Exists: The Films of Maurice Pialat, Pacific Film Archive

After seeing a reunited Isabelle Huppert and Gérard Depardieu in 2015's In the Valley of Love, it was grand going back 35 years to watch them in the prime of youthful magnificence. In Pialat's slice-of-life examination of class conflict, Huppert plays a young woman who leaves her priggish husband (Guy Marchand) for Depardieu's loutish ex-con. Favorite line: "I'd prefer a loafer who fucks to a rich guy who bugs me!"

Under Age (1941 USA dir. Edward Dmytryk)
I Wake Up Screaming (1941 USA dir. Bruce Humberstone)
The Girl and the Monster (1941 USA dir. Stuart Heisler
I Wake Up Dreaming, Castro Theatre

This line-up of trashy 1941 Film Noir – courtesy of esteemed, soon-to-be ex-San Francisco programmer Elliot Lavine – was THE triple-bill of 2016. In Under Age, two down-on-their-luck sisters fall into a scheme by which hitchhiking women coax businessmen to a chain of rest stops where they're swindled by waiting gangsters. Then in I Wake Up Screaming, a publicity agent is accused of murdering the waitress he's transformed into an A-list celebrity, with a fantastically menacing Laird Cregar as the police inspector out to frame him. I was surprised by a scene in which Betty Grable and Victor Mature hide out in a 24-hour "Adults Only" movie theater. I guess that was already a thing back in 1941? Then in the ultimate cake-taker The Girl and the Monster, a man about to be wrongly executed asks a scientist to transplant his brain into a gorilla so he can seek revenge against the mobsters who prostituted his sister. Yes, you read that correctly.

Multiple Maniacs (1979 USA dir. John Waters)

I hadn't seen Waters' first synch-sound film in over 30 years so this Janus Films 4-K restoration was a true like-a-virgin experience. So many things I had forgotten – Divine's hilariously fevered interior monolog in the church scene, the climactic chase through the streets of Baltimore, the re-enactment of Jesus' multiplying of loaves and fishes (canned tuna and trashy white bread). It was a special thrill seeing it in Alamo Drafthouse's main auditorium with Waters on hand to do the intro honors.

A Woman of the World screen shot from Janus DVD of The Love Goddesses

A Woman of the World (1925 USA dir. Malcolm St. Clair)
21st San Francisco Silent Film Festival, Castro Theatre

Of the 14 programs I caught at this year's SF Silent Film Festival, I had the most fun watching Pola Negri as a tattoo-sporting Italian countess scandalizing a small American hamlet. The image of Negri horsewhipping the local district attorney who wants to run her out of town is now lovingly seared upon my brain. Two additional SFSFF highpoints were Shooting Stars, which marked the debut of brilliant British director Anthony Asquith (A Cottage on Dartmoor), and René Clair's farcical The Italian Straw Hat.

The Beatles at Shea Stadium (1966 USA)
Castro Theatre

This miraculous 4K restoration of the Fab Four's legendary 35-minute Shea Stadium concert was a bonus feature at screenings of Ron Howard's new documentary, The Beatles: Eight Days a Week – The Touring Years. (The doc was concurrently streaming on HULU, minus the Shea concert). Thanks to its being shot with 14 cameras, the viewer experiences everything from the band's dazed sprint out onto the field, right up through their being whisked away by security post-concert. Most importantly, the songs can now be heard clearly over the stadium's 55,000 screaming fans. My favorite moment saw John and George convulsing with laughter while singing back-up on "I'm Down," the concert's final number.

So This is Paris (1926 USA dir. Ernst Lubitsch)
San Francisco Silent Film Festival's A Day of Silents, Castro Theatre

My fave silent film discovery of the year was this clever and breezy marital infidelity romp featuring four first-rate actors I'd never heard of and an orgiastic Charleston dance sequence that's gotta be seen to be believed. This one-day marathon of silent cinema goodness also featured Sadie Thompson with Gloria Swanson (who kept reminding me of Kristen Stewart!), the Alloy Orchestra accompanying Eisenstein's Strike, and the first-ever Oscar winner for Best Actor (Emil Jannings in 1928's The Last Command.)

Scarlet Street screen shot from Kino DVD

Scarlet Street (1945 USA dir. Fritz Lang)
Noir City 14, Castro Theatre

Edward G. Robinson gives a delicately sympathetic performance as a put-upon hubby and Sunday painter who gets mixed up with a prostitute (Joan Bennett) and her pimp boyfriend (Dan Duryea). It's easy to see why Fritz Lang considered this his favorite of the films he made in Hollywood. The movie wrapped up an impressive Saturday afternoon triple-bill that included 1944's The Lodger starring (once again) the great Laird Cregar as a surrogate Jack the Ripper, and 1944's Bluebeard featuring John Carradine as a women-murdering Parisian puppeteer. Noir City 14 also afforded me worthwhile revisits of Michael Powell's The Red Shoes and Peeping Tom, as well as Antonioni's Blow-Up.

10HTE: Lucy Laird

The San Francisco Bay Area is still home to a rich cinephilic culture nurtured in large part by a diverse array of cinemas, programmers and moviegoers. I'm honored to present a selection of favorite screenings experienced by local cinephiles in 2016. An index of participants can be found here.

Three-time IOHTE contributor Lucy Laird is the operations director for the SF Silent Film Festival, co-boss at Nerd Nite San Francisco, and writer of the occasional program note for local festivals.

In chronological order:

Image from Film Grimoire; chose it because WE HAD BEEN WAITING so long for the PFA to re-open!

2/3/2016 The Seventh Seal (1957) at the still-off-gassing-paint-and-carpet-glue-new Barbro Osher Theater at BAMPFA

There was no way I could miss the first “regular” public screening at the PFA. Having heard tales of the before-my-time, not-built-for-cinema Gund Theater’s glory days and having worked in and fallen in love (nothing like a pre-code series to fan the flames) at the “temporary” field-house structure on Bancroft Avenue, I knew this latest iteration had a lot to live up to. Yes, this Bergman was a bit somber for a celebration, but Barbro Osher charmed the audience with her introductory remarks, setting the scene for this: the screen makes generous use of its space (suddenly taking up much more of the wall’s square footage, hurrah!), the audience gasps (or was that just me?) as the masking makes way, the Swedish master takes over, and I see this film for the first time for my third time and the PFA’s fifth time on its third screen!

Screen capture from youtube.

2/6/2016 Douglas Sirk’s The Tarnished Angels (1957) at the PFA’s Cinema, Mon Amour series

Cinemascope, black-and-white perfection. I remember renting it on VHS from Santa Monica’s great (and thankfully not quite late) video store, Vidiots, back in the early aughts, and cursing my stupidity at not waiting until it came to a theater near me in 35 to see it for the first time. But I’d just read Sirk on Sirk, so perhaps you can understand. It’s a film about loneliness and love and stunt flying, the compulsive circling of Robert Stack’s character around the pylons a bit like us cinemaniacs, circling back around to our favorite theaters, convinced the next screening—or the next—will be our most thrilling.

3/4/2016 Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) at the New Mission

Technically a revival screening, no matter that it was only a few months out of the theater before it circled back again. This was my first time at an Alamo Drafthouse, but I quickly became a convert to the slightly-too-slick anti-device and -talking pre-show admonitions. Thankfully, George Miller’s dystopian crank-fest was loud enough to dampen any of my newbie annoyance at the (excellent, though pricey!) service of food and drink. Let the record show that earplugs were inserted about 10 minutes into this particular film and I then ate it up, along with a milkshake. Delicious and lived up to the hype—both the movie and the theater!

Image from MoMA

5/14/2016 Twilight (no, not THAT one) aka Crepúsculo (1945), part of the PFA’s Mexican Film Noir series

Gorgeous, overwrought, a denouement on a bridge that knocked the wind outta me, and a darn fine soft-titling job from a brave soul in the booth. Wish I’d gone to more of these Mexican noirs…

5/22/2016 The Red Balloon (1956) as part of BAMPFA’s free Family Day

I’d been reading my 4-year-old daughter the children’s book version (made up of stills from the film), but it had been years since I’d seen this, so we went with some friends. Still potent, still moving, still or moving, but there’s nothing like experiencing Ménilmontant avec Pascal, on the run through the petite alleyways, only wide enough for a boy and his balloon, watching with kids not yet old enough for subtitles.

Image from cageyfilms blog

And then I came back later on 5/22 for Antonio Pietrangeli’s I Knew Her Well (1965), one of the PFA’s (ir)regular 4K digital restoration screenings

I couldn’t help thinking I’d’a watched the heck out of this whilst in my obsessed-with-Jean-Seberg phase 20 years ago, because Stefania Sandrelli is just as compelling and has better hair—and her character works as a fabulously dressed cinema usher! What sad fun she and this film are.

6/3/2016 Behind the Door (1919) at the Castro Theatre, part of the 21st SF Silent Film Festival

I don’t have time to preview all the films we show at the Silent Film Festival, and I’m sure glad I didn’t spoil Behind the Door by distractedly watching a digital copy of it ahead of time. Perverse, beautiful, uncanny, and made all the more so with Stephen Horne live, at a late-night screening of a brand-new, tinted 35mm print, this was the rare SFSFF film I made time to watch all the way through DURING the festival, to-do lists be darned! And now here’s my unabashed plug: watch the trailer, then pre-order the DVD/Blu-ray from Flicker Alley

Image from Theater of Guts blog

9/24/2016 White Dog (1982), part of the series Samuel Fuller: A Fuller Life at the Smith Rafael Film Center

Another of those “How can I have not seen this yet?!” films, White Dog, with its complicated history and cult following, is a movie that I’d wanted to view for the first time on the big screen. But it was oh-so-worth the wait. Such a weird and sinister atmosphere, combining some really shoddy lighting set-ups and acting (I’m looking at you, Kristy), but somehow all the better for those faults. And on Art House Theater Day, and with Fuller’s wife and daughter on hand for a post-screening Q&A, and—I later found out—in a 35mm director’s cut snagged in a twist of fate by a private collector friend. How lucky we are to live here and have access to these experiences! So why was the theater so empty? Your only excuse would be that you decided to see it at the Roxie instead.

10/23/2016 Annie (1982) singalong at the Castro Theatre

Why didn’t anyone tell me that there are GIGANTIC areas of screen covered up by the singalong lyrics? Yes, this was my first singalong experience, so maybe that’s old news. And the bags of stuff everyone gets? The bang-snaps and the glow sticks and the candy and the bubbles? Well, I was a sucker for it all, especially that goodie bag, which kept my kid happy during the (many) charmingly boring parts of this John Huston film that I remember LOVING as a kid. I think I still love it and happily belted out the stupid tunes. This is my kind of expanded cinema.

Image courtesy contributor

11/2/2016 Joshua Grannell (aka Peaches Christ)’s talk at Nerd Nite @ the Alamo Drafthouse New Mission Theater, part of the Bay Area Science Festival

This is a bit of a cheat because a) this isn’t strictly a movie, and b) I was involved in programming this show that combined a little bit of science, a little bit of cinema, cocktail robots, and a celebration of the New Mission Theater’s 100th anniversary—but I did not book Mr. Grannell, whose bawdy, and brilliant slideshow/lecture on the history of the Bay Area’s cult film scene really livened up the proceedings. Thank Christ for Peaches!

10HTE: Sterling Hedgpeth

The San Francisco Bay Area is still home to a rich cinephilic culture nurtured in large part by a diverse array of cinemas, programmers and moviegoers. I'm honored to present a selection of favorite screenings experienced by local cinephiles in 2016. An index of participants can be found here.

First-time IOHTE contributor Sterling Hedgpeth runs a stamps & cinema blog called The Filmatelist, from which he's allowed me to re-post (with different images) from this entry.

Dumbo screen capture from Disney DVD

We’ll start with Dumbo (Sharpsteen, 1941) at the Paramount in Oakland, on absolutely stunning 35mm. Although the emcee called it original (which it couldn’t have been, because that would have meant nitrate stock), it certainly was a crisply struck print that had not seen much circulation. Combine the divine “Pink Elephants on Parade” sequence with the most gorgeous Art Deco palace in the Bay Area, and it was a great way to start the year.

Also in January were some memorable titles at Noir City at the Castro, and for me, the highlight was a first viewing of Mickey One (Penn, 1965), a glorious jazz-tinged fever dream of a film, with an assist from legend Stan Getz. Disjointed, bizarre, singularly unique and punctuated by a live dance routine from burlesque goddess Evie Lovelle.

Soon after, the PFA had an excellent Maurice Pialat series, but I suspect that the power of his Under the Sun of Satan (1987) was magnified by it being bookended (quite by coincidence) with two other contemporary films I saw the same week that also explore religious faith, fanaticism and hypocrisy: Pablo Larrain’s The Club and Avishai Sivan’s Tikkun. In Pialat’s fantasy-fueled acid bath Passion Play, he posits the possibility that religion may be the most oppressive to the truly devout. Overall, a provocative accidental trilogy.

The Beguiled screen shot from Universal DVD

Some fun Gothic films ran their course at the Yerba Buena Arts Center that summer, and the highlight was my first time seeing The Beguiled (1971) on the big screen. Still Don Siegel’s best, Clint Eastwood plays a Yankee fox trying to subvert and seduce a Dixie henhouse. The thick hothouse atmosphere and sexual tension played beautifully through Siegel's lighting and the insidious plotting and character power plays. Still a remarkable film (soon to be remade by Sofia Coppola).

Though a relatively recent movie, I have to include the Triplets of Belleville (Chomet, 2003) screening at the Taube Atrium in the SF Opera House because Benoît Charest was there with a jazz combo to perform his exquisite score live, including saws, bikes, and trashcans as percussion instruments. A terrific experience.

2016 was the first year the Alamo Drafthouse in the Mission was open, and the best part of their programming is the late night Mon-Wed screenings. My first dip into that pool was a packed show of Two-Lane Blacktop (Hellman, 1971), which I’ve seen several times in the theater, but never tire of the gearhead culture, the meditative structure and lack of urgency (for a racing film!) and Warren Oates’s phenomenal turn as GTO. My year was relatively short on roadtrips but this went some way to sating my wanderlust.

The Shining screen capture from Warner DVD

In my backyard at the Parkway, there was an irresistible double bill of the cuckoo-bananas conspiracy theory documentary Room 237 (Ascher, 2012) followed by a screening of the focus of its subject, The Shining (Kubrick, 1980) itself. Rarely does a year go by when I don’t see some Kubrick on screen (I also revisited Paths of Glory and Spartacus at the Smith Rafael Film Center for Kirk Douglas’s 100th birthday), but a bonus this year was an excellent exhibit on Kubrick at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in SF with some amazing artifacts from his career, including the typewriter and hedge maze model from this film.

Also at the Smith Rafael was a Sam Fuller weekend (with his widow and daughter in attendance), where the biggest revelation for me was his Tokyo noir House of Bamboo (1955), a beautifully stylized genre piece whose gangster trappings and compositions appeared to anticipate the marvelous Seijun Suzuki, whose career was starting around the exact same time. As you’d expect, Robert Ryan is in top form and the climax on a rooftop amusement park is a standout.

Destiny screen capture from Kino DVD

And finally, two silent films, both firsts for me. At the Silent Film Festival at the Castro, Destiny (1921), the earliest film I’ve seen by Fritz Lang and a glorious anthology of stories where Love must face down Death. It was wonderful seeing Lang’s visual imagination in bloom, anticipating the superb special FX and supernatural wonders of his next few years in Germany. Months later, over at the Niles Essanay Film Museum, the buoyant energy of underrated actress Bebe Daniels was on full display in the fizzy comedy Feel My Pulse (La Cava, 1928), about a hypochondriac heiress looking for rest at a health sanitarium which is actually acting as a front for bootleggers (led by a very young William Powell). A hilarious comedy and secret gem.

So that’s 10 features, but since I saw over 60 archival shorts in the theater last year, I’ll give an honorable mention to two with Buster Keaton, still silent in the autumn of his career. I saw The Railrodder (Potterton, 1965) at an Oddball Film Archive screening, featuring Buster traveling across Canada on an open-air mini-railcar, a playful reminder of his other great train film The General, but in sumptuous color. And around the same time, the Smith Rafael Film Center played Film (Schneider, 1965), one of Samuel Beckett’s few forays into film and a wonderful existential metaphor with Buster showing that age had not changed the expressiveness of his body in motion. A sublime pairing. Here’s looking forward to another year of familiar films and new discoveries.

10HTE: Adrianne Finelli

The San Francisco Bay Area is still home to a rich cinephilic culture nurtured in large part by a diverse array of cinemas, programmers and moviegoers. I'm honored to present a selection of favorite screenings experienced by local cinephiles in 2016. An index of participants can be found here.

Three-time IOHTE contributor Adrianne Finelli is a filmmaker & GAZE co-curator.

This chronological list is not presented in any type of rated order as I could not begin to weigh these works in relation to one another.

The Fall of the I-Hotel screen shot from online trainer

1
The Fall of the I-Hotel (1983)
dir. Curtis Choy
Artists'Television Access
Thursday, February 11, 2016

This screening was of the most politically resonant and poetically inspiring films that I have seen in recent years. The Fall of the I-Hotel should be required viewing for everyone living in the Bay Area, as was the preceding short film Anatomy of a Mural (1982) by Rick Goldsmith. The screening was programmed by a team of filmmakers, writers and curators who are rediscovering a local library's film print collection and sharing the best of their findings through free public screenings.

2
L'enfance nue (1968)
dir. Maurice Pialat
Pacific Film Archive
Saturday, February 20, 2016

Naked Childhood (L'enfance nue) was the most emotionally charged narrative film that I saw this year, and its true impact is how it restrains emotion into very palpable realism. The story is complex and simple, the performances are jarringly brilliant, the cinematography is beautifully sincere. I tried to see as much of the Pialat series as possible, he is a master of portraying the human depth of feelings.

3
NFPF PreservationHighlights
presented by Jeff Lambert
Pacific Film Archive
Wednesday, February 24, 2016

Jeff Lambert presented this program of recently preserved films. The screening was full of surprising variety and unexpected gems from the National Film Preservation Foundation. Children Who Labor (1912) by Ethel Browning, Interior New York Subway (1905) and Lyman Howe's Famous Ride on a Runaway Train (1921)—all new to me—were fascinating documents. Plus, it was a real treat to see Sid Laverents's Multiple Sidosis (1970) on 35mm.

That Night's Wife screen capture from Eclipse DVD

4
That Night's Wife (Sono yo no tsuma) (1930)
dir. Yasujiro Ozu
Castro Theatre—San Francisco Silent Film Festival
Friday, June 3, 2016

Perhaps the most beautiful silent film I have ever seen—this particular print was stunning, the texture of the film almost became another character. Ozu cleverly hooks us with a suspenseful, noir-like crime plot and slowly shifts the story's core to an intimate family drama. I never remember crying during a silent film, but Emiko Yagumo's brilliant performance as the mother moved me to tears. I'm sure that the nuanced live musical accompaniment by Maud Nelissen also had something to do with my weepy reaction.

5
Within Our Gates (1920)
dir. Oscar Micheaux
Castro Theatre—San Francisco Silent Film Festival
Saturday, June 4, 2016

I left the Castro feeling like I needed to write a thank you letter to each member of the Oakland Symphony and Chorus for their unforgettable performance. This was my first time seeing Micheaux's Within Our Gates, and getting an African-American perspective from that historical era makes me wish I had seen it during my film studies instead of being shown The Birth of a Nation (1915) repeatedly. In addition, the writing and performances are powerful, and the whole is tremendously haunting considering our current political climate.

6
Water and Power (1989)
dir. Pat O'Neill
Pacific Film Archive
Thursday, September 29, 2016

Filmmaker Pat O'Neill was in attendance for this screening of Water and Power plus several short works. It was a joy to see all of the films in the new PFA theater and to hear the discussion that followed the screening. I was blown away by the whole evening. O'Neill is a master that remains curious and prolific. It was wonderful to also see the exhibition of his artwork in the gallery beforehand. The range of work—painting, drawing, sculpture and installation was remarkable.

Jeanne Dielman screen capture from Criterion DVD

7
Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975)
dir. Chantal Akerman
SFMOMA
Sunday, October 9, 2016

This screening was perhaps the most meaningful film screening of 2016 to me. I had seen Jeanne Dielman before, but this particular time marked my first public screening as a projectionist. I had the honor of sharing the booth and studying under the talented Brecht Andersch. We bonded over having seen the film for the first time in our late teens and the impact it had on us. We collectively mourned the loss of the great Chantal Akerman. It was a very emotional and surreal experience. 

8
La Région Decentrale (2016): A Prepared Projection Performance for Michael Snow's La Région Centrale (1971) by Gibson + Recoder
Exploratorium co-presented with Canyon Cinema
Tuesday, November 7, 2016

This screening happened on Election Day 2016 after spending the day hiking in the Marin Headlands with dear company. I entered the Kanbar Forum with a sinking feeling in my stomach as we were still uncertain of the country's fate, but my fears and anxiety fell away as I became entranced in a visual and aural meditation with a room full of fellow travelers. Sandra Gibson and Luis Recoder presented a live four projector performance that reimaged Michael Snow's three hour La Région Centrale (1971) simultaneously into a quadrant of images that layered the sound from each reel. At the moment that the third projection was introduced the sound transformed into an otherworldly force.

9
Conical Solid (1974)
dir. Anthony McCall
Sutro Baths Cave—Lightfield Film Festival
Sunday, November 13, 2016

Lightfield Film Festival organized one of the most magical film events that I have ever attended. Imagine this—abstract light flickers from a 16mm projector fill a cave of fog and creates forms that touch the bodies flanking its brilliant beam with the sound of the salty waves crashing against the rocks alongside the ruins of the famed Sutro Baths under the biggest supermoon of our lifetime.

Lost Landscapes of San Francisco, 11 screen capture from longnow.org stream of the show.

10
Lost Landscapes of San Francisco, 11
edited by Rick Prelinger
Castro Theatre
Wednesday, December 7, 2016

This was my fifth year attending Rick Prelinger's annual screening of found footage of the San Francisco Bay Area. My husband and I always look forward to the event and love hearing the voices of the community shout out locations, jokes and information, but this year was especially wonderful as we had the rare opportunity to join Rick and Megan Prelinger on stage with our fellow Prelinger Library volunteers. Rick's remarks about the importance of the commons struck a chord with many and the energy of the crowd could be felt throughout the entire theater. It was also a great pleasure to scan some of the featured 8mm and 16mm film footage for Lost Landscapes of San Francisco, 11.

10HTE: Carl Martin

The San Francisco Bay Area is still home to a rich cinephilic culture nurtured in large part by a diverse array of cinemas, programmers and moviegoers. I'm honored to present a selection of favorite screenings experienced by local cinephiles in 2016. An index of participants can be found here.

Nine-time IOHTE contributor Carl Martin blogs and runs the Bay Area Film Calendar (and even a new L.A. offshoot) for the Film on Film Foundation.

The Lodger screen capture from Fox DVD

january 30: the lodger @ the castro (noir city)
not the hitchcock version of marie belloc lowndes's jack the ripper story but john brahms's, starring laird cregar, whose talent dwarfed his girth. it was early in the year, but i remember still the meticulously, evocatively detailed sets, fully fleshed-out performances in the minor roles even, and a poetic sensibility that made a virtue of the unacceptability of showing explicitly a murder victim's terminal blood-gush. screened later in the evening: scarlet street, a movie i was sure i'd seen but hadn't, and what a movie!

march 9: black vengeance, aka poor pretty eddie @ the new mission
a new (old) venue, and stabs at genre and extrageneric rep programming. terror tuesdays took off, not as much weird wednesdays. there was some chaff, but damned if there wasn't hidden wheat! both the film's titles prime us for the lowbrow, but as we should know by now, exploitation films often harbor social commentary, and this one does in spades (and from a feminist perspective).

march 23: defending your life @ the roxie
albert brooks's films are rarely screened. previously i'd only seen the lackluster looking for comedy in the muslim world. i hope this is more typical of his work. poignant, personal, and funny.

Under the Cherry Moon screen capture from Warner DVD

june 9: under the cherry moon @ the castro
we all know purple rain is great. but it took a death for anyone to dare bring back utcm (or track down the also-excellent sign "☮" the times) prince treats the twentieth century as he does his sexuality. there is no anachronism; he panchronistically cherry-picks the best each era has to offer.

september 15: meshes of the afternoon in 16mm @ oddball archives (another one bites the dust)
oh sure, i'd seen it before, but this time its revolutionary dream logic really swept over me. poetic perfection. it played with a wonderful program of paul clipson films.

october 5: an american werewolf in london @ the castro
john landis always seemed terribly overrated to me. kentucky fried movie is a winner but that's because it has that z-a-z magic. animal house is ok. the blues brothers gets too big for its britches (and dan aykroyd is one of the worst actors). starting with the travellers' well-drawn camaraderie, on through the stereotypical depiction of english village life, to the burgeoning relationship between patient and nurse, and beyond, aawil crams in humor, romance, and pathos, while walking that tightrope between the real and the psychological that is strung through all the best horror films, and it works splendidly. to top it off, landis has included the best film-within-a-film and one of the best dreams-within-a-dream (along with meshes?). i'm glad i finally caught up with this shockingly good movie.

Lucifer Rising screen capture from Fantoma DVD

october 25: lucifer rising in 16mm (private screening)
i had a chance to re-watch this kenneth anger masterpiece and realized i had in fact never seen it and OH DAMN it's like a little satanic 16mm baraka.

november 11: if you can't see my mirrors, i can't see you in 16mm @ the lab (light field festival)
this film was made in 2016 so it breaks the rules but alee peoples's work reminds me of the playful spirit of some "artist-made" films of the '60's and '70's. this one plays with how objects enter the frame, and with our expectations.

november 21: a divided world (private screening)
part of what made this screening special was its serendipity, but i won't go into the details of that. arne sucksdorff shot animals as if they were humans and vice versa. as in many of his films, we don't see the humans here. but rarely has the intersection of nature and artifice been so breathtakingly photographed.

49th Parallel screen capture from Criterion DVD

december 4: 49th parallel @ pfa
i caught up with a number of powell-pressburgers i hadn't seen before (and re-watched the utterly fab i know where i'm going). here, laurence olivier has a lot of fun playing a fronch caneddian but then disappears as we move on to another wonderful canadian setting and set of characters. can it be that the nazis are the anti-protagonists of this film, as at each encounter they find their ideologies challenged and their numbers reduced? or is canada itself the hero? trust p&p to find still-exciting ways to reinvigorate narrative formulas. in a propaganda film no less.