Better Late Than Never: a brief 2007 review

NOTE: THIS ENTRY HAS BEEN SALVAGED FROM THIS SITE AND REPOSTED UNEDITED ON 6/1/2008. SOME INFORMATION MAY BE OUTDATED, AND OUTGOING LINKS HAVE NOT BEEN INSPECTED FOR REPUBLICATION. COMMENTS CAN BE FOUND HERE.

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I finally finished up my coverage of the Sundance Film Festival at GreenCine Daily, and now I find myself in the midst of Frisco's festival season. We're in the middle of Indiefest, which I usually enjoy sampling a few titles from (as a big Dengue Fever fan I'm probably most excited by the documentary on that band's recent tour of Cambodia, Sleepwalking Through the Mekong). San Jose's Cinequest announced its program last week, and this is the year I'm finally going to attend this festival, after several years of simply eyeing their programming from afar. There's just no way I can let myself miss chances to see silent films by Ozu and Eisenstein I've only sampled on VHS before now; I'll definitely be making my first trip to the restored California Theatre for the delightful I Was Born, But... February 29th, and hopefully the monumental October (sometimes known as Ten Days That Shook the World) on March 7th as well. And there's other enticing options from the Cinequest lineup of recent films, such as Naomi Kawase's the Mourning Forest, which won a prize at the last Cannes film festival, and Esteban Sapir's the Aerial, which opened the 2007 Rotterdam Film Festival. I've already seen and can recommend a few of the films on the program; I caught the British-made noir-animation short Yours Truly at Sundance, and local filmmaker Alejandro Adams' Around the Bay on a screener. More on the latter later.

The SF Asian American Film Festival announced its lineup just yesterday, and as usual it's going to be hard for me to prioritize the anticipated titles at this, always one of my favorite festivals of the year. Again, more later, but for now, take a look at the lineup here, or check a new feature I just added to my sidebar, just below the "Frisco cinema" links. I'll highlight current and upcoming local film festivals in this slot, and try my best to keep it absolutely up-to-date, even at moments when I don't feel I have time to jot down impressions, hunt down urls, and publish new posts. Let me know what you think of this idea- I only wish I'd thought of it before!

But now, let me put the lid on 2007. Finally. Yes, we're already well enough into 2008 that this all might seem irrelevant by now, but since I didn't have my act together to contribute to the Senses of Cinema World Poll I where I usually house my year-end wrap-up of new releases, I figure I might as well put it here on my home turf. My top ten new-to-me and new-to-Frisco films of 2007 are as follows, in alphabetical order with superficial commentary but more substantial links:

Brand Upon the Brain! (Guy Maddin, Canada) more than satisfied my craving for neo-silent extravaganza.
The Darjeeling Limited (Wes Anderson, USA) is an affectionate critique of the privileged Westerner's outlook on spiritual journeys in Asia.
Everything Will Be OK (Don Hertzfeldt, USA) represents a new level of achievement from one of my very favorite short-form filmmakers.
Forever (Heddy Honigmann, the Netherlands) is one of the most moving documentaries I've found.
Grindhouse (Quentin Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez, Edgar Wright, Rob Zombie, and Eli Roth, USA) transcended its retro-thrill-ride essence by yo-yo-ing audience expectations in a fascinating manner. All directors involved were in peak form for this one.
Opera Jawa (Garin Nugroho, Indonesia) is the film that, for me, most perfectly encapsulated the mission of the the New Crowned Hope film project, even though I loved
Syndromes and a Century (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Thailand) and its expression of a favorite director's personal vision even more. Swap this title with the Wes Anderson film and this list becomes approximately preferential in order.
There Will Be Blood (Paul Thomas Anderson, USA), speaking of personal vision, sent me home with enough of this year's most visionary moments to completely overwhelm the nagging that its director wasn't always exactly certain what he wanted to do with this film.
Woman on the Beach (Hong Sang-soo, South Korea) found Hong in autocritical mode as usual, but this time the characters felt less like props for each other than they sometimes can in his films.
VHS - Kahloucha (Nejib Belkadhi, Tunisia) was the year's most entertaining and enlightening peek into the worldwide phenomenon of DIY filmmaking, through the keyhole of a Sousse action auteur and his followers.

Runners-up, because I can't just limit my favorites to ten, would include Martha Colburn's Destiny Manifesto, David Cronenberg's Eastern Promises, Lev Yilmaz's How We Managed to Not Really Date Each Other, So Yong Kim's In Between Days, David Lynch's Inland Empire, Joel & Ethan Coens' No Country For Old Men, Jafar Pahani's Offside, Jessica Yu's Protagonist, Brad Bird's Ratatouille and Carlos Reygadas's Silent Light. Many of these, on another day, could easily have found their way on the "official" top ten list. But right this minute anyway, they feel like somewhat more minor works.

And here's where I apologize profusely to loyal and esteemed Hell on Frisco Bay contributor Adam Hartzell, who sent me his own top ten list for 2007 weeks ago, has weathered my endless procrastinations but is still willing to offer his thoughts on the year to you readers. Please forgive the unforgivable delay, my friend. Here's Adam:

I purposely made the decision to watch fewer films this year, reducing my screenings of new films (that is, films new to me) by one-third. I reduced the number of films I saw for many reasons, but a big motivator was being aware one can only consume so much media or else risk getting matters all muddled up. Plus, as much as I make efforts to incorporate my film watching with my friendships, it can take away from that time as well.

This is the first year where most of the films I watched were not from South Korea, the cinema I primarily write about as a contributor to Koreanfilm.org. Instead, most of the films I caught were from the country I call home, the United States. This is likely due to the fact that I wasn’t able to attend the Pusan International Film Festival since I was helping out with the Korean American Film Festival in San Francisco. (This also likely explains why no South Korean films make my list this year, although the Lee Bang-rae retrospective of his films from the 1960s that I caught at the Pucheon International Fantastic Film Festival was a highlight of the year.) Also, my DVD consumption increased as a percentage of what I watched. It appears that complacency set in, that is, in not consciously pursuing a certain number of films to watch, I fell into the easiest films to access and easiest spaces to watch films, respectively the United States and my flat.

With that summary of my idiosyncratic year at the movies, here is my Top Ten from what I was able to catch in 2007. (Films eligible for my list are those released in 2007 or at the edge of the 2006/2007 border along with films yet released that I caught at film festivals.)

10) Endo (Jade Castro, 2007, Philippines)

I reserve my #10 as a reach, a stretch. A film I know might not be brilliant but I took such a liking to, I allow it to seep ever so slightly into my list of the best of the year. In this case, placing Jade Castro's Endo on this list is a stretch because I saw it without subtitles at the CineMalaya Independent Film Festival at the Cultural Center of the Philippines in Manila while stationed at my company’s office there this past summer. I can't feel confident about this choice since I watched it un-translated. I know there are much better Pinoy films (see Noel Vera's list for way better guidance than I can provide), but I greatly enjoyed the mood of young adult ennui the film presented. What I couldn't understand I was able to bring to my co-workers who did their best to explain something they hadn’t seen but definitely an experience they all knew quite well. The title Endo is not referring to the BMX trick-riding term, but a term for contract workers at (mostly) mall stores and fast food establishments, working until the 'end of contract'. This information helped me better understand the long lines of manila folders (my co-workers don’t call them that in Manila) containing their resumes outside the malls on my walk home from work in the morning. The story follows two lovers who meet in their respective contract work and how they negotiate their futures considering the limited economic opportunities available to them.

9) Hot Fuzz (Edgar Wright, 2007, UK)

Man this film was fun. I got the DVD from a White Elephant gift exchange at work. I had my gift stolen from me at the end and instead of continue the exchange stealing, I took the final remaining gift and I'm glad I did, otherwise I might not have caught this film until much later. The pace, dialogue, and ridiculousness of this 'model' village gone bad was a pleasant ride the whole way through. (Side note, one of my ex-pat co-workers is a firm believer in the 'greater good' of letting the underage drink at pubs claiming it helps reduce(?) teen pregnancy. Who knew a film like Hot Fuzz would generate such serious policy discussions?)

8) Ratatouille (Brad Bird, 2007, USA)

I was privileged to have the opportunity to see this treat in the lovely Pixar screening room where stars shoot above and cricket chirps surround before the fun begins. It says a lot that I still put this film on my list when I am truly sick and tired of the male-ego-enhancing trope of the unkempt/incompetent/uninspiring guy finding redemption when the together/talented/motivated gal takes an unjustified shine to him. (Thankfully, Juno was a nice corrective to the Superbads, Eagle Vs. Sharks, & Knocked Ups this year.) In spite of Ratatouille plotting through my political peeve, the film warmed my kitchen’s hearth like it did that of so many others.

7) Lust, Caution (Ang Lee, 2007, Taiwan)

I understand that the Women Film Critic Circle listed this one amongst their 2007 Hall of Shame and I’m curious to read an article/essay that expands on that argument.
Personally, my feminist frame doesn’t find the film to be an Eve-is-Evil narrative. And the character falling for her rapist does not condone the rapist or the act of falling in love with a rapist but presents someone making constrained choices within a misogynist system, within a world lacking in full female agency, not a film approving of said misogyny. But I’m open to contrary interpretations. As I left the Lumiere in San Francisco, I felt discomfort. I felt at dis-ease. I was cautioned about my passions (political and otherwise) just as the film intended.

6) Romántico (Mark Becker, 2005, USA)

I saw this film early in the year, so my memory is fuzzy, but I recall the film treating its traveling troubadour subject with great respect. Rather than caricature the border-crossing of Mexican immigrants, it allowed us a glimpse into that which many of us refuse to see everyday on our streets and behind our neighbor’s, or our own, doors. And the fact that it follows a man in the very city in which I was watching the film, San Francisco (at the Opera Plaza), made it even more impacting.

5) Pao's Story (Quang Hai Ngo, 2006, Vietnam)

The Cinequest Film Festival in San Jose has not been good to me. One previous screening I attended abruptly ended when the print caught fire. And Cinequest again had a lot of print problems with Pao's Story, resulting in the programmers needing, mid-screening, to switch to an alternate format (DVD or Beta, I can’t remember). But in spite of all that, it’s to Pao's Story's testament that my friend and I were still impressed with this feminist tale of sisterhood solidarity still able to reach across the divide of a wife and the too often Other-ed other woman.

4) Live-In-Maid (Jorge Gaggero, 2004, Argentina)

This little tale of class-crossings was touching without being condescending and educational about modern day Argentina without being didactic. This excellent film slipped into the Opera Plaza in San Francisco with limited fanfare, but justified the fare of this fan.

3) Passion and the Power: The Technology of Orgasm (Wendy Blair Slick and Emiko Omori, 2007, USA)

This film made me so happy in its gutsy willingness to treat with such splendid serious, intellectual curiosity a domestic technology the importance of which is often ignored when not being slanderously scorned – the loyal vibrator. Just the right dashes of dildo humor make this the feel good movie of the year! I caught it at the San Rafael during Mill Valley Film Festival and SF Bay Areans can catch it starting February 22 when it revisits the same theatre.

2) Persepolis (Vincent Paronnaud and Marjane Satrapi, 2007, France)

The second film on this list I caught in Manila, the CineManila International Film Festival this time. It lived up to the hype, justifying the not so easy trip outside my sleeping schedule to catch the screening at the Gateway Mall.

1. Killer Of Sheep (Charles Burnett, 1977, USA)

Yes, I’ve seen this before, but it tops my list this year because it FINALLY got the release (and at the Castro nonetheless) it deserved when it was initially completed. See what a MacArthur Genius Grant can help accomplish?

2007: I Only Have Two Eyes

NOTE: THIS ENTRY HAS BEEN SALVAGED FROM THIS SITE AND REPOSTED UNEDITED ON 6/6/2008. SOME INFORMATION MAY BE OUTDATED, AND OUTGOING LINKS HAVE NOT BEEN INSPECTED FOR REPUBLICATION. COMMENTS CAN BE FOUND HERE.

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Since I've started paying attention, the repertory/revival offerings here on Frisco Bay have seemed just oh-so-slightly less inspiring every year. But I can never be sure if this perception holds due to a real, if gradual, decline in the number and diversity of local screenings of yesteryear's films, or if it can be better explained by my own increasing understanding of film history, and knowledge of what might be screening in other places but not here. I may complain that a place like the Paramount remains shamefully unutilized, or that the Stanford is becoming the only place in the area that plays not only the bona fide classics from the Golden Age of Hollywood, but also the somewhat more forgotten films from that era on a very regular basis. But who am I kidding? I still saw plenty of wonderful stuff in rep. houses this year, and the list of films I can't believe I actually let myself miss in 2007 is staggering.

That's why, when drawing up a set of year-end favorite repertory/revivals, I thought I'd invite other local bloggers and cinephiles to weigh in with their own picks as well. I saw a lot in 2007, but I didn't see everything I wanted to see, much less everything I didn't even realize I wanted to see. This compilation of lists from Frisco Bay filmgoers who generously agreed to participate is intended to remind everyone, including myself, of just how rich the options are around here for those who enjoy using the cinema screen as a portal to the past as much as they enjoy watching the newest releases.

I asked participants to list 5-10 favorite repertory/revival films seen in Frisco Bay theatres in 2007. Here's what these twenty eyes came up with, in order of submission:

Michael Guillén, dean of the Evening Class:

If not part of a genre-specific film festival, or San Francisco's annual Silent Film Festival, vintage and cult films still find their way to Bay Area screens, satisfying an ongoing hunger for rarely-screened gems. The value of our repertory theaters like the 4 Star, the Castro Theatre, and the Roxie Film Center and our archival film venues like the Pacific Film Archives and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Screening Room just can't be extolled enough. Here are 10 wonderful old movies I caught this year in neighborhood moviehouses.

1. Holy Mountain (La montaña sagrada, 1973); d. Alejandro Jodorowsky; Castro Theatre.

2. Kwaidan (1964); d. Masaki Kobayashi; Castro Theatre.

3. 2 Or 3 Things I Know About Her (2 ou 3 choses que je sais d'elle, 1967); d. Jean Luc Godard; Castro Theatre.

4. The Wild Pussycat (1968); d. Dimis Dadiras; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.

5. Welcome Home Brother Charles (1975); d. Jamaa Fanaka; Roxie Film Center.

6. Spider Baby (1968) & Pit Stop (1969); d. Jack Hill; Roxie Film Center.

7. The Mad Fox (Koiya koi nasuna koi, 1962); d. Tomu Uchida; Pacific Film Archive.

8. A Flower In Hell (Jiokhwa, 1958); d. Sang-ok Shin; 4Star

9. Pyaasa (1957); d. Guru Dutt; Castro Theatre.

10. The World's Greatest Sinner (1962); d. Timothy Carey; Roxie Film Center

Michael Hawley, contributor to the Evening Class:

Spider Baby (1968) and Pitstop (1969), Dead Channels Festival, Roxie New College Film Center

In the wayward world I inhabit, this double-bill was THE Bay Area film revival event of 2007. Cult movie director Jack Hill spent a full Sunday afternoon sharing his personal 35mm prints of these two drive-in classics, graciously introducing each one and following up with illuminating Q&As. I walked away having learned all I’ll ever need to know about figure-8 stock car racing, not to mention an enthusiastic appreciation for the singular acting talents of Sid Haig. There were fewer than 50 people in the audience, for which San Francisco should hang its head in shame.

Yoshiwara: The Pleasure Quarter (1960) Tomu Uchida: Japanese Genre Master, Pacific Film Archive

Stunning, wide-screen color epic about a common whore’s rise to Grand Courtesanship, and the simultaneous plummet of the birthmark-cursed mill owner who finances it all. My favorite discovery of 2007.

Kiss the Blood Off My Hands (1948), Noir City, Castro Theater

Besides having one of the great film titles of all time, this nasty slice of Noir featured a hunky Burt Lancaster being stripped to the waist, tied to a rack and flogged. The Castro audience roared its approval.

Sátántangó (1994) Pacific Film Archive

Bela Tarr’s infamous, seven-and-a-half hour Holy Grail of Cinephilia did not disappoint. Unfortunately, I slept through the entire build-up to the little-girl-abuses-a-kitty-cat scene, meaning that one day I’ll need to watch this all over again.

Pavement Butterfly (1929) San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival, Castro Theater

Along with a stunning performance by the vastly under-appreciated Anna May Wong, this late-era silent boasts a vivid portrait of Parisian bohemia and Riviera café society at the tail end of The Jazz Age. A true Francophile’s wet dream.

The Godless Girl (1929) San Francisco Silent Film Festival, Castro Theater

Christian and atheist high school students go to war and wind up in reform school in this silent Cecil B. DeMille potboiler. Over the years I’ve seen Dennis James give some grand performances on the Castro’s Mighty Wurlitzer, but this one truly took the cake.

Look Back at England : The British New Wave, Pacific Film Archive

The half-dozen selections I saw from this 17-film retrospective proved to me that Britain’s cinema in the ‘60s was every bit as vital as the nouvelle vague happening south of the channel. (Look Back in Anger (1958), A Taste of Honey (1961), The Entertainer (1960), Billy Liar (1963), Darling (1965), Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960))

Tearoom (1962) Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

William E. Jones’ provocative presentation and discussion of footage shot through a two-way mirror in a Mansfield, Ohio public restroom in the summer of 1962 (later employed to send 31 men to prison on sodomy convictions).

2 or 3 Things I Know About Her (1967) Castro Theater

This is Jean-Luc Godard in polemical, no-fun mode. But if I’m ever required to attend a costume party dressed as a movie character, I now have the perfect scheme – show up stark-raving nude wearing only a TWA or Pan Am flight bag over my head.

El Topo (1970) and The Holy Mountain (1973) Castro Theater

Gorgeous new prints of Alejandro Jodorowsky’s insane psychedelic spectaculars, which I hadn’t seen in 30-some years (and won’t need to see again for another 30). This line from The Holy Mountain became my mantra for early 2007: "Your sacrifice completes my sanctuary of 10,000 testicles."

Adam Hartzell of koreanfilm.org, and a semi-regular contributor to this site:

5. Charlie Chaplin's LIMELIGHT (1952) and THE CIRCUS (1928) at the Castro
4. FRANZ FANON: BLACK SKIN, WHITE MASK (Isaac Julien, 1996, UK) at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
Packed house on Valentine's Day for an obscure highbrow film?! How excellent is that?!
3. CHILSU AND MANSU (Park Kwang-su, 1988, South Korea) at San Francisco State University
2. The Hong Sangsoo retrospective brought by the SF International Asian American Film Festival
1. KILLER OF SHEEP (Charles Burnett, 1977, USA) at the Castro

Ryland Walker Knight, creator of Vinyl is Heavy:

In chronological order, some rep touchstones of 2007. It's clear I go where I can, and where's easy, and that's usually one of three theatres; and of those three I frequent the one in my backyard more than either of the other two combined. I'd like to do better in 2008. I'll try, funds permitting. Luckily, the current PFA calendar is awesome and I want to go far too often.

1. Starting out yet another year with a sold-out screening of Pierrot le fou at Berkeley's Pacific Film Archive was fun, despite my cough, as always. It's easy to forget what an experience it is to see that widescreen technicolor all big and bright.

2. Not sure if it counts but Killer of Sheep at the Castro, after a pretty delicious sushi dinner across the street with some good friends, kicked me in the butt real hard. I gasped three times. I may or may not have been moved to tears.

3. The two-day Out 1: Noli me tangre event at the PFA was the single greatest thing I did not write about this year. Still don't know what to throw down about it. May have a better idea after seeing Out 1: Spectre at the PFA in February.

4. Love Streams at the Yerba Buena Screening Room comes in close. I never really understood Cassavetes until seeing this picture, I don't think. Or I'd forgotten the joy he possessed and projected and lived. "I've got to get that goat!"

5. I always enjoy a good 70mm exhibition of 2001 at the Castro. Best movie ever? I always think so upon exiting. (The also-grand Lawrence of Arabia is more tiring than joyful these days.)

6. The last great rep film I saw was Chantal Akerman's Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles. I dozed twice, yes, but it sure is *something*. It lives up to Manny Farber's essay, "Kitchen Without Kitsch." Or, Farber's essay lives up to the film, as I experienced the words before the pictures.

7. The series I wish school hadn't prevented me from catching was the "Battle of the Andersons" that the Castro programmed. I would have loved to have seen The Life Aquatic and Punch-Drunk Love on the same screen on the same night.

Marisa Vela, painter and extremely tasteful filmgoer:

Colossal Youth, Kabuki, SF International Film Festival
Brand Upon The Brain!, Castro, SF International Film Festival
Cottage On Dartmoor, Silent Film festival
Wicked Woman, Noir City
Barbara Stanwyck Centennial -- There's Always Tomorrow, PFA at the Castro
Ingmar Bergman series -- Hour Of The Wolf, The Rite, PFA at the Castro
Silent Light, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
Sátántangó, PFA
Aelita Queen Of Mars, PFA
Joseph Cornell Film Series, SFMoMA
Agua, Kabuki, SF International Film Festival
The World's Greatest Sinner, Film On Film Foundation at the Roxie

A trip to the Niles Essanay Film Center

Sad moment: Listening to audience members laughing loudly through a screening of Mouchette (The Jeff Wall series at MoMA was great, though).

shahn, the masterful mixologist at six martinis and the seventh art:

a cottage on dartmoor - castro theatre
the moment i realized i was learning forward on my seat to get closer to the screen, i glanced to my left to find that most people sitting in my row were also on the edge of their seats.

morocco -stanford theatre
the moment that i was not only sobbing audibly but ready to take off my shoes and walk out of the theatre after gary cooper.

noir city film festival -castro theatre
the moment when i was volunteering at the booze table and found out whiskey and film noir go really, really well together. i can't recall which film i saw but it was very enjoyable.

joseph cornell: films -sfmoma
the moment i found out that while my idol brakhage's film wonder ring was stupendous, cornell's version gnir rednow was so so so much better.

kevin brownlow -pacific film archive
when during the q&a some old blowhard answered his own question in order to show off, the moment kevin brownlow cut him off in the most respectful and informed way possible- proving that studying old films for years can provide one with tools of knowledge powerful enough to knock the wind out of an old blowhard.

also enjoyed:
footlight parade at stanford
pyaasa at castro
swing time at sfmoma
reckless moment at pfa
eraserhead at castro

Ben Armington, self-described "unrepentant film fanatic and professional explainer of rush lines":

1. Sátántangó (Pacific Film Archive)
2. Syndromes & a Century (Yerba Buena Center for the Arts)
3. Massacre at Central High (Castro)
4. The Mother & the Whore (SF MOMA)
5. Grin without a Cat (Artists' Television Access)
6. Crimes of the Future w/ Spoonbender 1.1.1 (Roxie)
7. Short films by Glenn Wait and David Enos, + music performances by Late Young and the Cones (ATA)
8. Scarlet Street (Castro) / La Chienne (SFMoMA)
9. Beggars of Life (Castro)
10. Stalker (PFA)
I know Beggars of Life is technically a festival film and Syndromes & a Century theoretically had a theatrical release in urbane New York City, but I felt they both deserved a spot because of how much enjoyment they brought me in comparison to other rep stuff.

Lincoln Spector of the terrific resource Bayflicks, with a somewhat more East-Bay-centric perspective than most of the other participants here:

Rear Window at the Cerrito (January)
I own this picture (my favorite Hitchcock) on DVD, so watching it in 35mm with an enthusiastic audience was a real reminder of how movies should be seen. Nothing can replace the thrill of watching a movie while surrounded by hundreds of your fellow homo sapiens.

Kevin Brownlow's Talk at the Pacific Film Archive (April)
A great overview of the silent era presented by the world's greatest authority on the subject. The clips presented, with accompaniment by Judith Rosenberg, included one certified masterpiece: Buster Keaton's two-reel One Week.

RiffTrax Presentation of Over the Top at the Rafael (May)
Okay, it was a lousy movie, but that was the point. And it was presented off of a DVD, but so what--it's a lousy movie. The running commentary by three Mystery Science 3000 alumni was hilarious, and once again, the audience made it better.

Beggars of Life at the Castro (July)
I caught several films at the San Francisco Silent film Festival, but but this tramp drama starring Wallace Beery and Louise Brooks outdid them all. So did the Mont Alto Orchestra in accompaniment. Another plus of the festival: Meeting Robert Osborne of Turner Classic Movies.

Patton at the Castro (September)
Beautiful, 70mm print of the last great big-format roadshow production. As drama, Patton works even on the small screen. But sitting in the Castro's front row, watching the amazing clarity of a 70mm print made from a 65mm negative, and it's a whole other--and much better--experience.

Thrillville at the Cerrito (October)
I finally made it to a Thrillville event (semi-regular occurances at the Parkway and Cerrito). Will, Monica, Mr. Lobo, and Queen of Trash put on a great live show, as did the band Project Pimento. Mint-condition 35mm prints of two mediocre horror movies made it a great night.

Dr. Zhivago at the Cerrito (November)
I've always liked more than loved Lean's follow-up to Lawrence of Arabia (admittedly a hard act to follow), but finally seeing Zhivago on the big screen helped me finally get this picture. I loved it.

Flesh and the Devil at the Castro (December)
Part of the Silent Film Festival's winter program. Christel Schmidt of The Library of Congress introduced the feature, and the always amazing Dennis James accompanied it on the Wurlitzer. It's always nice to be reminded just how hot a love scene can be, even if it was shot more than 80 years ago.

Robert Davis, who never need apologize for his Errata:

ONE
Killer of Sheep, Castro/Red Vic
Perhaps the best film I saw in 2007, period, a film of such simple/complex beauty that it overcomes any number of problems with projection, sound, or delayed distribution. Stunning. I saw it twice.

TWO
L'eclisse / Antonioni series, PFA
The Antonioni series at the PFA included both a favorite screening and a big disappointment. The spell of L'eclisse lingers -- the sound of the fan blowing Monica Vitti's hair -- but, surprisingly, so does the shock of showing up for Red Desert and seeing a mob of people crowding the box office. I didn't get in, but I left with a smile anyway, because droves of people had chosen to spend the evening with Antonioni's brown coats and red splashes. Five months later, he was gone.

THREE
Sátántangó, PFA
The DVD has been delayed, and I can only assume it's because they can't figure out how to fit it into the box. It's seven and a half hours of Bela Tarr whose ideas do not slip easily into thin disks. The girl with the cat. The man with the binoculars. The drunken dance drunken dance drunken dance. Thankfully, we have the PFA.

FOUR
Land Without Bread, SFMOMA
Although it was bookended by two lesser films projected on DVD, the 16mm screening of Land Without Bread at SFMOMA was the most unusual film-audience interaction by whose gale-force gusts I had the pleasure of being pummeled. Seven decades after he made the short, Buñuel proved again that he was a master of provoking collective discomfort, a maestro who conducted with a red hot poker.

FIVE
Kiarostami series, PFA
The PFA's extensive Kiarostami retrospective was not only a great chance to catch up with some of his least screened films but also a sad reminder of how exhibition has changed in the last decade: Homework was screened in a bowdlerized version and practically no one (including the staffs at the PFA and NYC's MOMA) noticed.

SIX
Stalker, PFA
Now that rare, small, and foreign films are readily available on DVD, I find that my favorite public screenings are of films that mirror the large, patient, hypnotic dreams of their creators, the ones that demand rapt attention. In the digital age, the world may be the cinephile's oyster, but I note that pearls are among the tiniest known orbs. Don't stir them with peas! They could easily be swallowed! Not so, Tarkovsky!

SEVEN
Threnody/Triste, SF Camerawork
Sometimes you want a guy to put a white rectangle on the wall, set up some folding chairs, and project a couple of silent meditations. Then you want the guy to stand up afterward and tell you about using celluloid to create objects, not just representations of something else, and you want him to be humble and mind-blowing at the same damn time. You want Dorsky, Nathaniel, at SF Camerawork. Sometimes called "Nick."

EIGHT
Tropical Malady, PFA (shot-by-shot)
Or sometimes you want a guy to sit down with one of his signature films and talk about each shot, stopping to answer questions along the way. Not always. Not just anybody. But if it's Apichatpong Weerasethakul, who gave me a whole new way to see Tropical Malady, name the time and the place. Can we get an encore with Syndromes and a Century, my favorite new film of 2007?

NINE
Fires on the Plain, PFA
The 50 years of Janus series played at both the PFA and the Castro, and I might have put Knife in the Water on this list except that I saw Fires on the Plain when the PFA brought it back. Ichikawa has such stunning control of his material that he pulls against every easy reaction to his satirical nightmare.

TEN
Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, PFA
Rarely screened -- and even more rarely screened with such reverence -- Chantal Akerman's searing deconstruction of a woman's daily routine set the filmmaker on a career-spanning course of spatial examination, and it may even have prefigured the mise en scène of Hou Hsiao-hsien. Like Tarr and Tarkovsky and Antonioni, her confidence in the medium allows the film's slow and steady accumulation of ideas to end with an inevitable smack that simply would not thwack the way it should were it seen at home.

And finally, my own top choices for the year. I will admit that I didn't draw this up until after these submissions started coming in, so I may well have been influenced by others' choices. I was probably particularly merciless to screenings mentioned by someone else, as well as to films I'd seen before, or to those shown in a festival I volunteered for (which explains the lack of Silent Film Festival selections). But here's my own ten, in chronological order of viewing:

Sátántangó at the Pacific Film Archive, February. The act of watching it felt something like a rite-of-passage into a new phase of cinephilia. That endlessly-circling track over the villagers' faces is just one of many of this film's 172 shots I'll never forget.

the Lady Vanishes at the Castro, February. I'd never seen this British Hitchcock before, and it was all its reputation implied and more. Works to watchmaker's perfection on every level imaginable: as narrative, as art, as political commentary, etc.

Tropical Malady, shown as part of an April residency for Apichatpong Weerasethakul at the Pacific Film Archive; the film was shown in 35mm one day and then on DVD the next, with director Apichatpong behind a microphone performing an extemporaneous live commentary track and answering audience questions throughout the film. (By the way, this method of viewing will be attempted again when the PFA brings Terence Davies to talk about Distant Voices, Still Lives next month.)

Bruce Baillie's four-part epic of color and sound, shadow and "silence", Quick Billy, brought to Artists' Television Access by kino21 in April.

Killer of Sheep at the Castro in May. I also saw it improperly projected at a press screening, not held at the Castro. It was great both times.

The Film on Film Foundation's May presentation of Isadore Isou's masterpiece of cinematic insurgency Venom & Eternity, backed with Christopher Maclaine's The End at the Roxie. The latter film, shot in a Frisco very different from the one I was born in twenty years later, astonished me with its familiarity, its prophecy, its radicalism and its despair.

There was something about seeing the soft-core pornographic drive-in movie Revenge of the Cheerleaders as a MiDNiTES FOR MANiACS screening at the Castro in July. It's stuck with me. I still am trying to reconcile how such a lowbrow film could feel so thrillingly unformulaic even when mixing and matching the expected elements of sex, drugs, dancing and food fights. Talk about irrational exuberance.

The Abbas Kiarostami films shown at the Pacific Film Archive in July and August. I only saw a half-dozen of the features and a few of the shorts, but that still marked my deepest delve into a single retrospective in 2007. To finally see landmarks like Where is the Friend's Home and Close-Up for the first time, as well as early rarities like the Wedding Suit, nurtured me through several months of dread that my government might extend its saber's reach to Iran.

I had never seen Olivier Assayas' Irma Vep before and was delighted to confirm at the PFA in October that it's precisely the masterpiece of syncretism everyone had suggested it was. Having the director there in person was icing on the cake, and I only wish I'd been able to come back for more slices during his residency. (Note: Irma Vep plays the PFA again February 29th to wrap up a Jean-Pierre Léaud series.)

An SF Cinematheque presentation of 1940s-50s independent short films by Frisco filmmakers at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in November. The program included wonderful work by luminaries such as Sidney Peterson and Stan Brakhage, but my very favorite films on the program were a pair made by Jane Conger Belson: Odds and Ends and particularly Logos, a two-minute scintillation of cut-out animation backed by a vanguard electronic score by Henry Jacobs.

Anyone else have favorite experiences seeing old films in movie houses in 2007?

Intolerable Silence

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Here's a bizarre thought. Imagine if Martin Scorsese had filmed the Last Temptation of Christ, Kundun, the Gangs of New York and the Departed back-to-back during a period of a year and a half. Instead of releasing them separately over the course of two decades, he edited parts of them together into a single epic-length film, stripping each story down to its essential plot, and cross-cutting between the four to emphasize parallels in their narratives.

What kind of film would this be? Well, it would certainly be an epic of epics, taking place over four distinct times and places. Would it bring forth the stylistic and thematic similarities between these four distinct Films By Scorsese? Or would it encourage us to look at their differences? I'm not exactly sure, but I suppose the closest we'll get to knowing the answer is to view the only film I know of, though not By Scorsese, that was made in this fashion: D.W. Griffith's Intolerance. The 1916 film was first imagined as a straightforward exposé of the societal injustice of the day, but upon the extraordinary financial success of the perniciously racist Birth of a Nation, that concept was combined with retellings of the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre, of the crucifixion of Christ, and of the fall of Babylon into a single film with a vast scope. It's like a one-film template for an auteurist approach to reading cinema. As cinematographer Karl Brown told it, the four stories were shot in succession and assumed by most of the crew to be destined for four different releases that for some whim of Griffith's happened to share the same title: the Mother and the Law. In fact, two of these four would indeed be re-edited and released as stand-alone films in 1919: the Fall of Babylon and the current-day the Mother and the Law.

The releases and various re-editings and theatrical re-releases of Intolerance were never able to put the picture in significant profit. A September 1928 Variety article reported a $1,750,000 total gross on the picture at the close of the silent era, relative to $1,600,000 in costs, which may well have been even higher (wikipedia suggests it may have come closer to $2,000,000). But the financial failure of the film neither prevented Griffith from continuing his career as a director, nor has it kept many critics from hailing Intolerance as an unmatched high-water-mark of the silent film era. Take one of the most influential institutions of critical canon-formation, the Sight & Sound Top 10, which since 1952 has compiled "Ten Best Film" lists from critics around the world. That first year of the survey, Intolerance placed fifth in both the tallied result as well as on a simultaneous reader survey (incidentally, though they aligned on Intolerance in this survey, as well as the top two choices, the readers were ahead of the critics on Citizen Kane, which was a runner-up on the critics' compiled list but #3 on the readers'.) Since that 1952 assessment, a selection of contributors who have put Intolerance among their chosen ten includes Henri Langlois, Dilys Powell, Jonas Mekas, Enno Patalas, Vincent Canby, Armond White, and since Sight & Sound began inviting film directors to participate, Sidney Lumet, Masahiro Shinoda and Roy Andersson among others.

Most recently, the American Film Institute, in its tenth anniversary of the AFI 100 swapped out Birth of a Nation (#44 back in 1997) for Intolerance (at slot #49). Still, in the age of DVD subscription services and laptop movie-viewing, I sense that a huge-scale film like Intolerance begins to become more and more marginalized by modern movie watchers. Which is why I was so glad to get a chance to see the film tower above me on the Castro Theatre screen earlier this month, courtesy of the SF Silent Film Festival and Photoplay Productions, whose Patrick Stanbury brought a tinted print from London, introduced the screening, and performed 42 manual projection speed changes to ensure that we had the best presentation of the film possible. What a revelation it was to see the film exhibited this way! For the first time, I felt I was starting to understand not only the technical scale and skill involved in the film's making, but also the way the four interlocking stories joined to create a unique and modern narrative. That the three historical tales end in disaster due to intolerance and lack of empathy, makes the 'contemporary' tale become a moving plea of hope that the tragedies of history might not have to repeat themselves. This may be obvious to most, but it's something I'd never grasped before, when trying to watch a home video version of Intolerance, admittedly half-bored, on a television set. Anyway, the film's ultimate message cannot be fully comprehended just by reading about it; it's the precise filmmaking techniques Griffith employs that give Intolerance its emotional impact.

Kristin Thompson and David Bordwell have marked the birth year of the "classical cinema" style in Hollywood to be 1917. Griffith's cinema in Intolerance, released a year earlier, bears many signs that it is a precursor to that style, in which the 180-degree rule is enforced and editing emphasizes match cuts on eyeline or action. Griffith has broken out of what Thompson and Bordwell refer to as the "tableau approach" that contains all the action of a given scene in a single shot. Still, I noticed in Intolerance numerous instances in which cuts between shots in a scene jarred because they were not matched on action, or even because they would repeat the same action from different angles. Kevin Brownlow, in his chapter on film editing in the Parade's Gone By... mentions a theory by Ray Angus that these double action mismatches were entirely deliberate, but doesn't go into specifics. Some of these actions are dramatic enough that I wonder if Griffith thought audiences would be excited by seeing them repeated, as for example Ong-Bak director Prachya Pinkaew clearly did when showing off Tony Jaa's most impressive Muay Thai moves from multiple angles. But that musing doesn't explain instances in which the repeated action is not particularly interesting, nor the other examples of oddly-timed cuts. The issue isn't that the Thompson/Bordwell milestone year of 1917 hadn't been rung in yet, as there are certainly examples of smoothly-edited films made before then; one I can recommend wholeheartedly is Cecil B. DeMille's the Golden Chance from 1915. Don Fairservice in his book Film Editing: History, Theory, Practice discusses several possible explanations, but gets to the heart of the matter, I feel, in this passage:

What must be acknowledged is that the jumps and mismatches in Intolerance generate a tension within scenes which transcends continuity, the jaggedness of the cutting contributing to the content. One of the main difficulties facing a modern spectator who brings to the experience of seeing the film all the accumulated baggage and conditioned responses of continuity cinema is that Griffith's work demands a different quality of understanding wherein the whole is infinitely more important than the parts...

There has been a recent discussion at girish's place about the function of musical accompaniment with a silent film. Let this screening of Intolerance stand as my Exhibit A in the argument for a terrific live performer providing music for a theatrical screening. It's interesting that I found myself registering cutting 'discontinuities' much less frequently in the action sequences, particularly toward the film's culmination as three of the four stories' narrative arcs (the Judean segment having become visually de-emphasized about halfway through the film) converged into a thrilling alignment. I have no doubt in my mind that Dennis James's unflagging Wurlitzer score had as much to do with my emotional involvement in Griffith's converging melodrama as any visual strategies of the director's own making. Does this mean I was manipulated by the music? Yes. But I'm pretty sure it was a manipulation Griffith would have approved of; he was always concerned with the quality of the musical scores sent to the orchestras in theatres playing his pictures, and I can't picture him wanting audiences to watch Intolerance in silence.

James's performance December 1st was all the more remarkable given that the previous night he'd been at the Stanford Theatre, playing to Frank Capra's the Strong Man (just days ago inducted into the National Film Registry) and that he would be providing music for Greta Garbo in Flesh and the Devil at the Castro that evening. As an example of the formally mature Hollywood style, released ten years after Intolerance, it's a superbly-made film. Yet it portrays an outlook on women that felt like a huge step backward from the strong heroines played by Constance Talmadge and, at least by the end of Griffith's picture, Mae Marsh. Luckily Garbo is a supernatural force that transcends roles borne out of a fear of female sexuality in the flapper era. But before this turns into another huge post topic entirely, let me turn away from my own thoughts on the film and recommend Anne M. Hockens' thoughtful analysis of Flesh and the Devil as a film noir predecessor (and speaking of noir...)

The Silent Film Festival's morning program gave Mr. James a chance to rest his hands and feet, as we were treated to a program of nine mostly-delightful, mostly-hilarious Vitaphone shorts featuring mostly-forgotten vaudeville stars telling jokes and playing music. If you're wondering why a silent film festival deigned to show a program of talking pictures, think of how many silent stars got their start on vaudeville stages (Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, "Fatty" Arbuckle, and Mary Pickford are a few names you might recognize), how many theatres (including the Castro) brought both silent films and vaudeville acts to their patrons, and how important the coming of sound is to an understanding of the history of silent film, and you'll get the idea. Also, the films are really entertaining, and this particular program had never been seen together, much less in Frisco where a theatrical audience for Vitaphone shorts might grow quite healthily. My personal favorites of the nine shown were the Foy Family in Chips of the Old Block, and the Norman Thomas Quintet in Harlem-Mania, featuring a truly unforgettable drummer, and some unexpected camera positions to help accommodate his gymnastics.

In case you haven't noticed, it's been a while since my last post, which I can blame on the busyness and distractions associated with a cross-town move and the holiday season. I'm going to be playing a bit of catch-up on Frisco film events over the next few weeks here at Hell on Frisco Bay before I head off to Park City, Utah. But for now, while I'm on the topic of silent-era films, let me just point out the upcoming screenings of silents with live accompaniment I'm aware of in the next few months.

Monday night at Grace Cathedral there will be two performances of perhaps the most widely-seen of all silent films today, the Lon Chaney, Sr. Phantom of the Opera. It'll be accompanied by Dorothy Papadakos on the sanctuary's Aeolian-Skinner organ. I've never seen a silent film playing in a functioning place of worship before (no, the Paramount doesn't count!) so I'm particularly intrigued to check this out. There will be performances at 7PM for those of you with parties to go to by midnight, and 10PM for those of you who want to end 2007 with a scary movie.

The Pacific Film Archive has a terrific calendar for January-February, surely their best since, oh, way back in September-October at the very least. There's too much to process in one flip-through of the calendar program, but four series are of interest to appreciators of silent film and live music. First, a trio of Sessue Hayakawa films that, as I mentioned in my previous post, screen in conjunction with a UC Berkeley conference on silent cinema February 8-10. Second, a kid-friendly set of Saturday afternoon matinees including a program of Georges Méliès delights January 19th and a February 9th screening of Harold Lloyd in Speedy. Third, an extremely impressive series of European classics, some silent and some not, called the Medieval Remake, including Fritz Lang's rarely-shown Die Nibelungen in two parts January 20th, Dreyer's the Passion of Joan of Arc (paired with Robert Bresson's 1962 interpretation) January 27th, and Murnau's Faust February 16th. Finally, the resuming of the popular Film 50 series of screenings and lectures on the history of cinema will start off in the silent era and include a February 6th showing of the Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.

If you miss that screening, which you're likely to as tickets for Film 50 screenings are scarce, know that you'll get another chance to see Robert Wiene's expressionist masterpiece on this side of the bay in a few months. SFJAZZ has announced the April 12, 2008 return of the Club Foot Orchestra to the Castro Theatre, where the ensemble will perform the signature scores from their heyday: Nosferatu and Sherlock Jr. as well as the Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. These folks haven't performed together here since before I was smart enough to realize how great silent films are; I'll definitely want to be on-hand for the reunion.

The Niles Essanay Film Museum has announced its Saturday evening program schedule through March, though not yet on its website. The year starts with Lon Chaney in False Faces January 5th, and continues with selections such as the Black Pirate January 26th (also expected to play the Balboa for that theatre's annual birthday bash February 27th), Charley's Aunt February 2nd, the Docks of New York March 15th, the Covered Wagon March 22nd, and much much more.

And just wait 'til you hear what Frisco's got in store when it comes to talkies!

Quick Flick Picks

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On the eve of a day-long movie marathon, I just wanted to get some items off of my to-blog list.

In my last post on silent film, I mentioned that the Berlin and Beyond festival will, as usual, be showing a German silent film as part of its 2008 program. It's just been revealed that the festival, running January 10-16 at the Castro Theatre, will present the 1929 comedy the Oddball with live musical accompaniment by Dennis James.

Some noteworthy though not-so-silent entries in Berlin and Beyond 2008 include Michael Verhoeven's the Unknown Soldier, and a three-film tribute to the recently-deceased actor Ulrich Mühe: along with his recent triumph in the Lives of Others the festival will screen a film from his East German film career, Half of Life, and his role in the Austrian Michael Haneke's 1997 Funny Games, just before the Sundance premiere of that director's apparently all-but shot-for-shot remake. The opening night film is the Edge of Heaven by Fatih Akin, contradicting the program guide on the Castro's website, which says it will be Yella. Christian Petzod's film will still play in the festival, but its opening slot was switched out for Akin's after the Castro schedules went to press.

Speaking of which, there's a lot to talk about on those Castro schedules, and I'm not even going to cover it all here. A MiDNiTES FOR MANiACS triple bill of Burt Reynolds films including Peter Bogdanovich's rarely-revived tribute to Lubitsch, At Long Last Love, plays December 7th, and another threefer starts with possibly the most heartbreaking summer vacation movie of my teenage years, which was also Winona Ryder's first film role, Lucas. That plays February 8th, the Friday before Valentine's Day (on which Marc Huestis brings Olivia Hussey for the 40th anniversary of Romeo & Juliet.)

There's another in the Castro's continuing series of classic films organized by composer, this time nine days (December 26-January 3) of double-bills scored by the great Miklos Rosza, including multiple collaborations with Billy Wilder and Vincent Minelli. January 4-9 brings the nine of the ten most well-known pairings of the "Emperor" Akira Kurosawa and his "Wolf" Toshiro Mifune. They made sixteen films together, and I wish the selection included Red Beard or some of the rarely-screened early films like the Quiet Duel and the Idiot, but I'm glad for the opportunity to see any of these again on the Castro's mighty screen. I've never seen the Seven Samurai, for example, on anything larger than a regular television set, which is probably enough to send me to the cinephile stocks.

If you're concerned about how to fit the new cut of Blade Runner playing at the Embarcadero into your schedule this week, know that it will make a return appearance at the Castro for a week starting February 15th. The early-eighties revival I'm most excited about seeing in a Landmark theatre is one I've never seen in any cut before: Jean-Jacques Beniex's Diva, which opens at the Shattuck in Berkeley as well as somewhere in Frisco December 7th.

The Roxie has a pair of films from this past spring's SF International Film Festival on its upcoming slate. One I've seen and can recommend: Les Blank's new documentary All in This Tea. Not being particularly interested in gourmet tea varieties, I was skeptical going in, but I found the film to be a fun but serious peek into the blossoming of capitalism in China. It opens December 14th. The other is one I missed in May but won't in January, when it opens on the 11th: El Violin from Mexico.

The Red Vic has its full December (highlight: the Draughtsman's Contract on the 16th & 17th) and January (highlight: the Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford on the 15th & 16th) schedules online, but its paper copy extends a bit beyond that, revealing among other things that the Battle of Algiers will play February 3-4.

More time-sensitive news is that two programs of British experimental films from the 1960s and 1970s will play at at the SF Art Institute this coming Monday evening, December 3rd. This tip comes from Jim Flannery, who left it on the cinephile bulettin board that is girish's blog. More on the series here. It's the beginning of a busier-than-usual week of public screenings at SFAI, where a cellphone film event called mini-PAH will take place December 7-8.

SFMOMA, which is currently reprising the Joseph Cornell films it showed earlier this fall as part of its exhibition on the collagist, has also been running a fascinating film series I'm sorry I haven't really mentioned here before. In conjunction with a Jeff Wall exhibition, the museum will screen John Huston's Fat City this and next Saturday afternoon, R.W. Fassbinder's proto-emo-fest masterwork the Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant December 13th and 15th, Ingmar Bergman's Persona December 20th and 22nd, and perhaps most exciting since I've never seen this legendary epic, Jean Eustache's the Mother and the Whore December 27th and 29th. Then, beginning January 5th with a screening of Point of Order, SFMOMA will run a retrospective of the films of Emile de Antonio. In the Year of the Pig plays January 19th and 24th.

The current Year of the Pig ends February 6th, 2008. You may know that the Japanese Zodiac is based on the Chinese Zodiac, though the Pig is replaced with the Wild Boar in Japan (in Thailand the Pig becomes an Elephant). But since Japan celebrates New Year January 1st like we in the West, not the Lunar New Year of the Chinese, the Year of the Boar will end sooner than the Year of the Pig. Have I lost you yet? Either way, the new 12-year Zodiac cycle will begin next year, on either January 1st or February 7th, with the Year of the Rat. Shortly after the latter there will be a Pacific Film Archive tribute to Japanese-American silent film actor Sessue Hayakawa, who was born in 1889 (the year of the Ox, like me only 84 years earlier). February 9th screens Hayakawa's star-making role in Cecil B. DeMille's the Cheat, and on February 10th the Devil's Claim and Forbidden Paths will be shown. All three will be accompanied by Judith Rosenberg on piano, and are presented in connection with a two-day conference on silent film called Border Crossings: Re-Thinking Early Cinema. Fascinating stuff, and I'm hopeful that there will be more Hayakawa films announced soon.

Adam Hartzell interviews the director of Host & Guest

NOTE: THIS ENTRY HAS BEEN SALVAGED FROM THIS SITE AND REPOSTED UNEDITED ON 5/16/2008. SOME INFORMATION MAY BE OUTDATED, AND OUTGOING LINKS HAVE NOT BEEN INSPECTED FOR REPUBLICATION. COMMENTS CAN BE FOUND HERE.

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I have to hand it to the 10th SF Asian Film Festival and the 5th Korean American Film Festival, both of which ended for me Sunday with a screening of the 1963 Korean War movie Marines Who Never Returned. Its first ten minutes felt as eerily documentary-like a depiction of combat as any I've seen on film. It makes me glad I still live in the Richmond District not far from the 4 Star Theatre, though for some of the programs hosted there in the past week and a half I would certainly have traveled much longer distances. And I was delighted to learn last Friday that the venue had booked four more days of festival fun, starting yesterday and ending on Thanksgiving, in the form of a Chinese-American Film Festival. Along with films from China and the Chinese diaspora, there will be one more Korean film in the program. Sometime contributor to this site Adam Hartzell has more:

This year, when asked to help out with the San Francisco Korean American Film Festival, I decided it was time for me to do more than simply write the program notes as I have been asked to do in the past. And do more I did, much more than a guy who has a regular day job that requires him to wake up at 4:30 AM, work 10 hour days, and travel abroad from anywhere from a month to two months should really do, but that’s what you get sometimes for volunteering. Thankfully, I worked with a great bunch of people who equally worked their butts off. But regardless of how much you work, some things just don’t work out.

And one of those things that didn’t work out was we weren’t able to get Sin Dong-il’s (alternate Romanization is Shin) wonderful film Host & Guest into the festival. This had to do with coordination difficulties across the globe, conflicting country holidays and work schedules. Let’s just say I was working outside of my skill set. But thankfully, Director Sin intervened on my behalf and Frank Lee of the 4 Star Theatre offered to open up some slots amidst his Chinese-American Film Festival that began this Monday. Host & Guest will be screening this Wednesday, November 21st at 9:30pm, and Thanksgiving Day at 5pm.

It’s been over two years since I’ve seen Host & Guest, but it’s a film that's slowly grown on me as I've sat with the images and dialogue of the bizarre coupling of a bitter, arrogant film-less Film Professor and a conscientiously-objecting Jehovah's Witness. What I recall after two years away from the film (for thoughts fresh from my viewing the film at the Pusan International Film Festival in 2005 you can go here) is that I appreciated how, although strong in its contempt for the Cheney/Bush administration, the film didn’t focus its critique solely outward, but inward as well. Host & Guest is equally as critical of the South Korean government as it is the United States. Host & Guest is equally critical of itself as it is others. In this way, what might appear clumsy in less skillful hands was gently laid to grow within my thoughts and my emotions that followed me after sharing witness with Sin’s vision.

I asked Sin if I could do an interview with him of a few simple questions over email. I offered him the option to respond in Korean if he felt more comfortable speaking in his first language. He responded mostly in Korean with an exception I will note. Along with thanking Sin for taking the time to answer my brief, amateurish questions, I must also thank Kaya Lee for her willingness to translate under a tighter deadline than I’d prefer to request. I adjusted some of her translation for flow, but I wouldn’t have been able to do this without her. Equally helpful to bringing the film to San Francisco were the SF Korean American Film Festival director Waylon McGuigan, Frank Lee of the 4 Star Theatre, Kim Hee-jeon of CJ Entertainment, and Director Sin’s sister who lives in the Bay Area but whom I won’t name because time constraints don’t allow for me to confirm whether she’s comfortable with my posting her name here.

The following is the interview.

Adam Hartzell, for Hell on Frisco Bay: The title, Host & Guest, is an interesting one. What brought you to use that title for the film?

Director Sin Dong-il: I was building the story’s plot and surprisingly, the English title Host and Guest came across my mind before the Korean title. I really loved the English title; so, I chose one of the main characters’ names as “Ho-jun” from “Host” and the other’s name was “Gye-sang” from “Guest”. I felt so much interest in the idea that two characters who have totally different ideologies respectively on the surface meet each other as a host and an uninvited guest, that is, as a visitor. As their relationship proceeds, each character becomes a host and a guest as well, and it means both are the host of their own lives.

HoFB: Could you talk a little bit about military service in South Korea to give American audiences an understanding of it since an understanding of the obligation all young Korean adults have is important to the film?

Director Sin: Korean people have been considering men’s military service as an obligation that they should accept naturally without doubt because of ideological confrontation and military tension between North and South Korea which has been ongoing for more than 50 years. Such represents that nationalism is controlling Korean people’s consciousness. It is true that people who refused the military obligation under conscience demands for peace have not been known to the South Korean public. I believe nationalism is an anachronism as the cold war composition has already collapsed around the world.

HoFB: Being a first time film director, having one character be a film professor who has never made a film makes me wonder how much he is based on your own experiences. Does that character represent your life in any way? Or is he more the kind of person you are worried you could become?

Director Sin: My life experience helped in making the film. Unlike the U.S. film market, South Korea’s independent film industry is very vulnerable. It is very hard to pursue my original thought into film without negotiating with the commercial/business world. South Korea’s film industry is focusing on box-office value too much. Actually it will bring serious risks/result in the end. I débuted with a feature film, but making a feature film is too hard. I am so gloomy whenever I think about how to get financial support for my third film. If anybody is interested in my third work after watching Host and Guest, please don’t hesitate to contact me. I always welcome producers for my work… just like a host and a guest. [laugh] It’s half seriousness and half joke. In addition, even though Ho-jun is called a professor, he is actually a part time instructor.

HoFB: If there is any kind of statement about the film you wish to make, feel free to add anything else you might want to say.

Director Sin: [Here, Director Sin Dong-il chose to type in English.]

Most people see only what they want to see. This world labels you a stranger once you trespass the standardized rules of the society. I want to open the door that is shut fast to these strangers.

If you want to look at this film closely, I would like to call your attention to Ho-jun’s snobbish elitism, deeply ingrained in his personality. Ho-jun finds himself transformed into an enemy of himself after having gone through days full of breakdowns and failures. He then meets Gye-sang, another soul, who’s also wounded by the prejudice and ignorance of the world. Thanks to Gye-sang, Ho-jun finds himself again, no longer as a "visitor" in his own life, but as both "host" and "guest."

I dedicate this humble film to those who are dreaming of a different world.