Around The Bay: an interview with Alejandro Adams

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Last Friday I had my first experience attending Cinequest in San Jose. Once I'd survived the transportation logistics of getting down there from the second-most populous city on Frisco Bay, I had a great time. Srdjan Golubovic's the Trap wasn't as good as I'd hoped it would be, but everything connected to the experience (the presentation, the helpful volunteers, etc.) was very smooth. In the evening I finally sampled the restored California Theatre (no current connection to the Berkeley Landmark) for a screening of the Ozu masterpiece I Was Born, But... with Jim Riggs behind the organ controls. What a great theatre to experience silent cinema in! What a shame it's so rarely utilized for such. Cinequest is bringing Eisenstein's October and organist Dennis James next Friday night, and if I weren't already so mentally committed to attend the Peter Bogdanovich/Cybil Shepherd in-person tribute at the Castro that weekend I'd surely head down the peninsula for seconds. Who knows how soon another opportunity will pop up again?

Another Cinequest film worth going out of one's way to see is the first feature by local cinephile Alejandro Adams, Around the Bay. Michael Guillén has eloquently summarized the reaction to this confident debut in advance of its world premiere screening this past Saturday. The film plays twice more at the festival: Tuesday, March 4th at the Camera 12 and Saturday, March 8th at the San Jose Repertory Theatre. Adams showed me a version of Around the Bay last fall, and though skeptical going in I became quite taken with the film. When bumping into the director at the recent Terence Davies series at the Pacific Film Archive, I proposed interviewing him over e-mail. The resulting conversation follows:

Hell on Frisco Bay: Alejandro, I first became aware of you through your writing and editing the website BRAINTRUSTdv.com, where you assembled an impressive collection of essays, interviews, and other documents, primarily concerning new motion picture technologies. What is the relationship for you between writing about filmmaking and doing it?

Alejandro Adams: I have an ongoing debate with a friend about the notion of the artist who writes about art and also perpetrates it. He feels that if you're a sworn visual artist, you have to give up talking about it. I feel that talking about it is part of doing it. However, if you're hyperverbal, as I am, you can describe an idea for a novel in conversation and deflate your urge to write it. Or you can upstage your own film by doing an interview in which you reveal all the motivations behind every technique. I think there's so much in this film that I can talk about what I did intentionally and still allow people to have their own experience. In an interview I did with two critics a few days ago, I explained the title of this film, and within minutes after I explained it, they both talked about what the title meant to them--very valid, personal interpretations which I would never refute. And I think Around the Bay has the capacity to allow people into it, allow people room to enter it and move around freely.

But, yes, it's potentially dangerous to write about film and simultaneously make films. I think Bresson's little book is a great example of how to do it right. Very internalized, very process-oriented, not critical of specific films he hates in the world, but with every breath he answers those films to which he so vehemently objects. On many levels Around the Bay refutes those films to which I vehemently object, and that's something I would never do as well in writing.

HoFB: Well, thank you for taking time out of your busy premiere week to risk upstaging your film! I don't think what we discuss here will get in the way of audiences' experiences with Around the Bay.

I. Working With Actors

HoFB: Many ultra-low budget films feel to me like a wasted opportunity to serve as a window onto a kind of realism that the mechanics of Hollywood just can't reach. Wasted, I say, because so often actors seem to want to provide elaborate performances that overshadow the material and the setting of the film they're in. The actors in Around the Bay almost completely avoid this.

AA: I know exactly what you mean, and I agree, but you have me chuckling because there is a really flamboyant, overshadowing performance at the center of this movie. Five-year-old Connor Maselli gives a totally over-the-top take-no-prisoners performance that probably constitutes the only sensationalism to be found in this film, since there's no sex, no music, maybe two instances of profanity, and no violence, except for this kid's unique brand of terrorism--and there, I've said it, for those who want to see the political metaphors, which are as valid and present as anything else.

HoFB: The Noah character isn't what I usually think of as "sensationalism." Though he certainly operates at a different energy level from the other characters, it's very much in tune with and in service to the film.

AA: I should mop up a bit and confess that I tally instances of sensationalism in this film because to me sensationalism is anathema to storytelling. Sensationalism is melodrama. Sensationalism is gimmickry. To me, sex scenes and music are the same thing, a way to remove responsibility from the director to carry a character or plot forward without smoke and mirrors. Now, there are whole films built around sex which are perfect, or books like James Salter's A Sport and a Pastime, which simply IS sex, and that's one of my favorite books. So this isn't puritanism I'm talking about, but a different kind of purity, a relentless character-making storytelling purity where the director is allowed no recess, no smoke break. There are no ambient shots in the film, no shots of trees or sky or water that aren't organically connected to a person. Ambient mood shots are like stuffing, like music, also a way of taking a break from the people who populate a film. I'm not saying I dislike Terrence Malick--in fact, he may be my favorite director--but for this film, I put a lot of that stuff in and just saw pretentiousness and bloatedness and a lack of rigor and vision. A diffusion of purpose.

HoFB: How does a first-time filmmaker find actors so willing and able to reign in the instinct to be larger-than-life in their characterizations?

AA: Think of how the contrast between Connor and the adult cast makes the courage of their quietness, their understatedness that much more palpable. If I were an actor, my insecurities would probably have driven me to over-act in order to compete. But here I think we see the opposite: restraint. I cast the movie very instinctively, having seen very few actors, knowing more or less before auditioning someone if I was going to cast them. Everything that happened between me and the cast happened at the casting stage. I couldn't have made the wrong actors into the right ones. That sounds hokey, but it's true. About actors wanting to be larger than life--well, the key roles were filled with actors who had no such inclinations. But even though I wanted that mutedness and pursued it and nourished it, the movie needed some contrast, and that's there too, I think. Some "bigger" acting in a few places, which serves to emphasize the general understatedness of the acting overall. You know, the exception proves the rule.

HoFB: I don't mean to imply that these performances are inert, or that the characters resemble inscrutable Bressonian figures. Daisy and Wyatt are selective about verbalizing their true thoughts and feelings but they're expressive nonetheless.

AA: I'm not sure everyone would agree that Steve Voldseth, who plays Wyatt, is expressive. I had a little flurry of debate with Phillip Lopate on this point. He had a very strong reaction to the Wyatt character, more or less took a flame-thrower to him, and Mort Marcus, when he talked to me on Cinema Scene, said he was yelling at the screen and called Wyatt one of "the most emotionless men ever to come to the screen." As far as I'm concerned, Wyatt expresses anxiety in the scenes in his car, which is his sanctuary, and I think if you look carefully you can almost see him making decisions there--right before the third act begins, for example. My wife says, "I only trust Wyatt when he's in his car," referring to the fact that he's too composed, smug, distant, dissimulating, manipulative when there are people around. The car scenes are vital to me because whether the viewer is aware of it or not, that's where this character graduates to a full-fledged human being. There have to be moments in which the viewer is allowed NOT to hate this guy, and it has to be done incrementally and subtly, with pinches of development rather than heaping tablespoons. Showing him in the car, though it's exclusively from behind--another distancing device--is a way of permitting the viewer to see him in his most intimate moments, as if he's in confession.

HoFB: What astonished me most about Conor Maselli's performance as Noah was just how un-"actorly", how unprecocious he came off. That is to say, he felt like a real kid. Can you talk a little bit about working with this actor? What's the difference for a five-year-old between acting in a film and "playing pretend"?

AA: We did a scene at the audition--totally improvised--in which he played scrabble with a Daisy and a Wyatt. He couldn't even read, didn't understand the game. The point was for the Wyatt and Daisy auditioners to use him as a pawn in some little competition they were having, to test the kid's loyalty, to see which of them he trusted. So they were saying "Put those letters together in the middle of the board" or whatever, and finally he just snapped and said, "Where!? What are you talking about!?" He wasn't aware of the harsh lights, the cameras, or me hovering over the whole thing. He didn't look at his mother in the audience. He was really in that moment, trying to play that game, and annoyed with these two people badgering him. He was already Noah. And the funny thing is that the two actors in that scene who were doing the Wyatt and Daisy roles were the ones who got the parts, too.

During production Connor would find his mother and say, "Please call me Connor. I want to hear my name." That will tell you how much acting was going on. Near the end of the production he called me into the back seat of his mom's van and said, "Can you give me more direction next time?" I think he wanted less responsibility for creating this character. He wanted someone he could blame it on. It's not that easy, just ask Steve Voldseth.

Another thing to point out is something else Mort Marcus said to me. We were talking about the distinction between a "child actor" and a kid just being a kid. He made the point that acting is creating something. If we'd had an unimaginative kid playing Noah, there would have been no material. If acting is creating a role, and improvisation is creating material, then there is no way to make this distinction. It's a semantic convenience. It robs something from Connor, something from me as director, and something from the gestalt chemistry of the cast if we say, "No, he was just running wild, he wasn't conscious of playing a role, and I hardly ever told him what to do." The same goes for him as for the adult actors--is it any different when Steve is driving or Connor is kicking in the pool? A camera is on and they have no lines and they're doing something they would do in reality, without the cocoon of a fictional character. Can we really make distinctions between what is so-called acting and what isn't, if the camera captures it?

II. Writing For the Screen

HoFB: Around the Bay is about a family. So are many highly successful films; I think it's because the family is the most interesting, and probably the most psychologically and politically important social grouping humans have. How did you come to make a film about this particular family?

AA: The short answer is that this is in no way autobiographical in the traditional sense. In autobiography we don't find stories, we find justification and condemnation posited as narrative, as a narrativity of experience, an often falsified description of how we became who we are--and, again, all that can result from that exercise is justification and condemnation, and I'm not sure that has value even therapeutically. I'm often irritated by openly autobiographical films and writing.

I've been a writer of novels and short stories--none published--for fifteen years. This particular story--of the young woman who comes to stay with her estranged father and helps care for her half-brother--was a story I tried to write intermittently for a year or so before giving up. I couldn't "see" the father character. He was much worse, much less sympathetic. I couldn't come to terms with this guy, but I had created him and in some way I needed to know him. I'm starting to sound like I have a Romantic view of the artist, which really isn't true at all. I've never felt particularly mystical about writing, but in this case it was just an unusual impediment, something I'd never faced. When I had a chance to make a feature it made sense to me to bring this vital, nagging story to the screen and see if I could meet this guy and get rid of him.

HoFB: There is a touch of melodrama in the set-up for Around the Bay once put into words: Wyatt loses his job and his girlfriend at the same time, and then he reunites with his long-lost daughter. However, the way you've presented all of this makes it feel less like plot than something intrinsic to his character; he's just the sort of guy who would have his life fall apart all at once.

AA: I think when you tell a real story, when you care about dramaturgy, you're going to be accused at some point of tending toward melodrama. I think there's a lot of vitality in Around the Bay. I think there's a lot of apparent randomness, a kind of restless energy that suggests there's no real narrative force behind it, that the chaos within the family at the center of the story is a reflection of chaos behind the camera. That feeling is erroneous. The dramaturgy is so sound, in fact, that the three-act structure is as transparent as in any Hollywood film. And I'm proud of that. I think low-budget indie films have been trying to avoid telling real stories, and I don't know why. Probably because if you have a kick-off like a guy losing his job and being dumped by his girlfriend, it feels melodramatic. But you've pointed out that the character is strong enough to withstand the plot I've burdened him with, so I think you're seeing the compromise I've struck between the bare necessities of an engaging plot and characters so dense that we can argue about their motivations and read emotions or sensations into their gaze. I wouldn't want to trade one of those things for the other.

HoFB: How much back-story did you write for each of these characters?

AA: Back-story was mostly left to the actors themselves. I would have been implicitly assigning motivation if I'd worked out too much back-story in advance, and that would have thwarted the complexity of what we were trying to do. I should mention that the short story I was trying to write was told in this same remote, non-psychologizing style, where none of the characters had a traditional point of view. I was reading a John Updike piece recently in which he talked about the New Novel of the sixties--Sarraute and Robbe-Grillet--and used the phrase "deadpan facticity." That's what the story had and that's the tone of this film, though the distancing devices in prose and cinema are totally different. It's almost impossible to prevent people from identification with characters represented cinematically, because of the syntax that's been created to facilitate identification--I'm headed toward Kracauer here, I think--whereas in prose you have to work to encourage identification. So you see things in Around the Bay that might not necessarily be revolutionary but that are used in ways we don't often see because very rarely is a film trying to modulate audience identification among three characters. Maybe there are three plotlines, and we care about someone in each plotline, but three characters constantly interacting with one another, where none is given the upper hand or the privilege of being the exclusive protagonist--that's much less common.

III. Technique and Distance

HoFB: Your film is filled with unexpectedly effective techniques such as blackouts and jump cuts. One would think these would be distracting but for me they helped to convey the characters' mental and emotional state and even tell the story. Were these techniques written into the script, or developed in the shooting or editing processes?

AA: Again, you're addressing something that's being modulated pretty carefully. I'm really glad to hear it works for you because it's risky to bring conspicuous technique--in this case, distancing devices--into something in which the characters are meant to be dense and real, not simulacra, not puppets of the plot. Not that I dislike Alain Resnais, but you can see where he's making the choice in Last Year in Marienbad to be totally impressionistic at the expense of presenting us with workable human beings. Around the Bay is elliptical and impressionistic by nature, and not all of those elements are distancing devices. A while back you told me that you recognized the practical function of the blackouts on a second viewing, but on a first viewing it had seemed like nothing more than empty technique--form over function. But you said you'd realized that they were used to convey specific information. I'm not sure everyone's going to get that, and I suspect there will be plenty of people who think it's just "experimental" for no apparent reason.

HoFB: Certain flourishes reminded me that great cinema can (must?) weave depictions of the actual with the imagined, hoped, feared, etc. Can you speak to your unusual approach to presenting dialogue?

AA: There are ways the sound is used in this film that might seem like aesthetic self-indulgence, but if you pay attention to the scenes in which those devices are employed, you may see a subtext of a sort of non-immediacy of experience, a shorthand for conveying a relationship in which the people seem to be communicating but aren't. On the other hand, sometimes certain words or phrases that are laid over the picture are made to coincide with specific gestures which reflect an immediacy of experience, of emotion--watch Daisy for instance. With Wyatt and Noreen, we hear hollow, repetitive dialogue, truisms about responsibility, and their scenes don't conclude. They are profoundly inconclusive, though not particularly vague. All the inconclusiveness was meticulously sewn in, as was the general, going-nowhere quality of the dialogue.

HoFB: Regarding distancing devices, as I suggested in my reaction piece (not for the spoiler-wary), I felt more distanced by the milieu- the fancy compound and the accoutrements of high-stakes Silicon Valley living. Technical devices were distancing insofar as they served to emphasize the barriers characters created out of the materials around them. Could I ever relate to Daisy's discomfort during the scene in which Noreen cooks her an omelette! But then, I related to different characters at different moments in the film (perhaps this is why I found Wyatt's gestures and physical cues expressive.) How does the film stylistically allow space for viewers to project and empathize at different points in the film?

AA: Distancing doesn't always have to be a matter of conspicuous technique. It can be a normal shot held too long or something done from a slightly different angle, which isn't particularly noticeable but is felt viscerally. I can talk about the omelette scene, since you brought it up. You certainly should feel for Daisy in that scene, but look at the last couple of shots and how they're constructed. A close-up of Noreen's hands washing dishes--when was the last time we saw Daisy helping with domestic labor?--and then Daisy eating this extravagant breakfast, as she calls it, and watch the shot of Daisy. Nothing unconventional, but think about how long it's held and compare that to the average shot length in the rest of the movie. After sympathizing with her, we see her stare disdainfully at the woman for whom domesticity is innate--staring, sizing up, chewing, staring, sizing up, chewing. I get a little creeped out by that shot because there's an unfamiliar quality in Daisy's eyes there, something like scorn rather than defensiveness, and maybe that's why it holds so much extra meaning and fascination for me. Noreen may be a textbook interloper in terms of plot, but things aren't that cut and dried. Which is the more idealistic response to the possible family combinations put before us--the Wyatt/Noreen/Noah model in which the kid has a functional mother figure who strives to hold father and son together, or the Wyatt/Daisy/Noah model in which a man tries to reconnect with his forgotten daughter but in execution it's essentially every man for himself? Isn't the best scenario the one in which Wyatt had never called Daisy in the first place? Don't we kind of wish for that on some level at the end?

IV. The Cinema Experience

HoFB: What was it like to finally see your film up there on the big screen?

AA: To be honest, I had very low expectations for our transfer from standard definition to HD, and I'd warned people involved in the production that the projection wasn't going to do it justice. But there it was stretched across that 40-foot screen, and it looked great in terms of resolution, way better than it had any right to look. And sound is at least as important as image in this case, so I have to point out that those inexorable or relentless sounds which are devised to toy with the senses literally felt like they were coming up through the floor, through the seats. I mean, those are the moments of "bigness" or grandiosity, when crickets are screaming at the top of their lungs, when CalTrain is at full speed, dozens of glasses and forks striking tables and plates to wash out the smallness of the human voices, the smallness of these lives. I was able to feel all of that for the first time, viscerally.

But most importantly, the whole movie played well for the audience on a screen that big, with massive sound, which surprised me. I considered this an intimate story, a film for an audience of one, but they proved that it could be consumed at the theatrical level. Even in the silent passages, which I expected to make people really uncomfortable and fidgety, they were rapt. With a sell-out crowd of 500, we had only seven walkouts. I told them afterward I was disappointed that we had only seven walkouts, that I was hoping about half the crowd would walk out--that way I could call myself a misunderstood genius. And I know it wasn't aloof politeness that kept them in their seats because they reacted very audibly to certain scenes. And the sensitivity and vehemence of the questions afterward--no one can fake that level of investment. Very perceptive, very in-tune. For a movie this oblique to register so deeply with a sell-out crowd, people coming and going, that is baffling to me. If you make something that you assume will alienate and frustrate everyone, and instead they're electrified--well, that just makes me want to stop talking about the movie in such proprietary terms because it's not mine anymore. It's theirs. It's kind of heartbreaking to say that because I made this movie for myself, in every possible sense. But now it's one against 500, and they've staked their claim. It's time for me to disappear.

HoFB: Once again, thanks for being willing to talk about your film here, Alejandro! I look forward to following how Around the Bay fares now that its journey onto festival screens has been launched.

Around the Bay plays at Cinequest in San Jose twice more: March 4th and March 8th.

SFIFF 2008 Director's Award Announced

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* * * * *After tributing Herzog and Spike Lee,
an improvement is not very likely.
No one's heard of Suzuki.
Argento's too spooky.
But they picked a good one with Mike Leigh.

Adam Hartzell on Passion & Power: the Technology of Orgasm

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Adam Hartzell sent me a review of a new documentary, one that he saw at a film festival and placed at #3 on his 2007 top ten list. It's opening next Friday at the Rafael Film Center and the Roxie, a booking whose timing has turned out to be unexpectedly topical, as Adam will explain. Take it away, Adam:

My special moment at last year’s Mill Valley Film Festival was providing the rare Y chromosome in line along San Rafael's Fourth Street waiting to enter the Christopher B. Smith Rafael Film Center and being approached by a curious older woman asking for which movie everyone was queued up. I smiled at this woman much my elder and said with a joyous lilt in my voice, "A movie about the history of the vibrator!" This is San Francisco, so she didn’t slap me. She said, "Oh?" with raised eyebrows and laughed slightly while walking away probably muttering in her head a modification of what I typed above (e.g., "Only in the Bay Area"). I’m sure she’s heard more shocking things during her time in Marin County than what I had just said.

The film we were queued up to see was one of my favorite films from last year, Passion & Power: the Technology of Orgasm by Bay Area filmmakers Wendy Slick and Emiko Omori. Based on the book The Technology of Orgasm: "Hysteria", the Vibrator and Women’s Sexual Satisfaction by scholar of domestic technologies Rachel P. Maines, PhD, Passion & Power is "A brief history of the relationship of one simple invention – the vibrator – to one complex human experience, the misunderstood female orgasm." And this lovely film will be returning to the the Bay Area starting February 22nd at the Rafael and the Roxie. I urge even the most sexually squeamish to give this wonderful documentary a trial for the "tasteful" way the issue is approached. Symbolic visuals of jellyfish and flowers and arias in place of the sights and sounds of real genitalia underscore the conversations with scholars and businesswoman interviewed throughout the film. (Although it still presents a contradiction since the film praises the work of Betty Dodson whose infamous display of the various "styles" of women's genitals at a consciousness event is highlighted in the film. If you’re praising Dodson's choice, wouldn't you want to follow her lead and let it all spread out in your documentary as well?)

The pleasures found in this film are definitely in the scholarly details, how Maines' needlework scholarship "kept being distracted by these goofy ads" in old copies of Good Housekeeping and Modern Priscilla (tagline – "The Magazine That Helps".) The beginning of the tale will take you back 2,500 years or so as it chronicles the social history of women's bodies and their place in the evolving myths throughout the ages. From this history lesson we revisit Victorian ideals that demanded the "social camouflage" of orgasms by labeling them 'hysterical paroxysms'. This medicalization allowed doctors to prescribe medical massage treatments. But these doctors eventually sought out a treatment with greater efficiency, seeking something de-skilled of the arduous work involved in helping their patients paroxysm hysterically, leading the way towards advanced vibrator technologies. Vibrators then find their place in the early 19th century revolutions of rural electrification, the transport of goods, and the very advertising that distracted Maines from her initial research. It wasn't until another revolutionary technology, moving pictures, that vibrators were packed up in metaphorical shoeboxes in the back of the proverbial closet. As they began to appear in stag films doctors and sanitariums (what we'd call a health spa now) didn't want to be associated with this re-branding of the vibrator's image.

With such a topic, humor is a necessary safety valve, and this is wonderfully provided by the expert timing of the performance artist Reno (some might just call her a comic, but we forget that comics are also performance artists) and the editing of visual underscoring by Slick and Omori. (Omori is also the Director of Photography of the film and appears ever so slightly in the mirror in the background of some of the interviews, where you can just make out her signature presence, her gorgeously striking, long, white hair.) This humor is needed even more as the film follows the unnecessary tragedy of the arrest of a vibrator saleswoman in Texas. To avoid weeping, one truly needs to laugh in the absurdity of the false justice applied in Texas and other states where dildo ownership is curtailed while gun ownership is promoted. Thankfully, since the completion of this film, that absurdity has been addressed. As a wonderful Valentine's Day present to true justice, the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals recently struck down the Texas law as a violation of the right to privacy guaranteed by the 14th amendment, doing so on the 14th of February of this year. With Louisiana, Kansas, Colorado and Georgia having similar laws declared unconstitutional, Alabama remains the only state exhibiting a perverted nonsense of justice.

So whether your Valentine's Day came to fruition in the form of a satisfying or unsatisfying evening, I couldn’t recommend this film any more highly than to tell you how happy this film made me. I had a smile throughout and after the screening, none of which had to do with physical stimulation but everything to do with intellectual stimulation. This is a celebration of our bodies controlled by ourselves while the powers that desire to be seek to supersede that control from us. In the end, Passion & Power is the true feel-good movie of the year.

Thanks, Adam! Also of note on the Rafael's current calendar are an evening with Ray Harryhausen, a shared booking of new prints of the 400 Blows and a Summer With Monika the week of March 7-13, and a David Lean mini-retro March 21-27. And the Roxie is a venue for numerous film festivals, including the upcoming Noise Pop Film Festival and Irish Film Festival, and of course the currently-running IndieFest, which has added encore screenings for this Thursday, of Stuart Gordon's Stuck and a local shorts program including Jay Rosenblatt's absolute must-see take on the banality of evil, Human Remains. Both venues are on the long list of venues where one can watch the Oscars on a big screen with a room full of strangers next Sunday. Last year I tried the Roxie's Up the Academy and it was a hoot. Presumably Passion & Power will move to the Little Roxie during the Oscars. I'm excited to check it out!

Better Late Than Never: a brief 2007 review

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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

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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?