Audition (2012)

WHO: Karen Yasinsky is the artist who made this piece of animation. Her work often contains contains cinephilic content, for instance her series of drawings inspired by the films of Robert Altman, Robert Bresson and Jean Vigo.

WHAT: When Audition screened at last year's Views From The Avant-Garde sidebar of the New York Film Festival, Genevieve Yu wrote about it for Reverse Shot. Let me excerpt:

Yasinsky works over a few frames from John Cassavetes’s The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, animating and repeating, in an intricate pattern that mimics dot-matrix commercial printing, the image of a woman prancing across a strip club stage, her skirt swirling Loie Fuller-like around her. Sit too close to the screen, and the image becomes illegible; it loses coherence the more closely it’s examined. The second half of the film features a book of early Japanese photographs whose pages are flipped before the camera.

The bridge between these two segments becomes the audio track: the music from the Cassavetes scene,  a beautiful piece called "Rainy Fields of Frost and Magic" by Neil Young sound-alike singer-songwriter Bo Harwood, whose demo-esque "scratch track" recordings used in this and other Cassavetes films retain a raw quality that fits the famous director's style as a maker of films that, in the words of Roger Ebert (R.I.P.): "gloriously celebrated the untidiness of life, at a time when everybody else was making neat, slick formula pictures".

Yasinsky has repurposed images from The Killing of a Chinese Bookie in which a strip-club owner (played by Ben Gazzara) consoles himself after his gambling losses by auditioning a waitress (played by Trisha Pelham) alone one morning. There's a rather queasy sense of seduction in the original scene, violently interrupted when his girlfriend appears, but Yasinsky confines her animation to earlier moments of motion where the audition seems more innocent. This abstracted ambiguity when contrasted with the clarity of the yakuza-style tattoos on some of the subjects in the photo book provides grist for consideration of the human stories lying behind stereotypical underworld imagery, as Cassavetes' film does within the confines of the gangster narrative.

WHERE/WHEN: Screens tonight only at 9:15 at the Victoria Theatre on the corner of 16th Street and Capp in the Mission District of San Francisco.

WHY: Audition opens the second of eight programs in SF Cinematheque's fourth annual film festival devoted to personal, artist-created film and video, Crossroads. Last year, my favorite program was a selection of cosmically-considered works that all happened to be made by female directors (with one male co-director). Yasinksy's piece kicks of this year's only all-woman-made program, leading beautifully into The Room Called Heaven by Basque filmmaker Laida Lertxundi (who had a full program of her own at last year's Crossroads), and other works before the program finale, the world premiere of a sure crowd-pleaser by Jodie Mack, Dusty Stacks of Mom. The latter is one of the festival works highlighted by Cheryl Eddy in her fine SF Bay Guardian preview.

I was able to sample a few of the weekend's screenings in advance myself, and I selected Audition to highlight today because it's a good reminder of the place of personal, truly-independent filmmaking in larger cinephile culture. Not just as something to be looked at, but as an expression of its makers' own engagement with the moving images that move us to become movie lovers. When we think of the economics of Hollywood production we often forget it, but filmmakers, at least those not chasing after big box-office receipts, are usually cinephiles themselves, expressing their cinephilia in ways no less (and arguably more) valid than writing reviews or making lists or collecting DVDs, or obsessively going to the movies. I have a feeling that many of the filmmakers in attendance for Crossroads will trying to find ways of squeezing in trips to the two other major cinephile events happening in town this weekend: namely, the opening of Christian Marclay's The Clock at SFMOMA and the 35mm Roman Polanski retrospective at the Roxie.

Also note that Yasinsky's Life Is An Opinion, Fire Is A Fact will screen twice at the San Francisco International Film Festival, in its annual program co-presented with SF Cinematheque.

HOW: Audition screens as a digital video projection, but there are 16mm works on this program as well. Other Crossroads programs involve 35mm, 16mm, Super-8 and video projection.

Headshot (2011)

WHO: Pen-ek Ratanaruang wrote and directed this. He's coming to town this weekend; his first visit to San Francisco, apparently.

WHAT: The latest feature by the Thai director is, I believe, his first shot digitally. (UPDATE 4/7/13: it's his second after Nymph, as it turn out.) His usual cinematographer Chankit Chamnivikaipong used the famed Red One camera for this so-called "Buddhist neo-noir" piece about a Bangkok policeman who gets embroiled in a world of gangsters, corruption and conspiracy against his will. He receives a headwound which leads to an unusual form of brain damage in which his vision is turned upside down. Luckily, the audience doesn't get too many disorienting point-of-view shots from this topsy-turvy perspective. One gently humorous scene involving a television set reminds us that when the world around us (or even just our perception of it) has been upended, it's comforting to at least be able to spend some time watching images on a screen that don't make us feel completely out-of-sync with reality. This might be a good summation of Pen-ek's motivation for filming in the first place; in a 2009 interview recently published in the book Southeast Asian Independent Cinema he stresses his desire to make films that connect him to like-minded audiences around the world who are alienated by the fare that dominates international cinema screens. A quote:

Lonely people tend to like my films a lot. Happy people don't seem to get my films. When I meet someone who says she liked my films, ninety percent of the time she prefers funerals to weddings, and its also a fan of Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits, Bob Dylan, and Nick Cave, like myself. 

WHERE/WHEN: Screens tonight only at 7:30 at the Yerba Buena Center For the Arts screening room. Pen-ek is expected to attend.

WHY: This screening kicks off a six-title retrospective of most of Pen-ek's feature films (his promising debut Fun Bar Karaoke and his third film Mon-Rak Transistor, which seems more and more to be the biggest stylistic and thematic anomaly in his filmography, are omitted) at YBCA, including the local premiere screenings of his three films which inexplicably never screened in the Bay Area. There has been a good deal of worthwhile press for this event, including articles by Valerie Soe, Cheryl Eddy and Jonathan Kiefer. Though one might expect films that other venues have passed on to be markedly inferior to the ones that have played here; I bet the average uninitiated attendee of this series wouldn't be able to guess that Ploy failed to make it into any local festivals while Nymph succeeded, or that 6ixtynin9 had a week-long run here but Invisible Waves didn't. (Last Life in the Universe remains Pen-ek's most fully satisfying film and it won't be a surprise to anyone that it's had the most Frisco Bay cinema showtimes of all his works).

It's a good reminder that there's a lot more to program a cinema or a festival than just sussing out quality. The fiscal states, marketing plans, or simple whims of distributors, sales agents, or filmmakers themselves can have more impact on whether a given film screens here than the best efforts of the smartest programmers can. It's important to remember this during the week of the San Francisco International Film Festival's announcement. If you follow the goings-on at other festivals around the country and the globe, there's surely a film or two (or more) that you were practically certain would/could/should appear at SFIFF this year. I like to channel such frustrations into hopes that another programmer might give the film a shot at another nearby venue. If, for example, you wonder why Carlos Reygadas's Cannes 2012 entry Post Tenebras Lux has yet to rear its head locally, be heartened that YBCA's Joel Shepard is bringing it in May 30 through June 1st.

HOW: Though the rest of this series is sourced from 35mm, Headshot was shot digitally and will be screened that way.

Casablanca (1942)

WHO: Michael Curtiz directed it. Conrad Veidt, Claude Rains, Peter Lorre, Sydney Greenstreet and Dooley Wilson star in it. Oh yeah, and there's the love triangle too: Paul Heinreid, Ingrid Bergman and a guy called Humphrey Bogart.

WHAT: One of the most famous movies of all time. It's almost impossible to pay attention to film without hearing someone make mention of it. Just the other day I heard a podcast interview with Cissy Wellman, who relates Howard Hawks's commonly-told and well-refuted story of a swap Hawks and Curtiz (who according to the story was the originally assigned director to Sergeant York) made between their directing projects. I think it says a lot that Hawks would tell this story in the mid-1960s after he'd begun being celebrated by critics as an auteur, a status denied him during the first few decades of his career. It's as if to say that by walking away from making Casablanca he denied himself the chance at a competitive Oscar and the kind of immortality that came from having made one of the most beloved classics ever, but that perhaps the kind of immortality Hawks was starting to enjoy as a developer of a career worth poring over might be preferable to being thought of as a relatively anonymous if highly competent workman like Curtiz.

WHERE/WHEN: Today at 1:30 & 7:00 at the Kabuki, or at 2:00 & 7:00 at Cinemark Theatres around the nation, including the Bay Area. Also screens at 2:30 & 7:00 on April 28th at the Castro Theatre.

WHY: Both the Kabuki and the Castro will be venues for the 56th San Francisco International Film Festival April 25-May 9th. Tickets, now on sale to members, become available to the general public this Friday. I'm not going to draft a typical festival announcement piece when there are others to read. I'll undoubtedly be devoting a good deal of attention to this event over the coming weeks, though not to the exclusion of others. Michael Fox opens his article on April's screenings with an interesting perspective about the usual role of a big international film festival in the film culture of a city. With presentation of new works by Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Kim Longinotto, Bernardo Bertolucci, Andrew Bujalski, Sophie Fiennes, Olivier Assayas and scores of other established and up-and-coming international filmmakers, there's no question but that this year's SFIFF is a crucial event for those of us who try to keep reasonably current with trends in world narrative and documentary cinema-making.

But what does the festival provide for those of us interested in keeping current with trends in restoration and re-evaluation of cinema from the past? The festival's repertory selections must provide quite a bang if they're going to be worth a ticket-buyer's bucks, especially with this year's price increases. For a San Francisco resident, a trip to a typical repertory film at the Pacific Film Archive or the Stanford Theatre (which has just released its next calendar) is about the same cost as a non-member SFIFF ticket- but only if you factor in the cost of public transportation.

There's potential here. I'm thrilled that the SFIFF is offering rare chances to see great films from the sixties, seventies and eighties, like Marketa Lazarová, To Live and Die in L.A. and Invasion of the Body Snatchers and reputedly-great films like The Mattei Affair, Eight Deadly Shots, and Downpour. What I don't know is whether any of the above will be presented in the film formats that they were originally made for, rather than via a digital delivery system. So far the festival has only made available the screening format information on one retrospective program: a 16mm showing of three rarely-seen early documentaries by Les Blank. This will be one of the first tickets I purchase. The others, I may hold off on until I hear whether they'll be shown on 35mm or not. I know this almost certainly mean I won't be able to get a ticket to To Live and Die in L.A., as that screening will include a live appearance by its legendary director, William Friedkin, and is being held in cinema (New People) with less than 200 seats. But that's okay; I saw a 35mm print of it last fall at the Roxie, and am  in no way going to allow myself to miss the other revival that it takes place on the same night as: the Castro showing of Waxworks. Again, I don't know if this will be a digital or film screening, but I do know I want to be there to find out what Mike Patton and his cohort of three percussionists plan to pull off as a musical accompaniment for the Paul Leni film starring Emil Jannings, Werner Krauss and Conrad Veidt.

Conrad Veidt! Oh yeah, I knew there was a reason I wanted to talk about this stuff under a post about Casablanca. Why see Casablanca tonight? To get in the mood for another Veidt film coming your way.

HOW: I know that the Castro showing of Casablanca will be sourced from DCP, and I believe the Kabuki & Cinemark showings will be sourced that way as well.

Speechless (2008)

WHO: Scott Stark made this film. As Brian L Frye writes in Radical Light, "Stark imported the wry wit of seventies performance art to his films, which are best described as works that play games with how movies work." Sounds right to me.

WHAT:  I'm not up to the task of writing a full review or analysis of the thirteen-minute Speechless, especially when eloquent considerations of the film are available at just a click or two away. But I would like to encourage any open-minded reader to see it. Speechless is part of a cycle of Stark films that draws particular attention to the individual frame as the building block of the moving image. Motion in the film is created by juxtaposing still images together, creating graphic matches and mismatches between, in this case, photographs of female genitals from a medical textbook, and images of (mostly) natural landscapes shot by Stark himself. A great many of these landscape images were gathered right here in San Francisco, at the former military installation West of Lake Merced known as Fort Funston. (Others were taken in Oakland or New Hampshire.) A simple, calm electronic drone soundtrack consisting primarily of two alternating notes and overtones provides a suitable sonic backdrop for audience contemplation of the connections between human and earth-borne forms, of how the Bay Area in particular has been a site for expressions of female sexuality (though I suspect few find these particular images of vaginas erotic), and I'm sure many other subjects particular to each viewer's experience. It's a strange and lovely film.

WHERE/WHEN: This free public screening, with Stark present for a post-screening discussion, happens 7:30 PM tonight, only at the lecture hall on the San Francisco Art Institute, Stark's alma mater. But come early for a 7:00 artist reception and to take in some of the best views of Frisco Bay from this beautiful Russian Hill location.

WHY: Depending on when you read this post, the program for the 56th San Francisco International Film Festival (April 25-May 9) may or may not be publicly available; the press conference announcing all programs happens this morning. Michael Hawley has done a stellar job running down all of the pre-conference announcements (and making guesses as to what else might screen) but shorts are not usually in his areas of interest. However, word is already out that Stark's eerie 2012 piece Bloom is also expected to screen as part of the SFIFF. Festgoers who see it will never hear the sound of music in quite the same way again.

But before that, two full programs of Stark's work show in local venues. Speechless screens tonight as part of a set of film and video works investigating the human body, each made between 1996 and 2008. (I listed the other films in the program here).  Then, this Sunday, three of his more recent video works screen as part of the Crossroads festival hosted by SF Cinematheque at the historic Victoria Theatre on 16th Street between Misson and Capp. On the program are a dual-projector screening of Compressive/Percussive, Stark's study of light and shadow upon an Austin, TX freeway, and Longhorn Tremolo, another Texas work that made my 2011 list of favorite films in the "yet to screen in a Bay Area cinema" subcategory. This screening marks its local debut, and also the world premiere of Stark's elegant, monstrous The Realist, which was shot partially in San Francisco and is sure to go down as one of 2013's most important releases into the experimental film & video world. Seeing tonight's program, and Speechless in particular, will be good preparation for appreciation of this brilliant new work.

HOW: Speechless will screen as a 16mm projection.

Mrs. Doubtfire (1993)

WHO: Did you know Chuck Jones was responsible for the animation that runs during the opening credits of this film?

WHAT: My first thought when approaching this post was to write about how Mrs. Doubtfire is one of the forgotten masterpieces of the 1990s, that best demonstrates how director Chris Columbus's mise-en-scène stands with that of Hou Hsiao-Hsien, Theo Angelopoulos and Abbas Kiarostami as some of the most sophisticated and powerful in the world's cinema of that decade. It is April Fools Day after all. But honestly, I have not rewatched more than a few clips of Mrs. Doubtfire in nearly twenty years, long before I'd heard of any of those guys. It wasn't a particular favorite when I last saw it in my early twenties, but why mock a movie that I barely remember?

Thus the Chuck Jones angle. Though his work heading up the creation and animation of a half-cartoon featuring a parrot named Pudgy and a cat named Grunge (this was the early nineties remember) is perhaps not at the same level of creativity as his best work, it nonetheless bears some of the signature characteristics of the director behind most of the Wile E. Coyote and Pepe Le Pew cartoons. The Mrs. Doubtfire "Behind-The-Seams" DVD includes three versions of the full, uncut version of Jones's animation, including animated pencil tests, the final full-color version, and an unused version with alternate backgrounds.

When this sequence appears on screen in the movie, we only get a few unobstructed views; the purpose of this opening is not animation for its own sake, but to establish Robin Williams's character as a struggling voice actor who puts principles above professional gain. He's recording the voices for the parrot and cat we see on screen like a foley artist might do sound effects. This is not the way animation has traditionally been voiced in this country in fact. From Mel Blanc in the Looney Tunes that gave Chuck Jones his start, to Williams in 1992's Aladdin or the more recent Happy Feet films, voice actors generally record their character dialogue before the animators have their turn, if for no other reason then to make lip-synchronization appear smoother (and I'm sure animators could rattle off many other reasons). Incidentally, most Japanese animation does work the way Williams is shown to in Mrs. Doubtfire, with the animation coming before voice recording in the production chronology.

Since Jones was in effect parodying the famous canary-cat duo of Tweety and Sylvester with Pudgy and Grunge, it's worth mentioning that Tweety was one Warner character that Jones almost never worked with during the "Termite Terrace" era. Tweety was a creation of Jones's arch-rival Bob Clampett, that was taken over by another Warner cartoon director Friz Freleng when Clampett left the studio in the mid-1940s. Freleng pitted a modified Tweety against Sylvester, who had debuted in his 1945 cartoons Life With Feathers and Peck Up Your Troubles, matched against a lovebird and a woodpecker, respectively. By the time of Jones's work on Mrs. Doubtfire Clampett was dead of a heart attack, and Freleng was long-retired. One gets a sense from watching Jones interviewed for a segment viewable on the "Behind-The-Seams" DVD that he had some mixed feelings about taking on a cat-and-bird duo for his contribution to the film.

As for the rest of Mrs. Doubtfire, it's clearly beloved by many movie watchers of a certain generation, and may be especially fondly regarded by certain residents of San Francisco, where it was filmed.

WHERE/WHEN: Tonight only at the Roxie Theater at 7:15 PM.

WHY: When I last mentioned Chuck Jones on this blog, it was in part to point out how rare it is to see his cartoons projected in 35mm, and that despite a current Cartoon Art Museum exhibit coinciding with the animator's centenary year, no such local screenings were on the horizon as far as I knew. Tonight's showing breaks a long drought; although it's surely not the same as seeing a 35mm print of a classic-era cartoon, it is an opportunity to see his animation in 35mm regardless, if momentarily, and interfered with by credits and cutaways to Williams performing. Jones's Mrs. Doubtfire art is even a part of the Cartoon Art Museum exhibit, along with pieces from throughout his career.

For those more interested in the earlier cartoons, Sonoma Film Festival is bringing a program of Chuck Jones films to Sonoma's Sebastiani Theatre on the morning of April 13th. A selection of 35mm prints from Jones's private collection will screen at 9:30 AM. Because this is being marketed as a ticket-less event aimed at bringing representatives of the newest generation of young moviegoers to the well-established festival, it may be wise to arrive even earlier than the scheduled start time in order to obtain first-come, first-serve seats.

HOW: 35mm print.