Blackmail (1929)

WHO: Alfred Hitchcock directed it.

WHAT: More frequently cited (including by Hitchcock himself) as his first talking picture than his last silent, it in fact was made in two versions during that technologically transitional period when "wired-for-sound" cinemas co-existed with those still committed to extending the silent film era for as long as movie-makers cooperated. (Hmmm... what does that remind me of?)

I haven't seen the sound version, actually, but I've seen the silent twice, and it's hard to imagine audible dialogue improving it. The story is, as Hitchcock himself allowed, somewhat simple (though diverting enough), but the moviemaking is just astonishing. Camera angles and movements still feel inventive to this day. Thanks to a new restoration (which I've been able to preview thanks to a screener DVD) there is more image clarity than ever. And it's the perfect introduction to Hitchcock's earliest period of movie-making, for anyone who hasn't experienced his pre-Man Who Knew Too Much work before.

WHERE/WHEN: Tonight at 8:00 at the Castro Theatre, and August 23rd at 7PM at the Pacific Film Archive.

WHY: Tonight's screening of Blackmail kicks off a full weekend devoted to the Hitchcock 9- new restorations of all nine of the surviving films made by the director before he turned thirty, and still had a lot to prove. Earlier this week I was able to interview Anita Monga, and I brought up the idea that silent moviemaking never left Hitchcock's bloodstream, and that the most iconic sequences in some of his most celebrated films (Vertigo, Psycho, Rear Window, Strangers On A Train, etc.) included no dialogue but only music, and perhaps sound effects (or screams).

Really, you can go home and turn off the sound to these films. Did you ever see [Emir Kusturica's] Arizona Dream with Vincent Gallo, Johnny Depp and Jerry Lewis of all people? There's a talent contest, and Vincent Gallo does, completely silent, completely devoid of any context, the Cary-Grant-running-from-the-crop-duster sequence from North By Northwest. I think that Kusturica was on to something. Hitchccock knew the power of cinema was about directing your attention, and the value of telling a story with images. He was very sparing with intertitles. There are hardly any intertitles in these movies. Just if something can't be expressed [visually]. 

If you want to hear more from Ms. Monga, I'll be posting more of her comments here in the next few days, or you can listen to Andrea Chase's podcast interview.

HOW: DCP presentations at both venues, with live musical accompaniment by the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra tonight and by pianist Judith Rosenberg at the PFA in August.

Home (2008)

WHO: Agnès Godard was cinematographer for this film directed by Ursula Meier.

WHAT: I haven't seen Home since 2009, when it was one of my very favorite films of the San Francisco International Film Festival that year. It would surely have appeared in the upper half of my Top Ten List that year's-end as well, except that I was restricting that list to films that found week-long commercial releases in the Bay Area; I don't believe Home has ever had another local public screening. Not until tonight.

Here's an excerpt from my own review written a little more than four years ago:

A family has fled urban living to establish a free-spirited life in a house mere feet off the shoulder of the highway. We're introduced to them first in a manic night hockey game shot (by cinematographer Agnes Godard) very tightly on the actors. It's the consistency of their character arcs that holds the film together throughout drastic changes in their setting and in tone; sometimes it feels like a comedy, other times drama, action thriller, or even horror.  

WHERE/WHEN: Screens tonight at the Pacific Film Archive at approximately 8:30 PM, after a presentation by Agnès Godard that begins at 7.

WHY: The PFA begins not only its Dancing with Light: The Cinematography of Agnès Godard series, but its entire summer schedule with tonight's screening. Godard we be on hand tonight and at four more screenings this weekend, showing and discussing four more films directed by Meier, by Erick Zonca, and by her most consistent collaborator Claire Denis. Two more Denis/Godard films round out the program after the cinematographer departs town.

Of the PFA series arriving later this summer, the one with the most relevance to this Godard selection is the extensive Jacques Demy retrospective being held in July and August. Three films made about Demy by the director's widow Agnès Varda will screen as part of this series, and for the best-known one of those, Jacquot, Godard was one of three cinematographers.

HOW: 35mm print following Agnès Godard's "behind the scenes of the art of cinematography in a talk followed by a Q&A with the audience."

My Way To Olympia (2013)

WHO: This documentary is from Niko Von Glasow, who began his film career as a "production assistant" (that is, coffee maker) on Rainer Werner Fassbinder's Lola and Theater In Trance, then worked his way up the ladder in films by the likes of Alexander Kluge and Jean-Jacques Annaud. Since 1990 he's written/directed, produced, or done both for about a dozen films thus far, and with My Way To Olympia he does all three, plus appears on camera.

WHAT: I haven't seen this documentary, made by Von Glasow at last year's ParaOlympics in London, but it sounds quite compelling, and I'm rather relieved to read reviews assuring what the film is not, such as the one by Cirina Catania I'm about to quote:

Von Glasow’s matter-of-fact approach to his subjects gets our attention right from the beginning of the film when he declares he is not sure he wants to make the movie, he hates sports and he thinks the ParaOlympics are basically a dumb idea. My Way to Olympia is not a gushy story about a group of charismatic, disabled humans overcoming adversity against all odds…

WHERE/WHEN: Tonight at the Little Roxie at 9PM and Saturday, June 15th, at the New Parkway at 5PM.

WHY: If you haven't yet seen one of the year's best films, The Place Beyond the Pines, it's playing in 35mm at the Castro today and I urge you to catch it. But if you already have, you may want to turn your attention to DocFest, which is responsible for bringing this screening tonight. At 7PM there's a showcase of shorts by local doc-makers, and an hour-long psittacine feature by another local (Emily Wick) called Life With Alex, which SF IndieFest near-completist Jason Wiener has called "the most amazing thing I've seen in the festival (so far.)"  Then at 9 there's yet another by a local: Public Sex, Private Lives, by Kink.com filmmaker Simone Jude; this one was featured in last week's Bay Guardian. 

But I'm personally most interested in the most far-flung of tonight's selections, My Way To Olympia, in part because I'm always interested in seeing films made about the Olympics, and why shouldn't that include the ParaOlympics as well? The fact that Von Glasow is himself a paraplegic adds to the allure, I admit; if one-eyed auteurs like Raoul Walsh and André De Toth could show-up most of their fully-sighted directorial brethren when making 3-D films during the 1953 stereoscopy craze, then how good of a picture might a Thalidomide survivor be able to come up with? I aim to find out.

HOW: Digital production and presentation.

The Source Family (2012)

WHO: Co-directed by Jodi Wille and Maria Demopoulos.

WHAT: Want to spend time in a vegetarian, psychedelic, mystical personality cult? No? How about just 98 minutes? This documentary about a Los Angeles religious community active in the early 1970s is well worth your time if you have any interest in California counterculture of that era. The Source Family, sometimes known as the Aquarians, was a commune of followers of a World War II vet named Jim Baker, who opened several popular health food restaurants, the last of which, The Source, was frequented by the likes of Goldie Hawn and Steve McQueen, and even made cinematic appearances in Hollywood films like Alex in Wonderland and Annie Hall (the doc provides relevant clips).

Inspired by the Kundalini Yoga teachings of Yogi Bhajan, Baker changed his name to "Father Yod" and selected a 19-year old named Robin to become "Mother Ah-Om" to help him set a new religion based on "the best" of all existing ones. 140 youngsters were drawn to his charismatic presence and came to live on his compound, donate their savings, work in his restaurant, and travel with him down a spiritual path involving the usual sex, drugs and rock and roll, but that ultimately took some bizarre turns. Though nothing as massively tragic as what's depicted in Oakland filmmaker Stanley Nelson's Jonestown: the Life and Death of Peoples Temple; the Source Family may have some superficial connections to Peoples Temple in that both attracted seekers trained by the 1960s political climate to distrust traditional father figures even if they still craved a kind of paternal authority, but it's clear that they were not very similar in some fundamental ways.

Made up mostly of interviews with former Source Family members, as well as the personal archive of Isis Aquarian, the now-septugenarien "family historian and temple keeper", The Source Family is no formal ground-breaker. It has a "generally favorable" rating on Metacritic, which seems fair enough. But I notice that the two most unfavorable reviews (neither outright pans) fault the film for not including more of an attempt to place The Source Family into the social and religious context of its time. It's true that directors Wille and Demopoulos largely avoid panning out to a view of the forest, preferring to examine the story at tree-level, almost as if the audience is experiencing the history of the movement from the perspective of someone who was a part of it at the time. Writer Erik Davis and a few other outsiders do provide a bit of analysis and context, mostly their commentary revolves around the musical recordings Father Yod and his followers published, which we also hear samples of throughout the soundtrack, and which now fetch pretty prices in psychedelic record collecting circles.

But though this approach meant that the film took a little bit of time to truly blossom into a compelling story, it also feels respectful of the audience, which is nonetheless given plenty of information and allowed to make up its own mind about went on in Father Yod's group (I know I'm being vague, but I don't want to give away any of the most unexpected revelations. If you want to know more than even the film tells you about Father Yod and his legacy, this article and the currently-active comment thread below might do the trick. But it may make a viewing of The Source Family less enjoyable.)

WHERE/WHEN: Tonight only at the New Parkway at 7:00.

WHY: Lots of documentaries at The New Parkway this week. This plays this as part of its weekly Doc Night held each Tuesday. The venue will also host a documentary tomorrow night: After Innocence, sponsored by the ACLU and screening for free. Friday through Sunday, it joins the Roxie in hosting SF Indie's Doc Fest. And Monday it shows Crossing The Line, about a US Army defector now living in North Korea.

HOW: Digital projection, as always at the New Parkway.

Elena (2012)

WHO: Brazilian filmmaker Petra Costa made this.

WHAT: Not to be confused with Andrey Zvyagintsev's 2011 drama with the same title, this first-person documentary was undertaken after Costa had an inspirational viewing of Agnès Varda's The Beaches of Agnès. I haven't seen it, but after several impassioned recommendations from cinephiles who have, I'm very excited to. Let me quote from Jordan M. Smith's recent review:

Elena was a Brazilian dancer turned movie bound New Yorker, dead set on becoming a star. Following in her sister’s footsteps, Petra has taken up the camera, performs before it and let’s her voice lay elegantly aloft the starkly personal collage she’s constructed.

WHERE/WHEN: Tonight only at the Roxie Theater at 9PM.

WHY: I haven't yet had a chance yet to attend this year's edition of SF IndieFest's annual showcase DocFest, which began last week and runs through June 20th at the Roxie and other Frisco Bay venues, after which it takes up a three-day residency at Santa Cruz's Rio Theatre. Though the festival began last Thursday, there are only a couple of fest selections that audiences won't have at least one more chance to see over the next two weeks. Check David Hudson's handy round-up of press previews to get a full sense of the program. But although none of the linked previewers mention Elena, my sense from the Facebook and Twitter endorsements I've spied is that it will be one of the festival's biggest highlights.

HOW: DocFest is all-digital this year, but that' makes sense as so few documentaries are shot on film anymore. This one mixes footage shot using digital and analog video cameras with that from a Super-8 film camera, which may be confounding to would-be format purists trying to decide whether to attend or not.