Moonrise Kingdom (2012)

WHO: Wes Anderson directed this.

WHAT: Moonrise Kingdom was my favorite new release of 2012. It was the first of Anderson's films since Rushmore that I fell in love with upon a single viewing, although I rewatched it twice in theatres and liked it better and better each time. I think it's because, like Rushmore or Anderson's formative influence the Bill Melendez-made Peanuts specials, the film is almost entirely about children. Adult actors like Bruce Willis, Edward Norton Jr., and Tilda Swinton are on hand to provide some star wattage but they subvert their own personae, and are peripheral to the story. At times they might as well be speaking in the indistinct monotones of Melendez's faceless adult characters, for all the importance their words have to the children in the story.

The Cinetrix wrote a lovely illustrated piece on the film when it came out, but that I only recently came across. I highly recommend clicking on the link.

WHERE/WHEN: Screens at 8:00 tonight on a temporary outdoor screen constructed in Washington Square Park in San Francisco's North Beach.

WHY: Look outside. Maybe you're outside already and looking at this on a portable device. If not, you probably should be. It's a gorgeous day. Last night was a gorgeous evening, and tonight's likely to be just as ideal for an outdoor event. Frisco Bay residents know that September is really our Summer, and it seems almost wasteful to spend to many of the warmest nights this month indoors watching movies. So why not stay outdoors and watch one? The San Francisco Neighborhood Theatre Foundation has for many years now put on outdoor screenings in San Francisco parks. Sometimes the weather doesn't co-operate for the June screenings, but September is pretty golden, and should be especially so tonight.

More outdoor screenings are planned in other Frisco Bay cities, including Berkeley, where the Pacific Film Archive is using the future site of its planned relocated space to show a couple locally-filmed 1970s classics in a few weeks, as well as Redwood City, Oakland, and San Rafael.

Meanwhile, the SFNTF's other major enterprises, the Balboa and the Vogue, are newsworthy this week. The Balboa just successfully achieved its kickstarter goal to raise funds to install state-of-the-art digital projection equipment. I hope the venue is able to retain at least one of its 35mm projectors, and from what I've heard the staff there is hoping to do so too. As for the Vogue, it's going to play host to the San Francisco Film Society's Hong Kong Cinema series on the first weekend in October. I'll discuss that line-up in a near-future post.

HOW: Digital projection.

Ritual in Transfigured Time (1946)

WHO: Maya Deren directed this.

WHAT: Coming as it does after her landmark psychodramas Meshes of the Afternoon and At Land, Ritual in Transfigured Time is still an under-appreciated Deren work. Acquarello describes the film's opening in her review:

an animated, approachable female figure (Maya Deren) alternately framed in high contrast against a pair of interchangeable doorways, beckons a seemingly naïve young dancer (Rita Christiani) into a large adjoining room to assist in an implied Sisyphean domestic ritual before being summoned by a striking, cosmopolitan figure (Anaïs Nin) awaiting in an opposite doorway.

WHERE/WHEN: 8PM tonight only at Oddball Films. Seating is limited, so it's best to RSVP by e-mailing or calling ahead at (415) 558-8117.

WHY: The cost of striking and renting 35mm prints is reaching ever-escalating heights. If the Pacific Film Archive 's upcoming complete Pasolini retrospective is being charged the same amounts a friend programming in another North American city mentioned he was quoted to screen some of the Marxist filmmaker's key works, there's no way they're making up the cost in ticket sales the old-fashioned capitalist way. It's no wonder that for-profit venues like the Castro are becoming more reliant on cheaper DCP technology to source their screening content (though its excellent September calendar is thankfully relatively light on repertory titles screening digitally).

As bleak as things might get for continued 35mm distribution, however, I'm optimistic that film-on-film exhibition will not die before audience demand for it does. Networks of archives and collectors who recognize the unique qualities of the film medium will continue the tradition of screening reels of films through mechanical projection equipment. The selection of titles may become more limited geographically, consisting more and more of titles that don't have to be shipped in heavy canisters for thousands of miles, but in a place like the Bay Area, with its many collectors and official and unofficial archives, the number of available titles will still be practically inexhaustible, as long as support from audiences encourages collaboration between local collectors and venues. As the organic food crowd has gravitated to the sustainability of the locavore movement so too can cinephiles encourage a community-based alternative movement to massive and costly distribution. It just needs a good name. Perhaps someone can think of something better than "parokinal" (my awkward mash-up of "parochial" and "kino").

I don't know where the Vortex Room sourced its print of Car Crash last night, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was a local collector. Local collections also form the backbone of programming at both the Niles Essnaay Silent Film Museum in Fremont, CA (which has revealed its September Saturday night schedule, and, via pdf, all its other screenings through the end of October) and the Berkeley Underground Film Society. The Psychotronix Film Festival is giving film purists a rare chance to see 16mm projections at the New Parkway in Oakland this Sunday. Even the Pacific Film Archive sometimes supplements its 35mm programs with 16mm prints of varying provenance; the Wendell Corey series starting there tonight is mostly in 35mm, but includes one DCP presentation (Sorry, Wrong Number) and two 16mm shows (Anthony Mann's The Furies tomorrow night and series closing Elvis vehicle Loving You).

But in San Francisco, Oddball Films is the king of the "parokinal" universe. A vast 16mm archive stored in a Mission loft that also houses its director Stephen Parr, Oddball has been screening selections from its collection weekly for years. Tonight's program curated by Scotty Slade is both typically diverse and notably deep. Entitled "Aligning the Trance Particles", Slade's selection includes experimental films like Ritual In Transfigured Time and Pat O'Neill's 7632 as well as ethnographic documentations like the 1964 Pomo Shaman and even a prize-winning scientific film made by Carol Ballard (of  The Black Stallion and Never Cry Wolf fame) called Crystalization which captures imagery through an electron microscope. I'm planning to go. See you there?

HOW: If tradition holds, all the films in tonight's program including Ritual in Transfigured Time come from Oddball's collection of 16mm prints.

Car Crash (1981)

WHO: Italian cult director Antonio Margheriti directed this.

WHAT: An early eighties car chase film with lead actor Joey Travolta (elder brother to John) behind the wheel and a synthesizer score? Sounds like a slice of action-packed schlock of the most easily digestible order to me. I don't believe it's available on DVD in this country, and I've never seen it (I almost said "of course" but I truly do sometimes go in for this kind of stuff). So here's a clip from a review by John Cooke:

Joey Travolta is as endearingly wooden as an Eric Estrada Chips guise clone extracted from two wheels to four but, unlike his more famous brother in recent years, keeps his spare tire in the back of the on screen vibrant red road rooster for all not to see. The blistering good looks of the car shine on screen as it eats up the road both in and out of chase sequences but it is the scene stealing qualities of John Steiner, as the loopy Kirby, which will delight and raise a smile for all in highlighting what a wonderfully accomplished and consummate character actor he had become by this time in his illustrious career.

WHERE.WHEN: 9PM tonight only at the Vortex Room.

WHY: The last few weeks have seen a flurry of local film organizations announcing their Fall programs, and there's more to come. I've been trying to keep readers of this blog and/or my twitter feed abreast of all the notable screenings but worthy events do slip through the cracks. Neither this week's SF Weekly Fall Arts Preview, and last week's Bay Guardian equivalent had much information you wouldn't already know if you read Hell On Frisco Bay as devotedly as I've been writing it this year, but the latter reminded me of a venue I've rarely mentioned on this blog and have only been to once. I wish The Vortex Room had more than a Facebook page as a linkable online presence, but that prejudice shouldn't prevent me from steering cinema lovers to an intimate space decorated like an Esquivel album cover (check out this Jackson Scarlet article on the venue for images and a description of the space and its philosophy) that plays 16mm prints of films just about no other Frisco Bay venue would dare to.

Their on-film presentations are meticulously recorded in the Film On Film Foundation calendar, but for posterity, the other 16mm titles in their current Antonio Marghereti series running each Thursday of September include 1975's Take A Hard Ride (playing with Naked You Die, the latter presumably digitally) September 12th, 1983's Yor, the Hunter From The Future (playing with The Wild Wild Planet, again presumably digitally) September 19th, and 1979's Killer Fish (playing with Cannibal Apocalypse you get the picture) September 26th.

HOW: 16mm print on a double-bill with another Antonio Margheriti action movie, a James Bond knock-off called Lightning Bolt, which I believe will screen digitally.

Behind The Eyes Are The Ears (2010)

WHO: Nancy Andrews made this video work.

WHAT: I haven't seen much of Andrews' work but I really liked her 16mm film Haunted Camera, which I saw and wrote a bit about when it screened at the San Francisco International Film Festival back in 2006. Behind the Ears Are the Eyes is a video-produced piece from the Maine-dwelling filmmaker, but like its forebear it takes a syncretic production approach, utilizing silhouette animation reminiscent of Lotte Reiniger, collage cut-outs a la Stan Vanderbeek, anthropomorphic costuming recalling Isabella Rossellini's "Green Porno" series, and archival images from educational and other films (I spotted Miriam Hopkins from Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and several animal stars from Chang myself). And more. 

It's all in service of a mad scientist tale about one Dr. Myes, a researcher doing self-experiments in a quest to increase the capacity of human perception. The genesis of the project was actually a song cycle composed by Andrews and musical co-conspirator Zach Soares, which forms much of the soundtrack to the 25-minute short. In turn, Behind the Eyes Are the Ears is currently being transformed into a feature-length film called The Strange Eyes of Dr. Myes starring Michole Briana White, Gunnar Hansen (who played Leatherface in the original Texas Chain Saw Massacre), and Jennifer Prediger (from Joe Swanburg's Uncle Kent and other films). She was inspired to move into the realm of feature filmmaking after being inspired by Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives to consider features as a way to get more exposure to experimental work.

WHERE/WHEN: Screens on a Pacific Film Archive program at 7:00 tonight.

WHY: Avant-garde film and video filmmakers and fans are converging on Toronto to experience the Wavelengths festival, and many of those left out are eyeing the just-announced program for the Views From the Avant-Garde festival happening in New York City in October. But what of those of us here on the West Coast, who can't make time or spend the cash to jet to an out-of-town festival? SF Cinematheque's Crossroads festival is a Spring event, and in 2013 provided us with opportunities to see terrific work like Scott Stark's The Realist and Jodie Mack's Dusty Stacks of Mom months before New York and Toronto viewers will get to. Hopefully some of the better works from these more-established festivals will find their way to Crossroads 2014. But in the meantime, there are a number of opportunities to see some of the works being presented at Views From the Avant-Garde, and other works by Wavelengths and Views makers at the PFA thanks to its Alternative Visions season, which has recently announced all programs through November on its website. Between these shows and the hot-off-the-press Other Cinema calendar for Saturday night experimental mayhem at Artists' Telvision Access, the Autumn is shaping up to have some good options for fans of "artist-made" cinema.

Nancy Andrews isn't in Wavelegths or Views this year, but two makers who are part of next week's Alternative Visions program, Lost And Found: Recent Experimental Animation are in the latter. James Sansing's Verses, which was a real highlight of the SF International Film Festival's avant-garde programming, will appear at Views, and Jodie Mack has a one-woman show of brand-new works. We'll have to wait to see those, but we will get to see her beautifully fibrous Point de Gaze on a program that also includes new work from local legend Lawrence Jordan and (full disclosure: my girlfriend) Kerry Laitala, as well as Stacey Steers, T. Marie, and Evan Meaney. Steers, Laitala, Jordan, and Sansing are all expected to be on hand for the screening.

Canadian Marielle Nitoslawska will present her new work about Carolee Schneemann, Breaking the Frame at the PFA October 9th, just after its Views From The Avant-Garde premiere. The following week, the great Phil Solomon will be here present two programs of work at the PFA and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, including his new Views piece Psalm IV: Valley of the Shadow at PFA. ELSA merdelamerdelamer, one of two new Abigail Child works playing at Views will be part of the PFA's in-person screening of film and video from the last thirty years of her career. Unfortunately we won't see Wavelengths/Views selection Three Landscapes at the PFA's November 6th showcase on Peter Hutton, but his beautiful work shows rarely enough that we might be happy enough to see the four 1990's-era 16mm films programmed.

And there's more. A showing of Holy Motors with the brilliant Jeffrey Skoller on hand to help contextualize it, a student work showcase, and in-person screenings with Portugal's Susana de Sousa Dias (showing 48) and Lynne Sachs (showing Your Day Is My Night, which also plays Other Cinema November 16th) help make the Fall 2013 Alternative Visions program a very diverse and enticing one. See you Wednesdays!

HOW: Digital presentation along with another Andrews work called On A Phantom Limb.

Lady For A Day (1933)

WHO: Frank Capra directed this film starring May Robson and Warren William.

WHAT: The first film made at then-tiny Columbia Pictures to receive any Academy Award nominations, it was in the running at the 1934 Oscars for Best Picture, Director, Adapted Screenplay and Actress (for Robson as "Apple Annie", a an aged peddler who is remade into a high-society matron for the benefit of her visiting daughter). It won none of the above awards, although Capra thought he had won the directing award when host and presenter Will Rogers called from the stage, "Come and get it, Frank!" when announcing the award. He meant his fellow Fox Studio employee Frank Lloyd for Cavalcade, however, leaving Capra embarrassingly standing in front of the stage speechless as he realized on his way to the podium he'd made a (perfectly understandable) mistake. 

The next year Capra found redemption when his It Happened One Night swept the major awards, but I think Lady For A Day is in most respects a superior picture than the slightly-later classic. Joseph McBride describes its uniqueness in his biography Frank Capra: the Catastrophe of Success:

It was not so much that the story had a seventy-year-old heroine but that it was not a conventional star vehicle. It was a truly democratic story. Each character was equally important. Even the nominal lead role of Apple Annie was merely the centerpiece of a fragile fairy tale that to an unusual extent depended for its credibility on the interaction of an entire community of characters.

WHERE/WHEN: Screens tonight only at 7:30 at the Stanford Theatre in Palo Alto.

WHY: The Stanford's Summer calendar is winding down now that it's September, with only four pictures to go, all starring Deanna Durbin, who was subject of a full retrospective last Winter and died at age 91 this past Spring. These four include Durbin's most uncharacteristic picture and one of her very best (along with His Butler's Sister and The Amazing Mrs. Holiday, in my opinion), the Robert Siodmak noir Christmas Holiday. It sounds like a charming film but goes to far darker places than even Capra's It's A Wonderful Life in its depiction of Durbin as a prostitute and Gene Kelly as a... but no, I won't give it away.

This film is something of a premonition of the next Stanford series, a dual focus on Humphrey Bogart and film noir running September 14 through November 10. Unfortunately, the theatre will go back to a four-day screening schedule after the initial nine-day run of Casablanca and The Maltese Falcon (Sep. 14-22). But the good news is everything will be shown in 35mm prints, and that every Thursday-to-Sunday weekend will pair one of Bogie's most popular pictures with a top-quality crime picture from approximately the same era. The two bookending bills in this pattern are knockouts: Bogart and Lauren Bacall in To Have and Have Not arrives with Robert Mitchum and Jane Greer in Out of the Past September 26-29, and my very favorite Bogart vehicle In A Lonely Place is paired with one of the all-time great noirs Gun Crazy November 7-10. In between are a number of other strong pictures (The Third Man, The Treasure of Sierra Madre, Touch of Evil, etc.) as well as a few I've never gotten around to seeing (namely, The Blue Dahlia, Key Largo and The Caine Mutiny). I'll be tempted to go every week!

HOW: Lady For A Day screens in 35mm on a double-bill with another Warren William film called Emploees Entrance