Teorema (1968)

WHO: Pier Paolo Pasolini wrote and directed this.

WHAT: From what I've heard, the most expensive Pasolini film for an institution to procure a 35mm print of, which is probably why it has not been part of every stop on the current national tour of his films (UCLA for instance passed on showing it). A shame, since it's one of his best, and an especially good entry point for a Pasolini newbie.

WHERE/WHEN: Tonight only at the Pacific Film Archive at 6:30.

WHY: Support the PFA's commitment to providing an essentially complete Pasolini series by attending a screening that (if the figure I heard quoted to another venue is correct) is mathematically incapable of making back its print rental cost through ticket sales.

Now's as good a time as any to mention other upcoming PFA series I've not highlighted on this blog. Most of them were just revealed this past week.

October 10-27: Moumen Smihi: Poet of Tangier, dedicated to a Moroccan filmmaker I'm unfamiliar with, but who has been making films since the days of Pasolini and Fassbinder (both of whom shot films in that country).

November 4-22: Afterimage: Agnès Varda on Filmmaking. The "mother of the French New Wave" will be on hand to screen four of her films on November 4th and 5th.

November 8-December 8: Beauty and Sacrifice: Images of Women in Chinese Cinema. Two films starring 1930s Shanghai film icon Ruan Lingyu, two starring Maggie Cheung (including one where she plays Ruan), and Cecile Tang's 1969 film The Arch, which I've been wanting to see for ten years or more.

November 13-17: Arrested History: New Portuguese Cinema. 6 recent films from one of the most interesting European national cinemas today. Includes in-person appearances by filmmakers Susana de Sousa Dias and João Pedro Rodrigues, and the 1st Frisco Bay screening of Miguel Gomes's acclaimed Tabu since last year's Mill Valley Film Festival (but this time in 35mm.)

November 21-24: Behind the Scenes: The Art and Craft of Cinema with Randy Thom, Sound Designer. Three in-person screenings of diverse films featuring sound work by an Academy Award-winner whose film career started with work on one of the greatest-sounding films American of all time, Apocalpyse Now.

December 1-15: The Resolution Starts Now: 4K Restorations from Sony Pictures. Grover Crisp will be on hand two evenings to try to sell us skeptics on the merits of high quality digital projection of nine classic Columbia pictures.

HOW: New 35mm print.

Ali: Fear Eats The Soul (1974)

WHO: Rainer Werner Fassbinder wrote, directed, and acted in this.

WHAT: Ed Gonzalez wrote a great review of Fassbinder's international breakthrough as part of a Slant Magazine focus on the director about ten years ago.

WHERE/WHEN: Tonight at the Pacific Film Archive at 8:50, and Thursday, October 17th at Yerba Buena Center For The Arts at 7:30.

WHY: Three Frisco Bay cinemas are running Fassbinder series this autumn, the first major local retrospective of the director's films in ten years. Two of the three begin their screenings tonight. The Roxie begins a week of 7 nightly Fassbinder screenings tonight with one of the director's late works Lola. Meanwhile the PFA in Berkeley screens Ali: Fear Eats the Soul as well as series namesake Love is Colder Than Death tonight to kick off that venue's 24-title series, complimented by a set of four of Fassbinder's favorite films by other directors starting November 1st.

Ali: Fear Eats The Soul will also kick off the YBCA's 10-title series in a couple of weeks. There is no overlap between the Roxie and YBCA titles, but all of them will play the PFA, along with seven others. Following is a list of all the films playing all three venues, in chronological order:

Lola: Roxie October 4 or PFA November 23
Love is Colder Than Death: PFA October 4 or YBCA October 27
Ali: Fear Eats the Soul: PFA October 4 or YBCA October 17
Fox And His Friends: Roxie October 5 or PFA November 15 (same day as Robert Bresson's Pickpocket)
The American Soldier: Roxie October 6 or PFA October 18 (same day as Beware a Holy Whore)
Fear of Fear: Roxie October 7 or PFA October 25 (same day as the Merchant of Four Seasons)
Mother Kusters Goes To Heaven: Roxie October 8 or PFA November 30
Effi Briest: PFA October 8 or YBCA October 24   
Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant: Roxie October 9 or PFA October 29
Marriage of Maria Braun: Roxie October 10 or PFA October 12
The Katzelmacher: PFA October 11
Gods of the Plague: PFA October 11
I Only Want You To Love Me: PFA October 13
Beware a Holy Whore PFA October 18 (same day as The American Soldier)
The Merchant of Four Seasons YBCA October 20 or PFA October 25 (same day as Fear of Fear)
Chinese Roulette: PFA November 1 (same day as Douglas Sirk's Written on the Wind)
World on a Wire: PFA November 2
Veronika Voss: YBCA November 3 or PFA November 24
Satan's Brew: PFA November 9 or YBCA November 16
Why Does Herr R. Run Amok: YBCA November 21 or PFA December 6
Martha: YBCA December 1 or PFA December 12
Despair: PFA December 6
Querelle: YBCA December 8 or PFA December 14 (same day as Nicholas Ray's Johnny Guitar)
In A Year of 13 Moons: PFA December 15 or YBCA December 21

HOW: All films in the Fassbinder season screen from 35mm prints. (UPDATE 10/17/2013: in fact The Katzelmacher was screened from a DVD due to print damage, and I Only Want You To Love Me screened via Blu-Ray, as had been planned from the series announcement. I regret the error. UPDATE 11/30/2013: Despair will also screen via Blu-Ray)

Nostalghia (1983)

WHO: Andrei Tarkovsky directed and co-wrote this.

WHAT: Arguably the most rarely-screened of Tarkovsky's seven feature films, at least in the Bay Area. The last local 35mm screening I'm aware of was in 2004 at the Pacific Film Archive. Only The Sacrifice hasn't been seen on any local screen for longer, but at least that one had played at the Castro in 2003 and the Red Vic in 2001. I guess this is splitting hairs.

As I wrote a couple months ago, I consider Tarkovsky's films made for cinema to the degree that I'm reluctant to watch them at home. I'd rather patiently wait for a big-screen opportunity to see them. This means that, because I missed that PFA screening, I've been waiting more than nine years to see this, my last Tarkovsky film aside from a few of his early shorts.

WHERE/WHEN: Tonight and Saturday, October 5 at 7:30, and Sunday, October 6 at 2PM, at Yerba Buena Center For the Arts.

WHY: The upcoming YBCA calender, now updated through December, includes more frequent 35mm screenings than the rest of 2013 has brought to the venue. After these three Nostalghia screenings, October 17th launches a series of ten Rainer Werner Fassbinder films (different titles from the seven screening at the Roxie starting tomorrow), and November 7th starts a fully-35mm series of eight classic art and exploitation films that have been saddled with an X rating at some point in history.

HOW: New 35mm.

F-Line (2013)

WHO: Silvia Turchin made this.

WHAT: I haven't seen this short documentary, but according to press materials provided by the Mill Valley Film Festival, "F-Line is a sensory-based poetic film that explores the ethereal past of San Francisco's historic streetcars. Shot entirely on celluloid, F-Line embodies a textural way of perceiving these relics and examines the traces of time's mystery that fluctuate beneath the surface."

WHERE/WHEN: On a shorts program starting 7PM tonight at the Pacific Film Archive, or on another shorts program screening next Tuesday at the Sequoia and next Thursday at the Rafael, both courtesy of the Mill Valley Film Festival.

WHY: Tonight's PFA program is a student film showcase including works from filmmakers studying at half a dozen different Frisco Bay film schools. A few, such as Michael Ong's striking Through the Darkest Valley are currently available to view online, but for most of these works a screening like this may be the only way to see them, especially with filmmaker present. (PS the PFA November-December calendar is now available.)

F-Line was fortunate to be selected for one of the higher-profile local film festivals as well, thereby perhaps escaping the "student film" stigma that unfortunately is attached to works made on the way to earning a degree. (A stigma I abhor; great films like Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story and Dyketactics started their lives as "student films" but have become canonized classics of a sort). The Mill Valley Film Festival (which I previewed here last month) starts tomorrow, and includes shorts programs on almost every day it runs, culminating in an October 13th screening of festival favorites and a premiere revival of the legendary 22-minute fantasy film from 1980, Black Angel.

HOW: Digital presentation on aforementioned shorts programs.

The Witch Who Came From The Sea (1976)

WHO: Millie Perkins stars in this.

WHAT: Fernando F. Croce has written the most eloquent positive review of this only-in-the-1970s film I've read.

WHERE/WHEN: Tonight at 7:00 only at the Roxie.

WHY: This screens thanks to the Film on Film Foundation, the first such presentation by this rag-tag group of celluloid purists in nearly two and a half years. Their first presentation was at the Roxie as well. I'm hoping tonight's show marks a FOFF rebirth, just in the nick of time as film presentations become gradually less and less frequent.

HOW: 35mm on a double-bill with another film featuring Perkins, also directed by exploitation film legend Matt Cimber, Lady Cocoa.