"IOHTE" stands for "I Only Have Two Eyes"; it's my annual survey of selected San Francisco Bay Area cinephiles' favorite in-the-cinema screenings of classic films and archival oddities from the past year. An index of participants can be found here.
Contributor Terri Saul is a visual artist and writer; she sometimes comments on new films on Letterboxd.
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| Screen capture from Kino Lorber DVD |
1. A Touch of Sin (China, 2013), Jia Zhangke,
Saturday, March 22nd, 2014, 8:15pm, at the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley,
CA, screened as part of the “A
Theater Near You” series.
A Touch of Sin is a well-choreographed
chain of reenacted current events exposing, through martial dramatization, the
everyday violence of life and livelih
2.
The Adversary (India, 1970), Satyajit Ray,
Sunday, March 30th, 2014, 5:15pm, at the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, CA,
was one of the films in the “The
Brilliance of Satyajit Ray”
set.
More political than the other Rays I’ve
seen, the Adversary reveals the small-scale warfare of everyday joblessness and
revolutionary politics in the chaos of late 60s Calcutta. Literal heat inflames
heated brawls and renders nightmarish hallucinations, via pitta in the chitta.
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| Screen capture from First Run Features DVD |
3.
Photographic Memory (US, 2011), Ross McElwee,
Tuesday, April 1st, 2014, 7pm, at the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, CA, was
part of the “Ross
McElwee and the Cambridge Turn”
series.
This documentary touches, too, on the
60s and exists in the no man’s land between memorabilia,
conversations, uniquely narrated musings, research, interviews, and
observation. Photographic Memory travels between modern-day Cambridge and
Brittany, France, then and now. A game of catch-me-if-you-can intergenerational
grasping and sporting youthful play develops bit-by-bit between a father and
his son. Not finding his son, he looks for himself; the son, avoiding his
father in order to find himself, searches for entries and exits to and from the
peering lens of his father’s world. The son and father both
employ ever-more daring techniques to capture the kind of attention they both
want, maybe not so much from each other, but perhaps from those outside familial
bounds. McElwee has an unforgettable narrative voice-over style I find
simultaneously charming and invasive.
4.
The Grapes of Wrath (US 1940), John Ford,
Wednesday, June 18th, 2014, 7pm, at the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, CA.
This show was a celebration of the restored 75th anniversary print with and
introduction by Susan Shillinglaw in conversation with Gary Brechin and Harvey
Smith.
New Deal preservation, related
projects, and Stenibeck Studies enhanced the audience’s
experience. I, for one, had never seen The Grapes of Wrath on a big screen. For
a poverty-conscious Californian with Okie roots, things got pretty vérité.
Look under the freeway overpass near the Albany Bulb, here in the Bay Area, for
the next chapter.
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| Screen capture from Polart DVD |
5.
Night Train (Poland 1959), Jerzy Kawalerowicz,
Sunday, July 6th, 2014, 5pm, at the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, CA, was
part of “Martin
Scorsese Presents Masterpieces of Polish Cinema,”
a digitally restored print.
Opening in the Polish city of Łódź,
this cool train mystery unspools like a 35mm film print, each secondary
compartment squeezed in its own intangible rectangle rushing past until the
film reel jumps its platter and hurls itself into a field with the force of a
heavy truckload of film stock come unbalanced in the projection booth.
6.
A Geisha (Japan 1953), Kenji Mizoguchi, Friday,
July 25th, 2014, 7pm, at the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, CA. This, and
the other Mizoguchis on my list, were presented as part of “Kenji Mizoguchi: A
Cinema of Totality."
Are there some seeds of feminism in
Mizoguchi’s version of a postwar floating world? Young women’s
rights and their obstructions begin to emerge in this film about the bonds of
apprenticeship, money lending, servitude, trickery, and the haunted beauty of
Kyoto in the 50s. Some would call it melodrama, but the film’s
theatricality and overtly political subject matter is quietly observed by
Mizoguchi in his standoffish style.
7.
Office Space (US, 1999), Mike Judge, Friday,
July 25th, 2014, 8:45pm, at the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, CA. Part of
the series “Rude Awakening: American Comedy, 1990–2010”
Where it all started and where many of
us ended up.
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| Screen capture from Masters of Cinema DVD |
8.
Crucified Lovers: A Story from Chikamatsu
(Japan, 1954), Wednesday, July 30th, 2014, 7pm, at the Pacific Film Archive in
Berkeley, CA.
A whirlwind, sometimes slapstick,
mistaken-identity tale, like a lover’s version of the “who’s
on first” routine, but this time it’s “who’s crucified first?”
Mizoguchi’s adaptation is based on a 17th-century story that has come
a long way from its puppet-play roots. It now has a 50’s era
film noir vibe but it maintains the feeling of a morally complicated folktale
on parade in the stage of the streets. The spoiler of a title doesn’t
ruin the story’s arc.
9.
The Taira Clan Saga (Japan 1955), Kenji
Mizoguchi, Thursday, August 14th, 2014, 7pm, at the Pacific Film Archive in
Berkeley, CA.
A dance of underfunded samurai and
selfish monastics, a Mizoguchi in color—what could be more perfect? This film
is like story candy. It leaves me not quite satiated, and with a noisy,
guilt-inducing wrapper in my pocket that, for some reason, I keep as a memento
of a night when I ate dessert first.
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| Screen capture from Warner DVD |
10. East
of Eden, Elia Kazan (US, 1955), Friday, September 5th, 2014, 8:50pm, at the
Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, CA. A part of “James
Dean, Restored Classics from Warner Bros.”
Here comes James Dean, not the way he
looked on the family TV, but digitally restored, in CinemaScope, and larger
than life. East of Eden was a gritty follow-up to the earlier lesson in
Steinbeck Studies after the Grapes of Wrath screening and discussion of
Weedpatch Camp in Bakersfield, last June. East of Eden there’s
more dirt and less dust, this time in Salinas.
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