Philip Fukuda: IOHTE

The San Francisco Bay Area is still home to a rich cinephilic culture nurtured in large part by a diverse array of cinemas, programmers and moviegoers. I'm honored to present a selection of favorite screenings experienced by local cinephiles in 2015. An index of participants can be found here.

IOHTE contributor Philip Fukuda is a volunteer at various local film festivals. 

 Courtesy of the San Francisco Film Society

Monte-Cristo (Henri Fescourt, 1929, France). San Francisco International Film Festival, Kabuki Cinema. Lenny Borger, this year's SFIFF Mel Novikoff award winner, elected to screen the 3 plus hour silent Monte-Cristo. Based on the Alexandre Dumas, père novel, the director's meticulous attention to detail made this classic tale of revenge a delight for me. I'm convinced that the French were masters of the epic historical drama.

On the other end of the spectrum, The Swallow and the Titmouse (Andre Antoine, 1920/83, France) is a simple drama. Screened at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, Castro Theatre. Filmed in a quasi-documentary style, The Swallow and the Titmouse (L'hirondelle et la mésange) shows the countryside pass by at leisurely pace as the barge travels between France and Belgium. Stephen Horne's piano and Diana Rowan's harp were the perfect accompaniment for the film.

100 Years in Post-Production: Resurrecting a Lost Landmark of Black Film History. San Francisco Silent Film Festival, Castro Theatre. This was one of the highlights of 2015's Silent Film Festival for me. This program presented footage discovered in the Museum of Modern Art's collection which consisted of scenes from Lime Kiln Field Day, shot in 1913 but never completed, USA featuring Bert Williams. It was a treat for me to see the pioneering black entertainer Bert Williams and showed why he was considered one of the top comedians of the day. I was also fascinated to see the performances shift over the course of multiple takes.

Screen capture from Miramax DVD of My Voyage to Italy

Ossessione (Luchino Visconti, 1943, Italy). Noir City 13, Castro Theatre. I enjoyed this adaptation of James M Cain's novel The Postman Always Rings Twice for its unglamorous and realistic view of the rural Italian countryside and equally earthy people that inhabit it. Visconti's love of the male body and opera are in full display in the film.

Sunset Boulevard (Billy Wilder, 1950, USA). Castro Theatre. I've seen this film many times, but I'm still knocked out by Gloria Swanson's bravura performance and Billy Wilder's and Charles Brackett's whip-smart dialogue. It's wonderful (and startling too) to see closeups of the still-beautiful 50-year old Swanson.

The Night of the Hunter (Charles Laughton, 1955, USA). Castro Theatre. Charles Laughton's sole film directorial effort was a memorable one. It's German Expressionism meets Southern Gothic. I think the sets are wildly artificial yet so beautiful. Robert Mitchum's Rev. Harry Powell was a menacing a villain as I've ever seen. Though I'd seen it several times on DVD, this was the first time I'd seen it in a theater, and what better place than on the Castro's big screen.

The Wild, Wild Rose (Wang Tian-lin, 1960, Hong Kong). A Rare Noir is Good to Find! series, Roxie Theatre. Grace Chang, a pop mega-star in Hong Kong, chews the scenery and belts out Carmen in Chinese in this wildly entertaining film. One of my guilty pleasures of 2015.

Hope and Glory (John Boorman, 1987, UK). Mostly British Film Festival, Vogue Theatre. I thought it was a charming film showing both the childrens' and adults' reactions to the Blitz in World War II.

Screen capture from Wellspring DVD

Rebels of the Neon God (Tsai Ming-liang, 1992, Taiwan). Opera Plaza Cinema. Slacker teens, petty crime, video arcades in early 1990s Taipei. For me, it adds up to a lot more than the average teenage flick.

A History of Violence (David Cronenberg, 2005, USA) Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Though I only saw a few films at the David Cronenberg retrospective at YBCA screening room, A History of Violence was a standout. As the title implies, the film was full of thrills, but it was also full of knockout performances.

Adam Hartzell: IOHTE

The San Francisco Bay Area is still home to a rich cinephilic culture nurtured in large part by a diverse array of cinemas, programmers and moviegoers. I'm honored to present a selection of favorite screenings experienced by local cinephiles in 2015. An index of participants can be found here.

IOHTE contributor Adam Hartzell writes for koreanfilm.org as well as other outlets.

Image courtesy Midcentury Productions

Black Hair (Lee Man-hee, 1964) A Rare Noir Is Good To Find
March 22nd Roxie Theatre
I have seen a few Lee Man-hee films in theaters. I saw The Evil Stairs (1964) in Udine, Italy at the Far East Film Festival and I saw The Starting Point (1965) at the Pusan International Film Festival, when Busan, South Korea was still spelled with a 'P'. I also have seen The Marines Who Never Returned (1963) on DVD. But I never thought I would get to see a Lee Man-hee in a San Francisco theater. And I would have missed seeing Black Hair (1964) at A Rare Noir Is Good To Find series in March at the Roxie Theatre if one of the clerks at Le Video hadn't given me the heads up. I will miss Le Video for reasons such as this. (Suggestion for SF Noir City presenters of future Korean noir films. 'jopok' is a more appropriate term for Korean gangsters than the Japanese term 'yakuza'.)

Kevin Jerome Everson: Frames Connecting Necessity & Coincidence
Wed May 20th YBCA/SF Cinematheque
And I would have missed Kevin Jerome Everson's shorts at the YBCA, curated by the folks at SF Cinematheque if it weren't for Hell On Frisco Bay proprietor Brian Darr letting me know some of Everson's shorts featured my hometown of Cleveland. Turns out that Everson grew up in Mansfield, Ohio and the short Tygers (2014) had kids from his former high school running plays from his time on the gridiron. The short Release (2013) also involved football drills, but this time performed by dancers. One of the shorts made in Cleveland, Sound That (2014), follows Cleveland Water Department employees listening for pipes underground. They listen with devices Everson sculpted to replicate the devices used in the real work. Plus, Everson placed these workers in significant locations of local horror, such as the house where the three kidnapped girls were held for years. Everson was not on my radar until Brian, YBCA, and SF Cinematheque put him on my radar. And that is why I support my local rep houses and my local Brian Darr.

Image courtesy SF Japanese Film Festival

Unoforgiven (Sang-il Lee, 2013) Sacramento Japan Film Festival
Sat 7/18/15 Crest Theatre
My wife and I make biannual trips up to Sacramento for either the French Film Festival or the Japan Film Festival. This year it was the latter. Since I have co-workers at my San Francisco office commute from Sacramento and Roseville, I consider Sacramento part of the Bay Area. It's a nice Amtrak trip away. We stay at the lovely Citizen Hotel so we can easily walk from the train station and are close by Insight and Temple Coffeehouses and the lovely Crest Theatre. This year's Sacramento Japan Film Festival was their most successful ever. (Did our choice to donate to the festival this year, getting to see our names on screen, have anything to do with it?) The highlight was Unforgiven (2013), an Ainu Western (Northern?) directed by a Zainichi (Japanese of Korean descent) that was inspired by Clint Eastwood's film of the same name. The older gentlemen who the film began an extensive narration of the whole plot but was stopped by the audience in time before he spoiled everything. His response was a sincere befuddlement saying something like 'Oh, I'm sorry. I just thought Japanese movies were hard to understand so I thought I'd explain things. Rather than be annoyed by this, I saw this as an unintentional Andy Kaufman-esque performance that added to the delightful weekend we had.

Let's Get the Rhythm: the Life and Times of Mary Mack (Irene Chagall & Steve Zeitlin, 2014) Dance Film Festival
Sun 10/11/15 Brava Theatre in the Mission
If a US film does not get to me until over a year late, I consider it ripe for discussion based on Brian's parameters, an older film at a Rep theater. Let's Get The Rhythm: The Life and Times of Mary Mack was released (on TV I think) in 2014 so it barely makes it in. I want to make it fit because it was one of my favorite films I caught last year. Girl culture is regularly ridiculed or minimized in wider culture so it was so nice to see an aspect of girl culture, hand-clapping games, respected and explored in this locally produced documentary. And Irene Chagall & Steve Zeitlin touch on so much in this short documentary, even including a discussion of how, well, dirty and off-color many of the lyrics are. They even brought in a mathematician to demonstrate how freaking complex the rhythms are of these games. You go, girls!

Image courtesy San Francisco Silent Film Festival

The Grim Game (Irvin Willat, 1919) A Day of Silents
Castro 12/5/15
This year's San Francisco Silent Film Festival's A Day of Silents feature I caught was The Grim Game (Irvin Willat, 1919), a vehicle for Harry Houdini to demonstrate is escape exploits. One thing the Silent Film Festival shows us is how long some tropes/genres have been going on. This is basically an action film like the Fast and Furious genre or the yet to truly blossom parkour genre (such as the Luc Bresson produced trilogy of parkour films featuring traceur David Belle). Except instead of car chases or people flipping through urban obstacles, we witnessed regularly paced lock-picking and restraint-removing by the greatest escape artist of them all, Houdini.

Frako Loden: IOHTE

The San Francisco Bay Area is still home to a rich cinephilic culture nurtured in large part by a diverse array of cinemas, programmers and moviegoers. I'm honored to present a selection of favorite screenings experienced by local cinephiles in 2015. An index of participants can be found here.

IOHTE contributor Frako Loden is an educator and a writer, who publishes at documentary.org and elsewhere.

Image courtesy San Francisco Silent Film Festival

1. For me the highlight of 2015's repertory screenings was not even a finished film—just a collection of takes for a film that was never to be. The San Francisco Silent Film Festival in June presented Bert Williams: Lime Kiln Field Day, a compilation of rushes for a 1913 film, starring black comic actor Bert Williams and a large number of important black stage entertainers, that the white producers Biograph/Klaw and Erlanger abandoned and never completed. The long preamble at the Castro by MOMA's Ron Magliozzi was rushed and packed with amazing information about the history of black people on Broadway and this particular production. The would-be film's plot isn't unusual--a black social club gears up for a picnic and ball--but the treatment and circumstances of its making certainly were. First, it was a truly interracial production, with white directors and a black assistant director and majority black cast with a few small white parts. Second, the black characters are middle class and their individual personalities, including a rare romantic kiss between Williams and Odessa Warren Grey (who also designed the costumes), preclude the usual stereotyping. A lively ride on a merry-go-round and an elaborate cakewalk sequence were exciting  highlights. The 50 minutes of footage, including repeated takes and glimpses of between-take preparation, gave me a joyous rush of imagining what American filmmaking might have been like if more films like this had been produced. Magliozzi thinks that the release of Birth of a Nation in 1915 was  what put this film on the shelf: it wasn't racist enough. Birth of a Nation unhappily set the standard for racist stereotyping of Hollywood films to come.

2. A lesser revelation at the December Silent Film Festival, also at the Castro, was Marcel L'Herbier's 1924 L'Inhumaine and its crazy Art Deco montage finale, in which a rejected young scientist-suitor brings his inhumanly cruel paramour back to life after a fatal snakebite in a laboratory designed by Fernand Leger. The frenetic sequence, which was a scandal in its day, could have inspired artists like Devo, Klaus Nomi and David Bowie. The film was accompanied by the Alloy Orchestra, which long ago established its reputation as one of the finest silent-film musical ensembles active today.

Image courtesy of Janus Films

3. Two years after the death of the great documentarist Les Blank, we were finally able to see his long-suppressed 1974 documentary on Leon Russell, A Poem is a Naked Person. Thanks to Blank's son Harrod, the film screened at the Opera Plaza followed by a Q&A with Russell himself, rolling to the screen in a mobility scooter and never removing his shades or signature hat. It was a bittersweet occasion to see a vivid, eccentric evocation of Russell's career and discover that Russell is just as laconic and taciturn about the film as Blank would have been.

4. The strangest, most astonishing repertory film experience this year was at the Roxie for the re-release of Roar, a sui-generis 1981 horror film directed by Tippi Hedren's husband Noel Marshall and starring the couple and their children, the most famous of which was a teenage Melanie Griffith. Of course the real stars are a menagerie of big cats allowed to roam free through the family's house. The publicity for the film is a list of casualties involving fractures, ripped scalps, bites and gangrene—some of which are captured on-screen. A roiling swarm of tawny manes, claws and jaws leaves an unforgettable impression.  

Screen capture from Sony DVD

5. Possibly the most joyous rep-film experience I had was at the Roxie shortly before Christmas for Michael Schultz's 1975 black kung fu romance-comedy The Last Dragon, with host/fanboy/racism critic W. Kamau Bell and star Taimak in attendance. The rowdy audience knew the dialogue and Motown song lyrics by heart. Bell christened the audience as an official Black Lives Matter gathering and that a meeting would commence after the screening. Bell's affection for the film and Taimak, whose performance inspired the adolescent Bell to think that a black hero could be both kickass and serenely centered, was a happy way to end 2015.

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks: IOHTE

The San Francisco Bay Area is still home to a rich cinephilic culture nurtured in large part by a diverse array of cinemas, programmers and moviegoers. I'm honored to present a selection of favorite screenings experienced by local cinephiles in 2015. An index of participants can be found here. 

IOHTE contributor Jesse Hawthorne Ficks is the Film History Coordinator at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco and curates/hosts the Midnites for Maniacs series at the Castro Movie Theatre, Alamo Drafthouse & Roxie Theater. He also writes film festival reviews for many Bay Area outlets..

Ficks' Picks of Films Seen in 2015 For the First Time

1. Wim Wenders' Until the End of the World: 288 Minute Director's Cut (1991) - DCP @ The Castro

2. John Ford's Four Sons (1928) - 35mm @ The Stanford

3. Vittorio DeSica's Marriage Italian Style - DCP @ The Castro

4. James Glickenhaus' Shakedown - 35mm @ The Castro

5. Dimitri Kirsanoff's Menilmontant - DCP @The Castro

6. Henry King's The Gunfighter - 35mm @ The Yerba Buena Center

7. King Vidor's War & Peace - 35mm @ The Stanford

8. Sidney Bernstein & Alfred Hitchcock's Holocaust Concentration Camp - DCP @ The Castro

9. Floyd Mutrux's Dusty & Sweets McGee - 35mm @ The Castro

10. John Ford's The Iron Horse (1925) - 35mm w/ Dennis James on Organ @ The Stanford

Maureen Russell: IOHTE

The San Francisco Bay Area is still home to a rich cinephilic culture nurtured in large part by a diverse array of cinemas, programmers and moviegoers. I'm honored to present a selection of favorite screenings experienced by local cinephiles in 2015. An index of participants can be found here. 

IOHTE contributor Maureen Russell is a cinephile and a volunteer for Noir City.

Screen capture from Warner DVD

1) NOIR CITY 13: 'Til Death Do Us Part - A festival of unholy matrimony
The Castro Theatre, January 16 - 25, 2015
The marriage theme of this year's festival made for a fun take on noir. There were many strong, interesting women's roles. I liked the variety from the tense thriller Cry Terror! to the steamy Ossessione, but I particularly loved the Thin Man comedy double feature. Nothing like watching it in a full house at the Castro appreciating William Powell and Myrna Loy's wise-cracking, martini-downing and sleuthing, with my favorite film dog, Asta.
The Thin Man (1934)  
After the Thin Man (1936) - the couple returns to San Francisco

2) San Francisco Silent Film Festival 
Castro Theatre, May 28 - June 1, 2015 
I enjoy the variety of films and live musical accompaniment at this festival every year. Highlights included: 
Speedy
Directed by Ted Wilde, USA, 1928 Cast Harold Lloyd, Babe Ruth 
I loved the New York City locations, the scene with Babe Ruth, and the visit to Coney Island. Live musical accompaniment by the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra
The Amazing Charley Bowers 
Live musical accompaniment by Serge Bromberg 
Four short films from 1926 - 1928 
I hadn't seen any Charley Bowers' films before - inventive surreal shorts that included puppet animation and stop-motion techniques 
Also The Swallow and the Titmouse was a beautifully shot story, mainly taking place on a barge - documentary like at times with a dark story emerging.

Screen capture from Edgehill DVD of Rock Milestones: David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust 

3) Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders from Mars
Part of Cracked Actor: David Bowie on Screen
Director: D.A. Pennebaker  
David Bowie as his gender-bending alter ego, Ziggy Stardust, in his final performance given at London’s Hammersmith Odeon in 1973. (1973/82, 90 min, 35mm) 
YBCA 
This stood out when I considered my top ten list last year, before we lost David Bowie. I'd seen the film before but was enthralled seeing it again. D.A. Pennebaker's multiple cameras and planning during the previous night's show make it as close to being there as you can get. 

4) Mel Novikoff Award: Lenny Borger: Monte-Cristo  
Sundance Kabuki Cinemas   
San Francisco International Film Festival
Rediscovered silent masterpiece, France, 1929
Director: Henri Fescourt
Two-part epic adapting Alexandre Dumas' novel. The 218 minutes went by quickly. There were some stunning sets and shots and an engaging story.  

5) Wanda  
Director, writer, star: Barbara Loden (USA, 1970) - shot in 16mm - restored 35mm print screened SF International Film Festival, Castro Theatre

6) Roar! 
1981 Dir. Noel Marshall 
The Castro Theatre 6/11/15, DCP Scope
The story of how the film was made is as incredible as the film is. The audience was awestruck at 100 large wild cats interacting with actors. It had some indelible shots, like the giraffe racing a motorcycle..

Screen capture from New Line DVD

7) Grey Gardens 
New Restoration - DCP 
A film by David and Albert Maysles (1976) 
Pink Flamingos (1972, 108 min, 35mm) John Waters, director 
This is the 25th anniversary edition with bonus footage added post-film. April Fool's Day double feature at the Castro A great way to re-watch two films that became cult classics.

8) Army of Shadows 
Directed by Jean-Pierre Melville, DCP, 145min, 1969, France / Italy 
The Roxie 10/21/15 new color restoration 
145 minutes of intrigue with a great cast and film team. There is an incredible rescue scene.

9) Brandy in the Wilderness  
SF International Film Festival 
Director: Stanton Kaye, USA, 1969 
35mm restored print The Roxie, 5/2/15 
Rediscovered film "diary" about the aspiring filmmaker and his girlfriend. 

Screen capture from Universal DVD

10) The Big Lebowski
(35 mm) The Castro - 4/16/15 
Jeff Bridges double feature with Cutter's Way 1998, USA Directors: Joel Coen and Ethan Coen 
My first time seeing the Big Lebowski! I'd been wanting to see it, but wary of audiences shouting out lines at party screenings. This was a great way to see it, on 35mm, and paired with the interesting Cutter's Way. I was not the only one getting a White Russian at Twin Peaks Tavern after the screening.