10HTE: Adrianne Finelli

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 2016. An index of participants can be found here.

Three-time IOHTE contributor Adrianne Finelli is a filmmaker & GAZE co-curator.

This chronological list is not presented in any type of rated order as I could not begin to weigh these works in relation to one another.

The Fall of the I-Hotel screen shot from online trainer

1
The Fall of the I-Hotel (1983)
dir. Curtis Choy
Artists'Television Access
Thursday, February 11, 2016

This screening was of the most politically resonant and poetically inspiring films that I have seen in recent years. The Fall of the I-Hotel should be required viewing for everyone living in the Bay Area, as was the preceding short film Anatomy of a Mural (1982) by Rick Goldsmith. The screening was programmed by a team of filmmakers, writers and curators who are rediscovering a local library's film print collection and sharing the best of their findings through free public screenings.

2
L'enfance nue (1968)
dir. Maurice Pialat
Pacific Film Archive
Saturday, February 20, 2016

Naked Childhood (L'enfance nue) was the most emotionally charged narrative film that I saw this year, and its true impact is how it restrains emotion into very palpable realism. The story is complex and simple, the performances are jarringly brilliant, the cinematography is beautifully sincere. I tried to see as much of the Pialat series as possible, he is a master of portraying the human depth of feelings.

3
NFPF PreservationHighlights
presented by Jeff Lambert
Pacific Film Archive
Wednesday, February 24, 2016

Jeff Lambert presented this program of recently preserved films. The screening was full of surprising variety and unexpected gems from the National Film Preservation Foundation. Children Who Labor (1912) by Ethel Browning, Interior New York Subway (1905) and Lyman Howe's Famous Ride on a Runaway Train (1921)—all new to me—were fascinating documents. Plus, it was a real treat to see Sid Laverents's Multiple Sidosis (1970) on 35mm.

That Night's Wife screen capture from Eclipse DVD

4
That Night's Wife (Sono yo no tsuma) (1930)
dir. Yasujiro Ozu
Castro Theatre—San Francisco Silent Film Festival
Friday, June 3, 2016

Perhaps the most beautiful silent film I have ever seen—this particular print was stunning, the texture of the film almost became another character. Ozu cleverly hooks us with a suspenseful, noir-like crime plot and slowly shifts the story's core to an intimate family drama. I never remember crying during a silent film, but Emiko Yagumo's brilliant performance as the mother moved me to tears. I'm sure that the nuanced live musical accompaniment by Maud Nelissen also had something to do with my weepy reaction.

5
Within Our Gates (1920)
dir. Oscar Micheaux
Castro Theatre—San Francisco Silent Film Festival
Saturday, June 4, 2016

I left the Castro feeling like I needed to write a thank you letter to each member of the Oakland Symphony and Chorus for their unforgettable performance. This was my first time seeing Micheaux's Within Our Gates, and getting an African-American perspective from that historical era makes me wish I had seen it during my film studies instead of being shown The Birth of a Nation (1915) repeatedly. In addition, the writing and performances are powerful, and the whole is tremendously haunting considering our current political climate.

6
Water and Power (1989)
dir. Pat O'Neill
Pacific Film Archive
Thursday, September 29, 2016

Filmmaker Pat O'Neill was in attendance for this screening of Water and Power plus several short works. It was a joy to see all of the films in the new PFA theater and to hear the discussion that followed the screening. I was blown away by the whole evening. O'Neill is a master that remains curious and prolific. It was wonderful to also see the exhibition of his artwork in the gallery beforehand. The range of work—painting, drawing, sculpture and installation was remarkable.

Jeanne Dielman screen capture from Criterion DVD

7
Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975)
dir. Chantal Akerman
SFMOMA
Sunday, October 9, 2016

This screening was perhaps the most meaningful film screening of 2016 to me. I had seen Jeanne Dielman before, but this particular time marked my first public screening as a projectionist. I had the honor of sharing the booth and studying under the talented Brecht Andersch. We bonded over having seen the film for the first time in our late teens and the impact it had on us. We collectively mourned the loss of the great Chantal Akerman. It was a very emotional and surreal experience. 

8
La Région Decentrale (2016): A Prepared Projection Performance for Michael Snow's La Région Centrale (1971) by Gibson + Recoder
Exploratorium co-presented with Canyon Cinema
Tuesday, November 7, 2016

This screening happened on Election Day 2016 after spending the day hiking in the Marin Headlands with dear company. I entered the Kanbar Forum with a sinking feeling in my stomach as we were still uncertain of the country's fate, but my fears and anxiety fell away as I became entranced in a visual and aural meditation with a room full of fellow travelers. Sandra Gibson and Luis Recoder presented a live four projector performance that reimaged Michael Snow's three hour La Région Centrale (1971) simultaneously into a quadrant of images that layered the sound from each reel. At the moment that the third projection was introduced the sound transformed into an otherworldly force.

9
Conical Solid (1974)
dir. Anthony McCall
Sutro Baths Cave—Lightfield Film Festival
Sunday, November 13, 2016

Lightfield Film Festival organized one of the most magical film events that I have ever attended. Imagine this—abstract light flickers from a 16mm projector fill a cave of fog and creates forms that touch the bodies flanking its brilliant beam with the sound of the salty waves crashing against the rocks alongside the ruins of the famed Sutro Baths under the biggest supermoon of our lifetime.

Lost Landscapes of San Francisco, 11 screen capture from longnow.org stream of the show.

10
Lost Landscapes of San Francisco, 11
edited by Rick Prelinger
Castro Theatre
Wednesday, December 7, 2016

This was my fifth year attending Rick Prelinger's annual screening of found footage of the San Francisco Bay Area. My husband and I always look forward to the event and love hearing the voices of the community shout out locations, jokes and information, but this year was especially wonderful as we had the rare opportunity to join Rick and Megan Prelinger on stage with our fellow Prelinger Library volunteers. Rick's remarks about the importance of the commons struck a chord with many and the energy of the crowd could be felt throughout the entire theater. It was also a great pleasure to scan some of the featured 8mm and 16mm film footage for Lost Landscapes of San Francisco, 11.

10HTE: Carl Martin

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 2016. An index of participants can be found here.

Nine-time IOHTE contributor Carl Martin blogs and runs the Bay Area Film Calendar (and even a new L.A. offshoot) for the Film on Film Foundation.

The Lodger screen capture from Fox DVD

january 30: the lodger @ the castro (noir city)
not the hitchcock version of marie belloc lowndes's jack the ripper story but john brahms's, starring laird cregar, whose talent dwarfed his girth. it was early in the year, but i remember still the meticulously, evocatively detailed sets, fully fleshed-out performances in the minor roles even, and a poetic sensibility that made a virtue of the unacceptability of showing explicitly a murder victim's terminal blood-gush. screened later in the evening: scarlet street, a movie i was sure i'd seen but hadn't, and what a movie!

march 9: black vengeance, aka poor pretty eddie @ the new mission
a new (old) venue, and stabs at genre and extrageneric rep programming. terror tuesdays took off, not as much weird wednesdays. there was some chaff, but damned if there wasn't hidden wheat! both the film's titles prime us for the lowbrow, but as we should know by now, exploitation films often harbor social commentary, and this one does in spades (and from a feminist perspective).

march 23: defending your life @ the roxie
albert brooks's films are rarely screened. previously i'd only seen the lackluster looking for comedy in the muslim world. i hope this is more typical of his work. poignant, personal, and funny.

Under the Cherry Moon screen capture from Warner DVD

june 9: under the cherry moon @ the castro
we all know purple rain is great. but it took a death for anyone to dare bring back utcm (or track down the also-excellent sign "☮" the times) prince treats the twentieth century as he does his sexuality. there is no anachronism; he panchronistically cherry-picks the best each era has to offer.

september 15: meshes of the afternoon in 16mm @ oddball archives (another one bites the dust)
oh sure, i'd seen it before, but this time its revolutionary dream logic really swept over me. poetic perfection. it played with a wonderful program of paul clipson films.

october 5: an american werewolf in london @ the castro
john landis always seemed terribly overrated to me. kentucky fried movie is a winner but that's because it has that z-a-z magic. animal house is ok. the blues brothers gets too big for its britches (and dan aykroyd is one of the worst actors). starting with the travellers' well-drawn camaraderie, on through the stereotypical depiction of english village life, to the burgeoning relationship between patient and nurse, and beyond, aawil crams in humor, romance, and pathos, while walking that tightrope between the real and the psychological that is strung through all the best horror films, and it works splendidly. to top it off, landis has included the best film-within-a-film and one of the best dreams-within-a-dream (along with meshes?). i'm glad i finally caught up with this shockingly good movie.

Lucifer Rising screen capture from Fantoma DVD

october 25: lucifer rising in 16mm (private screening)
i had a chance to re-watch this kenneth anger masterpiece and realized i had in fact never seen it and OH DAMN it's like a little satanic 16mm baraka.

november 11: if you can't see my mirrors, i can't see you in 16mm @ the lab (light field festival)
this film was made in 2016 so it breaks the rules but alee peoples's work reminds me of the playful spirit of some "artist-made" films of the '60's and '70's. this one plays with how objects enter the frame, and with our expectations.

november 21: a divided world (private screening)
part of what made this screening special was its serendipity, but i won't go into the details of that. arne sucksdorff shot animals as if they were humans and vice versa. as in many of his films, we don't see the humans here. but rarely has the intersection of nature and artifice been so breathtakingly photographed.

49th Parallel screen capture from Criterion DVD

december 4: 49th parallel @ pfa
i caught up with a number of powell-pressburgers i hadn't seen before (and re-watched the utterly fab i know where i'm going). here, laurence olivier has a lot of fun playing a fronch caneddian but then disappears as we move on to another wonderful canadian setting and set of characters. can it be that the nazis are the anti-protagonists of this film, as at each encounter they find their ideologies challenged and their numbers reduced? or is canada itself the hero? trust p&p to find still-exciting ways to reinvigorate narrative formulas. in a propaganda film no less.

10HTE: Monica Nolan

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 2016. An index of participants can be found here.

Three-time IOHTE contributor Monica Nolan is an author and editor who regularly writes for the Film Noir Foundation and the SF Silent Film Festival.

Walker screen capture from Criterion DVD

My movies come from the usual suspects: Noir City, the International, the SF Silent Film Festival, and the PFA. Basically my butt alternated between the Castro and Berkeley, with a few side trips to the Roxie and YBCA. The odd one out was the Howard Zinn Fest screening, where the packed, unventilated room in the former Original Joe’s space precipitated some intense hot flashes during the movie. I hope the Zinn Fest does more revival programming, and I hope they up their projection skills and venue. Figure out the DVD settings before you start the film, please.

Looking at my 2016 calendar, I realize that I missed more films than I saw. Too many trips and weddings and way too many memorials pre-empted movies I really wanted to see, like Kamikaze 89 and Oh Rosalinda! This was also the year going to the PFA started to feel like a big pain. Being closer to the Berkeley BART has made the trip less appealing, if more convenient. I liked having the venue on campus, tucked away from the dreariness of downtown. I liked having two doors into the theater. I liked that the screen wasn’t hung so high above the audience’s heads you get a neck crick in the first ten rows. But I digress. The list below is in chronological order.

Girl With Hyacinths (Noir City, Castro) Lesbians! In Sweden! In 1950! The whole time I watched I kept thinking, is she going to turn out to be…could this be…no, it can’t. Not in 1950. But it could and she did.

Humoresque (Noir City, Castro) Every once in a while I see a movie that makes me think, Joan Crawford was a damn fine actress. This was one of them, especially when she first appears and looks John Garfield up and down through her glasses, holding them in front of her face, not committing to putting them on. And her delivery when she says, “I’m on a liquid diet.” And the scene where she throws a martini glass. The extreme close-up of her in an erotic swoon, heavy lidded eyes, nose and mouth filling the screen. Melodrama heaven.

Cast A Dark Shadow (SF International, Castro) Dirk Bogarde as the sleazy psychopath and Margaret Lockwood as the ex-barmaid who checkmates him (and survives him) made me forget the grungy digital quality. Another trip down gigolo alley.

Dragon Inn screen capture from A Touch of Zen Criterion DVD supplement King Hu: 1932-1997

Dragon Inn (Opera Plaza) An insanely complicated plot set in the mythical Chinese past is the excuse for stellar kung fu duels, plus some priceless eunuch baiting. I loved seeing the early days of HK action filmmaking technique, comparing it in my head to the films of the 90s that first introduced me to the genre. They’d figured out how to create illusions like that a guy has caught an arrow in mid-air, but then in the medium shots opponents are waving swords at each other from a safe distance. In the end the team of good guys (including a wonderfully competent woman) conquer the evil and powerful eunuch by running in circles around him and making him dizzy! The fun never stopped. Long live King Hu!

Gay USA (Frameline Festival, Roxie) Long and kind of tedious, but a priceless opportunity to time travel. Gay filmmaker Arthur Bressan filmed a bunch of pride parades in 1977 and interviewed parade goers and participants. What most struck me was how different people sounded: their vocabulary, the rhythms of their speech, the very timbre of their voices seemed significantly different than today’s. It’s the kind of thing even the best period movie can never capture. I kept looking for my hometown of Chicago, whose pride parade was featured, with little luck.

Variety (SF Silent, Castro) I’ve never been an Emil Jannings fan, but this film changed my mind. Plus Lya de Putti is out of control. Plus the camerawork. Plus just about everything except the moralistic framing device.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers screen capture from MGM DVD

Snatchers Body the of Invasion followed by Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Roxie) I’ve always wanted to see one of Anne McGuire’s reverse films and I’ve wanted to see the San Francisco-set version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers ever since reading Pauline Kael's review. Doing it as a double feature…the jury’s still out on that one. I was in a paranoid daze for days afterwards.

La Nuit du Carrefour (PFA) I only saw one other film in the PFA’s Maigret series, but I’m still positive that Renoir is the one who came closest to Simenon’s style and mood, especially the Simenon of the 1930s—events unfold enigmatically and all is explained at the end. There’s not a lot of nail-biting suspense—it’s all atmosphere. In Renoir’s hands the enigmas are so enigmatic the film becomes comic, absurd, and more than a little surreal.

Walker (Howard Zinn Fest, Piano Fight, with Alex Cox in attendance) I expected to see an earnest historical film about colonialism from a lefty angle. Boy was I wrong. Black comedy, deliberate anachronisms, and a touch of the Grand Guignol. Ed Harris is brilliant.

49th Parallel (PFA) I went because it was a Powell-Pressburger, but my pleasure was due to a fondness for WWII propaganda. This film had everything—Nazis so evil they pause to burn “decadent” art and a few books while on the run through the wilds of Canada! Peaceful German-speaking Hutterites, one of whom is a young Glynis Johns! And my favorite, Laurence Olivier hamming it up as a French-Canadian trapper! Just thinking of his fake accent brightens my day. The fun of the film was waiting to see which movie star the Nazis would encounter next, what aspect of democracy they would declaim about, and who would survive the encounter. Olivier is followed by Anton Walbrook, Leslie Howard, and the last nazi is finally captured by authentic Canadian Raymond Massey.

10HTE: Terri Saul

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 2016. An index of participants can be found here.

Eight-time IOHTE contributor Terri Saul is a Berkeley-based artist.

My Winnipeg screen capture from Criterion DVD

1) My Winnipeg (2007, dir. Guy Maddin), screened Saturday 2/13/2016, 8:15 p.m. at The Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley with our "mad poet" film-maker in person.

Maddin visits his childhood home Winnipeg, Manitoba, which sits on the confluence of two underground rivers. There’s a feeling of going underground in order to go back in time. He dives in, doing a dramatic reading of his own childhood with noir star Anne Savage cast as his mother playing her younger self. In his fiction-is-more-truthful-than-truth approach, the narrator claims his actual mother was a local soap-opera figure who talked men off ledges, playing her part in a daily re-affirmation for the still-living to eject themselves from a freeze-frame.

The city contextualized also plays itself, growing and resisting within the crackling womb of watery and frozen history. Bubbles emerge and burst such as the 1919 general strike, a First Nations occupation and creation of a parallel city on reclaimed rooftops, and Madden’s own ride on counter-currents.

Maddin, among sleepwalkers, recalls various freedoms to fight for and frights that made him and his beloved city, awaken. My Winnipeg is a living archive, a nest of taboos, and a space for the personal paddling down rapids via the political. The Guardian called Maddin a “Canadian Lynch,” however I find his storytelling to be more confessional and plausible than Lynchian.

He makes good use of small interior spaces such as train cars and basement pools to help create a sense of muggy claustrophobia or steamy, awkward burgeoning sexuality. The tight space also brings to mind investigative journalism, or going undercover to find the anonymous or repressed sources within.

According to F This Movie, “In its initial release, Maddin toured with [My Winnipeg], performing the voice-over narration live every night in front of the screen.” The film as performance art using documentary machinations with Maddin in the theatre added to a sense of being taken along for a ride as a co-conspirator.

We Won't Grow Old Together screen capture from Kino Lorber DVD

2) We Won’t Grow Old Together (1972, dir. Maurice Pialat) screened Friday 2/26/2016, 8:15 p.m. at The Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley.

This “feminist” film by a man accurately shows what it’s like to end an abusive relationship over and over again. Steeped in early 70s-era second wave feminism, and slow like Ozu portraying emptiness, its burning progression is maddening, frustrating, exhausting, yet we wait it out, thinking it might eventually change.

Maximilian Le Cain, roughly translated, has compared Pialat to “a silent hunter watching his prey with infinite patience.” By making the audience suffer in boredom and anger Pialat not only tells a bruising story but also makes an indelible mark in his painterly style. Some say his work is confessional, which doesn’t come as a surprise after seeing a number of his films back-to-back during the PFA series, “Love Exists: The Films of Maurice Pialat.”

3) I Knew Her Well (1965, dir. Antonio Pietrangeli) screened Friday 5/27/2016, 6:30 p.m. at The Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley.

This is one of those films that, like trauma, should come with a warning: You can’t un-see it after its over.

4) Branded to Kill (1967, dir. Seijun Suzuki) screened Friday 5/27/2016, 8:45 p.m. at The Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley.

With this film, Suzuki’s bad reputation was born. As a director, he was not a hit man, but his film was destined to become a cult classic and he fought for it. Not your run of the mill gangster film, everything in it is as out of place and ridiculous as the adorable baby-faced killer who fetishizes the odor of cooked rice and longs to grasp the mysterious and coveted position of number one assassin. Joe Shishido who plays Goro Hanada had his cheeks surgically enlarged to achieve his signature hamster-face look. Apparently the entire film is one long piece of improv by the director, fueled by whiskey and an anarchic spirit of collaboration with actors and the crew so it’s not surprising that the narrative doesn’t follow any kind of logic including that of space and time. Suzuki may not have known he was eventually to become number one weirdo when he was fired and blacklisted for making this movie.

The American Friend screen capture from Criterion DVD

5) The American Friend (1977, dir. Wim Wenders) screened Friday 6/10/2016, 6:30 p.m. at The Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley.

Another anarchic assassin movie, this Patricia Highsmith adaptation is one of many Mr. Ripley films. This one is based on Ripley’s Game and features Dennis Hopper as Mr. Ripley, and Bruno Ganz as Jonathan Zimmermann the terminally ill hired killer. According to IMDB, seven film directors are cast as villains.

The killer is a picture framer. The actors direct pictures, via frames. Who frames and who get framed? The framing metaphors multiply. Somehow the frame shop scenes are reminiscent of a projection booth. Is it a masterpiece or a forgery, Wenders may have been asking himself as he painted moving pictures in a classic yet personal style.

At 24 frames-per-second, deadly dangerous fights in doorways of moving trains mimic film and top a category of fast-moving cinematic thrills. Wenders pulls off one of the best examples of this dance.

On another note, cinematographer Robby Müller, master of acidic yellow-green, primary red and blue, silver grey-yellow, and all kinds of lighting situations really shines here. It bears repeating what others may have said that every shot, every still, looks like a painting. According to IMDB Müller had to repeatedly refuse color corrections when his film developer failed to recognize the intentionality of his palette.

Another jarring element of Wenders films that periodically crosses over from charm to distraction, is the English language bits that jump out from the German, giving the dialog a distinctive lost-in-translation flavor. In this film it enhances, rather than degrades, the actor’s performances.

6) Kings of the Road (1976, dir. Wim Wenders) screened Sunday 6/12/2016, 6:45 p.m. at The Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley.

A traveling projector repairman and portraits of the strangers he meets along the East German border continue the talk of frames and piecing it all together as local movie theatres and film projection equipment are shown in various states of decay. As Jan Dawson writing for the PFA observes, the two main characters are thirty years old, thirty years after WWII. They’re both running from an unspeakable past and out of synch with their unacceptable or unknowable present. One is a suicidal psychologist and one is freer of stereotypical Freudian repressions (he defecates in a field on screen, for example). Bruno (Rudiger Vogler) has interesting comic timing and a variety of approaches to performing smiling, laughing, or musing, some silent, some out loud, which emerge slowly and fantastically during the course of his journey. Of the road movies shown during the Wim Wenders: Portraits Along the Road series, this is the one that made my list of ten for 2016.

7) The Left-Handed Woman (1978, dir. Peter Handke) screened Sunday 6/19/2016, 7:15 p.m. at The Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley.

The appearance of Rüdiger Vogler was a surprise and tied in nicely with the Wim Wenders road movies.

Love Streams screen capture from Warner DVD of Electric Boogaloo: the Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films

8) Love Streams (1984, dir. John Cassavetes) screened Sunday 8/14/2016, 6:30 p.m. at The Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley as part of Vijay Anderson Selects.

A messy film full of impossible scenes set during the hedonistic alcoholic days of the early 80s, a time of unchecked misogyny and runaway bad-boy artistic impulses, this is one of the last times Cassavetes appeared on screen and he was apparently quite ill during the shoot. Gena Rowlands is predictably astonishing as a mentally ill animal lover who adopts a zoo of friends in her lonely state. The set is a kind of impotent Noah’s ark for the Regan era piloted by an anti-hero, a two-headed sibling-monster on a sinking ship without any viable speck of nature or righteousness with which to begin anew after the flood.

9) Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance (1993, Alanis Obomsawin) screened Thursday 11/03/2016, 7:00 p.m. at The Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley with the film-maker Alanis Obomsawin (Abenaki) in person.

This Indigenous grassroots documentary is so relevant right now in the context of water protectors’ success and difficulty blocking Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) permits. In Kanehsatake a small group of dissenters (protectors) grows and occupies their own ancestral lands in order to block a golf course that would cut through unceded Mohawk territory near the village of Oka, Quebec. Obomsawin shows First Nations humor in the face of white supremacy and state violence to examine how a sustained occupation can test the limits of non-violence in the face of human rights violations, acts of racism, and attempts at humiliation. It also explores the difference between sustained action, stopping and starting an action, and what some would call surrender. This film can be accessed via the National Film Board of Canada website.

Trick or Treaty screen shot from NFB trailer

10) Trick or Treaty? (2014, Alanis Obomsawin) screened Friday 11/04/2016, 7:00 p.m. at The Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley with Obomsawin in person for a panel discussion with Joanne Barker, professor of American Indian studies at SF State, and Hulleah J. Tsinhnahjinnie, professor of Native American Studies at UC Davis.

Witnessing First Nations activism continues with teach-ins on Treaty No. 9 and the recording of long walks by Native youth and elders to call attention to treaty rights (the everlasting right to hunt, fish, and prosper on shared lands) promised in written agreements with the Canadian government and ancestors of those appearing in the film. Was Treaty No. 9 a trick or a treaty? Obomsawin reveals so much using simple means.

10HTE: Philip Fukuda

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 2016. An index of participants can be found here.

Two-time IOHTE contributor Philip Fukuda is a volunteer for various local film festivals.

Elevator to the Gallows screen capture from Criterion DVD

Wicked Woman (Russell Rouse, 1953, USA). I Wake Up Dreaming series, Castro Theatre. As part of Elliot Lavine's last "I Wake Up Dreaming" series in San Francisco, he screened Wicked Woman, one of my favorite noirs. Tall, blond Beverly Michaels has both Richard Egan and Percy Helton wrapped around her finger. Or does she?? It's a pleasure to see the great character actor Percy Helton get so much screen time, too.

Earlier in 2016, Elliot Lavine also presented his last Pre-Code festival at the Castro Theatre. The Cheat (George Abbott, 1931, USA) pits glamorous Tallulah Bankhead against evil Irving Pichel. It's got gambling, partying and adultery in addition to mysterious Oriental customs. This was not a strong vehicle for Bankhead, but I found it fascinating to see her as a young ingénue who finds herself in way over her head.

Behind the Door (Irvin Willat, 1919, USA). San Francisco Silent Film Festival, Castro Theatre. This film was a revelation and goes far beyond what even the later pre-code films would consider acceptable. With its themes of graphic sex and taxidermy (!), Behind the Door was a stunner and my favorite film in last year's Silent Film festival.

Strike (Sergei Eisenstein, 1925, USSR. A Day of Silents, Castro Theatre. I enjoyed Eisenstein's first feature of strikers in pre-revolutionary Russia. Things don't go well for the proletariat, and not much has changed in 100 years. As relevant today as it was in 1925. The Alloy Orchestra provided superb accompaniment.

A Brighter Summer Day screen capture from Criterion DVD

A Brighter Summer Day (Edward Yang, 1991, Taiwan). Pacific Film Archive. I've managed to miss all the 35 millimeter screenings in the Bay Area over the past several years, so I thought I'd better catch this digital screening, or not see it at all theatrically. Edward Yang's masterpiece portrays life in 1950s Taiwan, concentrating on teenagers and gangs, but also covers the troubles the older generation faced.

The Mother and the Whore (Jean Eustache, 1973, France). Alamo Drafthouse. Although this theater concentrates on first-run Hollywood fare, the Alamo runs several repertory programs in addition to screening neglected classics. And The Mother and the Whore is an absolute treasure of French cinema. Jean-Pierre Léaud, now in his 20s, still plays a disaffected youth with sex and philosophy on his mind.

Crossroads (1976) and Easter Morning (2008) (Bruce Conner, USA). Bruce Conner: It's All True exhibit, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. 2 short films shown as part of the exhibit. As a multi-disciplinary artist (paintings, drawings, sculpture and film), Bruce Conner frequently used found objects in his work. In Crossroads, Conner used footage of the atomic testing at Bikini Atoll from 27 different angles. Projected in slow motion, the mushroom cloud first appears beautiful, but as the images progress, I was struck by the sheer horror of it. Easter Morning, Conner's last film is a meditative collage of nature and religious images. Both films featured wonderful musical scores by Terry Riley and Patrick Gleeson in Crossroads and Terry Riley in Easter Morning.

Insiang (Lino Brocka, 1976, Philippines). New Filipino Cinema, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. This drama shows the impoverished life of Insiang and what she has to put up with until she can't take it anymore. What a great tale of revenge. It was a major loss that Lino Brocka died so young.

Grave of the Fireflies screen capture from Sentai Filmworks DVD

Grave of the Fireflies (Isao Takahata, 1988, Japan). Roxie Theatre. For me, this Studio Ghibli animated film, about the struggles of 2 Japanese children in World War II, packs an emotional wallop even though the story is told in flashback and the viewer knows what happens to the protagonist in the first scene. Also, I think that having children doing the voiceover work in the Japanese version heightens the emotional impact.

Elevator to the Gallows (Louis Malle, 1958, France). Opera Plaza Cinema. From the wonderful performances of the two lead actors (Jeanne Moreau and Maurice Ronet), the beautiful night shots of Paris filmed by cinematographer Henri Decaë, the assured direction of Louis Malle, and the music by Miles Davis, Elevator to the Gallows (Ascenseur pour l'échafaud) is perfection all around.