Michael Fox's 2018 Eyes

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 2018. An index of participants can be found here. 

First-time IOHTE contributor Michael Fox is a film journalist and critic for KQED Arts and the curator and host of the Mechanics' Institute's CinemaLit screening program.

Here is my 2018 list. I promise to get out more in 2019.

Persona screen capture from Criterion DVD

1. Persona (1966) with Liv Ullmann on hand at BAMPFA: I spent a little time with the classics in 2018.

2. The Crime of Monsieur Lange (1936) at BAMPFA: Our affections for various directors naturally wax and wane as we get older, but I can't imagine ever falling out of love with Jean Renoir (especially 1930s Renoir).

3. La Dolce Vita (1960) at the Castro: Every time I see a Mastroianni film, I'm persuaded all over again that he's the greatest screen actor of all time.

4. Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song (1971) at Alamo Drafthouse: Melvin Van Peebles was a bad mutha.

5. The Cameraman (1928) at the Mechanics' Institute: Forgive me for including one of my screenings, but few things are as fun as a room full of adults falling for a Buster Keaton film they'd never seen.

Aparajto screen capture from Criterion DVD

6. The Apu Trilogy at SFMOMA: Satyajit Ray made it look so easy—and he was just getting started.

Carl Martin's 2018 Eyes

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 2018. An index of participants can be found here. 

Ten-time IOHTE contributor Carl Martin is keeper of the Bay Area and Los Angeles Film Calendars for the Film on Film Foundation, where he also occasionally blogs.

I didn't think I could do it.  Did I even see 10 films total in the Bay Area?  Yes, enough to produce this:

Overlord screen capture from Criterion DVD

March 28, Roxie: Overlord

This d-day account combines insane archival WW2 footage with beautiful new (mid-70's) scenes to present a poetic, personal picture of war's tragedy, confusion, and meaninglessness.

April 4, New Mission: Taxi Zum Klo

Many years ago I encountered this on VHS and thought, "Ha ha, taxi to the bathroom... what the heck is this?"  (paraphrased.)  And i saw some crazy shit i had never seen before.  It was interesting enough that it stuck in my brain though.  Seeing it again decades later confirmed my hunch that Frank Ripploh's autobiographical, self-referential, elliptical, very explicit film is indeed a very important work of "experimental" cinema as well as classic gay smut!

April 16, New Mission: To Live and Die in L.A.

A single tracking shot during a car chase is better than most entire movies.

June 2, Castro: Mare Nostrum

A haunting, dreamy tale of maritime intrigue (mostly not at sea if I remember rightly).  Guillermo Del Toro stole the ending for one of his crap movies.

The Godfather Part III screen capture from Paramount DVD

July 8, Castro: The Godfather, Part III

Most folks dismiss this movie for some reason and it is rarely shown.  I'd been waiting to see it for some time.  It's really good!  Andy Garcia's performance is dynamite, and Sofia Coppola's is unfairly maligned.  Themes of power, loyalty, and betrayal over generations carry the film through to its operatic denouement.  As for the print, it had succumbed to vinegar syndrome and wouldn't hold focus worth a damn.

July 18, Roxie: Sleaze Apocalypse

I like outrageous trailers so of course I was going to watch this compilation show.  They came from Joel Shepard's collection so this is also an excuse to bemoan the loss of his curatorial hand at YBCA.

August 22, Roxie: Velvet Goldmine

I didn't much care for this one on its initial release.  Maybe the trailer led me astray.  Or maybe the weird Oscar Wilde interlude at the beginning threw me.  Indeed the film can hardly keep up with its own ideas.  I'm not going to say it's Haynes's masterpiece but it's solid and is full of killer songs i'm largely unfamiliar with.

October 30, Castro: The Hollywood Knights

My old boss was fond of quoting this one and i finally got to slake my curiosity.  Floyd Mutrux, whose debut was the ultra-bleak Dusty and Sweets McGee, delivers a raunchy ensemble comedy.  American Graffiti as if directed by Robert Altman.  It does have a wang to it!

Sanshiro Sugata screen capture from Eclipse DVD

December 16, PFA: Sanshiro Sugata

Kurosawa's first film surprised me doubly: I was sure I'd seen it before but hadn't, and it's a good, sure-handed effort.  The various devices used to show the passage of time impressed me particularly.  I believe I detected a thematic anticipation of Yojimbo and other later films.

Unknown date, private screening: Mosori Monika

Chick Strand's film starts with a McGraw-Hill logo.  Is it possible that this "ethnographic" film was shown to schoolchildren?  Would they have caught on to its subtle subversions?  A voiceover with a "benign" colonialist perspective is challenged by other voices and images to present a complex portrait of colliding cultures.

Terri Saul's 2018 Eyes

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 2018. An index of participants can be found here. 

Nine-time IOHTE contributor Terri Saul is a Berkeley-based artist and writer.

Out of all the films I saw with other people in Bay Area cinemas in 2018, there were only two older films. The others were 2017 films from other countries that premiered in the US in 2018. As interesting as the festival screenings were, if I could only pick two films out of all the movies I saw, these two older films would be at the top of my year-end list.

As Above, So Below screen capture from UCLA DVD "L.A. Rebellion: Creating a New Black Cinema"

1. As Above, So Below (1973, dir. Larry Clark) screened at the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley on Wed, 11/14/2018, at 7:00 p.m. preceded by short, Everybody Dies! (2016, dir. Frances Bodomo), followed by an art slideshow and conversation with Larry Clark, and Ra Malika Imhotep and Jamal Batts with The Black Aesthetic.

In the opening short, the grim reaper as a matriarch decides which children live and die as part of a surreal children’s television show. Everybody dies.

Also centered on the precarious, the feature, As Above, So Below, is a surreal and spiritual portrait of Black liberation and rebellion in a Chicago neighborhood, featuring a recovering Marine who finds compassion and community in a neighborhood coffee shop. Another safe haven, the neighborhood church, also provides dramatic cover for something else. Clark says he made the film in his community, by his community, for his community, and after surveying the audience, concluded it was not made for a large portion of the people attending the screening.

As a layer, the HUAC (House Un-American Activities Committee) soundtrack drones on in the background, which at first seems to be included for dramatic emphasis, but is actually an archival tape of US government hysteria and plans for a forthcoming military occupation of Black neighborhoods.

Clark asked us to please try to approach the story through the lens of 1973 and not to project current situations on to it. It was difficult to follow his instructions, and not apply the early 70s setting to today.

Screen capture of Summer in Sanrizuka excerpt from Academy Video VHS of 100 Years Of Japanese Cinema

2. Summer in Sanrizuka (1968, dir. Shinsuke Ogawa) screened at the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley on Thursday, 11/29/2018, at 7:00 p.m.

A chaotic documentary created by the filmmaking collective Ogawa Pro, follows radicalized student activists and poor farmers in Sanrizuka, fronted by lines of sturdy women linking arms, as they come together to resist eviction from their land to make way for the Narita International Airport which was built in Chiba Prefecture, east of Tokyo and resisted for a decade.

Cops and corporations attempt to criminalize people occupying their own land. Residents, in particular the elderly, find ways to shame them for doing so. Young and old come together to resist water cannons, land surveyors, and capitalists, using rocks, shit catapults, sticks, plastic helmets, hand-towels, and other defensive gear made out of materials available on a farm. The day-to-day gains and losses are recorded by a crew constantly tasked with compressing time during the unfolding of a standoff with an unknown trajectory or endpoint.

Partway through production, the cameraperson is arrested. What follows is a break with the shooting style of the previous section. For the rest of the doc, a portrait style emerges as we move closer in and spend moments in stillness, confronting and in some ways disarming the cops via a camera’s gaze.

This exchange of one set of eyes for another offers an additional layer of understanding, pulling the viewer inside the community in a way that only two eyes and one lens never could.

Claire Bain's 2018 Eyes

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 2018. An index of participants can be found here. 

Four-time contributor Claire Bain is an artist based in San Francisco.

Calle Chula image from Video Data Bank

“Have You Seen Her? La Misión” ...”20th year anniversary retrospective showcase [of] the varied responses to the transformations experienced in the Mission District during the late 1990s dot.com boom....” Roxie / Cine + Más San Francisco Latino Film Festival

Wicked Woman Castro Theater

When the Beat Drops (not an old movie, but independent). Frameline42 LGBTQ Film Festival

Rififi Castro Theater

Black Orpheus Castro Theater

West Side Story Castro Theater

Zero For Conduct screen capture from Criterion DVD

Zero for Conduct and À Propos de Nice by Jean Vigo, Pacific Film Archive

The Adventures of Robin Hood (with Errol Flynn) Castro Theater

Marie-Octobre Roxie Theater

All of the ATA@SFPL screenings

Joel Shepard's 2018 Eyes

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 2018. An index of participants can be found here. 

First-time IOHTE contributor Joel Shepard is an independent film programmer.

A pregnant wife and the loss of my longtime job made 2018 an odd, wonderful and challenging year, and my list of notable (not necessarily “best”) rep screenings possibly reflects this...

Image from San Francisco Silent Film Festival

1. Mother Krause’s Journey to Happiness (Castro)

This downbeat drama about the working poor in Weimar Germany was the revelation of the 2018 San Francisco Silent Film Festival.

2. Deliverance (Castro)

John Boorman’s poetic meditation on landscape and violence was the highlight of the Castro’s much-appreciated though poorly attended Burt Reynolds tribute series.

3. Zodiac (YBCA)

Still David Fincher’s best film, an overwhelming portrait of minds ruined by the impossibility of resolution.

Screen capture from Anchor Bay DVD of Halloween

4. Halloween (Castro)

Very strange to see this film again, so long after having been completely electrified and terrified by it at the age of fourteen at a neighborhood theater in Edina, Minnesota. On this viewing, the sexism is a little annoying, as is the fact that hardly anything happens until the last reel.

5. Sisters (Castro)

This great and somewhat idiotic slab of gutbucket sleaze with an artsy patina looked superb on the giant Castro screen.

6. Time to Die (YBCA)

Flawed, but an austere sign of great things to come from the mind of Arturo Ripstein in his first feature from 1966.

7. Car Wash (SFMOMA)

Originally saw this when I was 12 years old at a downtown grindhouse. I found it just mildly amusing, but it brought down the house. It hasn’t aged well. 40 years later it felt like the whitest semi-blaxploitation film of the 70s.

Le chant du styrène screen capture from Criterion DVD of Last Year in Marienbad  

8. Le chant du styrène (SFMOMA)

Plastic has never been more beautiful than in this majestic industrial film by Alain Renais, with gleaming cinematography by Sacha Vierny. Presented as part of the Paul Clipson tribute, held in June.

9. Sleaze Apocalypse (Roxie)

OK, maybe I’m a dick for including my own program on my list, but seriously...this compilation of impossibly rare 35mm exploitation trailers was the hardest-edge and most darkly revealing 80 minutes of film archaeology presented all year.