Category: Report

Report

SF International's Golden Gate Awards: Alive and cooking

Food scents and film sensibilities mingled at a Golden Gate Awards evening that saw the San Francisco International moving away from a stage-presentation format into a pungent party atmosphere at the California Culinary Academy Wednesday night. With kitchen scenes as backdrop, filmmakers received and celebrated awards in a variety of categories while taste-testing from a broad buffet.

Yung Chang, with Up the Yangtze, won the Golden Gate Award for Best Documentary Feature, presented by storied documentarian Rob Epstein (The Times of Harvey Milk). He got the opportunity to thank two of his uncles, Wilson and Howard, who were present at the party, and asked the audience to not forget the 4 million people who’ve been relocated by the Three Gorges Dam Project. His involvement with the people he filmed has continued after shooting, and he told SF360.org that, after showing the film to one of his subjects, she said she "saw her fate" and decided to leave the quite possibly dead-end cruise-boat job she’d been working and go back to high school. The filmmakers are now helping her family financially.

topics: animation, awards, bay area, directors, documentary, features, san francisco international film festival, shorts

Report

"Cachao: Uno Más"

"You’re listening to Con Sabór," says KPFA DJ and Music Director Luis Medina. "I am going to be featuring an interview with one of the great masters of Latin Music, Israel "Cachao" Lopez. Cachao will be in concert tonight at Bimbo’s featuring the Cine Son All Stars with special guest Andy Garcia."

That’s how the documentary film Cachao: Uno Más opens. The Cachao tune, "Goza Mi Mambo" (Enjoy My Mambo), bubbles underneath as Luis talks on the radio and a visual panorama of San Francisco scenes—the Bay Bridge, ships, seagulls, cable cars, Muni, Victorians, and the Transamerica pyramid—all collage together.

Cachao: Uno Más gets its premiere as part of the 51st San Francisco Film Festival on Monday, April 28, at the Sundance Kabuki. It comes a few weeks after the passing on March 22, 2008, of the acclaimed bassist and Cuban music innovator at age 89 in Coral Cables, Florida. Now, what was to be a living celebration of his artistic work turns into a memorial mass paying homage to his musicality and accomplishments.

topics: documentary, documentary film institute, music, san francisco international film festival, san francisco state

Report

SF Int'l announces its 51st program and year-round screen

The San Francisco International Film Festival announced not only its 2008 program today at the Westin St. Francis Hotel, but also the June 13 launch of its year-round programming on one screen at the Sundance Kabuki.

San Francisco Film Society Executive Director Graham Leggat told the assembled that the Film Society has been working very hard since he arrived to turn its programming into a “year-round operation,” and that the SFFS screen will feature international independent and documentary features with limited U.S. distribution.

[Editor’s note: SF360.org is published by SFFS.]

Most of the event was devoted to unveiling the work inside the 51st Festival, which runs from April 24 through May 8. It opens with Catherine Breillat’s The Last Mistress, starring Asia Argento—one of three films in the Festival’s opening weekend featuring the actress, who Leggat spoke of as “alluringly vulpine. And that’s a compliment.” The International’s closing night is an Alex Gibney documentary with roots in San Francisco publishing, Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. Jonathan Levine’s Sundance hit The Wackness is the Centerpiece presentation.

topics: documentary, environmental films, exhibitions, french cinema, genre films, independent film, international film, italian cinema, midnight movies, san francisco film society, san francisco international film festival, sundance film festival, sundance kabuki, technology

Report

Eran Kolirin and "The Band's Visit"

Eran Kolirin is an Israeli director who made a comedy to try to understand why he feels the kind of pain that persists after someone’s arm is cut off. He is still struggling to explain just why he made a film about an Egyptian military band stranded in an Israeli desert even after “The Band’s Visit” took both Best Director and Best Screenplay prize at last year’s Israeli Academy Awards and has won raves at festivals all over the world.

topics: arab cinema