Insider

Film Arts Foundation's legacy of advocacy enters a second stage through SFFS

By Michael Fox

When The Big Book of Bay Area Film History is written one day, chapters will certainly be devoted to the groundbreaking experimental filmmakers of the postwar era, as well as to the delicious poison-pen letters Alfred Hitchcock shot and signed here. The Francis Ford Coppola-Saul Zaentz-George Lucas trinity will certainly get its due. But the longest chapter should go to the entity that’s had the widest and deepest influence on the local filmmaking scene: a nonprofit organization formed by 15 independent filmmakers in 1976 called Film Arts Foundation (FAF). FAF provided members with equipment, classes and a bimonthly magazine, and, for many years, hosted a film festival notable for showcasing the best of the region’s legion of documentary, experimental and fiction filmmakers. Most critically, early on the institution evolved into a mentor to makers. That legacy of support, advice and advocacy is front and center as the San Francisco Film Society (publisher of SF360.org) takes on several of Film Arts’ key functions, notably the fiscal sponsorship program, effective Aug. 19.

topics: bay area, digital filmmaking, directors, exhibitions, experimental film, film festivals, film history, filmmakers, san francisco film society

Report

SFFS carries on Film Arts Foundation's legacy with new filmmaker services programs

By Susan Gerhard

The San Francisco Film Society, publisher of SF360.org, announced today at the Sundance Kabuki Cinemas the launch of a new set of programs to support local independent filmmakers. Through an agreement signed with Film Arts Foundation (FAF), the programs carry on the traditions of FAF in the areas of professional education, career development, membership services, fiscal sponsorship, grantmaking, and the management of information resources.

Graham Leggat, Executive Director of SFFS, said he was pleased that "a new, vitaminized Film Society" is able to consolidate so much support for filmmaking under one roof, and spoke of the changes as a "transition of services" as opposed to a "merger" or "acquisition."

topics: bay area, directors, film history, filmmakers, independent film

Insider

Manny Farber (1917-2008): "The Geography of Gesture"

By Robert Polito

SF360.org editor’s note: Manny Farber, 91, died at his home in Leucadia, California, at midnight, Aug. 18. Said Telluride Film Festival co-director Tom Luddy, who shared the news with SF360.org, "I can only say that Manny was a dear friend and one of my heroes, a great writer and a great painter." One of America’s greatest film critics, Farber leaves behind many other admirers and friends in the Bay Area, including the San Francisco Film Society, who enjoyed Farber’s presence when he received the Mel Novikoff Award during the 2003 Festival. We welcome your comments on Farber’s legacy and life (below) and reprint Robert Polito’s article for the 2003 SFIFF catalogue in Farber’s honor.

No other film critic has written so inventively or flexibly from inside the moment of a movie as Manny Farber.

For much of his writing life Farber was branded an advocate merely of action films and B-movies—as though it might not be distinction enough to have been the first American critic to advance serious appreciations of Howard Hawks, Samuel Fuller, William Wellman, Raoul Walsh and Anthony Mann. Yet Farber resisted many noir films of the 1940s as inflated and mannerist, and he also was among the first critics to write about Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Werner Herzog, and was an exponent of such experimental directors as Michael Snow, George Kuchar, Andy Warhol and Chantal Ackerman. As J. Hoberman has written, Farber played “both ends off against the middlebrow.”

topics: authors, bay area, cinephiles, critics, exhibitions

Platform

Stephen Olsson and Link TV

By Michael Fox

Nestled in a quiet office between Telegraph Hill and the Embarcadero in San Francisco’s Waterfront District, hard by the advertising agencies and KGO, Link TV provides a wide-angle antidote to the standard television news mix of hit-and run stories and doltish commercials. The free public-interest channel, founded in 1999, aims to inform Americans about corners of the globe, notably the Middle East, that tend to be oversimplified or ignored by other broadcast media. Link TV’s programming encompasses international documentaries, music, news and culture, from works that might be familiar to regular film festivalgoers to pieces that never received any U.S. exposure. Its lineup of original programming includes the highly respected "Mosaic," a daily digest of news from the Middle East, and "Global Pulse," a three-to-five minute daily segment. Link TV flies under the radar hereabouts because it’s only available to San Francisco cable subscribers on weekends. (The educational access channel, Comcast 27, is the place to find Link TV beginning midnight Friday through 7 a.m. Monday. Check out the Web site, www.linktv.org, for more information.) The core audience of five million weekly viewers gets the channel via satellite, on channel 375 on DirectTV and 9410 on Dish network. We sat down with Stephen Olsson, a veteran Bay Area documentary maker and Link’s senior director of original programming, to get the scoop.

topics: bay area, digital filmmaking, political film, tv, world cinema

Insider

Parvez Sharma and "A Jihad for Love"

By Judy Stone

Parvez Sharma might never have made his profoundly moving A Jihad for Love if he had not felt guilty about causing unhappiness to his dying mother when he told her he was homosexual.

"A lot of the religious dogma she had never really used in her entire life became part of her argument against my homosexuality," the Indian director said when he was in San Francisco to present his documentary at the Frameline film festival this past June. The film opens in the Bay Area August 22.

topics: directors, documentary film, gay lesbian cinema