A big Macworld

By Susan Gerhard

SF360.org introduces a weekly log: blogs, print, webmags, and a few other items of interest…

When you work in South Park, and notice that your local garage has increased its rate 400 percent on a given day, you learn to blame the Giants. But when it’s only the second week in January, and the Giants haven’t even made it through the Cactus calendar, you remember what brought us South Park as we now know it: The computer. Yes, it’s Macworld Expo week in San Francisco, and in the neighborhood where I park my PC, Macusers and abusers are a happy, frenzied lot, with the Steve Jobs announcement of the new Apple iPhone, which Mathew Honan tells us, “brings together several features of the iPod, digital camera, smart phones and even portable computing to one device, with a widescreen display.” Then there’s AppleTV and all the movie possibilities that offers. Of course, it takes a blogger outta Berlin — David Hudson at GreenCine Daily — to harvest the most interesting commentary on the event from the event from Chuck Olson: “This is the biggest Apple ‘Holy Shit!’ day in recent memory.“

Opening: Berlin

Speaking of Berlin, or San Francisco, or both: The annual “Berlin & Beyond” festival returns to the Castro for more, and amore, according to the SF Bay Guardian’s Nicole Gluckstern, who offers a rundown, starting off with the romance component: “…stories in which love turns a skeptic into a true believer, an ill-tempered miser into a philanthropist, or a broken spirit into an undamaged specimen free from the taint of failures past. This year’s Berlin and Beyond Film Festival offers two very different takes on the theme: Matthias Glasner’s ‘The Free Will (Der Freie Wille)’ and Doris Dörrie’s ‘The Fisherman and His Wife — Why Women Never Get Enough (Der Fischer und Seine Frau — Warum Frauen Nie Genug Bekommen).” For notes on the sounds of “Berlin and Beyond” — Monks and Einsturzende Neubauten docs — see Cheryl Eddy and Gluckstern’s accompanying article.

What else?

While preparing for Sundance is occupying some members of the Bay Area independent, avant-garde, and experimental media filmmaking communities — including Lynn Hershman Leeson, with the late-breaking “Strange Culture” — others will be working on their relationship with SF Cinematheque, whose President Rick Prelinger and Board of Directors offer a cordial invitation to a public meeting to discuss Cinematheque’s new programming initiatives, future plans, recent administrative changes — including the departure of Cinematheque’s Artistic Director Irina Leimbacher — and its relationship to the filmmakers, audiences, and collaborators on Wed., Jan. 17, 7-9 p.m., in the Film Arts Foundation conference room, 145 9th Street (between Mission and Howard streets), ground floor.

You heard otherwise? Let us know what we’re missing.

01.10.2007