Film '07 -- Bests and more from the Bay Area's scene-makers

By Susan Gerhard

The critics have spoken, and the American West is winning in many year-end polls. But a quick survey of Bay Area programmers, curators, distributors, and filmmakers reveals a much richer picture of 2007’s best movie events, from avant-garde showcases to locally programmed extravaganzas. SF360.org offered some of the Bay Area’s leading voices a chance to weigh in on their film favorites and disappointments for the year, as well as their hopes for the next. We present an edited selection of their comments here.

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
Midnites for Maniacs programmer at the Castro Theatre

Favorite film of the year: Stephen King’s “The Mist,” directed by Frank Darabont (“Shawshank Redemption”). With all the overextended “political bravery” that some critics are giving to Brian DePalma’s pathetically patronizing “Redacted” and to Richard E. Kelly’s insipid satire “Southland Tales,” why aren’t they championing Frank Darabont’s inspired adaptation of Stephen King’s “The Mist?” Taking the classic formula of trapping a bunch of small town strangers in a small space while the community is inundated by a goverment-created mistake, “The Mist” allows each and every character to earn particular good and evil attributes. Sure, some of the CG animation looks fake, but a good B-Movie understands that if we believe in the characters and their screams, it doesn’t matter what the monster looks like. And I can honestly say that the ending is as shockingly cynical as the politically charged classics “They Shoot Horses Don’t They?” and “Night of the Living Dead.” Don’t skip this Stephen King masterpiece. (It’ll make you forget all about “Dreamcatcher!”)

Nancy Fishman
San Francisco Jewish Film Festival program director

Favorite film of the year: “Protagonist” by Jessica Yu, which I saw at Sundance last year and I still think was the most creative film I saw the last year and has stayed with me all year.

Film you wished you’d been able to program yourself, but couldn’t: I’d tell you but then I’d have to kill you.

Biggest disappointment: That John Garfield is not alive and thus couldn’t come to the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival’s screening of “Body and Soul,” which was part of our program “Jewish Boxers: Shtarkers and the Sweet Science.”

Fondest Hope for films of ’08: May the goddess of narrative arcs bless new and veteran filmmakers of both narratives and documentaries.

Noel Lawrence
Other Cinema Digital and The J.X. Williams Archive

Favorite film of the year: As always, there were many great films but I’ll throw in my hat for the underdog: Damon Packard’s “Space Disco.” It has had [almost] no public screenings other than the New York Film Festival where a-g film purists stormed out of the “Views From The Avant-Garde” program because the film used too much ’80s pop music.

Film you wished you’d been able to program yourself, but couldn’t: J.T. Petty’s “S&ndman:” one of the most subversive films of the decade. It’s a deadpan pseudo-documentary that focuses on voyeurism, victims, victimizers and the shadowy world of underground horror snuff films. Inexplicably, the film was executive produced by Mark Cuban(!). It showed at the Toronto “Midnight Madness” program last year and hasn’t been heard from since.

Biggest disappointment: Growing public apathy toward great cinema. Last Saturday, Bruce Fletcher and I went to the Roxie for a once-in-a-lifetime screening of Timothy Carey’s “The World’s Greatest Sinner.” We expected the show to sell out, but the theatre was only a quarter-full by showtime, mostly with the same collection of cinephiles, critics, and other film professionals that I see at festivals and similar events.

Remember when 1,000 people lined up at 8am to see “The Godfather” during its opening week? And when the first show sold out, everyone waited three and a half hours in the lobby for the next screening? I miss that kind of excitement in the age of the digital download.

Right now, there is just too much crap competing 24/7 for the attention of the public. We don’t have a problem as much with not enough good films as we do with too many bad films. No one can cut through the white noise when there are 150,000 aspiring filmmakers (current membership of withoutabox.com).

Fondest hope for films of ’08: A way for artists to bring quality films directly to the public through the Internet in a profitable manner. A friend of mine uploaded a film to YouTube last year. He got 2 million views and zero dollars . Free “user-generated content” is great but I don’t want to live in a society in which career artists cannot monetize their work.

The age of film may be coming to a close. In 2020, the only thing to watch may be housecats playing pianos on YouTube.

Marc Huestis
Outsider Productions curator, filmmaker, impresario

Favorite film: “Sweeney Todd” — bring on the Sing-along!

Michael Lumpkin
Frameline executive director

For 2007, I was most excited, encouraged, motivated and happy about the great queer cinema emerging from Argentina.

Alex Dos Santos’ “Glue,” a dreamy portrait of the inner lives of teenagers, screened at US festivals throughout 2007 after premiering at Rotterdam in 2006.

Two excellent Argentine films premiered at major international film festivals in 2007, “XXY” by Lucia Puenzo (Cannes) and “La León” by Santiago Otheguy (Berlin). “XXY” is the dramatic story of a 15-year-old hermaphrodite and how she and her parents cope with the challenges of her condition. “La León” follows Alvaro, a young gay man, as he ekes out a humble existence living on a remote island off the coast of Argentina. Beautifully shot in black and white, “La León” is reminiscent of two of my all-time favorite films, “Mala Noche” and “A Thousand Clouds of Peace.” Hopefully, both of these films will acquire US distribution, or at least show up at US film festivals, in 2008.

Marcus Hu
Strand Releasing president

The best films for me this year, “No Country for Old Men,” by far the best thing the Coen Brothers have done, and “Lust, Caution,” Ang Lee’s erotic tribute to Hitchcock style. The best discovery was “Sugisball,” a film from Estonia that Gregg Araki turned me onto. The biggest disappointment was all the time, effort and money spent on flaccid “thoughtful” pieces aimed at the war. Biggest guilty pleasures were Tim Burton’s take on
“Sweeney Todd,” which seemed more inspired by Dario Argento and Herschell Gordon Lewis, and David Fincher’s obsessive “Zodiac,” he made that film with a microscope.

Caveh Zahedi
Filmmaker (“I Am a Sex Addict”) and recipient of the Rome Prize as well as SF360.org contributor

Top 10
1. “Brand Upon the Brain”
Guy Maddin’s most inspired, most brilliant, and most deliriously twisted film yet, and it was shot in Super-8!

2. “It’s a Free World”
Ken Loach does it again

topics: argentine cinema, bay area, castro theatre, critics year end polls, digital filmmaking, film festivals, filmmakers, gay lesbian cinema, jewish cinema, midnight movies, queer cinema, roxie

12.27.2007