Topic: archives
Reclaiming Alcatraz: Other Cinema marks the 40th anniversary of the Alcatraz occupation with a collection of archival amazements and a contemporary documentary feature by James Fortier. (Photo courtesy Other Cinema)
Returning to Alcatraz at ATA
Among the many empowerment movements that burgeoned in the 1960s was Red Power—an unprecedented wave of activist zeal among Native Americans who’d had their land, languages and cultures systematically taken away by the government. If the 19th-century Indian experience was defined by broken treaties, in the 20th it had suffered from dubiously well intentioned efforts to relocate and assimilate tribal peoples in mainstream society. This had the effect of cutting them off from their roots while dumping them in cities with minimal institutional support.
topics: activism, american indian film, archives, artists' television access, bay area, directors, diy, documentary, world cinema, youth
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Go ask Alice: Russell Merritt introduces Walt Disney's Alice Comedies to audiences at the San Francisco International Animation Festival. (Photo courtesy SFFS)
Russell Merritt animates the archives for SF International Animation Festival
Celebrating the Bay Area’s status as a hotbed for animation creators as well as enthusiasts, the now annual San Francisco International Animation Festival kicks off Wednesday, November 11, with an historic live event that features Lawrence Jordan among others. It then officially opens Thursday, November 12 with the premiere of Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr. Fox, a stop-motion adaptation of Roald Dahl’s children’s fantasy featuring George Clooney. And it continues through the weekend with experimental shorts, commercial features and family cartoon classics that push the boundaries of the medium. Among them are rarities gleaned from the archives: Walt Disney’s Alice Comedies, a series of Disney shorts produced between 1923 and 1927, in which a live-action girl is inserted into an imaginary cartoon world. J.B. Kaufman and Russell Merritt, authors of Walt in Wonderland and Walt Disney’s Silly Symphonies will introduce a selection of films and lead the program, presented with the help of the Walt Disney Family Museum. Merritt, a lively raconteur and Professor of Film Studies at UC Berkeley, where, for over 20 years, he has taught animation, art-house cinema and film history, will share a portion of his vast knowledge of film lore, Disney and otherwise, with the audience. First, he offered a preview for SF360.org readers. (SFIAF runs November 11-15; the Alice Comedies program takes place November 14, 1 p.m. at Landmark’s Embarcadero Center Cinema.)
topics: animation, archives, avant-garde, music, san francisco film society
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Hand-held: Home Movie Day at the PFA October 17 showcases work by amateurs and offers advice for preservation.
Pamela Jean Smith brings home movies to the big screen
Home movies have been around since the Lumières, and there’s no doubt their fascination goes beyond the den. Though often made for private reasons, they are treasure troves of culture ephemera and social history. Most of all, they speak loss (the French refer to them as "films-souvenirs"). The home movie represents a distinct ecology of moving images, incorporating domestic life, travelogue, ritual and relaxation. When every family has its own private archive, what is the role of the public one? Pamela Jean Smith, a film preservationist at the Pacific Film Archive, has spearheaded the Berkeley chapter of Home Movie Day, an event used to raise awareness of the endangered legacy of amateur celluloid. After many months of fielding submissions, she’s prepared a public program for October 17. Among its other pre-YouTube mementos, the show will pay special tribute to home movies shot in Kodachrome, the rich-hued film stock recently discontinued by Kodak. Increasingly, celluloid itself is part of the home movie’s fable of days gone by. Smith agreed to talk about the selection process for Home Movie Day and how it broadens her mission as a film preservationist.
topics: archives, audiences, authors, bay area, diy, documentary, pacific film archive
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Behind the curtain: Critics with Bay Area ties offer perspectives on the past in two holiday-released film books.
Reading between the frames: Fleming and Sturges
The rap against Victor Fleming and John Sturges is that they were competent and perhaps even skilled directors who lacked the imagination and grace that elevates craftsmen into artists. Michael Sragow’s Victor Fleming: An American Movie Master and Glenn Lovell’s Escape Artist: The Life and Films of John Sturges, both splendid new biographies by film critics with local ties, expressly aim to reestablish their subjects’ reputations. They hit that mark with varying success, but provide so much pleasure for even a casual moviegoer that it scarcely matters. Both Sragow and Lovell have a solid sense of where the legend diverges from fact, and though they tend to print both, they leave little doubt which is which.
topics: actors, archives, authors, bay area, hollywood
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Oddball, at work and play: Stephen Parr, whose "Euphoria" plays YBCA this weekend, speaks about his massive archive of histories and eccentricities.
Stephen Parr's Oddball Films
Stephen Parr licenses film and video footage, and currently presents some of the best film screenings in town with his Oddball Films series. He has also invented a wide variety of after-hours venues, owned a small press and run burlesque shows. I shouldn’t be surprised that entering Parr’s office at Oddball Films is not quite, well—normal. Upon arriving at his Capp Street office, and having been instructed NOT to ring the bell, I call a cell phone number and someone happens to be leaving the building. I am told to walk in and go to the top of the stairs. As the outside door closes, I find myself in pitch darkness. Stairs? After feeling the walls, I fumble my way up to a carpet-covered door. One step in and I am surrounded with 6,000 sq feet of floor-to-ceiling films cans and the ’30s era 17 Reasons sign. Parr’s work is currently being appreciated in the Bay Area Now 5 series at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in a screening of Euphoria this coming Thursday.
topics: archives, directors, exhibitions, film
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