Experience

After Sept. 11, 2001, a decade found its way

On September 13, 2001, I stood in a small park in downtown Toronto, shocked but confident, and spoke to Canadian television: From now on, movies would not be the same, Hollywood and indie films would change completely. Everything would be different. It had to be, didn’t it?

Well, no, as it turned out.

I was wrong.

[Editor’s note: SF360.org is devoting this and the following week to coverage of the year and decade in film.]

topics: activism, argentine cinema, audiences, authors, bay area, critics, critics year end polls, curators, digital distribution, digital filmmaking, directors, distributors, diy, documentary, drama, dramatic films, dvd, exhibitio, tv, web, women, women filmmakers, world cinema, youth

Critic's Notebook

Lucrecia Martel makes a case for decadence

Blood red wine is poured into sweating crystal. Ice is added, and the glass is held aloft and rung like a bell, incessantly. Metal folding chairs scrape across the deck of an algae-filled pool as corpulent bodies shuffle for their alcoholic meal, extending the coterie’s drunken haze. From the very first moments of her first feature-length film, La Ciénaga (2001), Lucrecia Martel established herself as one of the most observant, powerful and urgent filmmakers working today. That opening would be memorable coming from any filmmaker. But, in this case, given that it accompanies a debut effort, it is nothing short of astonishing.

topics: argentine cinema, authors, critics, world cinema, yerba buena center for the arts

Experience

Frameline rides Argentina's new wave

Last year’s Frameline First Feature Award winner was Alexis Dos Santos’ debut Glue (2006), an overall festival favorite, and one that SF Bay Guardian Arts and Entertainment Editor Johnny Ray Huston wryly observed as "yet another example of how new Argentine cinema […] continues to stretch the time and space dimensions of the word new." It had already been a half decade since 2001, Argentine film’s watershed year at film festivals abroad and the year the entire industry—and country—suffered through a catastrophic economic collapse. The state-subsidized film schools that had nurtured members of the ’90s new wave were forced to close and many in the film industry fretted over what seemed like a foreclosed future.

topics: argentine cinema, frameline, gay lesbian cinema, queer cinema

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

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.

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