Platform

Parker and di Napoli on parody and high art in "(Untitled)"

If you were intrigued by Ben Lewis’s documentary The Great Contemporary Art Bubble at the recent San Francisco DocFest, or if you’ve picked up one of the copies available throughout the San Francisco Public Library branches of Sarah Thornton’s compelling anthropological study of the contemporary art world, Seven Days in the Art World, you will definitely want to check out Marin-based director Jonathan Parker’s latest film, which played the SF International this past spring and opens in the Bay Area this coming Friday. The hilarious romp through the comic fodder available in the world of conceptual art and atonal music, (Untitled) is a film destined to be seen in the theater for the benefits of the sound systems theaters provide; its sound design, provided by San Francisco local Richard Beggs, is integral to the film—as is the score provided by Pulitzer Prize-winning new music composer David Lang. I sat down briefly with Jonathan Parker and co-writer Catherine di Napoli (also a Bay Area local) to discuss (Untitled) and the following is a snapshot of what transpired.

topics: art, bay area, san francisco international film festival

Platform

Dave Eggers, Spike Jonze and the making of 'Wild Things'

Where the Wild Things Are is directed by Spike Jonze from a screenplay by Jonze and Bay Area-based writer Dave Eggers, based on the classic 1963 picture book by Maurice Sendak. The original story concerns an unruly boy who runs rampant through his house dressed in a wolf suit and is banished to his room without his supper. Alone and disgruntled, he sails to the land of the Wild Things, a ragtag band of hulking, unpredictable monsters. Max conquers them “by staring into their yellow eyes without blinking once," and he is made “the King of all Wild Things," dancing with the monsters in a “wild rumpus”. However, he soon finds himself lonely and homesick, and he returns home to his bedroom, where he finds his supper waiting for him, still hot.

topics: art, authors, bay area, children's issues, directors, features, screenwriting

Experience

William Klein's restless mind on view at the PFA

William Klein is best known as a photographer and expat New Yorker who moved to Paris in 1948 and never looked back—well, with the notable exception of New York (life is good and good for you in New York…), a mid-1950s exhibition and photobook. It was a much-debated sensation at the time for both its unconventional technique (Klein played liberally with focus, overexposure and wide angles) and rather shocking, vivid, un-pretty view of the Big Apple’s denizens. Today, it’s considered a game-changing landmark in the medium. His subsequent fashion photography (notably for Vogue) was also strikingly innovative. His images have been shown at leading museums around the world, including San Francisco Museum of Modern Art not long ago.

But in 1965 Klein got interested in filmmaking—initially abandoning still photography entirely for it.

topics: activism, art, art film, film history, filmmakers, french cinema, pacific film archive, photography, world cinema

Platform

Judy Bloch moves on after 29 years at PFA

For nearly 30 years Judy Bloch has been behind the classy film publications at the Pacific Film Archive, producing some of the best film annotation in the world, as a writer, editor and guiding presence. She recently retired from UC Berkeley and took a job managing publications for SFMOMA. We asked her about her life and times at PFA.

topics: art, art film, authors, avant-garde, bay area, critics, directors, pacific film archive, world cinema

In Production

Weissman collects oral histories of S.F.’s "Heartbreak and Heroism"

As the years passed after the exhilarating, exhausting release of The Cockettes in 2002, David Weissman arrived at the conclusion that he was through making films. It wasn’t the agony of fundraising that cooled his coals, but a more basic concern: He was insufficiently jazzed about any of the ideas he was coming up with. But when the notion struck of revisiting the early years of the AIDS outbreak in San Francisco, Weissman sprang into action. He obtained a small grant and started conducting marathon interviews with people who lived here before and during the crisis. It’s still early days for Heartbreak and Heroism: Stories from the Plague Years in San Francisco but Weissman has a clear fix on the film he making.

topics: art, art film, bay area, diy, festivals, film festivals, gay lesbian cinema, political film

Platform

Lawrence Jordan: to infinity and beyond

For more than 50 years, Lawrence Jordan has been one of the leading lights of American avant-garde cinema. His work as a maker, exhibitor and advocate of filmmaking and art was and remains essential to a filmmaking movement in the ’50s and ’60s that writers such as P. Adams Sitney refer to as the American Underground Cinema. Throughout and across his films, Jordan developed a cosmology that seems all his own. Gallery Extraña presents an exhibition of film still prints and a diorama created by Jordan beginning June 5, a date that just happens to coincide with the maker’s 75th birthday. The gallery also presents a preview of the documentary Lawrence Jordan and the premiere of Jordan’s newest film, a 12-hour collage epic, Circus Savage June 13. Jordan was kind enough to talk with us by phone, where he proved to be extremely open to discussing any topic with candor and modesty. His sly brilliance is masked a bit by his disarming charm.

topics: art, avant-garde, bay area, exhibition, experimental film

In Production

Walsh sets off on Rainer's parade

With the benefit of experience, Jack Walsh brings exceedingly reasonable expectations to his new project. "From the time you start something, it’s anywhere from five to seven years," he says. Walsh actually increases that estimate before we get off the phone, which is partly an indication that the economy is worsening by the minute.

The San Francisco filmmaker has embarked on Feelings Are Facts: The Life of Yvonne Rainer, a feature-length documentary about the groundbreaking choreographer and experimental filmmaker.

topics: actors, art, bay area, cinephiles, directors, diy, documentary, performance