First-person

Indie Toolkit writers rewind/fast-forward on the year/decade in film

The decade in screenwriting: Looking back over the past several years—to 2006, for example, when four of the American Film Institute’s top 10 films of the year were comedies, as opposed to just one each in 2008 and 2009—a number of prominent 2009 films took on serious topical subjects, from war to racism to financial insolvency. An ever-expanding number of sci-fi, fantasy, and horror vehicles offered near fatal adrenaline rushes and perhaps a needed relief from everyday troubles. But an especially notable trend in the stories told on film in the past year was toward the dark, lonely, inside story.

topics: activism, audiences, authors, bay area, critics, digital distribution, digital filmmaking, directors, drama, dramatic films, dvd, hollywood, how-to, independent film, internet, screenwriting

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

Box set "Treasures" unearths buried avant-garde

The latest wonderfully eclectic and stunningly vital DVD release from the San Francisco-based nonprofit National Film Preservation Foundation, Treasures IV: American Avant-Garde Film, 1947-1986, is not, strictly speaking, intended to be a greatest-hits collection or even a comprehensive introduction to experimental film for the novice. (Although one could imagine the more irreverent artists represented in the two-disc set cheerfully agreeing to inclusion in a black-and-yellow-sheathed "Dummies Guide to Experimental Film.") This splendid package of 26 films, drawn from the avant-garde capitals of New York and San Francisco, is primarily designed to support and tout the NFPF’s mission of helping preserve endangered works of our collective film history. Of course, curator Jeff Lambert didn’t pick films at random, but (with the assistance of experts in the field such as former S.F. Cinematheque executive director Steve Anker) compiled a cross-section of approaches, styles and tones. In reality, what’s immortalized in Treasures IV—what repeatedly smacks the viewer in the face—is the artists’ exuberance for life paired with the excitement of exposing celluloid to light.

topics: avant-garde, bay area, directors, distributors, documentary, dvd, exhibitions, experimental film, sf cinematheque, yerba buena center for the arts

The 6th Screen

SWAG: Free feature films on the web

Acronyms and abbreviations occupy an ever increasing part of our modern lives. Some of us spend at least a small amount of time pretending we understand them (IMHO) and feeling proud we can actually use them in crossword puzzles (IMHO, the New York Times, Sunday September 14). But this one—SWAG—goes way back. In fact, according to Wikipedia, it’s actually a backronym. Which means it existed as a real word first and then collectively we made up a series of words for the letters. Originally, it was defined as a small bundle of stuff, and really it still is: Stuff We All Get (of course, this is how the "S" is represented in polite circles).

topics: bay area, digital filmmaking, directors, distributors, documentary, dvd, web

The 6th Screen

SWAG: Free feature films on the web

Acronyms and abbreviations occupy an ever increasing part of our modern lives. Some of us spend at least a small amount of time pretending we understand them (IMHO) and feeling proud we can actually use them in crossword puzzles (IMHO, the New York Times, Sunday September 14). But this one—SWAG—goes way back. In fact, according to Wikipedia, it’s actually a backronym. Which means it existed as a real word first and then collectively we made up a series of words for the letters. Originally, it was defined as a small bundle of stuff, and really it still is: Stuff We All Get (of course, this is how the "S" is represented in polite circles).

Every glitzy film festival is full of SWAG. One day I will need that expensive rejuvenation crème, thank you Cannes. And the web is packed full of it, too. In the online video world, several burgeoning business models live side by side, vying for our attention on boring panel conversations. Several of these involve paying for content (iTunes Movie store), but others don’t. And on those sites that don’t, the SWAG is just getting better and better.

Here are some browser-based legal zones for free online feature film viewing pleasure. No installation required.

topics: bay area, digital filmmaking, directors, distributors, documentary, dvd, web

Manual of Self-Reliance

Re-distributing oneself

Have you ever gone on holiday only to wish that you would never return to the place that you’d departed? I wished it. In a sense, I actually did it. If late-August/early-September is traditionally a time for changes, I’ve done this season in spades – married, ankled (in Variety-speak) one job and started another. Why, after writing and talking in the past about my faith in the concept of digital delivery as an ever-expanding and ever-evolving solution to our current film distribution woes, would I leave the Internet-to-TV realm? I haven’t changed. They have.

topics: bay area, digital filmmaking, directors, distributors, dvd, experimental film

Take Two

Chris Marker comes home, at last

I confess that for a long while I had the misperception, based on almost no exposure to his work, that French essayist Chris Marker made dense, dry films steeped in political theory and inaccessible to anyone but a narrow strata of irrelevant European intellectuals. This delusion persisted because Marker’s films truly were inaccessible; outside of the infrequent one-shot local premiere at the San Francisco International Film Festival or the Pacific Film Archive, they never played. The exception is his tour de force short fiction La Jetée, which pops up with some regularity at venues like The Other Cinema and S.F. Cinematheque. (And even its army of admirers will concede that it’s less a pleasure trip about time and space travel than a pointed examination of the nature and meaning of images.) Marker’s unavailability wasn’t remedied by DVD, where one could only find La Jetée and Sans Soleil. Until today, that is, when Icarus Films releases The Sixth Side of the Pentagon (1967), The Last Bolshevik (1993), Remembrance of Things to Come (2001) and The Case of the Grinning Cat (2004). A gust of fresh air, they’re guaranteed to whisk away your boredom (it’s OK, you can admit it) with story-driven American documentaries with quirky characters.

I should point out that these are individual releases, not a box set, though it hardly minimizes the echoes that ricochet across the films and the decades.

topics: dvd, experimental film, french cinema, reviews