Experience

SFFS's first annual Cinema by the Bay festival spotlights local talent

A film festival that’s long overdue arrives tonight with San Francisco Film Society’s first annual Cinema by the Bay. A wide-ranging showcase of local filmmaking, as well as a forum for the region’s influence as subject and setting in the work of filmmakers beyond the Bay, it runs through Sunday, October 25, and encompasses the straight-ahead to the avant-garde to the tantalizingly difficult to categorize (I’m thinking Etienne!) in a four-day program of features, shorts, docs and multimedia live performance from established and emerging artists.

topics: actors, audiences, avant-garde, bay area, curators, digital filmmaking, diy, documentary, dramatic films, exhibitions, experimental film, film arts foundation, film festivals, film history, filmmakers, independent film, san francisco film society

Platform

Richard Levien, from "Immersion" to "La Migra"

New Zealand transplant Richard Levien, a longstanding fixture of the San Francisco indie film community, has until recently been known primarily as an editor. That changed forever during this year’s San Francisco International Film Festival when Levien’s directorial debut Immersion won the Golden Gate Award for Bay Area Short. Shortly thereafter, Levien was named as the first recipient of a $35,000 award from the first SFFS/Kenneth Rainin Foundation Filmmaking Grant for the script development of what will be his first narrative feature, La Migra. Both projects focus on the tribulations of immigrant children trying to live normal lives in the United States in the face of stigmatization, xenophobia and an often-vindictive legal code.

topics: actors, bay area, children's issues, digital filmmaking, diy, drama, exhibitions, film festivals, funding, immigration, latin american cinema, san francisco international film festival, sundance film festival

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

Platform

Epps' "Black Rock" unearths buried Alcatraz history

On a damp, rainy night last week, Kevin Epps took 250 supporters, sponsors and friends on a cruise back in time. Although in many ways this trip to Alcatraz resembled the excursion taken by thousands of tourists over the years, there was one crucial difference: The San Francisco filmmaker was premiering his latest documentary, The Black Rock, and the focus was on the African American prisoners and guards who lived on the island from 1934-63, when it was a federal penitentiary. The screening was framed by a tour (we forgot that Park Rangers working the Alcatraz gig are themselves performers as well as historians) and a panel discussion that focused on the uneven number of black males incarcerated since 1980. In his new film, Epps (who debuted with a splash in 2003 with Straight Outta Hunters Point) brings to light a largely forgotten sliver of fascinating, infuriating history and imbues it with both indignation and sadness. The Black Rock plays Friday, February 27, through Thursday, March 5, at the Red Vic Movie House in the Haight. We got the lowdown from Epps via email.

topics: african american cinema, bay area, documentary, exhibitions, red vic movie house

Experience

SF Indiefest: Seeing is disbelieving

With a roster that sprawls from horror to softcore to verite-style drama to animation and documentary, there’s one constant to the 11th edition of SF Indiefest: You won’t be bored.

While still mostly Amerindie in content, Indiefest ’09 opens with a U.K. feature (ever-unpredictable Shane Meadows’ latest grungy drama Somers Town), then detours into a mini-retrospective of Japanese “pink” (i.e., softcore) features from the last two decades. There are also efforts from Denmark (I’ll Come Running) and Italy (Waiting for the Sun). Plus a program of recent Nippon TV excerpts entitled Super Happy Fun Monkeybash!, which encompasses such merrily sadistic “reality” broadcast incomprehensibles (‘til you see ‘em) as male-female “pants-pulling matches,” “condiment battles,” champagne corks popped against genitals, human bowling balls, kitchenwear perpetually raining down on heads, and something called “No Reaction Pie Hell.”

topics: actors, exhibitions, film festivals, film history, genre films, horror, independent film

Found

Remembering Ave Montague

On Saturday, January 24, the San Francisco film and arts community lost one of its treasures, my friend and colleague, Ave Montague.

Ave was well known for her hard work, creativity and passion for the arts. I once asked her how she was able to make a name for herself in the arts community. She told me she had been working at a nonprofit organization that lost its funding, and she was out of job. All she had was $200 in the bank, a rolodex and an old computer. Realizing she had a son to feed, she rolled up her sleeves and got to work. And work she did.

Before Ave came along there was a dearth of activities and attention focusing on African American culture and arts in San Francisco. There was no Black Film Festival, MoAD (Museum of African Diaspora) was years away from being built and the Lorraine Hansberry Theater was rarely mentioned in the mainstream press. But all that changed under the spell of Ave.

topics: african american cinema, documentary film, exhibitions, film festivals, political film

Experience

Wim Wenders: a visit to Berlin & Beyond

Italy, England, Scandinavia and much of Eastern Europe all had their giddy cinematic “New Waves” of the 1950s and 1960s. But Germany—pretty well stymied by cultural conservatism following WWII, not to mention half the nation’s Communist oligarchy—took slightly longer to exhale fresh filmic breath.

“New German Cinema,” as it came to be called, was a movement that emerged from West German hippie experimental theater/art/film scenes, flourishing in the 1970s via several distinctive, erratic, brilliant and prolific directors. Most stellar were Fassbinder, Herzog, and Wenders. The latter is this year’s honoree at the 14th annual Berlin & Beyond festival.

topics: bay area, castro theatre, directors, dramatic films, exhibitions, features, german cinema, world cinema