Experience

San Francisco Cinematheque Springing into Action

The spring edition of the San Francisco Cinematheque calendar is making the rounds, and my copy is already dog-eared with wishful thinking. Beyond the usual bounty of local premiers and filmmaker spotlights, it’s exciting to see Cinematheque continue to cultivate unusual collaborations, programming formats and venues—even the most seasoned Bay Area filmgoer may need to consult the key to decipher some of this calendar’s site abbreviations (Quick, what’s PTUSF? NNC?). So grab your datebook and get ready for a rundown.

topics: audiences, avant-garde, curators, diy, documentary, exhibition, experimental film, yerba buena center for the arts

Take Two

Holiday film preview, part II

I don’t know about you, but I know what I want for Christmas (and Hanukkah and Kwanzaa, for that matter): Some decent movies. Hope springs eternal, especially at this time of year. It’s Hollywood custom now to reserve the majority of its prestige titles for an annual late onslaught, the idea being that award-bestowing organizations’ voters naturally gravitate toward whatever is freshest in their memories. In the indie sector, too, there are some goodies timed for holiday gifting.

So, here’s part II of our glancing, far-from-exhaustive preview of what we’ve got to look forward to between now and New Year’s Day.

topics: activism, art film, bay area, cinephiles, critics, documentary, exhibition, experimental film, genre films, hollywood

Platform

With movement and image, Catherine Galasso pays dual homage

Roy Sullivan was inordinately familiar with occupational hazards. The late Shenandoah National Park ranger (and Guinness record-holder) was zapped by lightning seven (!) times. This weirdly tormented figure is the inspiration for Lightning Never Strikes the Same Place Twice, a performance piece by rising choreographer, dancer and video artist Catherine Galasso that integrates live movement with projected images. Attracted by our vibrant dance community (touted by fellow Cornell grad Chris Black) and experimental film scene (ditto, per close friend and filmmaker Sam Green), Galasso began her professional career in San Francisco. Lightning Never Strikes the Same Place Twice plays Saturday and Sunday, Dec. 12 and 13 at SOMArts Cultural Center under the San Francisco Film Society’s cross-platform and new-technology umbrella, Kino-Tek. In honor of her father, award-winning composer Michael Galasso (Séraphine, In the Mood for Love, Chungking Express), who passed away in September. Glasso will perform a new solo dance, Simmer, as the curtain raiser. We caught up with the artist via email in the midst of her intensive rehearsals.

topics: avant-garde, bay area, dance, documentary, experimental film, music, world cinema

Experience

The Cockettes' celluloid afterglow still strong at 40

As a performing ensemble, The Cockettes were relatively short-lived. (So, sadly, were many members due to the AIDS crisis a decade later.) But their influence has been large, and seems ever more recognized. At present next-generation alternative S.F. theatre troupe Thrillpeddlers is passing the six-month mark with its surprise smash-hit revival of the Cockettes’ camp operetta Pearls Over Shanghai, currently extended through January 23.

It now includes an “Afterglow Floorshow” reprising numbers from other original Cockettes shows to honor the 40th anniversary of the troupe’s founding. That same milestone is marked Thursday by a one-night-only SFMOMA program you might kick yourself from here to eternity for missing.

The Cockettes on Film, at 40! sounds as good as it could possibly get for those of us too young or geographically disadvantaged to have experienced the group’s heyday in the flesh.

topics: activism, actors, diy, experimental film, film history, filmmakers, gay lesbian cinema, genre films, sfmoma

Platform

David Sherman brings desert exposé to S.F. oasis

For a decade and a half, multi-hypenate David Sherman was a major figure in San Francisco’s vigorous experimental film scene. A probing artist, Sherman’s numerous films included the 1997 Whitney Biennial selection Tuning the Sleeping Machine. A tireless curator, the Tucson native and his future wife Rebecca Barten founded the 30-seat Total Mobile Home microCINEMA in the mid-‘90s, presenting more than 120 shows during its five-year run. Sherman was also the administrative director of venerable Canyon Cinema and—yes, there’s more—taught at California College for the Arts. Marking his first trip to town with a new film since he and Barten moved to Bisbee, Arizona (80 miles southeast of Tucson) shortly after the millennium, Other Cinema unspools the underground premiere of Wasteland Utopias in a rare Sunday show on Dec. 6. He gave us the scoop on Wilhelm Reich and other shadowy figures on the phone and via email.

topics: bay area, curators, directors, diy, exhibition, experimental film, world cinema

Take Two

Remembering Chick Strand

This past July 11, filmmaker, teacher and lifelong Californian Chick Strand died at the age of 78. She was, without question, a crucial pioneer of West Coast experimental cinema. Strand is best known as one of the improbable few who helped instigate Canyon Cinema in the early 1960s, the Bay Area organization that has since nurtured several generations of avant-garde filmmakers. She began at Canyon as an enthusiast and community organizer, but by decade’s end was making her own work—films which, in the best experimental tradition, stretched the cinematic medium to realize a dynamic, idiosyncratic understanding of the phenomenal world. It’s only fitting that Cinematheque and Canyon would stage a tribute to Strand’s work (“After Day Comes Night & After That, Day Comes Again: A Tribute to Chick Strand,” in San Francisco Cinematheque’s program in SFFS Cinema by the Bay playing at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts on October 23 and and “Cinematic Tribute: Films of Chick Strand” at the Ninth Street Independent Film Center on October 24); both are direct descendants of the grassroots screenings she helped run nearly 50 years ago.

topics: activism, authors, avant-garde, bay area, canyon cinema, critics, experimental film, yerba buena center for the arts

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