Mill Valley Film Festival 30

Like its late-‘70s-birthed classmate Sundance, the Mill Valley Film Festival has a long-standing emphasis on American independent cinema. The difference being that at this point anything premiering at Sundance is instantly “discovered” by international media, sussed by agents, studio scouts and distributors. As its profile has risen, “indie cred” has perhaps inevitably lowered — several titles each year are just uninspired, starry if relatively low-budgeted quasi-mainstream flicks.

Not so at Mill Valley, which retains its genuinely alterna-vibe and local (rather than professional outta-towner) audience after 30 years…even if that loyal audience is very white, suburban and wealthy. Here, the bulk of the program remains truly alternative, with many a worthy movie not already poached by other, more media-pumped festivals.

Not that there weren’t plenty of celebrity visitations at MVFF’s 30th. First-time director Ben Affleck and thesp Amy Adams turned up — traffic-delayed but still welcome — to promote “Gone Baby Gone.” Ang Lee, a Mill Valley regular since his own 1991 debut “Pushing Hands,” discussed his career in a tribute program the night after “Lust, Caution” opened the festival. Questions about that latest effort prompted him to muse, “You could say all my films are about food and sex.” (We’re not sure where “Hulk” fits into that equation, though.)

Jennifer Jason Leigh got her own tribute in a program that included “Margot at the Wedding,” the new film by her writer-director husband Noah Baumbach (“The Squid and the Whale”) in which she co-stars with Nicole Kidman and Jack Black. A little nonplussed by interviewer Ben Fong-Torres’ line of questioning, she responded to his asking why several of her characters have been prostitutes by cracking, “I guess there aren’t that many jobs for women.” (She also noted that on her very first professional job, a part in 1970s TV series “Baretta,” star “Robert Blake threw a chair on the set. He has a temper.”)

A phalanx of the studio’s top animators attended the premiere of documentary “The Pixar Story.” An all-star lineup of musicians performed a Bob Dylan tribute concert after Todd Haynes’ Dylan fantasia “I’m Not There,” among them John Doe, Wilco’s Nels Cline, Ramblin’ Jack Elliot, Bob Weir and Chris Isaak. And last night’s closing feature was supposed to have brought in “The Kite Runner” director Marc Forster, scenarist David Benioff and the bestselling novel’s author Khaled Hosseini to the Sequoia Theatres. (I myself wasn’t able to make it to witness.)

These were the big-noise events. But eavesdropping on audience buzz at any given screening was likely to point instead toward the spotlight on new Romanian cinema, a digitally-shot drama from Burkina Faso, or a documentary about some impossibly off-grid culture. Marin audiences seem to have a particular fondness for the latter such exotica, and this year everybody’s favorite armchair-adventure discovery seemed to be “Riding Solo to the Top of the World,” a literal one-man enterprise in which filmmaker Guarav Jani, his camera and his motorcycle journeyed to the Changthang Plateau — an Indian mountain region bordering China where the average altitude is 15,000 feet and the few human residents are nomadic shepherds.

Other far-flung audience hits included “The Iron Ladies of Liberia,” about that previously violence-plagued nation’s new wave of enlightened female leaders; Kurdistan road-trip parable “Crossing the Dust;” and “Kiviuq,” a telling of traditional far-north Canadian Inuit fables in dance, music and Inuktitut language.

Closer to home, two excellent documentaries in the kids-do-the-darndest-things mode of “Spellbound” stirred considerable enthusiasm. Tricia Regan’s “Autism: The Musical” follows a group of diversely “functional” Southern California autistic kids — and their sometimes equally high-maintenance parents — as Miracle Project founder Elaine Hall pulls off the near-impossible feat of focusing their attentions toward creating a stage show. But even that stunt is dwarfed by those performed by the competitive jump-rope and double dutch (the two categories have elaborate, separate rules) tweens-to-teens in Stephanie Johnes’ “Doubletime.” You’re probably thinking: Jump rope tricks, right…big whoop. But the mix of acrobatics, hip-hop dance, speed, and whatnot these kids pull off is more exciting to watch than 95% of what you get at the Olympics.

Other nonfiction finds included “Anita O’Day: The Life of a Jazz Singer,” an engrossing portrait of the still-salty, hard-living bebop “canary,” and “Knee Deep,” a stranger-than-fiction tale of attempted matricide in the depressed farmlands of not-so-quaint inland Maine. A big favorite for many was Emiko Omori and Wendy Slick’s “Passion and Power: The Technology of the Orgasm,” which looks at the “secret history” of the vibrator from Victorian times (when doctors used it to relieve women’s “hysteria”) to today. Alas, there were no thematically relevant gift bags for patrons after the screening.

topics: film festivals, independent film, mill valley film festival

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Nine questions for Rob Nilsson

Veteran Bay Area filmmaker Rob Nilsson was a staple in San Francisco’s collectivist, countercultural film scene of the 1970s, a leading figure in the American independent feature landscape of the 1980s, and then…. Well, those who saw his earlier work (“Northern Lights,” “Heat and Sunlight,” “Signal 7”) at arthouses and festivals might have thought he dropped off the map in the 1990s.

Unless they religiously attend the Mill Valley Film Festival, that is, where patrons have known that Nilsson has been extraordinarily prolific since abandoning celluloid for the lighter, cheaper, more flexible digital realm. He’s made several features (noted below) both here and abroad — from Kansas City to Jordan — most of which have had low-profile release to home formats.

But his epic project, now finally complete, is the “9 @ Night” series of nine interlocking full-length films made in collectivist style with the Tenderloin yProject. These semi-improvised movies, stylistically diverse and often striking, fit together as a vast tapestry of life in and around S.F. — largely down-and-out life, reflecting in many cases the real-life experience of Nilsson’s collaborators.

Rich, humane, unpredictable, the “9” movies have been premiering individually at Mill Valley since 2000 — and this year the last-finished segments “Used” and “Go Together” will take their bow. Nilsson promises the entire series, 12 years in the making, will play regular local theatrical dates soon. As if that’s not enough, he’s got an unrelated third [ital] feature, “Presque Isle,” also premiering at MVFF.

Somehow amidst all this he found a spare moment to check in with SF360.org…

1. SF360: You’ve got to be the most-programmed filmmaker in the history of MVFF. Admittedly, you’ve had a lot of features to premiere — but why there in particular?

Rob Nilsson: I started with (Festival Director) Mark Fishkin and I intend to end with him. The North American premiere of (his 1978 first feature) ‘Northern Lights’ was at Mill Valley and I never looked back. They have supported me like no other American institution, and I support them like no other American filmmaker.

2, SF360: You went from being the classic U.S. indie filmmaker, who made a feature on film every few years, to this explosion of activity working with a collective on digital video. What’s most liberating about the new technology?

Nilsson: More intimacy. Less fooling around with needless technicalities. Great equipment which never fails. You look like an amateur so you can get people to relax. It’s closer to poetry.

3. SF360: How did you get started with the Tenderloin yGroup?

Nilsson: My brother was homeless. I drove through the Tenderloin everyday on the way to my editing room for ‘Heat and Sunlight’ (1987). I wondered, who were the brown baggers, the screamers, the shopping bag ladies, the prophets, the pimps, the prostitutes? I thought I might find my brother, but I found a 14 year artistic mission instead. And in the midst of it, my brother did appear.

4. SF360: How was the whole ’9 @ Night’ series developed, in terms of the characters, community and stories it would encompass? How heavily was improvisation involved?

Nilsson: The stories came as a result of meeting people on the streets and in the workshop, which was the first thing to get started. First it was the Tenderloin Action Group, and then the Tenderloin yGroup, a workshop for homeless, street people, inner city residents, professional actors and all comers. I met people through the workshop and its program. I saw how stories might be built around them.

Sometimes things came from their lives. Sometimes they collaborated on the stories. Sometimes things came from the slipstream. Sometimes I just saw things and ran with them. But the intent was to do things to activate the energies of people, to help them find emotion, intuition, honest response. I thought drama should start there. All the movies had a spine, a script scenario, a 10 to 15 page road map. All dialogue was improvised and shaped in editing.

5. SF360: Over what time period were the ’9 @ Night’ films developed, shot and edited? I’ve gotten the impression that in some cases a great deal of time passed between shooting and final edit. True?

Nilsson: It took us about 14 years to complete our entire plan. ‘Chalk’ (his 1996 drama about pool hall hustlers) was first, it was a stand-alone project, sort of a proof-of-concept film. Then it took about 12 years to finish the ’9 @ Night’ series. During that time I also made ‘Winter Oranges,’ (in Japan), ‘Samt’ (Jordan), ‘Security’ (Berkeley), ‘Opening’ (Kansas City), ‘Frank Dead Souls’ (South Africa), ‘A Town Has Turned to Dust (utah)’ — or did i do that before the workshop started? — and just last year ‘Presque Isle’ with the San Francisco School of Digital Filmmaking. I did that with students as apprentices in all positions, and in some cases as department heads.

6. SF360: Unless they’ve actually attended MVFF over the last several years, as far as I know people have had little to no opportunity to see the ’9 @ Night’ films. Now that the whole series is finished, are there plans for wider exposure?

Nilsson: Yes. Harvard is first. The Harvard Film Archive is going to show all nine features November 17-19. After that I’m going to organize a Bay Area opening, hopefully with an art theatre in each of the counties — a one-week orgy of 9 @ night. After that, we’ll take a breath and see what’s next.

7. SF360: Ideally, should the ’9 @ Night’ films be seen in sequence? At MVFF you’re now premiering the ‘2nd’ and ‘9th’ films — so if you intended a formal order, it clearly wasn’t going to be available to anyone until the very end of a long creative process.

Nilsson: Correct. But when films got finished they suggested other films. Some projected films got dropped and others took their place. But now we have nine which do go in a certain order, and Harvard is going to show them that way, three a night for three successive nights.

8. SF360: You seem constantly alert to new methods, new collaborators, new technologies. Do you ever look back on any of your earlier work and wonder where your head was at, professionally or emotionally?

Nilsson: In other words, what could I have been thinking? No. I’ve always been prolific. My poetry book has just come out. My book of film criticism will come out next year. My paintings will also be marketed more this coming year as I bring out the films. I’ve followed my skein because it was always there. The slipstream has offered me constant inspiration. That’s my path.

9. SF360: What were some major formative filmmaking influences on you? Where do you see inspirational hope among filmmakers now?

Nilsson: Cassavetes was my big inspiration, and I got to meet him and talk to him; almost made a film with him. Bergman was my other inspiration, but I never got to meet him. Tarkovsky. Satyajit Ray. More recently, Gaspar Noe, Tsai Ming Liang, Hou Hsiao Hsien.

American cinema has gone off track. Most of it was off track to begin with. I like Inniaritu, Cuaron, Del Toro. I liked Paul Haggis’ ‘Crash.’ Cassavetes and the verite artists pointed a way, a truly American way. I followed it. No one else did.

topics: bay area, filmmakers, mill valley film festival, q&a

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Mill Valley Film Festival at 30

Time flies when you’re having fun. The Mill Valley Film Festival turns 30 years young this year, sporting none of the pants-widening girth and wobbly ankles suffered by another way-out-west fest that began life in 1978. Unlike that media magnet, MVFF remains primarily a local event — albeit one that attracts plenty of Hollywood names. The paparazzi, the handlers, the buyers and sellers and buzz chasers have yet to seriously crash the party. Hey, this is still Marin: Laid-back is the posture of choice.

What do you do when you’re turning 30? Celebrate the past’s experience by looking to the present and future, of course.

That’s pretty much the plan, as 2007’s edition features new work from many an old alumnus, starting with its two-opening night features. “Slums of Beverly Hills” creator Tamara Jenkins’ long-awaited second film, family seriocomedy “The Savages,” will bring her along with star Laura Linney, whose career was feted in a 2003 “Spotlight.” Steamy Mandarin-language intrigue “Lust, Caution” marks the third time director Ang Lee has opened Mill Valley — which he’s visited since his debut “Pushing Hands” in 1991. He’ll get his own honorary tribute program tomorrow night, Friday Oct. 5.

Other tributees this year likewise have Mill Valley histories. Terry George (“Hotel Rwanda”), who brings his new drama “Reservation Road” along with stars Mark Ruffalo and Mira Sorvino (note: not all guest appearances mentioned here were confirmed at press time) on Oct. 10, closed the festival in 1996 with his directorial debut “Some Mother’s Son.”

The brilliant thesp Jennifer Jason Leigh is being celebrated Oct. 13 before a screening of her acclaimed new vehicle (with Nicole Kidman) “Margot at the Wedding,” written and directed by her husband Noam Baumbach, whose memorable “The Squid and the Whale” played here two years ago. Oct. 14 closing night selection “The Kite Runner,” the much-anticipated adaptation of Khaled Hosseini’s international bestseller, brings back director Marc Forster of “Monster’s Ball” and MVFF ’04 favorite “Finding Neverland.”

Other notable returnees include experimental prankster John Sanborn (premiering his nearly five-hour epic “365”), pioneering indie and TV-movie director John Korty (presenting a digital remaster of his delightful 1966 debut “The Crazy Quilt”), eclectic German auteur Doris Dorrie (with her new non-fiction “How To Cook Your Life”), and many more.

But nobody comes close to the MVFF track record of local maverick Rob Nilsson, who showed his first feature “Northern Lights” here in 1979 and since has shown…well, we can’t even count them. This year he is premiering no less than three new features, including the final two in his long-gestating, epic “9 @ Night” program. (Check back with us tomorrow, for an interview in which Nilsson explains all.)

Flabbergasting factoid: This isn’t even the first time he’s premiered a trio of brand-new, full-length movies at one MVFF. That happened before in 2000. Holy crap, Rob, slow down: You’re making the rest of humanity look so, so lazy.

There’s plenty of work from spanking-new talents to be sampled over Mill Valley’s 11-day course too, naturally. Where to begin? With the popular “5 @ 5” series of thematically clustered shorts? With first-time director (if hardly unfamiliar in other guises) Ben Affleck’s bracingly good mystery-cum-drama “Gone Baby Gone,” based on a similarly hard-hitting novel by “Mystic River” author Dennis Lahane? “Control,” Anton Corbijn’s acclaimed biopic about suicidal Joy Division singer Ian Curtis? Sterlin Harjo’s “Four Sheets to the Wind,” a tiny but lovely piece about a dysfunctional Seminole-Creek family in Oklahoma?

Other movies preceded by considerable positive vibeage include the Israeli ensemble whimsy “Jellyfish;” Kurdistan-set refugee drama “Crossing the Dust;” award-winning Romanian “California Dreamin’ (Endless),” completed after director Cristian Nemescu’s tragic car-crash death; outre Australian comedy “Kenny;” Afghanistan documentary “Postcards from Tora Bora;” and a revival screening of William Wellman’s superb if little-known 1933 Great Depression tale “Wild Boys of the Road.”

World premieres? Mill Valley’s got ‘em — even some not directed by Rob Nilsson. They include self-explanatory documentary “The Pixar Story,” James Searle’s thriller “Juncture,” and “The Trips Festival,” about the legendary three-day SF festival that in 1966 preceded — and kickstarted — every subsequent, celebrated multimedia counterculture event.

What have we left out? Well, the expansive annual Children’s FilmFest of creative kid pics from around the globe; the avant-garde, new-technology-focused “V(ision)Fest” section; sidebars on new work from Germany, India and Romania; “New Movie Lab” events encompassing seminars and one-on-one filmmaker consultations (signup is first-come, first-served) with industry professionals; the Marin Symphony performing Shostakovich’s score live to silent classic “Battleship Potemkin;” an array of local and other musicians covering Bob Dylan tunes in honor of Todd Haynes’ wildly imaginative “biographical” fantasy “I’m Not There.”

Plus more…a lot more. Which you’ll have to cross the Golden Gate Bridge — or at least consult the MVFF schedule — to discover.

topics: film festivals, mill valley film festival

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