The List

Travel guide through Another Hole in the Head Film Festival

It’s summer—not that that means much if you live in SF proper—so you might be contemplating vacation travel of one sort or another. Or if work commitments, poverty and/or gas prices are keeping you home for the season, maybe passive travel via the wonderful world of available local cinematic entertainment will have to suffice. That’s a pretty safe way to get around, but beware nonetheless: Even movie tourism can be dangerous to your health. Certainly if you’re a movie character, at least.

This year’s edition of SF Indiefest-presented Another Hole in the Head, the two-week horror, sci-fi and fantasy fest, offers a plethora of destinations it turns out were a very bad idea to visit. We can’t guarantee fate will deal you cards as grim as it does the cast in these representative ’08 HoleHead titles. But one can never be too cautious, right? So, for the time being one might want to avoid the following top ten locations for terror:

topics: bay area, genre films, horror, japanese cinema, sf indiefest

Platform

Jeff Nichols on "Shotgun Stories"

With “Shotgun Stories,” first-time writer/director Jeff Nichols managed to build, for less than half a million dollars, a relatable story and characters with substance seen rarely in mainstream film—and the film is now on quite a roll, fresh off grand jury prize wins at both the Seattle and Austin Film Festivals, Roger Ebert’s “great discovery” at the Chicago Film Festival, and nominated for a Cassavetes Award at the 2008 Independent Spirit Awards. I was particularly interested in the film’s success, as six of the principal cast and crew members of “Shotgun Stories” either teach at or graduated from the same small art college in North Carolina as me. When Nichols was visiting San Francisco for the film’s opening night appearance at SF Indiefest many many weeks back, he offered us with some insight into the creation and production of the film, which opens in SF this Friday. [SF360.org editor’s note: This article first appeared in SF360.org in a slightly different form during SF Indiefest.]

topics: independent film, sf indiefest

Found

SF Indiefest diary

I tend to overbook myself and 50 percent of the time, it prevents me from getting anything done. Case in point: Last night I decided I was going to take in a triple feature at the Roxie for purposes of Indiefest coverage. It made sense at the time.

A sucker for music documentaries of all kinds, I showed up at “Electric Heart — Don Ellis,” at 5 p.m. to begin my six-hour movie-watching marathon. Ellis immediately reminded me of a 1970s Peter Gabriel. Specifically pre-“So” Peter Gabriel, when he had officially broken away from Genesis but not yet had huge commercial success, when he was experimenting with complete abandonment using the sounds and limitations of the instruments at his disposal, with tones, with electronics, and heavily influenced by world music.

topics: cult cinema, exhibitions, film festivals, independent film, music, sf indiefest