Insider

SFFS Screen: Jacques Nolot and "Before I Forget"

The single, disgruntled, been-there-done-that gay man pushing well into middle-age or beyond has a long cinematic history—albeit most of it in the closet and unflattering. Sophisticated urban audiences might have recognized that such classic character actors in Hollywood’s "Golden Age" as Franklin Pangborn and Edward Everett Horton were playing stereotype "queers," but to most audiences they were just comic-relief eccentrics too fussy or silly to have gotten married. Later on, as movies became more "frank" in the 1960s and beyond, such figures came out of the closet only to be more harshly ridiculed, painted as bitter, misogynist, untrustworthy, even homicidal. What about today? With rare exceptions, in mainstream movies he’s still on the margins, if less despisedly so, as the heroine’s nonthreatening best friend or the funny neighbor or something.

So there’s something modestly daring about the movies made so far by Jacques Nolot, a longtime French stage, TV and film actor who didn’t make his feature directorial bow until a decade ago. His latest, Before I Forget, plays the SFFS Screen at the Sundance Kabuki starting this Friday.

topics: directors, french cinema, san francisco film society, sundance kabuki

Found

You, the Man, and "CSNY: Deja Vu"

"Shut up and sing!" has been the historied catcall—sometimes less politely worded—for audiences who are fans of a particular artist’s music but take umbrage when their onstage patter gets a little "too political." It was even used as the title of a documentary about the Dixie Chicks, whose mouthing off about our current President famously got them kicked off conservative-leaning country radio.

It’s just possible, however, that no one has yet hurled that epithet at Neil Young, country-, bluegrass- and heavy-rock-influenced as his music has often been. I mean, what could they be surprised by? From "Ohio" (about the Kent State killings of student protestors) to "This Note’s For You" (a catchy riposte to rock’s product-endorsing, corporate-concert-sponsoring nature) and beyond, Neil has always aimed a cranky finger at The Man.

topics: bay area, documentary, music, political film, sundance kabuki

Insider

Li Yang's hard look at China in "Blind Mountain"

There are at least two Chinese words for "blind:" "xia" for the physically impaired and "mang" for those who cannot or will not see ugly or uncomfortable truths. But director Li Yang spent years in Germany before he could make two films intended to open Chinese eyes to the wretched lives of women for sale and miners-turned-murderers in their lust for money and survival.

Unfortunately, in their new capitalist/communist world, most Chinese citizens will probably not be given the opportunity to see either the 2003 mining horror/suspense story Blind Shaft (Mang Jing) or the kidnapping and sexploitation of a college student in Blind Mountain (Mang Shan)—not because of censorship, but for the same reasons American arthouse films don’t reach their publics: commercial pressures. However, Blind Mountain, a gripping fictional tale inspired by a true case that is only one of similar thousands, will open today on the SFFS Screen at the Sundance Kabuki. And there is still another Li production to come: Mang Liu about the two million homeless children cast adrift on city streets begging for help.

topics: art film, asian cinema, sffs screen, sundance kabuki

Found

SFFS Screen offers a new Eric Rohmer

Though grouped with the Cahiers du Cinéma critics-turned-filmmakers who comprised the French New Wave, Eric Rohmer is eight years older than Jacques Rivette, ten years the senior of Jean-Luc Godard and Claude Chabrol, and was a full dozen years ahead of Francois Truffaut. Even so, Rohmer was still working as an editor at Cahiers when Truffaut and Godard had their respective breakthroughs (The 400 Blows, Breathless). By the time Rohmer joined their ranks, Truffaut was in a brief post- Jules and Jim (1962) wilderness and Godard was toying with Marxism. Rohmer’s capacious behavioral inquiries couldn’t help but seem somewhat aloof by comparison—though certainly not insensitive to the moral reckonings embedded in quotidian actions and thought processes.

topics: art film, directors, french cinema, san francisco film society, sundance kabuki

Found

Hong Sang Soo on the SFFS Screen

For South Korean director Hong Sang Soo, it’s the road often traveled that makes all the difference. Where Hong’s films frequently go is toward dichotomies—"life" vs. "death," "clean" vs. "unclean"—while dancing around the ambivalent partners of intimacy and isolation. Hong’s films are full of come-hither gestures followed by bodies retreating once the fleeting desire is consummated, yet this consummation never brings satiation. Hong’s characters always wander away, as if slightly fearful or disgusted following attainment of what they thought they wanted. Those of us who appreciate Hong’s films know not to expect resolution. Fulfillment comes in the delayed gratification that happens days later as your mind meanders along the paths of Hong’s characters realizing the significance of something as everyday as the accidental gifting of an umbrella or a scarf given to a sick child only to be taken back soon after.

topics: asian cinema, directors, san francisco film society, sundance kabuki

Experience

SFFS Screen at Sundance Kabuki

When executive director Graham Leggat announced last April that the San Francisco Film Society would open its year-round screen at the Sundance Kabuki Cinemas on June 13—a Friday by this year’s calendar—he added that for SFFS, at least, it would be an auspicious date. Even before the first film has spooled, you don’t need to be draped in garlic or packing rabbits’ feet to believe him. The Film Society (publisher of SF360.org) has reason to be optimistic about its new undertaking, which hopes to significantly contribute to the spectrum of art and specialty films now available at Bay Area theaters.

topics: art film, documentary, exhibitions, features, film festivals, independent film, san francisco film society, sundance film festival, sundance kabuki, telluride film festival

Report

SF Int'l announces its 51st program and year-round screen

The San Francisco International Film Festival announced not only its 2008 program today at the Westin St. Francis Hotel, but also the June 13 launch of its year-round programming on one screen at the Sundance Kabuki.

San Francisco Film Society Executive Director Graham Leggat told the assembled that the Film Society has been working very hard since he arrived to turn its programming into a “year-round operation,” and that the SFFS screen will feature international independent and documentary features with limited U.S. distribution.

[Editor’s note: SF360.org is published by SFFS.]

Most of the event was devoted to unveiling the work inside the 51st Festival, which runs from April 24 through May 8. It opens with Catherine Breillat’s The Last Mistress, starring Asia Argento—one of three films in the Festival’s opening weekend featuring the actress, who Leggat spoke of as “alluringly vulpine. And that’s a compliment.” The International’s closing night is an Alex Gibney documentary with roots in San Francisco publishing, Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. Jonathan Levine’s Sundance hit The Wackness is the Centerpiece presentation.

topics: documentary, environmental films, exhibitions, french cinema, genre films, independent film, international film, italian cinema, midnight movies, san francisco film society, san francisco international film festival, sundance film festival, sundance kabuki, technology