SFSFF 2012: PREVIEW—By Michael Hawley

Just four months after blowing everyone away with the awesome spectacle that was Abel Gance's Napoleon, the San Francisco Silent Film Festival (SFSFF) returns for its 17th annual event at the Castro Theatre from July 12 to 15, 2012. When the line-up was first announced I heard a few people grouse about it having a "greatest hits" vibe; but, the reality is only two of this year's 17 programs are repeats—Wings (from back in 1999) and Pandora's Box (shown in 2003). Personally, I've never seen any of them on a big screen and am therefore completely psyched. Big Names from the silent era are much in evidence, both in front of the camera (Clara Bow, Emil Jannings, Felix the Cat, Pola Negri, Louise Brooks, Douglas Fairbanks, Roland Colman, Buster Keaton) and behind it (Ernst Lubitsch, Victor Fleming, Georg Wihelm Pabst, Joseph von Sternberg, William A. Wellman). There are several tempting, unfamiliar rarities as well. I searched for films I might skip out on—if only to get a breath of air and a decent meal—but came up empty handed.

An issue that's sure to be a subject of discussion this year—and it's one the festival isn't shying away from—is that of digital exhibition. SFSFF dipped its toe in the digital waters two years ago with the restoration of Metropolis, saying it was the only option available. This year they're wading ankle deep with two DCP presentations, Lubitsch's The Loves of Pharaoh and Wellman's Wings. The latter is SFSFF17's opening night film, which is clearly making a statement. The great digital vs. 35mm divide is also the focus of this year's Amazing Tales from the Archives presentation (see below for details). So no matter which side you're on—if a side needs to be taken at all—there should be plenty here to chew on.

Plain and simple, if you've never attended the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, you owe yourself the experience of seeing a silent film the way it was meant to be seen, in a landmark 1922 movie palace with accomplished live musical accompaniment. What follows is a stroll through SFSFF17's line-up with some hopefully interesting facts, figures, gossip and trivia—a bit more than what's available on the festival's website and brochure, but considerably less than what we'll find in the scholarly essays that appear in the complementary program guide during the festival.

Thursday, July 12

7:00 P.M. Wings (1927, USA, dir. William A. Wellman)—Until The Artist, this drama about two WWI pilots in love with the same girl was technically the only silent film to win the Best Picture Oscar®, or rather, Most Outstanding Production. While I've never seen Wings, I am familiar with the famously heartbreaking kiss between Charles "Buddy" Rogers and Richard Arlen (both of whom served as pallbearers at the 1965 funeral of Wings co-star Clara Bow). Gary Cooper, who turns up in a supporting role as a doomed pilot, began a much-publicized affair with Bow during the shoot. The film seems best remembered for its aerial stunt photography—with director William Wellman having been hired specifically for his WWI aviator experience. None other than William Wellman, Jr., author of The Man and His Wings: William A. Wellman and the Making of the First Best Picture, will introduce this screening. The Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra will accompany, with Ben Burtt providing live Foley effects. Burtt is a nine-time Oscar® nominee for Best Sound / Sound Editing, with wins for ET: The Extra-Terrestrial and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Following the screening, a festive opening night party will be happening at the top-floor loft of the McRoskey Mattress Company.

Friday, July 13

10:30 A.M. Amazing Tales from the Archives: Into the Digital Frontier—One of the hottest topics amongst cinephiles this spring was the "This is DCP" series at NYC's Film Forum, where several digitally restored classics, including Five Easy Pieces, The Red Shoes and Rear Window, were screened in DCP, or "digital cinema package" format. The highlight was a comparative 35mm vs. DCP, side-by-side showing of Dr. Strangelove. This series was the undertaking of Grover Crisp, Sony Pictures executive vice president in charge of asset management, film restoration and digital mastering. I'm excited Crisp will be at the Castro performing another side-by-side demonstration for SFSFF audiences. (For an in-depth report on the Film Forum series, check out Miranda Popkey's piece at Capital New York). Also on the program will be Andrea Kalas, vice president of archives at Paramount Pictures, who will discuss the restoration of Wings, which will have opened the festival the previous evening in DCP. Admission is free.

1:00 P.M. Little Toys (1933, China, dir. Sun Yu)—Director Sun Yu is known for a string of socially conscious dramas made in the silent era's twilight years. In 2009 the festival brought us Sun's 1932 Wild Rose and now follows up with this decade-spanning epic about the calamities which befall a rural toymaker during a time of political upheaval. Sun made the movie to rouse nationalism following Japan's invasion of Manchuria. It stars two of China's most popular actresses of the 1930's playing mother / daughter protagonists; Lingyu Ruan (who we saw two years ago in A Spray of Plum Blossoms) and Li Lili (Wild Rose).

4:00 P.M. The Loves of Pharaoh (1922, Germany, dir. Ernst Lubitsch)—This historical melodrama was Lubitsch's last German production, a Hollywood calling card to prove he could indeed helm large-scale epics boasting 6,000 extras, lavish costumes and gargantuan sets. The great Emil Jannings (The Last Laugh, The Blue Angel) stars as an Egyptian ruler who spurns an offer of marriage to the Ethiopian king's daughter and thereby ignites a war by choosing the king's beloved slave girl instead. Long considered a lost film, this new digital restoration—assembled from fragments found in far-flung places—was executed by the same company (Alpha Omega GmbH) that resurrected Fritz Lang's complete Metropolis. Ten additional minutes are still thought to be missing. And who best to accompany this grandiose presentation than the incomparable Dennis James on the Castro Theatre's Mighty Wurlitzer. The photograph below is one of only 17 stunning, high resolution stills from The Loves of Pharaoh to be found on the festival's Press Room page.

7:00 P.M. Mantrap (1926, USA, dir. Victor Fleming)—Clara Bow makes her second appearance at 2012's festival in the film she claimed her personal favorite. Released shortly before It—the movie that gave her a moniker—Bow got rave reviews as the man-eating Minneapolis manicurist who strays from her backwoodsman husband and aims straight for a famous divorce lawyer. The story is adapted from a Sinclair Lewis novel, with Bow's character considerably softened, and the titular "Mantrap" is actually a Canadian boondocks town where the action is set. Cinematography is by the great DP James Wong Howe and the film's intertitles are said to be quite witty. Mantrap also witnessed the beginning of a hot and heavy affair between Bow and the film's director Victor Fleming, who would of course go on to direct The Wizard of Oz and Gone with the Wind. Noted film critic Michael Sragow, who wrote Victor Fleming, an American Movie Master, will introduce the screening. Stephen Horne accompanies on grand piano.

Mantrap will be preceded by Twin Peaks Tunnel, a recently restored short about the construction of one of the world's longest railway tunnels—one that just happens to begin right outside the festival's doorstep. Parts of the film are available to watch on YouTube and there's some terrific footage of Castro and Market Streets circa 1918.

9:15 P.M. The Wonderful Lie of Nina Petrovna (1929, Germany, dir. Hanns Schwarz)—Each year SFSFF engages a contemporary filmmaker to choose a film from the line-up and present it as a Director's Pick—with past pickers ranging from Alexander Payne to Terry Zwigoff. The Bay Area's Philip Kaufman has selected this tale of a St. Petersburg courtesan who leaves her officer lover for the affections of a lowly lieutenant. It's considered the best of Austrian director Hanns Schwarz' 24 films, with one ardent IMDb user gushing "it's more poignant and visually dazzling than Ophuls, more erotic and atmospheric than Sternberg, with a camera more sinuously alive than Murnau or Lang." The film stars Brigitte Helm as Nina Petrovna, two years after her mesmerizing screen debut in Metropolis and one year after starring in Marcel L'Herbier's L'Argent (SFSFF 2011 Winter Event). Accompaniment will be provided by the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra.

Saturday, July 14

10:00 A.M. The Irrepressible Felix the Cat! (1924-1928, USA, dir. Otto Messmer & Pat Sullivan)—Felix the Cat was the first cartoon character with a name famous enough to draw people into movie theaters. He was so iconic that Charles Lindbergh flew across the Atlantic with a Felix doll and Aldous Huxley wrote the cartoon proved "what the cinema can do better than literature or spoken drama is to be fantastic." These cartoons were also noted for integrating social issues and current events into their storylines. The festival will present seven Felix animated shorts, all but one from his days at the Educational Pictures distribution company. Leonard Maltin and film scholar Russell Merritt will introduce the screenings, which will be accompanied by Donald Sosin and Toychestra, an all-woman experimental music ensemble from Oakland. And remember, as with all SFSFF screenings, children under 10 are admitted free!

12:00 P.M. The Spanish Dancer (1923, USA, dir. Herbert Brenon)—Pola Negri was one of the biggest stars of the silent era and the first European actor to be lured to Hollywood (by Paramount in 1922). Her German mentor, Ernst Lubitsch, had been the first European director to cross over. I haven't seen any of her movies so I'm excited to experience this, her third American film and first big spectacle. Based on a Victor Hugo novel, it's the story of a gypsy singer who becomes involved in 17th century Spanish court intrigue. Negri's co-stars include the handsome Antonio Moreno as her lover and Wallace Beery as the King of Spain!? Adolphe Menjou also has a small role. The print we'll be seeing is a new restoration done by the Dutch EYE Film Institute, which also restored last year's Lois Weber film, Shoes. Rob Byrne, who worked on the restoration, will introduce and Donald Sosin accompanies on grand piano.

2:30 P.M. The Canadian (1926, USA, dir. William Beaudine)—This is a remake of a 1917 film, The Land of Promise, which bears the name of the Somerset Maugham play on which both films are based. A destitute woman journeys to the wilds of Canada to live with her brother and then marries a rough homesteader (actor Thomas Meighan, who played the same part in both movies) to evade her sister-in-law's ire. (Yes, it does sound a lot like Lillian Gish's 1928 vehicle The Wind (SFSFF15). Director William Beaudine was known for his efficiency and prolificacy, directing nearly 30 silents. He later became known for making series films like The East Side Kids and The Bowery Boys. But for me he's the guy who helmed notorious 1945 sex-ed feature Mom and Dad for exploitation pioneer Kroger Babb. Stephen Horne accompanies on grand piano.

Preceding the screening of The Canadian, the 2012 SF Silent Film Festival Award will be presented to the Telluride Film Festival "for their longtime dedication to the preservation and exhibition of silent film." Fest directors Tom Luddy, Gary Meyer and Julie Huntsinger will be there to receive the honor.

5:00 P.M. South (1919, UK, dir. Frank Hurley)—The festival follows last year's The Great White Silence with another Antarctic expedition documentary, South. It's an assemblage of photos and film footage taken by Australian photographer / adventurer Frank Hurley, when he accompanied Ernest Shackleton on that ill-fated trans-Antarctic trip aboard the ship Endurance. These materials exist today only because the intrepid Hurley dove into icy Antarctic waters ("stripped to the waist" as he wrote in his diary) to rescue them from the sinking ship. If you saw the 2000 documentary The Endurance: Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition, you've already been exposed to Hurley's work, which is said to have changed expedition photography forever. The festival will screen a new restoration by the British Film Institute with original tints and toning. Actor Paul McGann (Dr. Who, Withnail & I) will read from Shackleton's letters accompanied by pianist Stephen Horne.

7:00 P.M. Pandora's Box (1926, USA, dir. Georg Wilhelm Pabst)—Of all the programs in this year's festival, this tops my list—a new frame-by-frame restoration of one of the great films of all time, starring iconic Louise Brooks as cinema's quintessential femme fatale. I'm embarrassed that I've never seen it on a big screen, but am happy I've saved the experience for this opportune moment. Diary of a Lost Girl (1928), another memorable Pabst / Brooks collaboration, played the festival two years ago. This new restoration—paid for by good old Hugh Hefner—was produced by San Francisco-based Angela Holm and David Ferguson, who will introduce the film with some on-screen "before and after" comparisons. Sweden's Matti Bye Ensemble will provide accompaniment for this, the festival's 2012 Centerpiece Presentation.

10:00 P.M. The Overcoat (1926, USSR, dir. Grigori Kozintsev & Leonid Trauberg)—It's become a SFSFF tradition to reserve Saturday's final screening as a Late Show slot for silent cinema's off-kilter output. Past selections have included Häxan: Witchcraft through the Ages, Aelita, Queen of Mars and a trio of Tod Browing / Lon Chaney collaborations (West of Zanzibar, The Unholy Three, The Unknown). This year's unsettling oddity is an adaptation of Nikolai Gogol's most famous short story about the repercussions of a lowly office worker's obsession with obtaining a new overcoat. An acquaintance who attends the Pordenone Silent Film Festival wrote me that it's "a real jaw-dropper" and said people came out of the screening "completely mind-blown." I recently watched it on YouTube in the hopes of being disappointed—an early evening might have been nice, but nothing doing. This should be excellent and I can only imagine what the Alloy Orchestra has cooked up in the way of a score.

Sunday, July 15

10:00 A.M. The Mark of Zorro (1920, USA, dir. Fred Niblo)—This is a movie I've wanted to see for ages and I'm surprised the festival has never shown it. Based on Johnston McCulley's 1919 short story "The Curse of Capistrano," the film was Hollywood's first big swashbuckler and made Douglas Fairbanks a bigger star than he already was. He had a hand in writing the script and was responsible for coming up with that unmistakable Zorro "look." It was released the same year Fairbanks married Mary Pickford and was the debut release of United Artists, the company he co-founded with Pickford, Chaplin and D.W. Griffith. Director Fred Niblo would later work with Ramon Navarro in Ben Hur and Rudolph Valentino in Blood and Sand. Be on the lookout for 12-year-old Milton Berle in the uncredited role as "Boy." Dennis James on the Mighty Wurlitzer would seem the perfect choice for accompaniment. And once again, kids under 10 are admitted free!

12:00 P.M. The Docks of New York (1928, USA, dir. Josef von Sternberg)—No less than renowned film historian Kevin Brownlow considers this von Sternberg's finest film, which was released one year before he'd depart for Germany to make The Blue Angel. It's also his last silent film—excepting 1929's The Case of Lena Smith which is lost—and was selected for preservation by the National Film Registry in 1990. Betty Compson, a major silent star largely forgotten today, plays a prostitute who gets involved with the sailor (George Bancroft) who rescues her from a suicidal drowning. The film is by all accounts visually stunning, with an unsentimental and non-judgmental mindset towards its characters. I'm especially interested in seeing Olga Baclanova—best known as Cleopatra the trapeze artist in Tod Browning's Freaks—in a supporting role as the sailor's wronged wife. The intertitles are supposed to be something else. A wedding scene carries one that reads, "If any of you eggs know why these heels shouldn't get hitched, speak now or forever hold your trap." Donald Sosin will provide accompaniment on the grand piano.

2:00 P.M. Erotikon (1920, Sweden, dir. Mauritz Stiller)—Don't confuse this with Gustav Machatý's 1929 Czech film of the same title which played the festival three years ago. Stiller's Erotikon is a drawing room comedy about an entomologist studying the sex life of bugs. He has a mutual infatuation with his niece and a free-wheeling wife who's juggling the affections of a sculptor and an aviator. Detached and observational, the film is noted for its complete lack of moral judgment, unlike Hollywood films of the period. It sounds like a major highlight is the opera scene, with a half naked "Queen of the Shah" writhing lubriciously on a stage set worth of Busby Berkeley. Five years after Erotikon, Stiller would set sail for America with a little known actress he had discovered and given the name Greta Garbo. The Matti Bye Ensemble, who accompanied Stiller's The Blizzard at last year's festival, will repeat that honor for Erotikon.

4:30 P.M. Stella Dallas (1925, USA, dir. Henry King)—I knew the name Stella Dallas growing up because whenever I'd complain about how tough life was, one or both parents would respond, "Kid, you've got more problems than Stella Dallas." Oddly, I never sought out the famous 1937 Barbara Stanwyck vehicle—or the 18-years-running radio serial or Bette Midler's 1990 remake—so this will be my first exposure to the ultimate tale of maternal self sacrifice based on Olive Higgins Prouty's 1923 novel. The film was Belle Bennett's big break, as she was chosen over 73 other actresses by Samuel Goldwyn. Tragically, her 16-year-old son, whom she'd been passing off as her "brother" to hide her age from Hollywood producers, died during the production. The film co-stars Ronald Colman as Stella's wealthy husband, reuniting the actor with Henry King, who had directed his first Hollywood starring role (1923's The White Sister). Also making an appearance is 16-year-old Douglas Fairbanks Jr., in his fourth screen appearance. Czar of Noir City Eddie Muller will provide one of his customarily entertaining introductions, and Stephen Horne will accompany the film on grand piano.

7:30 P.M. The Cameraman (1928, USA, dir. Edward Sedgwick & Buster Keaton)—The festival ends with what many consider Buster Keaton's final masterpiece. It was his first film for MGM (a move he'd later call "the worst mistake of my career") and never again would he possess the independence and control necessary to create films worthy of his talents. Shot on both NYC locations and Hollywood sets, the film stars Keaton as accidental news photographer who becomes embroiled in Chinatown Tong Wars. Highlights include a hilarious sequence shot at a public swimming pool and one of film history's best performances by a monkey. The Cameraman was considered lost until an entire print was discovered in Paris in 1968. The Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra will accompany the film, with introductions by Leonard Maltin and SFSFF board member Frank Buxton, who was an acquaintance of Keaton.

Prior to The Cameraman, the Bay Area will finally get to see the most recent restoration of George Méliès' beloved 1902 short, A Trip to the Moon, which premiered at last year's Cannes Film Festival. In 1993, a hand-colored print of the film was discovered at the Filmoteca de Catalunya in a state of almost total decomposition. Restoration began in 1999 and took over 10 years to complete. Actor Paul McGann will be on hand to read the film's narration and Stephen Horne will accompany on grand piano.

Cross-published on film-415.

SFIFF55—14 Capsule Reviews by Michael Hawley

Only a few days left until the longest running film festival in the Americas launches its much anticipated 55th edition. Benoît Jacquot's Farewell, My Queen starts it all off on Thursday, April 19 and over the next two weeks the San Francisco International Film Festival will present 174 films (105 of them features), as well as honor such cinema luminaries as (director) Kenneth Branagh, actress Judy Davis and documentarian Barbara Kopple. In my fest coverage thus far, I've spotlighted the special programs and awards that were announced early on, then offered up a two-part overview of the complete line-up (Europe and everywhere else in the world). Now here are 14 capsule reviews of selections I've had the chance to preview (all seen via DVD screener, with the exception of Where Do We Go Now?).

Guilty (France / Belgium, dir. Vincent Garenq)—Based upon "the greatest French legal scandal in living memory," this intensely harrowing film recounts the living nightmare of Alain Marécaux, a bailiff wrongly accused of pedophilia nearly a decade ago. After being dragged from his home in the middle of the night, he spent three years in prison awaiting trial, during which time his family and business were destroyed (there were also several suicide attempts and a hunger strike). TV director Garenq conveys this ordeal with unsparing, exacting detail, and is especially skillful at portraying Marécaux's acute sense of isolation. Enough can't be said for the riveting lead performance by Philippe Torreton, an actor with whom I was previously unfamiliar (he makes another SFIFF55 appearance in Rebellion). More than any other film I've previewed, this one has really stuck in my gut.

Golden Slumbers (Cambodia/France, dir. Davy Chou)—Between 1960 and 1975, Cambodia produced nearly 400 movies, in a Golden Era that ended with the Khmer Rouge's reign of terror. All that survives today are a handful of clips, love songs from soundtracks, some memorabilia and the recollections of those few who survived the genocide. That anyone could assemble such a haunting and lyrical tribute from such scant resources is a small miracle. Particularly enchanting are interviews in which people wistfully recall film plots, most of which seem to involve ghosts, genies and demons. One ardent fan reveals that—while he's forgotten the faces of family members—he can effortlessly conjure up precise images of his favorite stars. We visit karaoke bars where the music of the era lives on, and a former 1,000-seat Phnom Penh cinema, which now shelters 116 households. Golden Slumbers begins with the camera traveling backwards along a dusty road at dusk, while voiceovers reminisce. It ends with a montage of the era's few surviving film fragments, tantalizingly withheld from our view until now and projected in a manner that's sheer poetry.

Neighboring Sounds (Brazil, dir. Kleber Mendonça Filho)—An upscale residential street in Recife serves as a microcosm of Brazilian class relations in this extremely well-crafted narrative feature debut. In nearly every intricately conceived scene, well-to-do residents interact with maids, security guards and deliverymen with politesse, while the film's sound design hints at an underlying ominousness. When that moment of denouement finally arrives, it's almost beside the point given the richness of all that's rendered up to that point. Neighboring Sounds also features my favorite fictional character of the festival—a weed-smoking housewife who's obsessed with a neighbor's barking dog and has a special relationship with her household appliances. This should be a strong contender for SFIFF55's New Directors Award.

Smuggler's Songs (France, dir. Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche)—Louis Mandrin is popularly considered the Robin Hood of France, a mid-18th century brigand who foiled the king's tax collectors up until his martyrdom in 1755. Smuggler's Songs is a thoroughly engaging history lesson about the clandestine band of followers who built upon his legacy. It's a radical departure for director Ameur-Zaïmeche, whose first three features all dealt with contemporary French-Arab immigration issues. He injects his first period piece with a rascally charm, some fine period detail and a charismatic supporting cast (and he also stars as the group's ringleader, Bélissard). Actor / director Jacques Nolot (Before I Forget) is especially memorable as the Marquis who betrays his class and lends emphatic support to the cause of les Mandrins. A movie to inspire the 99 percent.

The Day He Arrives (South Korea dir. Hong Sang-soo)—In this, Hong's 12th musing on thorny male / female relations amongst his country's creative class, a lapsed film director visits Seoul for several days of bumming around with friends, colleagues and exes. Like last year's Hahaha, the tone is pleasingly less contentious than in previous Hong outings and his ubiquitous fracturing of the narrative, once revealed, raises a smile rather than a roll of the eyes. What's new this time around is crisp, B&W cinematography that's wholly suited to the film's wintry, urban backdrop. Droll, disarming and the perfect length at 78 minutes.

¡Vivan las Antípodas! (Germany / Netherlands / Argentina / Chile dir. Victor Kossakovsky)—Antipodes are any two diametrically opposed points of land on the earth's surface and are rarer than one might think, given that 70 percent of our planet is covered by water. This visually stunning documentary contemplates four pairs of these antipodes without ever really making a point beyond the obvious ones of contrast and juxtaposition. Director Kossakovsky's success at conveying a sense of people and place ranges from the negligible (a barely seen Miraflores, Spain, whose antipode is Castle Point, New Zealand) to the sublime (a remote homestead in Entre Rios, Argentina, where two middle-aged brothers live a solitary existence maintaining a small bridge—their antipode is Shanghai, China). The film shines brightest in its breathtakingly creative transitional sequences, which should register impressively on a big screen (the fest is scheduled to show this in 35mm).

The Exchange (Israel/Germany, dir. Eran Kolirin)—A young, married physics professor breaks his well-established routine one day, setting off an existential crisis in which he becomes emotionally detached from the everyday. His newfound worldview manifests itself in ways ordinary (playing hooky from work and ignoring his wife's phone calls) and unordinary (exposing his genitals in his apartment building lobby and impulsively tossing a stapler out his open office window). This is a weird and oddly compelling little film that I can't pretend to have fully understood. It was certainly a bold way for director Kolirin to follow-up his 2007 arthouse charmer, The Band's Visit.

The Double Steps (Spain / Switzerland, dir. Isaki Lacuesta)—This fever dream of a movie was the surprise winner of the 2011 San Sebastián Film Festival's top prize and is constructed around three shifting, interrelated narratives: the works of contemporary artist Miquel Barceló, the legend of French writer / painter François Augiéras' hidden Saharan military bunker of painted frescoes, and the fantastical wanderings of a young African man who serves as some kind of Augiéras alter-ego. But phooey on all that. Best to just relax and take in the film's sensory pleasures—a funky desert dance party, the mud architecture of Mali's Dogon people, a nocturnal visit to an albino village, exotic animals and wandering bandits, all set to a Spaghetti Western-inspired score.

The Orator (New Zealand / Samoa, dir. Tusi Tamasese)—In a Samoan village, a dwarf with legitimate claims to chiefdom lives an unhappy life of ridicule with his wife, who was banished from her own village at a young age, and his pregnant step-daughter. When his wife dies, a conflict arises over the proper arrangements for her burial. It takes almost 90 patience-testing minutes for the film to reach this dramatic juncture, during which time we're unhurriedly exposed to the customs, rituals and pacing of Samoan village life (all lushly photographed). I confess that I struggled to stay awake. But the film utterly redeems itself in the profoundly moving final act, when our protagonist summons the courage to do the right thing. This is the first feature film ever made in the Samoan language, and it was New Zealand's recent submission for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar®.

It's the Earth Not the Moon (Portugal, dir. Gonçalo Tocha)—Corvo is a remote volcanic island in the middle of the Atlantic with 450 inhabitants, one town and one road. In the opening moments of this epic documentary, the filmmakers vow to literally film everyone and everything on the island. We watch craftspeople at work, witness pig slaughters and baptisms, visit the island dump and hear bad karaoke at a strobe-lit café. The inhabitants all come off as genial—not an outsized personality amongst them—and there's some nice photography, particularly of moody seas and skies. It's a not uninteresting portrait of a uniquely isolated place with a long history, but nothing surprising or revelatory is ever arrived at. The charm of the ordinary almost seems to be the point, but at 183 minutes (the longest film of the festival), it's a journey not everyone will consider time well spent.

OK, Enough, Goodbye (Lebanon / United Arab Emirates, dir. Rania Attieh, Daniel Garcia)—In this slow-moving deadpan comedy of sorts, an elderly mother walks out on her peevish live-at-home son and forces him to get a life apart from insulting customers at his down-on-its-heels pastry shop. This entails engaging the services of a prostitute and a recalcitrant Ethiopian maid with whom he can't communicate. As is often the case with deadpan, your mileage may vary. Of greater interest are the intermittent injections of melancholic travelogue, which portray the film's locale, Lebanon's second largest city of Tripoli, as a place that has seen better days (much like the film's protagonist).

Unfair World (Greece / Germany, dir. Filippos Tsitos)—A hangdog-faced police interrogator sinks into a morale morass after committing murder in this dour tale of perceived injustice in our modern world. Director Tsitos, who won the director's prize at San Sebastián, is clearly emulating Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki with deliberate pacing, absurdist conceits and monotonal acting. There's even a rock and roll scene. But this is Kaurismäki with all the life and soul sucked out. Providing significant diversion to all this agonizing austerity are some truly inspirational widescreen compositions and choreographed camerawork.

Bitter Seeds (USA, dir. Micha X. Peled)—Doc director Peled (China Blue, Store Wars: When Wal-Mart Comes to Town) completes his Globalization Trilogy with this sobering look at why a quarter-million Indian farmers have committed suicide in the past 15 years. The blame rests squarely on Monsanto Corporation and their genetically modified cotton seeds, which must be repurchased every year and incur multiple hidden costs. Farmers turn to bank loans or illegal moneylenders and are driven to suicide when a bad crop year results in confiscation of their land. The stakes are higher for families with daughters, whose marriages require huge dowry sums. Peled's film does a decent job of explaining these issues, albeit in a repetitive, simple-minded way. A self conscious and stagey narrative thread involving a village girl studying to be a journalist is as distracting as it is effective. Artless and uncinematic, this generic, issue-driven documentary is mostly of interest for the information imparted.

Where Do We Go Now? (France / Lebanon / Italy / Egypt, dir. Nadine Labaki)—Muslim and Christian village women unite to manipulate their menfolk away from religious violence in Nadine Labaki's follow-up to 2007's popular Lebanese rom-com Caramel. While this premise is indeed admirable, it's executed with the broadest possible strokes, even for a story which is clearly intended as fable-esque. The absurd lengths to which these women go—hiring a gaggle of Ukrainian prostitutes and getting the men zonked on hashish baked goods—is so far outside any conceivable reality it renders the director's message meaningless. Other problems include a tone that lurches from mawkish melodrama to chirpy musical comedy and a score which telegraphs every emotion. Don't even get me started on the Virgin Mary statue that cries tears of blood.

Cross-published on film-415.

SFIFF55—Michael Hawley Previews the Line-Up: Part Two

In my initial post at film-415 for the 55th San Francisco International Film Festival (SFIFF55), I gathered up early announcements of the festival's special awards and programs made before the official press conference. Then in the first part of my lineup preview, I took a look at SFIFF55's offerings from Europe. Now in Part Two, we'll zero in on what the fest has in store from Asia/Pacific, Middle East/Africa, Latin America and the USA.

Asia / Pacific

The SF International Asian American Film Festival has all but ceased programming new works by Asia's established auteurs. Fortunately, SFIFF has not. South Korea's Hong Sang-soo checks in with The Day He Arrives, the latest addition to his well-established, drunken-artists-behaving-badly oeuvre. The story sounds like typical Hong, with the added new spark of B&W cinematography and a wintry Seoul backdrop. Last year the fest screened Hahaha, the first Hong film I truly liked, so I'm hoping he and I are now on a roll. Hirokazu Kore-eda has had six prior films play in this festival and in I Wish, he returns to the world of children last explored in 2004's Nobody Knows. The revered Japanese director made personal appearances at SFIFF in 2009 and 2010, but isn't expected to attend this time out. Those with festival scheduling conflicts should know that The Day He Arrives opens for a one-week run at the SF Film Society Cinema on May 4 and I Wish is tentatively slotted for a local Landmark Theatre opening on May 18.

Not coming to a theater near you anytime soon is Johnnie To's Life Without Principle. This is said to be a departure for the prolific Hong Kong action director and is set in the avaricious world of investment banking. I'm scheduled to see it the same day as the Dreileben trilogy, so I hope my stamina holds up. The other Asian narrative feature I've prioritized is People Mountain, People Sea, a formalist, contemporary Chinese revenge tale that won its director, Cai Shangjun, a Venice Silver Lion. Also of possible interest: the world's first Samoan language film (The Orator), a movie from Tibet (Old Dog) and Peter Chan's martial arts blockbuster Wu Xia, starring Takeshi Kaneshiro and Donnie Yen.

Three documentaries relating to the region have also caught my eye. Davy Chou's Golden Slumbers reminisces on the Golden Age of Cambodian cinema (1960 -1975), during which time over 400 local films were made. The Khmer Rouge destroyed nearly all of them, as well as the artists who produced them. In his rave review for Variety, Richard Kuipers calls the film "inventively directed" and "pure poetry." Carrying the distinction of the longest-titled film in SFIFF55 is French artist / filmmaker Eric Beaudlaire's The Anabasis of May and Fusako Shigenobu, Masao Adachi, and 27 Years Without Images. I recently became interested in Japan's 1970s radical terrorist organization, the Japanese Red Army, after watching Kôji Wakamatsu's brutally fascinating United Red Army, and am hoping for some illumination on the group's years of exile in Lebanon. Finally, there's Alison Klayman's Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry, which profiles the ubiquitous Chinese artist/dissident.

Latin America

The past year has been a bit of an off-time for Latin American cinema, with a number of established directors (Carlos Sorin, Arturo Ripstein, Karim Ainouz and others) releasing new works to modest reception. One film that's been an uncontested critical success, Pablo Giorgelli's Cannes Camera d'or-winning Las Acacias, is oddly missing from the SFIFF55 line-up. Of the half dozen features that did make the cut, I'm especially excited about two. Milagros Mumenthaler's Back to Stay is the story of three college-age sisters who return to the Buenos Aires home of their recently deceased grandmother. It won the top prize at last summer's Locarno Film Festival. Winning the FIPRESCI prize at Rotterdam this year was Kleber Mendonça Filho's Neighboring Sounds, a mosaic of life on an upscale street in Recife, Brazil. Calling the film "a powerful, yet subtle X-ray of contempo Brazilian society" in his rave review for Variety, Jay Weissberg went on to praise Neighboring Sounds for being "superbly constructed, skillfully acted and beautifully lensed."

Another film being celebrated on the fest circuit is Cristián Jiménez' Bonsái, which is based on a seminal Chilean novella. I confess this time-bending "existential romance" had me nodding off to sleep when I watched it on DVD screener several months back. I plan to give it another chance. Also from Chile comes Alejandro Fernández Almendras' By the Fire, which I missed at the Palm Springs festival and am happy to find here. The two remaining Latin American narrative features are Found Memories and A Secret World, from Brazil and Mexico respectively. While there are surprisingly no Latin American documentaries in this year's festival, one comes awfully close. Russian director Victor Kossakovsky's ¡Vivan las antipodas! lyrically muses upon four sets of antipodes, with the greatest amount of screen time being devoted to a remote homestead in Entre Rios, Argentina.

Middle East / Africa

My top anticipated pick from this region is easily Mohammad Rasoulof's Goodbye, as I loved his two previous films, Iron Island and The White Meadows (both seen at previous editions of SFIFF). Whereas those two films were fanciful allegories, I understand this new work is a despairingly realist account of a female lawyer struggling to leave Iran, which the director shot clandestinely while awaiting appeal of his own six-year prison sentence. I'm equally excited by two Israeli films that have generated acclaim on the festival circuit. Policeman promises an inspired and provocative take on Israeli machismo and The Law in These Parts, a documentary about the Israeli legal system governing Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, won the Grand Jury Prize for Best Documentary in World Cinema at this year's Sundance.

Israeli director Eran Kolirin's The Exchange received mixed reviews when it premiered at Venice, but I'm giving it a shot based on my admiration for his 2007 crowd-pleasing The Band's Visit. Speaking of crowd-pleasing, Lebanon's Nadine Labaki follows up her popular 2007 film Caramel with Where Do We Go Now?, which won the Toronto Film Festival audience award and was Lebanon's most recent Oscar® submission. This yarn about village women diffusing religious violence opens at a local Landmark Theatre on May 18. Also from Lebanon comes OK, Enough, Goodbye, a deadpan comedy about a schlubby shopkeeper who's abandoned by his put-upon mother. Rounding out selections from the region are Iraqi orphanage doc In My Mother's Arms, and the chick flicky-sounding A Cube of Sugar from Iran.

SFIFF's African programming has been a decided weak spot in recent years. This year's line-up contains no films from North Africa—surprising in light of recent events—and the festival's three films set in sub-Saharan Africa are all by non-African filmmakers. That said, I'm really looking forward to Isaki Lacuesta's The Double Steps, a fantastical-looking fever dream that appears of be about, among other things, a search for hidden frescoes in the Malian desert. The film took the top prize at last year's San Sebastian Film Festival. I'm also likely to have a look at Ulrich Köhler's Sleeping Sickness, a meditation on post-colonial relations which won a Silver Bear for Best Director at 2011's Berlin Film Festival.

USA

Domestic films are generally not where I focus my attention at this festival, but there are some enticing entries this year. Eclipsing them all is Francis Ford Coppola's Twixt, which seven months after its Toronto world premiere still doesn't appear to have U.S. distribution. This darkly comic mystery about a small town serial killer stars Val Kilmer and Bruce Dern, and will be screened twice—in 3-D at the Castro (!!!) and 2-D at the Kabuki. Another one I won't be missing is The Fourth Dimension, a trio of short films for which the directors—Harmony Korine (Mister Lonely), Alexsei Fedorchenko (last year's Silent Souls) and Jan Kwiecinski—were given a set of Dogma-like strictures to adhere to. This could be disastrously pretentious or friggin' fabulous. Either way, it's a world premiere and all three directors are expected to attend. Val Kilmer fans take note: he's the star of Korine's segment.

If SFIFF55 is in need of a poster boy, director / actor Mark Duplass is the one to recruit, as he appears in both Lawrence "The Big Chill" Kasdan's Darling Companion and Lynn "Humpday" Shelton's Your Sister's Sister (the latter being SFIFF55's Centerpiece Film). Although I'll probably give those movies a pass, I am dying to see Mark and Jay Duplass' The Do-Deca Pentathlon, a hilarious-sounding comedy the brothers shot in between Baghead and Cyrus, which recently premiered to acclaim at SXSW. The Grand Jury Prize winner at that festival was Adam Leon's Gimme the Loot, in which two NYC graffiti artists scramble to set up their biggest "bombing" to date. At the SFIFF55 press conference, it was stressed that Gimme the Loot had been programmed into the fest long before its significant SXSW win. Two other U.S. narrative features I'm aiming to see are Compliance by Craig Zobel (Great World of Sound), reportedly the most divisive film at Sundance 2012, and Julia Loktev's The Loneliest Planet. Gael Garcia Bernal stars here as one half of a couple whose relationship is thrown off course during a backpacking trek through the Caucasus Mountains. Loktev's 2006 breakthrough film Day Night, Day Night, never screened in the Bay Area, so it was especially nice to find The Loneliest Planet in the SFIFF55 line-up.

My enthusiasm for this year's U.S. narrative features carries over to the fest's documentary selections as well, with some of America's best known non-fiction filmmakers represented. The name Alex Gibney (Enron, Taxi to the Dark Side, Magic Trip) is almost enough to make me want to watch ice hockey doc The Last Gladiators. Last Call at the Oasis is Jessica Yu's (In the Realms of the Unreal, Protagonist) take on the global water crisis. Kirby Dick (Sick, This Film is Not Yet Rated, Outrage) is no stranger to controversy and takes on the subject of rape in the U.S. military with his latest, The Invisible War. Then ex-Bay Area gadfly Caveh Zahedi (I Am a Sex Addict), stirs up plenty of debate in The Sheik and I, in which he goads his way through a commissioned film project in the United Arab Emirates.

Elsewhere on the domestic doc front, I'm debating whether to subject myself to The Queen of Versailles, Lauren Greenfield's portrait of a repellent family of American one-percenters getting their comeuppance. A queenly portrait of another sort is Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel, granddaughter-in-law Lisa Immordino Vreeland's film about the greatest fashion maven of all time. I saw this at Palm Springs and it's enormous fun, especially when viewed with an audience that's almost all well-to-do ladies of a certain age. Another documentary about a famous woman directed by a relative is Ethel, by Ethel and Robert Kennedy's youngest daughter, Rory. For more hard-hitting subject matter, I'm hoping to check out Peter Nicks' The Waiting Room, which surveys a day in the life of Oakland's Highland Hospital, and David France's history of AIDS activism, How to Survive a Plague.

Cross-published on film-415.

SFIFF55—Michael Hawley Previews the Line-Up: Part One

The Bay Area's press corps gathered at the Fairmont Hotel's breathtaking Crown Room last week for the unveiling of the 55th San Francisco International Film Festival (SFIFF55)'s full line-up. SF Film Society (SFFS) Board President Pat McBain, himself pinch-hitting for acting Executive Director Melanie Blum, spoke about the "unbelievably sad and challenging past year" and revealed plans to honor former Executive Directors Graham Leggat and Bingham Ray during the festival. Opening Night on April 19 will be dedicated to Leggat, "who led us with his passion and leadership and vision for 5½ years." Bingham Ray, who succeeded Leggat for a brief two months, will be honored at the Castro Theatre on April 28 with a screening of Carol Reed's The Third Man, his all-time favorite film. Prior to turning the press conference over to Director of Programming Rachel Rosen and her team, McBain stressed that the search for a new Executive Director was well under way and would go "full throttle" once this year's festival wrapped.

Before diving into the nitty gritty of this year's line-up, Rosen prefaced that "our best revenge against what life has handed us this year is to put on the best, most celebratory festival that we could in honor of Graham and Bingham and to all of you who support us." Indeed, it appears they've done just that. In a previous post at film-415 I gathered up all the early announcements of SFIFF55's special awards and programs, to which we can now add the following: The festival will close on May 3 with Ramona Diaz' documentary Don't Stop Believin': Everyman's Journey, the story of a Journey cover band singer from the Philippines who became a member of the actual group. The Kanbar Award for screenwriting will go to David Webb Peoples, who penned such films as Blade Runner, 12 Monkeys and Unforgiven (the latter of which will be shown at the awards presentation). And while the Peter J. Owens Award for acting wasn't ready to be announced at the press conference, it has just been revealed that Australian actress Judy Davis will be the recipient, a choice certainly as inspired as last year's selection of Terence Stamp. Following an on-stage interview and clips reel, the festival will show Fred Schepisi's new film The Eye of the Storm, in which Davis stars with Geoffrey Rush and Charlotte Rampling.

I've attended SFIFF every year since 1976 and this will be my sixth year writing about it as accredited press. As has become tradition, I kick off my coverage with a broad overview of the line-up, which contains over 100 narrative and documentary features. I'll touch upon the ones I'm dying to see as well as those that have piqued my interest, all loosely organized under geographic headings.

Europe

French language films are always my top priority, so that's where we'll begin. While it was disappointing not to find the new films of such SFIFF alumni as Bruno Dumont, Christophe Honoré, André Téchiné, Chantal Akerman, Philippe Garrel and Lucas Belvaux in SFIFF55, I'm more than pleased by the selections on hand. First, a big thumbs up for Robert Guédiguian's The Snows of Kilimanjaro, which sees the prolific director return to the working class milieu of Marseilles that marked his 1997 breakthrough hit, Marius and Jeanette. Guédiguian is one of my favorite filmmakers and I've always been grateful that this festival has consistently supported his work. I caught this one at Palm Springs and am likely to see it again.

Also high on my must-see list are three films by directors best known for their acting careers. In Bouli Lanners' The Giants, three teenage boys are left to fend for themselves in rural Belgium. The festival mini-guide incorrectly lists this as Lanners' feature directorial debut (his last film Eldorado played the SFFS Kabuki screen in 2009). The Giants won several awards in the Directors' Fortnight sidebar at Cannes last year. Mathieu Kassovitz is probably best known in this country for playing Amélie Poulain's object of desire. He both directs and stars in Rebellion, based on a bloody 1988 insurgency in the French Pacific island territory of New Caledonia. Mono-monikered actress Maïwenn won Cannes' Jury Prize for her third feature directorial effort, Polisse. This drama about a Parisian Child Protective Custody unit was perhaps the most divisive film in competition at Cannes last year. While some critics found it brilliant, others dismissed it as a shallow TV cop show on steroids.

Nearly all of this year's French language selections were already on my radar—the two which were not sound like potential winners. Vincent Garenq's Guilty is the true story of a husband and wife wrongly imprisoned for pedophilia. In his favorable review for Variety, Boyd Van Hoeij says this "stomach-churning thriller-drama hybrid … dissects one of Gaul's most famous miscarriages of justice with chilling precision." Van Hoeij was somewhat less enthusiastic about Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche's 18th century historical drama, Smuggler's Songs. This represents a new direction for the director, whose other three films explored issues surrounding contemporary French-Arab immigration (SFFS screened Adhen at 2009's French Cinema Now, and Wesh Wesh and Bled Number One played our 2006 Arab Film Festival). Smuggler's Songs co-stars (along with Ameur-Zaïmeche) the always interesting actor/director Jacques Nolot (Before I Forget).

Amongst the remaining French films, I'm sure everyone is looking forward to Chicken with Plums, Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud's follow-up to the wildly successful Persepolis. Again working from one of her graphic novels, this is the story of Satrapi's Iranian musician great-uncle, who's played by Mathieu Amalric. Two French selections are competing for SFIFF55's New Directors Prize. Delphine and Muriel Coulin's 17 Girls concerns the circumstances surrounding a port town's massive outbreak of teen pregnancy and John Shenk's Last Winter explores the struggles of a young farmer. The latter stars Vincent Rottiers, who made such a strong impression in last year's I'm Glad My Mother is Alive. Anyone desiring a look at populist French cinema won't want to miss The Intouchables, which is now France's second most popular film of all time in terms of domestic admissions (the first being Welcome to the Sticks, which played French Cinema Now in 2008). At this year's Cesar Awards, Intouchables co-star Omar Sy bested The Artist's Jean Dujardin for meilleur acteur. For a taste of French horror from the festival's The Late Show sidebar, there's Last Screening, a shocker about a psychopathic cinema projectionist. Finally, whether you love him or hate him, there's no denying that SF Chronicle film critic Mick LaSalle is a passionate and knowledgeable advocate of French cinema. That's why I plan to sit in on his master class, Mick LaSalle: The Beauty of the Real, based on his new book about contemporary French actresses.

At the festival press conference, SFFS programmer Rod Armstrong revealed that he had long suggested Ken Russell for the Founder's Directing Award, an idea Graham Leggat nixed as "crazy." Alas, Russell passed away in November and the festival now honors him posthumously, in raucous Peaches Christ-style, with a Late Show screening of 1975's Tommy. Equally exciting, SFIFF55 will present the other filmic adaptation of a rock opera by The Who, Franc Roddam's 1979 Quadrophenia, in a rare 35mm print at the Castro. A pair of contemporary UK films programmed in the festival finds two acclaimed British directors reimagining works of classic 19th century literature. Ultra-versatile Michael Winterbottom transports Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Ubervilles to modern day India in Trishna, which stars Slumdog Millionaire's Freida Pinto. Then in Andrea Arnold's follow-up to Fish Tank, the character of Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights is recast as a former Afro-Caribbean slave. Both films were well received at their respective Toronto and Venice premieres. The fest will also be screening Tanya Wexler's Hysteria, a romantic comedy about the invention of the vibrator (opening May 25 at Landmark's Embarcadero Cinema).

Shifting back to (non-French speaking) continental Europe, I spy five films I'm especially hot to see. When local festivals Berlin & Beyond and German Gems both passed on screening the Dreileben Trilogy following its 2011 Berlin Film Festival premiere, I feared it had forever passed us by. Characteristically, SFIFF55 has now stepped up to the plate. Dreileben (meaning "three lives") consists of three loosely interlocking films about the manhunt for an escaped murderer. Each is told from a different point of view, in radically different filmmaking styles, by three of Germany's most important contemporary directors: Christian Petzold (Beats Being Dead), Dominik Graf (Don't Follow Me Around) and Christoph Hochhäusler (One Minute of Darkness). Petzold is certainly the most renowned of the three (Yella, Jerichow) and Hochhäusler's unsettling The City Below was in last year's festival. SFIFF55 presents three opportunities to view the trilogy; twice as an all-day marathon and once spread over three consecutive days. My two remaining compulsory European films are Norway's Oslo, August 31, Joachim Trier's follow-up to his astonishing 2006 debut, Reprise, and what is possibly my most anticipated film of the entire festival, Yorgos Lanthimos' ALPS. It's been two years since Greece's Dogtooth became the most transgressive film ever nominated for an Oscar® and I'm ready to be shocked silly all over again.

Finally, here are a few remaining European films of potential interest. There's a second Greek film in the fest, Filippos Tsitos' Unfair World, which took prizes for best director and actor at San Sebastian last year. The trailer for Morten Tyldum's Norwegian genre thriller Headhunters looks like a real kick in the head. It screens in the festival's The Late Show sidebar and will open theatrically at a Landmark Theatre on May 4. Russia is represented at SFIFF55 with two films, Alexander Zeldovich's futuristic epic Target, and Michale Boganim's post-Chernobyl drama Land of Oblivion (which is technically from the Ukraine). Italian director Emanuele Crialese's Golden Door opened the festival in 2007 and I caught his latest, Terraferma at Palm Springs. What's important to know is that the film's ubiquitous poster / still of young hotties diving off the sides of a fishing boat has virtually nothing to do with the movie itself. Another Italy-set film, Rolando Colla's Summer Games, was Switzerland's 2011 Oscar® submission. Those disappointed that the festival didn't program Tabu, Miguel Gomes' follow-up to Our Beloved Month of August (the big discovery of SFIFF52), might console themselves with Gonçalo Tocha's three-hour plus Portuguese doc, It's the Earth Not the Moon, about the remote Azores island of Corvo. Lastly, and for me personally, leastly, those who can't get enough of farm animal documentaries should find pleasure in Winter Nomads and Women with Cows.

Click here for Part Two, where I discuss SFIFF55's line-up of films from Asia/Pacific, Middle East/Africa, Latin America and the USA.

Cross-published on film-415.