CATHLEEN ROUNTREE—The Movie Lovers' Club

Roughly about a year ago I met Cathleen Rountree at the press conference for SFIFF49 where she approached me to enquire after my digital recorder. As a seasoned interviewer, Cathleen's cassette recorder was just about to give up the ghost and she was exploring options. I smiled about this when I spotted her across the room at this year's press conference.

Exploring options is a good way to describe Cathleen. It doesn't take long in her presence to recognize her independent, entrepreneurial spirit, her deep-seated interest in other people, and her enthusiastic curiosity in new ways of appreciating cinema. We had several interests in common, not the least being our passion for cinema coming out of Mexico, Central America and South America, which Cathleen frequently capsulizes for SFIFF's program catalogs (this year she whets appetites for Verónica Chen's Agua and Ricardo Elias' The 12 Labors). Further, we had both studied Jungian psychology, recognizing filmmakers as the new mythmakers if not the contemporary inflection of ancient shamans. As I was recovering from a series of hospitalizations and maneuvering the war zone of disability insurance carriers, Cathleen was kind in sympathizing with my approach towards movies as a means to mend and heal.

After one of last year's SFIFF press screenings we shared lunch in Japantown and Cathleen enthusiastically profiled her upcoming book—The Movie Lovers' Club: How To Start Your Own Film Group (2006, Inner Ocean Publishing)—and her negotiations with a web designer to build the book's companion site. I'm happy to report the book has done well, garnering praise far and wide; but, it's Hannah Eaves' write-up for Greencine that provides the best glimpse into the book's structure and objectives. Last year especially, with the San Francisco Film Society's promoted collaboration with Ironweed Films, models were being presented on new ways to share movies with others, in the face of dying movie theaters and declining box office. A night was selected for people all over the Bay Area to watch the same film at organized house parties.

Cathleen had already begun exploring such options in the late '90s and her book is no less prescient than its publication last Summer. Whether through "small house parties-cum-private screenings" via Ironweed or Film Movement, or whatever's risen to the top of your rental queues on Greencine or Netflix, whether you've raked it in at Virgin at one of their frequent $10 sales, or whether you're taking advantage of the new "screen scene" streaming video-on-demand fare from Greencine, Jaman, Firecracker, and countless others springing up seemingly every day, the bottom line remains that the essence of this so-called "social cinema" is its sociality and cinema's communal texture. Cathleen's ready for you, welcoming you at the front landing, offering food that will complement screenings, suggesting strategies on how to choose films, calendar films, let alone how to select members for ongoing or nascent groups so that discussion will illuminate and enrichen films, and inviting you back for the next grouping. Or as Cathleen quotes Pauline Kael: "Being able to talk about movies with someone—to share the giddy high excitement you feel—is enough for a friendship."

Granted, film buffs in a regional hub like San Francisco might not feel any need to be advised on what to see nor where since we live in a virtual cornucopia of cinematic wealth with delicious eateries at every corner and a film festival at every weekend; but, even for us seasoned snobs, the book remains a perfect guide with its year-long suggestion of titles, its thematic groupings, and its intimate allegiance to the warp and woof of the seasons. I keep it by my bedside to dip in and out of as the whim fits. Sometimes I like to read the quotes. Sometimes I peruse trivia. Often the questions she poses for group discussion offer new perspectives and fresh insights even at a solitary reading.

But don't take my word for it. Negotiations with Cathleen's web designer produced a handsome and informative companion site for the volume that outlines the book's (and the site's) philosophy, an intimate bio of Cathleen, raves on the book, links to her reviews and published pieces in the Santa Cruz Sentinel, SF360, Release Print, and Jung Journal (previously The San Francisco Jung Institute Library Journal). She's building a respectable list of reviews and (my favorite!) previews and reports from various film festivals. Clearly Cathleen is a dedicated festival junkee, just like me. Don't miss her great interview with Eddie Muller from the recent Noir City.

Just to make it even easier for you, here are some of Cathleen's pieces for the Santa Cruz Sentinel. First her experience of last year's Sundance Film Festival; her Oscar prelude gleaned from her experience at this year's Palm Springs Film Festival; an entry celebrating Valentines shenanigans; and (as of this week) a piece on how movies are reviving the Atomic Age uneasiness about a bleak future.

Cross-published on Twitch.

THE ALLEGED WISDOM OF GEORGE CARLIN

My sister forwarded me the following "message" from George Carlin. I'm not convinced these are actually his words, but they're good words nonetheless and bear repeating. If they are his words, all the more power to him for the breadth of his sensibility. For his more customary acerbic fare, however, I point towards the quotes sections of both IMdb and Wikipedia.

* * *

The paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings but shorter tempers, wider freeways , but narrower viewpoints. We spend more, but have less, we buy more, but enjoy less. We have bigger houses and smaller families, more conveniences, but less time. We have more degrees but less sense, more knowledge, but less judgment, more experts, yet more problems, more medicine, but less wellness.

We drink too much, smoke too much, spend too recklessly, laugh too little, drive too fast , get too angry, stay up too late, get up too tired, read too little, watch TV too much, and pray too seldom. We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values. We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often.

We've learned how to make a living, but not a life. We've added years to life not life to years. We've been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet a new neighbor. We conquered outer space but not inner space. We've done larger things, but not better things.

We've cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul. We've conquered the atom, but not our prejudice. We write more, but learn less. We plan more, but accomplish less. We've learned to rush, but not to wait. We build more computers to hold more information, to produce more copies than ever, but we communicate less and less.

These are the times of fast foods and slow digestion, big men and small character, steep profits and shallow relationships. These are the days of two incomes but more divorce, fancier houses, but broken homes. These are days of quick trips, disposable diapers, throwaway morality, one night stands, overweight bodies, and pills that do everything from cheer, to quiet, to kill. It is a time when there is much in the showroom window and nothing in the stockroom. A time when technology can bring this letter to you, and a time when you can choose either to share this insight, or to just hit delete. . . .

Remember; spend some time with your loved ones, because they are not going to be around forever.

Remember, say a kind word to someone who looks up to you in awe, because that little person soon will grow up and leave your side.

Remember, to give a warm hug to the one next to you, because that is the only treasure you can give with your heart and it doesn't cost a cent.

Remember, to say, "I love you" to your partner and your loved ones, but most of all mean it. A kiss and an embrace will mend hurt when it comes from deep inside of you.

Remember to hold hands and cherish the moment for someday that person will not be there again.

Give time to love, give time to speak! And give time to share the precious thoughts in your mind AND ALWAYS REMEMBER:

Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.

2007 SFIFF50—Festival Crossover: Hana Yori no Naho

Yet another film I caught at the 2006 Toronto International Film Festival and which I'm pleased to discover on the SFIFF50 line-up is Hirokazu Kore-eda's Hana, co-presented by the Center for Asian American Media. Hana is an unexpectedly humorous and effective subversion of the samurai genre, veined throughout with Kore-eda's customary warm humanity. For being a historical period piece, it is brilliantly contemporary. Its comedy is achieved not only through an ensemble of randy and meticulously-drawn characters living in an Edo nagaya (tenement slum) in 18th century Japan, but by its purposeful upset of expectations regarding the samurai code. Kore-eda poses the question: Which is the more pathetic comedy? A samurai who is clueless at tracking and inept at swordplay? Or a samurai so driven by code that he forfeits the pleasures of being a husband and father? Kore-eda also asks: Who most honorably fulfills a father's dying wish to have his death avenged? A samurai warrior who interprets revenge as bloodlust and, if necessary, suicide? Or one who realizes that it is by teaching the young that the world is propelled forward? An admitted response to 9/11, Hana leans toward peace in times hungry for war.

Twitch teammates Todd and Opus have written fine reviews of Hana. Todd writes, "Kore-Eda has assembled a fine group of actors, many of whom have worked with him and with each other before, and the camaraderie is clearly evident on screen. The performances are universally strong, striking an admirable balance between humor and pathos, but what really makes it work is that you really believe that these are people who know and care about one another. …Beautifully shot, finely performed and brimming with life, Hana shows us a side of the acclaimed director that we haven't seen before, playful but still with a purpose."

Opus concurs: "Hana is warm, lively, deeply human, laugh-out-loud hilarious, and intensely enjoyable."

Kore-eda accompanied Hana's first TIFF screening and invited questions from his audience.


Prefacing that the film—although a period piece—addresses contemporary issues, Kore-eda was asked why he decided to set the film at the turn of the 18th century and what attracted him to the samurai genre? He stated that he initially came up with the idea after 9/11 when the spirit of vengefulness was at a peak. He wanted to make a film that addressed the theme of revenge, but, he wanted it to be a comedy or to have comedic elements. He envisioned a film about a samurai compelled by honor and code to avenge his father's death, even though he didn't really want to. Further, currently in Japan there is a resurging obsession with the samurai warrior code, which makes Kore-eda uncomfortable. He wanted to somehow address these patterns of vengefulness appearing once again in human history to comment upon how they interfere with peace.

Asked about the cinematic citation within Hana to Kenji Mizoguchi's Genroku chushingura / The 47 Ronin, Kore-Eda responded that people of his age usually watch this film about the tale of the 47 samurai who avenge their lord's death around the New Year. It's a tale very familiar to people of his generation.

With regard to the film's title Hana—which is the Japanese word for "flower"—Kore-eda explained that the film's full title is Hana Yori no Naho which roughly translates as "something more than a flower." Variety's Leslie Felperin tweaks that translation and says it actually means "even more than the flowers," which is "an allusion to the alleged last words of Lord Asano, who was referring to the fact that even more than the loss of petals in the wind, he regretted dying." The lord of the 47 ronin then committed suicide.

Throughout the film, Kore-eda associates samurai with cherry blossoms and queries whether the beauty of this equation is that samurai—like blossoms—must die. Kore-eda adeptly offers a counter-interpretation that what is beautiful about the falling of cherry blossoms is that they will return the following spring. Death, then, is seen as something like the middle of a long life and not an end in itself; certainly not a goal in itself, which is often the predictable trajectory of the samurai code and a predictability Kore-eda gently criticizes. In other words, as CineScene's Howard Schumann puts it, "Hana wants to change the symbol of the cherry blossom associated with the warrior spirit to one that represents a peaceful and nurturing life." Mileage will vary as to whether Kore-eda has succeeded in recontextualizing the metaphor, though his attempt to do is unquestionably timely and commendable.

Further, Kore-eda was asked if there was any significance to the fact that Soza's bird was named Hana and that it is eaten by a cat? Kore-eda complimented the questioner's hearing because the bird's name was indeed Hana but was not so named in the subtitles. He wanted the reference kept subtle and admitted he had, perhaps, his own reasons for naming the bird Hana, which he declined to expand upon.

One of the true delights of Hana, lending to its atmosphere of comic levity, is the film's music, which Kore-eda purposely selected to thwart the music customarily expected from samurai films. He employed a group of musicians to play antique European instruments from the 18th century to achieve contemporaneity with Japan.


Asked about the set design for the nagaya tenement slum in Edo (old Tokyo), Kore-eda admitted he has never done a historical scientific study of how many people lived in abject poverty at that time. He did discover that during that time they hadn't yet developed the technique for building houses on a slope so, in a way, the representation in his film might be inaccurate. Then again, his set design was in response to his frustration with how sturdy and well-built the houses of poor people are in most samurai films. He purposely encouraged his set designers to make the tenement slum as shabby as possible.

04/29/07 UPDATE: Cathleen Rountree's Greencine interview with Kore-eda—which she secured at 2006 TIFF—pivots around Kore-eda's reflections on community, memory and death. Kore-eda tells Cathleen that Hana was created with his mother in mind, as a cheerful film she could enjoy watching, even though she passed before the film's completion.

THE TRASHY MOVIE CELEBRATION BLOGATHON

There were a couple of things that sprang to mind at last Sunday's "Sleazy Sunday" triplebill. First, Bruce Fletcher lies through his teeth. He had me thoroughly convinced that he had secured the best print in the world for Mario Bava's Planet of the Vampires. The lights went down, I leaned back, and wham, pinkout with green scratchy lines. It was like some kind of mod madras plaid. Of course, this is absolutely appropriate—I dare say atmospheric—when it comes to emulating (simulating? stimulating?) grindhouse. That and the people walking in and out of the movie as they damn well please.

So then a few days later I went to watch the Tarantino/Rodriguez Grindhouse vehicle and I kept musing on how the two of them spent $50,000,000 to achieve the look that time and various Sleazy Sunday festivals had done to the Planet of the Vampires print. I'm here to say that Planet of the Vampires was much more realistic and convincing! Talk about throwing good money after bad….


Secondly, it's very interesting to watch bad movies in a moviehouse with people who appreciate bad movies. If they're really bad, people are catcalling and wiggling around in their popcorn, tossing out wiseacre comments and pretending they're the new hosts of Mystery Science Theater. It's all great fun. But here's the thing. It's also a very sensitive issue because, for example, the first film last weekend was this atrocious thing called War of the Robots that had more horrible blonde pageboy wigs than I've ever seen in my life, other than maybe Village of the Damned and its various sequels and remakes combined. It was easy—effortless—to make fun of that movie. Then comes Bava's Planet of the Vampires, which all of a sudden quieted the audience down. Because, despite the plaid print, it was too good, goddammit!!

Anyways, Neil over at The Bleeding Tree has been kind enough to let me offer up my first two "Sleazy Sunday" reviews—Starcrash and The Dunwich Horror—to his ongoing Trashy Movie Celebration Blogathon. I really wanted to take part and really didn't want to write anything new. I have just enough energy, however, to fully recommend this indulgence—nay celebration!—of all those films that are coming back around again. I'm a firm believer in recycling trash; aren't you?

Cross-published at Twitch.

THE DEAD CHANNELS—SLEAZY SUNDAYS: The Dunwich Horror

Through the choice casting of Sandra Dee and the unabashed rip-off mimicry of one of Roman Polanski's most successful films, The Dunwich Horror (1970) effects a theramin-saturated blend between Gidget and Rosemary's Baby. Of course, with its psychedelic cheesy effects and its hambone theatrics, one might as well call this The Sandwich Horror. Make mine to go.


I actually saw this film when it first came out in 1970. At the time I recall being quite creeped out by its unseen menace, though that's not quite accurate. You "see" the many-tentacled menace but you don't quite know what you're seeing. It's rendered as a psychedelic version of what the director undoubtedly thought was a bad LSD flashback with stroboscopic colors and all that. But it's mainly the sound of it moving around behind the locked door that triggered my imagination to envision the worst. Later, I was drawn to The Dunwich Horror again when I realized it was based on a 1928 H.P. Lovecraft story considered core to his Cthulhu Mythos. I should specify it's very loosely based on Lovecraft's story. Wikipedia notes: "While the script borrowed some elements from Lovecraft, the final film bears little resemblance to the short story."


The Dunwich Horror is relatively well-produced, though that won't keep audiences from finding plenty to heckle at. There's Sandra Dee's puffy-cheeked acting to begin with. And Dean Stockwell's pre-Quantum Leap zanily deranged characterization as Wilbur Whateley whose fraternal motivations might have you wondering, "Whateley the heck?!" Nyuk nyuk. But if you really want a bad line to chew on, consider the company press release: "He lures a cute coed to the mountains for a weekend of demonic rites and wrongs!" Yessireebob, it doesn't get much better than that. As Professor Armitage, Ed Begley—the original—adds a certain cachet to the ensemble, if not a credence to the adaptation. Then there's Sam Jaffe after Ben Casey got through with him. In fact, as J. Read points out in his review at Monsters at Play: "This was the last film for both great character actors Ed Begley (12 Angry Men) and Sam Jaffe (Lost Horizon, Asphalt Jungle)." What a way to go, eh?


For further plot synopses I refer you to Monster Hunter's irreverent review, which might actually make a good stand-up comedy act. Then again, maybe not. Eccentric Cinema's write-up is probably a bit more composed and scores trivia credits for pointing out that scriptwriter Curtis Hansen eventually won an Oscar for penning L.A. Confidential. Foster on Film deserves mention for posing the important question: "What is more frightening than a disco sorcerer? How about a disco sorcerer who only speaks in a soft monotone?" And for describing Sandra Dee as "more of a '60s girl, so she was tired by the '70s." Ouch. Gerry Carpenter does a fair job of assessing what works and what doesn't work in the film at Scifilm and The Bad Movie Report reminds that you can hate a movie on a first viewing, even hate a movie on a second viewing, but appreciate a bad movie for what it is on a third viewing.


Incidentally, at Cinema Strikes Back, David Austin reviews the latest collection of films in a continuing series based on the work of H.P. Lovecraft. Included among them is a two-minute short called My Necronomicon, which is the very volume featured in The Dunwich Horror that spells recipe for disaster.


The Dunwich Horror plays tonight at 8:30PM at San Francisco's Victoria Theatre as part of the "Infernal Beaster" program for The Dead Channels "Sleazy Sundays" series. It's "sandwiched" in (why not drive a joke into the ground?) between Crimson Cult at 7:00PM and the hair-raising Werewolves on Wheels. Bah-ROOOOOOO!! Now granted, The Dunwich Horror has practically the exact same plot and similarly bad reviews as The Reaping—and it might be a real conflict about where you want to drop your tenspot this evening—but c'mon: Hilary Swank in The Reaping with your money going to the Metreon or Sandra Dee in The Dunwich Horror with your money supporting Dead Channels and the Fantastic Film Festival slated for later this summer?? It's a no-brainer, dude!!

Cross-published at Twitch.

04/09/07 UPDATE: This entry has been willingly sacrificed to the Trashy Movie Celebration Blogathon hosted by The Bleeding Tree.

CINEMACHISMO—Nominated for Lambda Literary Award

I knew there was a reason why I've been championing Sergio de la Mora's Cinemachismo: Masculinities and Sexuality in Mexican Film. It's because his treatment of Mexican film, gender studies, and theories of queer spectatorship is … well … good! If not great. If not essential. And I'm not the only one who thinks so! Sergio has just been nominated for the Arts and Culture category of the Lambda Literary Award. The awards are sponsored by the Lambda Literary Foundation, "the country's leading organization for LGBT literature . . . to celebrate LGBT literature and provide resources for writers, readers, booksellers, publishers, and librarians—the whole literary community."

As Adan Griego, Curator for Latin American, Mexican American & Iberian Collections at Stanford University toasts: "En hora buena to Sergio who currently teaches Film and Chicano Studies at UC Davis."

Finalists for ARTS & CULTURE

Fun Home by Alison Bechdel (Houghton Mifflin)
Cinemachismo by Sergio de la Mora (University of Texas Press)
Sex Objects by Jennifer Doyle (University of Minnesota Press)
GAY L.A. by Lillian Faderman & Stuart Timmons (Basic Books)
Blood Beats: Vol 1 by Ernest Hardy (Redbone Press)

TRANSGENDER CINEMA—Enough Man

Ever since Jed Rosenthal Bell opened up my eyes (and my heart) to the transmen experience, I've welcomed the opportunity to learn more. That opportunity arrives free of charge as Frameline at the Center inaugurates its third season with a screening of Enough Man on Thursday, April 12 at 7:30PM at San Francisco's LGBT Center, 1800 Market Street, San Francisco.

Documentary meets explicit sexuality in Luke Woodward's groundbreaking debut video about body image, relationships, sex and sexuality from the perspective of nine female-to-male (FTM) transmen and their partners. Featuring health educators, college students, sex workers, activists and artists, Enough Man navigates the terrain between objectivity and personal identity, allowing viewers into some of the most personal and rarely discussed areas of transgender life. By, for, and about FTMs, Enough Man is at once sexy and political, punchy and poignant.

Seating will be limited so early arrival is recommended! There will be a post-screening discussion with Luke Woodward. Frameline at the Center's screening of Enough Man is proudly co-presented by: Center for Sex & Culture, Fresh Meat Productions, Tranny Fest, Trans March and United Genders of the Universe. Enough Man will be available April 10 through Frameline Distribution. The DVD includes half an hour of deleted scenes.

2007 SFWFF—Opening Night with Guineveve Turner

The 2007 San Francisco Women's Film Festival kicks off April 11th with an opening night screening and party at 12 Galaxies on 2565 Mission Street, San Francisco. They'll pay tribute to independent film director Guinevere Turner. Guinevere Turner has appeared in such films as Go Fish, Chasing Amy, Dogma and Kiss Me, Guido. Additionally, she has co-written many works, including American Psycho, The Notorious Bettie Page, and the television series, The L Word. Not only will SFWFF screen Turner's Hung and Hummer, but she will also be on hand for a Q&A session with Jenni Olson, film historian and director of e-commerce at WolfeVideo.com.

Opening night at 12 Galaxies will highlight the achievements made by women filmmakers in LGBTQ cinema by showing the following shorts:

Trained in the Ways of Men by Shelly Prevost
One Wedding and a Revolution by Debra Chasnoff
Make a Move by Hanifah Walidah
Team Queen by Leah Meyerhoff
Jaywalking by Leigh Lacobucci/Kathy Huang
Eklektika Dance School by Maria Takacs
Desperate for Love by Angel L. Brown
Godspeed by Lynn Breedlove/Jen Gilomen

Opening Night's festivities begin at 7PM with a live acoustic set featuring Trusting Lucy, a screening of shorts films and a Q&A, followed by dancing with DJ Zita. Admission to Opening Night is $10, with seating on a first-come, first-served basis. Food is provided by High Art Catering. Cash bar is available.

SFWFF continues through April 11-15th at various venues in the SF and Bay area, including San Francisco Women's Building, Zeum, 111 Minna Gallery and newly renovated Cerrito Speakeasy Theater.

2007 SFIFF50—Festival Crossover: Beş Vakit / Times and Winds

Encouraged to catch Reha Erdem's Beş Vakit / Times and Winds at the 2006 Toronto International Film Festival, the film ended up being one of my favorites and I have no doubt it will retain that status even within SFIFF50's diverse line-up, where it celebrates its West Coast premiere. It certainly warrants a second appreciation. Erdem is expected to attend.

Times and Winds is illuminated with moments of colloquial radiance. Beautiful, poignant, tender, these moments are visually framed by mutable weather sweeping across wide landscapes (stunningly photographed by Florent Herry). By film's end, I was weeping, face in my hands, grief stricken for all the vulnerable children in the world harshly disciplined by stern fathers and the serrated edge of life's fugacity. Unexpectedly overcome—and, admittedly, a bit embarrassed at my inability to stop crying—I noticed a fellow a few seats away from me who kept staring at me with a bemused grin, as if I were an entertaining fool. I felt my privacy violated. Who the hell was he to mock my grief? Of course, he was no one other than director Reha Erdem, who obviously got his jollies off watching me become devastated by the film's sumptuous photography and aching themes of childhood lost. If he hadn't created such a beautiful film, I might have punched him in the nose. Instead, I emerged from the theater and scribbled down this response:

You children, who sleep blanketed in warm straw
Or inbetween hummocks of sunlit grass
In the dappled shade of summer pine needles
Or dreaming on sunsoaked stone
Taking refuge in the narcolepsy of innocence

You children, who work hard, learn hard,
While moons scudded with clouds stare with watchful eyes,
While constellations cycle and clouds somersault
While the sea swallows whole the endless self-limitations of shorelines and men
You children, slumber through the last days of your innocence
And dream of killing your fathers.

Beware the murders you wish for.
Beware the folly that will break your heart.


As Dimitri Eipides synopsizes for the TIFF capsule: "Times and Winds is a finely etched portrait of remote village life in Turkey composed of small, meticulously observed moments of great beauty, melancholy and lyricism. …Erdem has a profound and innately poetic sense of the rhythmic passing of time, with each day in the village divided into five by the calls to prayer. … Despite the arduous living conditions and the domestic indignities that the young ones endure, Times and Winds is not a depressing film, for within each heartbreak lies the potential for self-discovery and redemption."

Variety's Derek Elley insinuates that any plot synopsis will sound like "a recipe for boredom" but assures that "Erdem's calculated juggling of small events creates an atmosphere of much more going on than is actually shown on screen."

J. Robert Parks observes at Framing Device: "The movie opens with a night shot of the village lights, but it's framed in such a way that it focuses on the dark water and sky behind it. In fact, the numerous landscape shots frequently combine land, sea, and sky in ways I haven't seen before, and the way the light is captured at all times of day is breathtaking. The pans across the hills become luminous meditations that provoke awe and wonder. The long shots of the minaret set against the sky and water are simply spectacular."

Set in the Turkish village of Kozlu with its cobbled uneven streets and embroidered pillowcases, Times and Winds celebrates the poet's task of "shepherding the winds" and reminds me yet again why I favor foreign films that allow audiences glimpses into pastoral villages and lifestyles well on the decline. Such films may end up being the final record left of a particular texture of rural upbringing.


Twitch teammate Opus, though less enthusiastic than I, states his objections but concludes: "[A]s a pure mood piece laced through with introspective thoughts concerning the roles of fathers, and the terrible consequences when they abuse their authority, Times and Winds can be quite powerful and haunting."

2007 SFIFF50—Festival Crossover: Bamako

I first saw Abderrahmane Sissako's Bamako at Toronto's Paramount Theater during the 2006 Toronto International Film Festival and was quite impressed. I'm delighted that SFIFF50—in collaboration with the Museum of the African Diaspora and the San Francisco Black Film Festival—have brought Bamako to the Bay Area for a festival run before its official distribution later this year by New Yorker Films. I've reworked my notes from TIFF and amplified them with some of the film's critical wake since then.

Bamako initially reminded me why I chose The Evening Class as the name for this site. I took the title from Ousmane Sembene's assertion that African cinemas are the evening class for adults who approach cinema as a means to focus on the issues of their lives. In the West we are accustomed to such issues being diluted by fictional dramatizations that cater to our short attention spans and whatever appetite for narrative entertainment or visual spectacle is currently in vogue. Bamako will disappoint such expectations and will not likely find favor among most Western audiences who will undoubtedly find its approach didactic and polemical, which is unfortunate, because it is near brilliant, particularly in its indigenous allegiance to now-outmoded styles of oratory that any armchair anthropologist will recognize from various African groups, as well as the Algonquin, the Maya, who encircle an issue with eloquence in hopes of sifting out a solution.

In Bamako the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the G8, the World Trade Organization, and other forces of globalization and privatization are put on trial ("really more of an inquiry" Stanley Kauffmann qualifies in The New Republic) in a small courtyard where the rituals of justice co-mingle with the rituals of everyday life. But justice—ever a relative term too frequently mistaken for law enforcement—is not only blind with dispassionate eyes wide open but as hobbled as the metaphorical ram that provides moments of comic relief for being a thinly-veiled critique of the judicial process. I am reminded of the historical accounts of Amerindian oration subverted by the treaty-speak of the invading Europeans, how all that eloquence pleading for fair treatment was reduced to signed treaties that were easily broken, and self-serving laws that ignored existing systems of resolution. What is spoken of in Bamako is readily apparent and that might draw criticism from those wanting to hear something "new." But how can eloquence move on to something "new" when it is still encircling the unresolved issues of the past?


What deserves attention in Bamako is how urgently complaints are voiced, as well as the countenances of those addressing the court or listening nearby. Their faces tell everything. They are powerful and beautiful and diverse. Some complain to the court in anger, others in heated debate, others through silence and a refusal to acknowledge the court's sovereignty; but, the movie's sterling moment is when an elder griot (Zegue Bamba)—who has been refused audience early in the film—can no longer hold the words in his heart, and interrupts the proceedings with a song that doesn't require subtitles or translation to be understood. His is one of the most powerful songs of heart I have ever heard and its plea for compassion silences everyone into rapt attention. My breath caught in my throat. Kauffmann considers this unsubtitled emotional outburst as the seeming demonstration of "the unheard protests of the continent."

Bamako asserts that it is not enough to find blame and it is not enough to find those on trial guilty. Suffering demands immediate recompense and the shame of modern life is its calculated deliberations.

Abderrahmane Sissako, who attended the TIFF06 screening, was grateful for Bamako being shown at the festival and hoped audiences would intuit that Africa's lament might all too soon be inherited by the West.

Doug Cummings reacted to Bamako at Film Journey, emphasizing "Sissako's satire of transnational entertainments that use third world countries as exotic backdrops: the imagined Death in Timbutktu clip (starring Danny Glover and Elia Suleiman) is a hilarious rebuke of Hollywood hegemony."

"This Western film caricatures popular attitudes," Kauffmann simplifies. Acquarello isn't content with that simplification at Strictly Film School and expands the image rather than reduces it, noting that the Death in Timbutktu clip "incisively channels the spirit of Nigerian film pioneer, Moustapha Alassane's Le Retour d'un Aventurier, the first native African film ever made that, ironically, depicted all the conventions of a Hollywood Western plot (albeit with African cowboys chasing zebras instead of wild horses). In evoking the specter of Alassane's seminal, but intrinsically derivative film, Sissako traces the inequitable history of western subservience and imitation to the figurative beginning, a sobering imputation that the socio-economic problems of post-colonial Africa are not only the residual legacy of economic imperialism and unfair trade, but also culturally self-inflicted in the naïve imitation of an unattainable western ideal."


In an interview David Pellecuer conducted with actor Leo Castel for Senses of Cinema, he brought up Castel's participation in genre films, including Italian westerns. Castel commented upon the nature of those "leftist Westerns" and his comment reminded me of Bamako: "[T]he Manichean side of those Westerns, their escapism and identification—this annihilates the reality of class conflict. And at the same time, it's a reflection of this conflict, in the sense that tensions really existed; this may be the reason why the Western genre came into being. Still, the ideas remain hidden. Somebody wrote in Cinéthique that the Western was a 'hypostasis of the class struggle'. Yes, but it's like the Bible: invent a popular language in order to screw the masses even more, meanwhile obscuring the real conflicts of alienated work."

Discussing this with Acquarello at his site, he agreed that the idea of a "flattened" class structure "fit in well with the inclusion of the Western in Bamako, particularly in the context that Danny Glover is also one of the first ones (if not the first one) to fire a shot at the village. It makes it a kind of dysfunctional equality, much like the way Africa's 'equal access' to the global economy is really something that is undercutting its own long term viability and sustainability."

Contrary to my naïve adoption of Sembene's philosophy about adult African moviegoers, Nathan Lee's review for The Village Voice stages his concern of how the film speaks to contemporary Africans. "Ultimately," he writes, "that's beside the point, given that the populace of Mali hardly needs a lecture, no matter how entertaining, on the impact of the IMF on their daily lives. . . . When you factor in the linguistic and literacy challenges that arise when screening films for the general African public, to say nothing of the exhibition infrastructure, the issue of domestic impact grows more complex. And as [Bamako's executive producer Joslyn] Barnes made perfectly clear: The 'average' African doesn't have the luxury of forming an opinion about Bamako for reasons Bamako directly confronts."

In her interview with Danny Glover and Abderrahmane Sissako for The New Statesman, Vanessa Walters underscores this thread and reveals the serious damage done to the African film industry in the 1980s in the wake of the economic ruin that followed IMF policies. "But even while interest in African film is growing in Europe," Walters writes, "the industry at home still struggles. Sadly, although Bamako has got a general release in both France and Britain, it is less likely to be seen in Mali itself, where the number of cinemas has fallen from 40 to three since international financial institutions forced the state to sell cultural assets in the 1990s."

On Saturday, April 28, at 5:30—following an earlier screening of Bamako at the Sundance Kabuki—SFIFF50 will feature "Picturing Development." Executive producer/actor Danny Glover will be joined by activists and academics to discuss the issues raised in Bamako. The panel will discuss the persuasiveness of the film's polemic.

MALAYSIAN CINEMA—Twitch Updates

As the San Francisco International Film Festival was my first exposure to Malaysian cinema, it seems only appropriate that I single out that the 2007 SFIFF50 program includes the international premiere of Yasmin Ahmad's Mukhsin.

Yasmin's Mukhsin is the third in a trilogy of films that began with Sepet and continued with Gubra, which I mentioned in passing here on The Evening Class and Todd Brown reviewed more fully at Twitch when Gubra was first distributed, and then later when it transferred to DVD. Twitch team mate "The Visitor" likewise interviewed Yasmin. Most recently, Twitch team mate Stefan reviewed her latest Mukhsin.

At her own blog, The Storyteller, Yasmin provides the Wislawa Szymborska poem that "influenced the flavor" of Mukhsin, discusses the memories that shaped the structure of the film, and offers the presiding culinary metaphor of "green tea over rice" to provide insight into the film. It's a blessing to have Yasmin relay her impressions on her own creation. I regret so much that Yasmin is not expected to attend the festival as I had welcomed the opportunity to talk to her.

SFIFF50 is also presenting the Malaysia/Hong Kong co-production of Patrick Tam's After This Our Exile, which Todd Brown reviewed when the film made its North American premiere as the opening night feature of the 2006 Reel Asian Film Festival. After This Our Exile went on to win Best Feature Film at the 43rd Golden Horse Awards, among other honors which "The Visitor" lists in his report.

Clearly, I have relied heavily on Twitch to keep abreast of Malaysian cinema, especially since Koay joined the team; but, a cursory search at the site reveals an ongoing focus on Malaysian fare to which several writers have contributed. Since my last summary of reports from Twitch, there have been several new additions including The Gommorahizer's review of Puaka Tebing Biru, "The Visitor"'s review of Chermin, and his sad (though unsurprising) report on the Malaysian government's censorship ban of both Amir Muhammad's Village People Radio Show and Tsai Ming-liang's I Don't Want to Sleep Alone.

Tsai Ming-liang's I Don't Want to Sleep Alone will have its San Francisco premiere at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Screening Room at 7 & 9 pm on Thursday, April 19-Saturday, April 21; 4 & 7pm on Sunday, April 22, thanks to the collaborative foresight of the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and Strand Releasing.

Countering the depressing news of censorship is the good news of alternate access. Amir Muhammad's The Last Communist is now available on DVD and several Malaysian films, including The Last Communist, are now available through Firecracker's TV service, which incidentally offers a free interview with Amir Muhammad on these ongoing censorship issues. Listening to Amir is always informative entertainment.

Cross-published on Twitch.

2007 SFIFF50—Memories and Anticipatory Remarks by Michael Hawley

Happy 50th Anniversary to the San Francisco International Film Festival! Speaking as someone who has attended every festival since 1976 (and I believe I have all the catalogs to prove it,) I offer my heartiest congratulations. To be sure, it's been a great ride all these 31 years.

The first festival I attended took place at the Palace of Fine Arts Theater from October 13 to 24, 1976. I was 23 years old and had never been to a film festival before. Among the roughly two dozen features screened that year were Alain Tanner's Jonah Who Will Be 25 in the Year 2000, Eric Rohmer's The Marquise of O, Akira Kurosawa's Dersu Uzala and Claude Miller's The Best Way. Although I'm a bit foggy about what I saw that year, I specifically remember experiencing my first Fassbinder film, Mother Kusters Goes to Heaven, and the huge impression it made upon me. Flipping through that year's catalog, I also see that there were tributes to Burt Lancaster, Jack Nicholson, Natalie Wood, Roger Vadim, and Shelley Winters. I'm horrified all these years later to admit that I didn't attend a single one of them. My guess is that they were prohibitively expensive for a young office drone making a $600 a month salary. Either that or I thought these people would be around forever.

Thirty-one years, hundreds of films and dozens of tributes later, reflecting back is certainly a daunting task. Off the top of my head, I'm grateful to the festival for the opportunity to be in the same room and breathe the same air as Dolores Del Rio, Bela Tarr, Agnes Varda, Giulietta Masina, Ousmane Sembene, Ginger Rogers, Sharmila Tagore, Guy Maddin, Arturo Ripstein, Kiyoshi Kurosawa and so many other Cinema Greats. Certainly the world premieres of Stop Making Sense and Priscilla Queen of the Desert at the Castro Theater in 1984 and 1994 respectively rank among the most fabulous evenings of my film-going life.

And how could I ever forget the night of October 14, 1980? The film was Sergio Giral's Maluala, about a 19th century slave revolt in Cuba. Seconds after the film began, flying objects went whizzing over my head, which turned out to be fruits and vegetables being hurled at the screen by anti-Castro audience members. Immediately, pro and anti-Castro camps began trading insults and threats, and were soon trading punches as well. Security was brought in to break things up, and to tell you the truth, I can't remember if the screening continued or not. I only remember that it was terribly exciting . . . not exactly the riots which greeted the 1930 premiere of Luis Buñuel's L'Age d'Or at the Studio 28 cinema in Paris, but as close as I'd ever get to that kind of extreme passion at the movies.

The 1990s were my "Volunteer Years" with the festival, during which time I performed a variety of duties in exchange for the privilege of attending press screenings. One of my favorites memories occurred on Easter Sunday in 1998, when I was working the first day of telephone ticket sales. The phones never stopped ringing and it seemed everyone wanted a ticket for Robert Frank's Cocksucker Blues. It was hilarious hearing people embarrassingly stammer over the film's title, and I think I might have even said to a few people, "I’m sorry. I didn't get that. Would you mind repeating that last title again?" Then the following year I was working crowd control at the Kabuki and made the mistake of trying to block a group of stampeding Russians who were late for a sold-out screening of Alexei Gherman's Khrustaliov, My Car! I got knocked flat on my ass for the trouble and decided I was getting too old for this volunteer business.

Fast forward to 2007 and this year's festival. There's been a lot of speculation about the line-up for the 50th anniversary edition, and now that it's been announced, I'll say without reservation that I'm extremely pleased. There are a good 25 films in the program which also appear on a wish list I've maintained since last year's Cannes Film Festival. The following 10 films are the ones that really made me throw my fist in the air and holler YES! when I learned of their inclusion. Most are films that will probably never be seen again in the Bay Area:

Flanders—Bruno Dumont dropped a real stink bomb with 2003's Twentynine Palms and the reception for this one hasn't been much better. But the folks on last year's Cannes jury must have seen something worthwhile to award it the Grand Prix. This just picked up a U.S. distributor, but it's one I've never heard of (International Film Circuit), thereby making this my number one festival priority.

Brand Upon the Brain!—Guy Maddin remarked last year that San Francisco was one of the places he hoped to present his latest work as it was meant to be seen and heard, with accompaniment by a live 13-piece ensemble, a couple foley artists, a narrator and a "castrato." I've been salivating ever since and am thrilled that we get to experience this at our very own Castro Theater.

These Girls—This documentary about homeless girls living on the streets of Cairo, Egypt drew major attention at Cannes and subsequent festivals last year. The Arab Film Festival could possibly pick this up for its program next fall, but I'm not taking any chances.

Colossal Youth—Pedro Costa's lengthy, minimalist narrative about impoverished Cape Verdean immigrants living in Lisbon was the great audience divider at Cannes.

Gardens in Autumn—The festival has been a consistent supporter of French-Georgian director Otar Iosseliani over the years and I'm very pleased they've programmed this, his latest work. As a bonus we also get Otar Iosseliani, The Whistling Blackbird, Julie Bertuccelli's (Since Otar Left) documentary about her friend and mentor, filmed during the making of Gardens in Autumn.

The Old Garden—I was blown away by Im Sang-Soo's A Good Lawyer's Wife, and somewhat less so by its follow-up, The President's Last Bang. I cautiously skipped seeing his new one in Palm Springs in hopes that either the SFIAAFF or the SFIFF would bring it to the Bay Area.

Dans Paris—I'm probably one of the few people that wasn't completely appalled by Christophe Honoré's sleazy Ma Mère. Louis Garrel apparently enjoyed the experience enough to star in the director's new one, playing brother to Romain Duris, who is probably my favorite contemporary French actor. IFC/First Take is scheduled to release this in August, but I'm afraid I can't wait that long.

Ghosts of Cité Soleil—This is an acclaimed documentary about the slums of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and I've been anxious to see it ever since checking out the stunning clips available on the film's official website.

Daratt—Mahamat-Saleh Haroun's revenge fable from Chad won a special jury prize at Venice last year, and is one of several sub-Saharan African films in this year's festival seeking to rectify last year's absence of same. It's also one of the six features commissioned for last year's New Crowned Hope series celebrating Mozart's 250th birthday.

Opera Jawa—Garin Nugroho's all singing, all dancing Indonesian updating of a tale from the Ramayana. It's also one of the New Crowned Hope films.

And now for a few words about the other films that were on my wish list. Several of these have U.S. distributors and I may forego their festival screenings in lieu of some of the more rarefied selections. Such is the case with the opening and closing night films, Emanuele Crialese's Italian-American immigration epic Golden Door and Olivier Dahan's Edith Piaf biopic, La Vie en Rose. The other European films that have been on my radar include Jean-Pascal Hattu's 7 Years, Pascale Ferran's multiple César-winning adaptation of D.H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley, and Philippe Falardeau's Congorama, all from France. There's also Joachim Trier's Reprise from Norway, and Nanni Moretti's satire of Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, The Caiman. This latter film I attempted to see in Palm Springs, but unfortunately the European distributor sent a print with French subtitles. Let's hope San Francisco has better luck.

The SFIFF has always had a strong selection of films from Latin America and this year is no exception. I'm especially excited about a pair of Argentine films, Pablo Trapero's (Crane World, Rolling Family) Born and Bred, and Carlos Sorin's (Historias Minimas, Bombón el Perro) The Road to San Diego. I'm also curious about Verónica Chen's Agua. I didn't care much for her debut film, Smokers Only, which screened at the festival in 2002. This latest effort, however, won the New Voices/New Visions Special Jury Prize at Palm Springs this year, so I'll most likely make an effort to see it. From elsewhere in Latin America I've heard great things about The Violin, the debut feature and multiple Ariel-winner from Mexico's Francisco Vargas, and Brazilian director Karim Ainouz' follow-up to Madame Sata, Love For Sale: Suely in the Sky.

From the USA I have my eye on Strange Culture from Bay Area filmmaker extraordinaire Lynn Hershman-Leeson (Conceiving Ada, Teknolust), as well as Hal Hartley's Fay Grim, which incidentally is being released on DVD less than two weeks after the festival ends. Rounding out the line-up of films from my wish list are Japan's Hana, from Hirokazu Kore-eda (After Life, Nobody Knows), Australia's Jindabyne, Ray Lawrence's follow-up to the remarkable Lantana (and soon to be seen at a Landmark Theater near you,) and Reha Erdem's Times and Winds, a Turkish film which Michael Guillén saw and loved at Toronto.

So there you have it, my view of the festival quick on the heels of the SFIFF50 Press Conference. I'm reviewing which films are being press-screened, which ones will be available on screener, which ones have U.S. distribution and which ones will have special guests accompanying them. Now it's a matter of sitting down and making a game plan to see as many of these wonderful films as possible from April 26th to May 10th.

Cross-published at Twitch.

04/04/07 UPDATE: Elsewhere, Susie Gerhard sums up the press conference for indieWIRE.

04/05/07 UPDATE: With customary aplomb, Brian Darr has profiled the program line-up masterfully at Hell on Frisco Bay.

DEAD CHANNELS SLEAZY SUNDAYS—Starcrash (Scontri stellari oltre la terza dimensione)

Is it just a coincidence that sleazy rhymes with cheesey? Little cattle little care. Dennis Harvey nails it in his Sleazy Sundays overview for the SF Bay Guardian: "These films were made for audiences, not for the private snickering of home viewers." Without question, what makes a bad movie good is an audience knowing and enjoying how bad it is! I've been appreciating screeners for Sleazy Sundays fare all week but I know I won't fully enjoy these flicks until I hear audiences groaning, protesting, and shouting out for more. Could they possibly protest for less?

Which leads me to the inaugural Sleazy Sundays capper Luigi Cozzi's Starcrash (1979), which Time Out calls a "trash-addict sci-fi spectacular" and Todd Brown at Twitch describes as "a landmark in the history of bad science fiction, so gloriously ignorant of just how horrible it truly is on every level that it becomes transcendent." Aw, he's just being nice. Though I have to agree with him 100% that Starcrash deserves "the MST3K treatment", which the Sleazy Sundays audience were more than willing to provide. I'll defer to the Twitch synopsis, which more or less covers all salient plot points. Though I have to admit the synopsis at Cool Cinema Trash lovingly fondles additional details.


There is time travel—of a sort—in Starcrash; the lead actors look suspiciously like '70s porn stars and their shiny, glittery costumes insinuate the future. But that's about it. While we're on the subject, let's talk about those costumes. Starcrash protagonist Stella Star (former Bond girl Catherine Munro) wears lovely leather latex bikini ensembles that could have been designed for Bette Paige by Fredericks of Hollywood. Barbarella, psychedella!

Her sidekick "L" (Judd Hamilton, her real-life husband at the time) is a robot with a twangy attaboy accent whose chrome head puts the steely back in Steely Dan and adds a whole new context to his description as Stella Star's "faithful companion." He's given the film's best lines, like when he's trudging through a field of ice and says, "It's times like this that I'm glad to be a robot." He also gets to be adorably chauvinist.

Actors have never had so much cheap scenery to chew nor the unprecedented opportunity to eschew some of the most contrived dialogue I've ever heard, which of course they don't. Some of them, in fact—I'm not naming Christopher Plummer by name—pad their "stunningly underwritten" parts with pretentious emphatic pauses that drive you near to distraction, especially when everyone's just about to get blown to smithereens. A galactic crisis is no time for iambic pentameter, Christopher. Either Plummer was "slumming for a paycheck" (as Mel Valentin tactly puts it at EFilmCritic.com) "or an all-expenses paid European vacation."

If you've actually taken the time to read the plot synopses hyperlinked above, you will know that—while searching for a missing spaceship—Stella Star & "L" visit several planetary systems, including a planet ruled by Corelia, Queen of the Amazons (Nadia Cassini). It's here Luigi Cozzi lifts the Tlalos sequence right out of Ray Harryhausen's Jason and the Argonauts (1963) but "creatively" differentiates it by adding a pair of breasts. Later another character produces a light saber that … gee … I dunno … does it remind you of Star Wars???


Once Prince Simon (David Hasseldorf) appears on the scene, you have to ask yourself: who's wearing more eyeliner? Him or Stella Star? This proves very important to Stella Star whose acting registers emotion by either widening her eyes or squinting them, often both at once. In one fabulous scene Stella Star's cohort declares, "We've just survived an attack by the most powerful weapon in the galaxy!" One beat. Two beat. Three beat. Drive your mac diesel through this space and park it in the back. Four beat. Five beat. Stella squeals excitedly, "Really?" Really, Stella. Now why don't you go swim in space?

Villain Zarth Arn's fist-shaped space fortress is expressive and, as Time Out notes about the movie in general, there's "a distinct lack of consideration for the laws of nature." Todd explains: "Building a fist shaped fortress to satisfy your own ego? Make sure that the fingers can clench and that you use standard plate glass windows on the command bridge. Assaulting said fortress? Don't do something useful like fire a weapon through said windows—which somehow magically keep the air from escaping even when shattered—oh, no! Fire torpedos loaded with live soldiers who can pop out and be slaughtered by the waiting army!"

John Gorenfeld's Salon essay on Starcrash contextualizes the film's place in the spaghetti space wars of 1979. "First Italians reinvented the western," he writes. "Then they reverse-engineered Star Wars." He has some killer trivia. Count Zarth Arn is played by "googly-eyed" Joe Spinell, producer of the infamous grindhouse template Maniac. Composer John Barry was moreoreless tricked into collaborating on Starcrash. Forestalling the truth of how poor the production values were for the film, producer Patrick Wachsberger (Vanilla Sky) showed Barry dirty black-and-white prints, claiming the effects weren't actually finished yet. Barry scored the movie, and long after Starcrash was forgotten, he recycled the main theme for Out of Africa, "making it a little less jaunty and winning an Oscar for his trouble."

Cross-published at Twitch.

04/09/07 UPDATE: This entry has been willingly launched into the Trashy Movie Celebration Blogathon hosted by The Bleeding Tree.

ITALIAN CINEMA—Antonioni Shorts PFA Program

Returning home to Miami via San Francisco after five months in Thailand, Peter Nellhaus and I met briefly for PFA's first Antonioni shorts program yesterday afternoon. We didn't have a whole lot of time to talk as I had to head off after the shorts program to get back into San Francisco for Sleazy Sundays at the Victoria; but, at least I was able to buy him a ticket to see I Vinti (1952), which he's reviewed at Coffee, Coffee and More Coffee.


The Antonioni shorts program was hits and misses. Gente del Po (The People of the Po, 1943-47) about a barge boatsman, his wife and their sick daughter; allegedly prefigures Il Grido (1957) (which, admittedly, I haven't seen though—if you read Italian—a comparison has been made between the two at Cinemateque.net). Its confluence of the sweet waters of the Po and the acrid waters of the Adriatic didn't do all that much for me, despite the short's lustrous black and white cinematography.

N.U./Netezza Urbana (Sanitation Department, 1948) chronicled the lives of streetcleaners in Rome. Though dark and somewhat underexposed, this short intrigued with its depiction of the heedless littering of upper classes cleaned up after by these working class heroes. The film was accompanied by a bluesy jazz score by Giovanni Fusco, which juxtaposed interestingly.

I very much enjoyed L'Amorosa menzogna (Lies of Love, 1949), a fascinating study of the "stars" of the fumetti—photographed comic strips—popular at the time in Italy. It held some delightful comic touches.


I equally enjoyed Superstizione (Superstition, 1949) for its laundry list of bizarre rural southern Italian superstitions including drinking an infant's piss to cure arthritis and burning a viper in a campfire until it's ash and then sprinkling the ashes on the threshold of the house of someone you want to hex. This is the kind of film that gives me ideas.

La Villa dei mostri (The Villa of Monsters, 1950) arrived in Italian with French subtitles and—though Susan Oxtoby claimed it was a great opportunity to focus on Antonioni's visual compositions—I used it as a quick opportunity to catch some zees. I'm only human.


Tentato suicido (Suicide Attempt, 1953), Antonioni's contribution to the L'Amore in città (Love in the City) portmanteau of six Italian directors, including Fellini, only reminded how love isn't always the best thing for you, especially when it goes sour. Fernando F. Croce has written some notes on the omnibus at Cinepassion.org.

Vertigine (1950) takes the viewer on a tram over what appears to be the Italian Dolomites. It reminded me of a similar experience I took on one of my first European sojourns and reminded me of how I worried the cable would snap. I fearfully imagined myself impaled on the tip of a pine tree. I can't find any information on this four-minute short, though it seems to reflect Antonioni's interests in these devices at the time. In the same year he did another 10-minute short La Funivia del faloria (The Funicular of Mount Faloria, 1950), so perhaps Vertigine was likewise filmed at the Cortina d'Ampezzo, Belluno, Veneto, Italy.

Finally, Sette canne, un vestito (Seven Reeds, One Suit, 1949) was a thoroughly engaging short documentary on the production of rayon, shot (again) in both the Po Valley and Torviscosa, Italy. In league with his profiles on the working class, Seven Reeds, One Suit seemed most like a true documentary to me. Its title alludes to the fact that it takes seven reeds to make one fabulous dress. The process is convoluted and chemical and I couldn't stop wondering who came up with this and how they figured it out in the first place. As a study of industrial ingenuity, it proved thoroughly informative. The IMdb user comment on this film is a handsome overview of Antonioni's early work.

Cross-published at Twitch.

2007 SFIFF50—Ticket Prices

I'm probably about as shocked as anyone else regarding the Tribeca Film Festival's hiking of ticket prices by 50%, now ranging in the $18 per ticket range, and I don't even live in New York. indieWIRE reports on the fracas and quotes our homeboy Graham Leggat:

" 'We're not inventing it from scratch,' explained Graham Leggat, head of the San Franciso International Film Festival and the San Francisco Film Society, when asked about the pricing plans for his festival. Leggat, a former top NYC arts exec who has worked at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, MoMA and GenArt, explained that the cost of tickets to the SF festival is intentionally pegged to the price of attending regular movies in his city and that when he joined the organization he lowered prices. This year, with the SFIFF about to celebrate its 50th anniversary, tickets for most screenings cost $12, with discounts to seniors, students and SF Film Society members (SFFS organizes the annual event).

" 'All along we've been staying slightly ahead of the multiplex or arthouse price for general admission,' Leggat told indieWIRE on Thursday, adding, 'On the other hand, we want to be sure we are giving our members a decent enough premium, if we went much above that, given our size, we'd be cutting our own throat.' "

Thanks for looking out for us, Graham!

Photo courtesy of Eugene Hernandez/indieWIRE. Cross-published on Twitch.