HOW THE GARCIA GIRLS SPENT THEIR SUMMER—The Evening Class Interview With Elizabeth Peña

Narratives about Chicana agency are something of a genre all on their own, presaged by the literary work of such distinctive authors as Ana Castillo, Denise Chavez, Julia Alvarez, among many others. Often in their stories the men are handsome and virile. They inspire and frustrate desire all in one fell swoop. But it's through frustrated desire that these women relinquish the confinement of their socially-sanctioned romantic illusions to discover their own embodied realities. Georgina Garcia Riedel's debut feature How the Garcia Girls Spent Their Summer (2005) affectionately revolves around this theme and—comparable to such cinematic predecessors as Real Women Have Curves—articulates self-empowerment intergenerationally through the shared experience of three Mexican American women, namely the Garcia "girls"—a grandmother (Doña Genoveva—Lucy Gallardo), a mother (Lolita—Elizabeth Peña), a daughter (Blanca—America Ferrera). All three negotiate their desires as they "grapple with romantic drought" over the course of a long, hot, dusty summer in an Arizona border town; a town where "you can't fart without everyone smelling it."

Notable for its calmly observed moments of Chicana sensibility—what cultural critic Amalia Mesa-Bains might describe as the aesthetic of domesticana—I have to take some issue with Dennis Harvey's otherwise fair, favorable, though qualified review for Variety. He caught the film at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival and complained that it "linger[ed] on domestic-life details beyond the requirement of insight or entertainment value." I couldn't disagree more, especially within the awareness of domesticana, which celebrates the persevering strength of the quotidian in the lives of Chicana women. Watching Doña Genoveva daydreaming while she sorts her frijoles harkens back memories of my mother's and my grandmother's kitchens. But along with the taken-for-granted maintenance of the everyday, the Garcia "girls" likewise articulate some remarkably brave moments of female sexuality: not only is the white-haired Doña Genoveva shown naked taking a bubble bath but her frustration in the face of her burgeoning desire is poignantly revealed and—with considerable grace and tact—Riedel develops her liaison with her gardener Don Pedro (Jorge Cevera, Jr.). Likewise, Peña pleasures herself with a vibrator whose batteries are frantically borrowed from the TV's remote control and Ferrera celebrates the arrival of her period; rejoicing when blood shows up on her panties. In an industry all too quick to pronounce each and every virtue of flexed virility, I find Riedel's exhaltation of the feminine admirably compensatory. Which is not to say Garcia Girls is simply a feminist tract; it's pervasive humanism discounts such a reduction.

Despite its favorable festival reviews, however, Garcia Girls floundered finding distribution until Maya Releasing accepted the challenge and picked it up. I've got my eye on Maya Releasing. They're a Latino-run distribution company focused specifically on the growing U.S. Latino market. Along with the nationwide release of Garcia Girls this month and August Evening in August, they've just picked up SFIFF51 favorite Sleep Dealer for early next year. The company owns a multiplex in Salinas, and is developing others in Bakersfield and Santa Fe, N.M. My thanks to Sonia Rosario, Vice President of Marketing at Maya Releasing, and Susan Steeno of L.A.'s GS Entertainment Marketing Group for arranging time for me to talk with Elizabeth Peña whose performance as Lolita in Garcia Girls "expertly glides … from emotional shutdown to oft-hilarious expressions of embarrassed erotic disarray" (Harvey, Variety).

Peña started her film career in 1979 with El Super, right after graduating from the High School of the Performing Arts in Manhattan. Her big break came as the maid-turned-revolutionary in Down and Out In Beverly Hills. Since then she has appeared in numerous films including La Bamba, Lone Star (for which she won the 1997 Independent Spirit for Best Supporting Female), Jacob's Ladder, Transamerica, Tortilla Soup, D-Wars; the list goes on and on and—thankfully!—continues to the present day.

* * *

Michael Guillén: Elizabeth, let me get my fanboy stuff out of the way—you have been one of my favorite actresses for years!

Elizabeth Peña: Thank you!

Guillén: As a Chicano, you remind me so much of my sister and—as I've watched your roles over the years—you've reflected so much of what she's expressed to me of her own life experience and it's great to see it interpreted on the big screen.

Peña: That's awesome! Thank you so much.

Guillén: This particular project—How the Garcia Girls Spent Their Summer—intrigues me because of its belated distribution. It's been a few years since it was actually filmed?

Peña: We shot it in 2005, took it to the Sundance Film Festival where it was very well received, took it to a bunch of festivals where it was well received, but could not find a distributor. Part of the problem with finding a distributor was because they had no idea how to sell this movie.

Guillén: I'm excited that Maya Releasing has accepted that challenge and picked it up because they have some strong ideas about how to get these stories out to the public that wants to see them.

Peña: Yes, I'm so excited. It's a horrible thing when you shoot a film with your heart and soul and nobody sees it. What's the point of making a movie if nobody sees it, y'know?

Guillén: How do you feel as an actor when a film's been delayed for so long? I was noticing at IMdb that—since you filmed Garcia Girls—you've gone on to do 18 other film and television projects!

Peña: Yeah, I've been lucky; but, Garcia Girls has stayed with me; with all of us who participated in the movie. The biggest heartache would have been for a talent like Georgina Garcia Riedel [to go unnoticed]. Her first movie is so friggin' awesome and it's such a personal piece! For me, the joy is having—I hope!—everyone love it so that Georgina can keep on doing her wonderful thing.

Guillén: How did you become involved with Georgina and the Garcia Girls project?

Peña: I was shooting another movie at the time. At the same time I was prepping a film that I wanted to direct. She sent the script to my manager and my manager sent me the script. I loved it; but, I told Georgina over the phone, "I love it but I don't think it's humanly possible for me to do it." Then my movie got delayed by six months and I wrapped the other movie and Georgina—to her credit—she's incredibly stubborn that woman! [Laughs.] She's hard-headed. She kept calling until I said, "I'm available and I'll do it." That's the way we got there.

Guillén: So what was it about the character of Lolita that you wanted to embody?

Peña: What originally lured me to the project wasn't the character of Lolita itself; it was the fact that Georgina had three completely different generations of women. They're Chicana women, which makes it a little bit more poignant because of the Catholic in-bred thing in our DNA. Even if you're not a practicing Catholic, it somehow stays in there. In American cinema and in television for that matter—with the possible exception of Desperate Housewives—women over, literally, 35 are non-sexual, except for getting raped or beaten. They don't write roles for women that express and explore older women's sexuality and I found [Georgina's script] so fantastic; to have a 70-year-old woman have sex, y'know? I loved the character of Lolita obviously, I loved her on the page; but—once I started to embody her—it was rough because she's such a frustrated lonely person that it was quite challenging to play that consistently. I actually started grinding my teeth again when I started shooting that movie.

Guillén: You did a great job. My colleague Dennis Harvey described your performance in his Variety review as "expertly gliding from emotional shutdown to an often hilarious expression of embarrassed erotic disarray."

Peña: Oh wow! I never even read that. Awesome!

Guillén: Which is to say that your comic timing is accomplished, tender and human. Did you train in comedy?

Peña: I trained as an actress so that covers everything from the classics to Greek tragedy to comedy to slapstick to contemporary to theatre of the absurd. I started my training very early in life and covered all of that. One of the things that a lot of young actors don't do today is to hone their craft. They want to be movie stars. But for me, if you love something so much, you should just do that. Do it even if you don't get paid for it. Then find somebody to pay for it.

Guillén: There were three moments in Garcia Girls that amazed me for their bravery. First, Lucy in the bathtub naked.

Peña: Isn't she awesome?

Guillén: She's absolutely awesome and clearly fearless. Second, America when she's checking her panties to see if she's had her period. And third, you pleasuring yourself, which—to add to my amazement—was the image of you used on the original movie poster. These are amazingly brave feminine statements in a film.

Peña: [Laughs.] I was excited to do something like that. We all were.

Guillén: Are you familiar with the work of Amalia Mesa-Bains?

Peña: No.

Guillén: Amalia is a cultural critic who writes a lot about Chicano/a and Latino/a issues and she's coined a term domesticana, which is an aesthetic based upon the everyday artistry expressed domestically by Chicanas and Latinas. In my opinion, How the Garcia Girls Spent Their Summer inflects that aesthetic spirit of domesticana; the script captures that spirit so masterfully.

Peña: That's Georgina, man, she rocks!

Guillén: My understanding is you're actually Latina, Cuban-American?

Peña: Yes.

Guillén: Do you find your experience as a Latina is in any way differentiated from the experience of a Chicana? You've played several Chicana roles.

Peña: I've actually played so many Mexicans in general that Cubans don't believe I'm Cuban! [Laughs.] A woman is a woman is a woman, regardless; but, obviously your culture infuses how you behave. In playing people of a different culture, I've discovered there are so many different types. The woman living on the border in Lone Star is a completely different type of woman than the woman who lives on the border in Arizona, down to their behavior and how they wear their make-up. And those two are completely different than Rosie in La Bamba. I'm completely fascinated by the Mexican culture in general; it's got so much going for it.

Guillén: Another aspect that intrigues me is that in all three of those roles, you're playing partially-assimilated Mexican women, which strikes me as parallel to the processes of womanhood in general adjusting to masculine culture. It's like you've expressing two negotiations at once. Is that something you're conscious of when you're creating these characters?

Peña: I try not to intellectualize too much. If I were to do that, then I can't act. What I try and do is find the soul of the character, what's making them beat, what their beat is, do my homework, and then just prepare to be in the moment. I may have planned something in my head last night when I was doing my homework for the scene and then I get to the set and the director asks me to do the scene juggling bananas on a bicycle. I have to be able to retain my homework but react to what's actually happening around me.

Guillén: Can you speak to what it was like reacting to Lucy and America?

Peña: Oh God, it was great! It was really smooth. I didn't know either one of them personally, we met, and it was amazingly fluid. We're three completely different people in real life, in our backgrounds and everything, but somehow our chemistry together was fluid and terrific.

Guillén: Will the three of you be doing any promotional work with the theatrical distribution of the film?

Peña: This is what I've been doing. I haven't stopped talking in four days! [Laughs.]

Guillén: That's excellent. I was so pleased you were still willing to talk about the movie after all this time. That speaks to your commitment to the project.

Peña: Thank you. Y'know, when you do a film, you've pretty much committed to it whether you like it or not; the film is forever. If you believe something is worthy—well, I wouldn't do a project if I didn't think it was worthy. I'm stupid like that. I could be rich by now….

Guillén: Do you have daughters?

Peña: I have an 11-year-old daughter and a 9-year-old son.

Guillén: Have your children seen any of your work?

Peña: The most enthusiastic they've ever been about my work was twice: first, when my daughter was five years old, we were walking through a mall and—this doesn't happen very often—but that particular day about five or six people from different places kept coming up to meet me and get my autograph. My daughter took a long pause after the fifth person and looked at me and said, "Mommy, who are you?" [Laughs.] Then, the film that made me a star in the house was doing the voice work for The Incredibles. I could have won 18 Oscars and for them just been Mom. But for The Incredibles?!! Forget about it, it was embarrassing, when the movie came out I couldn't walk with my children without them screaming to total strangers, "This is my Mom! She's the voice of Mirage in The Incredibles!"

Guillén: That's really sweet. What are you working on now?

Peña: I just wrapped Humboldt Park about two months ago. The script is awesome and the cast is amazing. That's with the wonderful Alfred Molina, John Leguizamo, Freddy Rodríguez and Debra Messing. That's going to be coming out on Thanksgiving of this year. I've got another movie called Love Comes Lately, which is a German and American co-production with Barbara Hershey and Rhea Perlman. That one's coming out in October. And there's another movie that I actually did two years ago ironically called Adrift in Manhattan and I was just told three days ago that it's got distribution and that will be coming out sometime in late October.

Guillén: I'm delighted that you continue to do such fine work collaborating with such distinguished acting ensembles and especially want to thank you for taking the time today to talk about Garcia Girls. It's been such a pleasure to chat with you.

Peña: And you! You're a delight. Thank you.

05/17/08 UPDATE: Via Dave Hudson at The Greencine Daily, Nick Dawson interviews Georgina Garcia Riedel for Filmmaker Magazine and Joe Leydon reviews Garcia Girls for the Houston Chronicle. Leydon writes: "With equal measures of discretion and honesty, Riedel directly addresses the sensuality of all three women, achieving an almost startling sense of intimacy in scenes that range from mesmerizingly intense and gently comical. Very gently comical."

Cross-published on Twitch.

SFIFF51—The SF360 Interview With Alex Rivera, Director of Sleep Dealer

My thanks to Sonia Rosario, Vice President of Marketing at Maya Releasing, for her permission to leap over the "hold review" on Sleep Dealer, allowing SF360 to publish my interview with director Alex Rivera. Like myself, she agrees that keeping the public discourse going on the film is important.

Photo courtesy of Pat Mazzera. Cross-published on Twitch.

HOLEHEAD08—Kataude mashin gâru (The Machine Girl, 2007)

San Francisco's Fifth Annual Another Hole in the Head Film Festival ("Holehead08") had its press conference this morning where the line-up was announced and Noboru Iguchi's The Machine Girl was screened. Boasting its West Coast premiere, The Machine Girl is the kind of date movie that will see blood-frenzied couples rushing out of the Roxie Film Center hungry for tempura or at least some finger food at a house party. Is it really true that revenge is a dish best served cold? Not when there's a wok with bubbling oil around!

Leave it to Iguchi to capitalize on Rose McGowan's machine-gun-sporting leg from Grindhouse: Planet Terror and amplifying it into a no-holds-barred vengeance-inspired blood bath. We're not just talking buckets of blood here; we're talking shower nozzles of blood. There's more spurting severed limbs in this film than you can count and the only thing missing is a Teledyne shower pik for adjustable blood flow: from a smoke-like spray to a pat-pat-pat pulsing massage. Perhaps in the sequel?

Let alone that fashionistas will tremble in their seats appreciating the first drill bra that lifts and (I mean it) separates.

The Machine Girl has been pretty much covered by the Twitch team. Gommorahizer first announced the project had gone into production a little under a year ago, including early production stills provided by the film's special effects wizard Yoshihiro Nishimura (whose work can also be seen in another Holehead08 West Coast premiere Exte: Hair Extensions).

Dispatching from the 2007 American Film Market where The Machine Girl had its world premiere, Todd Brown described it as a "low budget, futuristic sci-fi response to the huge budget historical fantasy Dororo" and over the course of the next week offered up several behind-the-scenes effects shots and production stills. When Todd finally secured the trailer for the film, it resulted in the highest spike in last year's Twitch traffic. The popularity of that trailer inspired Todd to hunt down trailers for Iguchi's other films.

Earlier this year Todd interviewed Iguchi who admits that there's "not really" any such thing as too much blood and violence and—concurrent with its upcoming June 3 DVD release—San Franciscans have the opportunity to decide for themselves when The Machine Girl screens three times at Holehead08: on June 6 at 9:30PM, June 12 at 5:00PM and June 14 at 9:30PM. Should you still feel ambivalent, here's a YouTube clip and Ardvark's review from the Amsterdam Fantastic Film Festival wherein he indirectly suggests that this is the movie that should have been entitled There Will Be Blood.



Cross-published on Twitch.

05/25/08 UPDATE: Opening last Friday for a one-week run at the Pioneer Theatre in Manhattan, Jeannette Catsoulis comments in The New York Times that The Machine Girl is "a riotous blend of arterial spray and grindhouse glee" and certainly "retrofitted for revenge." At The House Next Door John Lichman promises "you won't find a better splatter film for the next few months."

123RD PAGE 5TH SENTENCE

Yes, I am a sick and twisted player. When tagged by Hell on Frisco Bay's Brian Darr to participate in the internet's latest meme, I started to sing, "You charm the husk right off the corn, MEME…." (Boom. Ka-THUMP! Where's a kazoo when you need one?)

I participate only for fear that—should I not—Brian will do something drastic. Ordinarily I hate this sort of thing. Unlike Brian—though initially intrigued by Facebook—I've come to hate email invitations from friends of friends of friends wanting me to be a friend of a friend of a friend in a thoroughly misguided notion of social networking that eschews the face to face encounter or—at the least—a handwritten note in the mailbox and resembles something akin to an amoeba's promiscuous indiscretion. Let it be known here and now that this is the last meme I will ever respond to. And let me strongly suggest that the rest of you follow suit. If not now, when? If not you, who?

So here are the weapons of mass instruction:

1) Pick up the nearest book.
2) Open to page 123.
3) Locate the fifth sentence.
4) Post the next three sentences on your blog and in so doing...
5) Tag five people, and acknowledge who tagged you.

Being that I was in my office when I received Brian's email, I was surrounded by thousands of books, many of which actually do make it to page 123, and some even to a fifth sentence (dependent upon definition). On the desk proper, however—bracing for a Lewton aftershock—was Alexander Nemerov's Icons of Grief: Val Lewton's Home Front Pictures; a volume I have no reservations recommending over and over again.

Here are the requisite three sentences: "In a more limited sense, the slowing down fits the film's conscience-liberal wish to show the gravity and dignity of black people. Yet a deeper force at work in these characters is a fear of forgetting—specifically, a fear that histories of racial violence would be forgotten. The freezing of motion disputes the flow of images that makes a movie frame ephemeral." (Footnote omitted.)

Now here's the part that I find most reprehensible about this meme. The fact that it lays responsibility at the foot of the person who has furthered it (Brian Brian Brian B-R-I-A-N!!! Picture me with the palms of my hands pressed to both sides of my head screaming at the top of my lungs), but likewise incriminates by announced reference the next five. We all know who you are and we will all know if you refuse to participate.

Girish Shambu, because he doesn't have enough to do already.
Darren Hughes, because he doesn't have enough to do already.
Doug Cummings, because he doesn't have enough to do already.
Peter Nellhaus, because he doesn't have enough to do already.
Bob Turnbull, because he doesn't have enough to do already. [Accepting the meme on Mr. Turnbull's behalf, Pat Piper.]

Which leads me to my favorite playground quote: "Neener neener neener."

PFA: HONG KONG NOCTURNE—Twitch on To

Whenever I come up against a genre I'm not too familiar with—especially from an Asian director—I need research no further than Twitch. With the Pacific Film Archives poised to launch their Johnnie To retrospective "Hong Kong Nocturne" May 29 through June 27, 2008, I've decided to focus on what my colleagues at Twitch have to say about Hong Kong's favorite son and—though they comment on only five of the nine films in the PFA retrospective—they cover the most recent. Hopefully, the Twitch readership will comment on the rest. I've never seen a To film. I'm not exactly sure why I've resisted other than general comments I've heard about the limitations of the genre. I'm hoping to decide one way or the other what I think about To's films come July.

Yau doh lung fu bong (Throw Down, 2004)

PFA's Jason Sanders writes: "The spirit of Akira Kurosawa lingers in To's loose-limbed, light-hearted update of Sanshiro Sugata. Perversely refusing to update that 1943 film's judo-obsessed plot, To assuredly creates a current world where judo is still the hottest thing in Hong Kong's nightclubs, arcades, and triad dens. Ex-judo champion Szeto has exiled himself from the frenetic high-powered judo world, whiling away his nights in a drunken stupor until a chance for redemption arrives in the youthful forms of feisty Tony ('I'm Tony; I want to fight,' he chirps) and aspiring singer Mona. A few hundred judo fights later, and nearly everyone is still left standing, albeit with their arms in slings. Taking the usual gangster milieu and lightening it up until it's nearly parodic ('the gentle way' is the Chinese idiom for judo), Throw Down is arguably To's most pleasurable, accessible film, a tribute to the kind of old-fashioned storytelling in which tales of outlaws and drifters still have room for redemption, humor, and sentiment."

Opus included To's Throw Down in his write-up from the 2004 Toronto International Film Festival. His response was somewhat exasperated. "I've really, really tried to get into To's films," Opus explained but concluded that—at their very best—To's films "exhibit flashes of brilliance, but they always fall flat for me by the end and leave me confused as to why this guy is so revered in some circles. And at their very worst, they're, well, really bad." He situates Throw Down in the latter camp. "[F]or the life of me," Opus admits honestly, "I can't understand why I continue to watch his films. They always dangle a little carrot in front of me, promising something cool and exciting, but they almost always disappoint me in the long run. Throw Down just continues the streak, only moreso."

Hak Se Wui (Election, 2005)

"It's politics as usual, literally," Jason Sanders writes for PFA, "when a triad society attempts to nominate a new boss in this slow-burn, atmospheric gangster thriller that starts off like a near-documentary study and winds up on the far side of Shakespearean tragedy. Two men vie to become the new leader of the Wo Shing Society, with the becalmed, forward-looking Lok (Simon Yam) the front-runner over loose cannon Big D (Tony Leung Ka-fai), who looks and acts like he stumbled out of a Kinji Fukasaku film. Neither can truly be boss, though, without the gang's symbol, a centuries-old baton hidden in China. Both men send their minions to find the baton, but must contend with other gangsters angling for their own means. As fortunes rise and fall and allegiances shift (sometimes in the middle of one cell-phone call), Election moves from gangster film to tragicomedy to political satire, and boasts a finale that puts politicians' claims of being 'family men' and 'fishing buddies' to an alarming end."

With Election and Triad Election—which Opus watched in tandem—he experienced an aesthetic turnabout. Reiterating his initial complaint that To's movies are often "full of poorly-realized, unsympathetic characters, storylines that end up going nowhere, and flashes of absurd humor that feel more forced than anything else (and certainly aren't very funny)", Opus conceded that with Election and Triad Election all that "completely changed." Both films "delve directly into the heart of the Hong Kong Triad culture and then proceed to drive a stake through it" and—when viewed as one long epic—the two films become "a perfect blend of To's excellent sense of style, fully-realized characters, and a plot that ends with several gutwrenching twists." Further, Opus notes the films are not just about the Triad world, but comment pointedly on China's problematic relationship with Hong Kong, especially in Triad Election wherein the Chinese are cast in almost as bad a light as the Triads themselves.

Todd—who caught Election at the 2006 Toronto International Film Festival—echoed Opus's conversion. Likewise frustrated with To's earlier work because of its "unfortunate tendency to favor flash over character", Todd kept returning to To's work "in the hopes that one day he'd put all the pieces together, that he'd find some content to fill out the form, believing that when that day came he'd turn out a masterpiece." For Todd, Election is that masterpiece. A scathing indictment of the honor system of the Chinese triads, To examines their "shifting loyalties, the betrayals, the corruption and greed, the gap between their noble roots and current realities." "With its focus on character and the corrupting lust for power over action it deserves comparison to some of the world's great crime films, The Godfather included."

Hak se wui yi wo wai kwai (Triad Election, 2006)

Triad Election, aka Election 2, is a "black-hearted sequel" according to PFA's Jason Sanders who writes that the film "finds nattily attired younger henchman Jimmy, who attends both shootouts and economics lectures, now being browbeaten into running for triad boss during the new 'election.' In addition to a familiar threat (the current head of the triad, who's not about to relinquish power), Jimmy must also contend with corrupt mainland Chinese officials, and soon his Brooks Brothers suits are getting a bit stained with human blood. Reinvigorating the triad genre the way The Sopranos did for the mafia, Triad Election seems hyperrealistic in both its concerns (the gang members spend more time politicking and jostling for money than killing one another) and aesthetics (when the fighting does occur, it's with clubs and knives, not guns, and death is certainly not easy). A portrait of twenty-first-century Hong Kong and China so attuned to Darwinian capitalism that it could be Mao's worst nightmare, the film was suitably banned in China, and all publicity materials seized and burned."

Likewise catching Triad Election at TIFF06, Todd observes that "Singly either one of these films are a stinging slap in the face of the triads, together they make for a fascinating study both of triad culture specifically and of the corrupting and degrading nature of power in general. There is no doubt about it," he concludes, "these films are To's master works."

That praise seems to have carried uniformly across the board. Logboy likewise found the sequel "thoroughly captivating" with its "astonishing violence, primarily impressive because of its tangible sense of tension and fear, likely to leave many shaking or shocked at the end." Twitch likewise referenced interviews with director To at Coming Soon and Cinema Strikes Back. When both films screened at the Film Forum, the critical wake was nearly jubilant. At the New York Times both Manohla Dargis and A.O. Scott weighed in favorably. Scott, in fact, twice.

Fong Juk (Exiled, 2006)

By the time Exiled rolled around, To's fanbase had expanded exponentially. Sanders synopsizes: "A gang of hitmen descends on the former Portuguese colony of Macao in Exiled, a leisurely tribute to the bullet ballets and male-bonding reveries of Sam Peckinpah that finds To slowing down to enjoy the talents of his cast. Reuniting such familiar faces as Anthony Wong, Francis Ng, and Lam Suet, To presents the simple tale of 'retired' gangster Wo whose hope for a new life with his wife and baby is about to be thwarted by the appearance of other hitmen, two of whom are there to kill him, the other two to protect him. In the standoff that ensues, the hit men forget to hit, and become mere men: dinners are cooked, homes restored, and memories savored, but gunplay is never far away. An engrossing portrait of gunmen as ordinary individuals (give or take their great fashion sense), Exiled excels through its appealing cast, whose easygoing camaraderie gives the film a joy all its own."

At this point the Twitch team were warmed by To's "hot streak" and only too happy to post the film's trailer. Todd caught Exiled at the 2007 Fantasia Film Festival, dispelling the rumor that Exiled was a sequel to To's The Mission. More, it was a reunion of The Mission's cast playing different characters. As far as Todd was concerned, Exiled had everything going for it: cinematography ("a seemingly endless stream of iconic images"), action ("there are shots in this film that will leave your jaw on the floor for their sheer inventiveness and style"), script ("the plot line clever and engaging while never losing site of the people that drive it"), and cast ("feels like nothing so much as a group of old friends getting together to play and having a simply fantastic time while doing it").

Mack, who caught the film at the 2006 Toronto International, "highly recommended" it: "It completes a perfect blend of humor, action and heart as it spins its violent tale." He observes that this "Eastern Western" is redolent with the lone, sad guitar solos of Guy Zerafa's musical score. Opus, in turn, though occasionally fearful that To was going to drop the ball with Exiled, pulls it off by "brilliantly bringing about an already-satisfying film to a fitting conclusion."

Sun Taam (Mad Detective, 2007)

"The laconic Lau Ching-wan," Sanders writes, "Hong Kong's answer to Robert Mitchum and reigning Best Actor of the Year in the Hong Kong Film Awards, returns to Johnnie To's side after a seven-year absence with this bizarre tale of a 'mad detective' whose psychotic visions enable him to solve crimes. Inspector Bun (Lau) puts himself in the victim's place, literally, to find criminals; whether zipping himself into a suitcase and being tossed down the stairs or repeatedly stabbing a dead pig, he's rather unorthodox, yet successful. Years later, Bun has retired, but a new case emerges that requires his unique gifts. Bun's hallucinations provide perfect excuses for To's visual inventions and madcap stagings, most notably Bun's multiple personalities that are pictured as actual separate characters. Part police thriller, part surrealistic black comedy, with an homage to Welles's Lady from Shanghai mixed in, Mad Detective 'reaffirms To's status as an action master' (Manohla Dargis, New York Times)."

In his review from the 2008 Udine Far East Film Festival, Todd confirms To's continuing hot streak. Mad Detective is "an entertaining, surprising piece of work anchored by a powerhouse performance from Lau." "Compared to the fire that drove the Election films and the pyrotechnics of Exiled," Todd writes, "the far more character oriented Mad Detective can feel much smaller than it really is. The emphasis here is not on style, camera tricks or action—though there is a healthy dose of that—but on the portrayal of a man lost in his own mind and taken on those terms Mad Detective is a resounding success." Twitch provides the film's trailer.

Judging from this assessment, the first half of the Hong Kong Nocturne program suggests attention should be paid to the ground work set for the successful heat of To's later works. If anyone has thoughts on The Mission (1999), Fulltime Killer (2001), Running on Karma (2003)—which one friend has told me is the one To film not to miss—and Breaking News (2004), I'd love to hear from you.

Cross-published on Twitch.

QUEER CINEMA—Kino21 Presents the Films of Warren Sonbert

June Pride is nearly upon us and before Frameline grabs us by the nape of the neck and forces us to submit, Kino21 kickstarts this year's celebration of Queer cinema with a three-part program on the films of San Francisco experimental filmmaker Warren Sonbert, curated by Johnny Ray Huston and Konrad Steiner. With 16mm prints secured from Canyon Cinema, the retrospective will likewise feature a special chapbook of new and reprinted writings by and about Sonbert's life and work that will be for sale only at the shows. Knowing nothing about Sonbert's work, I anticipate this well-mounted introduction.

The series begins with Sonbert's magnum opus Carriage Trade (1971) which Canyon Cinema states "interweaves footage taken from [Sonbert's] journeys throughout Europe, Africa, Asia, and the United States, together with shots he removed from the camera originals of a number of his earlier films. Carriage Trade was an evolving work-in-progress, and this 61-minute version is the definitive form in which Sonbert realized it, preserved intact from the camera original." As Jon Gartenberg wrote in the program note for Carriage Trade when it screened at the Whitney Museum of American Art in October 1973 as part of the New American Filmmakers Series: "With Carriage Trade, Sonbert began to challenge the theories espoused by the great Soviet filmmakers of the 1920s; he particularly disliked the 'knee-jerk' reaction produced by Eisenstein montage. In both lectures and writings about his own style of editing, Sonbert described Carriage Trade as 'a jig-saw puzzle of postcards to produce varied displaced effects.' This approach, according to Sonbert, ultimately affords the viewer multi-faceted readings of the connections between shots through the spectator's assimilation of 'the changing relations of the movement of objects, the gestures of figures, familiar worldwide icons, rituals and reactions, rhythm, spacing and density of images.' "

Carriage Trade screens Thursday evening, May 15, 7:00PM at San Francisco Camerawork, 657 Mission Street, Second Floor in San Francisco (415/512-2020). Admission is free for SF Camerawork members and there is a (suggested donation) of $5 for general public; $2 for students and seniors.

The next two evenings of programs shift to Artists' Television Access ("ATA"). The "Pop Witness" program screens Thursday, May 29, 8:00PM and includes Sonbert's films Amphetamine (1966), Where Did Our Love Go? (1966), Hell of Mirrors (1966), and Friendly Witness (1989).

The third and final program in the retrospective—"Narrative Vertigo"—screens Thursday, June 5, 8:00PM and includes A Woman's Touch (1983) and Short Fuse (1991). ATA is located at 992 Valencia Street, San Francisco, (415/824-3890); Admission $6.

ODDBALL CINEMA—Jesse's Back!

Following up on his Raza program of a couple of years back, Jesse Lerner returns to Oddball Cinema to present "Chicano: Brown and Proud", a program of early landmark Chicano films featuring playwright/director Luis Valdez's 1972 satire Los Vendidos (The Sell-Outs), Jesus Salvador Trevino's pioneering Yo Soy Chicano, plus candy-colored San Francisco Low Riders, the trailer for the upcoming film Why I Ride From Low to Slow and other bronze rarities.

Lerner's Raza program will be followed by "Wooden Nickels and 2-Dollar Bills: An Evening of Lies, Phonies and Falsehoods". This second program includes 16mm shorts such as False Witness reconstructing the false "proof" that the Lost Tribes of Israel had settled the Americas. Also featured is the famous anthropological hoax, the discovery of the Tasaday, documented in A Message from the Stone Age and Van Meegeren's Faked Vermeers, the 1948 film telling the story of the Dutch forger of old masters. Also featured will be footage of Bigfoot and excepts from Monsters Mysteries or Myths, narrated by Rod Serling and featuring an investigation of the Loch Ness Monster.

Date: Friday, May 9th at 8:00PM and 10:00PM.
Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp St. San Francisco (Off Mission between 17th and 18th)
Admission: $10.00 (per program); Limited Seating RSVP Only to: 415-558-8117 or info@oddballfilm.com

SFIFF51: GONZO—Q&A With Director Alex Gibney

Graham Leggat introduced Graydon Carter, one of the producers of the closing night film Gonzo: The Life and Work Of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, and the editor of Vanity Fair magazine since 1992. Not only was this the West Coast premiere of Gonzo, but the Vanity Fair Reel Relief benefit, which Carter proudly announced had raised $100,000 for the Natural Resources Defense Council. He, in turn, introduced Alex Gibney.

Gibney credited Carter as being the individual responsible for phoning him with the idea of doing a film on Hunter Thompson, some of whose writing Vanity Fair had published. Gibney further acknowledged two other producers in the audience: Alison Ellwood and Eva Orner. He stressed the importance of showing Gonzo to a San Franciscan audience since the city was so much a part of Thompson's life. To preface the film, he offered a quote by Thompson on show business: "Show business is a cruel and shallow money trench; a long, plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs. But there's also a negative side." Gibney added that Thompson also had a saying: "Buy the ticket, take the ride." "You bought the ticket," Gibney shouted out to his cheering audience, "take the ride!"

And what a ride! Equally hortatory and hagiographic, Gonzo frames a larger-than-life personality, the likes of which is nowhere to be found elsewhere even if crucially needed in such desperate times.

Gibney returned to the stage after the screening accompanied by co-producer Alison Ellwood. Kicking off the questioning, Graham asked them to describe the arc of the project, what they saw as they were going through it and what they found in the story that meant the most to them. Ellwood said it was a spiritual experience for her and that it felt like she was channeling Thompson for two years. Gibney responded: "Hunter embodied the essential contradictions of the American character; that's what made him so exciting. The great sense of idealism. The great sense of possibility. And he understood more than anybody the fear and the loathing. It was tremendous to work with his words." It wasn't a "discovery" really; but, one of the things Gibney felt most strongly about was that "the word should be front and center." The spirit of that was caught in Johnny Depp's readings. To be able to use Thompson's words to tell his own life story was a thrill.

Curious whether Ralph Steadman had more to say about his collaboration with Thompson than contained within the documentary, Gibney at first joked that no, every single frame of Steadman footage had been used in the movie, but then admitted Steadman was magnificent, had designed the poster for the film, and that the DVD would contain much more footage of him, necessary since Ellwood had nixed the five and a half hour cut of the film.

The biggest challenge of the project was what to leave out. One of the great gifts given the producers of the film by Thompson's estate was to rummage through all his kept materials—audiotape recordings, photographs, pieces of paper—an extraordinary treasure trove of the material of an extraordinary person. There was no way all of this material could fit into the film. At some point "this mysterious otherworldly being called 'the story' " took over and forced them to pare it down. Though these materials have not yet been handed over to a public institution by the estate, they eventually will be all organized in a central location. In addition to the film, a CD of Thompson's audio recordings will likewise be released.

Asked how Gibney distinguished between Thompson's facts and fiction in the film, Gibney quipped, "Is there a difference?" One of the great things of Thompson's writing was his ability to move from fact into fantasy or just some sort of exaggeration. Because Hunter gave permission in his own writing, cinematically the film was allowed to play with his own tools, veering off from reality while keeping true. As was said in the movie, Thompson's was the least factual but most accurate reportage of the McGovern campaign.

As Gonzo opens with scenes from the bombing of the Twin Towers on 9/11 and Gibney claimed access to Thompson's complete files, one audience member was curious if Gibney found anything to support Thompson's suspicion that 9/11 had been "an inside job"? Though Gibney had heard of Thompson's suspicions, he didn't come across anything during his research to suggest Thompson "had found the Rosetta Stone."

Though the film was perhaps not initiated with any particular political or moral aim, Ellwood did discover that Thompson was able to see things in a fresh less-censored way than today's press corps and she hopes young reporters can embrace his skepticism of journalistic objectivity or at least creatively break the rules as he did.

One viewer wondered if the filmmakers had set out to paint the most positive portrait of Hunter Thompson they could since hardly anything negative was said about him from the film's talking heads. "We rigorously eliminated any negative comments about Hunter Thompson; we felt it would be inappropriate," Gibney quipped; but then qualified that many disparate people simply loved Hunter Thompson. They were engaged by him, amused by him, charmed by him and seduced by him. Pat Buchanan is a great example of someone who battled with Thompson fiercely. Back in 1968, they would get roaring drunk on Wild Turkey whisky and end up screaming at each other about the Cold War. They'd wake after a couple of hours sleep and try to function. Apparently one afternoon Thompson terrified Buchanan's wife by showing up with a couple of cases of beer balancing on his fingertips and Buchanan steered him away towards the swimming pool where they drank all afternoon. Politicians loved him. They had a well of affection for him. Perhaps because he had played politics himself? Through some of the comments made by those closest to him, Gibney felt that as filmmakers they had sketched out that Thompson was far from perfect and that he could indulge his dark side; but, these contradictions within him helped him to see the same dark contradictions in the American character. What amazed Gibney was how all these disparate people from various walks of life really loved the guy and had a tremendous affection for him.

Though Thompson's son towards the end of the documentary stated that the family had always known Thompson would take his own life by gun and—though no one seemed surprised when it happened—one woman was curious whether there was any direct speculation on why he committed suicide when he did? Had he lost most of his tools and his drive and knew he couldn't fight the fight that was going to be necessary in the face of the Bush administration? Gibney has heard all these speculations; but, the truth is that it's very hard to know. Suicides are always a great mystery. One thing that might have been mentioned a little bit more in the film was that Thompson was in terrible health; he was failing and in much pain. That might have figured in. There was possibly also a mythic dimension that Thompson was also playing out. But, at the end of the day, a suicide is always a mystery and—even though he has heard all these speculations—there's no insight he can add.

Graham Leggat wrapped up the evening by praising the film as a brilliant memorial to Hunter Thompson and a great way to close the 51st International.

Dave Hudson at The Greencine Daily has gathered the Sundance Film Festival reviews for the film, where Cathleen Rountree interviewed Gibney for SF360, parts one and two.

Photos courtesy of the San Francisco Film Society. Cross-published on Twitch.

05/10/08 UPDATE: Via the Greencine Daily, Claire Howorth writes up closing night for Vanity Fair. "Thompson's Nixon-era loathings (and fears) come across as all too prophetic in light of current events, and the resonance was acutely felt here in one of the country's most liberal cities. When the screen split into frames mirroring disturbingly similar images of Iraq and Vietnam, you could feel chills tingling up the arms of every Patagonia-sleeved, wine-swilling yuppie cinephile. The ghost of Gonzo was in the house."

I'm not sure how I feel being categorized as a "Patagonia-sleeved, wine-swilling yuppie cinephile", or even if I caught a glimpse of Thompson in a white sheet and cut-out holes for eyes; but, sure, the prophetic relevance of Thompson's concerns remains disturbing and effective and the YouTube clip provided with Howorth's report is worth embedding. Is it disrespectful to suggest that Thompson reminds of Mitch Pileggi: X-File's Assistant Director Walter Skinner?

SFIFF51—Audience Ballot Awards

From the Castro Theatre stage on SFIFF51's closing night, San Francisco Film Society Executive Director Graham Leggat announced the winners of the audience ballot awards. Over the past 15 days, more than 80,000 ballots were cast, intensifying the competition for best documentary and best narrative feature.

Audience favorite for best documentary went to Gonzalo Arijon's Stranded: I've Come From A Plane That Crashed On the Mountain, which Leggat described as "an extraordinary document of human courage and endurance; a film of incredible moral impact." I had the opportunity to interview director Arijon during the run of the festival and hope to have that transcription up soon.

Audience favorite for best narrative feature came in at a tie for Rodrigo Plá's La Zona and—most pleasingly—for Barry Jenkins' Medicine for Melancholy. Barry offered me the welcome opportunity to be one of the first to write about his film as he was gearing up for South by Southwest and it's been heartening to follow the film's popular and critical success since then. We finally met only yesterday in the Vanity Fair press lounge where I introduced myself to him and his cinematographer James Laxton. Barry didn't miss a beat rising to his feet to give me an appreciative hug; his only gripe about my write-up being that I praised Laxton first. They've gone round and round about that, he grinned.

The one comment I did not make in my initial review that came to me afterwards involved the scene where Micah and Jo opt for San Francisco's Museum of the African Diaspora instead of the Museum of Modern Art, followed by a stroll through the Martin Luther King, Jr. Fountain in the Yerba Buena Gardens. This sequence of their afternoon "date" underscored the civic hypocrisy of San Francisco; the great divide between its monumental tributes to race while steadily eliminating the African-American presence in the city proper. I find it more than fitting that San Francisco audiences have recognized the need to redress that hypocrisy with full-fledged acknowledgment.

Congratulations, Barry! Well-done.

PFA: WE ARE CINEMA—The Evening Class Interviews With Matt Losada, Elijah Wolfson and Hector Jimenez

A little under a month ago—and largely as a gesture of support to my friend Matt Losada—I attended "We Are Cinema", a Pacific Film Archives program of student short films curated by UC Berkeley students. As Jeffrey Skoller, Associate Professor of Film Studies at UC Berkeley wrote for the PFA calendar: "Filmmaking at UC Berkeley is moving to new levels of creative expression and intellectual exploration, with production courses now being offered in the Departments of Art Practice, Anthropology, Ethnic Studies, Film Studies, Journalism, and Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies. Rough-hewn and radical, this eclectic range of sophisticated and highly imaginative approaches to image-making by both undergraduate and graduate students—some of whom picked up a camera for the first time to make them—give us a glimpse of the future of filmmaking at UC Berkeley and beyond."

"We Are Cinema" was student-curated by Julien Guillemet, Elizabeth Johnson, Jungmin Lee, Alana Miller, Brittany Nickerson, Sang-hee Oh (who designed the evening's program), August O'Mahoney (who wrote the capsule for the PFA calendar), Jay Patumanoan, and Jennifer Siu, as part of an internship offered by UC Berkeley's Film Studies Department and PFA, under the guidance of Kathy Geritz, with the assistance of Jason Alley.

It was the program's multi-departmental representation that most impressed me and I found myself much more entertained than, admittedly, I was expecting. Wanting to support the Bay Area's new wave of filmmakers, The Evening Class took time to speak with three of the program's filmmakers: Matt Losada, Elijah Wolfson and Hector Jimenez.

Sin Título (2007)

As August O'Mahoney summarized for the PFA calendar, Matt Losada's Sin Título "explores the craft and art of making images amidst an askew urban setting." (Sin Título will be screened again this evening at PFA's program of selected works from the Eisner Competition.)

Michael Guillén: Matt, could you identify which department you hail from and how you were pulled into the film program? More specifically, how did you become involved in the Eisner Competition?

Matt Losada: I'm in the grad program in Romance Languages and Literatures. Specifically in the Spanish and Portuguese department, but also in French and in Italian. These are mostly text-based departments, but they have some film courses. I taught one last year on Latin American cinema, which was really enjoyable. The undergrads here are very smart, so the courses stay lively. I've always been into cinema, especially French and Spanish-language cinema, and so I took some seminars in Film Studies. One was a production course with Jeffrey Skoller, for which I made this piece, and afterward he recommended I submit it for the Eisner competition, [where it received] an honorable mention.

Guillén: Could you talk a bit about the tripartite structure of your film? What were you going for?

Losada: In part that was kind of pragmatically how it ended up because of the story told: basically a guy—who's my cousin Federico—who builds a pinhole camera, goes out into the street and takes some photos. That's it. So there was the first section where he builds the camera, then the section where he goes out of that room, out into the street and takes photos, then the last section, where you see the photos. In general it goes from really small scale, in which you see only his hands making the camera, to a sort of human scale when he goes out, to images with big scale that turn into more abstract images. The photos he takes have three sections too, because the camera you see him make has three pinholes that make the image show up three times, side by side but in slightly differing images. So there's sort of a rhyme there, and unity, of threes.

Guillén: In the Q&A after the program you spoke a bit about being fond of "boring" films; what are you referencing in particular?

Losada: I meant "boring" in quotes, of course. It's a matter of expectations, like when you tell someone they just have to see a certain film, then sometimes afterward they avoid mentioning it, and if you ask about it they say it was slow or boring. If they're used to lots of camera movement, lots of cutting, dense narration, they'll find certain films boring. I think this is what Pedro Costa meant when he said how lots of commercial films need to create "energy" where sometimes there is none. So I suppose I might have been apologizing for my piece not being like that. But I think that "boring" films are often much richer films, so I was trying for that kind of richness in the piece.

The story told provided a good opportunity to use the frame as a immobile boundary between what you see and what you don't see. At the end you see my cousin's photos, which I tried to respond to in the form of the individual shots, and that called for a fixed frame and long takes. So I started out lots of the shots as empty spaces, abstracted because there are no people for scale, and then I didn't move the camera at all. So the frame forms a strong boundary between what's on screen and what's off, and you can play with that divide, especially with the sound. When you're not following the elements of the story around with the camera, or cutting to different shots to follow what's important to advance the narration, then the off-screen space becomes pure opportunity to use sound to create a world out there. Sound takes on a completely different dimension, one that's not there if you don't establish that code, that you're not going to move the camera, or cut to tell the viewer what he should be looking at. So the minimal story allowed this, and the photos provided a reason to fix the frame and use long takes, which results in the "boring" I was referring to.

I tried to play with this boredom too. [For example,] in the endless shot of him building the camera, the phone starts to ring and he doesn't answer it, and it keeps ringing and ringing. The interval between each ring gets a tiny bit longer each time. I was trying to create that feeling of relief when you think it has stopped …but then the thing rings again … and again, until he finally gets up and leaves, [which] probably most of the audience wanted to do by that point. His photos also allow chance to come into play. Some are from the camera with the three pinholes, and they make three images of the same thing appear, but each image is different, because the pinholes aren't exactly alike, and the light kind of scrapes through on the rough edges and bounces around, creating all kinds of effects on the images. This element of chance is also present in a different way in the video shots, which show simple things like my cousin waiting to cross the street, and the city provides the rest, like people passing into the frame, smoke, dogs, sounds, all these little events. With video you can shoots lots of takes and eventually something interesting will happen.

To get back to the question, specific directors that are "boring", but in a very good way: the first [who] comes to mind is Ozu. Maybe Kiarostami. My favorite of all is Bresson. There's a great Argentine film from the '60s I showed in my course called El dependiente [1969] by Leonardo Favio. And some experimental films … Chantal Akerman is great, her Jeanne Dielman [1975] is a wonderful use of long takes and repetition with variation. Michael Snow's Wavelength [1967] is another. These films take you mental places where more narrative cinema can't go. If you describe them to someone, they sound really horrendous, but hidden in that "boredom" is a wonderfully rich perceptive experience. There are lots of newer narrative films. One that uses a fixed frame and very long takes and narrates with just sound, but in a different way, playing with different temporalities, is Hamaca paraguaya [2006] by Paz Encina. It's a film about waiting, which motivates the form. I showed it to my students, they'd never seen anything at all like it … some of them loved it, felt really strongly about it. Another good one, in a different way, is Honor de cavalleria [2006] by Albert Serra. Don Quijote and Sancho Panza's down time, when they're hanging out between adventures. It sounds kind of boring, doesn't it?

folie à deux (2006)

August O'Mahoney notes that Elijah Wolfson's folie à deux "addresses the obsession and voyeurism of both actors and audience", whereas the program notes translate that folie à deux is "a madness shared by two: a psychological phenomena wherein paranoia and delusion are transferred from one afflicted individual to another, closely associated individual. Their desire for each other generates and then reinforces a shared psychosis."

Michael Guillén: Elijah, which department do you hail from and how did you become involved in making your film and submitting it to the program?

Elijah Wolfson: The Rhetoric department at Berkeley is almost one of a kind; I believe one of only two such undergraduate programs in the United States. It's a kind of continental philosophy-based interdisciplinary program that simultaneously promotes intellectual rigor and academic creativity (which is usually an oxymoron). The department is closely associated with the Film department at Berkeley, and my focus was Narrative and Image, so I've had the chance to study a lot of film and aesthetic theory, the political and social uses of film, images, narratives, and aesthetics. The flexibility of the program also allowed me to pursue my interests in photography and filmmaking as I simultaneously deconstructed those same interests.

Guillén: What impressed me most about your film was its sense of atmosphere through sound design. Could you talk some about that?

Wolfson: A film professor I had told me that—for a narrative film—sound is two thirds of a movie. People will accept a terrible image if the sound is good, but if the sound sucks—no matter how good the image is—people will dislike the film. So I take sound very seriously. I was lucky to have my friend Chris Shurtleff, who's a sound engineer, help me with the sound design. For folie à deux, I wanted the sound to reflect the unsettling feeling of being the object of the voyeuristic surveillance system that pervades modern spaces—the sense of being watched never goes away, [which] might not be at the front of your mind but is always lurking underneath. So we had a kind of light tonal dissonance recur regularly throughout the film that gets louder and more aggressive as the film progresses. I also layered a few different recordings of the dialogues between the main character and her boyfriend, to get a kind of echoing, vacuous space, the space I imagined her to occupy mentally and emotionally. She's a narcissist, who constantly needs someone or something else, something outside herself, to fill the void.

Guillén: Clearly David Lynch has had a major influence on you. I anticipate a horror film out of you in the future. What film, in fact, lies ahead?

Wolfson: Yeah, Lynch is a huge influence, especially his sound design actually. About the future, I'm not really sure. I bought this Canon 8mm film camera a while back and a couple of summers ago in Brooklyn, a friend (Peter Kassel) and I made a silent, black and white horror film called The Meatman. It was the most fun I've had making a film. I really like the texture of film better than video—I'm a pretentious analog guy and still develop my own photos—and I have some Kodachrome 8mm film stock that I'd like to experiment with soon. I'm moving to New York after graduation and I'd like to get involved with the independent film scene out there. I'll probably have to get a real job for a while, but I'll keep writing and shooting and hopefully sometime soon I'll have the opportunity to work on a feature length film, either writing or directing, or both.

Direction (2006)

As the program notes synopsize, in Hector Jimenez's Direction, "A writer is losing his mind after witnessing the death of a director on the set of a film he wrote. His psychiatrist recommends he rewrites the death. Upon doing so, he breaks with reality and realizes his own life is scripted." Or as August O'Mahoney states it, Direction is "a rapid-fire deconstruction of directorial intention [that] ends with the undoing of it all."

Michael Guillén: Hector, which department do you hail from and how did you became involved in the student films project?

Hector Jimenez: I graduated with a BA in Film theory in the spring of 2006. I worked on a few short films while studying, both for my own practice and more "viewable" stuff.

Guillén: Direction was, by far, the most scripted of the films in the student showcase. Could you talk a bit about how you developed the script?

Jimenez: The idea for Direction itself came from an amalgamation of two or three stories I had been writing on and off for a while. The foundation however came after reading Luigi Pirandello's "Six Characters In search Of An Author." I [have] always enjoyed when the fourth wall [is] broken, but I never encountered anything like [Pirandello's play]. The great thing about the play is that the fundamental drive is the narrative itself.

The script writing process was sort of ad hoc. I essentially sat down and thought about all the things I liked about film and what I would like to try and tackle. I ended up with this list of things like "animation", "screwball comedy" and "self-referentiality". Then I just tried to merge these into a cohesive story.

Guillén: I enjoyed your cartoon repartee, especially the "We're in a movie" / "No, we're not" sequence, which seemed to come straight out of Warner Brothers with Bugs and Daffy going at each other.

Jimenez: As far as the Rabbit Seasoning thing goes, I feel like it just nicely culminated the absurdist build-up of the scene. I had written myself into a corner where the psychiatrist needed to also "pop" out of the narrative. I was trying so hard to build this logical path, and then after banging my head on it for a while, realized that using cartoon logic just took it one step even further in the direction I wanted to go.

The film is now two years old and just sort of existing in YouTube limbo. I submitted it to a couple festivals, but nothing really came of it. I think I'm at a point now where I just sort of released it into the wild and let it exist.

Guillén: What's coming up?

Jimenez: I'm currently working on a screenplay for a feature length film I hope to self-produce soon. It deals with a future world where Mexico has slowly established financial stability, while the U.S. [has] slowly [fallen] into financial woes. Now Mexico is moving on its prior territories (California, Texas, etc.) in an attempt to expand. In the middle of this is the Los Angeles-raised Hispanic protagonist who needs to decide whether to flee north with the U.S. or immigrate into the new Mexican nation. I'm having a complete blast writing it and definitely coming from a far more personal and experiential perspective.

SFIFF51—Sleep Dealer

Alex Rivera's debut feature Sleep Dealer was developed at the 2000 and 2001 Sundance Institute Feature Film Program labs, and won the 2002 Sundance/NHK award and a 2004 Annenberg Feature Film Fellowship.

It then moved on to win two major awards at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. Rivera and David Riker won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award for outstanding achievement for their screenplay and Sleep Dealer was also the recipient of this year's Alfred P. Sloan Prize. The Prize, which carries a $20,000 cash award to the filmmaker provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, is presented to an outstanding feature film focusing on science or technology as a theme, or depicting a scientist, engineer or mathematician as a major character.

Sleep Dealer was selected "for its visionary and humane tale of a young man grappling with a technological future in which neural implants, telerobotics and ubiquitous computing serve a global economy rife with fundamental challenges and opportunities, and for its powerful and original storytelling and direction."

The critical response has been qualified but almost without exception Rivera has been praised for his ambition and ingenious maximization of a meager budget to achieve his vision. What strikes me as the true challenge with this film is whether audiences spoonfed multi-million dollar special effects will be willing to shift suspension of disbelief or be able to overcome their addiction to blockbuster visuals to accommodate Sleep Dealer's unique angle on the near-future? Certainly the ideas are noteworthy enough and the film features a solid doe-eyed performance from one of Mexico's rising stars. Luis Fernando Peña—the lead actor of Sleep Dealer—is likewise starring in Desierto Adentro, Rodrigo Plá's critically-acclaimed follow-up to La Zona (featured in this year's festival lineup).

With two screenings left at SFIFF51 (Sunday, May 4, 9:15PM and Wednesday, May 7, 6:15PM, both at the Sundance Kabuki) and with Rivera arriving in the Bay Area to accompany his film, I encourage debate on whether audiences can be expected to shift their expectations of what a sci fi film should be to recognize the promise in Rivera's flawed yet impressive debut feature.

PlumTV's video interviews with Rivera, actress Leonor Varela and co-actor Jacob Vargas, include some clips from the film. Hollywood.com's interview with Rivera is up on YouTube.



05/05/08 UPDATE: Via The Hollywood Reporter, Maya Entertainment has picked up the U.S. Rights for Sleep Dealer.

Cross-published on Twitch.

IN ROTATION—HOFB & Text of Light

Congratulations to Brian Darr on the launch of the newly-designed Hell on Frisco Bay ("Mark II—Jazz Odyssey"). My optometrist loves you!

When I first began haunting press screenings at the Hobart Building's Variety Screening Room, the first journalist to introduce himself and welcome me into the press corps was Max Goldberg, critic on the staff of the San Francisco Bay Guardian and frequent contributor to SF360. His kind gesture was deeply appreciated. Especially since I had recently been yelled at by a certain anonymously-bereted and leather clad "critic" who accused me of sitting in "his" seat. He reminded me that he had been a critic of some 20 years and who the hell was I? "Are you going to move?" he demanded. Too weathered to register this blast of hot air, I smiled sweetly and reminded him, "This sounds very much like a personal problem."

Thus the fact that someone could be civil and collaborative in that small screening room meant the world to me. I've long been a fan of Goldberg's writing and am delighted that he has finally announced his blog Text of Light, which he's kept modestly hidden since last Fall. Along with treasures to be savored in his archives, most recently Max has offered up a preview of SFIFF51, and a review of Standard Operating Procedure (likewise screening at the festival). Now it's my turn to welcome Max Goldberg and Text of Light into the weave!