Gosh, where does the time go? Festival season in Toronto is kicking into high gear earlier this year as the fine folks over at TADFF bumped up their festival to August! Thus the deadline for film entries has come upon us quicker than expected. Read on minions!

A quick announcement for any horror, sci-fi, action, animation or cult filmmakers out there. This is the final week to submit your short or feature film to the 2009 Toronto After Dark Film Festival, proudly sponsored by Twitch. If you’re looking to gain added exposure for your genre film it could be well worth your while taking the few minutes to enter. While this is only the fourth annual edition of the fest, Toronto After Dark has already established itself as one of North America’s leading genre cinema showcases. Over 8,500 fans came out for last year’s record-breaking Toronto event. All the films programmed including LET THE RIGHT ONE IN, REPO: THE GENETIC OPERA, TOKYO GORE POLICE and I SELL THE DEAD scored extensive media coverage. This year’s Toronto After Dark brings its cinematic mayhem for the first time to Summer and runs Aug 14-21, 2009.  But if you want to enter, you’ll have to hurry. To be considered, your film entry details must be completed online by end of day, this Friday May 15.
Full details, including a fast and easy to complete online submission form, are available at the official festival website

The Peter J. Owens Award—named after longtime San Francisco benefactor of arts and charitable organizations Peter J. Owens (1936-1991)—honors an actor whose work exemplifies brilliance, independence and integrity. This year’s recipient Robert Redford joins such previous honorees as Angelica Houston, Geena Davis, Danny Glover, Gérard Depardieu, Tim Roth, Harvey Keitel, Annette Benning, Nicholas Cage, Sean Penn, Wynona Ryder, Stockard Channing, Kevin Spacey, Dustin Hoffman, Chris Cooper, Joan Allen, Ed Harris, Robin Williams and Maria Bello.

The onstage tribute to Redford included a clip reel, an onstage conversation with Phil Bronstein, and a spanking new print of Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid, celebrating its 40th anniversary.

Graham Leggat introduced Phil Bronstein as Vice President and Editor-at-Large of the San Francisco Chronicle. Phil began his career as film reviewer and Leggat mentioned that he once wrote a very long review in which he completely forgot to mention the title of the film. “It was all uphill from there. In his early twenties he was a reporter for KQED on public television’s first nightly news show called Newsreel. After KQED, he specialized in investigative projects and won several awards for his work on environmental and law enforcement abuses. He joined The Examiner as a reporter in 1980 … as a member of the investigative team. Beginning in 1983, he spent 10 years as a war correspondent and in 1986 was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for his work in the Philippines. He went on to cover conflicts in other parts of Southeast Asia, as well as El Salvador, Peru and the Middle East. Phil was named Executive Editor of The Examiner in 1991 and—when The Examiner and The Chronicle merged in 2000—he was made an editor at The Chronicle. In February 2008, he was named to his current position as Executive Vice President and Editor-at-Large and in that capacity he oversees an investigative reporting group that spans several newspapers around the country and is deeply involved in issues of journalism’s digital future. Phil is on the board of the Center for Investigative Reporting in Berkeley. He was a school drop-out, was expelled from several schools, but somehow paradoxically he has an honorary doctorate in public service from Notre Dame de Namur University. Phil also survived a recent appearance on the Stephen Colbert show.” (Frankly, his surviving an attack by a komodo dragon seemed of more import.)

After listing Robert Redford’s filmography, Leggat claimed, “Tonight’s honoree has no equal in post-war American cinema. He stands alone. He’s peerless. Not only as a brilliant, beautiful and talented actor; but, also, he has distinguished himself as an excellent director, as a tireless and selfless environmental and social activist, and as the creator and guiding light of the Sundance Institute, which for the last 28 years has been the most influential film organization in America and has been an inspiration for filmmakers and film culture around the world.”

Propelled by roaring applause and a standing ovation, Robert Redford took to the stage to converse with Phil Bronstein.

Continue Reading "SFIFF52: BUTCH CASSIDY & SUNDANCE KID—Onstage Conversation With Robert Redford & Phil Bronstein"...

Hirokazu Kore-eda‘s latest feature Kûki ningyô (Air Doll, 2009)—based on a manga by Yoshiie Gōda about a life-size blow-up doll who develops a soul and falls in love with a video store clerk—has been selected for screening in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard. In San Francisco to promote the appearance of Still Walking in SFIFF52’s World Cinema sidebar—in tandem with the film’s upcoming theatrical release—I took a moment during our conversation to enquire after his latest.

Michael Guillén: Congratulations on being selected for this year’s Un Certain Regard with your new film Air Doll. I’m interested in what you were seeking to explore thematically in your latest film?

Hirokazu Kore-eda: The doll is inflated with air, so it’s basically empty or blank inside. She is living in Tokyo and around her are us urbanites who are also empty. We have nothing inside of us either and we are isolated. I wanted to explore the emptiness, the loneliness that is felt by the inflated doll and the isolated urbanites.

Cross-published on The Evening Class.

Back in the late 1970s as a young lad, one of my favourite summer past-times was sitting with the family on the stoop of our small condominium townhouse during those wild and crazy summer storms.  Watching the lightning, feeling the thunder and daring friends and siblings to run out (prancing like fools) into the downpour and challenge the unlikely (but still finitely possible) event of a bolt of white tagging you into the next life.  Kids feel pretty immortal and liberated in those endless summers.  You do not think too hard about it, because well, in innocence (a form of arrogance) you have no concept of the consequences.

Enter Jennifer Baichwal, who won a number of awards and notice with her 2007 documentary Manufactured Landscapes.  She points her camera on several folks from around the world who actually have been struck by lightening and have lived to tell the tale.  The common thread amongst these haphazardly assembled mini-narratives is how to process the spectacular ‘awe’ of lightning.  By way of the mathematics of electricity and magnetism, polarity and potential?  So says author Paul Auster who accepts the total randomness of the event, but cannot stop thinking about it, even after writing about the experience several times.  Auster is by far the most compelling speaker in the film, his voice is modulated to carry the room like a seasoned pro:  intense, yet lost in reverie.  His reading of one of his own stories is the climax of the picture (a wise move) and it is gripping stuff. Or perhaps simply it his rationality and pragmatism appeals more to my own heart.  Others, like the mother in Mexico that had her sons and husband killed in a massive lightning strike in front of her hilltop church, or the self-help guru and veteran affairs consultant who took years to recover from his injuries, turn to God for their questions.  Lightning is a good a symbol as anything as the instantaneous manifestation of his divine will.  Either way you slice it, God or science, lightning and storms are the most spectacular demonstration of either notion.

Continue Reading "Hot Docs:  ACT OF GOD Review"...

Yes, boys and girls, Toronto’s little music and film festival that could - Over the Top - is back for its 2009 edition and once again film programmer Jeff Wright has put together one dandy lineup.  So fine, in fact, that Twitch is co-presenting the closing night film, PVC-1, the Colombian real-time drama about a woman forcibly turned into a human time bomb.  Check the full announcement below the break!

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Linda Blackaby, Programmer for the San Francisco Film Society, had the honor of bestowing upon Lourdes Portillo SFIFF52’s Golden Gate Persistence of Vision Award, which honors the achievements of a filmmaker whose work is crafting documentaries, short films, animation or work for television. In as many years as I have been attending the San Francisco International, the Golden Gate Persistence of Vision Award has been given to such luminaries as Jan Svankmajer, Robert Frank, Johan van der Keuken, Faith Hubley, Kenneth Anger, Fernando Birri, Pat O’Neill, Jon Else, Adam Curtis, Guy Maddin, Heddy Honigmann and Errol Morris. Portillo—the “elegant insurgent” (as scribed by filmmaker Renee Tajima-Peña in her commendable program essay)—rightfully joins that esteemed company.

Continue Reading "SFIFF52: AL MÁS ALLÁ—On-Stage Conversation With Lourdes Portillo & John Anderson"...

At last year’s Cannes Film Festival, Atom Egoyan‘s Adoration won the Ecumenical Jury Prize: the award given for movies that celebrate spiritual values.  Steering The Greencine Daily at that time, David Hudson gathered the conflicted critical response from Cannes08, which bore considerable breadth.  At The Hollywood Reporter, Ray Bennett praised the film’s intelligence and musicality and proclaimed it “a haunting meditation on the nature of received wisdom and how it can warp individuals, damage families and even threaten society.”  At First Showing.Net, Marco Cerritos countered that Adoration was “full of great ideas that crash together resulting in a mediocre execution.”  Adoration then had its North American premiere at the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival and—upon its screening at the London International Film Festival a month later—Catherine Grant presented an extensive roundup of text, audio, and video on the film at Film Studies For Free.  Adoration now sees its U.S. premiere in the World Cinema sidebar at SFIFF52.

Continue Reading "SFIFF52: ADORATION—A Critical Overview and A Question For Atom Egoyan"...

“The world’s insane / the paper’s gone mad / but our love is a peace vibe, yes.”—Laura Nyro

Introducing New Directors Prize contender Don’t Let Me Drown [site], SFFS Executive Director Graham Leggat specified that the New Directors Prize—which carries a cash award of $15,000—is singular in a number of ways.  “First of all,” he enumerated, “it’s for debut feature narrative films.  It’s not for documentaries or second or third time filmmakers.  It’s for the freshest new talent.  The competition features 11 films but each one is from a different country so—in effect—Don’t Let Me Drown is the American entry.”

Leggat first saw and was moved by Don’t Let Me Drown at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.  “It has a particular resonance for me,” Leggat offered, “as it does for many people of New York City [who]—at 9:00 on September 11—[were] on the D Train crossing the Manhattan Bridge.  The first plane had hit the towers so that tower was burning and the second plane hit shortly after—as I understood it—my train re-entered the tunnel.  Everyone ran to the window of the train gasping.  The worst thing that happened to me on that day was I got a really bad sunburn walking back across the Manhattan Bridge—it was hot so I took my shirt off—but, many people suffered greatly, as you are well aware.

Continue Reading "SFIFF52: DON’T LET ME DROWN—Introductory Remarks and Q&A With Cruz Angeles and Maria Topete"...

Acknowledging the many sponsors, consulates, organizations and individuals that make the San Francisco International Film Festival possible, Executive Director Graham Leggat proudly beamed that this year’s opening night held special meaning for him because his older daughter Vhary—recently relocated to San Francisco from New York—was attending the festival for the first time.

“The festival,” Leggat reminded, “shows 150 films from 55 countries and its stock and trade is international film.  But this year we have seen an amazing vibrancy and vitality of local films in the festival.  For the last 51 years, the San Francisco Film Society has been something of a high-end florist.  It’s taken the best films from all over the world—the flowering of world cinema—and put it in the vase of the San Francisco International Film Festival; but, last August the Film Society underwent a radical organizational transformation with an agreement with our friends from the Film Arts Foundation, which for 32 years ably and inspirationally served filmmakers in the Bay Area and around the country.  The Film Society took over the stewardship of many programs the Film Arts Foundation had run—that includes fiscal sponsorship, grants and residencies, membership services, classes and workshops and so on—and for the last nine months the Film Society has … become less of a florist and more of a nursery.  Part of that increased responsibility has meant getting closer to taking more responsibility for and caring more about all the wonderful filmmakers in the Bay Area.  This year at the festival, we’re very proud and honored to be able to carry on the Film Arts tradition and I know I speak for all our stakeholders—and especially the staff—when I say that we have never in 52 years had as much enjoyment on a day-to-day basis as we have doing more for people in the City.

Continue Reading "SFIFF52: LA MISSIÓN—Opening Night Introductory Remarks"...

[Our thanks to Sean “The Butcher” Smithson for the following ...]

Calling all Northwestern gorehounds, sleaze merchants, and horror geeks.  The very first DRIFFF (Deep Red International Festival of Fantastic Film) will take place on April 24th & 25th in Portland, Oregon, at the Clinton Street Theater and on May 8th & 9th in Seattle, Washington, at the Grand Illusion Cinema.

Put together by the madmen known as Shade Rupe and Chris Bavota,these two insaniacs have gathered a grip of films to be feared and revered.  Their cinematic holocaust will take place over two scream filled nights, and consist of ...

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I take two big gulps of black coffee this morning.  First, because the Cannes line-up has been officially announced (and it’s downright thrilling), and second and most immediately, because the 52nd edition of the San Francisco International Film Festival launches this evening at San Francisco’s majestic movie palace The Castro Theatre with the West Coast premiere of Peter Bratt’s La Mission, followed by an opening night party at Bruno’s and a rare opportunity to party among the ruins of El Capitan, one of the jewels of yesteryear’s Miracle Mile.  I take a third gulp to chase those two down.

Although I’ve already offered a few previews for SFIFF52, I’d like to officially begin my coverage with comments on what I consider to be one of the most prescient, fascinating and must-see selections in SFIFF52’s line-up: the West Coast premiere of Boston Phoenix critic Gerald Peary‘s For The Love of Movies: The Story of American Film Criticism, presented in association with the San Francisco Film Critics Circle and in conjunction with the related panel “A Critical Moment”, convening on Sunday, May 3, 6:00PM, following the 3:45PM screening of Peary’s documentary.

SF360 editor Susie Gerhard’s cogent program capsule warrants replication in full: For a century, film critics have separated the wheat from the chaff and made the case for great films.  But who will make the case for these bleary-eyed, ink-stained devotees?  Boston Phoenix film critic Gerald Peary sharply evaluates the history of critical-analytical writing on moving pictures in this stimulating tour through the rise, fall and reorientation of film criticism in the United States: Early silent-era plot summarizers give way to the daily newspaper reviewers of the ‘30s, replaced by auteur-theory debaters of the ‘60s, succeeded in turn by the alt-weekly thinkers of the ‘70s who, finally, face extinction via the past decade’s upsurge in bloggers.  Peary’s documentary begins by calling film criticism “a profession under siege,” but this is no strident whine from a victim class.  It’s a smart look at key figures and how they’ve changed public consciousness of both the movies and criticism itself.  Peary prioritizes the wry over the dry, even giving Andrew Sarris the opportunity to dish on his adversary Pauline Kael, who was not above gay-baiting her rival in the early stages.  (His retort: “I took one look at Pauline, and she was not Katharine Hepburn.”)  In addition to the iconic Sarris, interviewees include The New Republic‘s stately Stanley Kauffmann, self-starting phenom Harry Knowles (aintitcoolnews), pop-and-academic theorist B. Ruby Rich, Boston Globe daily reviewer Wesley Morris, the Los Angeles Times‘s sometimes embattled Kenneth Turan and breakthrough newspaper-to-TV critic Roger Ebert.  Few opinions are shared, but all stand shoulder-to-shoulder on a broad and abiding love of film.

Continue Reading "SFIFF52—For The Love of Movies: The Story of American Film Criticism"...

I usually turn to Brian Darr at Hell on Frisco Bay to keep apprised of upcoming film-related events in the San Francisco/Bay Area, but as his entries at that site have become infrequent—no doubt because he’s avidly working on his essay and slide show for this summer’s upcoming San Francisco Silent Film Festival—I turn to Michael Hawley and film-415 to nudge me towards this screening or that. My thanks to Michael for sharing his previews with Twitch.

Continue Reading "Michael Hawley Looks Ahead"...

Elliot Lavine, former programming director for the Roxie Film Center, helped set new standards for art house cinemas with his film noir festivals, classic revivals and popular premieres.  In conjunction with the anticipated publication of TV Noir: I Wake Up Dreaming, Lavine returns to the Roxie with “two weeks of darkly demented, baffling B budget curios of the American style—most not available on DVD and many not seen in theaters for decades.”  Under the aegis of “I Wake Up Dreaming: The Haunted World of the B Film Noir”, come May 15 through May 28 noir aficionados will be treated to Lavine’s unique curatorial dexterity.  Not only that, but—perhaps in preparation for the Roxie’s 100th birthday (check out Cinema Treasures historical purview)—seats from the recently-demolished Coronet have been installed for greater viewing comfort.

The entire line-up for “I Wake Up Dreaming: The Haunted World of the B Film Noir” can be found at the Roxie’s official website where—as indicated—“From 1990 until 2003, San Francisco’s Roxie Theater enjoyed a reputation as being the foremost venue in the entire Bay Area for the absolute best in quality, esoteric film noir.”  What, one might question, distinguishes Lavine’s noir festival from Eddie Muller’s highly successful and popular Noir City venued at the Castro?  “The focus of this series,” the Roxie’s website asserts, “is the shadowy and gritty world of the B noir.  These are not the glitzy and glamorous classics most filmgoers are familiar with.  Rather, they are the doomed and forgotten, rough and ready step-children of Hollywood’s lower depths; poverty row gems that, in many ways, capture the true, brutal essence of noir far better than many of their upper-crust cousins.”  That, in itself, isn’t much of a distinction from Noir City whose programs in recent years have included several of the titles appearing in the Roxie line-up.  Clearly, then, the distinction must be the Roxie itself and Lavine’s program ends up being something of a devoted noir valentine to the venue.  To paraphrase, the Roxie captures the true, brutal essence of noir in contrast to its upper crust cousin the Castro Theatre.  I’m being facetious of course.  By way of Noir City at the Castro, the Pacific Film Archive, and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, noir, pulp and grindhouse have gained a heightened profile on the San Franciscan cinematic landscape.  It’s almost as if one film noir festival is too many while two is simply not enough.

Continue Reading "I WAKE UP DREAMING: THE HAUNTED WORLD OF THE B FILM NOIR—The Devil Thumbs A Ride (1947)"...

Last year at this time the lady-friend and I were putting together the final preparations for a trip to Italy.  The purpose?  To visit the Udine Far East Film Festival, then entering its tenth edition, a festival that immediately lived up to its reputation as one of the very greatest showcases of Asian film on the planet.  They’ve got a good thing going in Udine, an event that not only has great films and a great theater but also has a very well deserved reputation for its hospitality and for how relaxed and easily accessible all the talent that attend are.  This isn’t one of those festivals that features a bunch of suits in business mode, this is where people come because they love film.  We had a spectacular time and I’m more than a little upset that I wasn’t able to work it into my schedule for this year. 

And my degree of upset just rose considerably with the announcement of the full lineup for the 11th edition of the festival.  They’ve got the world premiere of Miki Satoshi’s Instant Numa, the international premiere of Wilson Yip’s Ip Man; Dante Lam’s fantastic Beast Stalker; the European premiere of Mouly Surya’s Fiksi; a Thai action day featuring Ong Bak 2, Chocolate, Som Tum and Fireball; a day devoted to Ann Hui plus the proverbial so much more.

Check out the complete announcement below the break!

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The World Premiere of Carlos Sorín‘s La Ventana (The Window) at the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival came and went as quietly as the film’s narrative about the last day in the life of Antonio, an 80-year-old writer awaiting the visit of his estranged son on his hacienda in northern Patagonia. As he takes stock and reminisces, he looks out the window at his fields, the sun, the buzzing life that beckons him even as it fades before his eyes. Distinguished Argentine filmmaker Carlos Sorín once again trains his camera on the small stories written by life, on the humanity behind human beings. By casting the great Uruguayan writer and scriptwriter Antonio Larreta in the lead role, Sorín establishes a link between fiction and reality that makes the protagonist’s fears, hopes and wishes even more palpable. Larreta won the Premio Planeta (the second most valuable literary award in the world after the Nobel Prize) for his 1980 novel Volavérunt.

Favorably reviewed by John Anderson at Variety who affirmed that “Sorín has constructed a reflective poem, one that’s never solemn, always insightful and sometimes hilarious”, Anderson also wrote that so much of the film’s charm and art lies between the lines. “It’s a film that needs to be actively watched, not passively experienced,” he advised sagely. Sorín’s “elegant” tale “mines a rich, deep vein of melancholy and humor.”

La Ventana went on to win the FIPRESCI prize at the 2008 Valladolid International Film Festival, where Sorín was likewise nominated for the Golden Spike Award. I was delighted when Bavaria International advised that the film had been picked up for distribution by Film Movement, who gave La Ventana its North American premiere at the 2009 Palm Springs International Film Festival, with a subsequent screening at the San Diego Latino Film Festival. Of related interest, La Ventana will screen in the World Cinema section of the 2009 San Francisco International Film Festival, where Jeremy Quist writes: “Sorín tells one of his ‘minimal’ stories here, as he did with his earlier masterpiece, Historias Mínimas, in which a series of seemingly inconsequential moments and details ultimately come together in a synthesis of life-affirming beauty.”

My thanks to Stephen Lan and Bavaria International for making Sorín available for a brief interview while attending the Toronto International.

Continue Reading "LA VENTANA (THE WINDOW)—Interview With Carlos Sorín"...