Citing last year’s 50th anniversary festival as a “fantastic benchmark” and “a gateway to a brighter future,” SF Film Society Executive Director Graham Legatt and his programming team revealed this year’s equally impressive line-up at a press conference last week.  In a recent Evening Class write-up, I summarized all the special events that had been announced prior to the press conference, to which we can now add the following:

* Errol Morris will receive this year’s Persistence of Vision Award, with an on-stage interview and a screening of his latest work, Standard Operating Procedure.

* The Maurice Kanbar Award for screenwriting will go to Robert Towne, who will be interviewed on stage by Eddie Muller prior to a screening of Shampoo.

* This year’s State of Cinema Address will be given by Kevin Kelly, founding executive editor of Wired magazine and former editor/publisher of the Whole Earth Catalog.

* Rose McGowen and Jason Lee are to be the recipients of this year’s (2nd annual) Midnight Awards, presented to an actor and actress “entering the prime of their careers.”

That same pre-press conference write-up contained the Cinema by the Bay and Castro Theater roster of films.  We now know what the other 80-plus programs worth of narrative and documentary features will be, and it’s quite something—full of movies I’d been hoping the festival would bring our way.  I’ve had a week to digest the line-up and now offer this overview of what I personally find exciting about SFIFF51.

Continue Reading "SFIFF51—Michael Hawley Previews The Lineup"...

Oh John Rambo. You had me at, ‘They drew first blood… ’. Since them it’s been a bullet a second action with you. And Lionsgate Home Entertainment, lord bless them, they must have heard my prayers each night because they are bringing out all four of your movies in a nifty tin can edition. Raise your bowie knives to the heavens, John Rambo is coming to a home near you. Pray you didn’t piss him off!

Here’s the skinny. On May 27th you’re going have a choice of Rambo never conceived before. The fourth film, conveniently titled Rambo, comes out in its own Standard, 2-Disc Special Edition and Blue-ray versions [SRP: $29.95, $34.98 and $39.99]. On the same day there is also Rambo: The Complete Collector’s Set [pictured left] which includes all four films, all of the features from previous editions and a digital copy of the fourth film on 6 discs [SRP: $54.98]. That would be perfect for anyone who does not have any Rambo film on DVD.

Once we have links to Amazon we’ll let you know. Follow for all the cover art. [via]

The Band’s Visit is a warm, humanistic “night in the life” story that sidesteps the most obvious sentimental traps. The characters depicted in the film are gentle, sweet, beguiling, and droll. They are people who have survived the years by embracing their own mortality.

The Israeli picture gained a degree of publicity after the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences disqualified it for consideration in the Best Foreign-Language Film category because its “dialogue track” was not “predominantly non-English.” Rules are rules, but this rule in particular highlights how ridiculous the category has become; combined with the failure of the Academy to recognize the acclaimed 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days, along with other historical factors, it’s become crystal clear that the category should be abolished.

Meanwhile, Sony Pictures Classics is steadily rolling The Band’s Visit out across the U.S., finally reaching my current home area in Dallas, Texas this weekend, and I couldn’t be happier.

Director Eran Kolirin demonstrates an exquisite eye for color and composition. My first point of reference was Bent Hamer’s Kitchen Stories, representing the cooler shade of the temperature spectrum: pale blue uniforms set against metallic surfaces with a greenish tint, softly diffused to avoid any hint of arid harshness.

Continue Reading "Review: THE BAND’S VISIT Strikes the Right Chord"...

The critically acclaimed movie by Turgut Yasalar, Sis ve Gece (Fog and Night) (2007) has recently got a DVD release in Turkey, from D Productions. Sis ve Gece is a political crime drama based on a best-seller novel by Ahmet Umit. It tells the story of Sedat, a mid-aged secret service agent as he searches for his missing girlfriend Mine, in the political turmoil of ‘70s Turkey.  Shot in tones of gray, the movie seems successful in reflecting the period’s atmosphere. The production values look impressive from the trailer. DVD extras include a making-of documentary, interviews with Turgut Yasalar (director) and Ahmet Umit (writer) and the theatrical trailer. Subtitles are available in Turkish, English and German.

Variety has leaked the line-up for the 19th Annual Palm Springs International Film Festival. With a nod to the upcoming Oscars, PSIFF’s “Awards Buzz” program will screen 55 of the 63 official submissions to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences for foreign-language film. This is my main incentive for attending PSIFF and I welcome any feedback from Twitch readers regarding the “Awards Buzz” selection.

In usual obsessive fashion, I’ve scoured the film review lists for Strictly Film School, Long Pauses, Film Journey, and (of course) my own Twitch teammates and have linked reviews when relevant. I’ve also linked all Wikipedia synopses, which usually include IMdb profiles; but, in those instances where they don’t, I’ve linked in IMdb as well, particularly for their external reviews and user comments. In those instances where The Greencine Daily has crafted a film-specific critical overview, I have linked those in as well.

Continue Reading "PSIFF08—Foreign Language Oscar Submissions"...

Michael Hawley, contributing writer to The Evening Class, offers the Twitch readership anticipatory remarks to the upcoming Palm Springs International Film Festival.

The 19th Palm Springs International Film Festival ("PSIFF") is set to begin in two weeks, and although the full 230-film line-up won’t be announced until December 23, bits and pieces of what we might expect to see from January 3 to 14 have recently been brought to light.

The three International Gala titles announced thus far are Fatih Akin’s The Edge of Heaven, Joseph Cedar’s Beaufort and Danielle Luchetti’s My Brother is an Only Child.  Akin’s film will also be the opening the Bay Area’s Berlin & Beyond festival on January 10, leading me to believe that the director himself will soon be California-bound to support the film at both festivals.  The Edge of Heaven, for which Akin won a Best Screenplay award at Cannes, is Germany’s official entry for this year’s Best Foreign Language Film Oscar.

Cedar’s Beaufort, you may recall, became Israel’s Oscar entry after their first choice—Eran Kolirin’s The Band’s Visit—was disqualified for having too much English dialogue.  Both films, however, will screen at Palm Springs this year as part of a spotlight series celebrating Israel’s 60th anniversary.

Continue Reading "PSIFF08—Anticipating Palm Springs"...

The Global Film Initiative announced today that seven filmmakers have been awarded completion funding for their film projects during the Initiative’s Fall granting-cycle.  “This Fall’s grant-recipients represent a diverse spectrum of global filmmaking,” says Santhosh Daniel, Director of Programs.  “We’re very impressed by the high quality of projects, and the cultural breadth they represent.”

The 7 projects were selected from a group of 44 applications, from 26 different countries, for their artistic excellence, accomplished storytelling, and cultural perspective on daily life around the world.  Funds received from grants are used to subsidize post-production costs, such as laboratory and sound mixing fees, and access to advanced editing systems.

Since its founding in 2002, the Initiative has awarded more than 50 grants to emerging and established filmmakers from Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East.

Continue Reading "GLOBAL FILM INITIATIVE—Seven Projects Awarded Funds"...

In her first feature film Barakat! (Enough!, 2006), documentary filmmaker Djamila Sahraoui creates a compelling tribute to the human spirit, specifically inflected through feminine resiliency and camaraderie.

Winner of Best Original Score, Best Screenplay, and the Oumarou Ganda Award for Best First Work at the 2006 Ouagadougou Panafrican Film and Television Festival (FESPACO), Sahraoui’s victory was all the more noteworthy because Enough! was the only film of the 20 considered produced by a woman.

As Nathan Southern synopsizes for All Movie Guide:

“Algerian director Djamila Sahraoui’s sobering drama Barakat! chronicles the plight of Amel, an emergency physician living and working in a small town hospital on the Algerian coast, during that nation’s blood-soaked civil war in 1990.  One evening, Amel returns home to discover that her husband has vanished without a trace.  Inferring that he was abducted and taken underground by a group of militant Islamic terrorists, Amel confronts the authorities but is promptly snubbed and given the runaround.  Refusing to be deterred, Amel vows to head for the war-torn surrounding foothills and locate the man herself.  An older woman who lives nearby, Khadidja, once fought for Algerian independence against the French as a young girl; she insists on joining Amel.  Though the women discover massive differences between themselves in outlook, politic, and breadth of experience, they quickly realize that they need to stick together and resolve minor disagreements if they are to confront the enemy successfully.”

Continue Reading "2007 GLOBAL LENS: ALGERIAN CINEMA—REVIEW of Barakat! (Enough!)"...

I’d be hard-pressed to outdo Robert Avila’s outstanding SF360 preview of Global Lens 2007.  As a member of the GFI board, I am grateful for his accomplished outreach.  This year’s dynamic, community-based screening schedule truly achieves GFI’s mission to—as Susan Weeks Coulter describes it—"link local communities through these films and create a cinematic experience that can be shared by everyone.”

Spanning eight neighborhoods and thirteen venues, Global Lens 2007 launched on November 1st and continues through November 16th.  The series opened at St. Dominic’s and St. John’s churches (Pacific Heights and Richmond District), and continues with screenings across the city, including the Bayview Opera House (Bayview), Roxie Film Center and El Rio (Mission), San Francisco Art Institute ("SFAI", North Beach), and San Francisco State University ("SFSU").

As part of new and ongoing partnerships with the Initiative, the San Francisco Film Society will also host daytime, educational screenings for high school students at the de Young Museum, and the Mexican Heritage Plaza (San Jose) will screen the entire series, as well as host educational film screenings, during the month of December.  “Collaboration, which is reflected in our partnerships, is an extension of our mission to support film communities locally and worldwide,” says Santhosh Daniel, Director of Programs at The Global Film Initiative.

The premiere of Global Lens 2007 marks the second time the Initiative has taken a collaborative approach to its series in the Bay Area.  Last year, Global Lens screened in five locations and this year’s expansion reflects the Initiative’s continuing mission to foster the growth of vibrant independent film communities through innovative presentations of Global Lens.

Following is the ongoing Bay Area schedule for Global Lens 2007.  As I’ve already specified, I’ll be introducing films at the Roxie Film Center (except for Another Man’s Garden, which will be introduced by Cornelius Moore of California Newsreel).

Continue Reading "2007 GLOBAL LENS—Line-up"...

In the shadow of the grand AFM and AFI events currently taking place this weekend in Los Angeles, another festival with similar initials, AFF, is kicking off.  The Arab Film Festival from October 31st through November 4th is happening in Los Angeles this weekend at the WRITERS GUILD THEATER. This is a festival that, while smaller in scope and reach than the monster festival, may have more global importance than any other film gathering in town this week.  I know, it’s a bold statement, but hey, I’m a bold girl. 

Good stuff in the line-up.  All L.A. Premieres.

Centerpiece Screening of FALAFEL epitomizes the notion that, maybe they’re not so different than us?  Hot girls, parties, yummy food in Beirut – and a good storyline to boot! 

Also, there are a couple of great docs, both interesting and really important.

USA VS AL-ARIAN – Sami Al-Arian was a Florida State professor and a Palestinian activist who was charged with terrorism by the US Government after 9/11.  Held in jail for 2 years, when he finally went to trial he was acquitted on every count. Yet, even then, he was still unable to go free.  Wherever you may fall on the question of Israel/Palestine, this movie is a chilling portrait of the current state of the American justice system and freedom of speech.

I LOVE HIP HOP IN MOROCCO – The name basically speaks for itself, but it’s an incredibly fun doc that also manages to show how kids in Morocco are using hip hop as an avenue to fight for their rights.

SALATA BALADI – The antidote to the idea of ‘us against them,” this Egyptian doc follows one family as they explore the their diverse ethnic and religious background made up of Italians, Palestinians, Egyptians, Israelis, Russians, Turks, Christians, Jews and Muslims.  The name, which translates as both “Egyptian Salad” and “Mixed Salad” captures the tone perfectly.

Oh yeah, and the filmmakers are going to be at all of these screenings.

Tickets and details:  Arab Film Festival

Launched in 2006 and supported by the European Union, the Caravan of Euro-Arab Cinema sponsored a series of cinematic events (aptly named “Caravan Nights") in various European and Mediterranean cities earlier this year. Focusing on Lebanese cinema, Caravan Nights presented 11 films produced between 2000 and 2006, representing established directors with unique approaches and up-and-coming directors making their feature-film debut. The screened films reflected the uniqueness of Lebanese film production less concerned with traditional issues and heavily influenced by the diaspora from Lebanon. During May and June, the Caravan traveled through the Netherlands where it attracted 4,500 filmgoers and screened Arab films in Amsterdam, Rotterdam and other Dutch cities. It also participated with 11 films in all four competitive categories of June’s 7th Arab Film Festival in Rotterdam. In July the Caravan was represented at the 5th Paris Cinema Festival at the Arab World Institute, where it then moved on to the Toulouse Cinématheque.

San Francisco’s Arab Film Festival brought three of these Lebanese features—Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige’s A Perfect Day (2005), Michel Kammoun’s Falafel (2006), and Ghassan Salhab’s The Last Man (2006)—to the Bay Area. Each employed Beirut at night as their mise-en-scène and shared common themes, albeit by individual stylistic flourishes. Kammoun, the youngest of the directors, explored a magical realism unique to the Mideast through Falafel; Salhab enunciated Beirut’s death wish through The Last Man; and Hadjithomas and Joreige used A Perfect Day to profile the foolish hope of a Lebanese youth who decides to live life his way.

Continue Reading "2007 AFF: LEBANESE CINEMA—A Perfect Day, Falafel and The Last Man"...

Lotfi Abdelli is a charismatic, handsome young Tunisian who carries himself confidently. His left eyebrow is accented by a diagonal scar. The award-winning actor for the Arab Film Festival’s opening night feature Making Of was detained for five hours at San Francisco International Airport upon his arrival. We met in the newly-situated AFF offices to discuss the incident with artistic director Sonia El Feki graciously providing translation (when allowed). Abdelli, who has joked that he has spent five thousand Arab dollars learning English, insisted upon practicing. Thus, I have elected to retain the charm of his broken English out of respect for his accomplished effort.

Continue Reading "2007 AFF: MAKING OF—The Evening Class Interview With Lotfi Abdelli"...

If Lotfi Abdelli’s award-winning turn as Bahta in Nouri Bouzid’s Making Of wins you over to his promising talent, you might want to check out as well his brief appearance in the U.S. premiere of Lotfi Achour’s debut short film Ordure / Garbage (2007), wherein Abdelli plays a butcher who gives his girlfriend “full blows to shut her up and full condoms to make up for it.” Abdelli applies the brooding intensity maximized in Making Of to his swift and questionably attractive characterization of the butcher in Garbage. The pitch of his intensity is reminiscent of early DeNiro in Taxi Driver or Edward Norton in American X. Abdelli’s got the chops, the looks, the conflicted sensuality, and a long future to hone it perfect.

The lead actor in Achour’s short slice of life, however, is Nôomane Hamda as Mounir, a night watchman who becomes comforted in his life of isolation and loneliness by the strange passion he cultivates for rubbish left behind by his neighbor Latifa, with whom he is secretly in love. Mounir takes possession of Latifa’s garbage and becomes the secret witness of her life, which is anything but dull. This raises the ugly head of what I discussed with Cartoneros director Ernesto Livon-Grosman: just how private is our garbage anyways?

Cross-published on The Evening Class.

At the 2006 Carthage Film Festival—the biannual October film festival hosted by the government of Tunisia—Nouri Bouzid’s Making Of won the festival’s grand prize: the Tanit d’or, or “Golden Tanit” (named for the lunar goddess of ancient Carthage; the award is in the shape of her symbol).

As the opening night feature of the 11th Annual Arab Film Festival ("AFF"), Making Of offers Bay Area audiences an intriguing conceit: Brecht in Tunisia. As the AFF program capsule cites: “Nouri Bouzid shows the audience the parallels between the creation or ‘making of’ a suicide bomber from an apolitical young man, and the direction of an actor in a controversial role that both he and his director are uncomfortable with. Thus, director Bouzid stages a debate within his own film concerning the causes of terrorism and the burdens on those (like him and his cast) who are bold enough to try to represent it in cinema.” True to Brecht, the film makes you think more than feel and encourages argument about the ideas it suggests. Breaking the proscenium allows the ideas to gain a staged complexity.

Continue Reading "2007 AFF—REVIEW of Making Of"...

Michael Hawley is a contributing writer at The Evening Class and has offered up a preview sampling of this year’s Arab Film Festival for Twitch readers.

The Arab Film Festival ("AFF") is one of the essential reasons why film-going in the Bay Area is so rich. But please don’t call it the Bay Area Arab Film Festival or even the San Francisco Arab Film Festival—it’s simply THE Arab Film Festival, the largest of its kind in the nation. This year’s edition (the festival’s 11th) features an impressive selection of 44 narrative and documentary features, a like number of shorts, and will take place from October 18-28 in San Francisco, Berkeley and San Jose. Then in a festival first, the whole show will travel south to Los Angeles for a five-day run starting October 31.

Continue Reading "2007 AFF—Michael Hawley’s Preview"...