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Thread: San Francisco International Film Festival 2017

  1. #16
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    PARK (Sofia Exarchou 2016)

    New post-Lanthimos generation of Greek art director, serious, earnest, and not very rewarding look at aimless youths spending the summer mostly in the remains of the 2004 Athens Olympics headquarters. Why if as she says this was thoroughly written and carefully directed, is so little really happening? A series of incidents, a pit bull, boys arm wrestling, playing in the shower, mixing with low rent beach tourists. Rob Reiner would give us Stand by Me. Fifties Italians would give us Vitelloni or Accatone. Hou Hsiau-hsien in the early Eighties would give us The Boys from Fengkuei. Andrea Arnold would give us American Honey. What has Exarchou got to give us? A dead pit bull. She admires Harmony Korine and Lucrecia Martel.

    Last edited by Chris Knipp; 04-13-2017 at 05:42 PM.

  2. #17
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    TANIA LIBRE (Lynn Hershman-Leeson 2016)

    A film about Tania Bruguera, a famous, highly provocative Cuban performance artist whose politically charged work has provoked the powers that be in Havana for years.

    Her father was an associate of Castro himself, yet she has been arrested, interrogated and held for months under house arrest with no charges brought. She got released, came to the US (I guess) and did some counseling with a famous specialist in PTSD and the Stockholm Syndrome, Dr. Frank Ockberg, and these sessions were filmed.

    It's not the liveliest or most informative way of presenting the work of Tania Bruguera. I knew nothing about it and would have liked to learn more. But it's a document. And it's sort of an intimate portrait, in a way. Hershman-Leeson will receive the Persistence of Vision award for documentary filmmaking achievement and this film will be shown on the award evening.

    Last edited by Chris Knipp; 04-08-2017 at 02:45 AM.

  3. #18
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    THE LONG EXCUSE/SEISAKU IINAKAI (Miwa Nishikawa 20167)

    A literary/showbiz TV jerk wakes up, sort of, to his caddishness when his wife dies in an accident and he cares for the kids of a fellow widower. This is an acid look at Japanese males by a female director, and it shifts focus interestingly from the jerk to the naive truck driver to the latter's sensitive and rebellious young son. All have something to learn.


  4. #19
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    EL INVIERNO/THE WINTER (Emiliano Torres 2016)

    From Patagonia, frequent AD and writer of screenplays for other Latin American directors Torres makes a promising feature debut with a slow-burning thriller among gauchos in a world going out of style. The storytelling may be conventional and the action slow but he intense atmosphere of the barren spaces seeps deep into your bones and tis is a tale worthy of Cormac McCarthy or Annie Proulx.

    Last edited by Chris Knipp; 04-14-2017 at 02:32 AM.

  5. #20
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    EL MAR LA MAR (Joshua Bonnetta & J.P. Sniadecki 2017)

    Another radical and significant documentary from the Harvard Sensory Ethnography Lab. This is one - focused on the Sonoran Desert that has swallowed up thousands of Mexicans seeking to enter the US - whose political import can't be ignored. It is their most passionate and poetical yet. But its crabwise intensity may still seem of-putting to mainstream viewers.

    [/B]

  6. #21
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    Score: A Film Music Documentary (Matt Schrader 2016)

    This talking heads-doc homage to the big movie composers doesn't encourage questioning the necessity of loud scores manipulating audience reactions minute-to-minute but it might provide a starting point for a debate, as well as being valuable material for a film course.

    Last edited by Chris Knipp; 04-15-2017 at 07:08 PM.

  7. #22
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    THE TRANSFIGURATION (Michael O'Shea 2016)

    A radically realistic teenage vampire movie with a black kid (Eric Ruffin) in a Brooklyn project. Its surprise Cannes Un Certain Regard acceptance led to 19 international festival appearances and now Landmark release which has already begun (NYC Angelika; LA Nuart). This may lead some viewers, or disappointed genre fans, to feel disappointed. But I liked. I was depressed and then I was curiously satisfied by the grim finale.


  8. #23
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    Wed., 19th April: Last day of SFIFF 2017. Top Awards.

    Among many others, Ethan Hawke was honored for his work at the fest. Here is a brief interview with him on YouTube.

    Among the last day's public screenings are Filmleaf-covered Park, The Future Perefct, and Heal the Living. I still have a couple of films to watch - The Death of Louis XIV (already reviewed) and Everything Else. The latter won the main SFIFF Golden Gate narrative feature award. There were also three documentaries awarded Golden Gate awards. See trailers and other SFIFF awards HERE.

    GOLDEN GATE NEW DIRECTORS (NARRATIVE FEATURE) PRIZE
    Winner: Everything Else, Natalia Almada (Mexico/USA/France)
    The Jury Noted: "For its humanism, its consistency of vision, its formal rigor, and its remarkable blend of fiction and non-fiction, we give the New Directors award to Natalia Almada and her film Everything Else."

    MCBAINE DOCUMENTARY FEATURE AWARDS
    Winner: Brimstone & Glory, Viktor Jakovleski (USA)
    The Jury Noted: "Spectacular and visceral, dangerous and spiritual, this high flying documentary transports us into the ecstatic rituals of a Mexican town."

    McBaine Bay Area Documentary Feature Award: The Force, Peter Nicks (USA)
    "For it’s [sic] timely and in-depth examination of the relationship between the police and the community, unafraid to show the complex humanity of all sides of this fraught subject, we give this award to Peter Nicks’ gripping and finely crafted documentary." -Golden Gate Award Jury

    Special Jury Prize: School Life (formerly In Loco Parentis), Neasa Ni Chianeáin, David Rane (Ireland/Spain)
    The jury noted: "The jury would like to give a special jury prize to a movie that take us into an eccentric and idyllic world with intuitive grace and a richly empathetic vision."
    Last edited by Chris Knipp; 04-19-2017 at 10:27 AM.

  9. #24
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    Links to the reviews:

    Bending the Arc (Kief Davidson, Pedro Kos 2016)
    Cinema Travelers, The (Shirley Abraham, Amit Madheshiya 2016)
    Date for Mad Mary, A (Darren Thornton 2016)
    Duet (Navid Danesh 2016)
    El mar la mar (Joshua Bonnetta & J.P. Sniadecki 2017)
    Family Life/Vida de Familia (Cristián Jiménez, Alicia Scherson 2016)
    Heaven Sent/Tombé du ciel(Wissam Charaf 2016)
    Invierno, El/The Winter (Emiliano Torres 2016)
    Long Excuse, The (Miwa Nishikawa 2016)
    Maliglutit/The Searchers (Zacharias Kunuk,Natar Ungalaak 2016)
    Mukti Bhwan/Hotel Salvation (Shubhashish Bhutiani 2016)
    Next Skin, The/La propera pell/La proxima piel (Isa Campo, Isaki Lacuesta 2016)
    Ornithologist, The/O Ornitólogo (João Pedro Rodriguez 2016)
    Park (Sofia Exarchou 2016)
    Score: A Film Music Documentary (Matt Schrader 2016)
    Sieranevada (Cristi Puiu 2016)
    Student, The/(M)uchenik (Kirill Serebrennikov 2016)
    Tania Libre (Lynn Hershman-Leeson 2016)
    Transfiguration, The (Michael O'Shea 2016)
    World Without End (No Reported Incidents) (Jem Cohen 2016)

    As well as these SFIFF films previously reviewed on Filmleaf:
    Beach Rats (Eliza Hittman 2016)
    By the Time It Gets Dark (Anocha Suwichakornpong 2016)
    Challenge, The (Yuri Ancarani 2016)
    Death of Louis XIV, The/La mort de Louis XIV (Albert Sera 2016)
    Endless Poetry/Poesía sin fin (Alejandro Jodorovsky 2016)
    Future Perfect, The/El fuuro perfecto (Nele Wohlatz 2016)
    Heal the Living/Réparer les vivants (Katell Quillévéré 2016)
    Human Surge, The/El auge del humano (Edoardo Williams 2016)
    Lady Macbeth (William Oldroyd 2016)
    Life After Life/Zhi fan ye mao (Zhang Hanyi 2016)
    Nocturama (Bertrand Bonello 2016)
    Paris Opera, The/L'Opéra (Jean-Stéphane Bron 2016)
    Patty Cake$ (Geremy Jasper 2016)
    Stopover, The/Voir du pays (Delphine, Muriel Coulin 2016)




  10. #25
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    SHAH RUKH KHAN

    SFIFF roundup. Here are excerpts from the closing press release.


    San Francisco, CA – SFFILM wrapped the 60th San Francisco International Film Festival (April 5–19) with 249 screenings of 181 films from 51 countries, which were attended by some 200 filmmakers and industry guests from 15 countries. Over two weeks, the 60th SFFILM Festival showed 66 narrative features, 36 documentary features, two New Visions features, two television series, and a total of 75 short films. The Festival awarded nearly $40,000 in prize.

    Audiences warmly embraced the Festival’s new venue configuration, with throngs of film lovers crowding the sidewalks of San Francisco’s South of Market and Mission districts. Spurred by an 8% increase in total event capacity, Festival attendees flocked to the city’s newest and oldest cinema screens—from the Alamo Drafthouse New Mission and new Festival venues SFMOMA and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, to the beloved classic arthouses the Roxie Theater, the Victoria Theatre, and the Castro Theatre—and across the bay to BAMPFA. Festival filmmaker guests and filmgoers alike took advantage of the bustling cultural life of the city, partaking of the countless sources of world-class food, drink, and entertainment. Noah Cowan, SFFILM Executive Director heralded an "amazing your."

    Special guests included Kevin Bacon, Ellen Burstyn, Nancy Pelosi, William R. Hearst III, Usher Raymond IV, Francis Ford Coppola, Pixar/Disney Animation Studios president Ed Catmull, Bill Nye, James Gray, World Bank Persident Dr. Jim Kim (featured in the documentary Bending the Arc), Griffin Dunne, Brett Ratner, Asian Dub Foundation, Matt Bomer, Martin Starr, Katharine Ross, Will Oldham, Maude Apatow, Michael Almereyda, DeVotchKa, Industrial Light & Magic honcho Gigi Gorgeous, John Knoll, Joan Chen, Peter Nicks, Peter Bratt, Dolores Huerta, members of the Kronos Quartet, Alex Wolff, Danielle Macdonald, James Schamus, and Nick Thune, and others.

    Telluride founder Tom Luddy received the Mel Novikoff Award. Visionary Bay Area artist and filmmaker Lynn Hershman Leeson received the Golden Gate Persistence of Vision Award.Other awards went to Eleanor Coppola, Gordon Gund, EThan Hawke, James Ivory, and John Ridley.Thousands of screaming fans flocked to the Castro Theatre to see global superstar, actor, producer, and humanitarian Shah Rukh Khan at his special tribute program.

    Festival Big Nights Were Land Line(opening night), Patti Cake$ (centerpiece) and world premiere of San Francisco fantasia visual collage The Green Fog by Guy Maddin, composer Jacob Garchik, and the Kronos Quartet.

    Award-Winning Films

    Nearly $40,000 in prizes was awarded by Golden Gate Awards juries at the 60th SFFILM Festival ceremony 16 Apr. at The Lab: the $10,000 New Directors feature prize went to Natalia Albada's Everytihg Else, chosen from a field of ten films. Additional cash prizes went to two winners in the competition’s non-fiction feature categories, where 10 films were in juried competition for the McBaine Documentary Feature Award ($10,000) and the McBaine Bay Area Documentary Feature Award ($5,000). The McBaine Documentary Feature Award went to Brimstone & Glory (USA) by Viktor Jakovleski. Special Jury recognition was given to School Life (formerly In Loco Parentis) by Neasa Ní Chianáin and David Rane (Ireland/Spain). The jury presented the McBaine Bay Area Documentary Feature Award to The Force (USA) by Peter Nicks. Best Narrative Short prize went to Univitellin (France) by Terence Nance. Best Documentary Short was presented to The Rabbit Hunt (USA) by Patrick X Bresnan. The GGA for New Visions Short was given to Rawane Nassif’s Turtles Are Always Home (Qatar/Lebanon/Canada). First Prize for Best Bay Area Short went to In The Wake of Ghost Ship (USA) by Jason Blalock, Second Prize was awarded to American Paradise (USA) by Joe Talbot, with a Special Jury Prize to A Brief History of Princess X (Portugal/France/UK) by Gabriel Abrantes. The award for Best Animated Short went to Hot Dog Hands (USA) by Matt Reynolds.

    The award for Best Family Film (another category and jury) went to Valley of a Thousand Hills (South Africa/UK) by Jess Colquhoun. A Special Jury Prize went to Julia Pott’s Summer Camp Island (USA). Golden Gate Award for Youth Works went to Caleb Wild’s Cycle (USA).

    There was a Google Breakthrough in Technology Award was awarded to an individual. .

    The Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature went to Alejandro Jodorowsky’s Endless Poetry (Chile/Japan/France), with Geremy Jasper’s Patti Cake$ (USA) also scoring highly with Festival audiences. Best Doc Audience Award went to Peter Bratt’s Dolores (USA); Rina Castelnuovo-Hollander and Tamir Elterman’s Muhi – Generally Temporary (Israel/Germany)was the runner-up.

    SFFILM Launch films were Andy Goldsworthy purchased by Magnolia Pictures soon after its world premier - as well as Jeff Unay’s The Cage Fighter (USA), Peter Livolsi’s The House of Tomorrow (USA), Rina Castelnuovo-Hollander and Tamir Elterman’s Muhi – Generally Temporary (Israel/Germany), and Sherwin Shilati's People You May Know (USA).

    Live performances

    There were also live performance programs, mainly musical accompaniments of films. George Lucas's THX 1138 was presented eith a live score bAsian Dub Foundation and short films by Jerome Hiler. Director Terence Nance’s presented experimental dual live performances 18 Black Girls / Boys Ages 1–18 Who Have Arrived at the Singularity and Are Thus Spiritual Machines. Dziga Vertov’s 1929 The Man with a Movie Camera was scored by DeVotchKa in a Russian style. And More THINGS in Films feasted festivalgoers for the second year in a row with an evening of stories about objects in films from writers, artists, and filmmakers including writer, artist, and the former creative director of McSweeney's Brian McMullen, Oakland art collective Bonanza, and Headlands Director of Programs Sean Uyehara. The evening was MC'd by Scott Vermeer and his musical sidekick Nick Stargu.

    A notable special event was a presentation of Welles' Citizen Kane followed by a discussion between David Thomson and William Randolph Hearst's grandson. Episodes were presented of Jill Soloway’s new adaptation of Chris Kraus’s provocative book, I Love Dick. Series stars Kevin Bacon and Griffin Dunne joined screenwriter Sarah Gubbins to introduce the special screening to Festival audiences.

    World Cinema Spotlight is a thematic series that brings to light hot topics, reinvigorates genres, celebrates underappreciated filmmakers. This year the focus was on Argentina and included these feature films: Nele Wohlatz’s The Future Perfect, Matías Piñeiro’s Hermia & Helena, Eduardo Williams’s The Human Surge, and Emiliano Torres' [I]The Winter[/I.
    There was lots more, including master classes and a screening room. For the full press release and general information see sffilm.org/festival.

    For more information visit sffilm.org.

    This press release is available online at sffilm.org/press/releases

    Last edited by Chris Knipp; 04-20-2017 at 10:25 PM.

  11. #26
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    Notes. Filmleaf coverage.

    Counting films previously seen and reviewed, Filmleaf has 34 SFIFF 2017 films reviewed on the site.

    I have rewatched Serra's Death of Louis XIV and it is much more impressive and real than his Casanova film. I rewatched, that is, as much as I could bear. AFter it shows the gangrenous leg it becomes grim, and there are 45 minutes left.

    We now have a copy of Viktor Jakovlevski's Everything Else to watch since it won the Golden Gate award, so there may be 35. Peter Nicks's The Force, about the Oakland, California police department, won the documentary award; there were 21 SFIFF awards. Nicks's The Waiting Room (SFIFF 2012), about Oakland's Highland Hospital, was good. No screener of The Force though. Nicks produced his documentaries and also Ryan Coughlan's Fruitvale Station.

    None of the following was a slog, though Everything Else might be, as was Park - and Sieranevada, but that one, around a Romanian wake, directed by Cristi Puiu (of The Death of Mr. Lazarescu) was a Cannes Competition film and alsoe NYFF Main Slate so required viewing. But nearly three hours.

    Truly enjoyable features were:

    Date for Mad Mary (Ireland)
    Winter/El Invierno (Patagonia)
    The Long Excuse (Japan)
    The Next Skin (Spanish Pyrenees)
    and (finally an American one)
    The Transfiguration (Brooklyn)



    Most of these are first features. Some of the other features we covered haven't left much of an impression.

    The most impressive documentaries:

    Bending the Arc - an incredibly impressive, inspiring story
    World Without End (No Reported Incidents) - Jem Cohen has his own brand of outsider visual poetry that I love
    .

    I just saw: ‎Sarah Adina Smith's Buster's Mal Heart, starring the incredible Rami Malek of "Mr. Robot." It may have been made a couple years ago, and Malek signed on for it before "Mr. Robot," it turns out. It may be a tough sell. However, I fought it very intriguing how Smith blends her wierd, wigged out ideas with tricky editing and beautiful cinemaotraphy and sound design and socre. Not an everyday picture. The Transfiguration is similar - not for everyone but very original neorealist story of a black teenage vampire (or does he only deludedly think he's one?), in a remaining Brooklyn ghetto-like project.

    Tomorrow I'm going to finally see James Gray's Lost City of Z, a SFIFF selection, noq out at the local Bay Street cineplex. I'm excited. I missed it in the NYFF (it was in the Main Slate). I am a fan of Charlie Hunnam and of James Gray.
    Last edited by Chris Knipp; 04-20-2017 at 10:26 PM.

  12. #27
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    THE ORNITHOLOGIST/O ORNITÓLOGO (João Pedro Rodrigues 2016)

    Strand Releasing is releasing the film in the US to hit theaters June 23, 2017 (NYC) and June 30 (LA).

    Last edited by Chris Knipp; 07-22-2017 at 02:35 AM.

  13. #28
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    THE TRANSFIGURATION (Michael O'Shea 2017)

    20 July: Strand Releasing has announced they are bringing out The Transfiguration on DVD 8 Aug. 2017.

    Good news for fans of original, realistic vampire movies.


    Last edited by Chris Knipp; 07-22-2017 at 02:35 AM.

  14. #29
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    BENDING THE ARC (Davidson, Kos 2016)

    US theatrical release: Fri. 6 Oct. 2017

    Now in theaters (NYC, San Francisco Bay Area), Landmark Theaters. Important,
    informative doc about Partners in Health, an organization you need to know about. Recommended.

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