San Francisco International Film Festival 2013 (year 56)

[Chris Knipp]

Belmin Söylemez: PRESENT TENSE (2012)

Söylemez, who previously made documentaries, focuses in her debut feature on a young woman recently divorced living on the edge in Istanbul. About to be evicted, she gets a job as a fortune teller in a cafe reading coffee grounds, and converts what money she has into dollars to go to America, a dream that may not happen. Sanem Öge, the restrained, sad-faced actress who plays the lead, looks like Juliette Binoche and Austrian dp Peter Roehsler provides beautiful images (he leans toward turquoise, yellow, and pale green) that are a continual pleasure to watch.

[Chris Knipp]

Mike Ott: PEARBLOSSOM HIGHWAY (2012)

Mike Ott is a fine super-indie American filmmaker whose previous (second) feature, LITTLEROCK (2010) won a raft of awards, for understandable reasons, and this one uses the same general setting and some of the same main actors in slightly different roles, focusing on a young Japanese woman and a would-be artist/rock star who drinks and smokes too much. They are Atsuko Okatsuko, who co-wrote both films, and Cory Zacharia, who stars in both films. A fourth feature using much the same company is coming next year, LAKE LOS ANGELES. LITTLEROCK is on Netflix instant play, and I recommend it.

[Chris Knipp]

Michel Franco: AFTER LUCIA/DESPUÉS DE LUCÍA (2012)

A coldly filmed art-house-style shocker, and therefore compared to Haneke (I'm not suggesting that's justified), Cannes Un Certain Regard winner and Mexico's entry in the Best Foreign Oscar lists. About bullying at a posh Mexico City school, and other stuff that happens afterwards. It is bold and effective, at least the last half, but don't look for Haneke's puzzlement and intelligence. I guess this is another Mexican director to watch for, even if warily.

[cinemabon]

Just superior stuff, Chris. Can't begin to express my appreciation and gratitude for the this level of work.

On the technical side, I'd like to ask about digital presentation. As we move further away from film as a medium and move toward digital recording and digital projection, I wondered how many films were projected without the use of the motion picture film as a medium (if you know). Digital films are far more diverse when it comes to mobility, cost, transfer, editing, and distribution as well as presentation. For doc filmmakers (and the SFFS seems to have a plethora) this is a godsend as shooting ratios can be high and digital formats simple erased and used over and over, transferring only shots that matter to the final cut.

I believe most film schools around the country and around the world have kissed 16mm film goodbye in favor of DSLR, Red Camera, 4X, and other digital formats. Is the same true with the International crowd at this festival?

[Chris Knipp]

Thanks for the compliment.

As for film vs. digital, surely digital has won out but some still use film, though except for 16mm it has become a luxury. This is a big topic about which I know relatively little. I can't give you a rundown on all the films and how they were projected. Festival quality auditoriums have to remain able to show film or digital formats and classics are still shown sometimes on newly cut films. I mention in my review of COMPUTER CHESS (Andrew Bualski) that it's a jokey response to the colleagues who've urged him to switch to digital, because it's video, but a very antique kind of it; he has a few minutes in 16mm color. Obviously most small budget films are greatly assisted by using digital because of saving on processing and film and bigger budget filmmakers like being able to shoot through without all the pauses reels of tape require. However some still do use film. I can't give specifics. If you look up and can find a review of the film in Variety, it usually gives all the specs, and so would a dedicated website for the particular movie. I cringed slightly when you went on recently about how much better digital is than film, it doesn't have the scratches, etc. Film is beautiful and it has a different look. Digital tends to be harsher. Digital also creates an odd effect at night. It banishes some of the mystery. I don't think Kubrick could have shot BARRY LYNDON as he did on digital. Some films made now shot on 16mm by sophisticated cinematographers tends to have richer, more unusual colors. When CD's came along they were heralded as the great new thing. But later it turned out that vinyl has fuller, richer sound. Converting sound and image to pixels causes more loss of information. However, digital can look really great sometimes, obviously. It's just that it's not simply "better." It's more convenient. I personally miss working in the darkroom. Don't you? But I don't exactly miss the toxic smells, or the mess.

A guy I know in New York called Jack Angstreich, who was the main character in the documentary CINEMAPHILIA, is a fanatic about projection. His concern is not whether a film was shot in digital or in film, but that it be projected in the format appropriate to how it was made. Somebody like Jack could tell you a lot more than I can but he's not around, I'm in California. When (bigger budget) films are shot in film, they are usually transferred to digital now and edited in digital. Nobody wants to cut an paste film anymore. But then they are transferred back to film. It gets too complicated for me, because there are various combinations.

[Chris Knipp]

In a forum about the survival of film it's pointed out that MAD MEN and LAW AND ORDER, the TV series, are still shot on film, then transferred to digital. (As I mentioned, pretty much everything is transferred to digital for the editing phase.)

Somebody else on that forum says THE HURT LOCKER was shot mostly on Super 16mm, ditto BLACK SWAN. Christopher Nolan and Spielberg are using film. Cinemascope and iMAx movies are shot on film stock.

Sports are shot on film (NFL games) at 120 fps to allow for slow motion replays. Film has up till recently, they say, been superior for slow motion.

THE DARK KNIGHT RISES and ARGO were shot on film. Nolan made a plea for 35mm film, which the Hollywood studios are trying to squash. This LA Weekly article describe the concern about having film wiped out.

David Lynch deliberately switched to digital but used an expensive consumer grade camera for INLAND EMPIRE, which gives it a weird shitty look. He said he would never go back to film because of the shortening of takes and all the trouble and expense with film.

It is true that most still photographers have switched to digital, but it is still possible to shoot in film, and people are still doing it, for a reason, the look, as I've mentioned. Film has beauties that are lost with digital.

3D films are shot in digital and projected with 3D projectors.

[Chris Knipp]

Stay tuned on this thread. I will be reviewing more SFIFF films in the following week. These will include:

Penance, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Japan, 300 min. This is a recent TV miniseries said to be great.
Sofia’s Last Ambulance, Ilian Metev, Germany, 75 min. Documentary, nitty gritty stuff.
Our Homeland, Yang Yong-hi, Japan, 100 min. I may not be able to see this.
Rosie, Marcel Gisler, Switzerland, 106 min. Wry humor.
The Cold War, Longman Leung, Sunny Luk, Hong Kong, 102 min. Hong Kong gangster flick with big stars.
In the Fog, Sergei Loznitsa, Russia, Belarus, Germany, etc., 128 min. WWII drama, won FIPRESCI Prize at Cannes 2012.
Big Sur, Michael Polish, US, 90 min. About Jack Kerouac's stays at Ferlinghetti's cabin on the California coast.
Chimeras, Mika Mattila, Finland, 86 min. Doc about two contemporary Chinese artist.
Tall As the Baibab Tree, Jeremy Teicher, US/Senegal, 83 min. About fighting arranged marriage. Very young director.
Possible:
Populaire, Régis Roinsard, France, 110 min. Fifties period charmer, was opening nighter of the R-V but we didn't get to see it.

[Chris Knipp]

Marcel Gisler: ROSIE (2013)

This gay interest plus family issues interest Swiss film ia about a cynical gay novelist who must return from long years in Berlin to deal with the health problems of his aging mother in a small Swiss town. This leads to closer relations with family, revealed famlily secrets, and young love. Hooray! Many nominations at the Swiss film awards and Sibylle Brunner, who plays Rosie, won the Best Actress award, but it could not compete with last year's terrific Swiss film, Ursula Meier's SISTER, a Best Foreign Oscar finalist which won top prize.

[Chris Knipp]

Longman Leung, Sunny Luk: COLD WAR (2013)

This ultra-slick Hong Kong police drama is by two new directors but features some famous names such as Andy Lau and Tony Leung Ka-fai as well as some new hotshots, especially Aaron Kwok (who takes the lead) as managerial deputy commissioner and Aarif Rahman as a cocky young ICAC investigator. It's in two parts, a somewhat botched operation (dubbed "Cold War") to deal with a hostage situation, with an almost Shakespearean powere conflict over who shall be in charge -- and second half that goes off on a whole new tack with a complicated investigation of a possible "mole" and internal wrongdoing. The aim seems to be a return to the kind of "mole" police drama featured in the ultra-successful INFERNAL AFFAIRS series on which Scorsese's THE DEPARTED was based. There are a lot of good scenes, but the analytical, yet violent with explosions, second half is so cut off from the first half, something seems wrong. It's all shiny glass and steel and chiseled rooms and faces here. Makes you miss the old days of John Woo and Wong Kar-wai when things were grittier.

[Chris Knipp]

Here's a change of pace again.

Jeremy Teicher: TALL AS THE BAOBAB TREE (2012)

Teicher, who is only 23 and a recent Dartmouth College graduate, shot this film in a Senegalese village where he was known and had established close contact via visits over a four-year period partly making a short documentary, and he uses state of the art digital equipment and local people in a quiet drama about an underage girl in an arranged marriage used to pay medical expenses. Despite sensitive use of non-actors and the gorgeous imagesthe action is a bit too low key for most viewers, but the film has drawn international attention and been shown at Montreal, London, and other fests and clearly Teicher is a precocious talent.

[Chris Knipp]

Sergei Loznitsa: IN THE FOG (2012)

Everybody's a bit confused about what they should do and what's right in this WWII three-hander set when the Germans are fighting a long fight against the partisans in Belarus. Winner of the FIPRESCI prize at Cannes, it may be just a bit too simple. As in the director's 2010 Cannes fiction feature debut MY JOY, which went haywire but was more original, Loznitsa stages a striking crowd scene covered in a continuous tracking shot. The rest becomes a rather long slog, though there are clearly admirers, and Strand Releasing has bought this for some sort of US distribution. Hence I am only giving a preview at this time.

[Chris Knipp]

Mika Matilla: CHIMERAS (2012)

A handsome, elegant documentary about two post-Mao Chinese artists of two different generations and very different styles and personalities who both wrestle with the basic question: Chinese contemporary art has lost its roots in ancient Chinese culture. And contemporary art is dominated by Western art. Contemporary art is Western. Matilla is a cinematographer for documentaries of Finnish origin long resident in Beijing. His understanding and access inform this thought-provoking film, which just debuted in Toronto.

[Chris Knipp]

R.I.P. MITCHELL BANKS


Mitchell Banks by CK

Mitch Banks was an international film distributor, film and Torah scholar whom I watched press & industry screenings with at Lincoln Center events for the past seven years. We sat together on the back bench at the Walter Reade Theater. I've just learned he died of a massive heart attack a day or so ago (April 29, 2013). Information about him online is hard to find - he was not an Internet person - but luckily there is this video

Mitchell Banks on Amtrak & Montreal Film Festival ~ Stephen Holt Show

Watch it and you'll get a gliimpse of this brilliant, knowledgeable, passionate, articulate and devout man who loved cinema, knew everybody, and had stories to tell about filmmakers and actors, especially the French ones he particularly loved. I learned a lot from him and he was incredible company. I'll miss him terribly.

His company was M&L Banks International. His funeral in Thursday May 2nd 9:30AM @ Riverside Memorial Chapel 180 W. 76th St., NYC. Thanks to Peter Hargove, Kurt Brokow, and Nora Lee Mandel for passing on this information.

[Chris Knipp]

Ilian Metev: SOFIA'S LAST AMBULANCE (2012)

A fly-on-the-wall documentary of a three-person ambulance crew in Bulgaria, where the system is so bad there are only 13 ambulances for two million people, and they ones they have aren't working too well. HD cameras were stapled to the dashboard and the young filmmaker, who won a youth prize at Cannes Un Certain Regard in 2012, edited material gathered over a two-year period.

[cinemabon]

Thanks for sharing about Mitchell Banks and his story of the "Blue Angel" and the last surviving print. You are a treasure, mon frère.

Here is a reference to what Michell was referring to in the video:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Langlois