SFIFF 2015 - links and comments thread

[Chris Knipp]

San Francisco International Film Festival 58 - April 23-May 7, 2015



Opening, Centerpiece, and Closing films announced for SFIFF 2015



SFIFF58 BIG NIGHTS REVEALED AND ON SALE TO SFFS MEMBERS NOW
We are excited to announce the Opening, Centerpiece and Closing films anchoring the 58th San Francisco International Film Festival. This year, Alex Gibney's intelligent and surprising documentary Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine will kick off the program; The End of the Tour, a moving biographical drama about writer David Foster Wallace will play as SFIFF's Centerpiece film; and Experimenter, in which Peter Sarsgaard gives a stellar performance as controversial social psychologist Stanley Milgram, will close out the Festival.
Full program announced March 31. Members only onsale noon March 31; public onsale noon April 3.

[Chris Knipp]

31 March 2015: SFIFF 58 program announced at press conference. Tickets go on sale to SFFS members.

- SFIFF 2015 FULL PROGRAM (PDF file)
- FILM FINDER
- SFIFF 58 WEBSITE
- Filmleaf's Festival Coverage thread for SFIFF 2015


31 March press conference

[Chris Knipp]

The SFIFF isn't in Indiewire's 2012 list of ten best festivals (Cannes, Sundance, Toronto, South by Southwest, Internat'l Doc Fest. Amsterdam, Venice, Berlin, Rotterdam, New York and Telluride, they did have some very good things to say about it:

San Francisco International Film Festival
The oldest event of its kind in the United States, "the International," as organizers affectionately refer to it, is also the preeminent film festival in Northern California. While not typically considered a "discovery festival" (one where you may expect to find prominent unseen work), the festival showcases a fantastic round of international and domestic fare with 150 feature films programmed. The festival also organizes an annual awards night that has drawn the biggest who's who in the film world, and why not? San Francisco is one of America's most beautiful, diverse, and welcoming cities. Its locals are great appreciators of art, and the city is the second biggest consumer of foreign-language film. The International uses venues that range from decent to fantastic, including the historic Castro Theatre. Perhaps the one thing that is a bit lacking (and this is true of many festivals) has been a central area where attendees can gather for social time between screenings. Still, SFIFF is a gem, and the curation and the city itself are tops. [Indiewire - Brian Brooks]

NB: Indiewire noted the NYFF isn't a "discovery film festival" either, though they found its selectivity made it a "cultural beacon of record." The SFIFF is a more conventional panoramic-style fest, but a good one and the only big general one I have any access to, however that access may be limited.

[Chris Knipp]

Upcoming reviews/previews of SFIFF 2015.
Scroll down for links to the Festival Coverage
reviews as they come


Tawfeek Barhom in A Borrowed Identity

The Taking of Tiger Mountain (Tsui Hark)

Stylist and genre-tweaker Hark takes on the war film here showing a standoff and battle between communists and warlords after the end of World War II. "Inspired by a Mao-era "model opera" to Communist ingenuity and bravery, Tsui deploys eye-popping 3-D effects and ingenious CGI to retell this story as sly political thriller and contemporary action extravaganza." -- SFIFF blurb (Noah Cowan). "Tsui Hark transforms a Maoist chestnut into The Taking Of Tiger Mountain 3D" (AV Club (Ignatiy Vishnevetsky)

A Borrowed Identity (Eran Riklis)

As the first Arab accepted to a prestigious Jewish boarding school in Jerusalem, young Eyad struggles between two antagonistic worlds to secure an identity. The film adapts Sayed Kashua’s popular semi-autobiographical novel Dancing Arabs for the screen, fashioning an accessible coming-of-age story in an Israel resonant with contemporary cultural unrest. With the assistance of his adopted tribe—his loyal best friend and secret Jewish girlfriend—Eyad distinguishes himself in the classroom, bringing his unique cultural perspective to daily lessons and finding unlikely allies in the process.

Vincent/Vincent n'a pas d'écailles (Thomas Salvador)

A low keyed French super-powers tale of a man who's found that when he comes in contact with water he has the strength of ten men. Starring the filmmaker, who already has a reputation with French critics for the spirit and originality of his shorts.

[Chris Knipp]

THE TAKING OF TIGER MOUNTAIN (Tsui Hark 2014)

Vividly wintery mountainous locations, far-out, cartoonish characters, over-the-top (but technically sub-par) set pieces provide for a middling Tsui Hark effort. Unfortunately plot is important, and we can't survive on mise-en-scène and colorful characters alone, no matter how good. Or can one? Here, from minute to minute, one almost can. Tsui Hark puts on quite a show. But the whole is less than the parts.

[Chris Knipp]

VINCENT/VINCENT N'AS PAS D'ÉCAILLES* (Thomas Salvador 2014)

Low key, low budget films about the supernatural are the most convincing; expensive CGI just reminds us we're at the cineplex. Salvador, a French director already respected by local critics for his short films, stars in his first feature as an ordinary man who is transformed when he enters the water. Salvador plays this shy, exceptional man like a mime, who barely speaks, with a touch of Buster Keaton. Released in France in February, this got high marks -- AlloCiné press rating of 3.9 with top scores from Cahiers du Cinéma and Les Inrockuptibles.

*"Vincent doesn't have scales."

[Chris Knipp]

More upcoming reviews. See links a
nd the Filmleaf SFIFF 2015 Festival
Coverage thread.


Black Coal, Thin Ice

Black Coal, Thin Ice (Diao Yinan)

A noirish crime drama about a surly cop who loses his job after a botched arrest in a bizarre serial killer case. Five years later, now a bloated, drunken security guard, he's drawn back into the case when a similar crime comes his way with a mysterious woman . . . you get the picture. It's a Hong Kong neo-noir, in Mandarin, which won the Golden Bear at the Berlinale last year.

Murder in Pacot (Raoul Peck)

Sexual intrigue and class warfare in the wake of Haiti's 2010 earthquake. "Newcomer Lovely Kermonde Fifi blazes onscreen as Andrémise—her overripe sexuality barely concealing a dexterous cunning—and Alex Descas (star of numerous Claire Denis films) brings typical steely reserve to the role of commanding patriarch. While the drama does eventually erupt into violence, the “murder” in Murder in Pacot is not so much about personal vendetta as it is about the killing of a social order, and even an entire civilization. Left behind to rebuild from the rubble, these lost souls must learn how to renegotiate their landscape, and their very lives" —Michelle Devereaux

[Chris Knipp]

BLACK COAL, THIN ICE (Diao Yinan 2014)

It's a ravishing neo-noir frem Mainland China containing some political and social commentary, sign of a new freedom, perhaps. A rather broken down ex cop investigates serial killings on his own, and falls half in love with the prime suspect. Unfortunately while the editing delivers some stunning shocks, there are also longeurs. Our hero gets bogged down, and so at times does the movie. Deliciously filmed shabby-chic locations set in Northeastern China, first in hot summer 1999, then in a bitterly cold winter 2004. The beauty almost makes up for plot failings.

[Chris Knipp]

A BORROWED IDENTITY (Eran Kiiplis 2014)

Preview only. This feel-good tale of a talented Palestinian youth who seeks assimilation at an elite Hebrew boarding school in Jerusalem was to be the opening night film in July 2014 in Jerusalem, but fear of violence caused it to be relegated to less obtrusive spot. Parts of it seem pure fantasy, but Tawfeek Barhom, the actor, brings authenticity and charisma to the role. Full review will appear upon 25 June US release.

[Chris Knipp]

DEAREST (Peter Ho-sun Chan 2014)

Preview only. Divorced parents are sharing custody of their three-year-old boy when after being dropped off by his mother at his dad's Internet cafe he wanders off and is abducted. When miraculously they find him three years later after a support group and a prolonged search, the country woman who has raised him is innocent of awareness of wrongdoing, the boy has forgotten his birth parents, and it seems cruel to take him away. Neglected to mention this one earlier due SFIFF "hold review" listing requiring me to hide my full comments - perhaps a US release is coming that I don't know about.

[Chris Knipp]

SAND DOLLARS (Laura Amelia Guzmán, Israel Cardénas 2014)

Geraldine Chaplin performs well and fearlessly in a sex tourism story set in the Dominican Republic. Visually beautiful, simple, vivid, but a bit more lightweight, I felt, than Heading South/Vers le sud, Laurent Cantet's treatment with Charlotte Rampling. Guzmán and Cardénas are a couple, he from Mexico, she Dominican, and this is their fourth film in seven years.

[Chris Knipp]

MURDER IN PACOT/MEURTRE À PACOT (Raoul Peck 2014)

Another thing altogether. Too long, symbolism too obvious, but packs a wallop andway, with excellent actors and a sense of range and danger only a Haitian recreating the week after the 2010 earthquake could feel.Focus on a ravaged rich person's house a fresh outlook. The social leveling proves illusory though. Claire Denis regular Alex Descas, the fascinating Thibault Vinçon of Poisonous Friends (NYFF 2006), and great newcomers Lovely Kermode Fifi and Joy O. Ogunmakin.

[Chris Knipp]

A GERMAN YOUTH (Jean-Gabriel Périot 2015)

Périot, a French documentarian, is noted for his neatly edited shorts. Now he turns to feature length with a breezy review of Seventies radicalism in Germany. It's a chilly breeze, refraining from any judgment pro or con and consisting only of tightly interlaced clips from the period. They come mostly from news media, and we learn news czar Axel Springer's records could reveal things the establishment preferred to hide. There are also provocative and sometimes funny films by the activists themselves. Depending on your interest, this film will be an eye-opener, or a snooze. It won't enthrall you with dramatic sequences of violence like The Baader Meinhof Complex, which I reviewed here six years ago. But as a tracing of the gradual progression from polite critic to public enemy number one, it's enlightening.

[Chris Knipp]

SUNDAY BALL/CAMPO DE JOGO (Eryk Rocha 2014)

Rocha, son of one of Brazil's great engagé filmmakers of the Sixties and Seventies, has made a film about the soccer championship of Rio's favelas that celebrates the game and the event in the manner of the Harvard Ethnology Lab directed by Lucien Castaing-Taylor. With arisa from Puccini and Wagner. It's an odd experience, the the images are razor-sharp, the light and color perfect, and the music pretty. If you don't want to see soccer turned into an art piece, turn on your TV.

[Johann]

Awesome thread here Chris. You do the work of ten people for covering movies Man!