2011 Program Guide. Mayor s Welcome 26 Board Chair s Welcome 26 Executive Director s Welcome 28. Awards and Tributes

Transcription

1 Contents San Francisco International Film Festival 2011 Program Guide Introductions Mayor s Welcome 26 Board Chair s Welcome 26 Executive Director s Welcome 28 SPONSORs 27, 29, 31, 33, 187, 189 Awards and Tributes George Gund III Award 35 Founder s Directing Award 37 Peter J. Owens Award 39 Kanbar Award: Frank Pierson 40 Golden Gate Persistence of Vision Award: Matthew Barney 42 Mel Novikoff Award: Serge Bromberg 44 New Directors Prize 46 Golden Gate Awards 48 FIPRESCI Prize 51 highlights 53 Cinema by the Bay 53 Spotlight 54 Big Nights 53 Opening Night: Beginners 57 Midnight Awards 59 Film Society Awards Night 60 Centerpiece: Terri 61 Closing Night: On Tour 62 Tributes 63 Serge Bromberg: Retour de Flamme: Rare and Restored Films in 3-D 64 Matthew Barney: Drawing Restraint Founder s Directing Award 66 Owens Award 67 Frank Pierson: Dog Day Afternoon 68 Live & Onstage 69 From A to Zellner 70 New Skin for the Old Ceremony 71 Porchlight 72 State of Cinema Address: Christine Vachon 73 Tindersticks: Claire Denis Film Scores new directors 77 WORLD CINEMA 107 DOCUMENTARIES 135 SHORTS 173 Special Programs Youth Education, SFIFF College Days and Schools at the Festival 182 Conversations & Previews 184 Credits & Information Golden Gate Awards Screeners 192 About Us 193 Board, Staff, Donors 194 Acknowledgments 198 Indexes Advertiser Index 199 Causes & Impacts Index 200 Short Film Print Sources 202 Country Index 204 Filmmaker Index 206 Title Index 208

2 WELCOME edwin m. lee George Gund III Mayor City and County of San Francisco On behalf of the City and County of San Francisco, I am honored to welcome you to the 54th San Francisco International Film Festival. The International continues to shine a light on our beautiful City while simultaneously reaffirming our citizens passion for the arts and engaging cinema, in particular. While the Festival continues to serve as a window to the world, its ties to our Bay Area film community have never been stronger. The Film Society has become an essential part of the City s artistic makeup for both film lovers and filmmakers alike. Its education program continues to contribute to the development of film students of all ages, while its filmmaker services program has supported hundreds of small productions throughout the City. San Francisco has long been a city known for its warm embrace of artists and I am pleased to say that this tradition continues to this day. In particular, the Film Society s collaboration with the Film Commission has been a gratifying opportunity to renew our commitment to the community of filmmakers who call San Francisco home. With 54 years of success, I salute the San Francisco Film Society for its unwavering commitment to both local and international filmmaking, in addition to solidifying our City s position as a world-class venue for cultural arts and entertainment. I offer my sincere gratitude to the board, staff and volunteers of the Film Society and to all those who have played a key role in this year s wonderful Festival. Enjoy the Festival! With warmest regards, Chairman Board of Directors San Francisco Film Society On behalf of the San Francisco Film Society board of directors, I invite you to join us at the 54th International Film Festival. It is with enormous pride that I reflect on our rich history at the same time as I look forward to the organization s vibrant future. In recent years the Film Society has grown exponentially, expanding its cultural offerings to Bay Area audiences through progressive year-round programs and events. I am particularly proud of our dynamic education programs that encourage students of all ages to better understand and explore the fascinating medium of film, and our filmmaker services, which foster the creativity and further the careers of the many wonderful filmmakers in the Bay Area. Through our Youth Education, Colleges & Universities and Film Craft & Film Studies programs we reach 11,000 students each year. Filmmaker Services, in turn, helps develop the projects of over 200 filmmakers annually and will disburse over $700,000 through grants in 2011, and more in coming years. Even as we expand these exciting year-round programs, the International remains the jewel in the Film Society s crown. As the oldest film festival in the Americas, the International is a cultural treasure for Bay Area audiences whose sophisticated tastes and warm embrace of diversity extend naturally to the silver screen. For me, one of the highlights of the Festival is its sense of discovery. When it comes to cinematic innovation and global perspective, the International goes unrivaled. With representation from more than 40 countries and 30 languages, the Festival showcases an array of world cinema that is not just illuminating; in this increasingly globalized world, it s essential. We hope that over the next 15 days you, too, will revel in this sense of discovery and from the comforts of a darkly lit cinema find yourself somewhere new. See you at the movies! Edwin M. Lee Mayor City and County of San Francisco George Gund III Chairman, Board of Directors San Francisco Film Society 26

3 WELCOME Graham Leggat Executive director san Francisco Film Society The marquee event of the San Francisco Film Society, the International, brings together the finest films and filmmakers from across the country and around the world for the best two weeks of the year. During this time, for those in the thick of it, it feels as if the Bay Area, already the center of global business innovation, is the spellbinding capital of film culture, that worldwide republic of likeminded filmmakers, filmgoers and industry professionals. It s as if, each year in late April, we find ourselves in Brigadoon, the mysterious Scottish village that appears for one magical night every hundred years. Why a Scottish village, I don t know. It probably has to do with the liquor laws. For mortal visitors to this enchanted place, time seems to stand still one night lasting a century. Their lives are changed; they never leave. Also, they are forced to give up the cash in their pockets. Brigadoon is a developing region, with a lousy balance of trade. Come to the International yourself, and see. Not the fleecing part you can keep your spare change. Instead, come and see how your life can be changed, in large or small part, by the experience of watching a film with others. Feel the lyrical larger-than-life cinematic imagery enter you in the dark, the way a dream enters a sleeping body, and become, if only for one magical night, an enchanted being. You will never want to leave. Happily, today, you don t have to. Film is all around you; film is everywhere. And the San Francisco Film Society a dream factory par excellence, a machine for the creation of exploration, discovery and transformation works tirelessly and joyfully to celebrate film culture every day of the year. Not just through the International, our flagship offering, but through a vibrant fall exhibition season, our SFFS Screen programs and numerous special screenings and events; through our Youth Education, Colleges & Universities, Artist-in-Residency and Film Craft & Film Studies programs; and through a range of filmmaker services that include grants, residencies, fiscal sponsorship and production and development assistance. The Film Society s year now expands far beyond the two- week borders of the International, our annual Brigadoon, to present daily programming that celebrates film and film culture in all its glorious forms. And how do we do this? Good question. The short answer is total commitment: high work-rate and keen intelligence in the service of timeless quality, exemplary standards and superb performance in all areas. The longer answer is that the Film Society is a) blessed with a dedicated, engaged and exceptionally generous board of directors; b) comprised of 35 superlative full-time employees, more than 100 seasonal staff and several hundred volunteers, all of whom would crawl over broken glass to achieve the organization s ambitious goals; c) teamed up with more than 3,000 smart and loyal members with a healthy appetite for adventurous filmgoing; d) uplifted by legions of passionate supporters and industry professionals who continually animate our efforts; and e) lucky enough to be based in a region that is innovative, philanthropic, visionary and collaborative far out of proportion to its small(ish) population. If you are reading this, then you are lucky enough to be part of the wonderful world of film culture, too. Now that you have found us, we hope you never leave. Graham Leggat Executive Director San Francisco Film Society 28

4 a tribute to GeorGe Gund GeorGe GuNd iii award In 2011, to honor George Gund for more than 40 years of stalwart support, the San Francisco Film Society is inaugurating the George Gund III Award, which will be given on a periodic basis to members of the filmmaking community for their outstanding contributions to film culture. George, on behalf of the Film Society board, staff and everyone who has enjoyed the San Francisco International Film Festival since you began to support it in 1966, thank you! Remembering his days at the San Francisco International Film Festival, former Executive Director Claude Jarman said that 1966 was my first year at the Film Society. It was also the first year I met George Gund. George came into the office one day and said, I m interested in the Film Festival. I d like to make a $1,000 contribution. And I said, That s great. What can we do for you? Nothing, replied George. I just believe in the Festival. That s George. Longtime chairman of the board of directors, George Gund III has been associated with the Film Society in one capacity or another for more than 40 years. He has been a donor, an advocate, a champion of world cinema. Since the 1970s, Gund has been importing and distributing Eastern European films and encouraging independent film production in the US. He is a founder of the Cleveland Cinematheque, a board member of the Cleveland Film Festival and the Sundance Institute, and has been chair of the San Francisco Film Society for more than 30 years. George has been the lifeblood and patron saint of the Film Society, says Film Society Executive Director Graham Leggat. He is one of the most supportive and committed arts patrons I have ever worked with. Gund s enthusiasm and generosity extend beyond film. Part of a family distinguished for its wide-ranging philanthropy, he is a trustee of the George Gund Foundation, a Cleveland-based organization created by his father in 1952 and known for its support of innovative community and national programs. He is the cofounder of the Lee and Gund Foundation, serves on the board of a number of nationally recognized philanthropic and arts organizations and is an avid art collector. He has generously ponied up in support of the annual National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Nevada, as well as the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington DC. A native of Cleveland and a longtime resident of San Francisco, George has been a National Hockey League owner more than 30 years, testifying to a lifetime of enthusiasm for amateur and professional sports. George Gund III has been an indispensible part of the San Francisco International Film Festival. Jeannette Etheredge, the owner of Tosca Café in North Beach, is a former board member and longtime friend of Gund. For so many years, George would ride to the rescue of the Festival, she says. Every time there was a crisis, George stepped up to the plate. The Festival, and the Film Society, no longer need rescuing, but George continues his steady, enlightened support. 35

5 walter salles at sfiff 2010 Founder s DIRECTING AWARD previous RECIPIENTS 2010 Walter Salles 2009 Francis Ford Coppola 2008 Mike Leigh 2007 Spike Lee 2006 Werner Herzog 2005 Taylor Hackford 2004 Milos Forman 2003 Robert Altman The Film Society honors an outstanding director with the Founder s Directing Award. This award is given each year to a master of world cinema in memory of Irving M. Levin, the visionary founder of the San Francisco International Film Festival in The evening will include a clip reel of career highlights and an onstage interview with the director, followed by a film screening. Film Screening The evening includes a special screening of a representative film from the career of the honoree. Previously Known as Akira Kurosawa Award 2002 Warren Beatty 2001 Clint Eastwood 2000 Abbas Kiarostami 1999 Arturo Ripstein 1998 Im Kwon-taek 1997 Francesco Rosi 1996 Arthur Penn 1995 Stanley Donen 1994 Manoel de Oliveira 1993 Ousmane Sembène 1992 Satyajit Ray 1991 Marcel Carné 1990 Jirí Menzel 1989 Joseph L. Mankiewicz 1988 Robert Bresson 1987 Michael Powell 1986 Akira Kurosawa The Founder s Directing Award is made possible by Fred M. Levin and Nancy Livingston. 37

6 robert duvall at sfiff 2010 Peter J. Owens Award previous RECIPIENTS 2010 Robert Duvall 2009 Robert Redford 2008 Maria Bello 2007 Robin Williams 2006 Ed Harris 2005 Joan Allen 2004 Chris Cooper 2003 Dustin Hoffman 2002 Kevin Spacey 2001 Stockard Channing 2000 Winona Ryder 1999 Sean Penn 1998 Nicolas Cage 1997 Annette Bening 1996 Harvey Keitel Named for the longtime San Francisco benefactor of arts and charitable organizations, Peter J. Owens ( ), this award honors an actor whose work exemplifies brilliance, independence and integrity. The evening will include a clip reel of career highlights and an onstage interview with the artist, followed by a film screening. Film Screening The evening includes a special screening of a representative film from the career of the honoree. Previously Known As Piper-Heidsieck Award 1995 Tim Roth 1994 Gérard Depardieu 1993 Danny Glover 1992 Geena Davis 1991 Anjelica Huston The Peter J. Owens Award is made possible by a grant from the Peter J. Owens Trust of The San Francisco Foundation. Gary Shapiro and Scott Owens, trustees. 39

7 Kanbar AWARD FRANK PIERSON Frank Pierson: Screenwriting s Cool Hand The Kanbar Award for excellence in screenwriting acknowledges the crucial role that strong screenwriting plays in the creation of great films. The award is made possible through the generosity of Film Society board member Maurice Kanbar. FESTIVAL SCREENING Dog Day Afternoon previous RECIPIENTS 2010 James Schamus 2009 James Toback 2008 Robert Towne 2007 Peter Morgan 2006 Jean-Claude Carrière 2005 Paul Haggis The breadth of Frank Pierson s career can be suggested by the contrast between two films and a single night in March That was the evening he took home the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for Sidney Lumet s tense, character-driven drama Dog Day Afternoon. Presenter Gore Vidal accepted the statuette on his behalf. The writer of the tough, violent story that Pauline Kael hailed as one of the most satisfying of all the movies starring New York City spent awards night in a Phoenix parking lot directing scenes from his script of an altogether softer and weepier film, Barbra Streisand s version of A Star Is Born. That pair of movies may make unlikely twins, but what they share is Pierson and his vision. What I do think I have, he explained in a recent interview for Inside Film Magazine, is the ability to take a look at a situation whether it s a real-life situation in Dog Day or whether it s a fictional one that expresses a kind of emotional, psychological truth to me and think through what kind of a movie I would like to make that is new and fresh and exists on its own level. A World War II combat veteran, Pierson was a Time magazine correspondent before turning to scriptwriting. He honed his craft in television, contributing to such shows as By Pam Grady Have Gun, Will Travel (for which he also served as producer) and Naked City. He jumped to the big screen with the comic musical Western Cat Ballou (1965), sharing an Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay with cowriter Walter Newman. Two years later, Pierson got another Oscar nod, this one shared with Donn Pearce for their adaptation of Pearce s novel Cool Hand Luke. The drama starred Paul Newman as a chain gang convict dedicated to flouting the rules and eventual escape. It was set in a prison in the Deep South but nonetheless captured the zeitgeist of an increasingly fractured America, as the Vietnam War continued to escalate, in a single line that did not appear in Pearce s book: What we ve got here is a failure to communicate. The dialogue was Pierson s, coming to him as he labored over the script on his Underwood typewriter. After contributing to the screenplay for the 1967 mob/ hippie hybrid comedy The Happening, Pierson made his feature-film directing debut in 1969 with his adaptation of John le Carré s spy thriller The Looking Glass War. In 1971, he created a television Western for James Garner, Nichols, serving as writer and producer on the short-lived series. That same year also marked his first collaboration with Lumet, with Pierson penning the adaptation of Lawrence Sanders crime drama The Anderson Tapes. 40

8 dog day afternoon king of the gypsies presumed innocent the anderson tapes cool hand luke SELECTED FILMOGRAPHY 1990 Presumed Innocent 1989 In Country 1978 King of the Gypsies 1976 A Star Is Born 1975 Dog Day Afternoon 1971 The Anderson Tapes 1969 The Looking Glass War 1967 Cool Hand Luke 1967 The Happening 1965 Cat Ballou A Star Is Born marked Pierson s return to screenwriting after his Dog Day Afternoon triumph. He was the seventh writer and fourth director hired to work on a rock-and-roll update of a story filmed twice before, in 1936 and It was not a happy experience, as he revealed in a 1976 story he wrote for New West magazine, excoriating Streisand and her then-partner and producer Jon Peters. Pierson s article is a peek behind the curtain at a troubled shoot and a mercurial star, but it also provides insight into his thinking as a writer, as he neatly sums up the challenges in transforming a tale first told during the Great Depression to the Watergate era. The simple unvarnished dialogues of 1936 are embarrassing today, he wrote. We need to update a sentimental romantic story for an audience that has become skeptical about sentiment and almost derisive of romance. Pierson went on to write and direct King of the Gypsies (1978) and collaborated on the teleplay adaptation of Haywire (1980), Brooke Hayward s memoir of life with her troubled parents, actress Margaret Sullavan and producer/ agent Leland Hayward. After cowriting an adaptation of Bobbie Ann Mason s post-vietnam novel In Country (1989) and collaborating with Alan J. Pakula on the screenplay of Scott Turow s novel Presumed Innocent (1990), Pierson concentrated more on directing and producing for television, most recently sharing a Writer s Guild of America Drama Series award for his work as consulting producer on season three of Mad Men. Long active behind the scenes in Hollywood, Pierson has twice served as president of the Writers Guild of America, West, and from 2001 to 2005 as president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, where he is currently a member of the board of governors. He is also active in educating the next generation of screenwriters and filmmakers. He has taught at the Sundance Institute and is the artistic director of the American Film Institute Conservatory. Pierson is hard at work as ever. In addition to his teaching, he recently served as a consulting producer on the drama series The Good Wife and is currently writing the screenplay for 17 Days of Winter, a 3-D Korean War drama due for release in As he recently joked to Variety, By this time I thought I d be playing golf, but I never had time to learn. Pam Grady is a San Francisco based critic and journalist who contributes to Boxoffice, the San Francisco Chronicle, FilmStew and other publications. 41

9 Golden Gate Persistence of Vision Award Matthew Barney Matthew Barney: between artist and auteur Established in 1997, the Persistence of Vision Award each year honors the achievement of a filmmaker whose main body of work is outside the realm of typical narrative feature filmmaking, crafting documentaries, short films, television, animated, experimental or multiplatform work. FESTIVAL SCREENING Drawing Restraint 17 previous RECIPIENTS 2010 Don Hertzfeldt 2009 Lourdes Portillo 2008 Errol Morris 2007 Heddy Honigmann 2006 Guy Maddin 2005 Adam Curtis 2004 Jon Else 2003 Pat O Neill 2002 Fernando Birri 2001 Kenneth Anger 2000 Faith Hubley 1999 Johan van der Keuken 1998 Robert Frank 1997 Jan Svankmajer Film is a liberator for me, Matthew Barney said in an interview near the 2005 theatrical release of his enigmatic epic, Drawing Restraint 9. It s an ironic and perfectly fitting term for an artist who makes video, sculpture and full-fledged masterworks (that would be his notorious Cremaster Cycle) dealing with notions of resistance, control and release. Cinema sets him free to work on an enlarged conceptual canvas, to inhabit a dynamic role between artist and auteur and to pave the way for subsequent generations of artists to push further the boundaries of the medium. Film also helps to tap his audience-building potential he s one of the best-known artists of his generation, one with movie- and art-star charisma. Barney changes the way we look at and make film, from conception to distribution. He s hijacked film genres, merged them with sculpture and physiological interests in sports, then filtered them through a highly individualized aesthetic. Like Andy Warhol, he has his own troupe of superstars in front of and behind the camera notably the legless athlete Aimee Mullins and composer/collaborator Jonathan Bepler. He s lured an illustrious roster of cameos Norman Mailer, proto-bond girl Ursula Andress, country singer Patty Griffin all of whom he cast for their cultural mythologies. Barney hit the art world in the early 1990s with his Drawing Restraint series of sculptural objects, photos By Glen Helfand and single-channel tapes unforgettable and somewhat perverse videos derived from endurance- and obstaclebased athletic actions. These were black-and-white or lower-res color pieces that express an indebtedness to the body-based art videos and 8mm and 16mm films of Bruce Nauman (see Nauman s fittingly testicular Bouncing Balls, 1969) and Vito Acconci. These artists also worked in color, but Barney, being of another media generation born in 1967 in San Francisco evolved his focus on the corporeal to infinitely more phantasmagorical proportions. It seems he was as inspired by the expansive acid trip surrealism of Alejandro Jodorowsky s Holy Mountain as much as by more minimalistic gestures and Barney had the wherewithal to mobilize his widescreen vision. One of Barney s gifts is his ability to think big and long-term an attribute more akin to indie filmmakers aiming for general release than to visual artists working at more intimate scale. The five Cremasters, and their culmination in a massive multimedia exhibition at the Guggenheim, took eight years ( ) to realize. He started his Cremaster Cycle with Cremaster 4 because the 42-minute work included elements he could leverage at the time. The film s initial run at the Joseph Papp Public Theater, in New York City, took place in conjunction with an exhibition at Barbara Gladstone Gallery. Merging sports spectacle, motorcycle cinema (those peach-colored tires with testicles!), aerial photography, 42

10 SELECTED FILMOGRAPHY 2007 De Lama Lamina (short) 2005 Drawing Restraint Cremaster Cremaster March of the Anal Sadistic Warrior (short) 1997 Cremaster Cremaster Cremaster 4 Edith Head on-acid costumes, Vaseline-covered biological narrative and the entire metaphor-laden Isle of Man as back lot, it was art in uncharted territory. While certainly there had been artists working in cinema before (Robert Longo made Johnny Mnemonic in 1995, while Julian Schnabel debuted Basquiat in 1996), Barney s appropriation of feature film scale was unrivaled. New York Times art critic Michael Kimmelman, reviewing Cremaster 4 in the film section, noted, You can find yourself thinking of Buñuel and Dalí. But you can also think of The Fly and Alien, not to mention Ghostbusters when Mr. Barney is slimed by goo. While Barney s works more generally inhabit the world of contemporary art, Kimmelman s references are apt Barney has cited Sam Raimi s Evil Dead series and Steven Spielberg s Jaws as notable influences. Not that you d ever confuse a uniquely paced Barney film with a blockbuster Drawing Restraint 9, in which he costarred with Björk aboard a Japanese whaling ship, pulled in just $225,000, a figure that speaks to the fact that Barney is operating on different terms in regard to box office figures. Barney has carved his own path, distributing his work his own way. The Cremasters are unavailable on DVD, sold instead like editioned prints, with collectors owning a disk in sculptural jewel cases. Barney reserves the right to periodically screen the full cycle in cinemas, not unlike festivals of Wagner s entire Ring Cycle. Barney remains a pioneer in his artistic experimentation as well as in his channeling of a particularly American spirit of vast landscapes and can-do attitude. With the Cremaster films, which essentially make characters of football stadiums, salt flats and the Chrysler Building, among other iconic sites, he made the connection between epic cinema and large-scale sculptures similar to massive Earthworks projects such as James Turrell s decades-in-progress Roden Crater. Now Barney is in the midst of staging a series of seven massive performances, Ancient Evenings, of which two have been produced. Even though they are live presentations, they allude as much to performance art history as to biblical epics and CSI TV shows. Barney patiently operates in time frames that seemingly exist in centuries, his influence likely to extend past the 21st. Glen Helfand is a writer, educator and curator who contributes to Artforum and other publications. Helfand teaches in the graduate fine arts programs at California College of the Arts and Mills College. 43

11 Mel Novikoff Award SERGE BROMBERG SERGE BROMBERG, ALL AROUND WHIZ By David Shepard Named in honor of legendary San Francisco film exhibitor Mel Novikoff ( ), this award is given annually to an individual or institution whose work has enhanced the filmgoing public s knowledge and appreciation of world cinema. FESTIVAL SCREENING Retour de Flamme: Rare and Restored Films in 3-D Mel Novikoff Award Previous Recipients 2010 Roger Ebert 2009 Bruce Goldstein 2008 J. Hoberman 2007 Kevin Brownlow 2005 Anita Monga 2004 Paolo Cherchi Usai 2003 Manny Farber 2002 David Francis 2001 Cahiers du Cinéma San Francisco Cinematheque 2000 Donald Krim David Shepard 1999 Enno Patalas 1998 Adrienne Mancia 1997 Film Arts Foundation Judy Stone 1996 David Robinson 1995 Institut Lumière 1994 Naum Kleiman 1993 Andrew Sarris 1992 Jonas Mekas 1991 Pauline Kael 1990 Donald Richie 1989 USSR Filmmakers Association 1988 Daniel Talbot Although Serge Bromberg is based in Paris, France, he is an international crusader for cinema. His enthusiasm is bottomless, his energy even more so. He lives the lives of four men, all of them passionate and amazingly accomplished cinephiles. Serge began collecting Laurel and Hardy comedies as a child and soon discovered that rare old films come to him as flies come to honey. Serge will go to a butcher shop to buy some chops and instead bring back a pile of 100- year-old 35mm prints. I was in his office one day when a kid rode up on a bicycle with a basket full of films. He had found them in the milk house of a farm and wanted to donate them because he thought they might be interesting (they were). In another lucky find, Serge discovered 17 Méliès films that were previously unknown. Serge founded Lobster Films in Paris in 1984, when he was barely out of his teens, with the hope of collecting, preserving and sharing rare cinematic treasures. Today the Lobster collection comprises some 40,000 reels. Standing in Lobster s vault and looking at the vast accumulation of wonders stretching into the far distance, it is hard to imagine that all this is the work of Serge Bromberg and his self-effacing colleague Eric Lange. But Serge is not a collector who gloats over his rare holdings; he has deposited thousands of unique original negatives and prints with pubic-benefit archives in Europe and the United States, where they will be preserved and made available for study. Several times a year, Serge becomes a cinema evangelist and takes to the road. Since 1992, he has presented brilliant programs to the public, accompanying the silent films on piano and providing all the films with high-energy personal introductions. He calls these unique film concerts Retour de flamme (flashback). Beginning with showings at vintage music halls in Paris, at the Cannes Film Festival, the Musée d Orsay, the Louvre and in the Tuileries Garden, he has performed them not only across France and Europe but also in many US venues and in Mexico, India, South America and heaven knows where else. The films go even where he cannot. Through Lobster Films, Serge organized a website, europafilmtreasures.eu, on which hundreds of rare films from many archives are streamed for the pleasure of anyone who wishes to watch them. He has coproduced award-winning DVD sets including Georges Méliès, First Wizard of Cinema, whose 200 films comprise almost all of Méliès surviving work; Chaplin at Keystone: An International Collaboration, offering eye-opening restorations of all the comedian s surviving work from his first year in movies; and the previously lost 1926 silent Bardelys the Magnificent, directed by King Vidor and starring John Gilbert. Animation is another of Serge Bromberg s special passions. Since 1999 he has been artistic director of the International Festival of Animation, a world conclave held annually in Annecy, France. For several years he also produced and hosted a very popular daily children s 44

12 the infernal boiling pot henri-georges clouzot s inferno working for peanuts Mel Novikoff Award Committee 2011 Francis J. Rigney (chairman) Helena R. Foster George Gund III Maurice Kanbar Philip Kaufman Tom Luddy Gary Meyer Anita Monga Janis Plotkin Rachel Rosen (ex officio) Peter Scarlet television show called Cellulo, breeding a new generation of cinephiles with the delightful short films he displayed. Most of the profit from this venture he invested in firstclass 35mm preservation of unique films that document the work of some worthy forgotten artist or some fascinating, little-remembered event. As the result of getting trapped in an elevator with the widow of director Henri-Georges Clouzot, Serge won the opportunity of shaping the unedited footage from Clouzot s unfinished film Inferno into a provocative new docudrama which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and won for Serge ecstatic reviews as well as a 2010 César (the French equivalent of an Academy Award) for Best Documentary Feature. The film, Henri-Georges Clouzot s Inferno, was featured in last year s SFIFF program and has been released theatrically and on DVD in many countries, including this one. Serge has also produced over 500 newsmagazines, corporate films, documentaries and television programs, having organized Steamboat Films, a production company, as an affiliate of Lobster. This tornado of activity has not gone unnoticed. Serge is a member of the board of directors of the GAN Foundation for Cinema, the Cinematheque Française and the French Muscular Dystrophy Association (organizer of the annual telethon). He was honored for Inferno and his preservation work by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association in 2011, made a knight of the French Order of Arts and Letters in 2002 and, in 1997, was awarded the Prix Jean Mitry, presented by the Province of Pordenone, Italy, for his lifetime of work in conserving vintage cinema. Beyond all of this, Serge has a fabulous sense of humor, is an intensely loyal and encouraging friend, a devoted husband and father to three terrific children. The only mystery I ve never been able to unravel about Serge is how he does it all. David Shepard is a film archivist and preservationist, a film teacher, founder of Film Preservation Associates, owner of the Blackhawk Films library and has been a leading influence in the film preservation movement for over four decades. He was the recipient of the Festival s Mel Novikoff Award in

13 alamar, Pedro González-Rubio, mexico, 2010 Winner NEW DIRECTORs PRIZE in support of innovative filmmaking The New Directors Prize is awarded to the director of a debut narrative feature that is an Official Selection in the San Francisco International Film Festival. It is accompanied by a $15,000 cash award. Films selected to compete for the New Directors Prize are first narrative features that exhibit a unique artistic sensibility or vision. An independent jury of film professionals from various fields screens the international selections during the Festival. The New Directors Prize will be announced at the Golden Gate Awards on Wednesday, May 4. 46

14 New Directors prize Competition OFFICIAL SELECTIONs Autumn Aamir Bashir India Circumstance Maryam Keshavarz USA/France/Iran/Lebanon The High Life Zhao Dayong China The Journals of Musan Park Jung-bum South Korea Kinyarwanda Alrick Brown USA/Rwanda My JoY Sergei Loznitsa Germany/Ukraine/Netherlands The Place in Between Sarah Bouyain France/Burkina Faso The Salesman Sébastian Pilote Canada She Monkeys Lisa Aschan Sweden Tilva Rosh Nikola Lezaic Serbia Ulysses Oscar Godoy Chile/Argentina past winners of the new directors prize Alamar 2010 Pedro González-Rubio Mexico SNOW 2009 Aida Begic Bosnia and Herzegovina VASERMIL 2008 Mushon Salmona Israel The Violin 2007 Francisco Vargas Mexico Taking Father Home 2006 Ying Liang China Me and You and Everyone We Know 2005 Miranda July USA Squint Your Eyes 2004 Andrzej Jakimowski Poland The Man of the Year 2003 José Henrique Fonseca Brazil The Wild Bees 2002 Bhodan Sláma Brazil The Business of Strangers 2001 Patrick Stettner USA Eeny Meeny 2000 Alice Nellis Czech Republic Xiao Wu 1999 Jia Zhangke China Somersault in a Coffin 1998 Dervis Zaim Turkey Honey and Ashes 1997 Andrzej Jakimowski Poland New Directors Prize jury NICK JAMES MARIE THERESE GUIRGIS DANIELA MICHEL Nick James is the editor of Sight & Sound, one of the world s leading English language film magazines, first published in As a freelance critic on film, literature and art, James has contributed to the Guardian, the Observer, the Independent, Vogue, Time Out, the London Review of Books and the Literary Review. In 1995 he was appointed deputy editor of Sight & Sound and editor the following year. In 2002 his book on Michael Mann s Heat was published, and he was the presenter of the BBC documentary British Cinema: The End of the Affair. He is currently working on a British film criticism reader as well as other book and film projects. Marie Therese Guirgis is a talent manager in New York City who has represented film directors since She is a producer of the upcoming films The Loneliest Planet, The Goodbye People and Keep the Lights On, as well as a consultant for MPI/Dark Sky Films. Previously she was senior vice president of Wellspring, where she ran acquisitions and helped launch the company s theatrical releasing initiative. Daniela Michel is the founding director of the Morelia International Film Festival, an annual event launched in 2003 to support and promote a new generation of Mexican filmmakers. The festival shares an ongoing partnership with the Critics Week section of the Cannes Film Festival. Michel has served as juror for the Rockefeller Foundation s Media Arts Fellowships, the Fulbright García-Robles Film Fellowships and the J. William Fulbright Prize for International Understanding, as well as for festivals including Sundance and IDFA. She has reported on film in major Mexican media as a print journalist and television presenter since Michel lives in Mexico City. 47

15 last train home, Lixin Fan, canada/china, 2010 Winner, best investigative documentary feature golden gate awards The Golden Gate Awards were established to augment the San Francisco International Film Festival s tradition of recognizing and promoting excellence in independent and world cinema. For more than five decades, the competition has introduced Bay Area audiences to illustrious filmmakers who have transformed the medium with their award-winning documentary and narrative features and animated, narrative, documentary, experimental and youth-produced short films. The Golden Gate Awards are one of many ways in which the San Francisco Film Society fulfills an essential Festival function: to increase attention and resources given to independent filmmakers, and to support the development of international cinema. This year, there will be close to $100,000 awarded in cash prizes, with $75,000 for feature-length documentary and narrative works and $18,500 earmarked specifically for Bay Area filmmakers. Selected from a wide array of entries, these films truly represent the best of the international filmmaking community. Some past recipients of the Golden Gate Award for feature film include Lixin Fan (Last Train Home), Pedro González-Rubio (Alamar) and Anders Østergaard (Burma VJ), while local luminaries such as Marlon Riggs, Sam Green and Lourdes Portillo have been awarded for their cinematic achievements. The prestige of the Golden Gate Awards is distinguished in large part due to the participation and expertise of the members of our vital and dedicated Bay Area film and video community. Each year, filmmakers, journalists, exhibitors, curators and academics devote hours of their valuable time to screen hundreds of entries. These individuals evaluate each submission and recommend films for Golden Gate Award competition. International jurors view these works at the Festival and bestow Golden Gate Awards upon narrative and documentary features and short films. Since 1957, the Golden Gate Awards have recognized and honored filmmakers of the highest caliber, and we are especially proud of this year s world-class films in competition. 48

16 golden gate awards official selections DOCUMENTARY FEATURE Better This World (Bay Area) Kelly Duane de la Vega, Katie Galloway, USA Cinema Komunisto Mila Turajlic, Serbia Crime After Crime (Bay Area) Yoav Potash, USA Detroit Wild City Florent Tillon, France/USA Foreign Parts Véréna Paravel, J.P. Sniadecki, USA The Good Life Eva Mulvad, Denmark The Green Wave Ali Samadi Ahadi, Germany/Iran Marathon Boy Gemma Atwal, England/USA/India The Pipe Risteard Ó Domhnaill, Ireland Position Among the Stars Leonard Retel Helmrich, Netherlands The Redemption of General Butt Naked Eric Strauss, Daniele Anastasion, USA The Tiniest Place Tatiana Huezo, Mexico DOCUMENTARY SHORT The Home Front Phie Ambo, Denmark Into the Middle of Nowhere Anna Frances Ewert, Scotland/England Library of Dust (Bay Area) Ondi Timoner, Robert James, USA NARRATIVE SHORT Aglaée Rudi Rosenberg, France Bitch Rabbit Guérin Van De Vorst, Belgium Blokes Marialy Rivas, Chile God of Love Luke Matheny, USA Machines of the Working Class James Dastoli, Robert Dastoli, USA Noreen Domhnall Gleeson, Ireland The Strange Ones Christopher Radcliff, Laurent Volkstein, USA/France Young Dracula (Bay Area) Alfred Seccombe, USA animated Short Dromosphere Thorsten Fleisch, Germany The External World David O Reilly, Ireland Get with the Program Jennifer Drummond Deutrom, USA Once It Started It Could Not Be Otherwise Kelly Sears, USA Pixels Patrick Jean, France A Purpleman Kim Tak-hoon, Yoo Jin-young, Ryu Jin-young, Park Sung-ho, South Korea NEW VISIONS All Flowers in Time Jonathan Caouette, Canada/USA Chromatastic (Bay Area) Kerry Laitala, USA Coming Attractions Peter Tscherkassky, Austria Lost Lake Zackary Drucker, USA Self Portrait as a PowerPoint Proposal for an Amusement Park Ride (Bay Area) Jonn Herschend, USA Tourist Trap (Bay Area) Skye Thorstenson, USA YOUTH WORKS Escape from Suburbia (Bay Area) Mayana Bonapart, USA Flags Mattan Cohen, USA India Export (Bay Area) Raphael Linden, USA/India The Math Test (Bay Area) Sam Rubin, USA 2 AM Joseph Procopio, Canada Z-Man (Bay Area) Nat Talbot, USA works for kids and families The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore William Joyce, Brandon Oldenburg, USA Play by Play (Bay Area) Carlos Baena, USA The Snowman (Bay Area) Kelly Wilson, Neil Wrischnik, USA Specky Four Eyes Jean-Claude Rozec, France 49

17 golden gate awards Juries DOCUMENTARY FEATURE JURY DAN KRAUSS MIKE MAGGiore ESTHER ROBINSON Dan Krauss is an Academy Award and Emmy-nominated documentary filmmaker whose work has won awards from the Tribeca Film Festival, IDA and the San Francisco International Film Festival. HBO acquired his first film, The Death of Kevin Carter. He was director of photography for the Academy Award nominated documentary The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers and Life 2.0 (SFIFF 2010). Mike Maggiore, with director Karen Cooper, programs the premieres for New York s Film Forum. He has served on the committees of Film Independent s Truer than Fiction Award and the Sundance Documentary Fund. Previously he was assistant director of the film and video department of Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and publicity manager for the Museum of the Moving Image. Esther Robinson is an award-winning filmmaker/producer whose critically acclaimed directorial debut, A Walk into the Sea: Danny Williams and The Warhol Factory, took top prizes at the Berlin, Tribeca and Chicago film festivals and is available domestically on the Sundance Channel, Netflix and itunes. Other producing projects include The Canal Street Madam, Home Page and the 1999 digital satellite release of The Last Broadcast. shorts Jury ANDY GILLET MAX GOLDBERG KIM YUTANI Andy Gillet is a stage and screen actor. His first film was Nouvelle Chance. He subsequently appeared in Eric Rohmer s The Romance of Astrea and Celadon (SFIFF 2008), Min Kyu-dong s Antique and Philippe Terrier Hermann s The Rift. Gillet recently appeared as the Marquis de St. Loup in an adaptation of Proust s A la Recherche du Temps Perdu, directed by Nina Companez. Max Goldberg is a film critic for San Francisco Bay Guardian, where he writes primarily about alternative cinemas. His work also appears in Cinema Scope, SF360. org, MUBI Notebook and on his blog, Text of Light. He received his master s degree in Cinema Studies from San Francisco State University. Kim Yutani is a film programmer for the Sundance Film Festival. She is also the director of programming for Outfest: The Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, and oversees Fusion: The Los Angeles LGBT People of Color Film Festival and the Outfest Screenwriting Lab. She has served on juries at the Toronto and Berlin international film festivals and the Palm Springs International ShortFest. SFIFF 2010 Golden Gate Award WINNERS Best Documentary FEATURE Pianomania Lilian Franck, Robert Cibis (Austria/Germany) Documentary Short The Shutdown Adam Stafford (Scotland) New Visions Release Bill Morrison (USA) INVESTIGATIVE DOCUMENTARY FEATURE Last Train Home Lixin Fan (Canada/China) Bay Area DOCUMENTARY FEATURE Presumed Guilty Roberto Hernández, Geoffrey Smith (Mexico) new directors prize Alamar Pedro González-Rubio (Mexico) FIPRESCI PRIZE Frontier Blues Babak Jalali (Iran/England/Italy) Bay Area Short, FIRST prize Embrace of the Irrational Jonn Herschend (USA) Bay Area Short, SECOND prize Leonardo Jim Capobianco (USA) narrative Short The Armoire Jamie Travis (Canada) Animated Short Tussilago Jonas Odell (Sweden) Work for Kids And FamilIES Leonardo Jim Capobianco (USA) Work for Kids And FamilIES, HONORABle MENTION The Mouse That Soared Kyle Bell (USA) Youth Work Moon Shoes Joel Vanzeventer (USA) Youth Work, HONORABle MENTION Alisha Daniel Citron (USA) 50

18 frontier blues, Babak Jalali, Iran/England/Italy, 2010 FIPRESCI PRIZE WINNER THE PURPOSE OF FIPRESCI IS TO SUPPORT CINEMA AS ART By Klaus Eder Festivals offer an exciting opportunity to become acquainted with world cinema. As film critics, it is our interest and often our pleasure to support national cinema in all its forms and diversity, considering it an important part of national culture and identity. We do this by writing and talking about cinema in newspapers or specialized magazines, on radio and television or the Internet. And we do it by awarding the best of them (from our point of view) the International Critics Prize (FIPRESCI Prize). This prize is established at international film festivals, and its aim is to promote film art and to particularly encourage new and young cinema. We hope (and sometimes we know) that this prize can help films to get better distribution, or distribution at all, and to win greater public attention. FIPRESCI, the International Federation of Film Critics, has been in existence for more than 65 years. The basic purpose of the organization, which now has members in over 60 countries all over the world (among them, of course, in the US, the National Society of Film Critics), is to support cinema as an art and as an outstanding and autonomous means of expression. We do this for cultural, not political, reasons: Our interest is focused only on cinema itself and its artistic development. FIPRESCI also organizes conferences and seminars and is increasingly playing a part in a number of cultural activities designed to protect and encourage independent filmmaking and national cinemas. We are cooperating with the European Film Academy and are deciding, within the framework of the European Film Awards, a Felix of the Critics. It is with pleasure that we come to the San Francisco International Film Festival. We are excited to participate in this event with its precious tradition of more than half a century. Klaus Eder is the general secretary of FIPRESCI, which can be found on the Web at fipresci.org. Previous Recipients 2010 Frontier Blues 2009 Everything Strange and New 2008 Ballast 2007 A Parting Shot 2006 Half Nelson 2005 Private 2004 The Story of the Weeping Camel FIPRESCI JurY ADAM NAYMAN ULRIK ERIKSEN BARBARA lorey DE LACHarriÈRE Adam Nayman is a film critic based in Toronto, Canada. He writes regularly for Eye Weekly and Cinema Scope, and has contributed articles to Montage, POV, The Walrus and Elle Canada. He has a Master s degree in Cinema Studies from the University of Toronto and he lectures on cinema for the Toronto Jewish Film Society. He is currently writing a chapter for an upcoming critical anthology on Claire Denis and has written essays for books on Michael Winterbottom and Ron Mann. Ulrik Eriksen is a Norwegian freelance writer working out of New York City. He is the senior film critic for the Norwegian newspaper Morgenbladet and also writes for several other Norwegian publications including Dagbladet, Film&Kino and Dagens Naeringsliv. Barbara Lorey de Lacharrière is a Paris-based freelance writer and journalist for German newspapers and periodicals, specializing in cultural reporting and film criticism. She has curated film and photo exhibitions in Europe and the US and is a program consultant for various international film festivals. Recently appointed director of FIPRESCI Awards Promotion, she is currently organizing special film programs for festivals and art house cinemas. 51

19 THe selling, emily lou, usa, 2011 CineMa by the bay featured films American Teacher Better This World The Cap (s) Chromatastic (s) Come to the Table (s) Crime After Crime The D Train (s) Escape from Suburbia (s) Fire Bad (s) Independence in Sight (s) India Export (s) Library of Dust (s) The Math Test (s) Miss Representation Play by Play (s) Self Portrait as a Powerpoint Proposal for An Amusement Park Ride (s) The Selling The Snowman (s) Something Ventured Tourist Trap (s)!women Art Revolution Young Dracula (s) Z-Man (s) A celebration of the passion, innovation and diversity of Bay Area filmmaking, the intelligence and probing spirit of local directors and the incredible depth and breadth of America s film and media frontier, Cinema by the Bay designates work produced in or about the San Francisco Bay Area and provides a window into Bay Area film culture and practice at its best. This program section includes features, shorts, narratives and documentaries from well-known and emerging local talent. The San Francisco Film Society has long celebrated films produced in the creative heart of the West, recently expanding Cinema by the Bay to include a film series in the fall. In 2010, SF360. org, the Film Society s daily online magazine, inaugurated Essential SF, an ongoing compendium of the Bay Area film community s most vital figures and institutions. (s) = Short 53

20 cave of forgotten dreams World Cinema Spotlight Painting with Light By David D Arcy Supported by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the Festival s World Cinema Spotlight calls attention to a current trend in international filmmaking, bringing to light hot topics, reinvigorated genres, underappreciated filmmakers and national cinemas. This year s Spotlight gathers three excellent examples of a thematic trend in filmmaking: bringing paintings and their creators alive through film. FESTIVAL SCREENING Cave of Forgotten Dreams The Mill and the Cross Nainsukh It s taken film long enough to earn its legitimacy. In the early days of cinema (and photography), filmmakers sought respectability by choosing respectable subjects. These days films aren t trying to look like paintings, but they re still trying to probe the mysteries of painting. Cave of Forgotten Dreams by Werner Herzog leaps 30,000 years from the mysterious creation of the recently discovered cave drawings at Chauvet-Pont-d Arc in the Ardeche region of southern France to the 3-D technology that Herzog s skeleton crew uses to document a brief visit. Back to the future once again? Until now, the public could only see official still photographs of the cave, which was found in For once, the word revelation means something here. We don t know who the Chauvet artists were or why they made those drawings. The charcoal images of animals on the undulating cave walls horses, mammoths, lions, panthers, bears, even rhinos blend a remarkable naturalism with a thrilling gestural drama. Herzog s title comes right out of the cabinet of eeriness, but we can assume that these images are anything but mere dreams. How could the artists have drawn animals that they hadn t seen? How did they learn to draw them so well? Herzog s 3-D depiction of the magical realm where the images are preserved amid magically sculptural stalactites and stalagmites is as eloquent an argument for the 3-D filmmaking as you re likely to see. Another reason to see Cave of Forgotten Dreams is that it s the only way you ll ever be able to enter this unique but fragile archaeological monument. The only way to preserve the cave was to seal it. In Nainsukh, which looks back only a few centuries at Nainsukh ( ), one of the great Mughal painters of the 18th century, director Amit Dutta is not building on the element of surprise. His film opens in the Kashmir landscape, and it reconstructs the miniature paintings of Nainsukh s time that probably won t make it to Art Basel Miami Beach. 54

21 the mill and the cross NAINSUKH Shifting among ruins, Paradjanov-style live action and lingering observations of nature, Dutta familiarizes you with Nainsukh s palette and his characters. He also works against our expectations of moving pictures, especially those moving pictures that find their way into art galleries. His camera stays with the scenes that found (and find) their way into paintings. If you re accustomed to today s drive-by art, you need to readjust as you look at the weathered stone of the palace of Jasrota. Finding the right rhythm is part of how you find your way into Nainsukh. Your eyes begin to redefine the notion of site-specific work. The Mill and the Cross shares some of the same ambition. Lech Majewski, no stranger to the world of art, invites you to enter a painting. His broad canvas is inspired by The Way to Calvary, the 1564 panorama by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna). At the center of the image, soldiers on horseback take Christ to the cross. Yet throughout the landscape, as tends to happen with Bruegel, life goes on in all its richness, bawdiness and banality. The camera navigates its way into the human drama as your eye might wander through the painting. Bruegel (played by Dutchman Rutger Hauer) conceived of society as a web of activity. It s a thick web. His paintings are densely human. The Mill and the Cross is about more than the Passion of Christ in a human landscape without a center. Bruegel painted The Way to Calvary as occupying Spanish troops pillaged and burned their way through his native Flanders. The painting inside the film becomes much more than a novelty when you see women accused of heresy buried alive (with a priest in attendance) and a man martyred on a wheel atop a high pole, where he s eaten by crows. Bruegel was nothing if not tactile. In retouching a masterpiece, The Mill and the Cross is nothing if not ambitious. A filmmaker isn t going to top Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Nainsukh or the extraordinary observers of the wildlife near the caves of Chauvet 30,000 years ago. But the camera can sharpen our eyes to a painting s secrets and to its magic, preserving the Old Masters by preserving our interest in them. Even better in the cases in which the French government hasn t barricaded entry to all but Werner Herzog and a few specialists the camera can lead you back to the paintings themselves. David D Arcy writes about film for Screen International and other publications. He has written about art for The Art Newspaper since its founding in

22 BIG NIGHTS Special Gala Screenings and Events 58 Opening Night Beginners 59 Midnight Awards 60 Film Society Awards Night 61 Centerpiece Terri 62 Closing Night On Tour 57

23 Big Nights Beginners USA min DIR Mike Mills PROD Leslie Urdang, Dean Vanech, Miranda de Pencier, Lars Knudsen, Jay Van Hoy SCR Mike Mills CAM Kasper Tuxen ED Olivier Bugge Coutté MUS Roger Neill, Dave Palmer, Brian Reitzell WITH Ewan McGregor, Christopher Plummer, Mélanie Laurent, Goran Visnjic PRINT SOURCE Focus Features, 100 Universal City Plaza, Universal City CA kyle. Seventy-five-year-old Hal has found love with a man half his age, and is overjoyed to be dancing to house music at the club. Oliver, his 38-year-old graphic artist son, is not so lucky. He s the permanently brokenhearted veteran of short-lived affairs who is afraid to be happy even when he s met the woman of his dreams. Thumbsucker director Mike Mills charms with this autobiographical tale inspired by his own father s decision to come out late in life. Ewan McGregor is the son confused by, but supportive of, his father s new lifestyle. Christopher Plummer, giving one of his finest performances, is a man determined to finally be true to himself and live life to the fullest, even in the wake of a cancer diagnosis. The story jumps nimbly back and forth through time as Oliver navigates a promising new relationship, recalls his parents passionless marriage and wonders at Hal s later life as a bon vivant senior citizen refusing to give in to illness. Excellent supporting turns from Goran Visnjic and Inglourious Basterds Mélanie Laurent (as father and son s respective love interests) and a talking Jack Russell terrier make up the lively ensemble. Stylish direction and Mills witty, intelligent script add to the film s delights. This is a moving and layered work with lots of laughs and all the poignancy of a son s love letter to his father. Pam Grady OPENING NIGHT THURSDAY, APRIL 21 FILM 7:00 PM CASTRO THEATRE 429 CASTRO STREET (NEAR MARKET) PARTY 9:30 PM 1:00 AM TERRA GALLERY 511 HARRISON STREET (NEAR FIRST) Kick off the 54th San Francisco International Film Festival with a world-class cinematic event and a festive celebration with live entertainment, dancing, fabulous food and delicious drinks. You must be 21+ to attend the party. Mike Mills Berkeley native Mike Mills (b. 1966) graduated from Cooper Union in An artist, graphic artist and filmmaker, his varied career has ranged from designing CD covers, clothing graphics, skateboards and books to directing commercials and music videos. He began filmmaking with documentary shorts Deformer (2000) and Paperboys (2001) and fantasy short Architecture of Reassurance (2001) before making his narrative feature debut with Thumbsucker (2005). A documentary feature, Does Your Soul Have a Cold?, followed in Beginners (2010) is his second narrative feature. 58

24 BIG NIGHTS midnight awards SATURDAY, APRIL 23 10:30 PM W SAN FRANCISCO 181 THIRD STREET (AT HOWARD) The Midnight Awards honor a dynamic young American actor and actress who have made outstanding contributions to independent and mainstream cinema and who bring striking intelligence, exemplary talent and extraordinary depth of character to their roles. This late-night cocktail reception is one of the Festival s most sought-after special events and a key happening for the city s most discerning filmgoers. The Midnight Awards takes the shape of a late-night talk show featuring a special guest host who will interview the two young actors, show film clips of their work and present their awards. Enjoy this unique opportunity to interact with top-level talent in an intimate setting. Cocktails and light hors d oeuvres will be served, accompanied by live musical entertainment. Must be 21+ to attend. PREVIOUS RECIPIENTS 2009 Evan Rachel Wood Elijah Wood 2008 Rose McGowan Jason Lee 2007 Rosario Dawson Sam Rockwell 59

25 Big Nights FILM SOCIeTY AWARDs NIGHT awards night THURSDAY, APRIL 28 Melanie and Lawrence Blum, chairs 6:00 PM VIP cocktail reception with celebrity guests 7:00 PM SHARP Dinner and awards program Founder s Directing Award Peter J. Owens Award Frank Pierson, kanbar award george gund III, george gund iii award This star-studded occasion honors this year s directing, acting and screenwriting award recipients with a glamorous evening featuring onstage celebrity appearances, dinner and entertainment. In 2011, to honor George Gund for more than 40 years of stalwart support, the San Francisco Film Society is inaugurating the George Gund III Award, which will be given on a periodic basis to members of the filmmaking community for their outstanding contributions to film culture. BENEFITS san francisco FILM SOCIETY YOUTH EDUCATION Pictured above: SFIFF 2010 award recipients Walter Salles, Robert Duvall and James Schamus. Bimbo s 365 Club 1025 columbus avenue (at chestnut) TABLES $5,000/$10,000/$15,000/$25,000 TICKETS $500/$1,000/$1,500 The Peter J. Owens Award is made possible by a grant from the Peter J. Owens Trust at The San Francisco Foundation. Gary Shapiro and Scott Owens, trustees. The Founder s Directing Award is given in memory of Irving M. Levin, the visionary founder of the San Francisco International Film Festival in Made possible by Fred M. Levin and Nancy Livingston. The Kanbar Award is made possible by San Francisco Film Society board member Maurice Kanbar. For Awards Night tickets and information, call For all other ticket information, visit sffs.org/tickets. No cameras please. Black tie optional/supper club chic 60

26 BIG NIGHTS Terri CENTERPIECE SATURDAY, april 30 USA min DIR Azazel Jacobs PROD Alison Dickey, Hunter Gray, Lynette Howell, Alex Orlovsky SCR Patrick dewitt CAM Tobias Datum ED Darrin Navarro MUS Mandy Hoffman WITH Jacob Wysocki, John C. Reilly, Creed Bratton, Olivia Crocicchia, Bridger Zadina PRINT SOURCE IDP (a Samuel Goldwyn Films & ATO Pictures Company), 1133 Broadway, Suite 1120, New York NY FAX: With wit and affection, director Azazel Jacobs follow-up to his lauded film Momma s Man (2008) surveys the myriad ways one might find oneself a struggling misfit. Terri is a heavy, shambling, pajama-wearing junior-high student, the physical incarnation of all the insecurity and awkwardness that accompany adolescence. We get to know the taciturn Terri as he cares for his ailing uncle (a man at turns gentle and derisive), conducts solitary experiments in zoology and pines for a girl just out of reach. When vice principal Fitzgerald (played with superb clarity and humor by John C. Reilly) tags Terri as an at-risk student, Terri joins the ranks of official oddballs and fears his school days are numbered. Instead, a charmingly disjointed friendship forms between two outcasts, one young and one old. Awakened by Mr. Fitzgerald s openness about his own past and his oddly direct, often corny conversations, Terri begins to empathize with the plight of those around him. Patrick dewitt s screenplay depicts with precision and compassion a hilariously touching, deeply humane tale of youth in transition. What is especially remarkable about Terri is that it manages to bridge a potentially vast gulf between its deeply awkward outcasts and the audience. We end up walking with them every shambling step of the way. Sean Uyehara FILM terri 7:30 PM SUNDANCE KABUKI CINEMAS 1881 POST STREET (AT FILLMORE) PARTY 9:30 pm 1:00 am clift, Velvet Room 495 Geary street (at taylor) At the center of this year s Festival is an extraordinary event that features an edgy new film by a celebrated director followed by a chic lounge party at one of San Francisco s hottest nightspots. Party with a sophisticated crowd in the CLIFT s Velvet Room, featuring elegant velvet curtains and hand-blown Murano glass. Indulge in cool cocktails, delicious hors d oeuvres and the latest beats. No-host valet parking available. You must be 21+ to attend the party. Azazel JACOBs Azazel Jacobs, son of avant-garde filmmaker Ken Jacobs, was born in 1972 and raised in Lower Manhattan. He attended Purchase College, State University of New York as an undergraduate, and received his MFA from the American Film Institute in Terri is Jacobs fourth feature-length film. His other features include The Good Times Kid (2005), a charming ultra-low budget film about chance encounters and quirky love, and Momma s Man (2008), a tale of redemption and parenting that was one of the more notable independent films of

27 Big Nights On Tour Tournée CLOSING NIGHT THURSDAY, MAY 5 France/Germany min DIR Mathieu Amalric PROD Yael Fogiel, Laetitia Gonzalez SCR Mathieu Amalric, Philippe di Folco, Marcelo Novalis Teles, Raphaëlle Valbrune CAM Christophe Beaucarne ED Annette Dutertre WITH Mathieu Amalric, Miranda Colclasure, Suzanne Ramsey, Linda Marraccini, Julie Ann Muiz, Angela de Lorenzo, Alexander Craven PRINT SOURCE Le Pacte, 5 rue Darcet, Paris, France. n.jeung@le-pacte.com. WEB: tournee-lefilm.com. Presented with support from TV5Monde, the French American Cultural Society and the Consulate General of France, San Francisco. Acclaimed French actor Mathieu Amalric directs and stars in this unsentimental homage to the burlesque show and outsized female personalities barely contained by the proscenium stage. This chatty, bawdy entertainment reminds us that women have real bodies and they want to run the show. All the women in On Tour winner of last year s jury award for Best Director and the FIPRESCI prize at the Cannes Film Festival are authentic American performers of what is dubbed the New Burlesque. Their acts are not only comic, theatric and erotic but also hypnotic, draped knowingly in feather boas, in a wink to audiences who think they re watching just a striptease. Keeping the acts and the narrative flowing is the troupe s manager, Joachim (played by Amalric, in a performance that recalls his lovable alienated misfits in Arnaud Desplechin s films). A former French TV producer who left France for the United States after some untold disgraces, Joachim has found renewed purpose with a bevy of burlesque queens. He accompanies them to France for a tour of the countryside that will be either a journey of redemption or an utter failure. For the sassy brassy ladies, it s a different story. They ve been promised Paris, but they are willing to give their all in the seedy theaters Joachim books for them in backwater towns along France s west coast. They are pros after all and, in the end, the show must go on. Beverly Berning FILM on tour 7:00 pm Castro Theatre 429 Castro Street (near Market) PARTY 9:30 pm 12:30 am the factory 525 Harrison Street (near First) Attend a fabulous new film and enjoy a party with special guests to celebrate the wrap of another great Festival at a fabulous SOMA party space. Dance the night away to music inspired by the Closing Night movie On Tour and indulge in delicious hors d oeuvres and cocktails. You must be 21+ to attend the party. Mathieu Amalric As an actor, Mathieu Amalric is best known for collaborations with director Arnaud Desplechin in such films as A Christmas Tale (French Cinema Now 2008) and Kings and Queen (SFIFF 2005). Amalric gained international fame as stroke victim Jean-Dominique Bauby in Julian Schnabel s The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007) and as Bond villain Dominic Greene in Quantum of Solace (2008). Amalric has cowritten and/or directed a number of films to date, including Le stade de Wimbledon (2001) and a forthcoming television adaptation of Pierre Corneille s L illusion comique. On Tour won him Best Director at the Cannes Film Festival. 62

28 tributes Big Awards, Big Talents, Big Statements 64 Mel Novikoff Award Serge Bromberg Retour de Flamme: Rare and Restored Films in 3-D 65 Golden Gate Persistence of Vision Award Matthew Barney Drawing Restraint Founder s Directing Award 67 Peter J. Owens Award 68 Kanbar Award Frank Pierson Dog Day Afternoon 63

29 tributes the infernal boiling pot Retour de Flamme: Rare and Restored Films in 3-D AN afternoon WITH serge bromberg Total running time 150 min. Attempts at three-dimensional motion picture presentation began almost at the same time as the invention of movies themselves. This special program hosted by 2011 Novikoff Award recipient Serge Bromberg presents some of the earliest examples of 3-D motion pictures as well as some contemporary gems. The inimitable Bromberg not only discovers rare treasures like the ones described above but also restores, preserves, archives and tirelessly roams the world screening them to astonished and delighted audiences. Bromberg, in his showman persona, also accompanies the films on the piano and sometimes even sings along! In addition to Lumière brothers 3-D work and other rarities by Georges Méliès, Norman McLaren, Charley Bowers, Chuck Jones and the Disney Studios, Bromberg unveils films from the Soviet Union and contemporary shorts by Matthew O Callaghan and Pixar s John Lasseter. Films include Musical Memories (Dave Fleischer, USA 1953, 7 min), Working for Peanuts (Jack Hannah, USA 1953), Motor Rhythm (John Norling, USA 1940, 15 min), Arrival of a Train and other shorts (1935, Auguste Lumière, Louis Lumière), Lumber Jack-Rabbit (Chuck Jones, USA 1954, 7 min), 3-D Experiments by René Bunzli (France 1900), Melody (Ward Kimball, USA 1953, 10 min), Falling in Love Again (Munro Ferguson, Canada 2003, 4 min), Knick Knack (John Lasseter, USA 1989, 4 min), The Infernal Boiling Pot (George Méliès, France 1903, 2 min), The Oracle of Delphi (George Méliès, France 1903, 2 min), Parafargamus the Alchemist (George Méliès, France 1903, 2 min), Fur of Flying (Matthew O Callaghan, USA 2010, 3 min) and Coyote Falls (Matthew O Callaghan, USA 2010, 3 min). sunday, may 1 5:00 pm Castro theatre 429 castro street (near market) This year s recipient of the Mel Novikoff Award bestowed upon an individual or institution whose work has enhanced the filmgoing public s appreciation of world cinema is the tireless Serge Bromberg, an indispensible force for film restoration and preservation as well as a film programmer, filmmaker and first-rate showman to boot. Bromberg will engage in an onstage interview at the Castro Theatre followed by the screening of a selection of rare and new 3-D films. A complete article with biographical information on Serge Bromberg can be found on page

30 tributes Drawing Restraint 17 AN afternoon WITH matthew barney North American Premiere Switzerland min DIR Matthew Barney PROD Matthew Barney, Schaulager/Laurenz Foundation CAM Peter Strietmann ED Matthew Barney, Chris Seguine WITH Emily Harrington PRINT SOURCE Gladstone Gallery, 515 W. 24th Street, New York NY gladstonegallery.com. Multimedia artist Matthew Barney s Drawing Restraint series perhaps best known to filmgoers for the featurelength Drawing Restraint 9, which costarred Björk and a Japanese whaling ship is an ongoing project of more than 20 years duration inspired by Barney s early life as an athlete. Premised on the notion that form arises in the attempt to overcome barriers to action, the project uses video, film, sculpture, drawing and performance to create art born of restraint. The latest work in this series, the stunning Drawing Restraint 17, merges sculpture, aweinspiring athleticism and fascinatingly cryptic symbolism into a silent metaphysical meditation on art-making and physical exertion. The video atmospherically glides through an elusive narrative rich in metaphor. As he has in other works, Barney casts notable works of architecture in this case, in and around Basel, Switzerland as key players. Split-screen sequences visually interrogate the expressionistic concrete edifice of the Goetheanum, a center for the study of spiritual science designed in the 1920s by architect/thinker Rudolf Steiner, and Herzog & de Meuron s more recent and angular Schaulager Museum (for which this piece was produced). In the museum, Barney portrays an artist supervising the construction of a sculpture made from rotting wood beams, while on the fecund bucolic grounds of the exurban Goetheanum, a blonde woman tills worm-rich soil before embarking on a picturesque tram ride to the museum, where she engages in a dizzying interaction. The site, like DR17 itself, becomes a wormhole leading to an otherworldly zone only Barney could conjure. Glen Helfand SATURDAY, april 30 5:00 pm Sundance Kabuki Cinemas 1881 Post Street (at Fillmore) The Golden Gate Persistence of Vision Award this year goes to internationally celebrated multimedia artist and filmmaker Matthew Barney. Best known for his Cremaster Cycle ( ) of experimental films and related art works, Barney has changed the way we look at and make film. Among the best-known artists of his generation, Barney joins the Festival for an onstage conversation ahead of a screening of his latest cinematic creation. A complete article with biographical information on Matthew Barney can be found on page

31 tributes walter salles at sfiff 2010 Founder s Directing Award Wednesday, April 27 7:00 pm Sundance Kabuki Cinemas 1881 Post Street (at Fillmore) The Film Society honors an outstanding director with the Founder s Directing Award. This award is given each year to a master of world cinema, in memory of Irving M. Levin, the visionary founder of the San Francisco International Film Festival in The event includes an onstage interview and a special screening of a representative film from the career of the honoree. The Founder s Directing Award is made possible by Fred M. Levin and Nancy Livingston. Film Screening The evening includes a special screening of a representative film from the career of the honoree. 66

32 tributes robert duvall at sfiff 2010 peter j. owens award Friday, april 29 7:30 pm castro theatre 429 castro street (near market) Join the Festival for a very special award night celebrating the career of one of cinema s great acting talents. Named for the longtime San Francisco benefactor of arts and charitable organizations Peter J. Owens ( ), this award honors an actor whose work exemplifies brilliance, independence and integrity. The evening will include a clip reel of career highlights and an onstage interview with the artist, followed by a special screening of a representative film from the career of the honoree. The Peter J. Owens Award is made possible by a grant from the Peter J. Owens trust at The San Francisco Foundation. Gary Shapiro and Scott Owens, trustees. Film Screening The evening includes a special screening of a representative film from the career of the honoree. 67

33 tributes Dog Day Afternoon AN AFTERNOON WITH frank pierson USA min DIR Sidney Lumet PROD Martin Bregman, Martin Elfand SCR Frank Pierson CAM Victor J. Kemper ED Dede Allen WITH Al Pacino, John Cazale, Charles Durning, Chris Sarandon PRINT SOURCE Warner Bros. The bank heist movie to end all bank heist movies, Dog Day Afternoon leaves the hardened action criminals behind and gives us Sonny (Al Pacino in one of his greatest roles), a neurotic yet sensitive first-time crook who holds up a Brooklyn bank for unexpected reasons of his own. As hordes of police, reporters and riotous masses convene around the bank, the heist becomes a media sensation, with everyone from bystanders to the hostages themselves vying for their 15 minutes of fame. Epitomizing the political atmosphere of 1970s social discontent (Sonny s Attica! Attica! rant referencing the 1971 prison massacre is legendary), the film also gives us access to multilayered characters: As negotiations heat up outside, Sonny and partner-in-crime Sal (played by Pacino s Godfather costar John Cazale) establish a strange rapport with their hostages. Screenwriter Frank Pierson (this year s Kanbar Award recipient) took inspiration from a Life magazine article in creating a complex masterpiece as nuanced as it is gripping, in which the nature of Sonny s crime and the audience s allegiances are continually challenged. Pierson and director Sidney Lumet treat their characters seriously but allow an absurdist humor to erupt naturally out of the palpable air of midsummer desperation. Nominated for six Oscars (including Al Pacino for Best Actor) and winner of Best Original Screenplay for Pierson, Dog Day Afternoon is a defining film in American cinema. Jenni Rowland SATURDAY, april 30 12:30 pm Sundance Kabuki Cinemas 1881 Post Street (at Fillmore) The Film Society is proud to present the 2011 Kanbar Award for excellence in screenwriting to a living legend, Frank Pierson, the voice behind some of the freshest and most enduring films in the canon of American cinema. Join the Festival in honoring Pierson with an onstage interview prior to a screening of the iconic 1975 film that won him an Academy Award, Dog Day Afternoon. sidney lumet Sidney Lumet began his career directing Off-Broadway productions and made his film debut in 1957 with the instant classic 12 Angry Men. Over the course of a career that spans nearly 50 years, Lumet has directed such celebrated films as Network (1976), The Verdict (1982) and Before the Devil Knows You re Dead (2007). Known for making rock-solid social dramas and his ability to draw strong performances out of his actors, Lumet received an Academy Award for lfetime achievement in

34 LIVE & ONSTAGE FILMS, Music, Performances 70 From A to Zellner 71 New Skin for the Old Ceremony 72 Porchlight 73 State of Cinema Address Christine Vachon 74 Tindersticks: Claire Denis Film Scores

35 Live & onstage From A to Zellner DIR David Zellner, Nathan Zellner PRINT SOURCE Zellner Bros., PO Box 49554, Austin TX info@zellnerbros.com. Total running time 75 min. Meet the inimitable Zellner Bros.! David and Nathan, the Austin-based filmmaking duo, makers of last year s giddily eye-popping treat Fiddlestixx (SFIFF 2010), will be at the Festival to present more selections from their considerable oeuvre of short films, the newest of which is an unprecedented look into the mysteries of nature entitled Sasquatch Birth Journal 2. The Zellners write, direct, produce, shoot, edit and often act in their films, which run the gamut from heartfelt and touching to raucous and absurd, usually moment by moment. Characters with accents Welsh/Australian/Southern-US and unknown abound. Interactions with animals of various stripes are not uncommon. Characters with serious blind spots for their very troubling character deficiencies are the norm. In this special program, we will have the rare opportunity to interact at length with the Zellners about their process, their heritage and their deepest-seated desires. Looking back on their decade of filmmaking, certain questions arise. Just how real are these seemingly obviously fake movies? Were the brothers really attacked by a shark? Is it really true that one of them is circumcised and the other isn t? Who was that sasquatch, really? From the twisted tale of a good deed gone wrong in Quasar Hernandez to the emasculating failure of reaching for closure on a broken relationship in Rummy, the Zellners will cover all the bases from A to you know where. Sean Uyehara David Zellner Nathan Zellner David and Nathan Zellner are filmmaker siblings based out of Austin, Texas. Their first exposure to the magic of cinema took place as children while serving as featured extras in Pasolini s Salò. Their feature film Goliath premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2008 and was distributed by IFC Films. They ve made numerous award-winning short films and music videos that have screened internationally. SUN APR 24 9:45 KABUKI 70

36 who by fire New Skin for the Old Ceremony leonard cohen live & onstage Total running time 95 min. Leonard Cohen has enthralled us with his writing and music for over 50 years. This three-part evening features films and music produced in response to the profound beauty and unexpected humor of Cohen s work. Cohen s 1974 album New Skin for the Old Ceremony is the source for 11 new short films, each by a different director, each set to a different track from the album. The project was developed and first presented at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles by curators Lorca Cohen (Leonard Cohen s daughter) and Darin Klein. The films will be projected uninterrupted with the album as a soundtrack. The eclectic selection includes shorts by a number of fine artists, musicians and animators, including Theo Angell, Kelly Sears, Brent Green and Lucky Dragons. To accompany this new compilation, we present a classic documentary focusing on Cohen s literary work and public persona in the late 60s, Ladies and Gentlemen... Mr. Leonard Cohen (Donald Brittain, Don Owen, Canada 1967, 45 min). This wonderful film reveals Cohen at work and with friends, and the multifaceted nature of his popularity. At turns reserved and brash, self-deprecating and self-assured, the young Cohen is a complicated and intriguing subject. Finally, we present live renditions of several Cohen songs, in performances anchored by local songsmith and Sub Pop artist Kelley Stoltz and beloved duo Pale Hoarse. Sean Uyehara TUE APR 26 9:00 KABUKI 71

37 Live & onstage Porchlight Director Kaspar Astrup Schroeder at SFIFF 2010 Total running time 70 min. San Fracisco s beloved nonfiction storytelling series makes another highly anticipated appearance at the Festival for a special night of film industry themed stories. The rules for telling a story at Porchlight are deceptively simple: Tell a true ten-minute tale to an audience of strangers as if you were telling it to a good friend. The results vary wildly (as some of you may remember from last year s SFIFF) but are uniformly unforgettable. Arline Klatte and Beth Lisick, the show s cofounders and hosts, move the night along with grace, charm and wit. The program will feature six storytellers, each accompanied by a video clip as supporting material. As of press time there are three storytellers confirmed, including Lisick herself, who ll be telling her first Porchlight story since cofounding the series 11 years ago! (This writer happens to know that Lisick was once asked to play a hip mother who utters slam-style poetry in a banking commercial. Thank you, advertising world.) Jonn Herschend, whose film Self Portrait as a PowerPoint Presentation for an Amusement Park Ride screens in the Get with the Program shorts program, will discuss his escapades, most recently a fake marketing video for the gallery Den Frie in Copenhagen. Alan Black, literary maven and proprietor of local haunt Edinburgh Castle, will reprise a story about a film shoot in his bar that brought the house down on its first telling. Visit the fest11.sffs.org for updates on other guests expected to participate in this informal bean-spilling session. Sean Uyehara TUE MAY 3 9:30 KABUKI 72

38 State of Cinema Address christine vachon live & onstage Each year, the Film Society invites an industry leader to ruminate on the intersecting worlds of contemporary cinema, culture and society. This year, indie film maverick Christine Vachon discusses her remarkable career as a producer of often controversial films such as Kids (Larry Clark, 1995), I Shot Andy Warhol (Mary Harron, 1996), Happiness (Todd Solondz, 1998), Boys Don t Cry (Kimberly Peirce, 1999), Hedwig and the Angry Inch (John Cameron Mitchell, 2001) and Cairo Time (Ruba Nadda, SFIFF 2010), as well as all of Todd Haynes s films including Poison (1991), Safe (1995), I m Not There (2007) and the HBO mini-series Mildred Pierce (2011). One of indie film s most formidable and well-respected figures, Vachon s take on the State of Cinema promises to enlighten and provoke. Total running time 75 min. PREVIOUS ADDRESSES 2010 Walter Murch 2009 Mary Ellen Mark 2008 Kevin Kelly 2007 Peter Sellars 2006 Tilda Swinton 2005 Brad Bird 2004 B. Ruby Rich 2003 Michael Ciment The Killer Producer By Jason Berger In 1973, while growing up in New York City, ten-year-old Christine Vachon wandered into an Upper West Side movie theater, hoping to catch a horror film. With no knowledge of the films except for their titles, she picked one that sounded like the best bet to deliver the scares she was looking for. That film turned out to be Ingmar Bergman s classic Cries and Whispers. It certainly was a horror film, said Vachon in an interview with NPR, but not in the way that I had thought. It was a stunning experience. I walked out of there like I didn t know film could do that. In her 25 years as a producer, as cofounder of Killer Films, and as the author of two books on film production, Vachon has greatly expanded the parameters and possibilities of independent film. She has shepherded unique characters and distinct artistic visions to the screen, helping to move them beyond the New York art houses and into nationwide multiplexes. With films such as Boys Don t Cry and Kids, she has given voice to the type of gritty, emotionally extreme stories previously relegated to the fringes, placing them front and center in our artistic and cultural discussions. And, perhaps most radically, Vachon has never lost sight of what drew her as a ten-year-old to that theater in the first place, before she unknowingly walked into another cinematic world: Her films, no matter how high their artistic aspirations, still manage to entertain. [When I started] in New York there were really two types of films being made, Vachon recalled in an interview with Steven Priggé. You were either making movies that were being shown at the Collection of Living Cinema, which were essentially like watching paint dry, or you were making Hollywood movies. Vachon s savvy combination of art and entertainment has brought us such characters as the titular transvestiteturned-rock star in Hedwig and the Angry Inch and Dylan Baker s amiable pedophile-next-door in Happiness. And through her longtime creative partnership with acclaimed filmmaker Todd Haynes, Vachon has produced some of the era s most distinctive films, such as the glam-rock epic Velvet Goldmine, the Bob Dylan mosaic I m Not There and the Douglas Sirk inspired Far from Heaven, all of which received Academy Award nominations. In this year s State of Cinema address, Vachon will discus the ways in which the independent film industry has changed and how it must adapt in this era of new forms of media and film presentation in order to stay relevant how the types of films she loves to make can continue to open our eyes, shift our perspective and, yes, even entertain us. Jason Berger is a journalist and editor based in San Francisco. SUN APR 25 4:00 KABUKI STAT25K 73

39 Live & onstage tindersticks: Claire DeniS Film SCOreS Dir Claire Denis Total running time 70 min. Special support for this program generously provided by Visionary Circle members Nion McEvoy and Leslie Berriman, and by Robert Mailer Anderson and Nicola Miner. For the past 15 years, world-renowned French filmmaker Claire Denis and composer Stuart Staples best known as the primary singer and songwriter for groundbreaking British chamber-rock band Tindersticks have engaged in an inspired and fruitful collaboration, pushing the boundaries of their fields to produce art of profound and charmed beauty. The Film Society is honored to present Tindersticks in what will be an unforgettable live performance, as the band accompanies a meticulously prepared montage of scenes from six Denis films scored by Staples and his band mates. Technicians have scoured archives to collect the original elements and assemble strikingly sensual and alternately meditative and shocking clips from Nénette et Boni, Trouble Every Day, Friday Night, The Intruder, 35 Shots of Rum and White Material (the 2009 stunner featuring Isabelle Huppert). Viewed and heard anew, Denis s singular images will soar as the band s live music envelops the majestic Castro Theatre. For this special event, fellow Tindersticks members David Boulter, Neil Fraser, Dan KcKinna and Earl Harvin join Staples, augmented by additional musicians on strings and brass. The full ensemble will do dramatic justice to Denis s visionary cinema through gorgeously dark-hued music that blends subtle guitar strumming and delicate violin arpeggios with otherworldly percussion and atmospheric washes of symphonic color over which Staples croons in his inimitable baritone. Working with Claire makes us shift our vision, Staples has said. We come out the other end of it and we always feel kind of changed. Steven Jenkins, Sean Uyehara Claire DeniS Born in Paris and raised in French West Africa, Claire Denis has created a sensual, empathetic body of work that is as intellectually satisfying as it is emotionally immediate. Denis s cinema explores the experience of outsiders in French society while astutely documenting the legacy of colonialism. Her films include Chocolat (1988), I Can t Sleep (SFIFF 1995), Nénette et Boni (SFIFF 1997), Beau Travail (SFIFF 2000), Trouble Every Day (2001), Friday Night (SFIFF 2003), The Intruder (SFIFF 2005), 35 Shots of Rum (SFIFF 2009) and White Material (SFIFF 2010), among others. MON MAY 2 8:30 castro 74

40 NEW DIRECTORS First- and Second-Time Directors Emerging on the International Scene In Competition for NEW DIRECTORS PRIZE 80 Autumn 82 Circumstance 87 The High Life 89 The Journals of Musan 91 Kinyarwanda 94 My Joy 96 The Place in Between 98 The Salesman 99 She Monkeys 101 Tilva Rosh 102 Ulysses OUT OF COMPETITION 78 At Ellen s Age 79 Attenberg 81 A Cat in Paris 83 The Colors of the Mountain 84 The Dish & the Spoon 85 End of Animal 86 The Future 88 Jean Gentil 90 The Joy 92 Living on Love Alone 93 Microphone 95 Nainsukh 97 Le Quattro Volte 100 Sound of Noise 103 A Useful Life 104 The Whistleblower 105 Year Without a Summer 77

41 At Ellen s Age Im alter von Ellen new directors Germany min DIR Pia Marais PROD Claudia Steffen, Christoph Friedel SCR Horst Markgraf, Pia Marais CAM Hélène Louvart ED Mona Bräuer MUS Horst Markgraf, Yoyo Röhm WITH Jeanne Balibar, Stefan Stern, Georg Friedrich, Julia Hummer, Alexander Sheer PRINT SOURCE The Match Factory, Balthasarstrasse 79-81, Cologne, Germany. FAX: festivals@matchfactory.de. WEB: ellen. pandorafilm.com. In German, French and English with subtitles. Special support for this program generously provided by the Consulate General of the Federal Republic of Germany San Francisco. Promise me not to go all mad, OK? Ellen s boyfriend Florian asks her before revealing that he s going to have a child with another woman. But go a bit mad she does, ditching both home and her longtime flight attendant job and setting forth on an uncertain trajectory. Pia Marais s modern fable of dislocation takes us down the rabbit hole, dropping into a variety of unnerving, oddly humorous and slightly surreal situations as Ellen searches for grounding in a rootless world. Adrift, broke and unused to being alone, Ellen attaches herself to a daisy chain of acquaintances and complete strangers. Her need to be with others results in some undignified hotel-room mornings before she falls in with a group of militant animal rights activists. Ellen is attracted to their passion, and perhaps to their endless discussion of rules, but it s unclear whether they can provide the sense of purpose she s seeking. Moving from anonymous hotel rooms, airports and lobbies to the chaotic warmth of a Frankfurt commune, where sleeping bodies lie in a jumble among semi-domesticated animals, At Ellen s Age is filled with striking images: the red caps of a gaggle of airline attendants, a cheetah strolling regally across an airport tarmac, the otherworldly glow of a swarm of white lab rats running on black asphalt at night. Jeanne Balibar s ethereal beauty and controlled performance accentuate Ellen s standing as a perpetual stranger in a strange world, adding a distinctive center to a character and a film as mysterious and unpredictable as modern life. Pia Marais Born in Johannesburg, Pia Marais experienced her own share of globetrotting, growing up in South Africa, Sweden and Spain. Prior to becoming a filmmaker, she studied photography and sculpture at art academies throughout Europe. After making several short films and spending time as both a casting director and assistant director, she made her first feature, The Unpolished, which won various prizes in At Ellen s Age is her second feature. Rachel Rosen SUN APR 24 6:15 KABUKI WED APR 27 3:30 KABUKI FRI APR 29 7:00 PFA 78

42 Attenberg Greece min DIR Athina Rachel Tsangari PROD Maria Hatzakou, Yorgos Lanthimos, Iraklis Mavroidis, Athina Rachel Tsangari, Angelos Venetis SCR Athina Rachel Tsangari CAM Thimios Bakatakis ED Sandrine Cheyrol, Matt Johnson WITH Ariane Labed, Vangelis Mourikis, Evangelia Randou, Yorgos Lanthimos PRINT SOURCE The Match Factory, Balthasarstrasse 79-81, Cologne, Germany. FAX: As an architect suffering from cancer prepares for his impending death, his daughter, Marina, attempts an awkward flight into adulthood. Emotionally stilted at 23, Marina seeks the counsel of her best friend the promiscuous and instructive Bella who bluntly guides her through the clumsy physicality of sex. Marina, who prefers to watch the mating rituals of animals on David Attenborough documentaries than to experience them herself, wades through uncomfortable territory for the first time. We glimpse her terse experiments, her fumbles and frank inquiries as she tries to figure out how these things called relationships work. All the while, she shuttles her father to and from the hospital, witnessing his own body deflate. The daily machinations of Marina and Bella unfold against the backdrop of a crumbling mill town wrought firmly in the industrial imagination. Once conceived to be a paradise of production, the town is now a hollow landscape of steel skeletons, deserted construction sites and crumbling 60s mod homes a decrepit utopia that Marina s father helped to create. But things still emerge in the wasteland. Director Athina Rachel Tsangari constructs a world that is at once sobering and playful, strained and delightful, drawing out the life ripening amid the industrial clutter. Tsangari imbues her characters and landscape with an inchoate beauty; everything, everyone is a workin-progress. She applies a wry lens, scrutinizing her characters bizarre behavior with the rigor of an observing biologist, exposing their follies under searing lights. But, by doing so, their absurdity becomes accessible and intensely intimate. She makes us feel close. Athina Rachel Tsangari Attenberg is Greek-born Athina Rachel Tsangari s remarkably accomplished second feature. Prior to Attenberg, Tsangari directed The Slow Business of Going (2000), produced Kinetta (2005) and was the associate producer of the Academy Award nominated Dogtooth (Best Foreign Film nominee, 2011). Tsangari studied film and theater at New York University and received her MFA in film production from the University of Texas at Austin. She also cofounded the Cinematexas International Short Film Festival in Austin. new directors Sara Dosa FRI APR 22 7:00 KABUKI WED APR 27 8:45 KABUKI FRI APR 29 3:15 NEW PEOPLE 79

43 Autumn Harud new directors India min DIR Aamir Bashir PROD Aamir Bashir, Shanker Raman SCR Aamir Bashir, Shanker Raman, Mahmood Farooqui CAM Shanker Raman ED Shan Mohammed MUS Naren Chandavarkar, Suhaas Ahuja, Benedict Taylor WITH Reza Naji, Shahnawaz Bhat, Shamim Basharat, Mudassir Khan, Salma Ashai PRINT SOURCE Chasing Tales, B-504 Panchtantra 2, Panch Marg, Off Yari Road, Versova, Andhere West, Mumbai Maharashtra, India. net. WEB: harudthefilm.com. New Directors Prize Contender In Urdu with subtitles. After an unsuccessful attempt to cross into Pakistan, young Rafiq returns home to a desolate existence with his parents. The family is mourning the loss of Rafiq s older brother, Tauqir, one of the tens of thousands of young men who have disappeared since the insurgency in Kashmir began in His mother remains vaguely delusional about the chances of Tauqir s eventual return as she attends rallies by the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons; his father, a traffic cop, meanwhile begins to show signs of post-traumatic stress disorder from the years of violence he has witnessed. Rafiq spends much of his time sleeping or staring blankly, all emotion evacuated from his large brown eyes. When Rafiq discovers Tauqir s old camera with a roll of undeveloped film inside it, he is briefly emboldened by this tangible connection to his brother and the possibilities it might hold for his own future. Filmed on location in the Kashmir valley with either nonprofessional or first-time Kashmiri actors, Autumn is a powerful depiction of the loss and decay caused by 20 years of violent conflict. At the same time, it stands as a moving tribute to those who have struggled throughout to maintain their dignity and humanity. Aamir Bashir Born in Srinagar, Kashmir, Aamir Bashir worked as a television news correspondent and travel show host before moving to Mumbai to pursue a career in acting. He has appeared in several independent Hindi films including Clever and Lonely (2002), The Great Indian Butterfly (2007), A Wednesday (2008) and the award-winning Frozen (SFIFF 2008). Bashir spent four years developing the story and screenplay for Autumn, his first film as a writer, director and producer. Joanne Parsont SAT APR 23 6:15 PFA MON APR 25 6:45 KABUKI SAT APR 30 9:15 KABUKI 80

44 A Cat in Paris Une vie de chat France/Belgium/Netherlands/ Switzerland min DIR Alain Gagnol, Jean-Loup Felicioli PROD Jacques-Rémy Girerd SCR Alain Gagnol, Jacques-Rémy Girerd CAM Izu Troin ED Hervé Guichard MUS Serge Besset WITH Mark Irons, Sara Vertongen, Jerry Killick, Jasmine Avlonitis-Perrin PRINT SOURCE GKIDS, 225 Broadway, Suite 2610, New York NY FAX: In English. Recommended for children eight and up. Special support for this program generously provided by Visionary Circle member Caroline Crawford. An enchanting fable about looking past appearances and cultivating unlikely loyalties in times of need, A Cat in Paris is the first feature-length collaboration by the creative team of Alain Gagnol and Jean-Loup Felicioli. Impressive 2-D animation turns the streets of Paris into a delicate watercolor study, as cat burglar Nico and cat Dino leap nimbly across rooftops and slip silently into open windows in search of loot. Unbeknownst to Nico, Dino actually leads a double life: By day he is the constant companion of seven-year-old Zoe, the daughter of an overextended, widowed police commissioner, Jeanne. Zoe hasn t spoken since gang boss Victor Costa murdered her father. Her mother, determined to bring Costa to justice, is unable to give her much attention, leaving her instead in the care of her nanny Claudine, who herself leads a double life as Costa s gal pal. A criminal in job description only, nice guy Nico finds himself protecting Zoe against Costa s gang after she inadvertently stumbles on a plot to steal the so-called Colossus of Nairobi while following Dino on his mysterious rounds. To bring Costa to justice and rescue Zoe, Jeanne is forced to place her faith in a man she knows to be an outlaw. Children of all ages will root for the undercats in this droll thriller, while the moody cityscape and a cool retro jazz soundtrack will appeal to their hip elders. Alain Gagnol Jean-lOUP Felicioli Alain Gagnol and Jean-Loup Felcioli have been collaborating on animated shorts since 1996 at the Folimage animation studio. A graduate of the Emile Cohl School of Design in Lyon, screenwriter Alain Gagnol s first ambition was to create comic books, while graphics designer Jean-Loup Felcioli originally studied painting and fine arts in Annecy, Strasbourg, Perpignan and Valence. A Cat in Paris is their first feature-length collaboration. new directors Specky Four Eyes Arnaud s eyesight is atrocious. But when the doctor prescribes a new pair of glasses, everything suddenly looks a lot less interesting than it did before. (Jean-Claude Rozec, France 2010, 9 min) In GGA Competition. Nicole Gluckstern SUN APR 24 12:30 KABUKI SUN MAY 1 12:30 NEW PEOPLE 81

45 Circumstance France/USA/Iran/Lebanon new directors min DIR Maryam Keshavarz PROD Karin Chien, Maryam Keshavarz, Melissa M. Lee SCR Maryam Keshavarz CAM Brian Rigney Hubbard ED Andrea Chignoli MUS Gingger Shankar WITH Nikohl Boosheri, Sarah Kazemy, Reza Sixo Safai, Soheil Parsa, Nasrin Pakkho PRINT SOURCE Roadside Attractions, 7920 Sunset Boulevard, Suite 402, Los Angeles CA FAX: roadsideattractions.com. New Directors Prize Contender In Farsi with subtitles. Support for this program generously provided by the Kenneth Rainin Foundation. Maryam Keshavarz s debut feature is a riveting political drama and love story. This Sundance Film Festival Audience Award winner focuses on the fraught allegiances and desires of a single family in Tehran. Atafeh, the privileged daughter of an educated, well-to-do family and her new friend, Shireen, share in an underground culture of nightclubs and parties that are banned in Iran. As the young women move about the city without male escorts and remove their headscarves in public, they defy the morality police exhilarating but dangerous activities. Their friendship deepens and they fall into a sweet, forbidden love affair, further driving the wedge between their public and private selves. When Atafeh s brother, Mehran, returns home, newly fundamentalist in his views, the home itself becomes a dangerous web of surveillance and intrigue. Mehran, with direct access to powerful conservative forces in Tehran, uses his newfound prestige to rule over the daily activities of his sister and parents. Thus, the family becomes a microcosm of the political and social problems of Iran overall, where neighbors insist on their own moral superiority and pleasure takes place behind closed doors. Keshavarz fashions a sexy, engaging narrative that captures the paranoiac secrecy and repression that accompanies authoritarian rule, while revealing that politics truly do begin at home. Maryam Keshavarz In 2002, Maryam Keshavarz won a Steve Tisch fellowship to pursue an MFA in film directing at New York University. Keshavarz s first feature was the documentary The Color of Love, an intimate portrait of the changing landscape of love and politics in Iran. Keshavarz next returned to Argentina, where she had studied at the University of Buenos Aires, to direct the visual essay The Day I Died, about an adolescent love triangle. Kehsavarz participated in the 2007 Sundance Screenwriters and Directors Lab, Tribeca All Access and FIND s Producer s Lab while developing Circumstance, which also received a major grant from the San Francisco Film Society and Kenneth Rainin Foundation. Sean Uyehara SUN MAY 1 6:00 KABUKI TUE MAY 3 6:15 KABUKI 82

46 The Colors of the Mountain Los colores de la montaña Colombia/Panama min DIR Carlos César Arbeláez PROD Juan Pablo Tamayo SCR Carlos César Arbeláez CAM Oscar Jiménez ED Felipe Aljure, Andrés Durán MUS Camilo Montilla WITH Hernán Mauricio Ocampo, Nolberto Sánchez, Genaro Aristizábal, Natalia Cuellar, Hernán Méndez PRINT SOURCE Film Movement, 109 W. 27th Street, Suite 9B, New York NY FAX: com. Special support for this program generously provided by Visionary Circle member Fred Phillips. An endearing, motley crew of young boys in the mountains of Colombia lives only for one passion: soccer. Their field of dreams is not quite level and has no markings, but means everything to them. Manuel gets a new soccer ball for his ninth birthday and is so excited that he sleeps with the ball in his arms at night. But early into this warmhearted story of innocent youth creep signs of uneasiness. Their schoolteacher disappears. Guerrilla slogans appear on the walls of the schoolhouse. Then the right-wing paramilitary militias pass through town. Ominous rumors spread that some boys in a neighboring village have been killed for sympathizing with the guerrillas. Even this dreadful news cannot dim the passion the boys have for fútbol. One day, their ball rolls from the soccer pitch into a field planted with land mines, and they are forbidden to retrieve it. The paramilitaries tighten their noose on the village, sending the adults into a downward spiral of helplessness and fear. Still, nothing can darken the boys dreams. As the village becomes the center of a tug-of-war between the paramilitary groups and the guerrillas, the idea of a rescue attempt for their precious ball is too tempting to resist. With a simple filmic language reminiscent of contemporary Iranian cinema, first-time director Carlos César Arbeláez tells a suspenseful political tale about people who are as apolitical as can be. Carlos César Arbeláez Carlos César Arbeláez studied at the International School of Cinema at San Antonio de los Baños, Cuba and at the National School of Cinematic Experimentation and Production in Argentina. He has directed more than a dozen documentaries for Colombian television. The Colors of the Mountain is his feature film debut, and won the Best New Director prize at the San Sebastian International Film Festival in His new project is titled Eso que llaman amor. new directors Miguel Pendás SAT APR 23 1:00 KABUKI SUN APR 24 6:30 KABUKI 83

47 The Dish & the Spoon new directors USA min DIR Alison Bagnall PROD Alison Bagnall, Peter Gilbert, Amy Seimetz SCR Alison Bagnall, Andrew Lewis CAM Mark Schwartzbard ED Darrin Navarro MUS Anthony La Marca WITH Greta Gerwig, Olly Alexander, Eléonore Hendricks, Amy Seimetz PRINT SOURCE Humble Pictures LLC, 32 Westview Street, Philadelphia PA Emotionally unhinged after leaving her cheating husband, Rose runs off to drink away her sorrow in an abandoned lighthouse, where she stumbles on a similarly jilted and listless English boy. The two wounded souls fall in with each other, taking shelter in a deserted beach house. There they revert to childlike states in an effort to escape their adult anguish. The two shirk responsibilities in favor of binge-drinking, aimless wandering and playacting while conspiring to find and take revenge upon the woman who slept with Rose s husband. In the process, they play a game in which they act out the roles of a happy couple. But the game may mean different things to Rose and her new friend. Under the moody gray skies of off-season coastal Delaware, indie star Greta Gerwig (Greenberg) delivers a fearlessly unrestrained performance, with an endearing vulnerability that matches her paroxysms of grief. In contrast, newcomer Olly Alexander looking like a Don t Look Back era Bob Dylan bears his character s suffering more quietly, hinting at his torment through ironic distance. Together, the unlikely pair creates a stirring portrayal of young adults still learning to cope with the heartbreak that stems from being betrayed by the ones you love the most. Alison Bagnall, who most recently acted in two films by Joe Swanberg, employs a similarly low-key directing style while taking an emotionally direct approach that s all her own. The Dish & the Spoon is a quirky and potent story of the unavoidable perils of emotional dependency. Alison Bagnall Alison Bagnall graduated from the American Film Institute before making several acclaimed short films and cowriting Buffalo 66 (SFIFF 1998) with Vincent Gallo. She made her first feature, Piggie, in 2003, before acting in Nights and Weekends (2008) and Alexander the Last (2009). The Dish & the Spoon is her second feature. Jesse Dubus THU APR 28 8:45 PFA FRI APR 29 6:30 KABUKI SUN MAY 1 3:30 KABUKI 84

48 End of Animal Jimseung ui kkut US Premiere South Korea min DIR Jo Sung-hee PROD Heo Eun-kyong SCR Jo Sung-hee CAM Baek Moon-su ED Jo Sung-hee WITH Lee Min-ji, Park Hae-il, Yoo Sung-mok, Park Sae-jong, Kim Yeong-ho PRINT SOURCE CJ Entertainment, 17th Floor, CJ E&M Center, 1606 Sangam-dong, Mayo-gu, Seoul, South Korea. FAX: Pregnant teenager Soon-young, leaving Seoul in the backseat of a taxi to give birth at her mother s house, looks up to find the driver welcoming another passenger. The arrogant young man, without even turning to look at her, acts strangely and disconcertingly, revealing private details from the lives of both the driver and Soon-young. Even more disturbingly, he starts counting down to the precise moment when, he says, the angels will descend a countdown that terminates in a blinding white flash. Soonyoung regains consciousness in a motionless car with a dead cell phone and, against everybody s advice, begins to wander through a mysterious new world. Trouble starts the moment you leave the front door, our heroine is warned, but she can t help trying to make sense of what s happened to the life she thought she knew. Behind her lie broken dreams represented by cigarette lighters and Louis Vuitton bags (gifts from the boyfriend who jilted her), while the path ahead she negotiates with dubious guides that include other lost wanderers like herself. Cinematic clues that you re in one genre will steer you wrong time and again, as this gripping and deeply unsettling debut by newcomer Jo Sung-hee unwinds its small, personal tale of apocalypse with menace and dark humor. Jo Sung-hee Born in 1979, Jo Sung-hee wrote and directed the horror short Don t Step Out of the House! for the compilation film Nice Shorts (2009). It won awards at Cannes, Dubai and Jeonju. A graduate grant from the Korean Academy of Film Arts financed End of Animal, which is his first feature. new directors Frako Loden THU APR 28 9:15 KABUKI SAT APR 30 9:00 NEW PEOPLE TUE MAY 3 4:15 KABUKI 85

49 The Future new directors Germany/USA min DIR Miranda July PROD Gina Kwon, Roman Paul, Gerhard Meixner SCR Miranda July CAM Nikolai von Graevenitz ED Andrew Bird MUS Jon Brion WITH Hamish Linklater, Miranda July, David Warshofsky, Isabella Acres, Joe Putterlik PRINT SOURCE Roadside Attractions, 7920 Sunset Boulevard, Suite 402, Los Angeles CA FAX: roadsideattractions.com. Miranda July s (Me and You and Everyone We Know, SFIFF 2005) highly anticipated, darkly humorous second feature burrows its way into the lives of a couple (July and Hamish Linklater) contemplating cat adoption. As the rudderless protagonists face the impending responsibility of pet ownership, they see it as a deadline for living their lives fully. Their new outlook exposes foreign desires and unforeseen opportunities as they each face a pair of basic, ultimately terrifying questions: What do you want your life to be? And how does one get there? Using a number of disparate elements voiceover narration by a cat, an ambulatory shirt, varying degrees of dance instruction, gold chains, ecology, time travel and poetry the film s myriad approaches belie a singular concern with our relationship to time. July investigates the metaphysics of decisionmaking and what it means to be stuck. In this world, making decisions too lightly or too gravely can have dire consequences not only for our loved ones but also for cats awaiting adoption. The Future confirms her status as a master in film, performance and writing of the revealing detail, ever capable of making audiences surprised by their everyday worlds. With great originality in narrative form and visual design, The Future unfolds in unexpected and satisfying ways. Miranda July Miranda July is a filmmaker, artist and writer. Her videos, performances and web-based projects have been presented at the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum and in two Whitney Biennials. July wrote, directed and starred in her first feature film, Me and You and Everyone We Know (SFIFF 2005), which won four prizes at the Cannes Film Festival including the Camera d Or. Her collection of stories, No One Belongs Here More Than You (2007), won the Frank O Connor International Short Story Award. Her interactive sculpture garden, Eleven Heavy Things, was on view in New York s Union Square in Raised in Berkeley, California, July lives in Los Angeles. Sean Uyehara SAT APR 23 6:15 KABUKI SUN APR 24 9:15 NEW PEOPLE 86

50 The High Life Xun huan zuo le US Premiere China min DIR Zhao Dayong PROD David Bandurski, Zhao Dayong SCR Zhao Dayong, Li Qing CAM Xue Gang ED Zhao Dayong, Wei Chunyi MUS Wei Chunyi WITH Qiu Hong, Liu Yanfei, Shen Shaoqiu, Su Qingyi, Diao Lei PRINT SOURCE Lantern Films China Co. Ltd., Lun Fung Court 11A, 363 Des Voeux Road W., Hong Kong. com.hk. New Directors Prize Contender In Mandarin and Cantonese with subtitles. With the independent documentaries Street Life (2006) and Ghost Town (2008), Zhao Dayong established himself as a sharp-eyed chronicler of cultural displacement, of people cast adrift or left behind by China s urbanization. Zhao s first fiction feature, The High Life, is set in similar thematic territory: the shabby outskirts of ever-expanding Guangzhou, where everyone seems to be either coming or going but nobody seems to be getting anywhere. The film focuses at first on small-time hustler Jian Ming, who uses a sidewalk employment agency to relieve migrant job seekers of their savings. Jian Ming forms an unexpected, fragile bond with Xiao Ya, a young woman recently arrived from the provinces, and we might expect the movie to follow their developing story. Instead, it abandons them entirely, using a failed pyramid scheme ( Urban Hunters of Success! ) as an excuse to move the plot into a local prison where a guard forces inmates to recite his incendiary verse. (The guard, played by Shen Shaoqiu, is a real-life policeman and underground trash poet. ) In shifting from street realism to the surreal environment of the jail, The High Life reveals an allegorical impulse, highlighting the falsity of distinctions between control and powerlessness, freedom and entrapment, reality and art. Asked about the film s unconventional, pointedly unresolved narrative structure, Zhao said, Life is just like this, absurd, disordered and without reason. The High Life won the FIPRESCI Prize and the Silver Digital Award at the 2010 Hong Kong Film Festival. Zhao Dayong Trained as a painter, Zhao Dayong worked in advertising and design before turning to digital filmmaking. He has won international recognition for his documentaries Street Life (2006), a portrait of scavengers living along Shanghai s Nanjing Road, and Ghost Town (2008), about a village largely abandoned in China s rush toward urban prosperity. His newest work, My Father s House (2011), is a study of the African immigrant community in Guangzhou. new directors Juliet Clark SAT APR 23 8:40 PFA SAT APR 30 3:30 NEW PEOPLE MON MAY 2 8:45 NEW PEOPLE 87

51 Jean Gentil new directors Dominican Republic/Mexico/Germany min DIR Laura Amelia Guzmán, Israel Cárdenas PROD Laura Amelia Guzmán, Israel Cárdenas, Pablo Cruz, Bärbel Mauch SCR Laura Amelia Guzmán, Israel Cárdenas CAM Laura Amelia Guzmán, Israel Cárdenas ED Israel Cárdenas WITH Jean Remy Genty, Yanmarco King Encarncíon, Nadal Walcott, Paul Henri Presumé, Lys Ambroise PRINT SOURCE Aurora Dominicana, Respaldo Flérida de Nolasco 29B, Arroyo Hondo, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. WEB: jeangentil.com. In Spanish and Haitian Creole with subtitles. Jean Remy is worse off than his composed, mildmannered looks suggest. An educated Haitian man who used to teach French, Jean struggles to find decent employment in the Dominican Republic. A devout Christian, Jean s biggest virtue is his remarkably genteel and dignified attitude in the face of rejection and discrimination. But everyone has their breaking point, and before the harsh unforgiving urban bustle of Santo Domingo devours his faith, Jean leaves for the beautifully lush climate of the country, only to be continually tested and fall into a deeper solitude. Imbued with a naturalistic grace, this quietly desperate and deeply sympathetic portrait speaks volumes about the trials of humanity. Strikingly honest and poignant scenes transform the thin and frail Jean into a saint of sorts, an apostle whose despair lingers on the brink of consuming him. Shot on location in Santo Domingo and the surrounding countryside, the filmmakers apply their naturalistic style and intuitive eye to the island in its devastated state following the January 2010 earthquake. The duo who made their 2007 debut with Cochochi (SFIFF 2008) once again display confident skill in directing a nonprofessional cast. Despite the dire predicament of the struggling immigrant narrative, the film eschews a condemnatory or melodramatic approach, instead respectfully and wisely focusing on the innate qualities of its subject. You ll find yourself frustrated and saddened by Jean s plight, but his steadfast dignity ultimately inspires. Laura Amelia Guzmán Israel Cárdenas Dominican Laura Amelia Guzmán and Mexican Israel Cárdenas made a splash in 2007 with their debut hybrid documentary narrative Cochochi (SFIFF 2008), for which they share script, photography, production and direction credits. Cochochi won the Discovery Award at the Toronto Film Festival and went on to screen in several major international festivals. Based in Mexico, the young filmmaking duo jointly run their company, Aurora Dominicana. Christine Davila FRI APR 22 8:40 PFA SUN APR 24 1:00 KABUKI TUE APR 26 6:00 KABUKI 88

52 The Journals of Musan Musan il-gy South Korea min DIR Park Jung-bum PROD Park Jung-bum SCR Park Jung-bum CAM Kim Jong-sun ED Jo Hyun-joo WITH Park Jung-bum, Jin Yong-uk, Kang Eun-jin, Park Young-deok PRINT SOURCE Finecut, 4th Floor, Incline Building, Daechi-dong, Gangnam-gu, Seoul, South Korea. finecut.co.kr. New Directors Prize Contender Jeong Seung-chul lives at the edge of a demolition pit in the sprawling outskirts of Seoul. Recently emerged from a resettlement program, the number 125 on his identity card brands him to employers and the authorities as a North Korean refugee unwanted in South Korea. Winter, grim and gray, covers Seoul, and the only work he finds is poster-pasting for a sleazy promoter a dangerous living beset by gangs and turf violence. Seung-chul s bowl haircut and defensive posture stand in sharp contrast to his roommate, the cocksure Kyung-chul, whose easy adjustment to capitalism embraces Nikes, speeches for cash and money-transfer deals at steep commissions. Through Seung-chul I wanted to show what a person needs to do to survive in this society, says director Park Jung-bum, who plays the lead in his debut feature. Powerful visuals of gritty streets, yawning urban chasms and neon shopping malls underscore Seung-chul s marginalization and his precarious struggle to survive with decency intact. A starkly rendered moment in which he protects a stray white puppy mirrors his own sincerity and bewilderment when attacked. Seung-chul finds comfort in a local church and is drawn to a pretty choir member, Sook-young. They work together in her family s karaoke bar, his incapacity for cynicism ignites trouble with customers and with Sook-young. Park s ethical protagonist leads us to reflect on the complex world of modern Korea and pushes us to examine our own modern lives. Park Jung-bum Park Jung-bum served as assistant director to Lee Chang-dong on Poetry (2010). His distinguished short films have long been welcomed on the international festival circuit. His short 125 Jeon Seung-chul (2008) was based on the life of a North Korean friend and laid the foundation for The Journals of Musan, his debut feature. With Journals, Park received the New Currents Award and the FIPRESCI Award at the Pusan International Film Festival, the Golden Star at the Marrakech Film Festival and the Tiger Award at the International Film Festival Rotterdam. new directors Kathleen Denny FRI APR 29 9:15 KABUKI SUN MAY 1 8:30 NEW PEOPLE MON MAY 2 1:00 KABUKI 89

53 The Joy A alegria new directors North American Premiere Brazil min DIR Marina Meliande, Felipe Bragança PROD Felipe Bragança, Marina Meliande, Lara Frigotto SCR Felipe Bragança CAM Andrea Capella ED Marina Meliande MUS Lucas Marcier WITH Tainá Medina, Flora Dias, Rikle Miranda, Junior Moura PRINT SOURCE Duas Mariola, Rua Pinheiro Machado 57/403-B, Rio De Janeiro, Brazil. felipe_braganca@yahoo. com.br. WEB: aalegriafilm.com. The harsh realities of life in Rio de Janeiro can t extinguish the fire in the heart of 16-year-old Luiza, a young student with a fondness for inventing fairy tales and games of fantasy with her friends. After her cousin João is shot in an attack by military police, his ghost appears in Luiza s apartment seeking sanctuary. There he is embraced and celebrated by Luiza and her cohorts, then mourned when he leaves. I have decided I am going to be brave and joyful, Luiza announces to a world readying itself for the apocalypse. Her imagination and spirit carry her beyond the confines of the unhappy world created by adults. The teens, while not shying away from the hard demands of life in Rio, also create their own reality and find their own way through the turmoil. Directors Felipe Bragança and Marina Meliande carefully selected a cast of nonprofessionals after a year of auditions in Rio. Searching for teen superheroes, they happened upon 15-year-old Tainá Medina, who as Luiza embodies joyful enthusiasm, playfulness and a wellspring of determined strength. The Joy is the directors second film in a trilogy on modern youth, focusing on the courage and indomitable spirit of today s young people. As they courageously venture forth into an uncertain future amid a large and dangerous city, the teen protagonists demonstrate the transformative power of magical realism and show that whatever may happen in the external world, reality is the story we tell ourselves. Marina Meliande Felipe Bragança Young Brazilian directors Felipe Bragança and Marina Meliande have collaborated since their time in film school, codirecting two award-winning shorts before embarking in 2008 on the trilogy Hearts on Fire about modern youth. The trilogy includes The Escape of the Monkey Woman (2009), an experimental digital no-budget musical, The Joy (2010) and Neverquiet, a collective film by ten Brazilian filmmakers that is currently in postproduction. Gustavus Kundahl SUN MAY 1 9:15 KABUKI TUE MAY 3 1:15 KABUKI WED MAY 4 6:00 KABUKI 90

54 Kinyarwanda USA/Rwanda min DIR Alrick Brown PROD Tommy Oliver, Darren Dean, Alrick Brown SCR Alrick Brown CAM Danny Vecchione ED Tovah Leibowitz MUS John Jennings Boyd WITH Cassandra Freeman, Cleophas Kabasita, Edouard Bamporiki PRINT SOURCE Traction Media, 9665 Wilshire Boulevard, Suite 500, Beverly Hills CA FAX: New Directors Prize Contender In English and Kinyarwanda with subtitles. Special support for this program generously provided by Visionary Circle member Rudi Dundas. As spring turned to summer in 1994, a cross section of Rwanda s Hutu ethnic majority murdered nearly one million minority Tutsis. Alrick Brown s unconventional and surprisingly uplifting debut feature takes its name from the common language shared by both ethnic groups, and tells the tale of the Rwandan genocide and subsequent reconciliation process through a series of parallel and overlapping narratives from a variety of Tutsi and Hutu perspectives. Together, these stories based on true accounts form a resonant portrait of human resilience during those horrible days. The spiritual leader of Muslims in Rwanda issued a fatwa forbidding violence and opened the gates of the Grand Mosque of Kigali to all comers, be they Tutsi, Hutu, Christian or Muslim. This heretofore little-known act of courage and compassion anchors Brown s compelling narrative, which follows a variety of ordinary Rwandans during the rampage as they make their way toward the safety of the mosque. Brown s deeply felt portraits of a soldier, a small child, a pair of teenage sweethearts, a Tutsi/Hutu couple, a priest and an imam give Kinyarwanda an element of emotional complexity that other films on the Rwandan genocide have lacked. Conceived and produced by Rwandans, it also tells the story of the aftermath, when victims and perpetrators traversed the thorny path of reconciliation in neighborhood Gacaca courts to sit, discuss, mediate, confess and often forgive. Kinyarwanda plumbs the depths of terror to offer a testament to the human spirit s capacity for love, healing and transcendence. Alrick Brown Born in Kingston, Jamaica and raised in New Jersey, Alrick Brown served for two years as a Peace Corps volunteer in Ivory Coast before earning his MFA from NYU s Tisch School of the Arts and embarking on a filmmaking career devoted to, in his words, giving a voice to the voiceless and telling stories that otherwise would not be told. His work has screened in over 40 national and international film festivals, and received numerous awards. Kinyarwanda, which garnered the World Cinema Audience Award: Dramatic at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival, marks Brown s feature film directorial debut. new directors Michael Read SUN MAY 1 12:30 KABUKI TUE MAY 3 9:00 NEW PEOPLE THU MAY 5 6:00 KABUKI 91

55 Living on Love Alone D amour et d eau fraîche new directors France min DIR Isabelle Czajka PROD Patrick Sobelman SCR Isabelle Czajka CAM Crystel Fournier ED Isabelle Manquillet MUS Éric Neveux WITH Anaïs Demoustier, Pio Marmai, Laurent Poitrenaux, Jean-Louis Coullo ch PRINT SOURCE BAC Films, 88 rue de la Folie Méricourt, Paris, France. FAX: c.gagliardo@bacfilms.fr. The French title of Isabelle Czajka s impressive second feature, which translates literally as living on love and fresh water, is a common French saying that evokes the idea that love and a little water is all you need to survive. The romantic idealism of that timeworn message gets a satirical reassessment in this complexly woven story about a 23-year-old French woman trying to make it on her own. Julie is pretty, tough, independent and yet floundering in the cold, hard business world of Paris. Her attempts to keep a job fail. There is something reckless about Julie, and something sad about the way she seems to give up believing in anything. The love story that eventually develops is part of that recklessness, but it s not hard to understand why Julie would follow a charming young man of dubious employment to the South of France. It is the land of Pierrot le Fou after all, and the gloomy predicament of a lonely, disaffected young woman suddenly transforms into the exciting misadventures of a girl, a guy and a gun. Anaïs Demoustier, who starred in Czajka s debut feature L année suivante, is extraordinary as Julie. She conveys a complicated mixture of vulnerability and hardened cynicism, passivity and aggressiveness, which makes the film all the more intriguing in its exploration of love and power. Is Living on Love Alone a cautionary tale or a tragic love story? Its ambiguous ending only begs the question further and will leave you overwhelmed. Isabelle Czajka Born in Paris, France in 1962, Isabelle Czajka began her career in film as a director of photography, eventually turning to writing and directing her own films in 2002 with the short La cible. Her first feature L année suivante (2006) won the Golden Leopard at the Locarno Film Festival. Living on Love Alone is her second feature. Beverly Berning SAT APR 23 9:30 KABUKI WED APR 27 6:45 NEW PEOPLE FRI APR 29 9:00 PFA 92

56 Microphone Egypt min DIR Ahmad Abdalla PROD Mohamed Hefzy SCR Ahmad Abdalla CAM Tarek Hefny ED Hisham Saqr WITH Khaled Abol Naga, Menna Shalabi, Yosra El Lozy, Hany Adel, Ahmad Magdy, Atef Yousef PRINT SOURCE Film Clinic, 141(a) Cornish El Nile, El Maadi, 9th Floor, Cairo, Egypt. WEB: microphone-film. com. Ahmad Abdalla s thrilling second feature is a tribute to Egyptian underground art, especially music, but also graffiti, independent film and really any kind of creative expression. It s both a love and hate letter to Alexandria and its thriving youth movement. The film follows a number of local scenesters but focuses mainly on Khaled, an engineer recently back in Alexandria after several years in America. He s finding the transition tough: His former girlfriend has moved on, and his job can t keep his interest. He is a music fan, however, and his dream of putting on a concert leads him to a world of DIY musicians, artists and filmmakers. This crew provides the film s backbone and soundtrack. Great music courses through from the opening credits mainly hip-hop but also metal, pop and other genres. Meanwhile, there s a constant tension between the artists and the state. Each band vies for government funding and a spot on a government-sponsored showcase, but each is told their music is too obscene or too critical of the state. It s impossible not to watch all this in the context of post-mubarak Egypt, and while this film was made well before recent events (and is very much an Alexandria story), the elements of a young people s revolution are all here. They re fed up, and frustration feeds their art. Abdalla interweaves elements of cinema verité, and the film feels like a potent slice of Alexandrian life in all its vibrancy and frustration. Ahmad Abdalla Ahmad Abdalla was born in Cairo in 1978, studied classical music and the viola, and has been working in film since He s edited several projects and directed his first feature, Heliopolis, in Abdalla is currently starting a new independent film company with other young Egyptian filmmakers. new directors Benjamin Friedland FRI APR 22 9:15 KABUKI SUN APR 24 2:00 NEW PEOPLE WED APR 27 1:30 KABUKI 93

57 My Joy Schastye moye new directors Germany/Ukraine/Netherlands min DIR Sergei Loznitsa PROD Heino Deckert, Oleg Kokhan SCR Sergei Loznitsa CAM Oleg Mutu ED Danielius Kokanauskis WITH Viktor Nemets, Vlad Ivanov, Maria Varsami, Olga Shuvalova PRINT SOURCE Kino Lorber Inc., 333 W. 39th Street, Suite 503, New York NY FAX: New Directors Prize Contender In Russian with subtitles. Can you judge a country by its roads? Russia perhaps, with its botched byways, ominous turn-offs and implacable thoroughfares all patrolled by rogue cops terrorizing the traffic. First-time Belarusian director Sergei Loznitsa throws his taciturn truck driver, Georgy (Viktor Nemets), onto the pitted asphalt for a journey into darkness. Not your typical road movie, in which travelers find their true selves as the vistas of possibility open before them, Loznitsa s Slavic sortie finds the road ahead narrowing to nil. Georgy s picaresque passage takes him into the Russian countryside where he encounters peculiar folk: an old man still plagued by the Great War, a teenage prostitute who shuns kindness, a trio of tramps who wander the wasteland like an unholy trinity; each becomes a cul-de-sac of curiosity. Captured with dark authenticity, My Joy s episodes are drawn from Loznitsa s story trove, gathered from years of documentary work in the former republics. His clear-eyed fascination with a land in disarray is evident in his unvarnished style, rendered in grim coloration by the great Romanian cinematographer Oleg Mutu (The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days). The allegorical journey of My Joy from indifferent city to the village, with its rustic suspicions, and farther still to the wilds where order seems to end parallels the devolution of Georgy from fair-faced citizen to bearded madman. Loznitsa s gripping guignol about a Russia in decline doesn t keep to the well-trod path. After all, It s not a road. It s a direction. Sergei Loznitsa Award-winning documentarian Sergei Loznitsa was born in 1964 in Baranovitchi, Belarus, though he grew up in Ukraine. He began producing his sociopolitical nonfiction films at the Documentary Films Studio in St. Petersburg before relocating to Germany in Loznitsa has made three full-length documentaries and eight shorter works, winning awards at Oberhausen, Leipzig, Tel Aviv, Karlovy Vary, Krakow and other international festivals. My Joy is his first dramatic feature. Steve Seid SAT APR 30 5:45 KABUKI TUE MAY 3 9:00 KABUKI 94

58 Nainsukh North American Premiere India/Switzerland min DIR Amit Dutta PROD Eberhard Fischer SCR Amit Dutta, Eberhard Fischer, Ayswarya Sankaranarayanan CAM Mrinal Desai ED Amit Dutta, Eberhard Fischer WITH Manish Soni, Nitin Goel, Srinivas Joshi PRINT SOURCE Museum Rietberg, Gablerstrasse 15, 8002 Zurich, Switzerland. In Hindi and Punjabi with subtitles. This is a World Cinema Spotlight film. Nainsukh (circa ) came from a family of painters that settled in Guler in the northern hills of India. Growing up in an atmosphere of bold experimentation, Nainsukh enthusiastically took to the fluent naturalism of Mughal painting, notably setting his own artwork apart from the idealized approach to portraiture adopted by other Indian miniaturists of his time. Around 1740, he entered the service of Raja Balwant Dev Singh of Jasrota and was given rare entrée into the prince s life, which included horse riding in the countryside, enjoying performances by court musicians, smoking a hookah, hunting and carnal pleasures. During this period, through the coming together of a sophisticated patron and a greatly gifted painter, a compelling body of work emerged, rendered in a very individual, delicate way and imbued with heart-warming humanity. Amit Dutta painstakingly recreates Nainsukh s brilliant miniatures through sumptuous compositions set amid the ruins of the Jasrota palace as well as the splendid hilly surroundings. By harmoniously juxtaposing the gorgeous visuals with outstanding sound design, the filmmaker produces a unique work of art a living painting itself that stands on its own. He breathes new life into the old creations by accentuating their timelessness, reviving the intimacy of the grand worlds of the past through the time-defying medium of cinema. Amit Dutta Born in 1977, Amit Dutta graduated from the Film and Television Institute of India and is now regarded as one of the most promising and successful experimental filmmakers in his country. He was introduced to European audiences after his short film Kramasha won the FIPRESCI Award at the Oberhausen short film festival in His first feature film, The Man s Woman and Other Stories, won the jury s special mention prize (Orizzonti) at the Venice Film Festival in Nainsukh is Dutta s second feature film. new directors Galina Stoletneya FRI APR 22 9:15 NEW PEOPLE SUN APR 24 2:30 KABUKI SUN MAY 1 7:00 PFA 95

59 The Place in Between Notre étrangère new directors France/Burkina Faso min DIR Sarah Bouyain PROD Sophie Salbot SCR Sarah Bouyain, Gaëlle Macé CAM Nicolas Gaurin ED Valérie Loiseleux, Pascale Chavance MUS Sylvain Chauveau WITH Dorylia Calmel, Assita Ouédraogo, Nathalie Richard, Blandine Yaméogo, Nadine Kambou Yéri PRINT SOURCE Claude Nouchi, Colifilms Diffusion, 17 rue de Cheroy, Paris, France. FAX: claude. New Directors Prize Contender In French and Dioula with subtitles. Exploring dilemmas of culture and race, Sarah Bouyain s debut feature tells dovetailing stories of African women living in France. Amy is a young biracial woman whose mother is from Burkina Faso. At the age of eight, she was reclaimed by her father and went to live with him in France. His death 20 or so years later prompts a desire to visit her birthplace and reconnect with her other parent. In a parallel story, a middle-aged white woman is learning Dioula, a West African language spoken in Burkina Faso, from a taciturn woman named Mariam. In carefully precise scenes, Bouyain explores the displacement that both Mariam and Amy face in a country that is familiar but not quite home. In Burkina Faso, Amy tries to fit in by buying a brightly patterned dress, but locals call her white lady and she s unable to converse with her aunt in order to discover her mother s whereabouts. Meanwhile, Mariam tries to accustom herself to the bustle of Paris, where traditions and personal relationships are different from what she is used to. Through these two narratives, an affecting portrait of the African diaspora emerges. Over the course of the film, these two self-possessed women may not definitively discover the place where they belong, but what they do find is a significantly stronger sense of self. Sarah Bouyain Sarah Bouyain was born in France and studied film at Louis Lumière College. In 1997, she codirected the film Niararaye and in 2000 made Les enfants du blanc, a documentary about her biracial grandmother. In 2003, she wrote Métisse façon, a fictional work about biracial children in Burkina Faso. The Place in Between is Bouyain s first narrative feature. Rod Armstrong FRI APR 22 2:00 KABUKI SUN MAY 1 3:45 KABUKI THU MAY 5 8:45 KABUKI 96

60 Le Quattro Volte Italy/Germany/Switzerland min DIR Michelangelo Frammartino PROD Susanne Marian, Philippe Bober, Gabriella Manfré, Andres Pfaeffli SCR Michelangelo Frammartino CAM Andrea Locatelli ED Benni Atria, Maurizio Grillo WITH Giuseppe Fuda, Bruno Timpano, Nazareno Timpano PRINT SOURCE Kino Lorber Inc., 333 W. 39th Street, Suite 503, New York NY FAX: com. WEB: lequattrovolte.it. Special support for this program generously provided by Karen and John Diefenbach. To every thing there is a season in Michelangelo Frammartino s surprisingly humorous and moving meditation on the revolving cycles of life in a quiet medieval hilltop hamlet in Calabria, Italy. Amidst the dulcet tones of church bells and chirping birds, we meet all manner of peacefully coexisting inhabitants twolegged, four-pawed and molluscan as they go about their quotidian routines and ages-old traditions both sacred and secular, pausing on occasion to witness a scrappy passion play, climb a giant fir tree or, in the case of a scene-stealing dog, set in motion slapstick spills that throw the fortress-walled burg into picturesque disarray. Meanwhile, an elderly goat herder treats his persistent cough with a hallowed dose of dust from the local church floor, a goat kid is born (its struggle to stand upright following the shock of birth will have viewers rooting for success of the most elemental sort) and coalmen build an Andy Goldsworthy like structure of straw and clay in which time and temperature turn wood into charcoal. Small events accumulate and the titular quartet plays out in patiently observed takes under drifting clouds. Souls may transmogrify from human to animal to vegetable to mineral in this quiet village, or perhaps life and death are linked merely by happenstance. Frammartino s disarmingly lovely second feature treats the nature of metaphysics and vice versa with a delicate, perhaps uniquely Italian, touch, and his subtle couching of fictive elements within authentic settings makes for a fresh blend of documentary observation and narrative storytelling. Michelangelo Frammartino Born in Milan in 1968, Michelangelo Frammartino studied architecture at the Politecnico di Milano and discovered a fascination for the myriad ways in which physical spaces can be rendered through still and moving images. Following a number of short films and video installations, in 2003 Frammartino wrote and directed his feature-length debut, Il Dono (The Gift). Le Quattro Volte is his second feature. Both films have won awards at international film festivals. new directors Steven Jenkins SAT APR 23 6:45 KABUKI WED APR 27 6:15 KABUKI 97

61 The Salesman Le vendeur new directors Canada min DIR Sébastien Pilote PROD Marc Daigle, Bernadette Payeur SCR Sébastien Pilote CAM Michel La Veaux ED Michel Arcand MUS Pierre Lapointe, Philippe Brault WITH Gilbert Sicotte, Nathalie Cavezzal, Jérémy Tessier PRINT SOURCE Seville Pictures, 400 De Maisonneuve Boulevard W., Suite 1120, H3A 1L4 Montreal, Canada. FAX: New Directors Prize Contender In French with subtitles. Special support for this program generously provided by Visionary Circle members Camilla and George Smith. At a small-town car dealership in Quebec, 67-year-old Marcel Lévesque (Gilbert Sicotte) is top salesman for the month of December, as he has been in so many months over the preceding years. His daughter, Maryse (Nathalie Cavezzali), a hairdresser and single mother, thinks it s time he consider retirement. But Marcel relishes the work and his mastery of its small rituals and strategies, happily recording his sales pitches to learn where he went wrong and ordering 10,000 new business cards embossed with totemic gold foil. He s a widower, and other than his devotion to Maryse and her hockey-playing son, Antoine (Jeremy Tessier), Marcel is his job. Meanwhile, the local paper mill has been closed for eight months and counting, possibly for good, as the whole town holds its breath; not the best circumstances for selling cars. In his remarkably assured debut feature, writer/director Sébastien Pilote and cinematographer Michel La Veaux build the film s emotional and visual language from a quiet, natural poetry of quotidian detail: the resigned work of clearing fresh snow, the tight dimensions of Marcel s award-covered office, the ritual ka-thunk of daily sodas from the shop s vending machine. It s in this sense of circumscribed routine that we feel the maximum weight of the events that unfold beyond Marcel s control, testing not only his sense of identity but also life s meaning at the deepest level. Sicotte is riveting in a performance that feels nothing like performance, and the film s persuasive realism gives it the relevance of a great documentary, as crafted by a master storyteller. Sébastien Pilote Director/screenwriter Sébastien Pilote was born in 1973 and grew up in Saint-Ambroise, Quebec before moving to Chicoutimi. After earning a degree in art and film from the Université du Québec à Chicoutimi, he worked as a programmer for the Regard sur le Court Métrage short-film festival in Saguenay and as a director of television news. In 2007, Pilote directed the short, Dust Bowl Ha! Ha!, which was shown in competition at international festivals and won several awards. The Salesman is his first feature. Steve Mockus SUN MAY 1 6:15 KABUKI TUE MAY 3 8:50 PFA THU MAY 5 2:00 KABUKI 98

62 She Monkeys Apflickorna Sweden min DIR Lisa Aschan PROD Helene Lindholm SCR Lisa Aschan, Josefine Adolfsson CAM Linda Wassberg ED Kristofer Nordin MUS Sami Sanpakkila WITH Mathilda Paradeiser, Linda Molin, Isabella Lindquist PRINT SOURCE Swedish Film Institute, Box / Borgvaegen 1-5, SE , Stockholm, Sweden. gunnar.almer@sfi.se. WEB: atmo.se/film-and-tv/shemonkeys. New Directors Prize Contender Special support for this program generously provided by Carla Emil and Rich Silverstein, and by the Consulate General of Sweden, San Francisco. Immersed in the world of competitive equestrian vaulting, introverted Emma (Mathilda Paradeiser) and icily selfassured Cassandra (Linda Molin) find themselves drawn to each other first as friends, then as rivals as they train for a spot on the local team. Cassandra seems by far the stronger-willed, and at her behest Emma engages in increasingly reckless activities, until she discovers her own strength and begins to push back. Locked in a psychological battle for the upper hand, their uneasy relationship circumnavigates the boundaries of teenage sexuality, violence and control, culminating in a ruthless act of primitive justice. Meanwhile, Emma s preternaturally mature kid sister tests out her own understanding of sexual power and control as she attempts to seduce her cousin and babysitter. The effects of isolation reverberate through the unanchored actions of the three young protagonists as they attempt to connect to anything, or anyone, without giving too much of themselves away in return. Set in a rural Swedish village filled with more tumbleweeds than cars, with crisp, tightly wound performances and subdued, naturalistic camera work, not a single frame is wasted in this strikingly lean first feature by Lisa Aschan, who developed She Monkeys through the Rookie Film initiative of Sweden, which provides funding to young directors working outside the mainstream. Lisa Aschan Born in Ängelholm, Sweden in 1978, Lisa Aschan graduated from the National Film School of Denmark in After gaining notoriety in 2004 with her faux advertising campaign for rapistrepelling spiked tampons, she directed the short films In Transit (2005) and Goodbye Bluebird (2007). Her first feature, She Monkeys won the Dragon Award for Best Nordic Film at the Göteborg International Film Festival. new directors Nicole Gluckstern MON APR 25 7:15 KABUKI TUE APR 26 8:45 KABUKI 99

63 Sound of Noise new directors Sweden/France/Denmark min DIR Ola Simonsson, Johannes Stjärne Nilsson PROD Jim Bermant, Guy Péchard, Christophe Audeguis, Oliver Guerpillon SCR Johannes Stjärne Nilsson, Ola Simonsson CAM Charlotta Tengroth ED Stefan Sundlöf, Andreas Johnsson Hay MUS Fred Avril, Magnus Börjeson, Six Drummers WITH Bengt Nilsson, Sanna Persson Halapi, Magnus Börjeson PRINT SOURCE Magnolia Pictures, 115 W. 27th Street, 8th Floor, New York NY Special support for this program generously provided by Katie and Todd Traina. The sound-and-image anarchists behind Music for One Apartment and Six Drummers, the 2001 cult short film, successfully transfer to a larger arena in Sound of Noise, a delightful comic cocktail mixing a modern urban symphony, a police procedural and a love story. The up-tempo feature debut of Swedish directors Ola Simonsson and Johannes Stjärne Nilsson boasts the most complex and wacky musical numbers since Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet s Delicatessen, hitting notes alternately silly, raucous and rhapsodic. The narrative revolves around police officer Amadeus Warnebring (an engaging Bengt Nilsson), tone-deaf scion of a distinguished musical family, and his attempts to track down a group of six guerrilla percussionists whose public performances are terrorizing the city. The drumming set pieces correspond to an avant-garde score in four movements: Doctor, Doctor, Gimme Gas (In My Ass), Money 4 U, Honey, Fuck the Music Kill! Kill! and Electric Love. Where the short film had the six drummers imaginatively using standard apartment furnishings as their instruments, the feature unleashes them on an unspecified city s civic and cultural institutions. Doctor, Doctor plays out in a hospital operating room, literally removing the sound from a windbag patient; staged like a robbery, Money makes beautiful music from a bank s paraphernalia; the classical music establishment comes under attack from heavy machinery in Music; and daredevil Love unfurls in midair on the city s electric lines. There is even an amusing backstory for each of the soberly dressed drummers and investigator Warnebring, their music-hating nemesis. Ola Simonsson Johannes stjärne Nilsson Johannes Stjärne Nilsson (a graphic designer and cartoonist) and Ola Simonsson (a musician and composer) were both born in 1969 in Lund, Sweden and have been friends since they were seven years old. Together they have directed a number of shorts and documentaries including Nowhere Man (1996), Sweden (2000), Hotel Rienne (2002), You Were There with Your Friend Frank (2004), Way of the Flounder (2005) and Woman and Gramophone (2006). Music for One Apartment and Six Drummers (2001) received over 30 international awards. Sound of Noise is their first feature. Alissa Simon THU APR 28 3:45 KABUKI FRI APR 29 9:00 KABUKI 100

64 Tilva Rosh Tilva ros Serbia min DIR Nikola Lezaic PROD Mina Djukic, Nikola Lezaic, Uros Tomic SCR Nikola Lezaic CAM Milos Jacimovic ED Nikola Lezaic WITH Marko Todorovic, Stefan Djordjevic, Dunja Kovacevic, Marko Milenkovic PRINT SOURCE Visit Films, 89 Fifth Avenue, Suite 806, New York NY FAX: WEB: kiselodete.com. New Directors Prize Contender Bor, in eastern Serbia, was once home to the largest copper mine in Europe. Now it s just the biggest hole. Jobs are hard to find and the local populace feels overlooked. Full of unarticulated energy, best friends Toda and Stefan spend their first summer after graduating from high school skateboarding in the abandoned mine and making Jackass-like videos. Stefan is headed to Belgrade University in the fall, while Toda disdainfully claims he wouldn t apply for higher education even if he had the money. When Dunja, a friend who has returned from France for her summer holiday, arrives on the scene, the boys launch a quiet battle for her attention and affection. Caught up in a strange relationship of dying friendship and rivalry, they try to get ahead of each other. In the meantime, union protests in town gain momentum and the boys find themselves thrust back together under a common cause. First-time feature director Nikola Lezaic says Tilva Rosh is about waking the consciousness you don t want to wake, finding out about injustices you don t care about, assuming social roles when you don t want to participate and about helpless struggle to save that carefree teenage world from any changes. The international jury of the Sarajevo Film Festival, where Tilva Rosh had its world premiere in 2010, handed this astutely observed coming-of-age film the first of many international awards, including Best Film. Nikola Lezaic Nikola Lezaic was born in 1981 in Bor, Serbia, where he finished high school before going on to study film directing at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade. He was a cofounder of the comedy group SMOG and a cofounder of one of the first literary movements of the 21st century, Metasynchrism. Tilva Rosh, his feature debut, earned the Best Film and Best Actor awards at the Sarajevo Film Festival. new directors Alissa Simon THU APR 28 9:00 KABUKI FRI APR 29 9:15 KABUKI MON MAY 2 3:15 KABUKI 101

65 Ulysses Ulíses new directors World Premiere Chile/Argentina min DIR Oscar Godoy PROD Juan de Dios Larraín, Pablo Larraín, Hernán Musaluppi SCR Oscar Godoy, Daniel Laguna CAM Inti Briones ED Sebastián Sepúlveda, Nicolás Goldbart MUS Roberto Espinoza WITH Jorge Román, Francisca Gavilán PRINT SOURCE Fabula, Holanda 3017, Ñuñoa, Santiago, Región Metropolitana Anexo 111, Chile. FAX: New Directors Prize Contender Julio is a Peruvian immigrant in Santiago, Chile, a former history teacher now reduced to working at a series of menial jobs well below his capacities. His Peruvian background, instantly recognized if not necessarily looked down on, makes him an oddity, someone unable to hide or completely blend in. His innate intelligence and ambition allow him to gradually advance; he is always trying to get a better job, obtain legal residency status, send more money back home. He begins quietly confident, taking satisfaction in his accomplishments. A ray of hope comes into his life when a young woman in a music store takes a liking to him. But as time goes on, it begins to dawn on him that the difficulties he faces are not as easily resolved as finding a better job, a place to live or a girlfriend. These matters are difficulties of the heart, for the life of an immigrant is one of overwhelming loneliness. Julio s only lifeline is the occasional call to his mother from a public phone booth. Just as Homer s Ulysses lived for one thing to get back home to his beloved Penelope Julio lives to help his mother back home in Peru. In this nuanced psychological study, director Oscar Godoy examines the life of an immigrant worker with as much of a sense of importance as if he were the subject of timeless myth. In a modern world constantly being reshaped by immigration and evergrowing economic dislocation, this is a story for our times. Oscar Godoy Oscar Godoy worked as assistant director on Pablo Trapero s Born and Bred (SFIFF 2007). He wrote the screenplay for the feature film That Bolero Is Mine, winner of a Corfo award in Chile. He has directed the documentaries Marichi Alpha, in Venezuela, and The Years of No-Do, a TV series in Spain. Ulysses is his first feature, a coproduction between film companies Fabula (Chile) and Rizoma (Argentina). Miguel Pendás TUE APR 26 4:00 KABUKI MON MAY 2 6:45 KABUKI WED MAY 4 6:30 PFA 102

66 A Useful Life La vida útil Uruguay min DIR Federico Veiroj PROD Federico Veiroj SCR Inés Bortagaray, Arauco Hernández, Gonzalo Delgado, Federico Veiroj CAM Arauco Hernández ED Arauco Hernández, Federico Veiroj MUS Leo Masliah and Macunaíma, Eduardo Fabini WITH Jorge Jellinek, Manuel Martínez Carril, Paola Venditto PRINT SOURCE Global Film Initiative, 145 Ninth Street, #105, San Francisco CA FAX: org. Total running time 74 min. This gentle black-and-white ode to a life lived among the reels was one of the discoveries of the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival. Forty-five and saddled with a fashion sense as outdated as the videotapes he hides his keys in, Jorge (played by Uruguayan film critic Jorge Jellinek) has worked his entire adult life at Montevideo s Cinemateca Uruguaya. His routine has remained the same for years: projecting films, greeting the same six or seven audience members in line for every show, chatting with colleagues over possible series ( You take the Fridrick Thor Fridricksson ) and deciding what to repair next (the projectors or the seats?). But his days devoted to cinema, and those of his boss (played by the former head of the Cinemateca, Manuel Martínez Carril), might be coming to a sudden and life-changing end with the threatened closure of the economically unviable institution. A deadpan comedy of cinema and obsolescence, A Useful Life frames Jorge (and the archive) within a succession of outmoded technologies: faxes, telegrams, videotapes, reel-to-reel recorders and pay phones. At the same time, a flirtation with a female patron suggests a course of action. For a life spent working in film may end, but a life spent living with cinema? Not only useful but filled with hope, romance and dreams. Federico Veiroj No stranger to the world of film archives, Federico Veiroj, born in Montevideo in 1976, previously worked at the Cinemateca Uruguaya and the Spanish Film Library. His first feature, Acne (2008), premiered at Cannes Director s Fortnight and in 2009 was nominated for a Goya Award as the Best Hispano-American Film. new directors Protoparticles The experiment was almost a success, notes the spacesuit-clad narrator of this creative Spanish science fiction short, which won a special mention at Sundance. Back from the future, this mystery man putters about, watering flowers and doing other tasks for his neighbors, unable to share the biggest secret in the universe. (Chema García Ibarra, Spain, 7 min) Jason Sanders SUN APR 24 NOON NEW PEOPLE MON APR 25 7:00 PFA SAT APR 30 3:45 KABUKI 103

67 The Whistleblower new directors Canada/Germany min DIR Larysa Kondracki PROD Christina Piovesan, Celine Rattray SCR Eilis Kirwan, Larysa Kondracki CAM Kieran McGuigan ED Julian Clarke MUS Mychael Danna WITH Rachel Weisz, Vanessa Redgrave, David Strathairn, Nikolaj Lie Kaas, Monica Bellucci PRINT SOURCE IDP (a Samuel Goldwyn Films & ATO Pictures Company), 1133 Broadway, Suite 1120, New York NY FAX: In English, Ukrainian, Russian and Bosnian with subtitles. The brutal world of sex trafficking may seem an unlikely basis for a well-oiled international thriller, yet first-time director Larysa Kondracki, with the help of a stellar cast led by Academy Award winner Rachel Weisz (The Constant Gardener), has accomplished just that, using the slick format of a police procedural to treat a dire social issue. Kathryn Bolkovac is a single mom in the mid-1990s seeking a transfer from her police department in Nebraska to be closer to her children, who are moving away with their father. Unable to secure anything nearby, she decides to accept a well-paid six-month posting in Sarajevo with a private peacekeeping contractor. Despite her unlikely background for such a position, she takes to the job immediately, quickly learning to maneuver around the organization s boy s club atmosphere and the cultural complexities of overseeing a corrupt local police force rife with sexism and still-simmering ethnic feuds. But she soon finds herself embroiled in a far-reaching United Nations cover-up of a sex-trafficking scandal. Undeterred by attempts from higher-ups to thwart her investigation, and faced with threats on her life, she fights to uncover the truth. Weisz s portrayal of the real-life Bolkovac deftly balances her steely determination with sensitivity and vulnerability. Her equally impressive supporting cast includes Vanessa Redgrave, Monica Bellucci and David Strathairn, while director Kondracki tempers the unflinching treatment of her harrowing subject with a propulsive forward momentum. The Whistleblower is a stirring tale of courage in the face of the most depraved corruption. Larysa Kondracki Born in Toronto of Ukrainian descent, Larysa Kondracki studied English and theater at McGill University before receiving her MFA from Columbia University s film directing program. She spent two years in Europe researching sex trafficking and writing the screenplay for The Whistleblower, her debut feature film. Jesse Dubus TUE APR 26 9:15 KABUKI THU APR 28 9:30 KABUKI 104

68 Year Without a Summer Berkelana North American Premiere Malaysia min DIR Tan Chui Mui PROD Liew Seng Tat SCR Tan Chui Mui CAM Teoh Gay Hian ED Tan Chui Mui MUS Azmyl Yunor WITH Nam Ron, Azman Hassan, Mislina Mustaffa PRINT SOURCE Da Huang Pictures, 4, Lrg. SS1/20A, Kg. Tunku, Petaling Jaya, Selangor, Malaysia. FAX: info@dahuangpictures.com. WEB: summer.dahuangpictures.com. Director Tan Chui Mui returned to her birthplace, a quiet and remote Malaysian fishing village, to film Year Without a Summer, a story of boyhood friends who reunite after a long separation. Steeped in the rhythms of the sea, their story develops slowly and mysteriously, in a meditative tone that illuminates the poetry and emotion of their lives. Beginning with the arrival of Azam, now an adult on the tail end of a successful singing career in Kuala Lumpur, the film weaves together flashbacks to reveal the circumstances of their relationship, as Ali and his wife take Azam on a nighttime boat trip to an uninhabited island. Immersed in the hypnotic natural beauty of his formative years, Azam lets his melancholy slowly rise to the surface. From where comes the great sense of despair and longing that haunts him? A wonderful fisherman s myth about why crabs sift through sand one grain at a time provides an allegorical clue. A humorous story about a reversed mermaid head of a fish and legs of a woman plays a role. An absent mother and father, a taciturn grandfather, an inherited natural restlessness all could have contributed. But these memories arise and vanish like ripples, and though they leave emotional traces, no real cause can be found. The true origin and meaning of Azam s sorrow are as enigmatic as the ocean tides, and like the fisherman in his myth, he longs to return to the deep heartbeat of the beautiful and mysterious sea. Tan Chui Mui Born of Taiwanese descent in a small fishing village in Kuantan, Malaysia in 1978, director Tan Chui Mui created many prize-winning short films before making her first feature Love Conquers All (2006), which also won several awards at international film festivals. Considered a key participant in the recent Malaysian New Wave, she cofounded Da Huang Pictures in 2005 to create and promote Malaysian independent film projects. new directors Gustavus Kundahl SAT APR 23 3:00 KABUKI MON APR 25 9:15 NEW PEOPLE SUN MAY 1 5:00 PFA 105

69 WORLD CINEMA Acclaimed International Directors With Unique Visions 108 Asleep in the Sun 109 Aurora 110 Black Bread 111 Blessed Events 112 Chantrapas 113 The City Below 114 La Dolce Vita 115 Hahaha 116 Hands Up 117 Hospitalité 118 I m Glad My Mother Is Alive 119 Incendies 120 Letters from the Big Man 121 Life, Above All 122 The Light Thief 123 Love in a Puff 124 Meek s Cutoff 125 The Mill and the Cross 126 Mysteries of Lisbon 127 Silent Souls 128 The Sleeping Beauty 129 The Stool Pigeon Assassins 131 The Trip 132 Walking Too Fast 133 World on a Wire 107

70 Asleep in the Sun Dormir al sol world cinema Argentina min DIR Alejandro Chomski PROD Javier del Pino SCR Alejandro Chomski CAM Sol Lopatin ED Alejandro Brodersohn MUS Ruy Folguera WITH Luis Machín, Esther Goris, Carlos Belloso, Florencia Peña, Enrique Piñeyro PRINT SOURCE Musa Films, Arroyo A, 1007 Buenos Aires, Argentina. FAX: com.ar. Every dog has his day in Argentine filmmaker Alejandro Chomski s beguiling metaphysical mystery, a wildly inventive mix of Kafkaesque nightmare and political allegory that digs soul-deep into the surreal psyche of man s best friend. At first, all seems tranquilo in 1950s Buenos Aires, where hapless family man Lucio (a wonderfully hangdog Luis Machín) bides his time as an unemployed watchmaker in the picturesque neighborhood of Parque Chas, laid out in a circular system of labyrinthine streets that, like the film s twisting narrative strands, repeatedly turn in on themselves and offer no clear means of escape. Lucio s neurasthenic wife, Diana (Esther Goris, deftly transitioning from happy-homemaker acquiescence to whacked-out puppy love), seeks solace from her nervous disorders at the local pet shop, where she stares for hours at preternaturally self-possessed pooches who return her gaze with uncanny understanding. Concerned that Diane is slipping too far into dog-dominated daydreams, Lucio commits her to a phrenopathic institute overseen by the sinister pseudoscientist Dr. Samaniego. Upon her release from the cloistered sanitarium, Diana isn t quite the same; for one thing, the formerly demure esposa has a sudden hankering for oral sex. Has a Body Snatchers style switcheroo taken place? Brilliantly directed and lensed, with every 1950s period detail art-directed to perfection (characters, clothing and even wallpaper are carefully color-coordinated), Chomski s singularly bizarre identity-theft thriller also plays as a critique of totalitarian brainwashing: At whose command does Fido fetch so willingly? With dry humor and wry horror, Asleep In the Sun awakens audiences from passive viewing. Alejandro Chomski Born in Buenos Aires in 1968, Alejandro Chomski received an MFA in directing from the American Film Institute and made his feature-length debut in 2003 with Today and Tomorrow. The film screened at major festivals and garnered the attention of Jennifer Lopez, whose production company commissioned Chomski to direct Feel the Noise (2007), a reggaeton-driven narrative set among the Puerto Rican community of the South Bronx. A Beautiful Life followed in Asleep in the Sun is Chomski s fourth feature. He currently is in preproduction on an adaptation of Paul Auster s acclaimed sci-fi novel, In the Country of Last Things. Steven Jenkins SUN APR 24 8:45 KABUKI THU APR 28 3:30 KABUKI SAT APR 30 6:15 NEW PEOPLE 108

71 Aurora Romania/France/Germany/Switzerland min DIR Cristi Puiu PROD Anca Puiu, Bobby Paunescu SCR Cristi Puiu CAM Viorel Sergovici ED Joachim Stroe WITH Cristi Puiu, Clara Voda, Valeria Seciu, Luminita Gheorghiu, Catrinel Dumitrescu, Gelu Colceag, Valentin Popescu, Ileana Puiu PRINT SOURCE The Cinema Guild, 115 W. 30th Street, Suite 800, New York NY FAX: cinemaguild.com. Viorel doesn t have much to say. He negotiates daily life in bleak wintertime Bucharest with dispassion and an obscure anger. But when it becomes apparent he is planning a shooting, his stale and predictable world gets recast in a new and mysterious light. Romanian filmmaker Cristi Puiu destroys all notions of crime as entertainment in this painstakingly realistic anatomy of a murder, delivering a chilling character study of an ordinary person driven to kill. Puiu s post-communist Bucharest is a city on the edge in a suddenly capitalist country where people dream of self-sufficiency while fearing a deep plunge into poverty. Amid the unstable economy, relationships are fractured. At the heart of Viorel s discontent lie a failed marriage and his increasingly distant relationship with his two daughters. Playing protagonist Viorel himself, Puiu presents an intelligent, literate and penetrating reinvention of the traditional murder drama. Meanwhile, as in his acclaimed The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (2005), black comedy creeps into unlikely places: Intending to clean and test his gun, Viorel instead weathers a crew of redecorators, a neighboring dysfunctional family and the unannounced intrusion of his own mother and her new partner, a man Viorel despises. A onetime student of classic film noir, Puiu s realist noir subtracts the romance and keeps the doom. The result is an unflinching and haunting investigation of what compels a person to commit the ultimate act. Cristi Puiu Born in Bucharest in 1967, Cristi Puiu began his career as a painter before making several short films and documentaries. His first feature film, Stuff and Dough (2001), was an awardwinning road movie shot with a handheld camera. His widely acclaimed black comedy, The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (2005), was the first part of his Six Stories from the Outskirts of Bucharest series exploring life in contemporary post- Communist Romania. world cinema Gustavus Kundahl SAT APR 30 8:30 KABUKI WED MAY 4 8:00 NEW PEOPLE THU MAY 5 7:00 PFA 109

72 Black Bread Pa negre world cinema Spain min DIR Agustí Villaronga PROD Isona Passola SCR Agustí Villaronga CAM Antonio Riestra ED Raúl Román MUS José Manuel Pagán WITH Francesc Colomer, Marina Comas, Nora Navas, Roger Casamajor, Lluïsa Castell PRINT SOURCE Beta Film GmbH, Gruenwalder Weg 28 d, D Oberhaching, Germany. FAX: delphine. WEB: panegre.com. In Catalan with subtitles. In the dark days following the Spanish Civil War, a young boy, Andreu, witnesses the murder of another boy and his father in a Catalan forest by a mysterious hooded figure. His trauma is complete when his own father, Farriol, is accused of the crime. An air of vengeful politics lurks behind the accusation, since the village officials are the victorious fascists and Andreu s parents vanquished Republicans. Farriol goes underground to hide from the police, forcing the boy s exhausted mother, Florència, to work extra hours in a run-down factory just so they can survive. Andreu is sent to live with relatives, his whole life turned upside down. With his cousin Núria, he sets out to find the real killers. But the dark forests of Spain hide many secrets, and the truths he uncovers are far from comforting. Andreu, struggling with a reality that is in contradiction with his deepest beliefs and emotions, turns into someone he never wanted to be. This story of moral contradictions and imperfect heroes triumphed at the 2010 Goya Awards, walking away with nine prizes including top film and director. Nora Navas, who plays Andreu s mother, took the best actress honor and the two child actors, Francesc Colomer (Andreu) and Marina Comas (Núria), won for most promising performances. It is the first Catalonian film to win so much acclaim, and no film has so richly explored this twisted gothic underworld since Guillermo del Toro s Pan s Labyrinth (2006). Agustí Villaronga Born in 1953 in Majorca, Agustí Villaronga has directed 11 films since1976. His film El niño de la luna was an official selection at the 1989 Cannes Film Festival. He codirected the faux documentary Aro Tolbukhin: In the Mind of a Killer (2002), Mexico s official submission for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. In 2011, he won the Goya Award for Best Director for Black Bread. Miguel Pendás FRI APR 29 3:00 KABUKI MON MAY 2 6:00 KABUKI WED MAY 4 9:15 KABUKI 110

73 Blessed Events Glückliche fügung US Premiere Germany min DIR Isabelle Stever PROD Sigrid Hoerner, Anne Leppin SCR Anke Stellin, Isabelle Stever CAM Bernhard Keller ED Bettina Boehler MUS Yoyo Röhm, Jupiter Moll, Louis Mariot WITH Annika Kuhl, Stefan Rudolf, Arno Frisch PRINT SOURCE Media Luna New Films, Aachener Strasse 24, Cologne, Germany. FAX: medialuna.biz. WEB: medialuna.biz/films/ descr_blessed-events.html. Special support for this program generously provided by the Goethe-Institut San Francisco and the Consulate General of the Federal Republic of Germany San Francisco. The first blessed event in Isabelle Stever s intriguing film is clear enough: Simone, a depressed woman in her 30s, goes out for a night of listless drinking and dancing on New Years Eve, wakes up in a stranger s car after a one-night-stand and discovers afterwards that she s pregnant. The second blessed event is Simone s chance second meeting with the father, Hannes, a handsome, compassionate nurse who seems delighted with the prospect of fatherhood and plunges into a serious relationship with her. They find a charming home in a rural area, set up housekeeping together, prepare for parenthood and Simone begins to suspect it s all too good to be true. As her belly swells and her discomfort and suspicion grow, the questions begin to pile up. Is Hannes a liar with ulterior motives? Is Simone suffering from a combination of raging hormones and bad memories of the ex-boyfriend who appears to be stalking her? Or is she merely a self-destructive person about to sabotage a phenomenal stroke of luck? As Simone, Annika Kuhl delivers a subtle but intense performance that steadily ups the emotional ante, while Stever s direction reflects its main character s possibly skewed view of the world with dissonant settings and odd camera angles. Based on a short story by Anke Stelling, who helped write the screenplay, Blessed Events is a fascinating puzzle of a film that captures the overwhelming uncertainty of someone who has come to a crossroads in her life and is terrified of making the wrong decision. Isabelle Stever Born in Munich in 1963, Isabelle Stever studied mathematics before entering the German Film and Television Academy to study film directing. Her 2002 film, Portrait of a Married Couple, won Germany s First Step Award for best feature film, and her 2005 film, Gisela, won the Crossing Europe Award. world cinema Pamela Troy SAT APR 30 6:15 KABUKI MON MAY 2 9:15 KABUKI TUE MAY 3 3:15 KABUKI 111

74 Chantrapas Chantrapas world cinema US Premiere France/Georgia min DIR Otar Iosseliani PROD Martine Marignac SCR Otar Iosseliani CAM Lionel Cousin, Julie Grünebaum ED Otar Iosseliani, Emmanuelle Legendre MUS Djardji Balantchivadze WITH Dato Tarielashvili, Tamuna Karumidze, Fanny Gonin, Bulle Ogier, Bogdan Stupka PRINT SOURCE Les Films du Losange, 22 avenue Pierre 1er de Serbie, Paris, France. FAX: In French and Georgian with subtitles. Special support for this program generously provided by Melanie and Lawrence Blum in tribute to George Gund III for his lifetime of enthusiasm and support for the Bay Area film, sports and arts worlds and his dedicated commitment to the Film Society as chairman of the board of directors for over 40 years. A filmmaker finds creative freedom far more elusive than he imagined in this affectionately ironic comedy/ drama from Festival favorite Otar Iosseliani (Brigands, Chapter VII, SFIFF 1997; Gardens in Autumn, SFIFF 2007). Loosely based on the experiences of Iosseliani and his fellow Soviet Georgian filmmakers during the 1950s and 60s, the film follows young, idealistic Niko as he struggles to get his film made in the USSR in the face of state crackdowns and government interference. Fleeing to every young man s promised land (France, of course), Niko merely finds more of the same only here the creative interference is based on economics, rather than politics. What s worse, he barely has time for film, as he s forced into an immigrant s life of cultural isolation and odd jobs (street sweeper, zookeeper) to survive. Chantrapas is the portrait of a collection of filmmakers, notes Iosseliani, those who refused to collaborate with the Soviet dictatorship and were banned or exiled as a result (Iosseliani himself fled to Paris after making several now-legendary films in Georgia). Chantrapas is also a song to cinema itself, its scripts, sets, 35mm editing rooms, its dreamers, strivers and constant liars, all brought to life through Ioselliani s affectionate, picaresque storytelling. Cinema is a charming fair, he says. There s everything: merchants, drunkards, serious people, functionaries. The filmmaker is in the middle. A tribute to an era of Eastern European and Soviet filmmaking that was both extraordinarily difficult and powerful, Chantrapas is a warm, charming satire on creativity and the forces that inhibit it. Otar Iosseliani Born in Tbilisi, Georgia, in 1934, writer/director Otar Iosseliani won the FIPRESCI Prize at the Cannes Film Festival for his first feature November (1966), but saw his films repeatedly banned in the USSR. After his 1976 film Pastorale (SFIFF 1983) met with success at the 1982 Berlin International Film Festival following censorship in the Soviet Union, Iosseliani emigrated to France. There he made Favorites of the Moon (SFIFF 1985), which won a prize at 1984 s Venice International Film Festival. His subsequent films, including Brigands, Chapter VII (SFIFF 1997) and Monday Morning (SFIFF 2003), have also won prizes and acclaim internationally. SUN APR 24 6:15 PFA TUE APR 26 6:00 KABUKI FRI APR 29 9:00 NEW PEOPLE 112

75 The City Below Unter dir die Stadt Germany min DIR Christoph Hochhäusler PROD Bettina Brokemper SCR Ulrich Peltzer, Christoph Hochhäusler CAM Bernhard Keller ED Stephan Stabenow MUS Benedikt Schiefer WITH Nicolette Krebitz, Robert Hunger-Bühler, Mark Waschke, Corinna Kirchhoff PRINT SOURCE The Match Factory, Balthasarstrasse 79-81, Cologne, Germany. FAX: Special support for this program generously provided by the Goethe-Institut San Francisco. A high-flying corporate bigwig meets his match in Christoph Hochhäusler s tense drama set in the upper echelons of Frankfurt s banking sector. It s a malevolent world of high finance and corporate malfeasance, in which dour men sit around gargantuan tables in penthouse boardrooms plotting the takeover of rival firms. The dourest of all is the reptilian Roland Cordes (Robert Hunger-Büehler) who, at the outset of the film, seems to have lost some of his appetite for conquest. A chance encounter with the wife of an underling reignites the fire in his belly, and soon it s business as usual for Roland, except that now his machinations play out in the bedroom instead of the boardroom. His enigmatic paramour Svenja Steve (Nicolette Krebitz) is no shrinking violet, as Roland quickly discovers, and before long he finds himself embroiled in some of the most delicate negotiations of his career. But what laws of attraction could possibly explain Roland s allure for Svenja, a sensuous young woman with a doting husband? As it turns out, the two share some unsavory proclivities and secret pasts, which they can only reveal to each other. Their illicit affair is tested when Svenja discovers Roland has orchestrated the transfer of her husband to a precarious position in Jakarta, but even that betrayal may not sever their dark bond. Evocatively filmed and impressively acted, Hochhäusler s solemn tour de force is an utterly fascinating excavation of nihilism and late capitalism on the wane. Christoph Hochhäusler Christoph Hochhäusler (whose name means skyscraper in German) studied architecture in Berlin before embarking on a filmmaking career that has to date produced three feature films. His previous work, This Very Moment (2003), premiered in competition at the Berlinale, while Low Profile (2005) premiered at Cannes in the Un Certain Regard section. He is the founder of the film journal Revolver. The City Below is inspired by the biblical story of David and Bathsheba. This is what I found interesting: How power affects the longing for what we call love, Hochhäusler has written. Power transcends (or corrupts) ideology, beliefs, bonds. world cinema Michael Read FRI APR 22 9:30 KABUKI MON APR 25 4:00 KABUKI FRI APR 29 6:00 KABUKI 113

76 La Dolce Vita world cinema Italy/France min DIR Federico Fellini PROD Giuseppe Amato, Angelo Rizzoli SCR Federico Fellini, Ennio Flaiano, Tullio Pinelli, in collaboration with Brunello Rondi and Pier Paolo Pasolini CAM Otello Martelli ED Leo Catozzo MUS Nino Rota WITH Marcello Mastroianni, Anita Ekberg, Anouk Aimée PRINT SOURCE Paramount Archives, 5555 Melrose Avenue, Los Angeles CA Restored by Cineteca di Bologna at L Immagine Ritrovata in association with The Film Foundation, Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia-Cineteca Nazionale, Pathé, Fondation Jérôme Seydoux-Pathé, Mediaset- Medusa, Paramount Pictures and Cinecittà Luce. Restoration funding provided by Gucci and The Film Foundation. Presented as part of the Italian Cinema Visionaries Program by Gucci and The Film Foundation. Considered revolutionary at the time of its release, Federico Fellini s La Dolce Vita changed the landscape of international filmmaking. Being condemned by the Catholic Church in Italy as immoral naturally led to its breaking all box-office records there. In the United States it is still one of the most-seen foreign films of all time. The film chronicles seven nights and the dawns that follow as journalist Marcello (Marcello Mastroianni) pursues the sweet life in postwar Rome, floating between the decadent high society lifestyle he seeks with his rich lover and a Swedish bombshell, and the stifling domesticity offered by his suicidal girlfriend. The film s iconic images the statue of Christ being flown over Rome, Anita Ekberg frolicking in the Trevi Fountain in her evening gown have become unforgettable snapshots of a society in glamorous decay. Fellini brilliantly conducts Otello Martelli s sparkling black-and-white cinematography restored to pristine condition in this gorgeous new print as well as Nino Rota s jazzy score and one of Mastroianni s finest performances, all in a work that encapsulates the filmmaker s many gifts to cinema. Here in a rousing, moody and unforgettable masterpiece, Fellini offers us life in all its tragedy and beauty, absurdity and magic. Originally scheduled to be shown as the Opening Night film at the 1960 SFIFF (the film was pulled at the last minute by the distributor), the Festival finally, proudly presents La Dolce Vita. Federico Fellini Federico Fellini ( ) is one of the towering figures of 20th-century cinema. He strove to put his own dreams and subconscious experiences on the screen, ushering in a modern cinema that blends realism with surrealistic whimsy and brims with striking images and unforgettable characters. In 1956, at the Italian Film Festival organized by SFIFF founder Irving M. Levin, La Strada received the first Golden Gate Award for Best Film and Fellini was named Best Director. La Strada, Nights of Cabiria (SFIFF 1980), 8½ (1963) and Amarcord (1973) all won Oscars for Best Foreign Language Film. In 1993, Fellini received the honorary Oscar for lifetime achievement. Special support for this program generously provided by Max and David Glynn. SUN MAY 1 12:30 CASTRO 114

77 Hahaha South Korea min DIR Hong Sang-soo PROD Kim Kyoung-hee SCR Hong Sang-soo CAM Park Hong-yeol ED Hahm Sung-won MUS Jeong Yong-jin WITH Kim Sang-kyung, Yu Jun-sang, Moon Sori PRINT SOURCE Finecut, 4th Floor, Incline Building, Daechi-dong, Gangnam-gu, Seoul, South Korea. finecut.co.kr. Synonymous with the explosion of vital South Korean cinema, iconoclast Hong Sang-soo s growing body of playful, pleasantly challenging work has earned the auteur a favored place in the lexicon of modern film. Often employing protagonists who are filmmakers and professors (inviting autobiographical comparisons), and spiked with a healthy dose of drunkenness and alienation, Hong s explorations of memory, desire and self-interest make a lasting impression the world over. In this latest feature, which took top prize in last year s Cannes Film Festival s Un Certain Regard section, a filmmaker meets up with a close friend for farewell drinks before departing from Korea. Upon discovering they both recently returned from the same spiritual seaside town, the two men agree to swap fond memories for each sip. As the simple stories unfold in flashback, only the audience can realize that their accounts take place at the same time, and with the same people. Fans of the auteur s usual cynicism and concealed layers of meaning may be pleasantly surprised by the refreshing air of sweetness that quietly percolates here among his favorite preoccupations. With composed irreverence and a delicate but potent swirl of chance encounters, nostalgia, heartbreak and grace, Hong delivers his most sincere work. Hong Sang-soo One of Korea s most highly regarded contemporary directors, Hong Sang-soo remains a fixture on the international festival circuit. His award-winning work includes The Day a Pig Fell into the Well (1996), The Power of Kangwon Province (SFIFF 1999), The Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors (SFIFF 2001), Turning Gate (2002), Woman Is the Future of Man (2004), Tale of Cinema (2005), Woman on the Beach (2006), Night and Day (2008), Like You Know It All (2009) and Oki s Movie (2010). world cinema Landon Zakheim FRI APR 22 6:15 KABUKI MON APR 25 9:00 KABUKI TUE APR 26 3:30 KABUKI 115

78 Hands Up Les mains en l air world cinema France min DIR Romain Goupil PROD Margaret Ménégoz SCR Romain Goupil CAM Irina Lubtchansky ED Laurence Briaud WITH Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi, Linda Doudaeva, Jules Ritmanic, Louna Klanit, Louka Masset, Jérémie Yousaf PRINT SOURCE Les Films du Losange, 22 avenue Pierre 1er de Serbie, Paris, France. FAX: t.petit@filmsdulosange.fr. From its opening scene, time-stamped in the year 2067, Hands Up might be mistaken for a futuristic narrative. Reminiscing on an event in her childhood some 60 years earlier, Milana marvels at the archaic nature of classroom teaching in 2009 and can t even recall who was president of France that year (a not-so-subtle clue to the filmmaker s contempt for Nicolas Sarkozy). But this is very much a story of the present and the past when certain classes of French society suffer the consequences of government policy. For Milana at age 11, it is the threat of deportation for her and her family of undocumented Chechen immigrants living in Paris. Milana is one of thousands of children affected by current immigration policy a source of fierce political debate and protest within the community. When Youssef, one of her tight-knit gang of friends, is suddenly deported with his family, the group of children fear Milana will be next. Brother and sister Blaise and Alice convince their earnest, left-leaning mother (a free-spirited but stressed-out Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi, who, ironically, took this role just prior to becoming Sarkozy s sister-inlaw) to take Milana into their home to try to protect her. But when the perceived dangers continue to escalate, the kids hatch a meticulous plan to go into hiding, where they can insure Milana s safety (and eat and do whatever they like). For days, their disappearance becomes a cause célèbre in the media, compelling the adult world to sit up, take notice and reconsider their priorities. Romain Goupil Born in 1951, Romain Goupil took an early interest in both film and leftist politics, producing his first short films at the age of 16 and participating in the student protests of May An assistant director for Chantal Akerman, Roman Polanski and Jean-Luc Godard, he went on to direct his first documentary feature, Half a Life (SFIFF 1983), winning the Camera d Or in Cannes and a César for Best First Film. He continues to write, direct and act in shorts, features, documentaries and TV programs with predominantly political themes. Joanne Parsont SUN MAY 1 1:00 KABUKI TUE MAY 3 3:30 KABUKI WED MAY 4 6:15 KABUKI 116

79 Hospitalité Kantai Japan min DIR Koji Fukada PROD Koji Fukada, Kiki Sugino SCR Koji Fukada CAM Kenichi Negishi ED Koji Fukada MUS Kumuko Yabu WITH Kiki Sugino, Kenji Yamauchi, Kanji Furutachi PRINT SOURCE RamondaParis, 91 rue de Ménilmontant, Paris, France. Home invasion was never so droll as in this black comedy from writer/director Koji Fukada, which pokes a stick in the eye of xenophobia. Into the lives of a too-mildmannered Tokyo printer, his very young wife and their family comes a man with a story actually a couple of stories, take your pick. With one foot in the door, the stranger is hired on as a live-in printer. The ancestral family home is tiny and crowded, tucked away behind the printing machines, so when this man of admittedly bizarre affect moves in with his Brazilian wife, the strain is on. Still, the polite printer and his wife say nothing. Meanwhile, the unofficial neighborhood watch committee can t help noticing that the Brazilian likes to stand in the window naked as if playing on their fears of the homeless, criminals and foreigners, she seems to be all three. If the strange couple are pulling a scam, however, their motive is unclear; if they are liars, it turns out that their hosts have much to hide as well. Through the strangers machinations, all that is inside comes out, and all that is outside comes in, like so many Gullivers into this Lilliputian home. A fine ensemble cast plays brilliantly to an everyday tension in Japanese life, between a culture of hospitality and the fear of intruders. Koji Fukada Koji Fukada was born in 1980 in Tokyo. His first film, The Chair, was released in Tokyo in He joined Theatre Company Seinendan, which is led by Oriza Hirata, in He wrote and directed the animation film La Grenadière (2006) and received the Soleil d Or Award at the Third Kinotayo Film Festival. His feature film Human Comedy in Tokyo screened at the Rome International Film Festival in world cinema Judy Bloch SAT APR 23 9:00 NEW PEOPLE THU APR 28 6:30 NEW PEOPLE SAT APR 30 8:15 PFA 117

80 I m Glad My Mother Is Alive Je suis heureux que ma mère soit vivante world cinema France min DIR Claude Miller, Nathan Miller PROD Jean-Louis Livi SCR Claude Miller, Nathan Miller CAM Aurélien Devaux ED Morgane Spacagna MUS Vincent Segal WITH Vincent Rottiers, Sophie Cattani, Christine Citti, Yves Verhoeven, Maxime Renard, Gabin Lefebure, Olivier Guéritée, Ludo Harlay PRINT SOURCE Strand Releasing, 6140 W. Washington Boulevard, Culver City CA FAX: david@ strandreleasing.com. Claude and Nathan Miller s nuanced and provocative film, based loosely on real events treated in an article by writer and filmmaker Emmanuel Carrère, depicts the troubled life of an adopted boy. Twelve-year-old Thomas lives with his younger brother and kindhearted adoptive parents. He has dim memories of the mother who gave the two boys up at a young age, and the perceived betrayal still affects him deeply. Frequent scraps with classmates result in Thomas being sent to boarding school, where he manages to track down his birth mother, a woman named Julie Martino, but doesn t speak to her. Eight years later, Thomas, now a taciturn garage mechanic, decides to visit Julie, now the mother of another young son. This encounter, and the subsequent relationship that develops between them, is fraught with tense emotion as it builds to a surprising conclusion. Claude Miller, an expert director of actors, draws multilayered, moving performances from Vincent Rottier as the older Thomas and Sophie Cattani as Julie. I m Glad My Mother Is Alive doesn t make any grand statements about adoption but rather presents a particular character portrait about regrets and bottled-up feelings. After more than 30 years in the business, Miller working here with his son, Nathan adds another impeccably crafted drama to his impressive roster. Claude Miller Nathan Miller Claude Miller worked for many French New Wave icons, including Godard and Truffaut, before beginning his own feature film career with The Best Way (SFIFF 1976), starring Patrick Dewaere. Since then, he s made over 15 films, often focusing on children and young adults. His 1998 film Class Trip won the Jury Prize at Cannes, and he has been nominated numerous times for France s César award, winning Best Screenplay in 1981 for Garde à vue. Nathan Miller, son of Claude Miller, has worked as assistant director with his father and other directors, including Jacky Cukier, Jean-Loup Hubert and Bernard Stora. In 2000, he wrote and directed the short film La Tartine and in 2004 he served as cinematographer for a documentary about Jean-Paul Gaultier. On I m Glad My Mother Is Alive he serves as cowriter and codirector. Rod Armstrong FRI APR 22 6:45 KABUKI MON APR 25 9:30 KABUKI 118

81 Incendies Canada/France min DIR Denis Villeneuve PROD Luc Déry, Kim McCraw SCR Denis Villeneuve CAM André Turpin ED Monique Dartonne MUS Grégoire Hetzel WITH Lubna Azabal, Mélissa Désormeaux- Poulin, Maxim Gaudette, Rémy Girard PRINT SOURCE Sony Pictures Classics, 550 Madison Avenue, 8th Floor, New York NY FAX: sony_ WEB: incendiesmovie. com. Special support for this program generously provided by Thomas and Janet McKinley. Upon the reading of their late mother s will, Canadian twins Jeanne and Simon Marwan are shocked to learn that their father is still alive and they have a brother they didn t know existed. They are given sealed envelopes to deliver to each and told to travel to their mother s unnamed native country in the Middle East which she fled during wartime to find them. Simon is initially dismissive and refuses, resentful of his mother s former unreliability and emotional distance. But Jeanne makes the journey and her startling discoveries soon lure Simon into joining her. Bit by bit they uncover the deep scars left on their mother s life by the war and come to understand the sources of her strange behavior, ultimately discovering an unthinkable secret. Nominated this year for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, Incendies is viscerally cinematic and immensely satisfying as it spins a complex narrative across two continents and several decades. Director Denis Villeneuve, adapting Wajdi Mouawad s award-winning play, powerfully evokes the tragedy and complexity of the Middle East s conflicts. Never didactic, the film s focus remains on the lasting damage left behind. From its uniformly brilliant cast to its stunning, sun-soaked photography and profound emotional range, Incendies is bravura filmmaking. Villeneuve has created a haunting masterpiece that gradually reveals its mysteries through sharply attuned performances and rich storytelling. Denis Villeneuve Denis Villeneuve is considered one of Canada s greatest filmmakers. His four feature films have played at Cannes, Berlin, Toronto, Telluride and Sundance and have won dozens of international awards. His most recent short, Next Floor, played at SFIFF in world cinema Jesse Dubus MON MAY 2 6:30 KABUKI THU MAY 5 8:00 KABUKI 119

82 Letters from the Big Man world cinema USA min DIR Christopher Munch PROD Christopher Munch SCR Christopher Munch CAM Rob Sweeney ED Christopher Munch MUS Traditional music by Ensemble Galilei. WITH Lily Rabe, Jason Butler Harner, Isaac C. Singleton Jr., Jim Cody Williams, Fiona Dourif, Karen Black PRINT SOURCE Submarine Entertainment, 525 Broadway, #601, New York NY FAX: It is too rare a thing that we mark the occasion of a new film by Christopher Munch. One of the true auteurs of independent cinema, Munch s style is consistently beautiful and strange in its earnestness, an attribute that sets his work in stark contrast to a steady stream of ironic and wry looks at popular culture. And given a story about the deepening relationship between a young woman and a sasquatch, earnestness itself now becomes a central tension. What does it mean for a film to embark on an exploration of Bigfoot without irony, without winks, completely in good faith? What can we learn from this? We follow Sarah, an artist and hydrologist, as she surveys the old growth forests of the Klamath wilderness (captured majestically by cinematographer Rob Sweeney) for the Oregon forest service. She is embroiled in a number of intrigues: the politics of deforestation, a break up, a burgeoning love, metaphysical communication with a missing link. Viewers expecting a campy romp through cryptozoology will come away puzzled, and the better for it. In fact, the film doesn t even begin to address the gulf of doubt that surrounds its premise. Instead, it focuses on the deep, ancient and spiritual beauty of a region and people unaffected by the last ice age, and what we might gain by their example. Christopher Munch Christopher Munch is a producer/writer/director whose films include the features Harry and Max (2004), about two brothers who are both pop idols, The Sleepy Time Gal (2001), about a dying mother s search for a daughter put up for adoption at birth, Color of a Brisk and Leaping Day (1996), about a young man s efforts to save a doomed short-line railroad in the 1940s and The Hours and Times (1992), based on the friendship of Brian Epstein and John Lennon. Munch has been a Guggenheim Fellow and has been featured in two Whitney Biennial exhibitions. Sean Uyehara FRI APR 29 4:15 KABUKI TUE MAY 3 6:00 KABUKI THU MAY 5 7:30 NEW PEOPLE 120

83 Life, Above All South Africa/Germany min DIR Oliver Schmitz PROD Oliver Stoltz SCR Dennis Foon, Oliver Schmitz CAM Bernhard Jasper ED Dirk Grau MUS Ali N. Askin WITH Khomotso Manyaka, Lerato Mvelase, Harriet Manamela PRINT SOURCE Sony Pictures Classics, 550 Madison Avenue, 8th Floor, New York NY FAX: sony_ WEB: lifeaboveallmovie. com. In Pedi with subtitles. Special support for this program generously provided by Cecilia and Jim Herbert. Chanda is a South African preteen dealing with a number of difficult situations. Her mother, Lillian, is very ill, her stepfather is a drunk, her newborn sister has just died and her two living siblings need to be fed, clothed and taken to school. The grace and intelligence this youngster brings to bear on all these crises transforms the hard reality in Oliver Schmitz s Life, Above All into an inspiring coming-of-age story. At the same time, the film examines the prejudice and problems accompanying poverty and widespread HIV infection in the small township where Chanda lives. When locals start whispering that Lillian has the dreaded bug, a nosy neighbor (memorably played by Harriet Manamela) intervenes in a misguided attempt to shield Chanda and her family. As the problems mount, so does the girl s resolve, as she stands up to other residents and causes them to reevaluate their preconceptions. Newcomer Khomotso Manyaka brings maturity and intention to her portrait of Chanda, while screenwriter Dennis Foon s intimate narrative demonstrates the wider devastation suffered by a country due to poverty, fear and disease. Against a tragically preventable backdrop of teenage prostitution, alcoholism, infant mortality and the AIDS epidemic, the film seeks a hopeful future for a damaged community in one heartbreakingly resilient child. Oliver Schmitz Oliver Schmitz was born in Cape Town, South Africa and has worked in television and film in South Africa and Germany. His first film, Mapantsula (1987), debuted at the Cannes Film Festival and went on to receive numerous awards. His other films include Hijack Stories (2000) and one of the segments in Paris je t aime (2003). world cinema Rod Armstrong SAT APR 23 4:00 KABUKI THU APR 28 6:00 KABUKI 121

84 The Light Thief Svet-ake world cinema Kyrgyzstan/Germany/France/ Netherlands min DIR Aktan Arym Kubat PROD Altynai Koichumanova, Cedomir Kolar, Thanassis Karathanos, Marc Baschet, Karl Baumgartner, Denis Vaslin SCR Talip Ibraimov, Aktan Arym Kubat CAM Hassan Kydyraliyev ED Petar Markovic MUS Andre Matthias WITH Aktan Arym Kubat, Taalaikan Abazova, Askat Sulaimanov, Asan Amanov, Stanbek Toichubaev PRINT SOURCE Global Film Initiative, 145 Ninth Street, #105, San Francisco CA FAX: org. On the steppe in Kyrgyzstan, a simple electrician affectionately known as Mr. Light (director/cowriter Aktan Arym Kubat) finds himself caught in a difficult position when an ambitious politician embraces his dream of generating wind energy for his tiny impoverished town. Mr. Light is modest and altruistic through and through, but his unlikely partner seems motivated more by greed than hopes of community development. In the meantime, Mr. Light helps out the best he can, tampering with the meters of those too poor to pay for electricity, which raises the ire of the authorities. He also strains to keep his wife a tough, smart woman frustrated by her husband s naïveté happy. The Light Thief elegantly dramatizes the complex challenges of a developing economy with its heartfelt story about the unglamorous yet very real struggles of life in post-soviet Central Asia. Some of the villagers here have already given up, leaving to seek out easier lives in Russia and Italy. Those who remain must also look to the outside world to raise capital, as evidenced by a group of Chinese investors who are considering funding the wind farm. Director Kubat sets his narrative against the backdrop of the 2005 Tulip Revolution, when a disputed election led to a popular revolt against the government. Although the brief glimpses of political unrest in capital Bishkek seem a world away from Mr. Light s sleepy town, Kubat slyly illustrates the same governmental failings on a local level, as his humble protagonist faces the greatest social issues, plugging away against injustice and tyranny. Aktan Arym kubat Born in 1957, Aktan Arym Kubat is Kyrgyzstan s leading filmmaker. He began his career as a production designer after studying film in Bishkek, then gained international recognition and multiple awards at the Locarno Film Festival for his films The Swing (1993) and The Adopted Son (SFIFF 1999). His five feature films have screened across the globe, documenting the tumultuous contemporary history and everyday life of his native country. Jesse Dubus SAT APR 23 7:15 KABUKI MON APR 25 9:15 KABUKI SUN MAY 1 8:45 PFA 122

85 Love in a Puff Chi ming yu chun giu Hong Kong min DIR Pang Ho-cheung PROD Pang Ho-cheung, Subi Liang SCR Pang Ho-cheung, Heiward Mak CAM Jason Kwan ED Wenders Li MUS Alan Wong, Janet Yung WITH Miriam Yeung, Shawn Yue, Cheung Tat-ming PRINT SOURCE Media Asia Films, frederick_tsui@mediaasia.com. Boy meets girl during a cigarette break, unaware that his loose-lipped colleagues have just shared the details of his recent, embarrassing split from his girlfriend with his crew of fellow smokers. They all feign ignorance when ad man Jimmy (Shawn Yue) arrives and offers a light to cosmetics saleswoman Cherie (Miriam Yeung). You re Jimmy? she asks knowingly. A connection is made, and a hip, Hong Kong style modern romance ensues. Although Cherie is a few years older and already has a boyfriend (albeit an unappreciative one), her fledgling courtship with Jimmy is given an opportunity to grow when a friend s social media blunder and an intercepted text message abruptly bring her existing relationship to an end. Not quite prepared for what comes next, Jimmy and Cherie willingly move forward into an uncertain future. Despite its nicotine-centric plot, liberal use of Cantonese profanity and focus on a fasttracked relationship that takes place against the backdrop of a sometimes gritty urban setting, there is a distinctly innocent feel to Love in a Puff. Director Pang Hocheung keeps this romantic comedy lighthearted and the interactions between Jimmy and Cherie simple and sweet. Interspersed throughout the film and credits are a series of humorous mini-interviews with both lead and supporting characters, à la When Harry Met Sally, shot with a shaky handheld camera and an occasional boom microphone in the frame. The characters talk about love and each other, demonstrating that when it comes to human emotions, no translation is required. Pang Ho-cheung Hong Kong native Pang Ho-cheung began making films as a teenager. After graduating from high school, he studied in Taiwan and returned to make his professional start as a television scriptwriter. Since then, he has expanded his creative roles to include actor, producer and director. Pang s first feature film was You Shoot, I Shoot in His subsequent films, including 2004 s Beyond Our Ken (SFIFF 2005), have been official selections at numerous international film festivals. Love in a Puff is one of two films Pang made in 2010, the other being Dream Home. world cinema Monique Montibon THU APR 28 8:45 KABUKI SAT APR 30 1:15 KABUKI 123

86 Meek s Cutoff world cinema USA min DIR Kelly Reichardt PROD Neil Kopp, Anish Savjani, Elizabeth Cuthrell, David Urrutia SCR Jon Raymond CAM Christopher Blauvelt ED Kelly Reichardt MUS Jeff Grace WITH Michelle Williams, Bruce Greenwood, Will Patton, Zoe Kazan, Paul Dano, Shirley Henderson PRINT SOURCE Oscilloscope Laboratories, 511 Canal Street, #5E, New York NY FAX: info@oscilloscope.net. Special support for this program generously provided by Visionary Circle members David and Charlotte Winton. Academy Award nominee Michelle Williams (Blue Valentine) stars in this eagerly anticipated new feature from Kelly Reichardt (River of Grass, SFIFF 1994; Old Joy, 2006) characterized by the filmmaker s innate ability to locate emotional truth in the smallest of gestures and rituals. If tackling a period Western might seem like a departure, Reichardt approaches the subject matter with masterful ease, elegantly exposing the desperation, hard struggles and simple desires of her working-class protagonists. In 1845, during the earliest days of the Oregon Trail, three families undertake a perilous journey to begin life anew. Boastful rogue Stephen Meek, whom they have employed to guide them safely through uncharted danger, seems to have led them astray. They are running out of water and uncertain of survival. When they capture an Indian scout who has been tracking them, the group must wrestle with where to place its trust. Led by the adroit Williams (Wendy and Lucy), Reichardt s powerhouse ensemble vanishes effortlessly into their respective roles, contributing to a dissection of compassion, instinct and human dignity amid literal life-or-death stakes. With a finely tuned attention to detail, Meek s Cutoff courageously and resonantly strips away the grandeur of the Old West. Kelly Reichardt One of the most exhilarating American directors working today, Kelly Reichardt has achieved recognition all over the world for her distinct work. Known for a sparse, minimalist style, and favoring themes involving man interacting with nature, her award-winning and critically acclaimed body of work includes River of Grass (SFIFF 1994), Old Joy (2006) and Wendy and Lucy (2008). Landon Zakheim FRI APR 22 9:00 KABUKI MON APR 25 4:30 KABUKI 124

87 The Mill and the Cross Poland/Sweden min DIR Lech Majewski PROD Lech Majewski, Freddy Olsson SCR Lech Majewski, Michael Francis Gibson CAM Lech Majewski, Adam Sikora ED Eliot Ems, Norbert Rudzik MUS Lech Majewski, Jozef Skrzek WITH Rutger Hauer, Michael York, Charlotte Rampling, Joanna Litwin, Dorota Lis PRINT SOURCE Kino Lorber Inc., 333 W. 39th Street, Suite 503, New York NY FAX: WEB: themillandthecross.com. In English and Flemish with subtitles. Special support for this program generously provided by Visionary Circle member Diane B. Wilsey. This is a World Cinema Spotlight Film. A miracle of technology in the service of the artistic imagination, Lech Majewski s brilliant film transports its viewers into the living, breathing world of Pieter Bruegel s dense frieze of Christ s passion, The Way to Calvary. And live and breathe it does. Though carefully organized along symbolic axes, Bruegel s 1564 painting sets the drama of the crucifixion within a rustic Flanders scene teeming with everyday life. ( About suffering they were never wrong, the Old Masters, wrote W.H. Auden. How well they understood / Its human position; how it takes place / While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along. ) Likewise Majewski using computergenerated blue-screen compositing, new 3-D technology, just-so location shooting in Poland, Austria and New Zealand and a massive backdrop he painted by hand tells the story of the painting largely through closely observed secular rituals of 16th-century Flemish daily life, in all its earth-toned grubbiness, with occasional scenes revealing Bruegel s artistic choices and the politics of the day. Windmilling, calf-hauling, bread-peddling, villagers dancing and children horsing around take up the better part of the narrative, while cameos by Rutger Hauer (as Bruegel), Michael York (as his patron and friend) and Charlotte Rampling (as a limpid Virgin Mary) give historical context and symbolic depth. But the narrative is not the point the extraordinary imagery is. The painting literally comes to life in this spellbinding film, its wondrous scenes entering the viewer like a dream enters a sleeping body. Lech Majewski Polish-born Lech Majewski is an internationally prominent US-based artist, filmmaker, poet and stage director. His film and video work received a major mid-career retrospective at the New York Museum of Modern Art in His 2007 film Glass Lips, which took the form of an experimental set of meditations, was originally presented as 33 short films. The Washington Post s Philip Kennicott has called Majewski a brilliant filmmaker whose haunting aesthetic is processed through a lively mind and idiosyncratic imagination, chastened and tempered by history, and captured on screen with the rigor and perfectionism of an artist who might also carve castles out of toothpicks. Throughout his films, the great categories of our existence... are not bounded at all, but constantly dissolve into one another. world cinema Graham Leggat SAT APR 23 12:30 SFMOMA WED APR 27 9:00 KABUKI 125

88 Mysteries of Lisbon Mistérios de Lisboa world cinema Portugal/France min DIR Raúl Ruiz PROD Paulo Branco SCR Carlos Saboga CAM André Szankowski ED Carlos Madaleno, Valeria Sarmiento MUS Jorge Arriagada, Luis Freitas Branco WITH Adriano Luz, Maria João Bastos, Ricardo Pereira, Clotilde Hesme, Léa Seydoux PRINT SOURCE Music Box Films, 942 W. Lake Street, Chicago IL musicboxfilms.com. In Portuguese and French with subtitles. There will be a 15-minute intermission. The noble and the damned are interchangeable and identical in Raúl Ruiz s magisterial new gambit on the art of storytelling, based on Camilo Castelo Branco s 19th-century Portuguese novel yet more mind-bending and radical than any contemporary tale. A young boy in a Lisbon orphanage wonders who he is, but soon each and every identity comes into question, especially as flashbacks, flash-forwards and tales within tales begin to spiral forth. A priest may be a fighter, a wealthy man a highway robber and a noblewoman a nun. But who are you? asks someone. It all may depend on the story you re in, and who is telling the tale. What remains constant is the sumptuous setting: a decadent Old World Portugal of crumbling estates, extravagant ballrooms and fog-bound dueling fields. No stranger to epic novel adaptations (his Time Regained (SFIFF 2000) adapted Proust s Remembrance of Things Past with similar flair), Ruiz treats his material with consummate respect and a baroque, Borgesian grandeur, constantly framing shots within shots and actions within actions. A tale of tales, of orphans, counts and duels, this costume metadrama is Dickens filtered through a surrealist s gaze, and a fitting summation of Ruiz s artistry. Originally made as a miniseries for Portuguese television (this four-hour theatrical version was cut from the six-hour original), Mysteries of Lisbon is said by the director to be his final film. Raúl Ruiz Born in Chile, the prolific, ever-surprising Raúl Ruiz began his filmmaking career with Three Sad Tigers (1968), which won Locarno s Golden Leopard. Forced to flee Chile after the Pinochet coup in 1973, Ruiz settled in France, where he continued to refine an aesthetic of surrealist, baroque filmmaking seemingly inspired in equal parts by Jorge Luis Borges, classic 19th-century novels, philosophy and American B movies. He has created over 50 films including City of Pirates (1983), Three Lives and Only One Death (1996), Genealogies of a Crime (SFIFF 1997), Time Regained (SFIFF 2000) and Klimt (2006). Jason Sanders SAT APR 23 12:15 KABUKI 126

89 Silent Souls Ovsyanki Russia min DIR Aleksei Fedorchenko PROD Igor Mishin, Mary Nazari SCR Denis Osokin CAM Mikhail Krichman ED Sergei Ivanov MUS Andrei Karasyov WITH Igor Sergeyev, Yuri Tsurilo, Yuliya Aug, Ivan Tushin PRINT SOURCE Shadow Distribution, PO Box 1246, Waterville ME prexar.com. WEB: ovsyanki.ru/site. The rites and rituals of the Merja people an ethnic minority of Finno-Urgric extraction originally from the Volga region of Russia form the backbone of this lyrical, sensual and dreamlike film about love and loss. After beloved wife Tanja dies, pulp factory CEO Miron calls on his best friend, the photographer (and the film s narrator) Aist, to help him with his final goodbye. As the ravishingly lensed story unfolds, it becomes apparent that Aist and Tanja were once more than friends. The two men, bound together through friendship and passion for the same woman, discuss their memories of her in bawdy reflection as they transport her to her final place of rest. By a riverbank, they wordlessly and expertly observe the ancient rituals and lovingly prepare Tanja s body. Water is central to the film and to Merjan life, and the unobtrusive yet obviously key presence it has is indicative of the gentle way director Aleksei Fedorchenko beautifully weaves the myths and traditions of this vanishing culture into his poetic film. As the director states, The slogan of the film was tenderness. We wanted tenderness to be transformed into nostalgia; tenderness and nostalgia were to become synonymous with love. The result is a melancholy and mystical journey following the complex and twisting currents of the human heart. Aleksei Fedorchenko Aleksei Fedorchenko was born in 1966 in Sol-Iletsk, in the Orenburg region of Siberia. After studying engineering, he worked on space defense projects in a factory in Sverdlovsk (Ekaterinburg). In 1990, he became the official economist then deputy director of the Sverdlovsk Studio. Since 2000, he has managed the studio s production department and participated in the production of over 80 films. Fedorchenko s debut feature, First on the Moon (2005), was a mockumentary about a 1930s Soviet moon landing. Silent Souls is his third feature. world cinema Alissa Simon FRI APR 22 7:00 PFA SUN APR 24 4:45 KABUKI THU APR 28 7:00 KABUKI 127

90 The Sleeping Beauty La belle endormie world cinema France min DIR Catherine Breillat PROD Jean-François Lepetit, Sylvette Frydman SCR Catherine Breillat CAM Denis Lenoir ED Pascale Chavance WITH Carla Besnaïnou, Julia Artamanov, Kérian Mayan, David Chausse PRINT SOURCE Strand Releasing, 6140 W. Washington Boulevard, Culver City CA FAX: strandreleasing.com. On the heels of the mesmeric Bluebeard (SFIFF 2009), French auteur Catherine Breillat again delves into the piquant fairy tales of Charles Perrault for this singular, sparkling film, a reverie and rumination over slumbering lives and awakening sexual and mortal consciousness. Opening on some half-dreamed late-modern world, The Sleeping Beauty playfully sets up the story of young princess Anastasia (a delightfully quick and valiant Carla Besnaïnou), cursed at birth by a wicked fairy/crone to die in her sixth year. Fortunately for Anastasia, three beautiful young fairies counter the spell, at least a bit, sending the six-year-old instead into a 100-year slumber, from which she will wake into contemporary French society a ripe 16- year-old. First, though, our heroine, a defiant tomboy, will wander long in a dream world. There she finds and loses an adoptive brother, Peter, who lives with his mother in a country house set evocatively beside a train track. Going in search of the roving Peter her brother, prince and first love she meets a series of young princes and princesses ( Blue bloods stick together, she explains) in strange faraway lands before a real-life prince, grandson of Peter, wakes her into her 16-year-old self. From there, another awakening begins, or perhaps one spell is broken and another cast. Breillat s aesthetic fashions a world at once palpable and ethereal, itself a waking dream, with a ludic insouciance that delights in combining allusive, painterly detail with makeshift and anachronistic improvisations. As much a tonic to the intellect as the senses, The Sleeping Beauty will keep you up all night. Catherine Breillat Since her first film, A Real Young Girl (1976), Catherine Breillat has explored issues of female sexuality, sibling relations and the development of self with a characteristic frankness, imagination and intelligence. Other celebrated films include Romance (1999), Fat Girl (2001), Brief Crossing (SFIFF 2002), Sex Is Comedy (SFIFF 2003), Anatomy of Hell (2004, based on her novel Pornocratie), The Last Mistress (SFIFF 2008) and Bluebeard (SFIFF 2009). Her sister is actress Marie-Hélène Breillat. Catherine Breillat lives in Paris. Robert Avila TUE APR 26 6:15 KABUKI WED APR 27 6:30 KABUKI 128

91 The Stool Pigeon Xian ren Hong Kong/China min DIR Dante Lam PROD Candy Leung, Zhang Dajun, Ren Yue SCR Jack Ng CAM Kenny Tse ED Chan Ki-hop MUS Henry Lai WITH Nick Cheung, Nicholas Tse, Guey Lun-mei, Liu Kai-chi PRINT SOURCE Emperor Motion Pictures, 28th Floor, Emperor Group Centre, 288 Hennessy Road, 040 Wanchai, Hong Kong. FAX: WEB: emp.hk. In Cantonese with subtitles. Hong Kong crime thriller pro Dante Lam s latest sleekly stylized, hard-boiled drama comes pierced by an uncharacteristic tone of melancholy and urban gloom. Focusing on the ripped backstreets and slums of the city, Lam examines the moral quandaries faced by police who use paid informants to set up their stings on the criminal underworld. Nick Cheung gives a powerful and nuanced performance as police inspector Don Lee, whose use of an informant explodes in his face, causing him to question the tricky cop/informant relationship. As Lee, Cheung exudes a studious and unflappable surface, while underneath roils an increasingly disturbed and desperate man. When his new informer, Ghost Jr., is released from prison, Cheung endeavors to get things right from the beginning. Played with restrained gusto by Nicholas Tse, Ghost Jr. falls in with a wanted and extremely dangerous gang, and the thrill ride takes off. Though it explores deep themes, The Stool Pigeon also offers Lam s patented action sequences, which are fierce and head-spinning. Among the best scenes are a car chase accompanied by the soothing sounds of White Christmas, the rushed and furious action of a jewelry store robbery and the gripping and violent finale in the ruined schoolroom of some forgotten slum. In the swirl of several wrenching plot twists and a deepening existential angst, any character left standing has a bloody face to boot. Dante Lam Born in Hong Kong, award-winning director Dante Lam has elevated himself to the top of the new wave of Hong Kong action movies with a string of successes, beginning with Option Zero (1997). Known for its realism and breathtaking action scenes, Lam s work has included the critically acclaimed films Beast Cops (1998), Sniper (2008) and The Beast Stalker (SFIFF 2009). Last year he released Fire of Conscience. world cinema Gustavus Kundahl SUN APR 24 9:15 KABUKI MON MAY 2 8:30 KABUKI 129

92 13 Assassins Jûsan-nin no shikaku world cinema Japan min DIR Takashi Miike PROD Minami Ichikawa, Toichiro Shiraishi, Michihiko Umezawa, Takahiro Ohno, Hirotsugu Yoshida, Masaaki Ujo SCR Daisuke Tengan CAM Nobuyasu Kita ED Kenji Yamashita MUS Koji Endo WITH Koji Yakusho, Takayuki Yamada, Yusuke Iseya, Goro Inagaki, Masachika Ichimura PRINT SOURCE Magnolia Pictures, 2222 S. Barrington Avenue, Los Angeles CA Special support for this program generously provided by Penelope Wong and Tim Kochis. Cult filmmaker Takashi Miike (Ichi the Killer, SFIFF 2002; Izo, SFIFF 2005) delivers possibly his most surprising film of all, a nearly straightforward homage to the glory days of Japanese swordplay movies. A remake of a little-known (at least in the West) 1963 film by Eiichi Kudo, 13 Assassins begins in 1844, when the noble samurai Sinzaemon Shimada (Koji Yakusho, Charisma, SFIFF 2000; Babel 2006) is chosen to assassinate the brutal and extremely well-protected Lord Naritsugu (a giddily sadistic Goro Inagaki). A job this daunting needs more than a few good men; Shimada slowly recruits a dirty dozen of them, some more willing than others to kill and, most likely, die. All roads, of course, lead to a final showdown: our 13 assassins versus literally hundreds of villains in a remarkable, roughly 45-minute battle scene filled with life, death and dynamite a sequence that finds Miike holding his own against any Kurosawa, Inagaki or Leone set piece. While inserting his dry humor and a few of his trademark over-the-top moments, Miike otherwise refuses any snide genre send-ups or satire here, instead focusing on the simple pleasures of a well-crafted genre film. 13 Assassins is a samurai terror film showing the flowers of life and death, he notes. Simple, radical, beautiful. Takashi Miike Born in Osaka, Takashi Miike studied under Shohei Imamura at a Yokohama film school before beginning a creative career that now stands at over 85 films, television series and straight-tovideo quickies. One of the most notorious and prolific filmmakers in modern history (sometimes churning out five or six movies a year), Miike is best known for such cult works as Audition (1999), Ichi the Killer (SFIFF 2002) and Izo (SFIFF 2005). SUN MAY 1 8:30 CASTRO 130

93 The Trip England min DIR Michael Winterbottom PROD Andrew Eaton, Melissa Parmenter CAM Ben Smithard ED Mags Arnold, Paul Monaghan WITH Steve Coogan, Rob Brydon, Margo Stilley PRINT SOURCE IFC, 11 Penn Plaza, 18th Floor, New York NY FAX: WEB: revolution-films.com. Special support for this program generously provided by Susie and Pat McBaine, and by Jennifer and Doug Biederbeck. Prolific British director Michael Winterbottom never ceases... to amaze. A restless whiz, he s frequently wandered from the predictable path with such mercurial marvels as Wonderland, 24 Hour Party People and The Killer Inside Me. But nothing has stymied expectation more than the miasmic masterpiece Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story, in which Winterbottom succumbs to the bottomless buffoonery of Laurence Sterne s protopostmodern novel. That film s stars, Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon, slip out of their costumed roles to play themselves in a riotously amusing rivalry for center stage. The Trip finds them reunited in an ecstatic extension of their spar-filled friendship. Now Coogan (as himself) is sent to the Lake Country on assignment as culinary critic for The Observer. When Coogan s girlfriend Misha (Margo Stilley) can t accompany him, he rings up rollicking Rob (accurately portrayed by Rob Brydon), and off they go to the great country inns of England. They have only a map in hand and their wits about them. Visiting a string of chichi restaurants, the duo practically ignore the ornamental concoctions they ve been served in favor of slipping into celebrity impersonations of Anthony Hopkins, Michael Caine and Al Pacino, to name a few. One stirring bout has them trading impressions of Sean Connery ordering martinis until you can t hold your own cocktail steady. Steve and Rob s Brit bromance is seasoned sweet and sour in its ribbing rivalries. But like a foodie version of Sideways, The Trip trades dry vintage for a full belly laugh. Michael Winterbottom Michael Winterbottom first emerged as a television director in the early 1990s, soon crossing over with his debut feature Butterfly Kiss (1995). A restless and prolific artist, Winterbottom s body of work is notable for its stylistic adventure Wonderland, Code 46 and Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story and daring subject matter In This World, Nine Songs and The Road to Guantanamo. Winterbottom s previous film was his 2010 adaptation of Jim Thompson s The Killer Inside Me. world cinema Steve Seid MON MAY 2 4:00 KABUKI WED MAY 4 6:45 KABUKI 131

94 Walking Too Fast Pouta world cinema North American Premiere Czech Republic/Slovakia/Poland min DIR Radim Spacek PROD Vratislav Slajer SCR Ondrej Stindl CAM Jaromir Kacer ED Anna Johnson Ryndova MUS Tomás Vtipil WITH Ondrej Maly, Kristina Farkasova, Martin Finger, Lubos Vesely PRINT SOURCE Film Europe, Branicka 4, Prague, Czech Republic. WEB: pouta-film.cz. In Czech and Slovak with subtitles. Against the backdrop of a Cold War Czechoslovakia where the Velvet Revolution is still unimaginable, this taut political thriller traces the psychological unraveling of a secret agent, torn apart by the monotony and corruption of the sinister bureaucracy that employs him. Antonin, nicknamed Tonga, becomes obsessed with the girlfriend of a writer he is tracking as a suspected subversive, using the considerable means at his disposal to break them apart and win the woman for himself, never mind the implausibility of his plan. Afflicted by panic attacks and visions of himself teetering above a gaping chasm, he sees that his prey, Tomas, has exactly the life and the woman, Klara he desires, despite the constant pressures of the police state. Tomas refuses to accept Tonga s offer of exile, even amid the incessant sabotaging of his private life. But the pressure is unrelenting, and he eventually must choose between his love for Klara and everything else he holds dear. Bringing to mind The Lives of Others in its story of love under a totalitarian regime, Walking Too Fast similarly features a brilliant central performance by Ondrej Maly, who plays Tonga with a chilling ruthlessness. Maly s steeliness is echoed by Jaromir Kacer s surveillance-like photography, full of stark shadows and a tenebrous ochre and gray palette. Collecting an unprecedented 13 Czech Golden Lion nominations, Walking Too Fast is a bleak and potent rendering of the emotional destruction wreaked by totalitarianism. Radim Spacek Trained as an actor from the time he was five years old, Radim Spacek went on to study directing at the Prague Film Academy. After a year of study, he relocated to Sarajevo at the height of the Bosnian War, a move that informed his work from early on. Employing a mix of fiction and documentary, Spacek s first films often dealt with war and crisis. He has worked in various capacities for Czech television since his debut film, Young Men Discovering the World (1996). Walking Too Fast is his first narrative feature in over ten years. Jesse Dubus FRI APR 22 8:45 KABUKI SUN APR 24 3:00 KABUKI MON MAY 2 8:30 PFA 132

95 World on a Wire Welt am draht Germany min DIR Rainer Werner Fassbinder PROD Peter Märthesheimer, Alexander Wesemann SCR Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Fritz Müller-Scherz CAM Michael Ballhaus ED Marie Anne Gerhardt MUS Gottfried Hüngsberg WITH Klaus Löwitch, Ulli Lommel, Barbara Valentin, Günter Lamprecht, Kurt Raab, Margit Carstensen PRINT SOURCE Janus Films, 215 Park Avenue S., 5th Floor, New York NY FAX: finklea@janusfilms.com. There will be a ten-minute intermission. Largely unseen since its 1973 broadcast in Germany, the restoration of Rainer Werner Fassbinder s cyberpunk precursor is a revelation. This immensely satisfying and entirely singular work has rarely screened in the United States. Adapted from Daniel F. Galouye s novel Simulacron-3, the film s treatment of virtual worlds brings to mind The Matrix or Tron, but with its own astounding visual style. Director of photography Michael Ballhaus, who also supervised the restoration, mounts a riot of reflected, refracted and severely fragmented images in the service of a prescient story concerned with the illusory nature of reality and the subjectivity of perception. Scientist Fred Stiller replaces a colleague who was in charge of an enormous computer simulation until he committed suicide. The simulation is an artificially constructed world, made up of identity units with human thoughts, emotions and behaviors, created in order to predict the real-world needs of the future. Stiller s paranoia grows as he tries to uncover the reason behind his coworker s death. At the same time, he is unnerved by the sudden disappearance of a man who everyone but him seems to have immediately forgotten. Wire is on par with the best of European science fiction, but Fassbinder, rather than playing the genre straight, makes it his own. Subverting the material with characteristic elements of camp, pastiche and Sirkian melodrama, Fassbinder lends the film his distinctive sensibility, and it is all the richer for it. One of the major cinematic rediscoveries in recent years, World on a Wire is a beguilingly eccentric fusion of styles as well as a breathtaking visual achievement. Rainer Werner Fassbinder One of the seminal directors of the New German Cinema of the 1970s, Rainer Werner Fassbinder made 40 feature-length films in a career that lasted only 15 years. A larger-than-life figure known nearly as much for his stormy personal life as for his provocative films, he often focused on outsiders and social criticism while dealing with sexuality and prejudice through unconventional means, most notably ironic melodrama. Subject of a major retrospective that toured the United States in 1997, Fassbinder s works include Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974), Fox and His Friends (1975), Querelle (SFIFF 1983) and the Adenauer Trilogy. world cinema Jesse Dubus SAT APR 23 8:45 KABUKI SAT APR 30 2:00 PFA 133

96 DOCUMENTARIES International Nonfiction Features About People, Places, Issues and Ideas In Competition for Golden Gate Awards 140 Better This World 144 Cinema Komunisto 145 Crime After Crime 146 Detroit Wild City 147 Foreign Parts 148 The Good Life 149 The Green Wave 153 Marathon Boy 158 The Pipe 159 Position Among the Stars 160 The Redemption of General Butt Naked 163 The Tiniest Place OUT OF COMPETITION 136 American Teacher 137 The Arbor 138 The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu 139 The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye 141 The Black Power Mixtape Cave of Forgotten Dreams 143 Children of the Princess of Cleves 150 Hot Coffee 151 The Last Buffalo Hunt 152 Let the Wind Carry Me 154 Miss Representation 155 Nostalgia for the Light 156 Page One: A Year Inside the New York Times 157 Pink Saris 161 Something Ventured 162 Tabloid 164!Women Art Revolution 165 Yves Saint Laurent l Amour Fou 135

97 American Teacher documentaries World Premiere USA min DIR Vanessa Roth PROD Nínive Calegari, Dave Eggers, Vanessa Roth ED Brian McGinn PRINT SOURCE The Teacher Salary Project, rd Street, San Francisco CA WEB: bigyearprods.com. This is a Cinema by the Bay film. As the debate over the state of America s public school system rages on, one thing everyone (including President Obama) agrees on is the need for great teachers. Yet, while research proves that teachers are the most important factor in a child s future success, America s teachers are so woefully underpaid that almost half must divide their time between a second job in order to make a living. Chronicling the stories of four teachers in different areas of the country, American Teacher reveals the frustrating realities of today s educators, the difficulty of attracting talented new teachers and why so many of our best teachers choose to leave the profession altogether. The only African American teacher at Leadership High School in San Francisco, Jonathan Dearman, loved his job, and his students adored him. But his inability to support his family led him to pursue a new career and left his students devastated by his departure. An elementary school teacher in New Jersey, Rhena is fresh out of Harvard and personifies the smart, young teacher anyone would want for their kids. But even her youthful commitment ultimately crumbles when weighed against her own financial needs. Their stories are disheartening, but this wake-up call to our system s failings also looks at possibilities for reform. Can we re-value teaching in the United States and turn it into a prestigious, financially attractive and competitive profession? With almost half of American teachers leaving the field in the next five years, now is the time to find out. Vanessa Roth Vanessa Roth has been making social-issue documentaries for more than a decade. Her award-winning films include the PBS special Taken In: The Lives of America s Foster Children, Close to Home, Aging Out and The Third Monday in October (SFIFF 2007). As a producer, her film Freeheld won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Short in She holds a master s degree in social work from Columbia University, and before making films worked as a child advocate in family courts and public schools in New York and California. Joanne Parsont TUE MAY 3 6:30 KABUKI THU MAY 5 3:45 KABUKI 136

98 The Arbor England min DIR Clio Barnard PROD Tracy O Riordan CAM Ole Birkeland ED Nick Fenton, Daniel Goddard MUS Harry Escott, Molly Nyman WITH Manjinder VIrk, Christine Bottomley, Neil Dudgeon, Monica Dolan, Jimi Mistry PRINT SOURCE Strand Releasing, 6140 W. Washington Boulevard, Culver City CA FAX: david@ strandreleasing.com. British playwright Andrea Dunbar ( ) didn t come out of nowhere, as a familiar formula might have it. Both she and her art hailed from a precise place: Brafferton Arbor, a poor row of council estates in Bradford, West Yorkshire, the tangible setting for this moody, exquisitely crafted film portrait. Nevertheless, Dunbar s arrival at London s Royal Court Theatre at age 17 was hardly expected. When she died of a brain hemorrhage at 29, she vanished as suddenly as she had arrived. Dunbar left a complex legacy, entwined in several sexually precocious, uncompromisingly gritty and very funny plays including Rita, Sue, and Bob Too!, made into a celebrated film by Alan Clarke in 1986 (SFIFF 1993) and three children with three different men. Barnard delves into this bounding yet brooding history with inspired invention. Marshaling the techniques of documentary theater, she mixes archival footage with scenes from Dunbar s seminal play, The Arbor, staged outdoors on Brafferton Arbor itself. Meanwhile, actors lip-synch extensive audio interviews with family, neighbors and intimates performances so deft you could easily miss the conceit, but adding subtly to the narrative s hypnotic pull. As Dunbar s tenacity, ambivalence and depression emerge from the Arbor, so too does the story of Lorraine (a quietly haunted Manjinder Virk), her half-pakistani child who descended into addiction, prostitution and finally prison. Art and life intermingle in prolific ways as absorbing accounts by Lorraine, her siblings and others reverberate with, and respond to, the brutal, beautiful career of a working-class artist. Clio Barnard Born in Santa Barbara, California in 1965, Clio Barnard is a British artist and filmmaker whose work has appeared in film festivals, on Britain s Channel 4 at the Tate Modern and the New York Museum of Modern Art. She has also worked as a director and producer for MTV Europe. For The Arbor, her debut feature, Barnard won the Best British Newcomer Award at the 2010 BFI London Film Festival. documentaries Robert Avila SUN APR 24 8:45 PFA SUN MAY 1 7:15 KABUKI WED MAY 4 7:15 KABUKI 137

99 The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu Autobiografia lui Nicolae Ceausescu documentaries Romania min DIR Andrei Ujica PROD Velvet Moraru SCR Andrei Ujica ED Dana Bunescu PRINT SOURCE Mandragora International, 29 rue des Pyramides, Paris 75001, France. FAX: mandragorasales.com. WEB: the-autobiography. com. The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu opens with footage of Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu at their trial in 1989, just before their execution. The couple is exhausted but defiant. I will only answer to the Grand Assembly, Ceausescu says, whatever your masquerade is. It was your masquerade for 25 years, his unseen questioner retorts. Andrei Ujica s biting film documents that masquerade. In this collage of clips from Ceausescu s official filmed record, there is no sign of Romania s mass poverty or the countless sick and abandoned children who were the product of Ceausescu s laws against contraception. Instead there are cheering crowds, grandiose building projects, meetings with international figures like Charles de Gaulle and Jimmy Carter, and Ceausescu s obvious fascination with the obsequious political theater of Mao s China and Kim ll Sung s North Korea. At moments, the happy veneer wears thin. The audio from a live broadcast of the 1977 earthquake records the collapse of a crowded concert theater. A courageous Communist official refuses to vote for Ceausescu s reelection to the 12th Romanian Congress. For most of the film, however, the viewer will detect smaller fractures of the myth in the managed footage. A crowd of young people clowns around rather than listen to a Ceausescu speech. Workers in a store applaud mechanically beside goods that were shipped in so that Ceausescu could be filmed inspecting them. Ujica chillingly reveals, without comment, the manner in which a dictator constructs, and comes to believe in, his own cult of personality. Andrei Ujica Andrei Ujica was born in Timisoara, Romania, in He codirected Videograms of a Revolution (1992) with Harun Farocki and directed the acclaimed Out of the Present (1995), a documentary about cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev, aboard the Mir space station at the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union. Ujica currently lives in Berlin, where he teaches literature, film and media theory. Pamela Troy SAT APR 23 12:45 KABUKI SUN APR 24 5:15 NEW PEOPLE SUN MAY 1 1:30 PFA 138

100 The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye USA min DIR Marie Losier PROD Marie Losier, Steve Holmgren CAM Marie Losier, Benjamin Kasulke ED Marie Losier PRINT SOURCE Marie Losier. balladofgenesisandladyjaye.com. After many inventive short works, Marie Losier s first feature film is an intimate and poignant portrait of Genesis P-Orridge, the industrial music, performance art and body mod pioneer (and onetime SF resident). Shot on HD and 16mm, with sound floated in as if from outer space, the film combines Losier s home movie style cinematography with whimsical set pieces and amazing archival footage to collage P-Orridge s mercurial career with her deep love for late muse and other half, the lovely Lady Jaye. More specifically, it explores the pair s primary art project: their merging into a single pandrogyne through plastic surgery and various practices of oneness. The debatable success of this project makes it no less interesting though also, at times, somewhat sorrowful. For all its playfulness and provocation and there s plenty: It opens with P-Orridge looking like Carol Channing in a diaphanous bird suit, chirping mellifluously, and tracks her vanguard work with COUM Transmissions, Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV the film has a tweaked melancholy. It is as much an elegy as a ballad, not only for the loss of a loved one but also for something that not everyone cares about or even believes in: the late 20th-century avant-garde. If, by chance, you do believe in this if, Burners and friends, you believe in a vital sociopoetical underground bent on world liberation then this singularly magical little film will give you plenty of ideas to swipe and heartfelt permission to go further; as well as, perhaps, a hatful of blues to sort through. Marie Losier Marie Losier, born in France in 1972, is a filmmaker based in New York. She has been a film curator at the Alliance Française in Manhattan since 2000, and programs experimental films at various venues in Europe and throughout the United States. Her own films, including idiosyncratic portraits of George and Mike Kuchar, Richard Foreman and Guy Maddin, frequently screen at art and film festivals and museums. Recipient of many awards and grants for her filmmaking, she was included in the 2006 Whitney Biennial. The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye is her first feature film. documentaries Graham Leggat WED APR 27 9:15 KABUKI THU MAY 5 6:30 KABUKI 139

101 Better This World documentaries USA min DIR Kelly Duane de la Vega, Katie Galloway PROD Kelly Duane de la Vega, Katie Galloway CAM David Layton ED Greg O Toole MUS Paul Brill PRINT SOURCE Loteria Films, 1613 Eighth Street, Berkeley CA kelly.a.duane@gmail.com. GGA Documentary Feature Contender This is a Cinema by the Bay film. Passionate young activists and authorities clash in Minneapolis in events surrounding the protests at the 2008 Republican National Convention. As arrests are made and accusations fly, the truth recedes behind a desperate and strained justice system abetted by the opportunism of chameleon-like activist Brandon Darby, a cofounder of Common Ground Relief. Darby s cult of personality spins a nasty web that entangles the lives of two young protesters, childhood friends who had regarded Darby as their mentor and were eager to show him the genuineness of their political convictions. As the filmmakers follow the twists and turns of their legal defense, the young men confront a divisive moral dilemma that pits shared ideals against practical decisions, with immediate consequences for themselves and their families. From this tense situation, a poignant portrait emerges of the activists, their friends and loved ones. Intimate phone conversations, found footage, photographs and court transcripts merge with artful reenactments, while onscreen interviews include FBI officials and the federal prosecutor handling the case. Documentarians Kelly Duane de la Vega and Katie Galloway present a story that deals not only with problems of power and authority, freedom and democracy but also with the ultimate power of forgiveness and love. Kelly Duane de la Vega Katie Galloway Kelly Duane de la Vega is a 2010 HBO Documentary Film/ Film Independent Fellow and 2010 Sundance Fellow. Her documentaries have been broadcast on PBS, the Documentary Channel and Discovery Channel and have screened at numerous international film festivals. She has recently produced a television series for IFC. Katie Galloway is an award-winning documentarian who has produced works for Frontline, POV and PBS and is a 2010 Sundance Fellow. She now teaches Media Studies at UC Berkeley and is filmmaker in residence at the Journalism School s Investigative Reporting Program. Sean Diggins SAT APR 23 6:00 KABUKI TUE APR 26 6:30 PFA FRI APR 29 9:30 KABUKI 140

102 The Black Power Mixtape Sweden/USA min DIR Göran Hugo Olsson PROD Annika Rogell SCR Göran Hugo Olsson ED Göran Hugo Olsson, Hanna Lejonqvist MUS Ahmir Questlove Thompson, Om Mas Keith PRINT SOURCE IFC, 11 Penn Plaza, 18th Floor, New York NY FAX: WEB: blackpowermixtape.com. In English and Swedish with subtitles. Special support for this program generously provided by Dale Djerassi. Swedish filmmaker Göran Hugo Olsson s fascinating documentary, coproduced by longtime activist and acclaimed actor Danny Glover, juxtaposes recently discovered Swedish archival material chronicling the Black Power movement in the United States from 1967 to 1975 with new commentary by prominent African American voices in cultural and political spheres. Set to an evocative soundtrack with original music by Questlove (DJ and drummer of the hip-hop group the Roots) and Om Mas Keith, the outcome is a dynamic audiovisual collage about being Black in America in the 60s and 70s, through the curious and at times naive eyes of Swedish journalists. Unique coverage of iconic African American activists such as Stokely Carmichael, Angela Davis, Huey P. Newton, Eldridge Cleaver and Bobby Seale is contextualized with reference to the struggles of the Black community in places like South Florida and Harlem. Special attention is given to the Black Panther Party s activities in Oakland as well as the views of other radical Americans, criticizing the government and the situation for African Americans at the time. Mixtape is a striking reminder that many of the problems discussed here endure in today s society. This is emphasized by the insightful commentary from activists and artists such as Kathleen Cleaver, Sonia Sanchez, Abiodun Oyewole, Erykah Badu, Talib Kweli and Harry Belafonte. Apart from taking a refreshingly honest look at the Black Power movement s evolution, this montage of rare cinematic gems offers universally relevant observations about racial stratification and political empowerment. Göran Hugo Olsson Göran Hugo Olsson is a Swedish documentary filmmaker and cinematographer who has been making films for television for over two decades. He was a consultant at the Swedish Film Institute during and is a member of the editorial board of Ikon South Africa, a platform for innovative South African documentaries. Olsson is also the cofounder of the production company Story AB, where he has made other daring documentaries like Fuck You, Fuck You Very Much (1998) and Am I Black Enough for You (2009). documentaries Erica Hand SAT APR 30 9:00 KABUKI TUE MAY 3 6:00 NEW PEOPLE 141

103 Cave of Forgotten Dreams documentaries USA min DIR Werner Herzog PROD Erik Nelson, Adrienee Ciuffo CAM Peter Zeitlinger ED Joe Bini, Maya Hawke MUS Ernst Reijseger PRINT SOURCE IFC, 11 Penn Plaza, 18th Floor, New York NY FAX: This is a World Cinema Spotlight film. The surprise resurgence of 3-D has prompted everything from blanket claims that it s the future of cinema to dismissals that it will again exhaust public patience through indiscriminate application to inappropriate films. But this process too often associated with routine genre films and cheesy FX can be surprisingly apt for some auteurs. Who better to adopt the form than Werner Herzog, our veteran guide to landscapes and mindscapes dislocative yet immersive? Eternally attracted to the spectacular, mystic and strange, he s forever plunging head-first into exotica his bemused point-of-view renders gently inviting. There s scarcely a Herzog feature from Even Dwarves Started Small (1970) to recent Antarctica documentary Encounters at the End of the World whose outré content, personalities and imagery wouldn t make perfect sense in the stereoscopic form. Cave of Forgotten Dreams is about southern France s Chauvet-Pont-d Arc caverns, discovered in An Ice Age landslide had hidden (and preserved) prehistoric art dating back as far as 32,000 years ago, the oldest such expressions known today. Herzog was given exclusive access to this publicly sealed-off site of human prehistory. Its spectacular wall drawings from a near-unimaginable distant past are no less photogenic than the deep-focus vistas of limestone-stalagmite caverns à la Carlsbad. As ever, Herzog proves a wry, philosophically inclined, idiosyncratically personal guide to the extraordinary. Cave of Forgotten Dreams is like no 3-D movie you ve seen: It thrusts out not to show off but to ponder more deeply the humanness of human life over millennia. Werner Herzog Bavaria-raised director Werner Herzog has been a globetrotting, internationally acknowledged master of the medium since making his feature debut in 1967 with Signs of Life. Subsequent narrative films include Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972), The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (1975), Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979), Fitzcarraldo (1982), Rescue Dawn (2006) and Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (2009). His documentaries include Lessons of Darkness (SFIFF 1993), Bells from the Deep (SFIFF 1993), Little Dieter Needs to Fly (1998), Grizzly Man (2005) and The Wild Blue Yonder (2006). Herzog received SFIFF s Founder s Directing Award in Dennis Harvey MON APR 25 7:00 KABUKI TUE APR 26 9:30 KABUKI 142

104 Children of the Princess of Cleves Nous, princesses de Clèves North American Premiere France min DIR Régis Sauder PROD Sylvie Randonneix SCR Régis Sauder CAM Régis Sauder ED Florent Mangeot PRINT SOURCE RamondaParis, 91 rue de Ménilmontant, Paris, France. Total running time 89 min. Ah, the high school English class, where works of great literature are foisted upon students as required reading. Those great tomes filled with heady prose and characters from another era are supposed to be vitally important to every young person s education, but how relevant are they to the realities of daily angst-ridden teenage existence? In a refreshing and inspired look at the lives of contemporary youth, director Régis Sauder attempts to make that elusive connection between classic literature and contemporary teenage life through the authentic voices and emotions of one Marseille high school class studying the 17th century French novel La princesse de Clèves. A tale of love and duty in the 16th century court of King Henri II, this classic text has been taught in French classrooms for decades. But Sauder gives it a new spin, juxtaposing its narrative with the lives of the students themselves, a diverse population of teens from predominantly workingclass and immigrant families. As they gradually begin the stressful preparation for their baccalaureate exams, the students recite assorted passages from the book and speak candidly about their hopes and dreams, love and heartbreak, family and friends and their own place in today s French society. Régis Sauder After completing a master s degree in neuroscience and a brief career as a science journalist, Régis Sauder became a filmmaker by chance. Over the last several years he has directed a number of documentaries including Passeurs de vie (2003), Le lotissement, à la recherche du bonheur (2006), L année prochaine à Jérusalem (2008) and Je t emmène à Alger (2009). He is currently in production on a documentary about the mental health of prisoners, filmed in a Marseille prison. documentaries Aglaée After he loses a bet, Benoît s friends dare him to ask the disabled girl in their class to go out with him, sparking a range of teen emotions, insecurities, expectations, hormones and ever-present peer pressure. (Rudi Rosenberg, France 2010, 20 min) Joanne Parsont SUN APR 24 4:15 PFA MON APR 25 2:00 KABUKI SAT APR 30 4:15 KABUKI 143

105 Cinema Komunisto documentaries Serbia min DIR Mila Turajlic PROD Dragan Pesikan SCR Mila Turajlic CAM Goran Kovacevic ED Aleksandra Milovanovic MUS Nemanja Mosurovic PRINT SOURCE Dribbling Pictures, Bitoljaska 2/II, Belgrade, Serbia. FAX: WEB: cinemakomunisto.com. GGA Documentary Feature Contender More than a history of the Yugoslavian film industry, this account of a once-illustrious Belgrade studio chronicles how a national cinema was used to create and revise the narrative of a country with an ever-murky identity. Complete with heroes and legends, the fiction did not always cleave to reality. When the studio collapsed with the country around it, a new generation was left to struggle with reinterpreting the self-made myths. Spurred by a movie-mad populace that included cinephile-inchief President Josip Broz Tito, who screened nearly 9,000 feature films during his tenure and was often deeply involved in the productions, Yugoslavia allocated tremendous resources to making films. Scores of triumphant war films that extolled the nation s founding gave way to large international coproductions featuring stars like Sophia Loren, Anthony Hopkins and Orson Welles, culminating in an Oscar-nominated epic about a seminal battle of World War II. Told through the proud recollections of the industry s aging craftsmen and newly restored archival clips from dozens of forgotten films, Cinema Komunisto offers a glimpse into the wild frontier days of a studio where the answer to every challenge, no matter how great, was no problem. The film s charming subjects including Tito s personal projectionist, reverently remember the era, while acknowledging the disconnect between the way things were and the way they were proclaimed to be. Director Mila Turajlic s fleet-footed debut is a nostalgic tale of a golden age, with cheerful clips and bright music rendered bittersweet in light of the harsh realities that were to come. Mila Turajlic After graduating from the London School of Economics with a degree in politics and international relations and competing in numerous debate tournaments, Mila Turajlic decided to channel her political engagement into filmmaking. She earned a degree in film production at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade and went on to study documentary filmmaking at La Femis in Paris. She worked as an assistant director and production coordinator in New York and London before going on to develop Cinema Komunisto, her first feature documentary. Jesse Dubus SAT APR 30 3:15 KABUKI TUE MAY 3 6:30 PFA WED MAY 4 3:15 KABUKI 144

106 Crime After Crime USA min DIR Yoav Potash PROD Yoav Potash CAM Ben Ferrer, Yoav Potash ED Yoav Potash, Frank Giraffe MUS Jaymee Carpenter WITH Deborah Peagler, Joshua Safran, Nadia Costa, Natasha Wilson, Bobby Buechler PRINT SOURCE Life Sentence Films LLC, 1375 Santa Rosa Drive, Santa Fe NM WEB: crimeaftercrime.com. GGA Documentary Feature Contender This is a Cinema by the Bay film. Support for this program generously provided by Visionary Circle member Lynn Kirshbaum. Yoav Potash s moving documentary takes us inside the case of Deborah Peagler, a woman serving 25 yearsto-life for her involvement in the murder of the man who abused her. This intimate portrait includes the pro bono legal team of Joshua Safran and Nadia Costa, young attorneys who upon meeting Peagler already more than 20 years into a life sentence became inspired to fight relentlessly for her release. In the wake of a new California law offering abused women the opportunity to reopen their defense cases, Safran and Costa were convinced they would prevail. Shot over a five-and-a-half year period, Crime After Crime is a fascinating and penetrating look at a skewed justice system from the vantage of a remarkable and committed triumvirate taking on the powerful Los Angeles County District Attorney s Office. The film also offers a rare glimpse into life behind bars at the Central California Women s Facility in Chowchilla, the state s largest women s prison. Myriad twists and surprises unfold for the audience as they did for the director, making for an emotional roller coaster ride with pressing social content. Yoav Potash Yoav Potash, a 2008 San Francisco Film Society FilmHouse resident, recently codirected the documentary Food Stamped (2010) in collaboration with his wife, nutrition educator Shira Potash. His documentary Life on the Inside, about the nation s largest women s prison, began airing on PBS in His short Minute Matrimony earned a Golden Gate Award at SFIFF in 2002 and a Grand Festival Award at the Berkeley Video & Film Festival. Other films include Criminal Justice, on racial profiling, and From the Ground Up (2000), about a group of Berkeley students who helped rebuild burned-down African American churches in Alabama. Crime After Crime is his first featurelength film. documentaries Andrea Carla Michaels SUN APR 24 6:00 KABUKI WED APR 27 6:30 PFA MON MAY 2 9:00 KABUKI 145

107 Detroit Wild City Detroit ville sauvage documentaries France/USA min DIR Florent Tillon PROD Bernard Bouthier, Pierre-Emmanuel Fleurantin CAM Florent Tillon ED Florent Tillon, Claire Atherton MUS Winter Family, William Basinski PRINT SOURCE Festival Agency, 89 New Bond Street, London, W1S 1DA, England. GGA Documentary Feature Contender In English. Florent Tillon s film begins with familiar but inevitably arresting images of Detroit s decay into postapocalyptic pastoralism, but doesn t end there. While most cinematic pilgrims have portrayed the Motor City as a giant canvas onto which they project their outsider fantasies, Tillon has greater ambitions and greater respect. The obligatory urban tour of empty factories and the abandoned Michigan Central station quickly gives way to a contemplative, nuanced discussion of what futures might actually be possible. As we visit with a variety of Detroiters, we realize that most of what we think we know about Detroit is superficial, and begin to question easy assumptions about urban agriculture, urban pioneering and Detroit s reversion to a natural state. While urban farmer Shirley Robinson suggests a lot of people would go back to a simple life if they had a choice, outsider historian/pundit Black Monk questions the long-term effect of today s urban pioneering movement. Urban pioneers find the edge, but don t occupy it, he tells us. Cities are built by settlers, not pioneers. Tavern proprietor Larry Mongo, on the other hand, likens today s young inbound migrants to those who originally settled Detroit 300 years ago. A minimalist but intelligent travelogue that resists sensationalism, Detroit Wild City focuses on people rather than ruins. It suggests that while macronarratives may help us understand the past, micronarratives will describe the future, and Detroit s destiny will be the product of many individual, small-group and localized efforts. Florent Tillon Florent Tillon s films focus on landscape and the continuum between nature and culture. Other works include Rond-point de la Porte Maillot (2008), observing biodiversity in a traffic roundabout, and Las Vegas Meditation (2009). This is his first feature film. Rick Prelinger FRI APR 29 7:00 KABUKI SUN MAY 1 2:45 NEW PEOPLE WED MAY 4 8:40 PFA 146

108 Foreign Parts USA/France min DIR/PROD/CAM/ED Véréna Paravel, J.P. Sniadecki PRINT SOURCE Véréna Paravel, WEB: foreignpartsfilm.com. GGA Documentary Feature Contender In English, Spanish and Hebrew with subtitles. Anthropological in scope, sensuous in detail and emotionally resonant throughout, Véréna Paravel and J.P. Sniadecki s Foreign Parts is an exemplary social record one which harkens back to the unsentimental poetry of James Agee and Walker Evans Let Us Now Praise Famous Men as well as the ground-up advocacy work of Jane Jacobs The Death and Life of Great American Cities. The film takes a local interest in the Willets Point neighborhood in Queens, New York, an industrial enclave where cars are scrapped, salvaged and repaired. Enmeshed in a symphony of radios, drill bits, overhead plane traffic and much scraping and pounding (Sweetgrass sound editor Ernst Karel again works wonders here), we find an eclectic citizenry at work and leisure. Whether listening to a middleman bark orders for windshield glass, a Hasidic Jew explain how to wrap tefillen or a disillusioned young man s monologue on the lures of drag racing, Foreign Parts is a potent trove of talk. The observational camera threads the yard s pocked grounds on the heels of several local fixtures, a few of whom emerge as sharply etched characters. Meanwhile, the new Mets stadium looms in the near distance, emblematic of Mayor Bloomberg s redevelopment plans for the entire area. Without recourse to voiceover or direct interviews, Foreign Parts raises essential questions about urban renewal s effects on pluralism and the city s working class. The Willets Point landscape is unavoidably political, but Paravel and Sniadecki remain adamantly concerned with the grain of human experience there its bitterness and grace. Véréna Paravel J.P. Sniadecki Véréna Paravel and J.P. Sniadecki are both associated with the Harvard University Sensory Ethnography Lab. Paravel received her PhD in anthropology in France and began making films in 2008 at Harvard, producing 7 Queens (2008) and five video shorts grouped as the Interface Series (2009). J.P. Sniadecki is completing his doctorate in Harvard s Media Anthropology program. He has produced several films while based in Beijing, including Songhua (2007), the award-winning Demolition (Chaiqian) 2008) and The Yellow Bank (2010). documentaries Max Goldberg SAT APR 23 2:15 PFA THU APR 28 9:00 NEW PEOPLE FRI APR 29 1:15 KABUKI SUN MAY 1 6:45 KABUKI 147

109 The Good Life Det Gode Liv documentaries Denmark min DIR Eva Mulvad PROD Sigrid Dyekjaer CAM Eva Mulvad, Sophia Olsson ED Adam Nielsen MUS Johann Jóhansson PRINT SOURCE The Danish Film Institute, Gothersgade 55, 1123 Copenhagen K, Denmark. GGA Documentary Feature Contender In English, Danish, Portuguese and French with subtitles. We ve always had what we needed, and then some. And now we don t have anything. Such is the predicament of Mette Beckmann and her middle-aged daughter Anne, two women suddenly facing an unfamiliar nemesis poverty in this compelling and timely documentary by Eva Mulvad. Against the picturesque backdrop of a Portuguese resort town, The Good Life chronicles Mette and Anne s reluctance to surrender the opulent lifestyle they have enjoyed for decades far south of their native Denmark. While the elderly and pragmatic Mette makes feeble attempts to ensure the pair s survival, her entitled daughter desperately clings to delusions of their family s former grandeur. Bitterly lamenting a present reality for which she feels unprepared, Anne assuages the harsh challenges of adult life with frequent sunbathing, the frivolous pursuit of material objects and a particularly virulent strain of naïveté. The quotidian struggles of this tragic and often entertaining duo are thoughtfully juxtaposed with the overwhelming beauty of Portugal s coast. With a film that unapologetically parallels Albert and David Maysles 1975 classic Grey Gardens, Mulvad not only crafts an engaging narrative but also highlights a series of issues increasingly at the forefront of modern society. As the world prepares to face the consequences of widespread irresponsibility both financial and otherwise many people find themselves in situations not unlike that of Anne and Mette. Mulvad s memorable protagonists point to the uncertainty of the human condition and offer a glimpse into a fate from which none of us is necessarily exempt. Eva Mulvad Following her graduation from the National Film School of Denmark in 2001, Eva Mulvad produced films for Danish national television before distinguishing herself as one of the region s top documentary filmmakers. Her breakthrough work, Enemies of Happiness (2006), which traces the story of the first Afghan woman to enter the nation s parliament, garnered the 2006 IDFA Silver Wolf Award and 2007 World Cinema Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival. The Good Life is Mulvad s sixth feature-length documentary. Damon O Donnell FRI APR 22 3:45 KABUKI THU APR 28 6:45 KABUKI SUN MAY 1 9:30 KABUKI 148

110 The Green Wave Germany/Iran min DIR Ali Samadi Ahadi PROD Jan Krueger, Oliver Stoltz SCR Ali Samadi Ahadi CAM Peter Jeschke, Ali Samadi Ahadi ED Barbara Toennieshen, Andreas Menn MUS Ali N. Askin WITH Pegah Ferydoni, Navid Akhavan, Payam Akhavan, Shirin Ebadi PRINT SOURCE Visit Films, 89 Fifth Avenue, Suite 806, New York NY FAX: GGA Documentary Feature Contender In Farsi with subtitles. Spring and summer of 2009 were a heady time for the youth of Iran. The candidacy of comeback reformist Mir- Hossein Mousavi promised a blossoming of democracy and freedom not seen during the regimes of the Shah or the Islamic Republic. Green scarves and banners emerged, symbolizing the opening up of life and activism. Then, when the people realized that the outcome projected so clearly in favor of Mousavi was manipulated to give President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a landslide victory, their fury led to massive street demonstrations. These in turn provoked a brutal government crackdown in the form of beatings, torture and murder. As the regime silenced conventional media outlets like newspapers and state-run TV, new ones took their place. With The Green Wave, filmmaker Ali Samadi Ahadi has created a moving documentary collage that adroitly captures this 21st-century model for a new-media people s movement. A variety of real-time Facebook reports, tweets and videos posted on the Internet were integrated into the film composition, and hundreds of actual blog entries served as background reference for the experiences and thoughts of two young students whose story anchors the narrative. Vivid animation appears alongside authentic, often disturbing from-the-street photographs of the movement and on-camera interviews to drive the moving account of a youth revolt against one of the most repressive regimes in the world. It s a captivating amalgam of election meetings, demonstrations and unrest, and ultimately attacks by the militia, perfectly capturing a revolution in flux, yet evergreen with hope. Ali Samadi Ahadi Born 1972 in Tabriz, Iran, writer/director Ali Samadi Ahadi fled his country alone at the age of 12. He is now based in Germany, where he studied filmmaking and TV production. His documentaries, starting with Culture Clan (2004) and including Lost Children (2005), made with Green Wave producer Oliver Stoltz, have won several awards. He made his first feature film, the comedy Salami Aleikum, in documentaries Frako Loden SAT APR 23 4:00 PFA SUN APR 24 2:45 KABUKI MON MAY 2 6:15 KABUKI 149

111 Hot Coffee documentaries USA min DIR Susan Saladoff PROD Carly Hugo, Alan Oxman, Susan Saladoff CAM Martina Radwan ED Cindy Lee MUS Michael Mollura PRINT SOURCE If Not Now Productions. WEB: hotcoffeethemovie.com. Most folks will at least vaguely recall the infamous case of Liebeck v. McDonald s Restaurants, in which a woman who spilled a cup of coffee on her lap sued the fast food conglomerate for over $2 million dollars. As depicted in the media, the 1994 lawsuit quickly became a nationwide joke. Moreover, the public outrage over the perceived legal frivolity was subsequently maniputlated to help justify massive legal reform to favor big business. This larger legislative agenda, sold to the public as a means of protecting honest citizens from greedy individuals, had been underway since the 1980s, and its success has left the public less able to seek redress for corporate wrongdoing in court. The alarming facts of the case including significant corporate misconduct and extensive physical injury remained hidden. Starkly unraveling a history of corruption and self-interest, lawyer-turneddocumentarian Susan Saladoff s vital debut feature uses the cautionary hot coffee case among several vivid examples of similar injustices, each one more frustrating and disturbing than the last to expose a massive public relations campaign that has both facilitated and masked an effort to close off the one forum where average citizens have a fighting chance at holding corporations accountable to the law. Culminating with a travesty so appalling that it simply cannot be ignored, Hot Coffee cuts to the core of a corrupted civil justice system whose decay has been systematically orchestrated, and challenges us to do something about it. Susan Saladoff Susan Saladoff has spent the past 25 years practicing law and representing victims of individual and corporate negligence. Beginning her career as a public interest lawyer with Public Justice, she subsequently served as the organization s 20th president. Recognized by her peers as an Oregon Super Lawyer, she has previously directed, produced and edited several short documentaries. Hot Coffee marks her feature filmmaking debut. Landon Zakheim FRI APR 22 6:30 NEW PEOPLE MON APR 25 6:30 KABUKI TUE APR 26 2:00 KABUKI 150

112 The Last Buffalo Hunt US Premiere USA min DIR Lee Anne Schmitt PROD Lee Lynch, Lee Anne Schmitt CAM James Laxton, David Fenster, Lee Anne Schmitt, Lee Lynch ED Lee Anne Schmitt MUS Roger Pipers PRINT SOURCE CalArts/Film Deptartment, McBean Parkway, Valencia CA FAX: gmail.com. WEB: leeanneschmitt.com. Lee Anne Schmitt (California Company Town, SFIFF 2009) turns her essayistic directorial style onto the mythic idea of the American Western frontier. Centering on an officially sanctioned annual hunt on one of the last freeranging American bison herds, the film meditates on the iconography and activities associated with a special brand of American individuality as seen through the lens of a dying cowboy culture. Schmitt deftly poses the ideologies of frontierism and freedom against the practicalities of commodification and regulation. She displays the breathtaking open landscapes of southern Utah and presents the men who have worked its land for decades against a growing clutter of plastic teepees and casinos. Perhaps most troubling is the industry that has grown out of the hunt, now a mere tourist activity, an anachronistic experience for scrapbooks. The result is a rounded picture of the trajectory of the ideals surrounding our shared national narrative, an unvarnished look at the residue of a Western past and future. Schmitt continues her work of documenting culture through its detritus and decay. As in California Company Town, her approach is to let images and activities unfold and accumulate, allowing the duration of events to speak for themselves (recalling the work of experimental auteur James Benning.) The result is double-edged, as we are given access to the majestic beauty of an America we all desire, while we also witness it fading away. Lee Anne Schmitt Lee Anne Schmitt is on the faculty of CalArts graduate film directing program. She creates evocative, deeply felt works that consider everyday elements of American life as cultural ritual, including a series of cinematic investigations of the intersections of landscape with personal memory (Las Vegas, 2000), with the history of the American Left (Awake and Sing, 2003) and with urban development (The Wash, 2005). Her previous film, California Company Town (SFIFF 2009), an examination of the landscape of the loss of the American dream, screened at over 50 festivals and made top ten lists in Artforum, New York, Time Out and Cinema Scope. documentaries Sean Uyehara SAT APR 23 3:30 NEW PEOPLE TUE APR 26 6:30 NEW PEOPLE WED APR 27 4:00 KABUKI 151

113 Let the Wind Carry Me Cheng zhe guang ying lu xing documentaries North American Premiere Taiwan min DIR Chiang Hsiu-chiung, Kwan Pun-leung PROD Tony Luo CAM Kwan Pun-leung MUS Kuo Li-chi PRINT SOURCE Yonder Pictures Limited Inc., 11th Floor, No. 92, Sec. 1, Zhongshan N. Road, Zhongshan District, 104 Taipei, Taiwan. WEB: letthewindcarryme. com. Special support for this program generously provided by Taipei Economic and Cultural Office, San Francisco. For nearly three decades Mark Lee Ping-bin has collaborated with many of the most urgent filmmakers in Asia. As the primary cinematographer to Hou Hsiao-hsien, lensing classics such as A Time to Live and a Time to Die (SFIFF 1987), Goodbye South, Goodbye (SFIFF 1997, 2003) and Three Times (SFIFF 2006), Lee has altered the visual grammar of filmmaking. Let the Wind Carry Me documents Lee s working process and philosophical outlook, as he strives to present a vision of the world to filmgoers. With discussions on Lee s work with Hou and other Asian master directors with whom Lee has collaborated such as Hirokazu Kore-eda, Wong Kar-wai and Tran Anh Hung, Lee s intense and beautiful way of seeing is made clear. His tireless quest to picture things just so, however, does take a toll on Lee s personal life. His status as an itinerant artist blows him from project to project, leaving his wife and children anchored to their home is Los Angeles without direct access to their husband and father. The demand for Lee s services is great, and for good reason, as his economical and often fearless ideas have made lasting impact on the stunning design of his films. And it appears that success hasn t changed Lee, except perhaps in giving him the means and time to delve even more deeply into questions of the esoteric nature of perception. But, as the film offers discreetly, at what price? Chiang Hsiu-chiung Kwan Pun-leung No stranger to SFIFF, Chiang Hsiu-chiung brought her debut fiction feature Artemisia to the Festival in She is also an accomplished actress, delivering a Golden Horse nominated performance in Edward Yang s epic A Brighter Summer Day (SFIFF 1992). Behind the scenes, Chiang worked as assistant director and performance supervisor on Yang s films, including A Confucian Confusion (SFIFF 1995) and Yi Yi (2000), and those of Hou Hsiao-hsien: Flowers of Shanghai (SFIFF 1999) and Millennium Mambo (SFIFF 2002). Kwan Pun-leung has photographed close to 20 feature films, including (with Mark Lee Ping-bin and Christopher Doyle) Wong Kar-wai s highly acclaimed In the Mood for Love (2002). With Doyle and Lai Yui-fai he has won numerous awards for his photographic work on Wong s 2046 (2004), including Golden Horse, National Society of Film Critics and New York Film Critics Circle awards. In 1999, Kwan directed a making-of documentary, Buenos Aires Zero Degree, about Wong s film Happy Together (1997). Sean Uyehara FRI APR 29 6:15 NEW PEOPLE SUN MAY 1 1:30 KABUKI WED MAY 4 3:45 KABUKI 152

114 Marathon Boy England/USA/India min DIR Gemma Atwal PROD Gemma Atwal, Matt Norman SCR Gemma Atwal CAM Matt Norman ED Peter Haddon MUS Garry Hughes PRINT SOURCE DRG. blueyonder.co.uk. WEB: marathonboymovie.com. GGA Documentary Feature Contender In Oriyan and English with subtitles. A national hero, Budhia Singh made headlines by running more miles before the age of six than most people run in a lifetime. But what motivates this young boy? Is it safe for a five-year-old to run multiple marathons? Filmmaker Gemma Atwal focuses on these questions and many more in this spellbinding and often unsettling documentary. Budhia is a scrappy slum kid from the eastern Indian state of Orissa, where he and his mother search for their next meal. Biranchi Das is a charismatic judo instructor who runs an orphanage and becomes Budhia s mentor. Together, this dynamic duo captivates a country. As the determined boy runs and runs, coach Das sets his sights on Olympic gold. When India s government hurls accusations of child endangerment, the story takes a sharp and sudden turn. Using footage she gathered over several years, beginning with Budhia at three years old and ending when he s eight, Atwal crafts a tale with thrilling twists and turns. Her verité style gives us an immediate sense of access to the people and places of the story while refraining from easy judgments. Combining intense scenes of contemporary Indian life with striking shots of the country, Atwal builds a fascinating story full of contradictions and complexities that resonates well past the last frame. Gemma Atwal British filmmaker Gemma Atwal was a 2009 Gucci Tribeca Documentary Fund grantee. Her first film as a director was Expedition Alaska (2008), a feature-length documentary that follows a team of renowned scientists, naturalists and wildlife filmmakers into Alaska s four billion acres of wilderness to assess the impact of global warming. documentaries Brendan Peterson FRI APR 29 2:30 KABUKI SAT APR 30 1:00 NEW PEOPLE TUE MAY 3 9:15 KABUKI 153

115 Miss Representation documentaries USA min DIR Jennifer Siebel Newsom PROD Jennifer Siebel Newsom SCR Jennifer Siebel Newsom, Jessica Congdon CAM Svetlana Cvetko, John Behrens, Ben Wolf ED Jessica Congdon MUS Eric Holland PRINT SOURCE Girls Club Entertainment, 912 Cole Street, #198, San Francisco CA WEB: missrepresentation.org. Special support for this program generously provided by Celeste and Anthony Meier. This is a Cinema by the Bay film. Today s female teenagers consume more media than anyone ever. Each week, they devour more than 31 hours of television and 17 hours of music: programming pervaded by the message that their value lies more in their fleeting physical attraction than in lasting intellectual or leadership capacities. Miss Representation measures the magnitude of that phenomenon, including the way objectification gets internalized in a symbolic devaluing of self-worth inhibiting girls and women from realizing their full potential. Actress, filmmaker and former first lady of San Francisco, Jennifer Siebel Newsom marshals astonishing facts and statistics, supported by provocative stories from teenage girls as well as candid interviews with actors, politicians, journalists, academics and activists (a roll call that includes Jane Fonda, Geena Davis, Margaret Cho, Condoleeza Rice, Nancy Pelosi and Gloria Steinem). Siebel Newsom critically examines recent and stark episodes of sexism and prejudice in the public sphere, including the media s unbalanced treatment of Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin and Hollywood s ongoing exploitation of actresses and women directors. The accumulation of startling details will leave viewers shaken but armed with a new perspective. A personal narrative woven throughout, reflecting on the recent birth of her daughter Montana, affirms Siebel Newsom s genuine desire to ignite national enthusiasm for helping to advance the next generation. This is powerful advocacy on behalf of a more balanced portrayal of women and girls across the full spectrum of media we and they so voraciously consume. Jennifer Siebel Newsom Jennifer Siebel Newsom, former first lady of San Francisco, is also an actress, filmmaker, spokesperson and mother. After receiving an MBA from Stanford, she moved to Los Angeles and landed roles in film, television and theater. She founded Girls Club Entertainment in order to develop and produce independent films with strong social, political and cultural significance, focused on empowering women. In May 2010, Siebel Newsom partnered with the Professional BusinessWomen of California to create the First Lady s Young Women s Summit to help empower high school girls in the Bay Area. Kim Bender FRI APR 22 6:00 KABUKI WED MAY 4 5:45 NEW PEOPLE 154

116 Nostalgia for the Light Nostalgia de la luz France/Chile/Germany min DIR Patricio Guzmán PROD Renate Sachse SCR Patricio Guzmán CAM Katell Djian ED Patricio Guzmán, Emmanuelle Joly MUS Miranda & Tobar PRINT SOURCE Icarus Films, 32 Court Street, 21st Floor, Brooklyn NY WEB: icarusfilms.com/ new2011/nost.html. In Spanish with subtitles. Special support for this program generously provided by CineClean. For a man who has been making political films all his life, Nostalgia for the Light by Patricio Guzmán appears at first to be an aberration: an examination of the strangely beautiful work of astronomers using the mammoth telescopes in the remote highlands of Chile s Atacama Desert. The images of heavenly bodies they see are millions of years old, their light reaching us only now. The telescopes are in a place so high and dry that no humidity exists whatsoever, nothing to interfere with the view of the heavens. The desert has no birds, no animals, no insects. But there is another side of the Atacama. Here is where the Pinochet dictatorship quietly established its biggest concentration camp. In an attempt to cover up its crimes, the military regime dumped the bodies of its critics by the thousands in this same desert in the 1970s. Just as assiduously as the astronomers search the heavens, relatives of the disappeared comb the desert searching for the remains of the victims, the scientists as detached and joyful in their pursuit as the relatives are impassioned and somber. We meet both groups although they never intersect on a seemingly similar quest: searching the past, looking for the light. Guzmán magically weaves the two together in one of his most touching, most thoughtprovoking films. Patricio Guzmán Patricio Guzmán first gained international recognition with his epic documentary The Battle of Chile, filmed in 1973, a cinema verité account of the rise and fall of Salvador Allende s Popular Unity government. After going into exile, Guzmán continued to make films about his homeland, including In the Name of God (SFIFF 1988); The Southern Cross (SFIFF 1993); Chile, Obstinate Memory (SFIFF 1998) and The Pinochet Case (SFIFF 2002). Guzmán teaches documentary film classes in Europe and Latin America and is the founder and director of the International Documentary Festival of Santiago. documentaries Miguel Pendás TUE APR 26 6:30 KABUKI THU APR 28 6:15 PFA 155

117 Page One: A Year Inside the New York Times documentaries USA min DIR Andrew Rossi PROD Josh Braun, David Hand, Kate Novack, Alan Oxman, Adam Schlesinger SCR Kate Novack, Andrew Rossi CAM Andrew Rossi ED Chad Beck, Christopher Branca, Sarah Devorkin MUS Paul Brill, Killer Tracks PRINT SOURCE Magnolia Pictures, 2222 S. Barrington Avenue, Los Angeles CA aayers@magpictures.com. Special support for this program generously provided by Visionary Circle member Susan Murdy. The venerated New York Times finds itself front-page in Andrew Rossi s fascinating documentary on print journalism and its battle to survive in a contemporary climate of layoffs, cutbacks and new-media competition. Given full access to the institution and its newsrooms and corridors, Rossi tracks one year in the life of the Times media desk, one that featured moments both low including a day in which over 100 staffers were laid off and high. From WikiLeaks to Twitter, new modes of communication and journalism are brought to the forefront as challengers to the Gray Lady s throne, but as one staffer notes, Trees are still cut. Papers are still delivered. At the film s heart is Times columnist David Carr, a former drug addict who is both the paper s strongest advocate and its most irascible, charismatic iconoclast; whether publishing an exposé on the Tribune Corporation s internal issues or giving a bratty editor a verbal slap-down, he brings a down-to-earth humanity into such overarching issues as new versus old media, corporate control and journalistic integrity. Thanks to Carr and the other news hands interviewed here, Page One makes clear that whether it s online or off, printed or downloaded, what matters and what s at stake is good journalism. Andrew Rossi I d been impressed with the newsroom s openness ever since they agreed to let me and my camera in, notes director/ producer/cinematographer Andrew Rossi in a Filmmaker Magazine blog entry on the making of Page One. What really surprised me was the realization that something fundamental was changing, not just in the news business, but in how we as a culture access and interpret and internalize information. Rossi s first feature documentary was Eat This New York (2004), which screened on the Sundance Channel. Page One: A Year Inside the New York Times is his third documentary feature. FRI APR 29 6:15 KABUKI SUN MAY 1 5:30 NEW PEOPLE 156

118 Pink Saris England/India min DIR Kim Longinotto PROD Amber Latif, Girjashanker Vohra CAM Kim Longinotto ED Ollie Huddleston MUS Midival Punditz PRINT SOURCE Women Make Movies, 462 Broadway, Suite #500, New York NY In Hindi with subtitles. Acclaimed British filmmaker Kim Longinotto (The Day I Will Never Forget, SFIFF 2002) begins her latest unflinching portrait of gutsy everyday heroines with a line from Indian Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore: When old words die out on the tongue, new memories break forth from the heart. For 20 years now, Sampat Pal Devi has been battling the insults, violence, discrimination and sexual abuse routinely visited on married and single women of the untouchable caste. This intimate portrait, shot by the filmmaker herself with unblinking compassion, captures the founder of the Gulabi (or Pink ) Gang tirelessly challenging husbands, fathers-in-law and policemen in her home state of Uttar Pradesh. In one illuminating case, Devi intercedes on behalf of a pregnant woman whose fiancé was pressured by his father to abandon her. She confronts the older man clearly not used to having his authority questioned by a woman and refuses to leave until she gets her way. Devi incorporates lodging, counseling and inspiration as part of her mission, and the filmmaker does not shy from showing the financial and personal strain of a 24/7 calling. To the contrary, the most searing scene is arguably a nasty argument between Devi and her husband, who claims fame and notoriety have gone to her head. Knocked off her pedestal, she is touchingly vulnerable and acutely real. Longinotto has enormous admiration for her subjects but little interest in glorifying them. She recognizes that all social progress is the work of ordinary human beings, flaws and all. Kim Longinotto Born in London in 1952, Kim Longinotto is a widely acclaimed chronicler of ordinary women fighting entrenched societal injustice. Her extensive body of work includes a pair of films made in Africa, Sisters in Law and Rough Aunties, as well as Gaea Girls (SFIFF 2000) and Divorce Iranian Style (SFIFF 1998). Longinotto received the Inspiration Award at the 2010 Sheffield Doc/Fest, where Pink Saris also won the Special Jury Award. documentaries Michael Fox SAT APR 23 1:00 NEW PEOPLE THU APR 28 6:15 KABUKI 157

119 The Pipe documentaries Ireland min DIR Risteard Ó Domhnaill PROD Rachel Lysaght, Risteard Ó Domhnaill CAM Risteard Ó Domhnaill ED Nigel O Regan, Stephen O Connell MUS Stephen Rennicks, Hugh Drumm PRINT SOURCE Scannáin Inbhear, Barr na Trá, Béal an Átha, Co. Maigh Eo, Ireland. thepipethefilm@gmail.com. WEB: thepipethefilm.com. GGA Documentary Feature Contender The discovery in 1996 of a vast natural gas deposit off Ireland s west coast led global energy giant Shell to begin laying a high-pressure pipeline across the seabed and onto shore, where it would terminate at a refinery near the small town of Rossport. Shell did not ask Rossport s farmers and fishermen if it could pass its pipeline beside their houses and through the community s pristine commonage and coastline; according to resident Willie Corduff, it simply informed them of the fact. They tried to bully us, and it didn t work. In 2005, the community made international headlines when Corduff and four others were jailed for blocking construction of Shell s pipeline. Thousands rallied behind the Rossport Five. And that, says Corduff, is when it all began. Risteard Ó Domhnaill s reflective and rousing documentary incorporates archival footage from those days but begins its own chronicle a year later, during a violent nighttime clash between police and locals blockading the construction site after a government go-ahead to Shell. What follows is an intimate, stirring and utterly timely portrait of a community straining under a titanic battle for what it considers its very survival against a Goliath of money power and a largely compliant state. Ó Domhnaill s keen-eyed camera stays close to the lush countryside and a handful of courageous, colorful players in the grassroots effort. Shell, meanwhile, which refused to participate in the film, remains a shadowy onscreen conglomeration of trespassing land surveyors, men with binoculars, locals in hardhats tempted by shortterm jobs and a hulking, ominous ship named Solitaire. Risteard Ó Domhnaill Irish-born Risteard Ó Domhnaill spent summer vacations as a child in County Mayo, where the town of Rossport is located. He filmed The Pipe over the course of four years beginning in He holds degrees in theoretical physics from Trinity College in Dublin and history and Gaelic from the University of Galway, and has worked as a news cameraman and current affairs editor. The Pipe marks his directorial debut. Robert Avila SAT APR 23 6:00 NEW PEOPLE SAT APR 30 12:15 KABUKI MON MAY 2 6:30 PFA 158

120 Position Among the Stars Stand van de sterren Netherlands min DIR Leonard Retel Helmrich PROD Hetty Naaijkens-Retel Helmrich SCR Leonard Retel Helmrich, Hetty Naaijkens- Retel Helmrich CAM Leonard Retel Helmrich, Ismail Ezther Fahmi Lubish ED Jasper Naaijkens MUS Danang Faturahman, Fahmy Al-Attas PRINT SOURCE Films Transit, 252 Gouin Boulevard E., H3L 1A8 Montreal, Canada. WEB: positionamongthestars.com. GGA Documentary Feature Contender In Indonesian with subtitles. Special support for this program generously provided by Netherlands Cultural Services. Dutch director Leonard Retel Helmrich (Eye of the Day, 2001; Shape of the Moon, SFIFF 2005) returns with the latest chapter in his stunningly artful and intimate portrait of the Shamshudin family of Jakarta. After a pulse-quickening recap of choice moments from the first two films all the introduction one needs grandmother Rumidjah is summoned to the big city from the countryside by her son Bakti to counsel and motivate her teenage granddaughter Tari the family s great hope for attaining middle-class stability. Tari is smart but devious, and more interested in boys, music and colored contact lenses than studying. And presuming she does get into a university, where will the money for tuition come from? Meanwhile, Bakti breeds his beloved fighting fish and serves as a low-grade neighborhood functionary. The domestic drama of intersecting lives unfolds against a neon backdrop of rapidly increasing materialism in Indonesia and the fascinating underlying tension between secular modernism and Islam s central place in Indonesian life. Helmrich s virtuoso long sequences, distinguished by how-did-hedo-that? camera movement, transmute the banality of the everyday into art without romanticizing it. In one memorable passage, he turns the unannounced arrival of workers fumigating the alleyways with clouds of pesticide smoke into a scene that proceeds from unnerving to otherworldly to absurdly funny. Helmrich s eye, though, remains fixed on his subjects. Tari may represent the future of the family and Indonesia, but Rumidjah is the rock, the moral center, the connection to the land and, yes, the stars. Leonard Retel Helmrich Born in the Netherlands in 1959, Leonard Retel Helmrich is a master of cinema verité as well as one of its leading contemporary innovators. The more dramatic a certain situation is, he says, the least aware people are of the camera even when you are standing in their field of vision. This is why practically no one looks directly into the camera during shooting. Shape of the Moon (SFIFF 2005) received the Joris Ivens Award for best feature-length documentary at the 2004 International Documentary Festival Amsterdam and the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize for Documentary at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival. documentaries Michael Fox TUE APR 26 8:50 PFA WED APR 27 6:00 KABUKI WED MAY 4 9:00 KABUKI 159

121 The Redemption of General Butt Naked documentaries USA min DIR Eric Strauss, Daniele Anastasion PROD Eric Strauss, Daniele Anastasion CAM Eric Strauss, Peter Hutchens, Ryan Hill ED Jeremy Siefer MUS Justin Melland PRINT SOURCE part2 pictures, 287 Court Street, Brooklyn NY pictures.com. WEB: generalbuttnakedmovie.com. GGA Documentary Feature Contender Can a warlord become an advocate for peace? Can a nation ever heal the open wounds of a brutal civil war? The Redemption of General Butt Naked is the account of a man and a country attempting to move forward in the wake of unspeakable violence, both on a quest for revolutionary transformation. In 1996, General Butt Naked metamorphosed from ringleader of the ruthless Butt Naked Battalion responsible for the deaths of over 20,000 people in Liberia s 14-year civil war to Joshua Milton Blahyi, an evangelist who claims to be bringing peace and forgiveness to his ravaged country. Or so the story goes. This riveting documentary charts the rise and fall of the Butt Naked Battalion and the general s horrific tactics. We see the fearsome armies he led literally naked except for weapons draped on their backs slaughtering fellow countrymen in Monrovia s streets; we see the child soldiers he recruited, hefting machine guns larger than their emaciated torsos. Yet years later, with infectious charisma, Blahyi preaches the Gospel to the family members of his victims. He begs forgiveness and testifies before Liberia s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. I killed your brother out of madness, he says. Now, let me be your brother. Count on me when you need brotherly counsel. Are we witnessing a changed man? Filmmakers Eric Strauss and Daniele Anastasion neither romanticize nor prosecute Blahyi on his alleged journey of redemption. Instead, they shrewdly task the audience with a set of harrowing questions about justice, violence, mortality and faith. Eric Strauss Daniele Anastasion The Redemption of General Butt Naked is the first feature film for director/producers Eric Strauss and Daniele Anastasion. The two have previously produced and directed various series for broadcast, such as Hard Time, an Emmy-nominated prison series that premiered on the National Geographic Channel in 2009, as well as work for Frontline/World, the History Channel and A&E, among others. Strauss also directed, shot and produced Heroin Crisis and Iraq s Guns for Hire. Anastasion s other credits include KKK: Inside American Terror and Inside the Body Trade. Sara Dosa THU APR 28 1:30 KABUKI SAT APR 30 6:45 KABUKI MON MAY 2 9:45 KABUKI 160

122 Something Ventured USA min DIR Dan Geller, Dayna Goldfine PROD Paul Holland, Molly Davis, Dan Geller, Dayna Goldfine, Celeste Schaefer Snyder CAM Dan Geller ED Jen Bradwell, Gary Wiemberg MUS Laura Karpman PRINT SOURCE Zeitgeist Films, 247 Centre Street, 2nd Floor, New York NY WEB: somethingventuredthemovie.com. Special support for this program generously provided by Margaret and Will Hearst, and by Visionary Circle members Julie, Wally and Walter Haas. This is a Cinema by the Bay film. One day in 1957 a Wall Street brokerage firm received a strange letter from a group of men who would come to be known as the traitorous eight. Scientists and engineers at Shockley Semiconducter, frustrated with William Shockley s confusing and demoralizing management, wanted to offer their services as a group to another company. A young banker who traveled to California to meet them had a better idea. What followed would usher in an era characterized by new terms like venture capital and start-up company and new names like Apple, Intel, Cisco Systems and Silicon Valley. Beginning with the crew-cut techies of the late 50s, Something Ventured tells the story of the engineers, inventors and capitalists who joined forces to change the landscape of American technology and finance. Directors Dan Geller and Dayna Goldline use interviews and vintage footage to set outsize personalities against the shifting images of recent history, spiced with the conflicts inevitable when financial and computer mavericks interact. (Steve) Jobs is a national treasure, observes Arthur Rock, who helped launch Intel, Apple, Teledyne and Scientific Data Systems. He s so visionary, so bright. I had to fire him, though. [Venture capitalist Tom Perkins] had to take me to buy a suit, remembers Jimmy Treybig, founder of Tandem Computers. He always said he could buy the suit, but that still didn t help. This intriguing documentary reveals the origins, the risks, the triumphs and the failures behind many of the high-tech and financial giants who created the world we now live in. Dan Geller Dayna Goldfine Daniel Geller and Dayna Goldfine s past films include Ballet Russes (2005), which received a national theatrical release, the Emmy Award winning Kids of Survival (1999) and Frosh: Nine Months in a Freshman Dorm (1994), which was nominated by the Directors Guild of America for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in the Documentary Form. They live in San Francisco. documentaries Pamela Troy SUN APR 24 2:00 PFA SUN MAY 1 3:00 KABUKI 161

123 Tabloid documentaries USA min DIR Errol Morris PROD Julie Bilson Ahlberg, Mark Lipson CAM Robert Chappell ED Grant Surmi MUS John Kusiak PRINT SOURCE IFC Sundance Selects, 11 Penn Plaza, 18th Floor, New York NY FAX: com. Special support for this program generously provided by Celeste and Anthony Meier. You could tell a lie long enough that you believe it, suggests Joyce McKinney, the fabulously eccentric subject of Errol Morris s new documentary covering tabloid journalism, bondage, Mormonism and love. A former Miss Wyoming who boasts an IQ of 168, McKinney became infamous in the UK in 1976 as the mastermind of the Manacled Mormon Kidnapping after she abducted a former lover who had abandoned her for the Mormon Church. Charged with kidnapping and rape, she held him hostage in a cottage in Devon for several days, where she chained him to a bed (with mink-trimmed handcuffs) in order to erase all elements of Mormon brainwashing from his mind. I would have skied down Mt. Everest nude with a carnation in my nose for him, noted the everquotable McKinney during her trial, which became one of England s biggest media stories of the 1970s thanks to its combination of kinky sex and a buxom all-american girl gone wild. Now living relatively anonymously, McKinney reveals all to Morris s camera as do various British tabloid hacks still busy putting their own spin on the tale. A welcome return to the eccentric Americana of Gates of Heaven (1980) and Vernon, Florida (1982), Tabloid never uncovers what is the truth and what is a lie Morris writes that even he doesn t know. And that s what I like about it. Errol Morris A former graduate student at UC Berkeley and associate of the Pacific Film Archive, Errol Morris famously bet Werner Herzog he could direct a feature film; the result, Gates of Heaven (1980), started Morris on a critically acclaimed career (and forced Herzog to eat his own shoe). His films include Vernon, Florida (1982), The Thin Blue Line (SFIFF 1988) and Fast, Cheap and Out of Control (1997). His film on former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, The Fog of War (2003), won an Oscar for Best Documentary. In 2008, Morris received SFIFF s Persistence of Vision Award. TUE MAY 3 9:30 KABUKI THU MAY 5 2:45 NEW PEOPLE 162

124 The Tiniest Place El lugar más pequeño International Premiere Mexico min DIR Tatiana Huezo PROD Nicolás Celis SCR Tatiana Huezo CAM Ernesto Pardo ED Paulina del Paso, Tatiana Huezo MUS Leonardo Heiblum, Jacobo Lieberman PRINT SOURCE Centro de Capacitación Cinematográfica, Calzada de Tlalpan, 1670 Col. Country Club, Mexico City DF, Mexico. GGA Documentary Feature Contender Special support for this program generously provided by the Consulate General of Mexico, San Francisco. To walk into the jungle-shrouded village of Cinquera, El Salvador, is to enter a world where ghosts walk, passing back and forth between the past and present. Here, decades after a brutal civil war annihilated the village, survivors return to bury their dead and rebuild the community from the ashes. During the civil war, Cinquera was invaded by the National Guard, which targeted it as a potential haven for guerrillas of the FMLN opposition. Cinquera was literally wiped off the map, disappearing temporarily from official charts in a conflict that resulted in 80,000 deaths with tens of thousands more disappeared. We see the result of that devastation on the resolute and composed survivors now sowing new seeds in Salvadoran-born Mexican filmmaker Tatiana Huezo s stunning debut feature. In an unobtrusive portrait of collective memory, we mingle with villagers as they recall horrifying ordeals of rape, mutilation and torture; a man talks about the madness that consumed him; an old lady habitually talks to her dead daughter. Of those who managed to escape into the woods, many joined the FMLN (whose rebel flag still appears painted on the sides of houses). A remarkable example of Mexico s bourgeoning documentary scene, The Tiniest Place guides us through this landscape with a contemplative, poetical eye, as the deep forest looms in mute witness to the testimonies we overhear. Battle scars and wounds may run deep but they prove unable to destroy the soul of Cinquera. Tatiana Huezo Born in 1972 in El Salvador, Tatiana Huezo moved to Mexico City at age five. A graduate of the prestigious Centro de Capacitación Cinematográfica (CCC), she s the recipient of the Gucci/Ambulante award, a grant established in 2007 to support new and established Mexican documentarians. Huezo has taught documentary film at the University Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona. The Tiniest Place is her first feature-length documentary. documentaries Christine Davila SAT APR 30 6:00 PFA SUN MAY 1 4:15 KABUKI THU MAY 5 5:45 KABUKI 163

125 !Women Art Revolution documentaries USA/Canada min DIR Lynn Hershman Leeson PROD Lynn Hershman Leeson, Kyle Stephan SCR Lynn Hershman Leeson CAM Hiro Narita, Antonio Rossi, Fawn Yacker, Lise Swenson, Lynn Hershman Leeson ED Lynn Hershman Leeson MUS Carrie Brownstein PRINT SOURCE Zeitgeist Films, 247 Centre Street, 2nd Floor, New York NY FAX: com. WEB: womenartrevolution.com. This is a Cinema by the Bay film. Can you name three women artists? The question was asked of visitors to two major metropolitan art museums. Nobody filmed could. If you can t either, see this film. And if you can, ditto, because you might owe that fact to the feminist artists, critics, curators and academics who, starting in the late 1960s, took on the old-boy art establishment in an all-out WAR: Women Art Revolution. Lynn Hershman Leeson was there with her camera and in 40 years has never turned it off. In her living room, in artists studios, over coffee, she recorded dozens of women artists. Their candid tales of WAR come woven together in this engaging, provocative film with original graphics by Spain Rodriguez and a score by Carrie Brownstein. Some of the stories are public record, such as congressmen debating the merits of Judy Chicago s The Dinner Party with its depictions of women s genital regions. Others were newsworthy protests at major institutions (meet the Gorilla Girls still masked). But most are personal revelations that, taken together, form a history of a culture that grew out of the struggles of the 1960s but remained marginalized: How Faith Ringgold, the first to raise her voice in protest, challenged Robert Rauschenberg and Carl Andre as a representative of the made-up WSABAL ; where Leo Castelli Gallery told the late Nancy Spero to put her artwork; and the childhood outrages that led women artists to adopt fictional identities, as in Howardena Pindell s Free, White and 21 and Hershman Leeson s own Roberta Breitmore series. Lynn Hershman Leeson Lynn Hershman Leeson, a provocateur du cinema (Variety), is internationally acclaimed for her pioneering work in media and new technologies, in which she explores issues of identity and privacy, the interfacing of humans and machines and real and virtual worlds. Having come on the scene with her audacious Roberta Breitmore series ( ), she turned to cinema in 1998 with Conceiving Ada (SFIFF 1998), followed by Teknolust (SFIFF 2002) and Strange Culture (SFIFF 2007), all featuring Tilda Swinton. Her art is in numerous museum collections. Hershman Leeson is chair of the Film Department at the San Francisco Art Institute and professor emeritus at the University of California, Davis. Judy Bloch SAT APR 23 3:00 SFMOMA MON APR 25 8:40 PFA 164

126 Yves Saint Laurent l Amour Fou France min DIR Pierre Thoretton PROD Kristina Larsen, Hugues Charbonneau CAM Leo Hinstin ED Dominique Auvray MUS Côme Aguiar PRINT SOURCE IFC, 11 Penn Plaza, 18th Floor, New York NY FAX: ebrambilla@ifcfilms.com. Special support for this program generously provided by Howard Roffman. Few figures loom larger in the annals of 20th-century style than Yves Saint Laurent. Barely out of his teens when he was appointed head of the House of Dior, he triumphantly launched his own brand only a few short years later. For decades he epitomized the jet-set lifestyle, dressing its luminaries and sharing their giddy excesses. Visual artist Pierre Thoretton s first feature captures the well-known highs and lows of this remarkable but also stormy career: Saint Laurent s breakdown when conscripted into the French Army in 1960, during Algeria s Independence War; signature designs like the Mondrian-inspired dresses that epitomized Pop Art chic; his celebration of feminine beauty via muses from Deneuve to Iman; becoming the first haute couture house to democratize fashion via affordable prêt-à-porter lines; working compulsively hard and playing harder in the cocaine-fueled celebrity bubble of Studio 54. But Thoretton s film provides us privileged access beyond the headlines. Its primary voice is that of Pierre Berge, Saint Laurent s surviving business and life partner. Recalling their half-century together, Berge decides to surrender some of that past by selling many of their fabulous properties in what is dubbed the auction of the century. As he bids adieu to long-cherished possessions, we get the vicarious thrill of touring sumptuous homes in Morocco and France (one of them an homage to Proust) and a stunning art collection that stretches from ancient Egyptian artifacts to Matisse and Warhol. Yves Saint Laurent l Amour Fou documents a crazy love for all things beautiful. Pierre Thoretton Oise native Pierre Thoretton is a visual artist who has had solo exhibitions in France and Germany. Yves Saint Laurent l Amour Fou is his first feature. I don t know about fashion, I m interested in people, he has said of the film. For me, it s a film about love. He knew Saint Laurent from the time when he was the husband of actress Chiara Mastroianni, daughter of Marcello Mastroianni and YSL muse Catherine Deneuve. documentaries Dennis Harvey TUE MAY 3 7:00 KABUKI THU MAY 5 8:15 KABUKI 165

127 THE LATE SHOW THRILLS AND CHILLS FROM AROUND THE WORLD 168 Outrage 169 The Selling 170 Stake Land 171 The Troll Hunter 167

128 Outrage Autoreiji Japan min DIR Takeshi Kitano PROD Masayuki Mori, Takio Yoshida SCR Takeshi Kitano CAM Katsumi Yanagijima ED Takeshi Kitano, Yoshinori Ôta MUS Keiichi Suzuki WITH Beat Takeshi, Kippei Shina, Ryo Kase, Tomokazu Miura, Jun Kunimura, Renji Ishibashi, Tetta Sugimoto PRINT SOURCE Magnolia Pictures, 49 W. 27th Street, 7th Floor, New York NY WEB: office-kitano. co.jp/outrage/main.html. Takeshi Kitano makes a long-awaited return to the gangster genre with this embittered look at the formal hierarchies and manipulative honor of the Japanese yakuza, and what happens to those on the losing end of the power struggle. A crisis is triggered within a powerful syndicate by, of all things, too much friendship between enemies. One boss is too chummy with a rival, which demands the sending of a message though with a certain restraint. Unfortunately, the low-level boss picked for the job is Otomo (Kitano), who doesn t know the meaning of restraint (a particular dentist-chair scene makes this point perfectly clear). Suddenly a war is on, as rivals become allies and allies rivals. For the ever-scheming opportunists of the yakuza, however, allies are just those people you vow loyalty to before eventually killing. Leaving behind the cheerful eccentricities of his more recent work and the playful experimentation of earlier gangster masterpieces like Sonatine (SFIFF 1995), Kitano moves into far bleaker, almost existential terrain. To borrow the title of a seminal 1973 Kinji Fukasaku film, the battles here are truly without honor or humanity, and seemingly destined to play on a continuous loop for eternity. Takeshi Kitano Actor, filmmaker, comedian, painter, professor and television personality, Beat Takeshi Kitano was born in Tokyo in He began his entertainment career as an elevator operator at a Tokyo comedy hall and strip club before becoming a successful comic and entertainer. His first film role came opposite David Bowie in Nagisa Oshima s Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1983). He began directing in 1989 with Violent Cop but international recognition and success came with several offbeat yakuza films such as Sonatine (SFIFF 1995) and Fireworks (1997). In recent years he has steered toward iconoclastic, highly personal works such as Takeshis (2005) and Glory to the Filmmaker! (2007). the late show SAT APR 30 11:00 KABUKI WED MAY 4 9:45 KABUKI 168

129 The Selling World Premiere USA min DIR Emily Lou PROD Gabriel Diani, Emily Lou SCR Gabriel Diani CAM Mattias Schubert ED Chad Meserve MUS Geoff Mann WITH Gabriel Diani, Barry Bostwick, Janet Varney, Jonathan Klein, Etta Devine PRINT SOURCE Redwood Pictures, 7266 Sayre Drive, Oakland CA WEB: thesellingthemovie.com. This is a Cinema by the Bay film. For most people affected by the recent housing market crash, the impact was strictly financial. In Emily Lou s inventive debut, hero Richard Scarry discovers an additional burden: the paranormal. Worried by his mother s increasing medical problems, the overly nice real estate agent cooks up a grand moneymaking scheme. He and his friend Dave will buy a house, fix it up and flip it for an amazing profit. In the days before the bubble pops, this seems like a grand idea, and the pair sets to work on a quick sale. However, it soon becomes clear that not only are they in danger of losing money on the place but it s also haunted by the victims of a notorious serial killer called the Sleepstalker. In the wake of overflowing toilets and bleeding walls, a plague of wasps and a bad bout of demonic possession, the plucky salesman soldiers on, scheduling showings and even hosting an open house. Sometimes the closet becomes a portal to another realm, he helpfully warns one horrified couple. Scriptwriter Gabriel Diani (who also plays Scarry) cleverly employs the tropes of haunted house stories to witty and original ends. Besides Richard s frequent fisticuffs with phantasms, the film offers tongue-in-cheek casting (Rocky Horror Picture Show s Barry Bostwick plays a demented exorcist), a crisp visual style and keen up-to-date satire. Deftly juggling humor and horror, The Selling is one short sale genre fans won t want to miss out on. Rod Armstrong Emily Lou Emily Lou began her directing career at San Francisco State University, where she won the coveted Jules Irving Award for Excellence in Direction. At Teatro Esperanza, she directed the world premiere of Ride My Coche, which later moved to the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles. She has also worked at the San Francisco Fringe Festival and Magic Theatre. The Selling is her first feature film. the late show FRI APR 29 11:30 KABUKI WED MAY 4 4:15 KABUKI 169

130 Stake Land USA min DIR Jim Mickle PROD Derek Curl, Larry Fessenden, Adam Folk, Brent Kunkle, Peter Phok SCR Jim Mickle, Nick Damici CAM Ryan Samul ED Jim Mickle MUS Jeff Grace WITH Nick Damici, Connor Paolo, Kelly McGillis, Michael Cerveris, Danielle Harris PRINT SOURCE IFC, 11 Penn Plaza, 18th Floor, New York NY FAX: WEB: scareflix. net/stakesite.html. Martin and Mister are two of the few remaining survivors of a global apocalypse caused by rampaging (and ravenous) vampire zombies, the toughest of which can be killed only by a stake through the base of the skull. Martin (Gossip Girl s Connor Paolo) is a somewhat naïve teenager who watched his family get wiped out by the beasts, while Mister (cowriter Nick Damici) is a grizzled loner and vampkilling expert with a car pimped out like the Road Warrior s. Headed north to New Eden, the rumored encampment of remaining humans, the pair runs afoul of a marauding band of religious zealots called the Brethren, led by a nasty piece of work named Jebediah (an exceedingly creepy Michael Cerveris). As the two dodge crazed cultists and vicious vampires, they also come across small outposts of humanity, including a few folks (Top Gun s Kelly McGillis among them) who want to join their caravan to the possibly apocryphal New Eden. Though firmly in the vein of take-no-prisoners horror classics, Stake Land also offers a visually gritty dystopian tale in which human beings are worse than the monsters running amok. With nary a moment wasted, this is lean, mean filmmaking with a powerful bite. Jim Mickle Jim Mickle graduated from New York University and worked as a storyboard artist, grip and editor before directing a number of acclaimed short films, including Last Legs (1999) and The Underdogs (2003). In 2007, he directed his first feature, Mulberry Street. Stake Land is his second film. the late show Rod Armstrong FRI APR 22 11:30 KABUKI MON APR 25 9:45 KABUKI 170

131 The Troll Hunter Trolljegeren Norway min DIR André Ovredal PROD John M. Jacobsen, Sveinung Golimo SCR André Ovredal CAM Hallvard Braein ED Per Erik Eriksen WITH Otto Jespersen, Glenn Erland Tosterud, Hans Morten Hansen PRINT SOURCE Magnolia Pictures, 2222 S. Barrington Avenue, Los Angeles CA Special support for this program generously provided by the Royal Norwegian Consulate General, San Francisco. Student journalists making a documentary on bear poaching in the Norwegian countryside stumble upon a secret war between government operatives and stony giants. Thrust into danger and intrigue, the students suddenly need to bone up on troll defense. All of us know the rules of zombie and vampire combat, but how is it again that trolls operate? Equal parts The Blair Witch Project and Jurassic Park, this film features raw documentary footage and a healthy dose of CGI magic in a romp through troll lore. The integration of the massive menaces into seemingly amateur video is exhilarating and hilarious, as gargantuan trolls of many varieties blend into the landscape and sniff out Christians. Once the students realize the extent of the danger posed by the creatures, they set out to document the daily tasks of a troll hunter, in this case a disgruntled government employee fed up with a government bureaucracy that wants him to fill out troll death certificates after an arduous day of hunting. While documenting his activities, the students become embroiled in efforts to seek out and vanquish ever more dangerous and odd beasts, soon dropping their embedded journalist status and becoming troll hunters themselves. Icy adventures in caves, mountains and plains await the avid crew. Sean Uyehara André Ovredal Born in Norway in 1973, André Ovredal has made a name for himself as one of the country s most successful directors of commercials, having completed more than 200 for clients in Norway and abroad. He holds a B.A. from Brooks Institute of Photography and Motion Pictures in Santa Barbara. In addition to commercials, he has directed award-winning short films. The Troll Hunter is Ovredal s first feature film. the late show SAT APR 23 11:30 KABUKI MON APR 25 6:15 NEW PEOPLE 171

132 SHORTS Multiple Genres, Many Gems 174 Cupid with Fangs 175 The Deep End 176 Do You See What I See? 177 Get with the Program 178 Irresistible Impulses 179 Mind the Gap 180 Youth Media Mash-Up 173

133 young dracula blokes red shirley MEMO TO PIC DESK Cupid with Fangs Total running time 95 min. Every stage of life comes with its own set of challenges, but youth and old age are particularly fraught. This selection of narrative and documentary shorts covers this tricky territory with humor and pathos, from a kid who uses fake fangs to establish his nonconformity to an elderly woman whose extremely varied life establishes hers. Blokes During the depredations of the Pinochet era in Chile, young Lucho spies on a handsome guy across the way. (Marialy Rivas, Chile 2010, 15 min) In GGA competition. Young Dracula A misunderstood adolescent boy runs away from home and is picked up by a family that makes him feel relatively normal. (Alfred Seccombe, USA 2010, 15 min) In GGA competition. This is a Cinema by the Bay film. Library of Dust A storeroom of canisters filled with abandoned ashes in a rundown asylum becomes a meditation on time and remembrance. (Ondi Timoner, Robert James, USA 2010, 10 min) In GGA competition. This is a Cinema by the Bay film. Machines of the Working Class A couple of profane robots discuss the pros and cons of holding up a bank. (James Dastoli, Robert Dastoli, USA 2010, 2 min) In GGA competition. God of Love In this Oscar-winning short, lonely lounge singer Raymond Goodfellow receives a set of love darts from the Olympus Foundation and puts them to surprising use. (Luke Matheny, USA 2010, 19 min) In GGA competition. Rod Armstrong Red Shirley Rock music icon Lou Reed prompts his 100-year-old cousin to discuss her eventful life, from escaping WWII-era Poland as a child to her leftist political activism as a worker in New York s Garment District. (Lou Reed, USA 2009, 28 min) shorts SUN APR 24 3:15 KABUKI TUE APR 26 9:00 NEW PEOPLE 174

134 last resort minong, i slept slave ship The Deep End Total running time 75 min. Presented in association with Pacific Film Archive and San Francisco Cinematheque. Dive into a program of new experimental cinema that observes the world subjectively, drifting between rural and urban landscapes or expansive deserts and watery depths, interspersed with contemplations of history from the sinking of the Titanic to the exploits of Houdini. When you come back up for air, you ll be invigorated. Trypps #7 (Badlands) A hypnotic portrait that transforms a vivid landscape into a psychic experience. (Ben Russell, USA 2010, 10 min) Minong, I Slept A subtle tapestry of resonant images of life on a remote island serves as a meditation on place and the past. (Vera Brunner- Sung, USA 2010, 5 min) Last Resort The depths of an abandoned space are excavated, creating an abstract animation with a rich palette of mossy hues. (Katherin McInnis, USA 2010, 2 min) I Swim Now A story of survival frames a visceral rendering of shipwrecks as the tumult and ferocious beauty of the sea are imparted through layered and expressive abstraction. (Sarah Biagini, USA 2010, 8 min) Slave Ship Innovative pixel painting brings to subtle motion a mesmerizing and luminescent re-visioning of J. W. Turner s 1840 masterpiece. (T. Marie, USA 2010, 6 min) Burning Bush A shrub bursting with dazzling fall colors is at once real and unreal, natural and created. (Vincent Grenier, Canada/USA 2010, 9 min) Tokyo - Ebisu People and trains speeding through busy Tokyo stations are collaged in-camera into a vibrant checkerboard of multiple and fragmented images. (Tomonari Nishikawa, Japan 2010, 5 min) Victoria, George, Edward and Thatcher A dizzying journey from East to West London is captured in over 3,000 images taken on a cell phone. (Callum Cooper, England 2010, 2 min) Hell Roaring Creek The conflicts inherent in the Western landscape are framed in a filmmaker/anthropologist s pastoral portrait of a seemingly endless herd of sheep crossing a Montana stream. (Lucien Castaing-Taylor, USA 2010, 20 min) Kathy Geritz, Vanessa O Neill a little prayer (H-E-L-P) Images of Houdini bound in chains flicker and spin amid laceration marks created through hand processing. (Louise Bourque, Canada 2011, 8 min) shorts SUN APR 24 7:00 KABUKI WED APR 27 8:50 PFA 175

135 ormie jillian dillon play ATLANTIS by play UNBOUND specky four eyes the snowman Do You See What I See? Total running time 67 min. Whether young or old, big or small, not everyone sees the world through the same lens. In this collection of eye-opening shorts, an assorted cast of characters learns to adjust the focus and view themselves and others in unexpected new ways. Recommended for ages seven and up. Specky Four Eyes Arnaud s eyesight is atrocious. But when the doctor prescribes a new pair of glasses, everything suddenly looks a lot less interesting than it did before. (Jean-Claude Rozec, France 2010, 9 min) In GGA Competition. Twist & Shout An unusual ukulele duo jams to their favorite Beatles tune. (Yosuke Kihara, Japan 2010, 2 min) Jillian Dillon It s hard out there for a hippoplatypus. This fresh and charming take on the classic tale of misfit redemption is told through handmade puppets, rhyme and song. (Yvette Edery, Germany/ USA 2010, 5 min) Walk Don t Run Because you can never have too much ukulele. (Yosuke Kihara, Japan 2010, 2 min) The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore Children s author William Joyce (Rolie Polie Olie) brings stacks of storybooks to life in a whimsical tale of hurricanes, libraries and the love of reading. (William Joyce, Brandon Oldenburg, USA 2010, 17 min) In GGA Competition. Ormie A battle of will between pig and fridge. (Rob Silvestri, Canada 2010, 4 min) Joanne Parsont The Snowman Some may see a snowman with a vegetable nose. Others see dinner. (Kelly Wilson, Neil Wrischnik, USA 2010, 5 min) In GGA Competition. This is a Cinema by the Bay film. Play by Play Donn may not be a great baseball player on his team at school, but in his own mind he s an MVP. When the class bully threatens to expose his inner athletic world, Donn uses his ingenuity and creative writing skills to give their power dynamic a whole new spin. (Carlos Baena, USA 2010, 23 min) In GGA Competition. This is a Cinema by the Bay film. shorts sun MAY 1 11:00 am NEW PEOPLE 176

136 hail get with the program the cap a purpleman Get with the Program Total running time 72 min. These animated shorts will clear your head (The External World), blow your mind (Dromosphere) or at the very least make you a bit more organized (Pixels)... kinda. They run the gamut of CGI, hand-drawn, motion graphics and live action/animation hybrids. Get with this program! The Cap Amid the turbulent partition of India in 1947, a young Hindu boy has a chance encounter with a stranger. (Arjun Rihan, USA/India 2009, 6 min) This is a Cinema by the Bay film. Dromosphere Some may remember Thorsten Fleisch as the director of the incredible short Energy! (SFIFF 2008). Here, he again de-familiarizes an everyday object in the most amazing way, with a combination of high-speed photography and CGI (we think). (Thorsten Fleisch, Germany 2010, 11 min) In GGA competition. The External World David O Reilly has established a style unto himself, one that ingeniously borrows from and resituates classic storytelling and animation styles in unexpectedly absurd ways. (David O Reilly, Ireland/Germany 2010, 15 min) In GGA competition. Pixels A hybrid of live action and CGI explores the implications of making the entire world into a massively complicated video game extravaganza. (Patrick Jean, France 2010, 3 min) In GGA competition. A Purpleman An eye-opening animated interview with a North Korean émigré about a new life of alienation and consumption in South Korea. (Kim Tak-hoon, Yoo Jin-young, Ryu Jin-young, Park Sung-ho, South Korea 2010, 14 min) In GGA competition. Self Portrait as a PowerPoint Proposal for an Amusement Park Ride Not so much animation as motion graphics, this entirely text-based narrative is as engaging as it is ridiculous. (Jonn Herschend, USA 2010, 6 min) In GGA competition. This is a Cinema by the Bay film. Get with the Program This program s titular short ensures it all makes sense, answering two age-old conundrums: Tell me why my love is hot and Should I have a cell phone attached directly to my head? (Jennifer Drummond Deutrom, USA 2010, 4 min) In GGA competition. Hail The wonderful Emily Hubley offers a new hand-drawn music video for band Hamell on Trial in her trademark style. (Emily Hubley, USA 2011, 3 min) Sync Reminiscent of John Whitney s famous animated mandalas, Max Hattler s work presents a hypnotic, ever-expanding and contracting series of concentric circles. (Max Hattler, England 2010, 10 min) Sean Uyehara shorts SAT APR 23 9:45 KABUKI WED APR 27 9:30 NEW PEOPLE THU MAY 5 5:00 NEW PEOPLE 177

137 delmer builds a machine into the middle of nowhere the strange ones bitch rabbit noreen Irresistible Impulses Total running time 100 min. Behaving instinctively, although encouraged in children, often leads to mishaps and difficulty as one enters adulthood. In this offbeat medley of documentary and narrative shorts, various manifestations of acting out are strikingly realized, whether through the eyes of children at play in the woods or two trigger-happy policemen. Delmer Builds a Machine In this wordless gem, a tiny engineering genius builds an unusual device made up of sundry items, with calamitous results. (Landon Zakheim, USA 2010, 3 min) Into the Middle of Nowhere This warm and funny film lovingly captures the wonder of childhood as kids explore and test boundaries of reality through play and imagination. (Anna Francis Ewert, England/ Scotland 2010, 15 min) In GGA competition. Bitch Rabbit A jaded prostitute and her unexpectedly frisky trick share a tender moment in this curious love story. (Guérin Van De Vorst, Belgium 2010, 10 min) In GGA competition. Noreen A couple of bumbling policemen respond to a routine call and get more than they bargained for in this hilarious Irish comedy starring the director s father, Brendan Gleeson. (Domhnall Gleeson, Ireland 2010, 18 min) In GGA competition. The Strange Ones A pair of anonymous drifters seeks refuge and relief in a motel swimming pool, where they are befriended by a young woman. On the surface all seems normal, but a sense of foreboding lies beneath in this taut, suspenseful drama. (Christopher Radcliff, Lauren Volkstein, USA/France 2011, 14 min) In GGA competition. The Home Front The familiar adage home sweet home is given new meaning as government mediators attempt to diffuse emotionally charged disputes between neighbors. (Phie Ambo, Denmark 2010, 40 min) In GGA competition. Audrey Chang shorts FRI APR 22 3:15 KABUKI SUN APR 24 NOON KABUKI MON MAY 2 5:45 NEW PEOPLE 178

138 tourist trap coming attractions all flowers in time the d train Mind the Gap Total running time 76 min. Whether getting on or getting off, be careful, especially of your expectations. Many of these experimentally minded shorts explore the difference between the imagination of the thing and the thing itself. From established masters of experimental cinema such as Jay Rosenblatt, Peter Tscherkassky and Kerry Laitala to relative newcomers such as Zackary Drucker, this program will be sure to surprise, confound and illuminate worlds real and imagined. The film Coming Attractions is presented with the generous support of the Austrian Consulate General, Los Angeles. All Flowers in Time From the director of Tarnation comes this Lynchian scenario featuring Chloë Sevigny, question-posing men, truly alarming CGI and an off-kilter fairy tale/monster story. (Jonathan Caouette, Canada/USA 2010, 13 min) In GGA competition. Chromatastic Kerry Laitala thrills the senses with her abstract color schemes in spectacular, attractive 3-D. (Kerry Laitala, USA 2010, 4 min) In GGA competition. This is a Cinema by the Bay film. Coming Attractions Peter Tshcerkassky continues his near 30-year experimental film project with a work that explores the underlying relationship between early cinema and the avant-garde. A visualization of Tom Gunning s concept of a cinema of attractions. (Peter Tscherkassky, Austria 2010, 25 min) In GGA competition. The D Train An elderly man reflects on his life in this piece by a master of found footage. (Jay Rosenblatt, USA 2011, 5 min) This is a Cinema by the Bay film. Lost Lake Los Angeles based performance artist Zackary Drucker hunts rural perverts, luring them to their demise through the phone, Internet and good old-fashioned bear traps minus the bear traps. (Zackary Drucker, USA 2010, 8 min) In GGA competition. Once it started it could not end otherwise Kelly Sears takes a foreboding turn in this apocryphal yarn of gymnastically inclined school-age cliques. (Kelly Sears, USA 2011, 8 min) In GGA competition. Tourist Trap San Francisco is a lot of things to a lot of people, but it was never quite this video, which may well be stolen from the guide, San Francisco for Faceless Partiers. (Skye Thorstenson, USA 2010, 13 min) In GGA competition. This is a Cinema by the Bay film. Sean Uyehara shorts SAT APR 23 4:45 KABUKI SUN MAY 1 9:45 KABUKI 179

139 how could she? flags come to the table fire bad escape from suburbia Youth Media Mash-Up Total running time 69 min. A fascinating fusion of ideas, perspectives, genres, styles and voices, this creative concoction of short documentary, narrative and animated films is an inspired and inspiring look at the world as interpreted by today s teen filmmakers. Recommended for ages 12 and up. Neighborhood Watch A playful animated meandering through chalk and song. (Zachary Booth, USA 2010, 3 min) Sunny Side Up After his girlfriend leaves him, Sunny s seemingly perfect life turns upside down. (Mattan Cohen, USA 2010, 7 min) Escape from Suburbia Reflecting on the abridged life and extensive travels of an uncle she never met, a Marin teen charts her own future of exploration and discovery. (Mayana Bonapart, USA 2010, 9 min) In GGA competition. This is a Cinema by the Bay film. The Math Test The standard train-leaves-the-station math problem becomes a source of both anxiety and liberation for one young test-taker. (Sam Rubin, USA 2010, 5 min) In GGA competition. This is a Cinema by the Bay film. Come to the Table A former student revisits her positive culinary experiences in the Edible Schoolyard program at Martin Luther King, Jr. Middle School in Berkeley. (Zoe Sainave, USA 2010, 9 min) This is a Cinema by the Bay film. How Could She? Hidden secrets threaten to unravel a relationship. (Kevin Rieg, USA 2010, 5 min) Fire Bad Caveman make fire. Modern man pay price. (Isaac Wolfe, USA 2010, 2 min) This is a Cinema by the Bay film. Z-Man A legendary Bay Area photographer shares colorful anecdotes about some of his classic rock-and-roll subjects. (Nat Talbot, USA 2010, 5 min) In GGA competition. This is a Cinema by the Bay film. Independence in Sight At the Hatlen Center for the Blind, vision-impaired teenagers learn essential life skills that will help them lead independent lives. (Sydney Paige Matterson, Lauren Lindberg, Julian Compagni-Portis, Bonita Tindle, USA 2010, 8 min) This is a Cinema by the Bay film. 2 AM Somewhere between dream and reality, a young man wrestles with the fear of loss. (Joseph Procopio, Canada 2010, 6 min) In GGA competition. Flags Nationalism runs amok as everyone tries to stake his or her claim to cultural and global importance. (Mattan Cohen, USA 2010, 5 min) In GGA competition. Joanne Parsont India Export A vibrant visual voyage through the sights and sounds of Southern India. (Raphael Linden, USA/India 2010, 5 min) In GGA competition. This is a Cinema by the Bay film. shorts SAT APR 23 NOON KABUKI 180

140 students AT A SCREENING OF THE REEL YOUTH REVOLUTION SHORTS program AT THE 2007 SFIFF SAN FRANCISCO FILM SOCIETY EDUCATION PROGRAMS The Film Society s deep commitment to education through film touches the lives of tens of thousands of Bay Area residents of all ages every year through three key program areas: Youth Education provides year-round film literacy programming to Bay Area schools through screenings, filmmaker classroom visits, youth media classes, teacher trainings and curriculum support. Colleges & Universities offers creative, educational, social, financial and professional opportunities for college-level film students as they transition from the academic arena to the professional world. Film Craft & Film Studies classes give emerging artists, film professionals and cinephiles at all skill levels valuable instruction in the art, craft and business of filmmaking and in film appreciation, history and criticism. During SFIFF54, a series of new and recurring education programs will be offered for audience members of all ages and interests. schools at the festival The annual Schools at the Festival educational outreach program introduces students ages 7 18 to the art of filmmaking and celebrates both the differences and the shared values of the cultural groups that make up the global community. The program advances media literacy, deepens insights into other cultures, enhances foreign language aptitude, develops critical thinking skills and inspires a lifelong appreciation of cinema. Through film screenings, interactive discussions, filmmaker visits to schools and curriculum support for teachers, the program strives to cultivate students imaginations, facilitate their awareness as filmgoers and empower them as true global citizens. Read more about this year s special anniversary program on page 183. Schools at the Festival is made possible by the generous support of: dexter F. And dorothy h. baker Foundation THE SAN FRANCISCO FOUNDATION Tin Man Fund Nellie Wong Magic of Movies Education Fund sfiff college days This three-day film series is offered exclusively to Bay Area college and university students during the second weekend of SFIFF54. The program consists of five Festival films, curated specifically for a college film student audience, and includes post-screening Q&As with visiting film makers and an SFIFF programmer as a guest lecturer for each film. For participating schools, course credit is also available. The complete College Days program schedule is available at fest11.sffs.org. For more information, contact Education Associate Trinity West at twest@sffs.org. 182

141 SECOND- AND THIRD-GRADE STUDENTS AT GRATTAN elementary SCHOOL DURING A SCHOOL VISIT BY DIRECTOR BAR- BARA ETTINGER AND FILM SUBJECT SVEN HUSEBY OF A SEA CHANGE AT THE 2009 SFIFF Schools at the Festival 20th Anniversary In 1991 a retired San Francisco schoolteacher and Festival volunteer named Robert Donn had the revolutionary idea that high school students just might appreciate and learn from Festival films as much as adult audiences had been doing for decades. And, with that, Schools at the Festival was born. What began as an inspired educational experiment with a couple of high school classes has since grown into a year-round Youth Education program that now serves more than 10,000 students and teachers each year. Throughout SFIFF54, elementary, middle and high school classes from across the Bay Area will attend weekday matinees of specially curated Festival film programs at subsidized ticket prices. Dozens of filmmaker guests from around the world will also visit local classrooms to meet and discuss their films with students. Many SATF films are supplemented by study guides, providing participating teachers with questions, activities and resources for integrating each film s content into their classroom and curriculum. To commemorate this 20-year milestone, SFIFF54 features an additional series of special public programs showcasing SATF programming past and present. 20th Anniversary Celebration Tuesday, May 3, 5:00 pm Sundance Kabuki Cinemas $5 members, $6 general This program includes clips of past SATF films, live stories, tributes to educators and youth filmmakers and a reception with complimentary drinks and appetizers. Teacher Appreciation Night Tuesday, May 3, 6:30 pm Sundance Kabuki Cinemas $11 members, $12 senior/student/disabled, $13 general In honor of National Teacher Day, we present the world premiere screening of American Teacher (see page 136) with special guests in attendance. Puppets in Film: An Animation Workshop for Kids Saturday, April 30, 10:30 am Festival Lounge, 1493 Webster Street (at Geary) $15 members, $20 general Award-winning puppeteer Yvette Edery, director of Jillian Dillon in the shorts program Do You See What I See?, leads this interactive weekend workshop for kids on puppet animation techniques. Ages La Matinée Animée: A Cat in Paris Sunday, April 24, 12:30 pm Sundance Kabuki Cinemas Sunday, May 1, 12:30 pm New People $11 members, $12 senior/student/disabled, $13 general, $8 children 12 and under Join us for this family-friendly matinee of the Englishlanguage version of the new animated feature film A Cat in Paris (see page 81). Shown with the Frenchlanguage short Specky Four Eyes. Ages eight and up. The SATF program also includes an annual essay contest, for which students of all grade levels write about films they ve seen at the Festival and compete for cash prizes. The complete list of feature films, documentaries and shorts programs selected for this year s SATF program can be found at fest11.sffs.org. Our kids had a bake sale and raised $1,400 for the school in Salone. Lots of cookies and donations from families who were moved that their kids were so touched by the film experience. So Schools at the Festival is much more than a field trip for us. Anne Paine, teacher, San Francisco Day School I received a bunch of letters from one class who were so moved by my film that they wanted to write to my contributors to let them know how inspired they had been. This surely is what outreach is all about. Lucy Bailey, director, Mugabe and the White African 183

142 BRAZILIAN DIRECTOR AND RECIPIENT OF THE 2010 FOUNDER S DIRECTING award WALTER SALLES PRESENTS A MASTER CLASS AT SFIFF53. conversations Master Classes An extension of the year-round SFFS Film Craft & Film Studies program, this series of master classes provides a unique opportunity for audiences to engage with special Festival guests and get an insider s look at intriguing cinema subjects. Jean-Michel Frodon: The Critic s Response and Responsibility Thursday, April 28, 7:30 pm Sundance Kabuki Cinemas $12 members, $15 general French film critic Jean-Michel Frodon, a former critic for Le Point and Le Monde, former editor-in-chief of Cahiers du Cinéma and the 2011 Stanford Humanities Center Bliss Carnochan Visitor, will explore the task and purpose of the film critic in cinema today. Frank Pierson: A Writer s Life Friday, April 29, 5:00 pm Sundance Kabuki Cinemas $15 members, $20 general Join legendary screenwriter and recipient of this year s Kanbar Award Frank Pierson (Cool Hand Luke, Dog Day Afternoon) for an intimate discussion about the craft of screenwriting. The Producer/Director Collaboration Sunday, May 1, 1:00 pm Sundance Kabuki Cinemas $15 members, $20 general Salons This new discussion series is designed to deepen and enhance the Festival experience and take it a few steps beyond the post-screening Q&A. Bay Area film scholars and filmmakers lead in-depth audience conversations about major film genres and prominent Festival themes. See one or more of the films listed in each category, then join us for the corresponding salon to engage with other cinephiles. The Social Justice Documentary Monday, April 25, 8:30 pm Sundance Kabuki Cinemas $11 members, $12 senior/student/disabled, $13 general Salon host Bill Nichols is a cinema studies professor at San Francisco State University and an author specializing in documentary and ethnographic films, film history and theory, and rhetoric and visual representation. Susan Saladoff, director of Hot Coffee, will also participate in the discussion. Films up for discussion: Better This World, Crime After Crime and Hot Coffee. Expressions of French Cinema Sunday, May 1, 3:15 pm Sundance Kabuki Cinemas $11 members, $12 senior/student/disabled, $13 general Salon host Susan Weiner is the author of Enfants Terribles: Femininity and Youth in the Mass Media in France, and a former professor of French cultural studies at Yale University. Films up for discussion: Children of the Princess of Cleves, Hands Up, I m Glad My Mother Is Alive and The Place in Between. Join producer Alison Dickey and director Azazel Jacobs (Terri) for an in-depth discussion about working together to bring this year s Centerpiece film to the screen. 184

143 Golden Gate Award Screeners Filmmaker Services Consultation services Fiscal sponsorship Film Arts Forum Grants and residencies Membership services sffs.org Rachel Aloy Michael Arago Lynda Benoit Tangee Boyce Amalia Bradstreet Jill C. Brooke Charlie Canfield Jason Carey Maïa Cybelle Carpenter Paula Cavagnaro William Clark Karl Cohen Teresa Concepcion Laura Costantino Emily Doe Jesse Dubus Jeffrey Edalatpour Elsa Eder Nancy Fishman Jamal Gamal Pam Grady Justin Graham Robin Griswold James Gunn Rachel Hart Trevor Hazel Gail D. Huddleson Mary Kalin-Casey Athena Kalkopoulou Cynthia Kane Barbara Klutinis Kristine Kolton Jon Korn Gustavus Kundahl David Liu Frako Loden Monique Montibon Peter Moore Carol Nakaso Joanne Parsont Yoander Perdomo Francesca Prada Jennifer Rowland Erika Shershun Gail Silva Sam Stewart Galina Stoletneya Phoebe Tooke Alan Travis Natasha V Shannon Walter Gavrilah Wells Trinity West Sharon Wood Matthew Zabb-Parmley Keith Zwölfer Annual Fund Campaign 2011 exploration discovery transformation exploration Photo by tommy Lau 192

144 ABOUT US san francisco film society The San Francisco Film Society inspires the progressive evolution of film culture and transforms individual lives via a brilliant slate of programs and services designed for diverse audiences. exhibition The Film Society brings the best in international, independent and documentary film to the Bay Area with an array of screenings, festivals, events, talks and more throughout the year. highlights of SFFS yearround programming include the San Francisco International Film Festival, the longest-running film festival in the Americas; a robust Fall Season comprised of small, focused festivals; and SFFS Screen, presenting extraordinary world cinema on a daily basis. Newsletters Sign up at sffs.org and sf360.org. Picture Talk The weekly online resource for the latest Film Society happenings, upcoming events, free screenings and education programs. Filmmaker Newsletter A monthly digest of SFFS news and events specifically for the filmmaking community. Scoop du Jour Daily Festival highlights and best bets during SFIFF54, available via daily s and in print at the Festival info table at Sundance kabuki Cinemas. Watch video Scoops on fest11.sffs.org. SF360 enewsletter upcoming film events on Tuesdays and features, breaking news and filmmaking how-to articles on Thursdays. education The Film Society s youth Education program brings international cinema and media literacy to more than 10,000 teachers and students annually through film screenings, media presentations, interactive discussions, filmmaker visits to schools, study guides and teacher training. Film Craft & Film Studies classes and workshops offer emerging artists, film professionals, hobbyists and cinephiles of all ages engaging opportunities to learn the business and art of filmmaking as well as expand their cinematic experience. NetworK with Us Facebook San Francisco Film Society Twitter SF_FilmSociety filmmaker services offering a full suite of programs and activities designed to foster creativity and further the careers of independent filmmakers, the Film Society s Filmmaker Services program empowers filmmakers of all levels, taking their projects from conception to completion and beyond through its project development and fiscal sponsorship services, grants and residencies programs and a variety of networking events throughout the year. sffs Map out SFIFF54 gowalla.com/users/sffs/trips San Francisco Film Society causes & impacts now more than ever, filmmakers are producing films that raise awareness, influence opinion, change behavior, encourage action and even instigate social movements. By bringing these works to Bay Area audiences each year, the Film Society acts as an advocate, catalyst and change agent for the many causes these programs and films bring to light. sf360.org get involved The Film Society would like to thank its community of interns and volunteers who help create the transformative experiences that celebrate film culture all year long. Find out more about the San Francisco Film Society at sffs.org. The country s only independent regional film publication, SF360.org showcases the variety and vitality of the San Francisco Bay Area film and media scene. The daily online magazine serves a regional and national audience of filmmakers, industry professionals and aficionados with more than 1,000 feature stories, an ever-expanding filmmaking manual, deadlines and events listings and snapshots from America s film and media frontier. stay connected Smartphone users have SFIFF54 at their fingertips via fest11mobile. sffs.org, a mobile website that provides full program information and event details on the go. 193

145 San Francisco Film Society San Francisco Film Society 39 Mesa Street, Suite 110 The Presidio San Francisco CA Tel Fax Web Board of Directors George Gund III, chairman J. Patterson McBaine, president Doug Biederbeck Melanie Blum Max Boyer Glynn Frank Caufield Jennifer Chaiken John M. Diefenbach Dale Djerassi Carla Emil Sid Ganis William R. Hearst III James H. Herbert II Maurice Kanbar Graham Leggat, ex officio Fred M. Levin Janet McKinley Celeste Meier Howard Roffman Barbara Tomber Todd Traina Penelope Wong Advisory Board Joaquín Alvarado Maria Bello Britt Bensen Honorable Willie L. Brown, Jr. Marc Capelle Jean-Claude Carrière Melanie Cornwell Peter Coyote Stefanie Coyote Chris defaria Clint Eastwood Jeannette Etheredge Danny Glover Madelyn Hammond Ed Harris Lynn Hershman Leeson Werner Herzog Jim Hoberman Dustin Hoffman Anita Jaffe Hugo Lai Lois Lehrman Mike Leigh Tom Luddy Susie McCormick Cornelius Moore Jim Morris Adrienne Port Robert Redford Jorge Ruffinelli Kevin Spacey Steven Starr Robert Towne John Waters FILMMAKER Advisory Committee Peter Bratt Christine Dewey Hannah Eaves Pamela Harris Tony Liano Jamie Meltzer Beth Pielert Peter Quartaroli Ellen Schneider Tiffany Shlain Robin Sloan Film Society Awards Night Committee Chairs Melanie and Lawrence Blum HONORARY Chairs Carla Emil and Rich Silverstein Film Society Awards Night Committee honorary host committee Nena and Tom Bernard Jennifer and Doug Biederbeck Jerry Bruckheimer Joan Chen Karen and John Diefenbach Chiara DiGeronimo Dale Djerassi Jeannette Etheredge Jane and Douglas Ferguson Honorable Dianne Feinstein and Richard C. Blum Milos Forman Agnes Gund George Gund IV Llura and Gordon Gund Theo Gund Margaret and Will Hearst Cecilia and Jim Herbert Katie and Claude Jarman Philip Kaufman Edith Kramer George Lucas Monique and Tom Luddy Nicola Miner and Robert Mailer Anderson Rob Nilsson Nancy K. and Steve H. Oliver Honorable Nancy Pelosi and Paul Pelosi Nini and Miller Ream Mary Robinson Jan and David Sargent Roselyne Swig Sibylle Szaggars and Robert Redford Barbara Tomber and Don Mathews Diane Wilsey table sponsors screen legend Karen and John Diefenbach Carla Emil and Rich Silverstein George Gund III Margaret and Will Hearst Celeste and Anthony Meier mogul First Republic Bank Maurice Kanbar Susie and Pat McBaine Nicola Miner and Robert Mailer Anderson Penelope Wong and Tim Kochis executive producer Frank Caufield Theo Gund and George F. Gund Cecilia and Jim Herbert Janet and Thomas McKinley Howard Roffman Katie and Todd Traina Wells Fargo Diane Wilsey director Jennifer and Doug Biederbeck Melanie and Lawrence Blum Honorable Willie L. Brown Jr. Jennifer Chaiken and Sam Hamilton Chicken and Egg Pictures Dale Djerassi Nancy Hult Ganis and Sid Ganis Max and David Glynn Nancy Livingston and Fred M. Levin Nancy K. and Steve H. Oliver Barbara Tomber and Don Mathews VISA Inc. individual supporters This list includes Film Society Members and Annual Fund donors As of March 20, 2011 * Indicates member of the Film Society board of directors LEADERSHIP Premier Circle $250,000+ George Gund III* Maurice Kanbar* Sharon and Larry Malcolmson Susie and Pat McBaine* $100,000 $249,999 Margaret and Will Hearst* Celeste* and Anthony Meier $25,000 $99,999 Frank Caufield* Carla Emil* and Rich Silverstein Cecilia and Jim Herbert* Fred M. Levin* and Nancy Livingston Suzie Reider and Brian Smith Katie and Todd Traina* Penelope Wong* and Tim Kochis visionary circle $10,000 $24,999 Anonymous Jennifer and Doug Biederbeck* Denis P. Bouvier Caroline Crawford Jean and Josette Deleage Karen and John Diefenbach* Dale Djerassi* Rudi Dundas Doris Fisher Max* and David Glynn Julie, Wally and Walter Haas Arlene Inch Lynn Kirshbaum Sharon and Larry Malcolmson Nion T. McEvoy and Leslie D. Berriman Thomas and Janet McKinley Susan Murdy Fred Phillips Howard Roffman* Camilla and George Smith Diane B. Wilsey Charlotte and David Winton producer CIRCLE $5,000 $9,999 Edward V. Abratowski Melanie* and Lawrence Blum Charles N. and Margaret Charnas Penny and James George Coulter Guerrino De Luca Peter Dolan Randi and Bob Fisher Nancy Hult Ganis and Sid Ganis* Linda and Jon Gruber John and Tina Keker George and Judy Marcus Alexander and Carolyn Mehran Ron and Diane Miller Timothy Mott and Ann Jones Paul Spiegel Barbara Tomber* and Don Mathews Skylar Woodward Saul Zaentz 194

146 Luminary Members Club $900 $2,900 (includes Annual Fund Benefactor and Chairman s Club donors) Anonymous Carol Baker Joe T. Bamberg Barrish Bail Bonds Owsley Brown III Mark Buell and Susie Tompkins Buell Marc Capelle and Sara Murphy Nina Carroll Stefanie and Peter Coyote Robert K. Culley Arianne Z. Dar Guerrino De Luca David dewilde Ray and Dagmar Dolby Becky Draper Julia Erickson and Arthur Rothstein Netta F. Fedor William S. and Sakurako Fisher Fraenkel Gallery Jonathan Gans and Abigail Turin David M. Goodstein and Olga Perkovic Theo Gund Martine Habib Lynn Hershman and George Leeson Beth and Hank Holland Robert James and Howard Grothe Adam J. Klein Herbert Kurz John M. Lobato Lucasfilm Foundation Ken Malcolmson, in honor of Sharon and Larry Malcolmson Catherine Marcus David F. and Lori Marquardt Douglas Marschke Susan J. Martin James McElwee Linda and Tony Meier Merchant Steven L. Merrill Joan Maze Miles and Marion L. Miles Jr. Claudia D. Miller and Ron E. Corral Bert Mittler Philip Monego and Sandra Dinubilo Marjorie S. Munson William and Susan Oberndorf Nancy K. and Steve H. Oliver Jan and Howard Oringer Sharon Diane Ow-Wing Mary Prendiville and Richard Lopez John Riordan Jason Rogan Yvonne and Angelo Sangiacomo Brenda Shank, M.D., Ph.D. Jane Spray Heidi and John Stone Robert P. Taylor and Anne D. Kaiser Jay and Shannon Thomson Laney and Pasha Thornton Trevor and Alexis Traina Jack and Susy Wadsworth Leslie Walker and Buzz Burlock John Waters Benjamin and Patricia Winslow Paul Zaentz Film Director $500 $900 (Includes Annual Fund Patron donors) Actual Films Janice Anderson-Gram Richard Benefield and John Kunowksi Gretchen and John Berggruen Beatrice Bowles Jamie and Philip Bowles Sue Busby and Glen Hildebrand Andrew Byrnes Lisa Carlin Edward and Nancy Conner John Dawson Levon Der Bedrossian and La Méditerranée Steven and Pamela Dinkelspiel Netta and Michael Fedor Carolyn and Timothy Ferris Elisabeth and Greg Fowler, in honor of Penelope Wong and Tim Kochis Thomas and Sandy Friedland Dayna Goldfine and Dan Geller Kaatri Grigg Robert Holgate Linda and Robert Holub Leslie and George Hume Bill and Kathy Lazzaretti Stephen and Maribelle Leavitt Mr. and Mrs. P. Levensohn Bonnie Levinson and Donald Kay Sara MacPherson and Dr. Robert Bhistkul Alisha L. McCutcheon Walter and Aggie Murch Virginia Newhall Jim Newman and Jane Ivory B.L. Peuto and A. Betraud Peuto Bradley Post William and Karin Rabin, in honor of Nellie Wong Tuesday A. Ray Rebecca Ross Contee Seely Ivan Serdar and Brian Espinoza Wylie and Judy Sheldon Stephen L. Smith and Diana T. Go H. Marcia Smolens Katya Sorokko Stuhlmuller Vineyards Sundance Group John A. Traina Jr. Catherine Wagner and Loretta Gargan, in honor of Carla Emil Kirby Walker Lawrence Wilkinson CONTRIBUTOR $100 $499 Anonymous Stephen Bannatyne Charles Barile Ted Bartlett and Donna Hoghooghi Matthew Barton Laura Bass Karl Beck Susan Berger Law Andrew Black Tim Boettcher Romana and Nicholas J. Bracco Kimiko Burton Richard and Glynn Butterfield Larry Byrnes, in honor of Ana Stenzel and Trent Wallace Philipa and James Caldwell Jr. Mike and Gina Cerre Peter Chase Susan Churchill Margaret Clarson Chonita and Michael Cleary Gary Coates Lea Cohen Bruce Cree and Eleanor Harwood Cristine Dewey Earl Diskin Dolby Laboratories Lisa Doran Alan Epstein Sally-Ann and Ervin Epstein Jr., in honor of Jennifer Chaiken Elizabeth Erdos and Wayne Dejong Paul and Laura Escobosa Judith Ets-Hokin and Trig Liljestrand Paul and Dianne Felton Vicki and David Fleishhacker Hugh W. Foster Robert E. Frye, Whistling Communications Diana Fuller Rainer Gaethke Marina Galli Jameson Goldner Arnold A. Grossman Jana M. Hardy Elizabeth Hartka Allan and Nancy Herzog, in memory of Irma Levin Vivien Hillgrove and Karen Brocco James C. Hormel and Michael P. Nguyen Eleanor Jacobs Sid Jenkins Janet L. Johns Liz Keim Adam Keker Uzma and Ahmed Khaishgi Adam Klein Karen Kronick Shari and Phil Lalonde Hollis Lenderking Matthew Levine and Diane Duerr-Levine Anthony and Jodi Liano Delroy and Nashormeh Lindo John Lobato Vincent McCambridge Larry Mercer and Terry Senne Gerry Nagatani Hiro Narita and Barbara Parker Narita Leland Orser and Jeanne Tripplehorn Rajeev Prabhakar Don and Maureen Querio Charles and Patricia Raven Barbara and Charles Renfrew Royal Kennedy Rodgers Annie Roney Myra Rothfeld and Richard Shupak Ken Schneider and Marcia Jarmel John Sealander Anne W. Smith Carol A. Smith Lauren Sorkin Stephen and Elsa Spaulding Danielle Steel Susan Stern Timothy Streb Myron Sugarman and Cynthia Woods David Sweet Dolly Talaga Theatrical Stage Employees Local 16 IATSE Laura Thielen and George Eldred Andrea Turner Gregory and Virginia Tusher Leon Van Steen Paul Von Stamwitz Tim and Patricia Warner Melina and Tom Whitehead C. Lawrence and Anne Z. Whitman Alex Witherill Jon Yolles and Stacey Silver Mona Lisa Yuchengco and Lloyd LaCuesta 195

147 San Francisco Film Society San Francisco Film Society Staff EXECUTIVE OFFICE Graham Leggat Executive Director Rebecca Sills Executive Associate COMMUNICATIONS MARKETING Linda Butler Marketing Manager Jen Cox Marketing Associate PUBLICATIONS Miguel Pendás Creative Director Michael Read Publications Manager Barbara del Rio Design & Production Manager Mihai Manoliu The Spider Web Support Matthew Rancatore Graphics Intern SF360.org Susan Gerhard Editor-in-Chief Michael Fox Dennis Harvey Contributing Editors Julia Barbosa Gianmaria Franchini Kim Nunley Andrew Provost Jessica Sapick SF360.org Interns PUBLICITY Hilary Hart Director of Publicity Bill Proctor Publicity Manager DEVELOPMENT Kim Bender Director, Foundations & Major Gifts Suzanne McCloskey Director, Corporate Sponsorship Amanda Todd Development Manager Elizabeth Duran Development Associate membership Julia Rosof Membership Manager Jennie-Marie Adler Membership Associate EDUCATION Joanne Parsont Director of Education Michael A. Behrens Filmmaker Education Manager Keith Zwölfer Youth Education Manager Trinity West Education Associate Emily Hoover Education Assistant Apeksha Agarwal Djajijo Bola Luis Guzman Yuko Inatsuki Masakazu Nagane Ryan Nemec Education Interns FILMMAKER SERVICES Michele Turnure-Salleo Director, Filmmaker Services Athena Kalkopoulou Fiscal Sponsorship Coordinator Sara Dosa Grants & Residencies Coordinator Katelind Ikuma Samuel Tomfohr Jale Yoldas Filmmaker Services Interns finance, administration & operations FINANCE & ADMINSTRATION Steven Jenkins Deputy Director Keith Cowling Business Manager Sarah Bernat Office Manager INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY Ryan Del Gado IT Director OPERATIONS Sarah Cathers Director of Operations Jeremy Stevermer Technical Director Jay Wertzler Operations Manager PROGRAMMING Rachel Rosen Director of Programming Rod Armstrong Sean Uyehara Programmers Audrey Chang Golden Gate Awards Manager Joseph Flores Programming Coordinator Ally Fan Robin Griswold Julia Lee Judith Sealy Ashlee Szot Programming Interns FOR THE FESTIVAL communications MARKETING Rebecca Sweeney Marketing Assistant Jamal Pinkney Derek Sagehorn Marketing Interns publications Damon O Donnell Publications Associate Howie Severson Production Coordinator Harlen Mallis Digital Media Coordinator Robert Avila Copy Editor Jason Sanders Editorial Support Marc Capelle Music Director Erin Coker Scoop du Jour Video Host Rose de Heer Mei Levenson Marsha H. Levine Production Artists Denise Granger Print Broker Jeffrey Lowe Graphics Intern publicity Jason Berger Julieta Esteban Betty Tweedy Publicists Camille Bertrand Jannette Bivona Diane Lo Laura Molinari Publicity Interns Pamela Gentile Lead Photographer George F. Gund Tommy Lau Pat Mazzera Tanya Dueri Photographers DEVELOPMENT Victoria Amaro Development Assistant Kaleigh Gaynor Tera Ragan Brianne Ries Executive & Development Interns 196

148 Elise Cuvelier Membership Intern WINSLOW & ASSOCIATES SPECIAL EVENTS COORDINATORS Lynne Winslow President Neil Figurelli Vice President Saifon Doucet Business Manager Antonio Pagni Production Manager Simin Atayman Molly Glover Curtis Maughlin Diane Romualdez Tina Valentine Event Coordinators Nancy Li Rafael Musni Restaurant Coordinators Janet Glynn Intern EDUCATION Emily Doe Rocío Salazar Schools at the Festival Filmmaker School Visit Coordinators finance, administration & operations ADMINISTRATION Shannon Walter Administrative Assistant Box office Mitch Vaughn, Box Cubed Box Office Manager Ben Armington, Box Cubed Box Office Manager Adele Burnes Dimitri Camsat Adrianne Chu Sarah Flores Vanessa Gentry Brian Govender Katelind Ikuma Mike Keegan Erin Klenow Julie Lipe Oriana Reyes Lydia Smith Matthew Wanlin Box Office Cashiers Operations David Owen Festival Events Producer Sarah Bernat Stage Manager tech Timothy Taylor Assistant Technical Director Mike Shoun Technical Manager Jon Bastian David Goodyear Kahlil Karn Cat Lam Hal Rowland Projectionists Rick Baraff Tad Barker Aaron Delman Jacob Heule Jordi Valdes Peter Williams Technical Assistants THEATER OPERATIONS Gyllian Christiansen Theater Operations Manager Jackie Moe Sarah Simonds Theater Operations Assistants transportation Meredith Potter Transportation Manager Peter Lowe Transportation Associate VENUE OPERATIONS Alan Valensky Jessica Wilson Venue Operations Managers Christine Frey Keeyan Majdi Festival Lounge Managers volunteers Michael LoPresti Volunteer Manager Whitney Chaney Volunteer Associate programming GUEST OFFICE Christine Davila Guest Office Manager John Cardellino Jenni Rowland Guest Coordinators Matthew Takata Special Guest Coordinator Dori Stegman Talent Producer print traffic Jesse Dubus Print Traffic Manager Dylan Reiff Print Traffic Associate PROGRAMMING Denis DeLaRoca Vicci Ho Elisabeth Lequeret Program Consultants Christine Davila Associate Programmer Ally Fan Robin Griswold Julia Lee Judith Sealy Ashlee Szot Programming Interns Creative Credits Festival creative by Method Design Festival trailer motion graphics by Aaron Becker Festival original music by Marc Capelle and Monte Vallier Photo Credits Photo of Graham Leggat on page 28 by Michael Read. Photo of George Gund III on page 35 by Pamela Gentile. Photo of Walter Salles on page 37 by Tommy Lau. Photo of Robert Duvall on page 39 by Tommy Lau. Photo of Matthew Barney on page 42 by Hugo Glendinning, courtesy Gladstone Gallery, New York. Matthew Barney stills on page 43 courtesy Gladstone Gallery, New York. Still from Beginners on page 58 courtesy of Focus Features. Photo of Mike Mills on page 58 by Sarah Soquel Morhaim. Photo of Elijah Wood and Evan Rachel Wood on page 59 by Tommy Lau. Photo of Walter Salles, Robert Duvall and James Schamus on page 60 by Pamela Gentile. Photo of Serge Bromberg on page 64 by Léo Delafontaine. Photo of Matthew Barney on page 65 by Hugo Glendinning; courtesy Gladstone Gallery, New York. Still from Drawing Restraint 17 on page 65 by Hugo Glendinning, courtesy Gladstone Gallery, New York. Photo of Walter Salles on page 66 by Tommy Lau. Photo of Robert Duvall on page 67 by Tommy Lau. Photo of Kaspar Astrup Schröder on page 72 by Tommy Lau. Still from La Dolce Vita on page 114 courtesy Cineteca di Bologna/ Reporters Associati. Photo of Federico Fellini on page 114 courtesy Cineteca di Bologna/ Reporters Associati. Photo of Raúl Ruiz on page 126 by Pamela Gentile. Photo of the Master Class with Walter Salles on page 184 by Tanya Dueri. 197

149 Acknowledgments Betsy Abendroth William Adams Brooks Addicott Michael Ahrens Gunnar Almer Ioannis Andreades Jordan Angle Mark Ankner Wakana Arai Viviana Araneda Ed Arentz Sten Arne Rosnes Meagan Asplin Arnaud Aubelle Krissy Bailey Bill Banning Michael Barker Joe Bender Richard Benefield Katie Beneicke Dan Berger Nicole Berman Tom Bernard Andrea Bertolini BJ Crystal, Inc. Livia Bloom Stephanie Bolton Adreine Bowles Denise Bradley Elizabeth Brambilla Peter Bratt Josh Braun Phil Bronstein Grant V. Brown Owsley Brown III Debbie Brubaker Tom Bruchs Crystal Bryant Kristina Bunger Chris Burdett Meghann Burns Jessica Bursi Paul Burt Luis R. Cancel Marc Capelle Amelia Carpenito Antonucci Kim Caruana Jonathan Chait Aurbach Florence Charmasson Catherine Chau Joan Chen Thomas J.C. Chen Anna-Mae Chin Hwa-seon Choi Dennis Chu Martin Chu Wendy Chu Tracy Cink Brian Collette Michelle Collins Rebeca Conget Gerry Corbett Juan Ignacio Correa Matt Cowal Peter Coyote Stefanie Coyote Bruce Cree and Eleanor Harwood Eilish Cullen Steve Cummings Santhosh Daniel Manohla Dargis Marika Davis Ninfa Dawson Rosana de Sa Lindsay Dedo Denis DeLaRoca Thania Dimitrakopoulou Paul Discoe Dish Café James Dutcher Hannah Eaves Klaus Eder Ken Eisen Mark Eitzel Daniela Elstner Delphine Eon Jeannette Etheredge Michael Farmer Kevin Farnham Mike Farrah Liza Burnett Fefferman Howard Feinstein Carlos Félix Corona David Fenkel Festival Internacional de Cine de Morelia Sarah Finklea Sandro Fiorin Fei Ling Foo Jeffrey Fraenkel Fraenkel Gallery Dale Fridell Benjamin Friedland Betty Friend Diana Fuller Christine Gagliardo Mark Ganter Alex Garcia María Belén García Alcat Amélie Garin-Davet Christopher Geison Kathy Geritz Nancy Gerstman Kaveh Gharib Dulcinea Gonzalez Bill Gosden Lizette Gram Mygind Nancy Gribler Brad Griffin William Gruenberg Martine Habib Brian Han Rachel Hart Lauren Hart Ann Hatch Chris Hatfield Mohamed Hefzy Abigail Holmes Diana Holtzberg Seiji Horibuchi Christine Horstmann Marcus Hu Paul Hudson Johnny Ray Huston Manami Iboshi Steve Indig Hiroshi Inomata Joshua Jelly-Schapiro Larry Jenkins Nathalie Jeung Ali Johnston Doug Jones Linda Jordan Amber Kaplan Maciej Karpinski Jennifer Katell Mike Keegan Liz Keim Heejeon Kim Laura Kim Wes Kinnear Elyse Klaidman Ani Klose Marion Klotz Jorge Kobe Irena Kovarova Ryan Krivoshey David Kwok Yura Kwon Tomi Lahdesmaki Claudia Landsberger Pascale Langlois Karen Larsen Winnie Lau Claudia Lehan Juliette Lepoutre Dan Lettieri Caroline Libresco Cheng-Sim Lim Aida LiPera Alessandro Lombardo Bill Longen Richard Lorber Tom Luddy Cindy Lund Allen Machain Marie-Pierre Macia Lindsay Macik Maggie Mackay Sanam Madjedi David Magdael Robert Mailer Anderson Hiromi Makepeace Guillaume Mannevy Isabel D.C. Markl Jonathan Marlow Anne-Claire Martin Pablo Maseda Ayesha Mathews- Wadhwa Carol Anne McCrystal Catherine McCrystal Andrea McStocker Pamela Meneses Merchants of Upper Market and Castro Becky Mertens Meta Interfaces, Inc. Gary Meyer Daniela Michel Charlotte Mickie Paul Miller Rachel Milstein Jackie Moe Anita Monga Matt Moon Peter Moore Robert Morales Jim Morris Eddie Muller Robert Murdock National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture Russell Nelson Valeska Neu Rick Norris Claude Nouchi Luc Ntonga Jef Nuyts Mike Olcese Gary Olive Barbro Osher Susan Oxtoby Miira Paasilinna Gary Palmucci Steve Pelinacci Manfred Peng Angela Penny Mark Peranson Miles Perkins Richard Peterson Thomas Petit Frances Phillips Michael Pickman- Thoon Silvia Pinterova Mike Popalardo Mario Porto John Powers Tom Prassis Pusan International Film Festival Tom Quinn Jeremy Quist Jennifer Rainin Juan Ramirez Pascale Ramonda Courtney Regan Sandra Reid Charlotte Renaut Jennifer Revoir Danae Ringelmann Mariette Rissenbeek Jerry Rojas Lorrae Rominger Eric Rorer Becky Ross Peter Rothen Camille Rousselet George Rush Jr. Emily Russo Renate Sache Jeffrey Sakson Sarajevo Film Festival Marlene Saritzky Eric Schell AJ Schnack Kary Schulman Lauren Schwartz Samantha Scupp Heather Secrist Natalie Serfözö Neta Shacham Cindy Shamban Sam Sharkey Joel Shepard David Sibbet Michael Silberman Rosemary Silverman Renee Simms Alissa Simon Britta Sjogren Elena Smirnova Dustin Smith Gavin Smith Ashley Soares Karolina Sobecka Deanne Sowter Shelley Spicer Chris Statton Kate Statton Peter Stein Judy Stone Melinda Stone Micaela Swafford Patricia Sweetow M.T. Sylvia Clémence Taillandier Sandi Tan Nadja Tennestedt Claire Thibault Kyle Thorpe Skye Thorstensen Geir Tonnessen Akiva Tor Toronto International Film Festival Robin Treasure Kristin Treiber Shelley Trott Frederick Tsui Marie-Pierre Ulloa Camille Utterback Shannon Valcich Linda Valdespino Bart van Bolhuis Ron Vandenberg Jaap Veerman Juan Vélez Marc Vogl Ragnar von Schiber Leslie Vuchot Katrina Wan Villy Wang Cari Waters Marius Watz John Weaver III Adam Weiss Ryan Werner Molly Wiebe Chris Wiggum Jennifer Wilson Gisela Wiltschek Stacey Wisnia Leo Wong Vicky Yang Sherman Yee Jennifer Ziegler 198

150 CAUSES & IMPACTS LIFE, ABOVE ALL better this world American TEACHEr Vanessa Roth USA Better THIS World Kelly Duane de la Vega, Katie Galloway USA Crime After Crime Yoav Potash USA The Green Wave Ali Samadi Ahadi Germany/Iran Hot Coffee Susan Saladoff USA Kinyarwanda Alrick Brown USA/Rwanda Life, Above All Oliver Schmitz South Africa/Germany Miss ReprESENTATIon Jennifer Siebel Newsom USA The Pipe Risteard Ó Domhnaill Ireland The San Francisco Film Society is committed to more than the passive viewing of films on the big screen. Contemporary filmmakers are producing powerful films that aim to raise awareness, influence opinion, change behavior, encourage action and even instigate social movements. By curating programs and cultivating new film projects that have the potential to effect change, and by bringing these works to Bay Area audiences each year including thousands of students through SFFS Youth Education outreach programs (see page 182) the Film Society fills the role of advocate, catalyst and change agent for the causes these programs and films bring to light. At SFIFF54, we have identified ten narrative and documentary films that expose and explore some of today s critical social issues, including criminal justice, civil liberties, AIDS in Africa, women in the media and the arts, education, the environment, democratic revolution and conflict and reconciliation. Join us for Festival screenings of these films and participate in conversations with filmmakers in attendance. We hope you will be inspired to play a part in making change, engage with other audience members and connect with other enthusiasts, activists or groups who stand ready to respond to cinematic calls to action. In addition to connecting audiences with these important causes, we also aim to measure the impact these films are having in the world. Throughout the Festival and beyond, we ask you to share with us how you have engaged with the films and what action you have taken on the issues after seeing them. We also welcome your opinions on how you d like us to continue to develop this Causes & Impacts initiative and measure positive change in the future.!women Art Revolution Lynn Hershman Leeson USA 200