NEWS/
SCOOP DU JOUR
WEDNESDAY 27 APRIL
 |
 |
|
 |
||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| |||||
It’s hump day, and the oldest film festival in the Americas marches on! Dashing Egyptian actor Khaled Naga returns for today’s screening of Microphone at the Kabuki. Also present for Q&As will be directors Lee Anne Schmitt (The Last Buffalo Hunt), Leonard Retel Helmrich (Position Among the Stars), Lech Majewski (The Mill and the Cross) and producer of the colorful work The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye, Martin Marquet. The poignant Living on Love Alone will be attended by filmmaker Isabelle Czajka, and the Get with the Program shorts series features visits by directors Arjun Rihan and Jonn Herschend. Over at PFA, local director and activist Yoav Potash will accompany his compelling documentary Crime After Crime, followed by shorts director Vera Brunner-Sung at The Deep End screening.
Scoop du Jour is supported by Esurance, a longtime fan and presenting sponsor of the San Francisco International Film Fest since 2008.
Today on SF360.org, Dennis Harvey unpacks the Tindersticks, who will perform their beautifully brooding music live to a melange of clips from the films of French auteur Claire Denis Monday night at the Castro. Tickets are still available, but they’re going fast. Act now and be rewarded.
We Are All Made of StarsAstronomers have found that the matter found on earth is existent throughout the cosmos; the calcium found on other planets is elementally the same as the calcium in human bones. Patricio Guzmán’s beautifully intriguing documentary Nostalgia for the Light takes this idea of interconnectivity a step further. Fielding questions from an adoring and enthusiastic audience, Guzmán explained that he sought to examine “the past of human beings and the past of matter. I believe human beings need to have an explanation of where they came from.” The process of making the film began with choosing his subjects: scientists, survivors and searchers. In the thin, dry air of Chile’s Atacama Desert, some are observing the skies and digging the earth for clues to our origins while others are surveying the arid landscape for signs of human remains from a more recent past. Realizing that they told “parallel stories, like columns,” Guzmán designed an artful way for both stories and tellers to intersect. One scientist, the daughter of political prisoners who were disappeared under Augusto Pinochet’s 1970s regime, waited seven months before agreeing to be interviewed. She explained in the film how being an astronomer brings her some peace in the realization that everything is part of a continuous cycle of life. “If not for her, there would not have been an ending to the film,” Guzmán said. “But you must not push. You let things happen by themselves.” The final screening of Nostalgia for the Light is tomorrow night at the Pacific Film Archive, 6:15 pm. —MM
Brothers from Another PlanetFestival programmer Sean Uyehara made it all sound so straightforward: He would introduce the Zellner brothers, a pair of Austin-based filmmakers. There would be shorts, a talk, more shorts and a final Q&A. Simple, right? Then a decrepit elderly man wandered to the stage. Resembling Hans Moleman, he read a prepared statement: “Hello there. Welcome. My name is David and Nathan Zellner, but you can call me Bobo. I come from the planet Fluborg, hold for applause.” This was only the first surprise in Sunday night’s From A to Zellner, a live performance and shorts showcase from the Zellner brothers, whose absurd work so often turns expectations on their head. The piece Flotsam/Jetsam emerged from a purely aesthetic desire, according to David. “For a long time I thought it would be fun to be out in the middle of the ocean on a raft made of luggage with a vacuum and a chicken on it.” When exactly that hallucinatory, poetic struggle of a man adrift at sea turned into a hysterical pseudo documentary of a shark attack is just part of the Zellner’s mystique. Throughout the night’s strange variety show, there was no predicting what would come next, with costume changes, additional characters played by their supposed grandfather (a Bay Area native born in 1923 just blocks away in a Fillmore abortion clinic), or that the brothers and elder statesman would end the show with an unplanned rendition of Limahl's theme from The Neverending Story, complete with a choreographed tap-dancing duet. —RP
El Extranjero“I wanted to create a character that was ultimately a Latin American,” director Oscar Godoy said, discussing Julio, in Ulysses, which had its world premiere at the Festival Tuesday. A Peruvian immigrant who struggles to make a life in Chile against a background of overt racism, Julio is played by Argentinian actor Jorge Román, in a bit of intentional cross-cultural casting. “People who know Chile recognize that I don’t speak like a Chilean,” Godoy said. “Because I grew up in Venezuela. I thought it appropriate that a film by a director with my background would have an Argentinian playing a Peruvian facing blind discrimination in Chile. It was more important to see him as an everyman, a mestizo.” How many of Godoy’s personal experiences are in the film is unclear (the audience failed to ask him if he’s ever worked in a slaughterhouse amidst twitching cow carcasses), but Godoy certainly drew from the experience of being a stranger in a strange land, with San Francisco holding a special place in his heart. “The first time I traveled outside of my country was to San Francisco. It was a revelation to find a city with a culture so rich and diverse. It was like holding a mirror to myself and confronting my Latin American identity.” Ulysses plays again at the Kabuki on Monday, May 2 and at the PFA on May 4. —RP
Best BetsTickets are available for the following screenings and events at the Kabuki: At Ellen’s Age (3:30); The Last Buffalo Hunt (4:00); Position Among the Stars (6:00); Attenberg (8:45). At New People: Get with the Program (9:30). A smattering of tickets is still available for tonight’s Founder’s Directing Award presentation and screening of Salvador with Oliver Stone (7:00, Kabuki). Snap them up before it’s too late!
Today’s Scoop contributors are Monique Montibon, Damon O’Donnell and Ryan Prendivile. For additional fest coverage, visit sf360.org.
