Jason goes to Silentfest: Opening Night

The most amazing, intense, extended weekend of the year kicked off Wednesday night, and of course I was there.

The film of the night was Buster Keaton's THE CAMERAMAN (1928): Let's look back on what I said about it back when it was the closing night film in 2012:

What can I say, this is Buster Keaton being a comic genius. It's also the first film he made for MGM, and the start of him losing control over his own films--something he later called his worst mistake in his life. But he's still great in this as a humble tin-type photographer who sees a pretty girl (Marceline Day,) finds out she works at an MGM newsreel office, and decides to clear out his savings account to buy movie camera, get the great footage, and really impress her. He just has a bit of a learning curve. But with his stone-faced gumption and a very clever monkey, he saves the day. It also includes a hilarious public pool sequence that is surprisingly risque for the time. Hilarious, and I just had to wonder how the cameramen on the movie felt about the scene showing a monkey could do their job.

Yup, I still stand by all of that. I'll just add a comment about the hilarious running scene where the girl of his dreams calls him up and he runs to her building before she can even hang up the phone. And, of course, I have to give credit to the brilliant musical accompaniment by Timothy Brock conducting students of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.

Credits where credit is due, with a cameo by my fingertip!

Then a little after party at McRoskey Mattress Company, the festival's longtime sponsor. A few drinks, catching up with my one-weekend-out-of-the year friends, and then it was time for a little sleep so I could work and then be at the festival again the next night.

Running Time: 72 minutes
My Total Minutes: 504,060

Jason goes to SFFILM: Closing Night

My final three movies of the festival. The fest continued for a couple more days, and I had tickets but my day job kept me from using them. But let's not worry about that, instead enjoy the films I did get to see.

I started the day with the documentary SHOW ME THE PICTURE: THE STORY OF JIM MARSHALL. Even if you don't know the name, if you've ever seen a picture of a musician you probably know the work of Jim Marshall. Chock full of archival footage and dazzling candid photographs, you get a sense of a master photographer, a man who loved music and the whole lifestyle, and whose lifestyle led to his ruin. Drugs and an obsession with guns ended up ruining him, and even his best friends and lovers couldn't sugar-coat it. But he certainly left a legacy, and this excellent documentary will ensure his legacy lives on.

Probably Jim's most famous photograph. The audience gleefully reproduced it.

Next up was THE HARVESTERS, a challenging film from South Africa. Janno is a sensitive boy living in a deeply religious, white Afrikaner family in Free State. His mother takes in a tough, troubled street kid named Pietr, and tells Janno to treat him like a brother. And Janno is a good kid, so he tries. But Pietr has a sort of charisma that seems dangerous. I'm sure if I knew more of the history and culture of South Africa, I could read a lot more into the parallels of family and post-Apartheid culture wars. But as it is, I confess I was a bit bored. So I'll leave it as "challenging." I could tell there was a great deal of skill and care taken in making the movie, but it's just not my cup of tea.

And then I ended the night with the closing night film, OFFICIAL SECRETS, the latest from Gavin Hood (TSOTSI, EYE IN THE SKY,...we won't speak of his attempts at a more commercial studio blockbuster). This time he takes on the true story of Katharine Gun (who was there for the screening!), played by Keira Knightley. She worked for UK intelligence, and was disturbed by an e-mail that went around urging them to dig up dirt on leaders of foreign countries as leverage for them to go to war with Iraq over...let's say "flimsy" evidence at best. For doing that, she was charged with treason and put on trial, then the charges were dropped because the government refused to present their evidence. The question of "Why?" has still never been answered. The movie is political, of course, but at it's core it's a story of the relationship between a journalist. In this case, Martin Bright of the Observer (Matt Smith) who carefully checked and corroborated every detail he could. All in all, a rousing and important film with which to end the festival.

Total Running Time: 308 minutes
My Total Minutes: 503,989

Jason goes to SFFILM: Saturday, April 20

My third and longest day of the festival--a whole 4 movies! (My regular readers will know how weak that is for me.)

First up at the Roxie was THE LITTLE COMRADE, a funny Estonian film about the Soviet era resistance and a six year old girl who doesn't understand all of what her parents are into and instead is happy with the recognition she gets being a good little comrade and singing the anthem of the Young Pioneers. So when her mother is taken away to a prison camp (which her father covers by saying she's going off to be treated for a medical condition) she only understands her instructions to be a good little girl, and she thinks that means to be a good, respected comrade. It's a movie about authoritarianism, but through the lens of how confusing it can be for a child, when everyone is an authority to you. It might make one wonder about today, and how authoritarianism creeps into the minds of children--and those with childish minds.

Next up was DEBT, a Turkish slice-of-life about a dutiful husband, father, and upstanding community member Tufan. He works in a print shop, but they're struggling. When his elderly neighbor is sick, he takes her in. But as economic hardships set in, and his houseguest strains his marriage (and her daughter is no help at all) the strain starts to get to him. It's not just about monetary debts, it's about the debts we owe to each other as human beings--kindness, charity, respect, tolerance, forgiveness. Sometimes it feels like he's falling behind because he's the only one paying those kinds of debts, while everyone else is just out for themselves. In that regard, he certainly makes for an engaging and sympathetic hero.

And then it was time to HAIL SATAN? Penny Lane (NUTS!, Festival 2016) is one of my favorite filmmakers. She brings comedic insight into her documentaries and is never boring. And she has a ripe subject here. First you have to understand the difference between The Satanic Temple and The Church of Satan, Aleister Crowley's hedonistic cult from San Francisco. The Satanic Temple is the more publicly engaged, politically active, and comedically inclined church (yes, this happened after the movie was made, but they're now officially recognized as a church). Most of them don't literally believe in Satan, they're atheists or non-theists who believe in Satan as a useful (albeit loaded) metaphor for principled and reasoned opposition to an overbearing power. After all, the Bible calls upon us to serve God without question. Another word for servitude is slavery. So they're calling on people to reject slavery for themselves and others.

They're the ones who, for example, when a statue of the Ten Commandments went up in front of a courthouse in Oklahoma City, they sued to put a Baphomet statue next to it. (And when the Ten Commandments was taken down, they removed their Baphomet statue because it didn't work out of the context of religious plurality). The movie follows the leadership as they pick their battles, advance their strategy (working within the system), and deal with some of the growing pains of becoming a large, international organization. There's an interesting episode with their Detroit chapter, whose leader is way more radical than the rest of them. Eventually they do have to sort of...excommunicate her? I don't know what to call it. It's not that they object to her radicalism, even with the parts of her shows where she calls for assassinating the President. But it doesn't help their strategy if she's doing that in their name. So they can let her keep doing it (because unlike most religions they want to let people do their thing, even if it's following a different religion) and she gets to talk about how she's so radical she was kicked out of The Satanic Temple. The movie also gets into the more mundane activities--adopting a highway or beach clean-up. For many of them civic duty is a part of their faith, and that's a good thing. And I'd be remiss not to mention the Seven Tenets, none of which I can find objectionable. All in all, a very entertaining movie that might just open some eyes, but at least never bores you.

And finally, that wasn't weird enough so I ended the night with MONOS, a war movie unlike any other. With absolutely no context, we are introduced to young soldiers (nearly child soldiers) fighting for "The Organization." They have a hostage, "Doctora" whom they must keep alive and keep from escaping. And they have a cow, a gift from their higher-ups as thanks for their great work. And they train, and they goof around and fires their guns randomly. If it weren't for the occasional battle scenes, you might think it was a group of crazy kids in the wilderness playing war (which, come to think of it, is a pretty good description of most wars.) This is another movie--sort of a hallmark of this festival--that I loved while watching it and then find incredibly difficult to describe afterward. It's surreal, hallucinatory, frightening, and hilarious. Events veer radically out of control, and I don't even remember how it ended, but I know I loved it.

Total Running Time: 388 minutes
My Total Minutes: 503,680

Jason goes to SFFILM: Saturday, April 14th

For my second day of the festival, I spent the full day in the amazing Dolby Labs. Seriously, next year when they open up again, you all have to see at least one film there.

First up was a documentary MIDNIGHT FAMILY. Mexico City is woefully understaffed by public ambulances--and that's an understatement. In place of a public system, an informal, largely unlicensed network of private ambulances serve the population. This is an extended ride-along with one of them, and it's the family business with everyone chipping in. They race other ambulances to scenes of accidents, they get abused by corrupt cops who need bribes or they might be run in for running an unlicensed ambulance business. They advise their "customers" whether to try to get help at a public hospital or actually get helped (if they can afford it) at private ones. Oh, and occasionally their customers can actually pay, and they eat something a little better than saltines and canned tuna. It veers wildly from tragedy to comedy (just like life) and is never ever boring (unlike life.) A hell of a ride.

Then a movie that really made use of the beyond-state-of-the-art Dolby Atmos format,THE SOUND OF SILENCE. Peter Sarsgaard stars as Peter Lucien, a "house tuner" in New York. The idea, vastly simplified, is that you might be having trouble sleeping not just because your old radiator is noisy, but because it's out of tune with your refrigerator, or the whole neighborhood. He's got quite an ear, and quite a wild theory. There's something orchestrating our lives. If not exactly controlling our every movement, it at least helps the denizens of New York City go about their lives without tripping over each other. And he thinks it's sound. Every neighborhood, every block has it's one chord. E.g., the Financial District has a fast-paced, frantic chord, while Central Park has a more relaxing one (I don't know enough music theory to even confirm this makes sense.) Anyway, that's his theory, and his house tuning business is a perfect way to collect data on that. But his theory runs into an anomaly--a woman whose troubles aren't fixed with a simple house tuning. The movie teeters on the edge of rom-com territory, as he becomes obsessed and maybe infatuated with her and how she just doesn't conform to his model of the world. She challenges him, and as he seeks recognition of his theory from the scientific community, it might just break him. A fascinating story that sounded amazing inside Dolby Labs. It'll be interesting when it comes out (in the Fall, I believe) how well it will play at the local multiplex. 

And finally I ended the night with AQUARELA, the newest from Victor Kossakovsky (¡VIVAN LAS ANTIPODAS!, San Francisco Film Festival 2012). He takes his vibrant camera work and observational style to the world of water. From rescuers on not-frozen-over-enough Lake Baikal to hurricanes in Miami and everywhere in between. Water is life, but water can also be a deadly instrument of nature's fury. There's little to no narrative here, so it's difficult to describe in words. But it's beautiful, thrilling, sometimes terrifying. And again, in Dolby's amazing theater lab, I just sat back and let it wash over me (pun intended). Fantastic.

Total Running Time: 258 minutes

My Total Minutes: 503,291

Jason goes to SFFILM: Saturday, April 13th

My day job has kept me away from going all out at film fests, and from blogging. But I did make the weekends of the SFFILM Festival. So here we go.

I started my festival in the amazing Dolby Labs (which opens it's beyond-state-of-the-art theater one weekend a year just for this festival) and the documentary WE BELIEVE IN DINOSAURS. It's an engaging, funny, informative, sincere, and even-handed look at the Ark Encounter creationist museum and...theme park? in Kentucky. The building of it (extremely polished and professional), the controversies (tax breaks for an institution that doesn't just discriminate against non-Christians, even evolution-believing Christians or old-earth creationists are barred from working there), and sometimes just the bizarre. One of the real head-scratchers (at least for me, who hasn't delved into the world of young-earth creationist "science") was their solution for how all the animals could fit on the Ark. See, it wasn't two of "every animal", it was two of "every type of animal." So for example they didn't need two lions and two tigers and two of every other species of big cat...you just needed two prototypical big cats and then they...didn't "evolve" but somehow over several generations became all the species of big cats? I guess? Anyway, I have to hand it to them, they made a place that looks like a lot of fun to visit, just based around an idea that I totally disbelieve.

Then over to the Roxie for Shorts 4: Animation. Hooray for cartoons!
You know, normally this is the part where I list them all, and tell you a little bit about each one. Sorry, it's been too long, I don't remember well enough. Some were funny, many were abstract, I was drinking a beer or two. It was good. Sorry for punting.

And then I ended the night with THE INNOCENT, an audacious Swiss German drama about religion, animal testing, former lovers, hallucinations, and a monkey. Ruth is an evangelical who works in an animal laboratory, experimenting in head transplants (or whole body except the head transplants) on monkeys. She passes out in church one day. Then while recovering she see her long lost fiance (who had gone to jail, then disappeared) has reappeared. But when she hires a detective to investigate, he finds solid, irrefutable proof that he is dead. And then it gets weird. And the driving scenes get terrifying. And I haven't even mentioned the sex cult at the youth Bible study camp. So I just sat there and watched in shocked delight. One of my favorites of the festival (since I'm writing all these after the festival is long over, I can say that without the qualifier of "so far.")

Total Running Time: 287 minutes
My Total Minutes: 503,032

Jason goes to Cinequest--Closing Night

I guess I should finally write this. It's been a while, so this will have to be extra-short reviews. Sorry.

Of course, despite the long night before, I was still up and in the lounge for drink number one on the final day. Or was that not me but...the Tito's Bandito?!!!

Look out for the self-proclaimed Tito's Bandito!

First up was BRING ME AN AVOCADO, an excellent little local drama. It's the story of tragedy befalling a good, loving family. Specifically, in the form of a mugger shooting and seriously wounding the mother. So the father has to step up and take care of the kids. But he has help, in the form of his sister-in-law and her best friend. Tragedy brings out strength. But over time, that strength diminishes and...moral failings surface. But it's to the credit of the movie and its excellent cast that even as you watch people fail, you still sympathize with them and believe their motivations. Ultimately, the strength of family love wins out over the messiness of life, but not without a struggle.

Then it was time for TEEN SPIRIT, starring the lovely Elle Fanning, recipient of a Maverick Spirit Award. She plays a small town girl who loves singing and gets a chance to shine in a televised pop singing contest, Teen Spirit. Elle does all her own singing, and I'm no expert but I thought she sounded good. The plot is a bit formulaic, but fun. The best part by far is Zlatko Buric playing the creepy looking old guy who cheers for her when she's performing in the bar, but who turns out to actually know talent and ends up being her (deeply flawed, alcoholic) mentor. So let that be a lesson to the volunteer who was introducing a film a couple of days before and tried to shame me and my friend when we cheered at the mention of Elle. Sometimes the creepy looking drunk guys cheering are actually just cheering in deep admiration for talent, not because they're creeps. (Note: I took that whole exchange as a joke and exchanged a thumbs-up with him afterward.)

The lovely and talented Elle Fanning.

Then I had time for a quick VIP reception at the Grill in the Fairmont, a few drinks, a few snacks, and then back to the California for a Life of a Maverick Award presentation to educator and innovator Esther Wojcicki.

And then finally time for the closing night film, THE MAN WHO KILLED DON QUIXOTE. Terry Gilliam's quest to make this film has become a thing of legend, even spawning the first (that I know of) "Unmaking-Of" documentary. Well, he's finally done it, through the story of a frustrated commercial filmmaker (Adam Driver) who had shown so much promise when he made his student film of Don Quixote. His strategy at the time was to find locals in Spain to play the roles, for added realism. And he happens to find himself in that same spot in Spain, and looks up the old shoemaker (Jonathan Pryce) who played his Don Quixote way back then. But he was confused then, and senile now, and believes he really is Don Quixote and Sancho Panza has come back to take him on a new adventure. What ensues is pure, mainlined Gilliam. Extravagant set design, a head-spinning story (although maybe that was all the booze) and a celebration of obsession and pursuit of art and beauty, even if (especially if!) it drives you absolutely mad!

And then it was all over but the drinking. First the official after party, and then the unofficial but traditional after-after party in the Fairmont lounge, and finally up to my suite for the last drinks with the last few die-hards at about 4 am.

And with that, another Cinequest is in the books...unless I finally find time to watch all those screeners...

Total Running Time: 328 minutes
My Total Minutes: 502,625

And since it was asked after I crossed my 1/2 a million minute mark:
Total Running Time of Cinequest movies I saw this year: 4,878  minutes
My Total Cinequest Minutes: 63,066*

*Since 2005, when I started counting. So this doesn't count my few Cinequest years before that. But it is fair to say I've spent a lot of time there.

Jason goes to Cinequest--Day 12

The penultimate day! And I was legitimately hurting by then. But sometimes you have to play through the pain. So here was the last Saturday at Cinequest:

I started with...well, let's be honest, I started with drinks in the lounge at 10 am, like every day. But after enough of that, I went to the movies.

The first show started with the short INTO THE PLAINS, starring Maggie Alexander, a returning Cinequester whose previous film ENTHUSIASTIC SINNERS...I slept through. Look, my blog has some integrity, if not intelligence. Anyway, this time I more or less stayed awake (by the end of the festival, I don't really know what I'm watching vs. what I'm dreaming,) and it's a very good and gripping story of a woman who is avoiding her husband, "working late," and not facing their shared trauma of losing a child. Instead, she just takes off.

That was paired with the feature, RITOMA, a fascinating and inspiring documentary about the worldwide reach of basketball. Worldwide, as in...all the way to nomadic tribes in Tibet. Even more amazingly, it made it all the way to MIT (okay, I can kid because my alma mater literally had a documentary made about how much they suck at basketball.) Anyway, Tibetan nomads learn basketball from NBA broadcasts in their free time. They've got a little skill, a lot of enthusiasm, and zero sense for the strategy of the game. Bill Johnson was an assistant coach for MIT, and he learned about the basketballing nomads, so he comes up with a wacky plan. He travels to Tibet, teaches a team, and sets up a tournament with 8 local teams (and some visiting Americans.) And they have a blast. It's clear from the beginning, although there is a "hero" team, it really doesn't matter who wins. This is all about the fun they're having. International sports diplomacy on the smallest scale possible.

Blah blah blah, more drinks in the lounge. Ya know, I think I blame "Hambone."

Then back to the movies for a German crime thriller, CUT OFF. It's a satisfyingly gruesome story of a forensic pathologist who discovers a capsule inside a victim's skull. Inside is a note that leads to the realization that his 13 year old daughter has been kidnapped and threatened. This leads him on a wild chase with the help of his bumbling intern, with more notes hidden inside more victims, and a roundabout plot involving the an old case where he couldn't provide enough evidence to put a murderer away for long enough. Like most overly elaborate thrillers, the plot steps way outside the bounds of credulity, but ignore that and it's a lot of fun, and is twisty enough that I couldn't quite see the ending coming.

Next up was Shorts Program 4 - Animated Worlds. Hooray for cartoons!
THE BACKWARD ASTRONOMER: The decadent but empty romance of the wealthy, until a young man learns to be a backward astronomer and look down on the world from the moon.
FREAKS OF NURTURE: A young woman learns that her mom is amazing, in a cool stop-motion short.
FUN MORE: Super short, overlapping tasks and crude line drawings.
GUAXAMA: Memories of children on the beach, literally drawn in the sand.
I'M OKAY: Expressionist artist Oskar Kokoschka in WWI. Animated in a very playful style.
INANIMATE: A puppet has a sort of mental breakdown and starts questioning reality. Expect the unexpected.
MR. DEER: Animals on the subway. Being animals, just like people do.
NOT YET: A Hungarian film about a child searching for his mother. TBH, I don't remember much about this one.
ON THE DAY YOU WERE BORN: With simple line drawings, a man starts growing on his 45th birthday. Soon he can't fit his house, or his clothes, and then there's just a naked giant walking through town with his dong hanging out. Very funny.
PRIZEFIGHTER: Heavyweight champion Jack Johnson beat the whole world. But he was still subject to racism.
RANDOM THOUGHTS: Man Hurts Hotdog. Other anagrams. The story of an animator submitting to a film festival. Possibly based on Cinequest. From Steven Vander Meer, of SALMON DEADLY SINS (Cinequest 2014).
SELFIES: Made from selfies, about selfies.
SOLILOQUIES: A teen with anxieties, based on the life of filmmaker Julia Song.
TRUMP BITES: Bill Plympton animates actual Trump quotes, in his inimitable way.
TWO OF EVERY KIND: A couple of peacock queens make snarky comments about the others on the ark.

Then more shorts, Shorts Program 3 - Sci-Fi,  Fantasy, and Horror. Hooray for the far-out films (but not quite Mindbenders)
8:27: Earlier in the fest I saw THE LAST SUNRISE, which was a long form Chinese story about what happens if the sun goes out. This is a German take, and a more humorous take, on the same premise. Based on the time it takes light to travel from the sun to the Earth.
BOOK OF THE DEAD: A gorgeous CGI dream/nightmare about the process of dying...and returning.

I just really, really, really like this image

DAZZLE BEAST: A dirty underworld, and a young girl with a little magic.
THE GIVE AND TAKE: A funny story of an old eighties video game, a helpline that shouldn't really work anymore, and a cosmic glitch that allows it to work, and change the life of the guy answering the line.
HENRIETTA BULKOWSKI: Stop motion animation of a hunchback woman who wanted to fly, but could never look up. So she spent her life building a plane, only to find a bigger surprise.
JUMPY: An 8 bit videogame character has a lot of determination. He just needs to make that one big jump, but he keeps missing and getting increasingly frustrated.
LIFE ON MARS: A dying father convinces his little son that they'll meet again--on Mars.
NADINE: Superpowers and overcoming hate.
NEGROLAND: A poor black town, if the residents there were zombies. Or at least, if they were quarantined and mistreated like zombies. Actually, maybe it's a documentary about Flint, Michigan.
SHOULD YOU MEET A LADY IN A DARKENED WOOD: A nicely creepy animated piece about a taxidermist and his final prize. But the lady turns on him.
SINGULARITY: A brief consideration of super-intelligent artificial life.
TERMINALLY IN LOVE: Lovers, memories, fantasies, and dreams.
THE MISSING TRAIT: Inspired by the art of Magritte, a man...and his hat, are looking for the thing that is missing. Maybe an apple? Very cool.

And finally, I ended the night with BLOOD PARADISE, a very Swedish film featuring some gratuitous violence and the most gratuitous nudity of all of Cinequest. This wins the Skinequest prize this year. Robin Richards is a best-selling sleazy crime author, but she's in a bit of a rut. Her last book kinda flopped, and she has no inspiration for her next. So her publisher has an idea--send her to a Countryside Farm rustic resort for a little peace and quiet and hopefully some inspiration. But it's all just a little off, starting with the creepy driver Hans who claims to be her biggest fan and insists she calls him "Hans, Bubbi." Hans' wife is jealous and thinks they're having an affair. The farmer is a weirdo with a secret, his sister never speaks, his son is a gun nut. And it's all hilarious and sleazy, in a perfectly Swedish way, if that makes sense. At least, it has a Swedish sense of dry absurdity. I'm not sure if there's a stereotype of Swedish sleaze, but for now, for me, this is it.

And that was the end of Saturday. At least for the movies. There was still the matter of heading back to my hotel to drink with friends and filmmakers into the wee hours of the morning. First in the bar lounge so as not to disturb the sleeping guests. Then after they kicked us out at 2 am up to the room.

Total Running Time: 517 minutes
My Total Minutes: 502,297