San Francisco Intl Film Festival 2011

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Parent Category: Film Festivals

Category: Previews

Published on Thursday, 21 April 2011 04:15

Written by Lynne Shannon

The San Francisco International Film Festival (SFIFF) plays its 54th year April 21 - May 5, 2011 at the Castro Theatre, Sundance Kabuki Cinemas, and other venues around San Francisco, California. The longest-running film festival in the Americas, SFIFF is “an extraordinary showcase of cinematic discovery and innovation in the country's most beautiful city.”

This year, the Opening Night film is Mike Mills's Beginners. A graphic artist learns more about life from his father, who emerges at 75 from a long, passionless marriage and comes out of the closet, refusing to let even a cancer diagnosis stop his late-blooming eagerness to experience love. With Ewan McGregor, Christopher Plummer, Mélanie Laurent, Goran Visnjic. Mills and McGregor are expected to attend a post-screening Q&A.

The Centerpiece Film is Terri, directed by Azazel Jacobs. “Terri is a heavy, shambling, pajama-wearing junior high student, the physical incarnation of all the insecurity and awkwardness that accompanies emerging adolescence. When vice principal Fitzgerald tags Terri as an at-risk student, an unexpected friendship blooms between two misfits in this hilariously touching, deeply humane tale of youth in transition.” With John C. Reilly, Jacob Wysocki, Creed Bratton, Olivia Crocicchia, Bridger Zadina.

The Closing Night film is On Tour, directed by Mathieu Amalric, who also stars. A disgraced French TV producer tries making a comeback with a troupe of buxom, brassy American burlesque performers touring the French countryside. With Miranda Colclasure, Suzanne Ramsey, Linda Marraccini, Julie Ann Muiz, Angela de Lorenzo, Alexander Craven.

In between are nearly 200 films, narrative and documentary, feature and short, from brand new to restorations.

One of those restored films -- the other is Fellini‛s La Dolce Vita -- is:

World on a Wire
dir. Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Rarely seen since 1973 -- and almost never here -- this adaptation from Daniel F. Galouye’s novel Simulacron-3 is a sci-fi tale that anticipates Tron. But Fassbinder, in his own inimitable, put a different spin on the world of computers and virtual reality. Michael Balhaus, the film‛s cinematographer, supervised the restoration of the film. With Klaus Löwitch, Ulli Lommel, Barbara Valentin, Günter Lamprecht, Kurt Raab, Margit Carstensen.

Other features from around the world are:

13 Assassins
dir. Takashi Miike (Japan)
The auteur who brought the world Ichi the Killer, Audition, Visitor Q and Zebraman, among other mold-breaking works, now brings out an homage to Japan’s golden age of samurai films. A noble samurai is drafted to assassinate a brutal lord and proceeds to recruit 12 other fighters. Miike says it best himself: "13 Assassins is a samurai terror film showing the flowers of life and death. Simple, radical, beautiful." With Koji Yakusho (Memoirs of a Geisha, Tokyo Sonata), Takayuki Yamada, Yusuke Iseya, Goro Inagaki, Masachika Ichimura. 

The Trip
dir. Michael Winterbottom (UK)
The director brings back the boys from his earlier Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story for a rollicking road trip through England‛s Lake Country. Coogan is on assignment to write up the food in various country inns, and his pal winds up joining him for a lark that has been called "the foodie version of Sideways". With Steve Coogan, Rob Brydon, Margo Stilley.

Love in a Puff
dir. Pang Ho-cheung (Hong Kong)
He‛s in advertising, she‛s in cosmetics. Since they both smoke, their meet-cute happens on their cigarette break. Okay, so it ain‛t Bette and Paul. But it‛s still the start of a beautiful relationship. With Miriam Yeung, Shawn Yue, Cheung Tat-ming.

Some of the documentaries are:

Tabloid
dir. Errol Morris
Tabloid journalism, Mormonism, bondage, love -- Morris goes for a change of pace with his latest documentary, which profiles the notorious Joyce McKinney. The “Manacled Mormon Kidnapping” was her doing and it made her the center of one of England’s most sensational stories of the 1970s.

Nostalgia for the Light
dir. Patricio Guzmán
A deeply moving examination of the mammoth telescopes in the remote highlands of Chile’s Atacama Desert, where no animal life dwells. But the beautiful sights they bring are juxtaposed with the harsh history of the desert when bodies by the thousands were dumped during Pinochet’s murderous regime, and relatives search for the remains of loved ones.

The Good Life
dir. Eva Mulvad
An elderly woman and her middle-aged daughter are having trouble facing the new realities of post-meltdown poverty after a lifetime of opulence. As they struggle to exist in a beautiful Portuguese coastal town, the mother strives to be practical while her daughter prefers to keep her own reality checks to a bare minimum. To call it “Grey Gardens: Portugal Edition” would not be off the mark.

Cinema Komunisto
dir. Mila Turajlic
The director’s debut film chronicles the days of Yugoslavia’s movie industry, when President Tito himself led his people in a passion for films. He screened nearly 9,000 feature films during his tenure, and often involved himself heavily in the productions with considerable resources made available -- the kind of support most filmmakers have only dreamed of. The essentially Communist country even gladly hosted productions by Hollywood studios themselves. But in its zeal to be the Hollywood of Eastern Europe, Yugoslavia spun tales of heroes and triumphs that often rewrote history, if they related to it at all.

Each year, the Film Society invites an industry leader to share thoughts on the intersecting worlds of contemporary cinema, culture and society in a State of Cinema Address. This year, indie film maverick Christine Vachon discusses her remarkable career as a producer.

Among the awards given at the Festival, this year‛s recipients are:

• Founder’s Directing Award – Oliver Stone
• Peter J. Owens Award – Terence Stamp
• Kanbar Award for excellence in screenwriting – Frank Pierson
• Mel Novikoff Award – Serge Bromberg
• Golden Gate Persistence of Vision Award – Matthew Barney
• Midnight Award – Zoe Saldana and Clifton Collins, Jr.

Salons, the new discussion series, covers genres in the Festival:

• The Social Justice Documentary
• Expressions of French Cinema

Schools at the Festival celebrates its 20th anniversary with a special screening, La Matinée Animée: A Cat in Paris, Teacher Appreciation Night and an animation workshop for kids.

For more information about the Festival, go to http://fest11.sffs.org.

San Francisco International Film Festival (SFIFF)
April 21 - May 5, 2011

Castro Theatre
429 Castro Street
San Francisco, CA

Sundance Kabuki Cinemas
1881 Post Street
San Francisco, CA

New People
1746 Post Street
San Francisco, CA

Pacific Film Archive Theater
2575 Bancroft Way
Berkeley, CA

plus other venues in San Francisco

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