Reflections on the 2013 SF Int'l Film Festival

Posted May 29, 2013 at 10:08am by Larry Chadbourne, edited July 17, 2013 at 12:26pm

My friend Michael Guillén in his own wrap up of the 2013 SFIFF for his blog The Evening Class quotes Edinburgh fest director Chris Fujiwara, to the effect that we don't see a whole festival (maybe a few gluttons I know try) but shape our own mini-fests based on specific criteria. One such Michael doesn't cite, but shouldn't be surprised to hear from me, is authenticity of format. I have now got to the point in my viewing, both in theatres and at fests, where I research all that's offered and how it's scheduled to be presented, which works to the advantage of movies that have their technical specifications up on IMDB or a Variety review, and leaves a number of interesting sounding films waiting until they come round in what I can be sure is the right way or if that doesn’t happen, as a last resort on TV. I should also mention that I was only in town for the last 9 days of the fest, so anything shown only during the first 6 days isn’t included here.

Since this year's SFIFF offered precious little on actual film (see my post on this same site about last year's fest for comparison) I landed up watching mostly work shot on video. Programs shown on 35 or 16mm will be indicated below.

And as many documentary moviemakers in particular are now shooting digitally, that tends to skew my choices toward that genre, so of the 20 features I caught from this year's program 8 were non-fiction.

Using the fest's own rating system (from 1 meaning Poor to 4 Excellent) I would fit most of the documentaries into the 3 category, as they either informed or moved me about the subjects they covered but in most cases did not seem made to last as works of art. Two exceptions: The first was a presentation in its original 16mm of Les Blank's 1972 Spend It All (3 ½), a 40 minute featurette, accompanied by 2 of his shorts also from the 1970s. The enjoyment of Cajun food and music in the feature was a happy reminder of PFA's lovely Blank series last year when Les was still around, and the program I attended at New People benefited from guest speakers and an atmosphere of convivial commemoration. Most of all, the painstaking photochemical preservation by Mark Toscano and the Academy Film Archive, with the vibrant colors in all 3 films shown to good effect, proved a counter-example to the recent proliferation of bogus digital "restorations". This was the only revival title I attended at the fest; I had seen 7 of the other older offerings in the past.

The second exception was an essay movie, a subcategory of documentary I am especially fond of, The Search for Emak Bakia (3 ½) in which the Basque director Oskar Alegria allowed his curiosity about the 1926 Man Ray film of that name, and sheer chance, to take him in all sorts of interesting directions. His movie showed a real openness to life in its many unusual possibilities.

Of the others, the one that had the strongest impact on my thinking was Roger Ross Williams' God Loves Uganda (3), not so much for any particular artistry but for laying bare to me once and for all the harmful effects of religious proselytizing. I say this as a nominal Catholic, or better a skeptical Christian, who recognizes the beauty of such moments in Church history as shown in the ending of Rossellini's The Flowers Of Saint Francis, where the followers scatter in different directions of Italy to spread the joyous message. It is quite another thing when rightwing Protestant Americans meddle in the politics of faraway Uganda and leave a still brewing legacy of hate (mostly against gays) and death. (Setting aside the question of whether they are even spreading the Gospel, which in its 4 accepted versions has nothing to say about homosexuality.) The Jews have it right: Don't try to convert others.

I was richly informed by Ben Lewis' Google and the World Brain (3) about that corporation, whose original motto was "Don't be evil", and its questionable, still litigated project to digitize all the world's books. The movie was helped by the response of a savvy audience, close to Silicon Valley issues, and a post-screening Q & A with the director done, appropriately, on Skype.

Helsinki Forever (3) presented as part of the Novikoff award ceremony for this year's honoree Peter Von Bagh, tantalized with its scenes of a city some of us may never visit, and of mostly obscure Finnish films we may also never get to see. Von Bagh has set a high standard for film purism in at least one of the fests he curates, Sodankyla, and it was nice to see his film shown in 35mm, but I second my colleague Carl Martin's reservations about the technical compromises Von Bagh made. In a way I was tickled less by the film and more by the appearance of former PFA programmer Edith Kramer, who introduced Von Bagh and reminded us long time members how much we've missed her. This was a 2008 film that as far as I know had not previously gotten an outing in the Bay Area.

Zachary Heinzerling's Cutie and the Boxer (3) was an eye opening look at two NYC based elderly Japanese artists and their life together. I didn't feel however that there was anything I hadn’t already gleaned from his movie, or of its making, that I needed to know more about by staying for the Q & A.

For A River Changes Course (3) Cambodian-American director Kalyanee Mam delivered some remarkable footage based on the time she spent embedded with three rural Cambodian families. But because the movie received support from that country's authoritarian government, she was limited in how directly she could speak to the economic and social problems hinted at. In the interesting Q & A she answered some questions, such as why the US dollar is used as currency in parts of that land, and argued that by being subtle about potential controversy she was able to be more effective, but I thought the fact that she needed to spell so much out after was a weakness in an otherwise moving piece.

Last of the documentaries, Leviathan (2 ½) was the title in SFIFF with arguably the most buzz, and I was grateful that this screening was added at a later date so I could fit it in. I appreciated the ethnographers' attempts to convey the feel of being on a fishing trawler, but was disappointed by what I felt was a crude, ultimately misguided stab at cinematic impressionism. To wit, when I was a boy I fancied the best way to show a man falling out of a carriage in a film was to have the camera roll around on the ground to simulate the action. In all fairness, this is what Gance does in parts of Napoleon. In my mature years I have come to prefer a more distanced, contemplative approach, which allows the viewer to participate instead of having his face rubbed into it, such as what one of the 2 moviemakers, Lucien Castaing Taylor, used in his superior Sweetgrass. And I would have learned more perhaps about what goes on in such a fishing trawler, if it had been more like a Wiseman style project.

A documentary I might have gone to, Inequality For All, about the yawning gap between rich and poor in our troubled country, was only shown in a special slot with a jacked up admission, an example of how the fest is mostly clueless about the 99% because it is so driven by its coziness with the 1% benefactors.

Seguing from documentary into docu-drama, one of the fest's fiction movies (or what is dubbed in today's vulgar filmspeak, "narrative", as if documentaries such as those I just described can't tell stories) A Hijacking (4) was this year's equivalent of the 2012 fest's Guilty, a fact based re-enactment which by dint of strong direction and acting positively rivets an audience. I understand Danish director Tobias Lindholm and some of his cast are also involved in that country's political TV series Borgen, which FOFF colleague Lucy Laird recommended to me almost a year back, and which I have been remiss at getting to. The moviemakers used an elliptical approach to convey the drawn out negotiations between the owners of a cargo ship and Somali pirates who had captured it, and to tighten our involvement chose not to give explanatory but possibly distracting background on reasons for such piracy, and not to translate the hijackers' speech. This was not after all a documentary but a suspense movie, and on those terms could be used as a model of how to make such a docu-drama. Not to mention a reminder that sometimes one can indeed negotiate, at least partly successfully, with terrorists.

Takeshi Kitano's recent work has been erratic, but he followed up his excellent Outrage with this year's Outrage Beyond (4) which had the pleasures of a classic genre piece. The delineation of the various contending yakuza characters was done with the clarity of a master, and the original 35mm Scope format was also a pleasure to behold. Underlying all the violence was a wry sense of humor about the extremes men will go to to achieve power. I contrast this with a nauseating Coppola promoted Thai film of some years back, The Legend Of Suriyothai, which presented its historic politicians killing each other off with a total lack of feeling for the evil of such a lust for primacy.

The most visually striking movie for me was Enrique Rivero's Mexican entry Mai Morire (4), which brought to mind in its setting of watery Xochimilco on the outskirts of Mexico City, that country's classic film Maria Candelaria, though with a different style and purpose. There was some mystification, however, in the use of a Japanese kanji symbol in the home of a poor elderly Mexican woman, and even the title which is Italian (Never Die) and which had no reference in the text or elsewhere I could discover.

Speaking of Italy, Alicia Scherson's Il futuro (4), a co-production with 3 other countries, was thematically the richest movie I saw. It was based on a novella by the recently deceased Roberto Bolano which has yet to be translated in English, so I am not sure how much of the scenario is from the original. For a movie about the future, here that of two youngsters suddenly orphaned, there were numerous evocations of the past: the ruins of Rome where much of the story occurs, the long gone peplum epics that the actor character played by Rutger Hauer appeared in (and whose Cinecittá sets the sister later visits), the 1950s Hollywood melodramas referenced in the opening credits.

As Il futuro unfolds there are mythic resonances with a number of archetypal templates such as Beauty And The Beast and Sunset Boulevard. I am keen to see the earlier Scherson movies I've missed.

I had caught Computer Chess (3) a week before at the Calgary Underground Film Festival, but include it here since it was fresh in my mind. I'd liked previous films I'd seen by Andrew Bujalski but was wary at first about his decision to shoot a 1980 geek tournament with a retro video camera, much as the recent Chilean No used its own (to me wrong headed) retro video look. But soon Bujalski succeeded in creating a tight little world of oddball characters (it was also fun for a novice computer user like me to see the huge early prototypes) and that counts for something. Afficianados of film criticism may also be amused to see Boston based Gerald Peary, whose documentary on that subject, For The Love Of Film, was in a previous fest, trying out acting as the elderly master of ceremonies who attempts to keep the rival nerds under control.

Similar to Outrage Beyond in its use of criminal violence, the Korean Nameless Gangster: Rules of the Time (3) entertained especially because of the central character played by Choi Min Sik, somewhat of a buffoon who doesn't seem to have the chops to take on the different forces but miraculously succeeds. The political background of repressive 1980s South Korea with its thuggish police wasn't fully elucidated for a Western viewer, though, and the mise en scene was slapdash compared to Kitano's.

Moussa Toure's The Pirogue (3) was a Senegal movie about immigrants from that area heading to sea to try their luck in Spain, and the troubles they encounter. I looked later at a map and wondered if they would have been better off sailing for Brazil instead. The unfolding of the tense drama had a documentary style impact that will stay with me the next time I read an article about a similar situation.

Prince Avalanche (3) was my first show at the fest, and a fun way to start. I'm a fan of comic actor Paul Rudd and have lined up several of his recent movies, Our Idiot Brother and Wanderlust, on my DVR to see soon in Calgary. I also like director David Gordon Green though his recent work has been uneven. So this buddy flick about two losers forced to put up with each other on a summer project in the woods had its appeal, and I am curious to see the Icelandic original it was a remake of. The best thing in the movie, however, was a bit by the recently deceased veteran TV character actor (and former stunt double for Elvis in several films!) Lance LeGault as the truck driver.

The last movie I saw at the fest was Neil Jordan's Byzantium (3 ½), an add-on to the printed program, something of a feminist vampire piece with stylish lensing by the talented Sean Bobbitt who also shot one of this year's strongest films, The Place Beyond The Pines. Byzantium was an enjoyable way to exit the fest, especially on the big screen of Kabuki's House 1.

But before I close I must mention several entries that didn't quite work for me, and why.

Everyday Objects (2) was a German movie about tourists in Nice, and we did learn the interesting factoid that the locals prefer to hole up in the hills by their swimming pools rather than mingle with the visitors on the beach. In the end credits, director Nicolas Wackerbath thanked Maren Ade, responsible for the deadly Everybody Else in a previous fest, another work that lingered on the bored lounging of spoiled Eurotrash. One festival maven, Roger Ritland, quipped that whoever wrote the blurb mentioning "bourgeois ennui" may have been warning us.

Another German effort that didn't quite gel was The Strange Little Cat (2) which had a production credit from Béla Tarr and the presence of a feline in its favor. Director Ramon Zuercher wove a complex choreography of a dysfunctional family moving about the stylized space of a cramped apartment, but their banal dialogue reminded me uncomfortably of a time my youngest brother surreptitiously recorded our family squabbling about what to do on a rainy Sunday. A few nice shots of the cat couldn't override the unpleasant aftertaste.

The biggest disappointment was actor/director Ali Mosaffa's The Last Step (2) as it was one of the few real films shown and as I've been a fan of cinema from Iran. Actress Leila Hatami from A Separation was an asset but what the blurb refers to as "gamesmanship"--the play of reality versus acting out that works much better for Kiarostami--failed to sustain interest.

I am now reading about Cannes and wondering how many will make it here. Will we have to wait 12 months to see them? Will they be shown in the right formats? Check next year, same time, same place, for answers.