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Fall 2013 Schedule
August
Les Blank Documentaries
What do Cajun musicians, garlic lovers, Mardi Gras and Werner Herzog have in common? They were all documented by Les Blank, who died last April in his Berkeley home. Blank celebrated and explored America’s rapidly vanishing regional and ethnic cultures for more than 40 years. Combining his twin loves of authentic music and good food, he sought out traditional cultures where music and food provided spiritual nourishment and continuous rhythms for daily life. A frequent visitor to SFI over the years, we take this opportunity to look back and enjoy his remarkable body of work.
Garlic Is As Good As Ten Mothers
A zesty, lip-smacking paean of praise to the greater glory of garlic. One of Blank’s most enjoyable films, it lingers in the pungent kitchen of Berkeley’s Chez Panisse and includes a stop at the Gilroy Garlic Festival. (1980, 51 min.)
Garlic is as Good as Ten Mothers - Trailer
Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe
Filmmaker Werner Herzog promised to eat his shoe if the young director Errol Morris could finish his first film, GATES OF HEAVEN. When Morris premiered his film at the UC Theater in Berkeley, Alice Waters cooked the shoe, and Herzog paid off his debt in a truly soleful fashion. (1979, 22 min.)
Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe - Trailer
Friday, August 23 at 7:00 and Sunday, August 25 at 4:00
Key Of Life
A depressed and unemployed actor switches lives with a meticulous Yakuza assassin in Kenji Uchida’s brilliantly conceived and executed Japanese screwball comedy that explores themes of identity and anonymity while delivering a story that is hilarious, strangely touching and riddled with clever twists. Upping the absurdity ante is a workaholic magazine editor who has set herself a two-month deadline to find a husband and get married. The lives of these three people would have never crossed paths were it not for an accident at a bath house that kick-starts a story that is full of heart and wonderful surprises. "A quirky comedy with uncommon depth, KEY OF LIFE delights in consistently surprising its audience with twists on seemingly familiar elements. The trio of main actors is fabulous, the direction assured and the script blends gently absurd comedy with uncommon insight into - and love for - this isolated and awkward trio who simply need to find some connection in this world.” – Hawaii Film Festival (2012, 128 min., in Japanese w/English subtitles, )
Friday, August 30 at 7:00 and Sunday, September 1 at 4:00
September
Portrait Of Jason
“The most extraordinary film I’ve seen in my life.” - Ingmar Bergman
Astonishing, ground-breaking and courageous, this classic LGBT film has been brought back to life by Milestone Film. On the night of December 2, 1966, Shirley Clarke (THE CONNECTION) and a tiny crew convened in her apartment at the Hotel Chelsea to make a film. There, for twelve straight hours they filmed the one-and-only Jason Holliday as he spun tales, sang, donned costumes and reminisced about good times and bad behavior as a gay hustler, sometime houseboy and aspiring cabaret performer. The result is a mesmerizing portrait of a remarkable, charming and tortured man, who is by turns hilarious and heartbreaking. “When I say that the most impressive film to be released theatrically in April 2013 is likely to be Shirley Clarke's PORTRAIT OF JASON, that's because the years have turned a risky proposition into an easy bet... One of the most involving, uncompromising and revelatory human documents in the history of cinema!” — Stuart Klawans, The Nation (1967, 105 min. )
Friday, September 6 at 7:00 and Sunday, September 8 at 4:00
Thousand Pieces Of Gold
“Based on a true story, THOUSAND PIECES OF GOLD is the tale of Lalu, a beautiful, young Manchurian woman sold by her destitute father to a ‘procurer of women.’ In San Francisco's Chinatown she is auctioned to a mule-skinner, who is acting as agent for a powerful saloonkeeper in the Idaho territory. During the trek through the wilderness, Lalu falls in love with her captor, and he with her. But, true to his word, he delivers her to his master, a soulless Chinese entrepreneur intent on using her as a prostitute. Lalu (renamed Polly by the townsfolk) begins an instinctual struggle to escape the path of wife-slavery laid out for her. ‘Freed’ by Charlie, the town's shunned gentleman, in a game of chance, she learns to deal with the townspeople on their own terms.” – San Francisco International Film Festival Starring Rosalind Chao and Academy Award-winner Chris Cooper. Directed by Nancy Kelly. Edited by Kenji Yamamoto. (1990, 105 min.)
Friday, September 13 at 7:00 and Sunday, September 15 at 4:00
TRUST: Second Acts in Young Lives
“TRUST captures a youth theater project at its most intimate and powerful moments, demonstrating the capacity of art to transform and inspire the lives of young people.” – The Huffington Post
TRUST: Second Acts in Young Lives begins in a small theater as a group of teenage actors receive a standing ovation, then takes us back to the beginning, when Marlin, an 18-year-old Hondureña tells a traumatic story about her life to the company. Amazing things unfold as the young members of Chicago’s Albany Park Theater Project transform the story into a daring, original play. TRUST is a riveting look at the process of discovering empathy and kinship as the play moves from an embryo to a full-formed production, eventually opening before a full house. An enormously powerful film about the unexpected resources inside people you might discount because they are poor, young or of color. (2010, 78 min. )
Co-Sponsored by Associated Students Productions. Filmmakers Nancy Kelly and Kenji Yamamoto in person Friday night only!
Friday, September 20 at 7:00 and Sunday, September 22 at 4:00
Nancy Kelly and Kenji Yamamoto
Marin Independent filmmakers were a big hit last spring when they were here for screenings of their documentary REBELS WITH A CAUSE. We are proud to present their landmark independent 1990 feature THOUSAND PIECES OF GOLD and their profoundly moving documentary TRUST: Second Acts un Young Lives.
They will be here Friday, September 20 to introduce TRUST and answer questions afterwards.
You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet (Vous n'avez encore rien vu)
“As its title suggests, at age 90 master French filmmaker Alain Resnais (HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR, LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD) is indeed still full of surprises. Based on two works by the playwright Jean Anouilh, YOU AIN’T SEEN NOTHIN’ YET opens with a who’s-who of French acting royalty (including Mathieu Amalric, Michel Piccoli and frequent Resnais muse Sabine Azéma) being summoned to the reading of a late playwright’s last will and testament. There, the playwright (Denis Podalydès) appears on a TV screen from beyond the grave and asks his erstwhile collaborators to evaluate a recording of an experimental theater company performing his Eurydice—a play they themselves all appeared in over the years. But as the video unspools, instead of watching passively, these seasoned thespians begin acting out the text alongside their youthful avatars, looking back into the past rather like mythic Orpheus himself… YOU AIN’T SEEN NOTHIN’ YET is an alternately wry and wistful valentine to actors and the art of performance from a director long fascinated by the intersection of life, theater and cinema” – New York Film Festival (2012 , 115 min., in French w/English subtitles)
You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet - Trailer
Friday, September 27 at 7:00 and Sunday, September 29 at 4:00
October
Hollywood Hair
Thirty years ago, Tony Morales opened his hair salon on Hollywood Boulevard with dreams of catering to the rich and famous. Instead he became a father figure to the many bit actors, outsiders, and runaways who had come to Los Angeles in hopes of a better life. Hollywood Hair tells the story of an unlikely 'family' that exists in the shadows of the world's most famous boulevard. Shot in stark black and white as a contrast to the glamorized images of Hollywood, this offbeat film shows a real and unforgettable side of Tinseltown. The film is a 14-year-old labor of love for director Juliet Snowden who got to know the owner after patronizing the salon for years while struggling to make a name for herself in the industry. (2012, 50 min.)
Friday, October 4 at 7:00 and Sunday, October 6 at 4:00
Les Blank Documentaries
Always For Pleasure
A pulsating, joyous celebration of Mardi Gras in New Orleans focusing on the musical traditions, the rituals and the pageantry. ALWAYS FOR PLEASURE presents festivity as essential to the human spirit. In New Orleans, even a funeral procession ends with a raucous dance—“You take ‘em on out and you boogie back,” explains musician Allen Toussaint. Les Blank’s camera enters the heart of such jubilant celebrations—with drinking, dancing, and eating in the streets—from St. Patrick’s Day with revelers dressed in green to the Mardi Gras Indian Parade where African American “chiefs” compete in elaborate Native American–inspired feathered costumes. (1978, 58 min. )
Dry Wood
An intimate portrait of the slow rhythms of Creole life in rural southwest Louisiana, where the roots of family, food, and celebrations run deep, DRY WOOD is set to the soundtrack of music by “Bois Sec” Ardoin. (1973, 37 min.)
Friday, October 11 at 7:00 and Sunday, October 13 at 4:00
The Life Of Oharu
Kenji Mizoguchi considered THE LIFE OF OHARU his masterpiece and critics have placed it among the greatest films of all time. Based on a seventeenth-century novel by Saikaku, the film chronicles the decline of a beautiful court lady (Kinuyo Tanaka) who is gradually stripped of social respectability until she is reduced to prostitution and beggary. "The Genroku period background is evoked in images of staggering beauty and camera movements of truly epic sweep. Mizoguchi's sympathy for the plight of women in feudal society is here given its most perfect and profound expression. Beyond its themes of social criticism, THE LIFE OF OHARU achieves, in its narrative of human suffering and redemption, a final catharsis and realization of mono no aware (the elegiac awareness of the need for all things to pass) that is truly transcendent." - Tom Luddy, Pacific Film Archive With Toshiro Mifune. (1952, 136 min., in Japanese w/English subtitles)
Friday, October 18 at 7:00 and Sunday, October 20 at 4:00
Women Of The Night
Kenji Mizoguchi's searing look at life on the fringes in post-war Japan focuses, as do so many of his films, on the degradation of women in Japanese society. Filmed on location in Osaka, it is the story of a taxi dancer and her sister, the mistress of a narcotics smuggler. Sheldon Renan writes, "Traditionally on the fringes of Japanese life, the post-war environment brings a further, drastic deterioration in the (women's) situation. The women become scavengers, fighting among themselves like animals. WOMEN OF THE NIGHT documents the hellish world of prostitutes, narcotics dealers, and marauding female street gangs with graphic, uncompromising realism." (1948, 75 min., in Japanese w/English subtitles)
Friday, October 25 at 7:00 and Sunday, October 27 at 4:00
November
André Gregory: Before and After Dinner
"It's really wonderful work. Enlightening, moving, and very much a love story." - Martin Scorsese This portrait of groundbreaking director, actor, and artist André Gregory by Cindy Kleine (who is also his wife) is a delightful, ruminative appreciation of one man’s life and work. A brilliant and often hilariously funny raconteur, Gregory discusses the making of MY DINNER WITH ANDRÉ (1981), written by and starring Gregory and Wallace Shawn and directed by Louis Malle. He speaks warmly of his lifelong friendship with Shawn, and his problematic relationship with his European parents, described as “Jews who forgot to tell their children they were Jews.” André Gregory is a master storyteller, whose own life encompasses compelling passions, fears, and mysteries worthy of his theatrical mentors. “An indelible, gripping documentary portrait.…During the film’s scenes of Mr. Gregory at work, his theatrical direction suggests hocus-pocus conjuring...(Gregory) is a spellbinding raconteur….(with) a dry, slightly sinister cackle.” – Stephen Holden, The New York Times (2012, 108 min. )
André Gregory: Before and After Dinner - Trailer
Friday, November 1 at 7:00 and November 3 at 4:00
They All Laughed
Peter Bogdanovich’s hectic comedy centers on three detectives (Ben Gazzara, John Ritter, Blaine Novak), their various romantic entanglements and the women they fall in love with whom they've been hired to follow (Audrey Hepburn, in her penultimate big-screen role, Colleen Camp, Dorothy Stratten, and a fetching Patti Hansen). While poorly received at the time, the comical, heartfelt and personal picture has risen in stature over the last few years, with filmmakers like Quentin Tarantino, Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach all noting their personal affection for it. This bittersweet roundelay is shot entirely on location, and captures a New York rarely seen in movies. “Peter Bogdanovich’s THEY ALL LAUGHED is a gem, a minor miracle of a movie that is so delicate, so perfectly put together, and yet somehow so fragile that if you remove one element, one take even, the entire thing would unravel. It’s a whodunit, I suppose, with various characters running around New York following each other and spying on one another, but Bogdanovich seems to think that that is the secondary plot of THEY ALL LAUGHED, the first being just putting all of these crazy people into the same movie and seeing what would happen.” – Sheila O’Malley (1982, 115 min.)
Friday, November 8 at 7:00 and November 10 at 4:00
Enlightenmnet Guaranteed
The acclaimed Zen comedy by award-winning director Doris Dörrie. When his wife and children unexpectedly walk out on him, Uwe (Uwe Ochsenknecht) decides to join his brother Gustav (Gustav-Peter Wohler), a struggling feng shui consultant, on a pilgrimage from Munich to Japan, where Gustav hopes to find enlightenment as a guest in a Buddhist monastery. The plot thickens when, after a night of hard drinking, they get lost in the streets of Tokyo, temporarily derailing their search for serenity. (2002, 105 min., in German w/English subtitles )
Enlightenment Guaranteed - Trailer
Friday, November 15 at 7:00 and November 17 at 4:00
Les Blank Documentaries
YUM, YUM, YUM! A Taste of Cajun and Creole Cooking
Zydeco and Cajun music provide the background for this passionate celebration of cooking and eating in Louisiana. Locals and well-known chefs such as Paul Prudhomme demonstrate how to cook their dishes, based on the Cajun and Creole cultures of the Gulf Coast. (1990, 31 min. )
Spend It All
A lively and beautiful celebration of the food and music of the French-speaking Cajuns of Louisiana. With the music of Dewey Balfa and Nathan Abshire. (1971, 41 min)
Friday, November 22 at 7:00 and November 24 at 4:00