San Francisco (1968 film)
| San Francisco | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Anthony Stern |
| Written by | Anthony Stern |
| Produced by | Iris Sawyer Jeremy Mitchell Alan Callan |
| Cinematography | Anthony Stern |
| Edited by | Anthony Stern Anthony Sloman |
| Music by | Pink Floyd |
Production company | |
Release date |
|
Running time | 15 min |
| Country | United Kingdom |
San Francisco is a 1968 impressionistic documentary short film directed by Anthony Stern.[1][2]
The film, cut to a version of "Interstellar Overdrive" as performed by Pink Floyd in 1966,[3] pioneered the use of 16mm single frame cinematography in the late 1960s.[citation needed]
The film was produced by the British Film Institute (BFI) and by Iris Sawyer, Jeremy Mitchell and Alan Callan.[4]
Reception
[edit]The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: "Anthony Stern's film revives the 'city symphony', a genre as old as avant-garde film-making. The city images he chooses range from the banal (supermarkets, neon signs) and the tourist cliché to a specially staged pseudo-occult game involving a nude girl. However, the subject is no more than an excuse for a display of virtuoso technique, whose speed is presumably in response to the frenetic pace of city life – an observation neither novel nor especially relevant to San Francisco. Stern's photography is his main strength: fast motion or long clusters of single frames occasionally slowing to normal speed for a single image of a striking face or location. He also employs a technique familiar from his collaboration with Peter Whitehead on Tonite Let's All Make Love in London – the jerky re-animation of frozen frames; and the filmis edited to the same version of The Pink Floyd's 'Interstellar Overdrive' as used in Whitehead's film. Stern's techniques are here a means without an end; and even on its simplest level, as a fast coloured lightshow, the film lacks the wit and subtlety of such American antecedents as Ben van Meter's Up Tight, L.A. is Burning . . . Shit."[5]
Accolades
[edit]The film won awards for cinematography at the 1969 Oberhausen Short Film Festival,[6] the 1969 Melbourne International Film Festival[7] and the Sydney Film Festival[citation needed].
References
[edit]- ^ "San Francisco". British Film Institute Collections Search. Retrieved 16 August 2024.
- ^ "BFI Screenonline: San Francisco (1968)". www.screenonline.org.uk.
- ^ Palacios, Julian (2010). Syd Barrett & Pink Floyd: Dark Globe (Rev. ed.). London: Plexus. pp. 136–137. ISBN 978-0-85965-431-9.
- ^ "San Francisco (1968)". BFI. Archived from the original on 5 October 2019.
- ^ "San Francisco". The Monthly Film Bulletin. 38 (444): 35. 1 January 1971 – via ProQuest.
- ^ "Film archive". International Short Film Festival Oberhausen. Retrieved 16 August 2024.
- ^ "San Francisco". Melbourne International Film Festival. Retrieved 16 August 2024.
External links
[edit]- San Francisco at IMDb
- San Francisco at the BFI's Screenonline
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