Jonathan Marlow's 2018* Eyes

The San Francisco Bay Area is still home to a rich cinephilic culture nurtured in large part by a diverse array of cinemas, programmers and moviegoers. I'm honored to present a selection of favorite screenings experienced by local cinephiles in 2018. An index of participants can be found here. 

First-time IOHTE contributer Jonathan Marlow [PARACME  |  CALIFORNIA FILM INSTITUTE  |  ARBELOS] didn't exactly color within the lines in compiling this list, but I'm pleased he's placing local showings into a wider context. He also includes a screening from 2017, which he hopes will reprise in 2019.

2001: A Space Odyssey screen capture from Music Box DVD of The Story of Film: An Odyssey

Rarely one to let guidelines apply, a handful of non-Bay Area-centric selections are represented below. I would be entirely remiss if I did not bend otherwise agreeable rules to include these absolute highlights, accordingly (with everything thereafter listed alphabetically).

In keeping the whole assortment to ten, I removed such mainstays as 2001 at the Castro Theatre and everything from Noir City (as I was out-of-town for the duration, unfortunately). I will briefly mention here one from December which I sadly missed, much as I adore it: Exit Smiling (at the Day of Silents).

Honourable mention: anything whatsoever screened by Jesse Hawthorne Ficks. Dishonourable mention: the continued absence of Joel Shepard from YBCA. 

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I

Elégia [Elegy] (1965) dir. Zoltán Huszárik
Internationale Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen, Oberhausen, Germany 
digital restoration

** Oberhausen has an extensive archive of its past award-winners and last year they opted to screen recent restorations. I knew little about the film (nor its filmmaker) in advance but I haven't stopped thinking about it since. Absolutely stunning in every way!

Uprising in Jazak screen capture from excerpt at zilnikzelimir.net

II

Ustanak u Jasku [aka Uprising in Jazak] (1973) dir. Želimir Žilnik
Flaherty Film Seminar, Hamilton, New York
16mm

** Although Žilnik's work is relatively well-known in some circles, this shorter film is not. It truly should be seen by everyone--and fortunately can be found online as well albeit in somewhat inferior quality--as a masterpiece of resistance and human ingenuity.
 

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III
 

The Parallax View (1974) dir. Alan Pakula

Local Sightings [NWFF], Seattle, WA

Paramount digital preservation copy

** Nothing spectacular in the particular visual presentation (except that a digital master needed to be created at my own expense). The draw was the musical pre-show (and thereafter) with Amanda Salazar, John Massoni, Dale Lloyd and myself, a "super group" of players from different cities playing together for the first (and perhaps last) time ever.

The Infernal Cauldron screen capture from Flicker Alley DVD Georges Méliès: First Wizard of Cinema (1896-1913)

IV
 

Le chaudron infernal [aka The Infernal Caldron and the Phantasmal Vapors] (1903) dir. Georges Méliès

San Francisco Silent Film Festival

35mm duo-print projected as DCP

** What happens when you take two negatives shot by two cameras side-by-side (for sensible purposes difficult to explain with any brevity) and print them together?  Unintentional 3D (with master showperson Serge Bromberg)!

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V
 

The Last Movie (1971) dir. Dennis Hopper

Smith Rafael

Arbelos 4K digital restoration

** Hopper's unfairly maligned and too-little-seen follow-up to Easy Rider, lovingly restored by Craig Rogers at Arbelos! A great year for restorations, admittedly, with Barbara Loden's extraordinary Wanda returning to screens last year as well.

A Midsummer Night's Dream

VI
 

Sen noci svatojánské [aka A Midsummer Night’s Dream] (1959) dir. Jiří Trnka

Pacific Film Archive

35mm

** Irena Kovarova curated this exhaustive touring Trnka program and the PFA brought a fair portion of the series to our neighbourhood. [My only disappointment was that no other institution stepped-in to present the handful of films missing from the complete set (despite our repeated encouragements to participate).]

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VII
 

Sphinx on the Seine (2009) dir. Paul Clipson

Camera Obscura | Fourth Annual Report

16mm wild-sync

** Undoubtedly an emotional peak of the recent Camera Obscura arrived early with a screening of Paul Clipson's Sphinx... with Seth Mitter projecting and I wild-syncing Jefre Cantu Ledesma's score. Between this and a brief tribute to Robert Todd (with Lori Felker) the following day, it was a woeful weekend of quiet reminiscence and reflection.

That Woman image from Canyon Cinema website

VIII
 

That Woman (2018) dir. Sandra Davis

Canyon Cinema Salon

[digital]

** Although Sandra Davis only recently completed this hybrid non-fiction/dramatic re-enactment (and, therein, not a revival whatsoever), That Woman presents an ideal opportunity (among its other ample merits) to see the painfully missed George Kuchar (as Barbara Walters, no less)!

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IX
 

36.15 code Père Noël  [aka Game Over] (1989) dir. René Manzor

Alamo Drafthouse [“Terror Tuesday”]

c0-hosted by Kier-La Janisse

AGFA 2K digital restoration

** A proto-Home Alone in French? Indeed! Whatever you might imagine this to be, it is everything you'd suspect and ever-so-much more.

Invention for Destruction scree capture from digital restoration trailer

X
 

Vynález zkázy [aka Invention for Destruction] (1958)

Rafael Film Club

Muzeum Karla Zemana 4K digital restoration
 

** I travelled to Prague to fetch the DCP of this (and another) outstanding Zeman film for a pair of screenings at the Smith Rafael Film Center. Well worth the expedition to see the audience reactions to his outstanding work!
 

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foreshadow ahead: 2019

Filibus (1915) dir. Mario Roncoroni

** I first had the opportunity to see this extraordinary film at the 2017 San Francisco Silent Film Festival. The wonderful folks at Milestone Films have been working on a restoration which (ideally) should screen locally in the months ahead.

Ben Armington's 2018 Eyes

The San Francisco Bay Area is still home to a rich cinephilic culture nurtured in large part by a diverse array of cinemas, programmers and moviegoers. I'm honored to present a selection of favorite screenings experienced by local cinephiles in 2018. An index of participants can be found here. 

Eleven-time IOHTE contributor Ben Armington sells tickets to many bay area film festivals from his perch at Box Cubed, .

Screen capture from Criterion DVD of Eight Hours Don't Make A Day

1. Eight Hours Don’t Make A Day - Alamo Drafthouse

This was a day-long screening of all five episodes of R.W. Fassbinder’s 1972 tv series. I enjoyed it as an arch anti-soap opera, at times tender and cruel, and also as an early expression of Fassbinder’s digestion of Douglas Sirk’s hollywood melodramas into his own filmmaking practice (much as Alfonso Cuaron’s last three films show a deepening mindmeld with Andrei Tarkovsky’s work). I would have happily stayed in my seat for five more episodes.

2. Chameleon Street - SFMoMA, Modern Cinema: Black Powers Series

I’d been hearing about Wendell B. Harris’ 1989 indie film for years and never got around to watching it and am I glad I finally did because it is as great as it’s reputation promises. Packed with the delightful sense of invention, cine-craziness, and anarchic wit that characterized the french new wave films in the ‘60s.

Snake Eyes screen capture from Paramount DVD

3. Snake Eyes - Alamo Drafthouse

A locked room mystery wrapped in a neon-burnt noir laced with jittery veins of betrayal and corruption. I’d seen and enjoyed this 1998 Brian DePalma joint on video years ago, but seeing it on the big screen revealed an infinitely better film than I remembered. Won a plum place on my list for the exhilarating opening set piece sequence alone.

4. Duel - Castro

An early effort by Hollywood blockbuster maestro Steven Spielberg that plays like Sam Peckinpah directing a Hitchcock script. Spare and diabolically tense, the film keeps raising the stakes without sacrificing plausibility, simple and brilliant.

5. Light of Day - Roxie

Paul Schrader film from 1987 about growing up, growing apart, and rock & roll, with careful delineation of character and place. I found it very moving.

Screen capture from Criterion DVD of Identification of a Woman

6. Identification of A Woman - BAMPFA

Profoundly strange and wonderful late period Antonioni that incorporates the tropes and plot of the urban giallo into his own concerns of disconnection and ennui. One scene where an inexplicable fog overtakes a car with the lead characters, and the plot, was especially haunting.

7. No Fear, No Die - SFMoMA, Modern Cinema: Claire Denis series

I got to see a bunch of films in this series and loved them all, but this is the one that stuck with me the most, a 1992 film about immigration, family, humiliation,and frustration set in the shadowy and drab world of underground cockfighting, starring the incomparable duo of Issac de Bankole and Alex Descas.

Mala Noche screen capture from Wolfe Video DVD of Fabulous: The Story of Queer Cinema

Mala Noche - Roxie, Midnites for Maniacs Gus Van Sant Tribute

Like Chameleon Street, this is a film that i’d been hearing about forever and finally got to see and very much enjoyed. Often sublimely dream-like and very funny, it also contains perhaps the most honest portrayal of what it’s like to be young and in love and not loved back: obnoxiously horny, obsessive to the point of boring your loyal friends, prone to not-always-the-wisest decision-making.

Drag Me To Hell - Alamo Drafthouse

I’m a big fan of how Sam Raimi puts together an action sequence: gallopingly propulsive yet precisely detailed, Raimi manages to keep the viewer orientated within the frame while keeping the gas pedal pressed maniacally to the floor in terms of pacing. This film, his 2009 follow up to the Spiderman films, is some kind of pinnacle of his craft because it’s almost all action sequences, even most of the dialogue scenes.

Godfather Part III - Castro

The unloved final chapter of Francis Ford Coppola’s crime saga was magnificent on the big screen, a final twist of the knife for the themes of betrayal, corruption, family, and the limits of control worked through in the previous two films. And, despite what you may have heard, Sofia Coppola is great in it.

Frako Loden's 2018 Eyes

The San Francisco Bay Area is still home to a rich cinephilic culture nurtured in large part by a diverse array of cinemas, programmers and moviegoers. I'm honored to present a selection of favorite screenings experienced by local cinephiles in 2018. An index of participants can be found here. 

Five-time IOHTE contributor Frako Loden is an educator and writer, at www.documentary.org, Eat Drink Films and elsewhere.

1. The year-long Ingmar Bergman centenary program at Pacific Film Archive. I barely attended it—concentrating mostly on the remarkable 1940s films—but it spurred me to watch all the Bergman DVDs I've collected and never watched. I was astonished by my virgin viewings of Winter Light and the long-form version of Fanny and Alexander.

Le Trou screen capture from Cohen Media DVD of My Journey Through French Cinema

2. The Jacques Becker retrospective, also at Pacific Film Archive. I did a completely inadequate writeup for it—I've still only touched the surface of this French master's genius and look forward to repeat screenings. I'm grateful for the 20-minute analysis of Becker's work in Bertrand Tavernier's My Journey Through French Cinema, a masterwork in its own right.

3. The "Documenting Vietnam" series at PFA. The brief Whitesburg Epic (Appalshop, 1971) questions the citizens of a small Appalachian town, suggesting that young people with nothing to do go to war, especially when the town thinks that it's a good idea. The grueling Interviewswith My Lai Veterans (Joseph Strick, 1970) lays bare the toll on five young soldiers forbidden to talk about their experience of this pivotal civilian massacre. Frederick Wiseman's 1971 Basic Training shows how individual personalities and independent thinking are erased during the prelude to sending these boys off to war. Other documentaries were even more brutal and timely: Peter Gessner's 1966 Time of the Locust and the Winterfilm Collective's 1972 Winter Soldier. The latter documents a speak-in organized by Vietnam Veterans Against the War in Detroit, as one bearded and longhaired veteran after another, GIs and officers alike, testify to the cruelty and dehumanization of their fellow soldiers.

Saga of Gösta Berling image from San Francisco Silent Film Festival

4. The San Francisco Silent Film Festival, which for over 20 years has stayed at the pinnacle of the local film-festival pantheon with its attention to the best prints and brilliant live musical accompaniment. After its five-day run this summer, scenes from the French Lighthouse Keepers (Jean Grémillon, 1929) and the Swedish Saga of Gösta Berling (Mauritz Stiller, 1924) still play in my head. Even more recently, the December Day of Silents continued to astonish with Jean Epstein's 1923 Coeur Fidèle and my introduction to the young Beatrice Lillie in Sam Taylor's 1926 farce Exit Smiling.

5. Wendell B. Harris, Jr.'s 1989 Chameleon Street at SFMOMA's "Modern Cinema: Black Powers" series. What an amazing film! It really hasn't dated in its themes, techniques or cultural references. There are mentions of "black Barbie," obsession with Marvel Comics ("my Thor voice"), Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast and Edith Piaf. It ends with a re-telling of the fable of the scorpion and the frog, which is no different from the lyrics of the song "The Snake" that Donald Trump likes to repeat in speeches to his base. The film is based on the true story of Detroiter William Douglas Street, Jr. (played by Harris himself), a con man and impersonator who over the years pretended to be a Time magazine reporter, surgeon and civil rights attorney. At the beginning of the film, a psychiatrist notes Street's "complementarity": the ability to inhabit whatever persona someone else wants him to be. He knows all the tricks of being something that he isn't. It's a way of getting back at, or simply surviving in, the white world that won't let him do things legitimately. He has to be a trickster, a con artist. It's a major form of code switching. He doesn't just use his "white voice" (like in Sorry to Bother You)—he uses a kind of "white self," or at least a black self that doesn't threaten the white powers that be and that gives him entrée into their circles of privilege.

Personal Problems screen capture from Kino DVD

6. Bill Gunn's 1980 Personal Problems at the Alamo Drafthouse, adapted from an idea by writer Ishmael Reed (who at the Q&A established himself as the most righteously curmudgeonly guy in the world, even managing to slag James Baldwin). This film, by the director of Ganja and Hess, was considered lost because it was never aired on public TV as planned. Now restored and starring culinary anthropologist and writer Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor, who in a later career celebrated Gullah food and culture, we can see Gunn's influence on Spike Lee's films in its inspired improvisations and confrontations between aggrieved and angry people. Perhaps more than that, it's a rare, deeply humane look at the private lives of black people.

Michael Fox's 2018 Eyes

The San Francisco Bay Area is still home to a rich cinephilic culture nurtured in large part by a diverse array of cinemas, programmers and moviegoers. I'm honored to present a selection of favorite screenings experienced by local cinephiles in 2018. An index of participants can be found here. 

First-time IOHTE contributor Michael Fox is a film journalist and critic for KQED Arts and the curator and host of the Mechanics' Institute's CinemaLit screening program.

Here is my 2018 list. I promise to get out more in 2019.

Persona screen capture from Criterion DVD

1. Persona (1966) with Liv Ullmann on hand at BAMPFA: I spent a little time with the classics in 2018.

2. The Crime of Monsieur Lange (1936) at BAMPFA: Our affections for various directors naturally wax and wane as we get older, but I can't imagine ever falling out of love with Jean Renoir (especially 1930s Renoir).

3. La Dolce Vita (1960) at the Castro: Every time I see a Mastroianni film, I'm persuaded all over again that he's the greatest screen actor of all time.

4. Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song (1971) at Alamo Drafthouse: Melvin Van Peebles was a bad mutha.

5. The Cameraman (1928) at the Mechanics' Institute: Forgive me for including one of my screenings, but few things are as fun as a room full of adults falling for a Buster Keaton film they'd never seen.

Aparajto screen capture from Criterion DVD

6. The Apu Trilogy at SFMOMA: Satyajit Ray made it look so easy—and he was just getting started.

Carl Martin's 2018 Eyes

The San Francisco Bay Area is still home to a rich cinephilic culture nurtured in large part by a diverse array of cinemas, programmers and moviegoers. I'm honored to present a selection of favorite screenings experienced by local cinephiles in 2018. An index of participants can be found here. 

Ten-time IOHTE contributor Carl Martin is keeper of the Bay Area and Los Angeles Film Calendars for the Film on Film Foundation, where he also occasionally blogs.

I didn't think I could do it.  Did I even see 10 films total in the Bay Area?  Yes, enough to produce this:

Overlord screen capture from Criterion DVD

March 28, Roxie: Overlord

This d-day account combines insane archival WW2 footage with beautiful new (mid-70's) scenes to present a poetic, personal picture of war's tragedy, confusion, and meaninglessness.

April 4, New Mission: Taxi Zum Klo

Many years ago I encountered this on VHS and thought, "Ha ha, taxi to the bathroom... what the heck is this?"  (paraphrased.)  And i saw some crazy shit i had never seen before.  It was interesting enough that it stuck in my brain though.  Seeing it again decades later confirmed my hunch that Frank Ripploh's autobiographical, self-referential, elliptical, very explicit film is indeed a very important work of "experimental" cinema as well as classic gay smut!

April 16, New Mission: To Live and Die in L.A.

A single tracking shot during a car chase is better than most entire movies.

June 2, Castro: Mare Nostrum

A haunting, dreamy tale of maritime intrigue (mostly not at sea if I remember rightly).  Guillermo Del Toro stole the ending for one of his crap movies.

The Godfather Part III screen capture from Paramount DVD

July 8, Castro: The Godfather, Part III

Most folks dismiss this movie for some reason and it is rarely shown.  I'd been waiting to see it for some time.  It's really good!  Andy Garcia's performance is dynamite, and Sofia Coppola's is unfairly maligned.  Themes of power, loyalty, and betrayal over generations carry the film through to its operatic denouement.  As for the print, it had succumbed to vinegar syndrome and wouldn't hold focus worth a damn.

July 18, Roxie: Sleaze Apocalypse

I like outrageous trailers so of course I was going to watch this compilation show.  They came from Joel Shepard's collection so this is also an excuse to bemoan the loss of his curatorial hand at YBCA.

August 22, Roxie: Velvet Goldmine

I didn't much care for this one on its initial release.  Maybe the trailer led me astray.  Or maybe the weird Oscar Wilde interlude at the beginning threw me.  Indeed the film can hardly keep up with its own ideas.  I'm not going to say it's Haynes's masterpiece but it's solid and is full of killer songs i'm largely unfamiliar with.

October 30, Castro: The Hollywood Knights

My old boss was fond of quoting this one and i finally got to slake my curiosity.  Floyd Mutrux, whose debut was the ultra-bleak Dusty and Sweets McGee, delivers a raunchy ensemble comedy.  American Graffiti as if directed by Robert Altman.  It does have a wang to it!

Sanshiro Sugata screen capture from Eclipse DVD

December 16, PFA: Sanshiro Sugata

Kurosawa's first film surprised me doubly: I was sure I'd seen it before but hadn't, and it's a good, sure-handed effort.  The various devices used to show the passage of time impressed me particularly.  I believe I detected a thematic anticipation of Yojimbo and other later films.

Unknown date, private screening: Mosori Monika

Chick Strand's film starts with a McGraw-Hill logo.  Is it possible that this "ethnographic" film was shown to schoolchildren?  Would they have caught on to its subtle subversions?  A voiceover with a "benign" colonialist perspective is challenged by other voices and images to present a complex portrait of colliding cultures.

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks's 2018 Eyes

The San Francisco Bay Area is still home to a rich cinephilic culture nurtured in large part by a diverse array of cinemas, programmers and moviegoers. I'm honored to present a selection of favorite screenings experienced by local cinephiles in 2018. An index of participants can be found here. 

Seven-time IOHTE contributor Jesse Hawthorne Ficks is a film history educator at the Academy of Art University, a writer for 48 Hills, and a programmer of screenings under the MiDNiTES FOR MANiACS moniker.

Ficks' Picks of films watched in 2018 that were new to me on the big screen.

Eight Hours Don't Make A Day image provided by contributor

Eight Hours Don't Make a Day (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1972) @ Alamo Drafthouse New Mission - DCP, 495 minutes

Chameleon Street image provided by contributor

Chameleon Street (Wendell B. Harris, Jr., 1989) @ SFMOMA - 35mm print, 94 minutes

Belfast, Maine image provided by contributor

Belfast, Maine (Frederick Wiseman, 1999) @ BAMPFA - 16mm print, 248 minutes

Grey Area image provided by contributor

Beginnings: Black Female Cinema in 16mm: Diary of an African Nun (Julie Dash, 1977, 13 minutes), Killing Time (Fronza Woods, 1979, 10 minutes), Fanny's Films (Fronza Woods, 15 minutes), Grey Area (Monona Wali, 1981, 40 minutes) @ Roxie Theater (Staff Pick by Semaj Peltier)

Fanny and Alexander image provided by contributor

Fanny and Alexander: Director's Cut Television Version (Ingmar Bergman, 1982) @ BAMPFA - DCP, 312 minutes

Scenes From a Marriage image provided by contributor

Scenes From a Marriage: Director's Cut Television Version (Ingmar Bergman, 1973) @ BAMPFA -  DCP, 284 minutes 

Storm Center image provided by contributor

Storm Center (Daniel Taradash, 1956) @ SFMOMA - 35mm, 86 minutes

The Spook Who Sat By the Door image provided by contributor

The Spook Who Sat by the Door (1973, Ivan Dixon) @ SFMOMA - 35mm, 102 minutes

Jáaji Approx. screen shot from Video Data Bank excerpt

Without Paths or Boundaries: Films of Sky Hopinka: wawa (2014, 6 minutes), Jáaji Approx. (2015, 7 minutes), Venite et Loquamur (2015, 12 minutes), I’ll Remember You as You Were, Not as What You’ll Become (2016, 12 minutes), Visions of an Island (2016, 15 minutes),  Anti-Objects, or Space Without Path or Boundary (2017, 13 minutes) @ ATA Artists' Television Access - Digital

Chromatic Wheels image provided by contributor

Chromatic Wheels part of Astro Trilogy (Kerry Laitala, 2016) @ CROSSROADS Experimental Film Festival, SFMOMA - 16mm print, 10 minutes

Image provided by contributor

Canyon School Turns 100 Centennial 16mm Outdoor Salon: The Sun’s Gonna Shine (1969, Les Blank, 10 minutes), Yellow Horse (1965, Bruce Baillie, 9 minutes), Baby In A Rage (1983, Chuck Hudina, 5 minutes), Termination (1966, Bruce Baillie, 5 minutes), Angel Blue Sweet Wings (1966, Chick Strand, 3 minutes), God Respects Us When We Work But Loves Us When We Dance (1968, Les Blank, 20 minutes) @ CANYON SCHOOL  

The 61st San Francisco International Film Festival: Forgetting the Alamo?

Image from ★ supplied by SFFILM

Since last September, my moviegoing habits have been dramatically altered. As any longtime reader of this blog (and/or its appallingly garish predecessor) would probably guess, I've for many years treated the San Francisco Bay Area cinema scene like my own personal buffet table, sampling as many different kinds of films as I could from different eras, genres, nations and formats (with an admitted bias towards 35mm, 16mm and 70mm, especially for films originating in those gauges) at any venue I could reasonably visit, given the limits of time, money and public transportation. It has seemed to me that too many people are looking for any excuse not to go to the cinema, an attitude I've found dismaying.

But after Tim League, the CEO of Alamo Drafthouse, LLC admitted nearly seven months ago that he'd secretly hired back a former employee who had resigned after confessing to sexual assault, I could no longer see myself supporting the local link in his growing national cinema chain in any way. I'd attended and enjoyed dozens of screenings at the New Mission Theatre since it had been refurbished and reopened under Alamo auspices in late 2015. I had (and still have) nothing but respect for the New Mission employees and programming. But I wanted Tim League and his Austin-based enablers to feel some repercussions for their extremely (if not criminally) poor judgement. So on September 12, 2017 I sold back all my advance tickets to Alamo screenings and said goodbye to the staff of Lost Weekend video, which for the past few years has been housed in the New Mission lobby. I haven't been back inside the building since. (Now I limit my DVD/Blu-Ray rentals to what I can find at Faye's or Video Wave). With more damning details about Alamo's Austin operations coming out since, I don't regret anything except that I don't see as many of my cinephile peers coming to the same decision as I'd expected. I do remain hopeful that someday League might publicly answer the hard questions about his management decisions and make meaningful amends so that his brand, which had traded so heavily on themes of inclusiveness, progressive politics, and respect for the patron experience, can begin to be genuinely rehabilitated. So far reports of company changes have felt like little more than window dressing.

Depriving myself of the Alamo Drafthouse was a big change for someone who prided himself on seeking out as many of the best, most unique screenings in the region as he could, but it was an easy decision. Harder was taking the next logical step of writing to the many local film presenters and organizations that have partnered with Alamo to hold events at the New Mission in the years since it re-opened, asking their intentions about involving Alamo in future presentations and making clear that I wouldn't be attending their events held at any venue if they continued to work with League's company. Few organizations got back to me and none wanted me to publish their response publicly, for reasons I can only speculate on. (My best guess is that making public statements on this topic puts a festival at a disadvantage when negotiating with other venues?) But when organizations I'd previously supported, such as SF Sketchfest, Noise Pop, or the Jewish Film Institute, continued hosting events at the New Mission, I determined not to attend or promote their events at other venues like the Castro, no matter how appealing they were.

Image from Ravenous supplied by SFFILM

With this as the backdrop, I was thrilled to discover at last month's press conference for the San Francisco International Film Festival that in 2018 SFFILM would not be using the New Mission as a festival venue as they had in 2016 and 2017. From my perspective, SFFILM was the first established Bay Area film organization to publicly partner with Alamo Drafthouse, LLC when for their 2015 festival they brought Tim League on to guest curate and co-host their annual (rebranded from "Late Show") "Dark Wave" screenings at the Roxie and the Clay, months before construction on the New Mission was completed. As the longest-running film festival in town (not to mention, depending on your definitions, in the Western Hemisphere), SFFILM often sets trends that other major nearby film festivals follow. It feels only right that they be the first film festival to publicly distance themselves from the Alamo Drafthouse in the wake of Tim League's misjudgments, especially since such an action dovetails so neatly with the "Bay Area values" that were frequently touted at the press conference and in subsequent write-ups, and with SFFILM Executive Director Noah Cowan's remarks found on the inside cover of the festival program guide, and reprinted online.

To be sure, SFFILM's distancing from the Drafthouse was not a forcefully presented statement, but it it was clearly presented, and that's good enough for me. When I asked at the press conference if the decision not to use the New Mission this year was due to the scandals at the company's Texas headquarters, Cowan responded that SFFILM looks forward to continuing its relationship with the Alamo Drafthouse in the future as the latter's issues were being resolved, but that the festival would take a break from the New Mission this year while that was happening. It may not have been the rousing battle cry for institutional change at the Drafthouse that I'd dreamed of, but having a major regional festival put a pause on its partnership is still one of the very few concrete consequences for that company I can think of happening in the past months. Nonetheless, I'm not too surprised that, Lincoln Specter's initial Bayflicks festival announcement reaction aside, none of the 2018 SFFILM previews, articles, or interviews I've come across so far (as always, David Hudson has collected the best of them) have mentioned the reason why the New Mission is not among the venues this year. Six months on from the initial reporting on Harvey Weinstein's far fouler misdeeds, it sometimes feels like there's a general fatigue with #MeToo in the film industry, sadly, as a noble and important movement is now being improperly co-opted as a shield for the cowardly actions of ignoble institutions. Of course the Tim League story predates all of this, but it never really got enough traction to be taken seriously outside a few insular circles that most Bay Area journalists probably aren't paying close attention to. Perhaps if it's talked about more in the context of SFFILM's decision the overall conversation might change, even nationally. I hope so.

But now that I've got all that off my chest, I can dwell on my excitement about this year's films and guests. This year's SFFILM has plenty of events that make me feel so relieved I'll be able to attend without compromising my principles. I'll be writing about some of these in more detail in the coming days, but for now, here's my planned schedule, which if last year's schedule is any indication, will change by about 30% over the course of the next two weeks, but may still provide a good snapshot of what I'm most interested in.

Image from The Rider supplied by SFFILM

Thursday, April 5:
Chloé Zhao's The Rider, 3:30, SFMOMA
Larent Cantet's The Workshop, 6:00, Roxie
Dominique Choisy in person with My Life With James Dean, 8:30, Roxie

Friday, April 6:
Golden Gate Persistence of Vision Award to Nathaniel Dorsky, presenting Avraham, Intimation, Autumn & The Dreamer in 16mm, 6:00, SFMOMA (interviewer Steve Anker also expected)
Paul Schrader presenting his First Reformed, 8:45, Victoria

Saturday, April 7:
Creativity Summit: Alex Garland in Conversation, 2:00, Creativity Theater
Shorts program Shorts 3: Animation, 5:00, Roxie (Carlotta's Face director Valentin Riedl, Oh Hi Anne director Anne McGuire, 73 Questions director Leah Nicholas & Weekends director Trevor Jimenez expected)
Tribute to Wayne Wang, presenting his Smoke, 7:30, Dolby (interviewer H.P. Mendoza also expected)

Sunday, April 8:
Guy Maddin giving the festival's annual State of Cinema address, 12:30, Victoria
Mohammad Rasoulof's A Man of Integrity, 3:15, BAMPFA
Johann Lurf's ★, 7:00, YBCA

Monday, April 9:
Hong Sangsoo's Claire's Camera, 4:00, SFMOMA
A Celebration of Oddball Films with Marc Capelle's Red Room Orchestra in 16mm, 8:00, Castro

Tuesday, April 10:
Steve Loveridge's Matangi / Maya / M.I.A., 9:00, Grand Lake

Wednesday, April 11:
Shorts program The Shape of a Surface: Experimental Shorts, including some in 16mm, 6:30, Roxie (unnamed director(s) expected)
Blonde Redhead with I Was Born, But... in 35mm, 8:00, Castro

Thursday, April 12:
Rungano Nyoni's I Am Not A Witch, 6:00, Roxie
Kornél Mundruczó's Jupiter's Moon, 9:30, Castro

Friday, April 13:
Sandi Tan presenting her Shirkers, 6:00, BAMPFA
Ulises Porra Guardiola & Silvina Schnicer presenting their Tigre, 8:30, BAMPFA

Saturday, April 14:
Mel Novikoff Award to Annette Insdorff, presenting Ernst Lubitsch's To Be Or Not To Be in 35mm, 1:00, SFMOMA (interviewer Anita Monga also expected)
No evening SFFILM screening; I'm hosting a FREE open-to-the-public screening of Ricardo Gaona's Parque Central with Lizzy Brooks's Temporal Cities at 7:00, 234 Hyde Street in San Francisco, both filmmakers in person.

Sunday, April 15:
George Gund III Craft of Cinema Award to Rob Epstein & Jeffrey Friedman, presenting End Game, 1:00, Castro (interviewer B. Ruby Rich also expected)
Robert Greene's Bisbee '17, 4:00, Creativity Theatre
Gus Van Sant presenting his Don't Worry He Won't Get Far On Foot, 7:00, Castro (composer Danny Elfman also expected)

Monday, April 16:
Robin Aubert's Ravenous, 8:45, Victoria

Tuesday, April 17:
Bing Liu's Minding the Gap, 8:45, Roxie

10HTE: Brian Darr

If you've read the seventeen other contributions to by tenth annual I Only Have Two Eyes project attempting to chronicle a hefty portion of the San Francisco Bay Area's best repertory and revival venues and screenings then you know the scene is still robust even as it constantly shifts, opening up new venues as others shutter or pull back. Now it's time for me to (finally) unveil my own top choices from my 2016 filmgoing as experienced from my seat in the audience among friends and strangers.

As usual, I'm essentially limiting my choices to films I'd never seen before at all, as I particularly value the ability I have in the Bay Area to let my first viewings of great films come in the kinds of environments they were intended for in the first place. It was nearly a half-century ago that Jean-Luc Godard said to Gene Youngblood, "I would never see a good movie for the first time on television." I don't strictly hold to this doctrine but I find my home viewings increasingly compromised and theatrical viewings increasingly precious in this distraction-driven era. I could create a shadow list of viewings of films I'd previously seen on television or in an otherwise-unideal circumstance, which came more alive through a 2016 cinema viewing. (Here's a try: Dumbo at the Paramount, In a Lonely Place at Noir City, I Am A Fugitive From a Chain Gang at the Castro, In the Street at the Crossroads festival, When A Woman Ascends the Stairs at BAMPFA, How To Survive A Plague at YBCA, The Grand Budapest Hotel at the Roxie, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me at BAMPFA, Early Spring at BAMPFA, and Halloween at the New Mission.) But without further ado, here are the ten I'm "officially" picking as my 2016 I Only Have Two Eyes selections. Thanks to all my other contributors, to all you readers, and of course to the venues and the filmmakers, dead or alive, whose work made 2016 another grand one for my continuing cinematic self-education and enjoyment.

Heaven's Gate screen capture from Criterion DVD

Heaven's Gate, February 28, 2016

Though I'll definitely be watching the Oscar telecast this year (with reservations) in the hopes that I get to see my old blog-buddy Barry Jenkins accept (or at the minimum, see some of his Moonlight collaborators accept) an award or two, even with the temptation of seeing a newly-more-relevant cinematic titan, and one of the films that inspired it, on the Castro screen, last year I skipped the show without the tiniest shred of compunction in order to catch an extremely epic double-feature in the aforementioned cinema. San Francisco's grandest screen was the ideal place to finally view Michael Cimino's notorious film maudit, which I'm not so surprised to report is now my favorite of his films made up to that point: his 1980 Heaven's Gate. (I haven't delved into Year of the Dragon through Sunchaser but was less-than-thrilled by his swan-song segment of To Each His Own Cinema). It's a sprawling, misshapen masterpiece full of wisdom and folly and a wagon-load of scenes I will absolutely never forget even if I never watch it again- which I certainly will, especially if a 35mm print of this 219-minute cut shows up somewhere again, as it surprisingly did for this Vilmos Zsigmond-tribute showing paired with the also exceptional America America which provided the Haskell Wexler half of the pairing in honor of two great, now-deceased cinematographers. That Cimino joined those two in the pantheon of departed masters only a few months later and that a President was elected who would certainly hate the pro-immigrant themes of these two films soon after that, makes the showing feel all the more special nearly a year later.

Foreign Correspondent, March 20, 2016

I made it back home from a weekend trip to Alfred Hitchcock's Sonoma County stomping grounds just in time to race to Palo Alto's Stanford Theatre for the final screening of his second Hollywood film, which is my second-to-last of his Hollywood films to view (I still haven't seen Topaz). Perhaps a decade or so ago I made a vow never again to watch a Hitchcock film for the first time on home video, and I've broken it only once since (for his silent Champagne, which I missed at the Castro in 2013 to catch a Stanford showing of The Ten Commandments). I'm glad I didn't and waited for this formative, pure entertainment whose 1940 thrills still feel so visceral on a big screen. I only wish I had been able to make it to the same venue in the fall when it showed the ever-rarer Waltzes From Vienna, which marks the end of the string of his British films (beginning with Juno and the Paycock) which, along with the much-later Jamaica Inn, I haven't been able to catch in a cinema yet and thus remain gaps in my Hitchcography. At least I saw several other excellent films from the Stanford's Vienna-themed series (including Spring Parade and Liebelei) and other great 2016 screenings (Hold Back the Dawn, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, A Midsummer Night's Dream) at my hands-down favorite south-of-San Francisco screening venue.

Black Sunday screen capture from Anchor Bay DVD

Black Sunday, April 7, 2016

A 2002 Yerba Buena Center For the Arts retrospective is where I first became acquainted with the visionary, technically audacious cinema of Italian master Mario Bava, whose films like Kill Baby Kill, Five Dolls For an August Moon and Twitch of the Death Nerve make him my personal favorite international horror director from the period between Jacques Tourneur's and David Cronenberg's peaks in that genre. But I couldn't see everything in that 15-year-old retro, so I'd never before seen his very first feature film as an uncredited writer and a credited director. It's appropriate that I return to the scene of the crime (YBCA) to finally view this eerie and intense 1960 film, which not only made a star out of Barbara Steele but also allowed Bava to emerge with a fully-formed style (honed by years as a cinematographer). YBCA's all-35mm Gothic Cinema series was an overall 2016 highlight, also allowing me a chance to finally see wonderfully spooky films like James Whale's The Old Dark House and Jack Clayton's The Innocents for the first time.

Quixote, May 22, 2016

Bruce Baillie is well-known as the founder of Canyon Cinema. He's also one of my very favorite living filmmakers and I'm so glad I had a chance to finally see two of his major works on 16mm for the first time in 2016. Though it was wonderful to see him down from Washington State introducing a screening of his first film On Sundays at New Nothing Cinema in September, an Artists' Television Access showing of his 1965 Quixote was even more precious. It was introduced by a more recent (though not current) Canyon executive director, Denah Johnston, who also showed a lovely film of her own called Sunflowers as well as the great Study of a River by then-gravely-ill master Peter Hutton, as examples of work inspired by Baillie's unique way of seeing. Quixote turns out to be truly monumental work of the proto-hippie counterculture, on the order of Baillie's post-hippie Quick Billy if not ever greater. Shot all over the American West and edited with the aplomb of the most skillful of the Soviet masters, it's Baillie's grand, righteous, sorrowfully patriotic/anti-patriotic statement all in one. Other 2016 repertory highlights in an experimental vein included 16mm showings of Thad Povey's Scratch Film Junkies' Saint Louise and Gunvor Nelson's Take Off at SOMArts (the latter also introduced by Johnston, the former by Craig Baldwin) and of Scott Stark's Angel Beach, Paul Clipson's Another Void and Rosario Sotelo's Flor Serpiente among other works at A.T.A.; both of these evenings were organized in conjunction with an undersung SOMArts exhibit called Timeless Motion that I had a very small hand in assisting in the installation of. I also loved seeing Ron Rice's The Flower Thief and Pat O'Neill introducing his Water & Power at BAMPFA, Caryn Cline showing Lucy's Terrace and her other films at the Exploratorium, Toney Merritt showing EF and many of his other films and Lynn Marie Kirby showing Stephanie Beroes's Recital at New Nothing, and Ishu Patel's Perspectrum and James Whitney's Lapis among others presented by Ben Ridgeway at Oddball (whose weekly screenings have sadly been put on hiatus). It was another good year in this regard.

Gate of Flesh screen capture from Criterion DVD

Gate of Flesh, May 28, 2016

I like the latest iteration of the Pacific Film Archive, now rebranded as BAMPFA, in its newly-built structure just a block or so from the Downtown Berkeley BART station. I don't love it yet, though, because it can't compete with fifteen years of memories made at the old corrugated-metal building further up the hill. It doesn't help that my approach to cinema-going doesn't seem to mesh quite as well with some of the patterns being established at the new venue; earlier showtimes, a reintroduction of the canon, more DCPs (the latter two may be related), etc. And I'm not quite used to the fact that though there are more seats, there also seem to be more sold-out shows; more than once I've arrived at the venue only to be turned away for lack of space, something that hadn't happened to me, no matter how spontaneous my arrival had been, in about a decade before 2016. But BAMPFA still allowed me to see some wonderful 35mm prints of films I'd never watched before, including several Maurice Pialat films, John Ford's The Long Voyage Home, Nick Ray's The Lusty Men, and a decent sampling of the Anna Magnani series that played in the fall. But my year's happiest personal discovery there was certainly that of Seijun Suzuki's 1964 Gate of Flesh, first released when he was a mere 41 (he's now 93 and counting!) It's a maximalist melodrama set in the world of makeshift brothels of post-war Tokyo at it's bombedest-out, filled with tremendous color and energy and some of the most inventive double-exposures made since the silent era.

Anguish, August 9, 2016

When I first heard in April 2012 that the Alamo Drafthouse was going to be renovating the long-shuttered New Mission Theatre I was living just a few blocks away, and was excited but skeptical that I'd still be living there by the time it arrived. Sure enough, I was evicted and moved across town within two years and the venue didn't open for nearly another two. But I've still found the allure of another repertory venue filling some of the long-standing genre gaps in the Frisco Bay screening ecosystem too strong to resist. Alamo's New Mission has something of a reputation for catering to the gentrifying crowd epitomized by the condos next door whose construction were part of the deal to revive the old "Miracle Mile" movie house, and if you look at the prices of their normal tickets and food-and-drink menu items, it's hard to shake that perception. But the theatre's regular late-weeknight, usually-35mm screenings of our grindhouse cinematic heritage for only $6 a seat makes it a godsend for budget-minded cinephiles. The most successful series seems to be Terror Tuesdays, and though it tends to focus pretty strictly on films from the 1970s, 80s and 90s, I can't deny that's a pretty good time period to focus on when it comes to horror movies. Catalan filmmaker Bigas Luna's jaw-dropping 1987 Anguish fits right into that frame, and I'm SO glad I saw it for the first time in a theatre full of other movie lovers who, like me, didn't seem to know what was hitting them. I don't want to spoil a moment of this unique film experience, but I will say that Alamo programmer Mike Keegan (formerly of the Roxie) gave a pitch-perfect introduction that gave us a sense of the intensity of experience we were in for without tipping Bigas's hand in any way. If I could only pick one viewing experience to highlight on this list instead of ten, Anguish would be very much in the running. I've also enjoyed the Alamo's Weird Wednesday programming (especially Walter Hill's Southern Comfort) and, before the admission price more than doubled from $6 to $14, the Music Monday events (especially Donald Cammell's & Nicolas Roeg's Performance).

Manhunter screen capture from MGM DVD

Manhunter, September 3, 2016

I must admit that of all the active filmmakers I see many of my cinephile friends and admireds discussing with passion, Michael Mann is the one that I have traditionally had the most resistance to joining the cult of. Perhaps I've just seen the wrong films (The Keep must be for the advanced Mann-ophile). His 1986 Manhunter, on the other hand, is most definitely the right film. It revels in an eighties-era dread very different from (and to me, more appealing than) the 1990s guignol of Silence of the Lambs, which it technically precurses even if its shared characters are played by different actors, and does a better job at interrogating the wobbly line between society's desecrators and its guardians than any serial-killer movie I can think of. This was screened as part of Jesse Hawthorne Ficks's MiDNiTES FOR MANiACS series, which by the end of 2016 appeared to have departed from the Castro as its primary home for over ten years (after a healthy early-2000s stretch at the 4-Star) and taking up residency at the Roxie (where Manhunter screened) while occasionally venturing into the Exploratorium or the New Mission. The houses are more reliably packed and the films chosen more frequently diverge from my own personal perception of "dismissed, underrated and forgotten films" (this weekend is a tribute to Hayao Miyazaki, whom I love but whom I have a hard time imagining with those labels), but as Ficks has direct contact with a new generation of moving-image-obsessives in his position as a film history teacher at a local school, I'm willing to defer to his definitions. Especially when it means 35mm prints of great films get shown in nearby cinemas.

Viridana, October 14, 2016

What cinema fan doesn't love Luis Buñuel? Finally getting a chance to see his 1961 excoriating re-entry into filming in his homeland after 29 years, in a beautiful 35mm print, would be a highlight of any year. It's a tremendous, unforgettable film, perhaps Buñuel's most Buñuelian, tackling all his usual themes of hypocrisy, sexual obsession, class conflict, etc. with maximum fervor. As much as I love his Mexican and French filmmaking periods, there is something about his few Spanish films that sets them apart. The screening was held at SFMOMA on the second weekend of its first Modern Cinema series devoted to the Criterion Collection and to Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul (its current series is Werner Herzog and Ecstatic Truth and its next series, in June, celebrates 100 years of Jean-Pierre Melville by grouping his films with those of one of his most ardent director acolytes Johnny To). After sampling the venue with Viridiana I was able to re-watch great films by Victor Erice, Hiroshi Teshigahara, and Apichatpong, who was on hand wearing a Canyon Cinema T-Shirt for certain showings. This series marked the relaunching of SFMOMA's film programming after over three years of expansion and refurbishment; the Wattis Theatre got a mild make-over in comparison to much of the rest of the building, a missed opportunity to provide more legroom between rows compounded by a new problem of noise from stairwalking museumgoers infiltrating the theatre space during museum-hours screenings of quiet films. Luckily Viridiana screened after hours, a new capability of the space now that it has a separate public entrance from the expensive-to-insure galleries, and I found one of the better seats in the house to view it from.  Despite its minor problems, I'm glad to have a key piece of Frisco Bay repertory reinstated after such a long absence.

So This Is Paris screen capture from youtube

So This Is Paris, December 3, 2016

Since instating an annual one-day Winter Event (or sometimes Fall Event) at the Castro Theatre as a supplement to its Summer (now moved to late Spring) multi-day festival more than ten years ago, the San Francisco Silent Film Festival has gradually moved more and more to showing most of the latest restorations and rarely-seen archival gems in the summer while using the opposite end of the calendar to bring out well-known warhorses like The Thief of Bagdad or The General or The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. It's like a little favor to the many out-of-towners who attend the multi-day festival that they tend to shy away from showing too many films at the one-day event that they'll really regret missing. In 2016, however, their December Day of Silents may have been even more enticing to certain silent film fans than the June festival; it was to me. Although the latter let me see terrific unknown films like Behind the Door and a program of (minimum) 110-year-old hand-colored European films as well as re-viewing great work by Ozu, Wellman, Clair, Flaherty, etc, the Day of Silents seemed to be programmed right to my fondest viewing desires: a rare chance to see longtime favorites like Eisenstein's Strike and Von Sternberg's The Last Command on the big screen for the first time, a chance to see Raoul Walsh's wonderful (if sadly incomplete) Sadie Thompson for the first time ever, and more, nearly all of it (excepting an early-matinee Chaplin shorts set) in 35mm prints. The highest highlight, however, was seeing the last and probably the best of Ernst Lubitsch's Warner Brothers silents, So This Is Paris from 1926, with a tremendous piano accompaniment from Donald Sosin. Everyone talks about this film's bravura Charleston dance sequence, justifiably, but the rest of the film is also a supreme delight, spoofing the then-in-vogue romantic sheik figure, engineering a perfectly-interlocking love quadrangle based on the same material as the famous Strauss operetta Die Fledermaus, and suffusing the proceedings with a biting gallows humor. It immediately shoots to the top tier of American silent films most shamefully lacking an official DVD release, alongside Lubitsch's next great film The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg (which I'm not sure how to explain the absence of on my very first I Only Have Two Eyes list from when I saw it at SFSFF in 2007).

I Gopher You, December 10, 2016

The Roxie Theater has really improved its repertory-screening game in my eyes over the past year or so, at least in my eyes. Perhaps it's a competitive response to the appearance of the Alamo Drafthouse a few blocks away. Perhaps it's a function of getting the right personnel in place on its staff and its non-profit board. Perhaps it's connected to the November 2015 passage of the Legacy Business Preservation Fund creation, which the Roxie was able to benefit from starting in August 2016. Perhaps all these factors and more contribute. But though the oldest (first opened in 1909) essentially-continuously-operating movie house in San Francisco, if not a much wider geographic area (it's contested), still has challenges to face, it's facing them not only by using creative tools like their current silent auction and upcoming off-site fundraiser, but also by reasserting itself as an essential piece of the Frisco Bay exhibition quilt through its screenings, more of which involved celluloid in 2016 than had been the case in quite a few years. I personally partook in great events like a September Sam Fuller series, a lovely Les Blank program in March, some of the previously-mentioned MiDNiTES FOR MANiACS showings like Manhunter, and more. None were more purely fun than the two all-35mm programs of Warner Brothers animation brought through the Roxie's monthly Popcorn For Breakfast Saturday morning cartoon showcase enthusiastically and knowledgeably hosted by Amanda Peterson. June's set of selections leaned heavily on the great Chuck Jones, and let me view 35mm prints of classics I'd only seen on TV before like Robin Hood Daffy and There They Go-Go-Go; that it was held twenty-four hours before a Castro Jones tribute made for a deeply-immersive weekend for fans of Termite Terrace's most celebrated director. But the Roxie's December dozen, while not ignoring Jones, gave greater attention to his 1950s studio-mates, particularly Robert McKimson. And the program began with a cartoon by my personal favorite of Jones's under-appreciated co-workers, Friz Freleng, which I'm 99% sure I never saw as a kid and 100% sure I hadn't seen as an adult, much less in a great 35mm print. Freleng's 1954 I Gopher You is the fifth cartoon featuring the hilariously over-polite Goofy Gophers voiced by Mel Blanc and Stan Freburg, and the first in which their nemesis is not an antagonistic pooch but the industrial agricultural system itself. "Mac" and "Tosh" find their farmland food supply raided by the mechanisms of post-World War II production, tracing a truck full of freshly-picked vegetables back to the Ajax processing plant. The mazes of conveyor belts and relentless canning contraptions makes for the ideal playground for Freleng's signature "anticipation gags" in which hearty humor derives from the expectation of the fulfillment of a pattern of violence and/or humiliation against a character. Much like the gophers themselves, this well-oiled machine of a film is seemingly small (at only 7 minutes), but packs a formidable wallop. It's available as a bonus on the Warner DVD of His Majesty O'Keefe, which you can rent at Lost Weekend Video.