For some time, the San Francisco Independent Film Festival has been my Sundance, sans snow, slopes and pricey condos. For their Sweet 16 edition, Jeff Ross and his SF IndieFest program elves have cast a wide net and produced two weeks of edgy provocations and hip parties, all running Feb. 6-20 at the Roxie Theatre, the SF Women's Building, Brava Theatre and Oakland's New Parkway Theatre.
Sex: M While SF IndieFest is all about the coolest of under-the-radar fiction films, I think director Kate Elston's thoughtful sitcom-length documentary qualifies. The protagonist, one Lucas Waldron, a 21-year-old SF politics student, has an official State of California ID that unambiguously reads "M," for male. This intimate video, perhaps the pilot episode for Lucas' post-college adulthood, opens on a shot of our hero detailing a drugstore shopping spree. "We've got some alcohol wipes to clean my wounds with, a bio-hazard box for my needles, and a vial of testosterone."
We flash back seven months to a less confident Lucas YouTube confessional: "I'm not a woman. It's uncomfortable sometimes when I get lumped together with women." Dad Vince recalls his kid acting like a "tomboy." Mom Kathleen remembers him playing on all-boys' basketball teams into the 7th grade. Lucas envied those boys. "I want to look like him, act like him, all these girls like him, and that's what I want to be." Director Elston matter-of-factly informs us that "Lucas will inject testosterone into his thigh twice a month for the rest of his life."
A high point in the film is a moral-support party for Lucas' first home injection. The film covers the waterfront, from the once-dreaded trip home for the holidays to the tricky job of getting access to his campus' only single-occupancy restroom, to thoughts of future surgery, to finding suitable hetero-female dating partners. The film is finished; the life remains a work-in-progress. (Real Talk shorts program, Roxie, 2/15, 18)
Proxy It's not often you get a lesbian-themed psycho-thriller that manages to pull off allusions, sly and blatant, to classic horror-suspense films like French master Henri-Georges Clouzot's Diabolique, while holding you in its insidious grip right down to the final blackout with gunshots. Director Zack Parker's thriller kicks off with a pregnant woman mugged in an alley. The young woman develops powerful feelings for a female member of her victim-of-violence support group, managing in the process to drive her female lover �" fresh out of prison, hot-to-trot, and tattooed �" mad with jealousy and thoughts of revenge. And that's just the setup. This one sizzles for two hours with comic riffs on the role of psychobabble, crime reporters and prudish female cops in the scheme of things. Proxy deliciously illustrates Hitchcock's theory about the scariest things unfolding in broad daylight. (Roxie, 2/16 & 20)
Teenage Director Matt Wolf, whose unconventional bio of queer music artist Arthur Russell Wild Combination was a highlight of Frameline 2008, here provides a found-footage history of adolescents with eloquent narrations by Jena Malone, Ben Whishaw, Julia Hummer and Jessie Usher. In the film, based on Jon Savage's book Teenage : The Creation of a Youth Culture, 1875-1945, we travel in effect from my British dad's Edwardian childhood through my American mom's WWII Frank Sinatra "jumping at the Paramount" teen years. Wolf and Savage's research not only makes clear how revolutionary the whole idea of adolescence was, but also manages to find German teen rebels who resisted the Hitler Youth movement, notably the swing music-loving Tommie Scheel (Ben Rosenfield). (Roxie, 2/9 & 12; New Parkway 2/20)
The Big Lebowski party & film If anything defines SF IndieFest, it's the Coen Brothers' loopy set-up for every straight-boy drug, booze, and gender joke capable of being hatched at a bowling alley. Imagine a jovial blue-collar crowd on four tabs of acid. A scruffy Jeff Bridges is "The Dude," the righteous goofball who only gradually learns that he's in with a far rougher crowd than his bowling bros. The 11th Annual Big Lebowski Party unfolds Feb. 15 at 518 Valencia (at 16th St.), 8 p.m., with a 35mm Roxie screening at Midnight.
Almost Human If you prefer your backwoods Maine zombie horror fare to be strongly laced with deadpan comedy, then director Joe Begos' debut feature is the best thing down the pike since the Jessie Eisenberg/Woody Harrelson vehicle Zombieland. With a no-nonsense, working-class ensemble having the usual assortment of icky real-life problems �" losing shifts at the local diner, alien-abducted boyfriends �" this zany spine-chilling romp, set circa 1987-89, takes a cascading series of increasing bizarre zombie attacks to the end of the line. (Roxie, 2/15 & 17)