The 59th San Francisco International Film Festival runs April 21 through May 5 at our beloved Castro Theatre, the Roxie Theater, the Alamo Drafthouse/New Mission (Mission St. between 21st-22nd Sts.), the Gray Area (2665 Mission between 22nd-23rd Sts.), the Victoria Theatre (16th St. between Mission-Capp Sts,), Proxy (432 Octavia) and BAM/Pacific Film Archive (2155 Center St., Berkeley).
Longtime fans of the Festival may recall its origins stretching back to 1957, when some San Francisco civic leaders thought our berg needed to join the growing chain of film fests showing post-WWII films celebrating the new Europe, along with emerging national cinemas in Asia and Latin America. For years the SFIFF played the Masonic Auditorium, before a theater was constructed at the Palace of Fine Arts. The first festival opened with an offering from Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni, Il Grido, starring Steve Cochran and described by critic Leonard Martin as a "leisurely yet compelling study of Cochran's mental disintegration due to a lack of communication with those he loves."
As usual, the film fest will host an array of world-class filmmakers and actors, including Irving M. Levin Directing Award winner Mira Nair, whose 2001 feature Moonson Wedding will be shown at the Castro (4/21). We begin with a few highlights for the LGBTQ film community.
Check It Dana Flor & Toby Oppenheimer give us an LGBT doc set in a multicultural Washington, DC, where gay and trans youngsters of color have to defend their life choices 24/7. You may find yourself constantly changing your opinion on whom to pull for in a story that illustrates not only the heavy weight of America's vicious racial history, but also how hard it is to chart genuine opportunities for kids born and seemingly destined to remain stuck in the shadow of the Obama White House. (Alamo, 4/22; Victoria, 4/24)
Tickled David Farrier is an out gay reporter who stumbles upon the weird world of man-on-man competitive tickling. Some viewers may be drawn back to childhood times when prepubescent wrestling could often dissolve into tickling to exhaustion without the guilt pangs that early sexual fumblings could induce. A crazy cyberworld detective story that promises lovely men and some very odd beats. (Alamo, 4/23; Victoria, 4/24)
Neon Bull Brazilian director Gabriel Mascaro presents perhaps the fest's oddest duck. Neon Bull is a full-submersion baptism into a still raw, frontier-like society. The film's appeal lies in its original take on sex, gender and the never-ending battle of the sexes.
We first spot Iremar at the local vaquejadas (rodeo) in Brazil's still-wild Northeast, where men on horseback work to bring bulls to the ground by seizing their tails. While Iremar is a natural vaquero gifted at feeding and caring for the bulls, he yearns to create women's clothing. At home, he shares his truck with coworkers: Galega, an exotic dancer, truck driver and mother to her cheeky daughter Caca; and Ze, his rotund compadre in the bull pen. Together they comprise an odd but close-knit family. Swinging in his hammock, Iremar's head is full of dreams of sequins and exquisite fabrics as he mentally assembles his latest fashion designs. In Portuguese with English subtitles. (PFA, 4/23; Roxie, 4/25)
Under the Gun This advocacy doc opens with a devastating statistic: "Before this film is over, 22 people in America will be shot. Six of them will die." Directed by Stephanie Soechtig with understated narration from former CBS anchor Katie Couric, Under the Gun takes you on a meticulously researched journey across a nation with a complex love affair with firearms.
The film lays out the paradoxical history of the pro-gun lobby the National Rifle Association, showing that the NRA's resistance to gun-control laws dates back only as far back as the late 1960s, when Pres. Johnson signed civil rights legislation that empowered African Americans but produced fear and loathing across a broad swath of conservative whites. We hear the stories of Americans for whom gun violence is no mere abstraction: a father ponders the murder of his youngest son during the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre; a Chicago mother mourns the gun death of her son headed for college; and the astronaut hubby of former Rep. Gabriel Giffords takes us through his wife's recovery from a head wound to her return as a spokeswoman against America's gun-violence epidemic. The filmmakers report that you're 65 times more likely to die from gun violence in the US than in Britain. When Couric asks a panel of gun-owners who's packing a pistol at that moment, every hand in the room shoots up. A festival must-see: the life you save may be your own. (Victoria, 4/27; Alamo, 4/29)
Love & Friendship Whit Stillman directs the opening-night film, a period comedy about spunky social climber Lady Susan (Kate Beckinsale), who tries to wiggle out of a social scandal while putting herself and her daughter in a good position to marry up. Stillman adapts a Jane Austen novella set in the 1790s that looks into the affairs of the privileged and those yearning to be, winking at contemporary pretensions through the lens of the past. (Director Stillman and actor Beckinsale are expected to appear.) (Castro, 4/21)
Miss Sharon Jones! Oscar-winning documentarian Barbara Kopple (Harlan County, U.S.A.) presents a moving bio-doc on soul singer Sharon Jones as the veteran performer battles pancreatic cancer. Kopple's cameras follow Jones from a tiny church in South Carolina to NYC's majestic Beacon Theatre. (Castro, 4/22)
Author: The JT Leroy Story A few years back, a lively literary dustup ensued around the identity of "trans artist" JT Leroy. Many were taken in, and among the lessons learned was, It's not nice to fool [Fresh Air radio host] Terry Gross! Now filmmaker Jeff Feuerzeig attempts to re-spin and update the whole fuss with a lengthy film chat with the woman behind the hoax, SF resident artist Laura Albert. (Castro, 4/22)
Cast a Dark Shadow For decades, British actor Dirk Bogarde was sublime as gents with martial problems, blackmailed for being gay or fatally smitten by a Swedish youth (Death in Venice). Here we have early-period Bogarde as a suave wife-killer who meets his matches in characters played by Margaret Lockwood and Kay Walsh. (Castro, 4/23; PFA, 4/24)
Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World German director Werner Herzog recaps the history of the World Wide Web. (Castro, 4/23)
The Man Who Knew Infinity Slumdog Millionaire star Dev Patel returns as a WWI-era Indian math student at Cambridge who faces bias and other challenges while studying under a famed don (Jeremy Irons). (Castro, 4/24)
Monsoon Wedding (2002) Irving M. Levin Award-winning director Mira Nair is honored and presents a classic drama about the complications that ensue from an arranged marriage. (Castro, 4/24)
The Fixer Ian Olds offers an Afghan-born young man who served US forces as an interpreter and now faces fitting into a Northern California landscape filled with drugs and cultural intrigue. See if you can spot Palo Alto native James Franco hiding in plain sight. Hint: his character has long hair and can't be trusted. (Castro, 4/24)
Maggie's Plan Writer-director Rebecca Miller aims high with a screwballish romantic comedy constructed around Greta Gerwig as a sweet control freak who can't resist meddling with the lives in her Manhattan social orbit. (Victoria, 4/23; Alamo, 4/26)
Operator Martin Starr stars as a tech worker who jumps the shark with some techno gadgets that deliver only chaos and martial discord. (Roxie, 4/23, 25)
Wild German director Nicolette Krebitz explores interspecies passion in this odd little fable about a young woman who comes upon a wolf in the forest near her home. (Alamo, 4/22, 26, 28)
Assassination Classroom Japan's Eiichiro Hasumi offers a junior high fable about a teacher who challenges his students to kill him before he does something they'll regret. (Alamo, 4/23, 27)
The Greasy Strangler Jim Hosking gives us a Sundance Fest hit about a man who conducts a walking disco tour with his beat-down son. In a subplot, a maniac is on the prowl in their town. (Alamo, 4/22, 25)
All These Sleepless Nights Warsaw denizen Kris sets off on a binge of rowdy activity in this part-doc/part-fiction entry from Poland's Michal Marczak. (Alamo, 4/22, 24)
Counting Former festival award-winner Jem Cohen creates a globe-spanning visual essay in tribute to famed indie filmmaker Chris Marker. (PFA, 4/23; Alamo, 4/24)
Info: festival.sffs.org