The 60th San Francisco International Film Festival is filled with cinema gems and buried treasures. Let's start digging, shall we?
A Tribute to James Ivory: Maurice In a 25-film partnership with the late Ismail Merchant, Berkeley-born James Ivory breathed life into the Edwardian-era fiction of British gay author E.M. Forster. This tribute to their 44 years features a rare screening of their best work, Maurice. A 1914 novel that the closeted Forster had published posthumously in 1970, the film concerns a dull stockbroker (James Wilby) whose homosexuality arrives like a thunderbolt while he lives at Cambridge with the attractive if dodgy Clive Durham (the film debut of Hugh Grant). Maurice's rejection by Clive casts him literally out into the woods, where he meets boyishly cute servant Alex Scudder (Rupert Graves). Arguably one of the most romantic films in the gay male canon. (SFMOMA, 4/14)
The Man with a Movie Camera This exhilarating work by Stalin era (1929) cinema genius Dziga Vertov carries us through the burgeoning Russian urban centers Moscow, Odessa and Kiev, where the imperatives of modern life attempt to defy the despot. Plays the Castro with live music from the Denver band DeVotchKa, responsible for the soundtrack to Little Miss Sunshine. (Castro, 4/13)
The Green Fog �" A San Francisco Fantasia with Kronos Quartet Experimental filmmaker Guy Maddin attempts to recreate the emotional and visual resonances of Alfred Hitchcock's San Francisco-based classic Vertigo without using any of the fabled romantic thriller's actual footage. A collage of images will be accompanied by live musicians. (Closing night, Castro, 4/16)
Bending the Arc Filmmakers Kief Davidson and Pedro Kos track the efforts of doctors, supported by the World Bank, to eradicate HIV/AIDS and TB in Third World communities in Africa, Peru and Haiti. (Castro, 4/14)
Half-Life in Fukushima Swiss filmmakers Mark Olexa and Francesca Scalisi depict the valiant efforts of an aging farmer to survive on his land in the wake of a devastating nuclear power-plant meltdown following a powerful tsunami. Screens with the short Valentina, about a goat-tending elderly couple. (Roxie, 4/17, 19)
Whose Streets? Sabaah Folayan depicts the aftermath of the police shooting of Ferguson, Missouri African American citizen Michael Brown. The filmmaker argues that the federally supported militarization of that city's police department has escalated tensions and prevented efforts to bridge an immense class and racial divide. (Proxy, 4/14)
Defender The work of San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi is the focus of this doc on the case of Michael Smith, one of the first people arrested as the result of the use of police body cameras. The film by Jim Choi and Adachi himself explores the ongoing dilemma of police departments charged with maintaining different standards of justice for white defendants and people of color. Screens with the short The Boombox Collection: Zion 1. (Castro, 4/15)
I Love Dick Two Jill Soloway-directed TV episodes screen, about a Marfa, Texas-based artistic couple played with gusto by Kathryn Hahn and Kevin Bacon. (Alamo, 4/15)
Bill Nye: Science Guy Climate change-deniers beware: the witty and delightfully eccentric former TV host and freelance public climate tribune Bill Nye is on the job to take on religious crazies and other right-wing fools. The film's highlight concerns Nye's ongoing debate with a climate change critic and his skeptical teenage son. (Alamo, 4/18)
Two or Three Things That Frighten Me in Vertigo: David Thomson Master Class British-born critic/film writer David Thomson attempts to unearth some little-known facts about Hitchcock's most-discussed Bay Area-set film classic. (SFMOMA, 4/16)