Sitting down with Noah Cowan and Rachel Rosen on a wide veranda overlooking the spacious greenery of the Presidio, while being hydrated by a publicist, afforded this outsider some insight into the machinations required to craft the sprawling schedule of the San Francisco International Film Festival. Beyond the spiel delivered at the press conference and the hyperbolic blurbs in their brochure, I glimpse a beating heart beneath layers of bureaucratic verbiage that occluded my view. Cowan's a big guy whose gray-tinted glasses shield his watery blues. Rosen wears plaid in an Ida Lupino spirit.
Chief programmer Rosen chooses her words as if explaining things to a bright child. "We have a pretty process-oriented approach to our year-round work. Meaning: we often take a pause, take a step back, and think about what we're doing, where we want to be going, and why we're doing what we're doing, so we're not just functioning on automatic. The machinations are us talking through where we want to be and what our values are. The spiel you hear publically is us coming to a place where we are comfortable articulating that. So it's a messier vision behind the scenes and a more coherent presentation in public."
Executive director Cowan is equally thoughtful, checking his own sentences for formatting error as they issue from silver-bearded lips in a resonant tenor with folksy Canadian twang. "There's a series of guidelines both institutional and personal that we all operate under as we're watching films and reading about new films coming out that provide a basis for a higher or lower levels of scrutiny for those movies. Sometimes they pan out, sometimes they don't. We all share institutional priorities, but we bring our own personal points of view to the work we're seeing."
Rosen's chocolate eyes connect across the rustic wooden table. "Programming itself is a process. You're looking for a film to deliver in 15 different ways, and there's no perfect film, so it's a process of comparing and balancing different elements in different films. Those underlying conversations about values and goals help you keep the program balanced, but your individual reactions and passions are going to drive individual portions of the program. Give me a nun in love and you're already a step ahead of another movie, but we have to ask, Does this movie fit into what we're trying to say about cinema and the world?"
Cowan jokes, "I'm a little more banal. Adorable dogs is kind of a perennial for most programmers." Rosen amplifies, "My others are curmudgeonly old men. Those are easier to come by than nuns in love. And then, I love a good goat." Cowan parries, "You like barnyard animals as narrative drivers. I started my programming career in horror, particularly giallo movies, so whenever I see references or embedded tips of the hat to baroque bloodletting, I'm always a little delighted. Our Centerpiece has it, and our late-night 'Dark Wave' has it."
Cowan elucidates the bottom-line of his nonprofit organization. "We all come with constituencies. We have friends and opinion-makers and thought-leaders in the Bay Area we know well, who are going to respond well to certain movies. Everything's political, in a way. But as we collaborate, there are movies you feel more strongly about. Because it's not finally about our personal feelings, but the films that we feel can demonstrate value to an audience. Rachel's going to be able to demonstrate value for certain films better, and I'm going to be able to demonstrate value for some films better. We just speak with different voices."
Rosen skillfully turns the table on my question. "I feel like this is a process that goes on unarticulated in many professions. Movie critics aren't going on TV saying, 'Whoa, the movie was great, made me laugh, maybe you'll like it also.' You build your knowledge based on experience, based on watching a lot of movies, with audiences, at this festival, and reading and studying. You build a framework by which you can articulate why you think a movie is worthwhile. Part of the reason is you have some sort of personal response that is much more subconscious and emotional. You engage on an intellectual level, but everything is also being driven by emotional reactions."
Cowan suddenly spurts, "It's an ecstatic form of art! If you don't acknowledge that, then you're either lying, or dead inside." Rosen laughs as lightly as the spring breeze. Cowan concludes, "Either way, you don't make a good programmer."