San Francisco Film Festival

WIDE AWAKE WITH ALAN BERLINER

Alan Berliner’s WIDE AWAKE is an eye opener. The first-person documentary offers an understanding of insomnia in cinematic terms, inventively tossing and turning through the sleepless nights and bleary days of Berliner’s world while he ruminates on the topic. Nominated for the Sundance Grand Jury Prize, the multi-layered work is a delightful collage of dream interpretation, interviews, quirky arcs of logic, found footage, and pauses for discovery and self-reflection.

During the San Francisco International Film Festival, Susan Tavernetti spoke with Berliner about how WIDE AWAKE transcends the personal to become a fascinating study of social issues and the nature of creativity itself.

ART SCHOOL CONFIDENTIAL

San Francisco director Terry Zwigoff and comic book artist-turned-screenwriter Daniel Clowes follow-up their GHOST WORLD success with a less satisfying collaboration. Selecting the art-school experience as their subject, the pair created a sardonic satire with broad brushstrokes, using a very limited color palette. They paint it black. Very, very black.

GREAT CITY, GREAT FESTIVAL

Sunday, May 7---It's been a few years since I was last in San Francisco. The City by the Bay has always held a personal fascination for me. I remember the first time I came here, in 1973, a college boy from New York City, looking for vestiges of the famed Summer of Love. There were still hippies in 1973, and a feeling of intoxicating freedom in the air. I stayed in a crash pad near the corner of Haight and Ashbury, and being so close to that epicenter of cool made me feel quite groovy.

CLOSING NIGHT: TOMLIN, MADSEN AND ALTMAN'S "A PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION"

Sunday, May 7----If you think the only San Francisco love fest took place during the summer of 1967, think again. No one was wearing flowers in their hair at the Castro Theatre on Thursday's Closing Night of the San Francisco International Film Festival, but a special feeling was certainly in the air.

A HEART TO HEART WITH HERZOG

Friday, May 5-----Filmfestivals.com Industry Editor Sandy Mandelberger sat down last week with legendary director Werner Herzog , recipient of the San Francisco Film Society Directing Award at the San Francisco International Film Festival, for a heart-to-heart discussion about what has kept Herzog going in a career that spans 40 years and almost 30 films.

THE REVOLUTION, NOW PLAYING (PART TWO)

Wednesday, May 3----Over a month ago at the press conference kicking off SFIFF 49, Linda Blackaby announced the documentary line-up, adding that these selections were “often some of the most popular films in our festival.” The gifted director of programming for the San Francisco Film Society noted that a dozen of them would compete in the Golden Gate Awards, and 11 more filled the slate of nonfiction features representing 13 countries. There’s not an emperor penguin among them.

GOLDEN GATE AWARDS CEREMONY WINNERS

Wednesday, May 3----The parking was impossible. But the weather was gloriously balmy by the bay for the San Francisco International Film Festival’s Golden Gate Awards, held this evening in the Cowell Theater at Fort Mason Center. Appropriately, the Golden Gate Bridge itself could be glimpsed in the distance from the lobby windows.

San Francisco Film Festival Video

49th San Francisco Film Festival video: it is an overview of the festival and interviews from Werner Herzog, Tilda Swinton, Ed Harris and many more....

Download san_francisco_film_festival_video_tracie_donahue.wmv

FRENCH FILM AND ZOOM! AFTER HOURS PARTY

Tuesday, May 2----An innovative French film and a wildly anticipated after-hours party are on tap for this Tuesday, as the San Francisco International Film Festival moves into its final days. The film, BACKSTAGE, is directed by Emannuelle Bercot, one of France's most interesting new women directors. The ZOOM! After Hours Party is one of the new innovations created to add a celebratory atmosphere to the Festival events.

THE REVOLUTION, NOW PLAYING (PART ONE)

Sunday, April 30----The revolution may not be televised by the major networks or covered by the mainstream press, but it’s certainly playing on screens large and small somewhere near you. On Saturday afternoon at the San Francisco International Film Festival, Susan Gerhard, the editor/bureau chief of the newly launched web film magazine SF360 (www.SF360.org), moderated a panel tagged “The Revolution Now Playing: Film as a Tool for Social and Political Change.”

TETE-A-TETE WITH JEAN-CLAUDE CARRIERE

Sunday, April 30----Filmfestivals.com Industry Editor Sandy Mandelberger sat down with legendary screenwriter Jean-Claude Carriere, who was in San Francisco to receive the Kanbar Award for Distinguished Screenwriting at the International Film Festival. Carriere, who at 75, is remarkably energetic and prolific, is polishing his script for GOYA'S GHOSTS, his third collaboration with director Milos Forman.

REVIVING THE MOVIE MUSICAL

Saturday, April 29----While we may never get back to the heyday of the film musical, when films with Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly or Judy Garland were regular staples, the movie musical is, belatedly, making a mini-comeback. Spurred by the success of MOULIN ROUGE and CHICAGO, the musical drama is sprouting not just in America, but in Asia as well. Tonight's Festival Centerpiece Film, actor/director John Turturro's ROMANCE AND CIGARETTES is another ambitious attempt to bring back the magic of the movie musical.

AWARDS NIGHT BRINGS OUT THE STARS

Friday, April 28----It was men in tuxedos and women in evening gowns as the San Francisco Film Society (SFFS) celebrated its Gala Awards Night in the ballroom of the historic St. Francis Hotel last evening. A crowd of several hundred of the city's movers and shakers assembled to toast SFFS award winners, including legendary screenwriter Jean-Claude Carriere, prolific director Werner Herzog and "actor's actor" Ed Harris.

THE FESTIVAL'S LATIN BEAT

Friday, June 28---Films from Latin America figure prominently in this year’s Festival schedule. In all, 11 films will be showcased, representing emerging talents from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Cuba and Mexico. The recent explosion of film production in this region has fueled international audience interest in one of cinema’s most vital regions of inspiration.

WERNER HERZOG'S ECSTACY OF TRUTH

Thursday, April 27---Werner Herzog, the veteran German director who is being honored at the Festival with the San Francisco Film Society Directing Award, is known for his dry wit and deadpan humor. Both were in evidence at the packed-to-the-rafters tribute held last evening at the glorious Castro Theater, one of the countries' oldest and most elaborate movie palaces.