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Opening Night and Filmshi coverage |
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Contributed by Sara Schieron
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Sunday, 16 April 2006 |
This year marks San Francisco International Film Festival's 49th year.
As rounded and well programmed as ever, this year's festival offerings
are bountiful and diverse, offering everyone a little something to take
home with them. |
This year the film opens with PERHAPS LOVE, a Chinese film by veteran director Peter Ho-Sun Chan. This film has been described as a re-invention of the western musical through a Pan-Asian lens. We'll see. Peter Ho-Sun Chan, like most of the festival's guests are expected to attend this gala, and the list of guests is really quite impressive. Outside of the Festival Awardees (Guy Maddin, Jean-Claude Carrier, Ed Harris and Werner Herzog), the festival has invited: Chris Hegedus and Nick Doob, directors of AL FRANKEN: GOD SPOKE; Chris Paine, director of WHO KILLED THE ELECTRIC CAR?; Terry Zwigoff, director of ART SCHOOL CONFIDENTIAL, and Tilda Swinton who will be offering this year's "State of Cinema Address". You can find interviews by most of these filmmakers in our SFIFF section.
With 241 films to be screened over the span of 15 days (to say nothing of the events and panels) we'd be remiss if we tried to cover it all. Learning a lesson from Buster Keaton's SHERLOCK JR, we've decided it's better to do one job well than to do 241 jobs poorly. So, we're approaching SFIFF 49 with an interest in certain categories of film.
Documentaries and International Features will be covered, as they're the hallmark of SFIFF, but the films will be chosen with an eye towards this year's trend in programming. Already, the list of features and documentaries shows an emphasis on the political: films like IRAQ IN FRAGMENTS and THE DIGNITY OF THE NOBODIES explore cultures on the fringes of corporate wars that endanger their safety and force them to find a voice of protest.
Continuing with filmshi's interest in revolutionary film movements, a great deal of content on films from Latin America will be presented. We'll be looking at films inspired by Cine Novo, and films from the "Brazilian Resumption". Though it's argued the Resumption is still going on, the years that marked the resumption were '93-98, when an improvement in a law regarding tax incentives provided Brazillian filmmakers' funds which would invigorate the development of national identity through cinema. Features like DELICATE CRIME (Brazil) and HOUSE OF SAND (Brazil) artfully deal with isolation, intimacy and the cycles of history, while FAVELA RISING (US/Brazil) and NEWS FROM AFAR (Mexico) look at social systems and families in hostile environments.
And finally, Filmshi will fulfill its ongoing dedication to those things that baffle us. You'll find reviews on THE GLAMOROUS LIFE OF SACHIKO HANAI, the festival's only "pink film", METAL: A HEADBANGERS JOURNEY and a smattering of articles about the films of COCK BYTE: THE BEST OF MACHINIMA series as well as others. We'll pay close attention to the "late show" film series running on select nights, always after 10pm. If it's a film of unique aesthetic ambition, we're curious and we're chatty.
We'll be offering a great number of director interviews on video and audio podcast and you'll find links next on the site to these downloads. You can find the podcasts for subscription at the iTunes Music Store under filmshi, or you can click on the icon to the left that reads subscribe to shicast.
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Festivals 
