youth

DropBox employees drop money for Mission soccer field, kick out neighborhood kids

Erica Hanna
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DropBox employees drop money for Mission soccer field, kick out neighborhood kids

Mission neighborhood tension has never been higher. The tech fueled boom has predominantly white and Asian newcomers butting heads with Latino neighbors who are long-time residents. 

The newest scuffle is over a small patch of green: Mission Playground’s soccer field, located on Valencia between 19th and 20th streets.

A video now making the rounds captures an argument between Dropbox employees and Mission neighborhood kids. The Dropbox employees, including designer Josh Pluckett, argue they’ve already paid for and reserved the field.

The Mission youth counter that the field historically has always been pick-up-and-play (first-come, first-serve), no reservations required. 

The video has many startling moments, highlighting the divide between the two groups. Can we all just acknowledge the oddness of a Latino man asking a white tech dude to “show me your papers,” as he asks for his soccer field use permit? Later in the video, things really heat up.

“Just because you’ve got the money to book the field doesn’t mean you could book it for an hour,” one taller youth tells the Dropbox employees. When the dudes-in-Dropbox-shirts explain they paid $27 to rent the field, the kid replies “It doesn’t matter, this field has never been booked. How long have you been in the neighborhood bro?”

The Dropbox employee responds “over a year.”

Another one off camera says “Who gives a shit? Who cares about the neighborhood?”

“I’ve been born and raised here for my 20 years, and my whole life you could just play here,” the youth responds. 

On the surface this is a gentrification argument: the kids may not be able to afford regular use of the field, wheras those with big dollars can pay up for use. But the incident also highlights the problem with privatization of our public spaces. 

As Mission Local pointed out, the field used to be concrete pavement, but neighborhood folks still played soccer. And damn, they played soccer, injuring themselves frequently on the asphalt. That was then. Now, you’ve got to pay to play. 

Suffice to say, less neighborhood folks play there now. 

Renting out the field for only one night costs $27 per hour, but to rent the field regularly (like neighborhood kids playing weekly would have to) costs $5 to $10 per player per week. What kid has that kind of money on a weekly basis?

The Guardian has long covered the privatization of neighborhood parks, a charge led largely by Recreation and Parks Department General Manager Phil Ginsburg. 

Connie Chan, a spokesperson for RPD, responded with this statement:

“Last year Mission Playfield was available for free, drop-in play 96% of the time. Like all parks and recreation facilities, Mission Playfield is open for both drop-in and permitted use.  Users of Mission Playfield are guaranteed a minimum of 16 hours per week of free, drop-in play and last year were able to access 4021 hours of free, drop-in play. In 2013 the field was permitted for 734 hours of free youth permitted play, and 185 hours of paid adult permitted play.  The Department has long recognized that our City has limited open space for recreation, and we definitely lack playfields for both adults and youth to play; we encourage all our park users to respect one another and share our parks.”

She also shared this image of Mission Playground signage:

paytoplay

It’s a matter of history that much of Golden Gate Park, including the arboretum, used to be free (or rather, paid by our tax dollars). In a movement that started over five years ago, San Franciscans now pay a premium to enjoy many park amenities throughout San Francisco. 

“What a lot of us think the Recreation and Parks Department is actually doing is relinquishing the maintenance of park facilities to private entities,” Denis Mosgofian told the Guardian in 2011, when the park privatization battle heated up. Mosgofian founded Take Back Our Parks following his battles with the RPD over the closures and leases of rec centers. “They’re actually dismantling much of what the public has created.”

For the past six years, RPD has sought to build more astroturf soccer fields at the end of Golden Gate Park near the Beach Chalet. This November, Proposition H is poised to take down the project, if the measure passes. The Guardian endorsed No on Proposition H, because we felt that particular soccer field in Golden Gate Park often went unused as is. But Proposition I is shady ballot box politicking.

Proposition I would ease city rules and public democratic processes around park construction to allow the rapid creation of many more astroturf fields. If it passes this November, you can look forward to seeing many more arguments like the YouTube video above. 

Return of the messenger

Erica Hanna
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Return of the messenger

By Melinda Welsh

news@sfbg.com

This one has all the ingredients of a dreamed-up Hollywood blockbuster: Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist uncovers a big story involving drugs, the CIA, and a guerrilla army. Despite threats and intimidation, he writes an explosive exposé and catches national attention. But the fates shift. Our reporter’s story is torn apart by the country’s leading media; he is betrayed by his own newspaper. Though the big story turns out to be true, the writer commits suicide and becomes a cautionary tale.

Hold on, though. The above is not fiction.

Kill the Messenger, an actual film coming soon to a theater near you, is the true story of Sacramento-based investigative reporter Gary Webb, who earned both acclaim and notoriety for his 1996 San Jose Mercury News series that revealed the CIA had turned a blind eye to the U.S.-backed Nicaraguan Contras trafficking crack cocaine in South Central Los Angeles and elsewhere in urban America in the 1980s. One of the first-ever newspaper investigations to be published on the Internet, Webb’s story gained a massive readership and stirred up a firestorm of controversy and repudiation.

After being deemed a pariah by media giants like The New York Times, Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post, and being disowned by his own paper, Webb eventually came to work in August 2004 at Sacramento News & Review. Four months later, he committed suicide at age 49. He left behind a grieving family — and some trenchant questions:

Why did the media giants attack him so aggressively, thereby protecting the government secrets he revealed? Why did he decide to end his own life? What, ultimately, is the legacy of Gary Webb?

Like others working at our newsweekly in the brief time he was here, I knew Webb as a colleague and was terribly saddened by his death. Those of us who attended his unhappy memorial service at the Doubletree Hotel in Sacramento a week after he died thought that day surely marked a conclusion to the tragic tale of Gary Webb.

But no.

Because here comes Kill the Messenger, a Hollywood film starring Jeremy Renner as Webb; Rosemarie DeWitt as Webb’s then wife, Sue Bell (now Stokes); Oliver Platt as Webb’s top editor, Jerry Ceppos; and a litany of other distinguished actors, including Michael K. Williams, Ray Liotta, Andy Garcia, and Robert Patrick. Directed by Michael Cuesta (executive producer of the TV series Homeland), the film opens in a “soft launch” across the country and in Bay Area theaters on Oct. 10.

Members of Webb’s immediate family—including his son Eric, who lives near Sacramento State and plans a career in journalism—expect to feel a measure of solace upon the release of Kill the Messenger.

“The movie is going to vindicate my dad,” he said.

For Renner — who grew up in Modesto and is best known for his roles in The Bourne Legacy, Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, The Avengers and The Hurt Locker — the film was a chance to explore a part unlike any he’d played before. During a break in filming Mission Impossible 5, he spoke to us about his choice to star in and co-produce Kill the Messenger.

“The story is important,” said Renner. “It resonated with me. It has a David and Goliath aspect.

“He was brave, he was flawed. … I fell in love with Gary Webb.”

 

EARLY VIRAL JOURNALISM

There’s a scene in Kill the Messenger that will make every investigative journalist in America break into an insider’s grin. It’s the one where — after a year of tough investigative slogging that had taken him from the halls of power in Washington, D.C., to a moldering jail in Central America to the mean streets of South Central Los Angeles — Renner as Webb begins to write the big story. In an absorbing film montage, Renner is at the keyboard as it all comes together — the facts, the settings, the sources. The truth. The Clash provides the soundtrack, with Joe Strummer howling: Know your rights / these are your rights … You have the right to free speech / as long as you’re not dumb enough to actually try it.

It took the real Gary Webb a long time to get to this point in his career.

His father, a U.S. Marine, moved Webb around a lot in his youth, from California to Indiana to Kentucky to Ohio. He wound up marrying his high school sweetheart, Sue Bell, with whom he had three children. Inspired by the reporting that uncovered Watergate and in need of income, he left college three units shy of a degree and went to work at The Kentucky Post, then The Plain Dealer in Cleveland, where he rose quickly through the ranks of grunt reporters. Dogged in his pursuit of stories, Webb landed a job at the Mercury News in 1988 and became part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 1989 for reporting on the Loma Prieta earthquake.

It was the summer of 1996 when the lone-wolf journalist handed his editors a draft of what would become the three-part, 20,000-word exposé “Dark Alliance.” The series was exhaustive and complex. But its nugget put human faces on how CIA operatives had been aware that the Contras (who had been recruited and trained by the CIA to topple the leftist Sandinista government in Nicaragua) had smuggled cocaine into the United States and, through drug dealers, fueled an inner-city crack-cocaine epidemic.

When “Dark Alliance” was published on Aug. 18 of that year, it was as if a bomb had exploded at the Mercury News. That’s because it was one of the first stories to go globally viral online on the paper’s then state-of-the-art website. It was 1996; the series attracted an unprecedented 1.3 million hits per day. Webb and his editors were flooded with letters and emails. Requests for appearances piled in from national TV news shows.

“Gary’s story was the first Internet-age big journalism exposé,” said Nick Schou, who wrote the book Kill the Messenger, on which the movie is partially based, along with Webb’s own book version of the series, Dark Alliance. “If the series had happened a year earlier it, ‘Dark Alliance’ just would have come and gone,” said Schou.

As word of the story spread, black communities across America — especially in South Central Los Angeles — grew outraged and demanded answers. At the time, crack cocaine was swallowing up neighborhoods whole, fueling an epidemic of addiction and crime. Rocked by the revelations, U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters, congresswoman for Los Angeles’s urban core to this day, used her bully pulpit to call for official investigations.

But after a six-week honeymoon for Webb and his editors, the winds shifted. The attacks began.

On Oct. 4, The Washington Post stunned the Mercury News by publishing five articles assaulting the veracity of Webb’s story, leading the package from page one. A few weeks later, The New York Times joined with similar intent.

The ultimate injury came when the L.A. Times unleashed a veritable army of 17 journalists (known internally as the “Get Gary Webb Team”) on the case, writing a three-part series demolishing “Dark Alliance.” The L.A. paper — which appeared to onlookers to have missed a giant story in its own backyard — was exhaustive in its deconstruction, claiming the series “was vague” and overreached. “Oliver Stone, check your voice mail,” summed Post media columnist Howard Kurtz.

Now, even some of Webb’s supporters admitted that his series could have benefited from more judicious editing. But why were the “big three” so intent on tearing down Webb’s work rather than attempting to further the story, as competing papers had done back in the day when Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein broke the Watergate scandal?

Some say it was the long arm of former President Ronald Reagan and his team’s ability to manipulate the gatekeepers of old media to its purposes. (Reagan had, after all, publicly compared the Contras to “our Founding Fathers” and supported the CIA-led attempt to topple the Sandinista government.)

Others say that editors at the “big three” were simply affronted to have a midsize paper like the Mercury News beat them on such a big story. An article in the Columbia Journalism Review claimed some L.A. Times reporters bragged in the office about denying Webb a Pulitzer.

One of their big criticisms was that the story didn’t include a comment from the CIA. When reporters at the big three asked the agency if Webb’s story was true, they were told no. The denial was printed in the mainstream media as if it were golden truth.

Other issues fueled controversy around Webb’s story. For example: It was falsely reported in some media outlets — and proclaimed by many activists in the black community — that Webb had proven the CIA was directly involved in drug trafficking that targeted blacks. He simply did not make this claim.

In some ways, Webb became the first reporter ever to benefit from, and then become the victim of, a story that went viral online.

After triumphing in the early success of the series, Webb’s editors at the Mercury News became unnerved and eventually backed down under the pressure. Jerry Ceppos, the paper’s executive editor, published an unprecedented column on May 11, 1997, that was widely considered an apology for the series, saying it “fell short” in editing and execution.

When contacted by us, Ceppos, now dean of the Manship School of Mass Communication at Louisiana State University, said he was only barely aware of the film coming out and wasn’t familiar with the acting career of Oliver Platt, who plays him in the movie. “I’m the wrong person to ask about popular culture,” he said.

Asked if he would do anything differently today regarding Gary Webb’s series, Ceppos, whose apologia did partially defend the series, responded with an unambiguous “no.”

“It seems to me, 18 years later, that everything still holds up. … Everything is not black and white. If you portrayed it that way, then you need to set the record straight. I’m very proud that we were willing to do that.”

Some find irony in the fact that Ceppos, in the wake of the controversy, was given the 1997 Ethics in Journalism Award by the Society of Professional Journalists.

Webb, once heralded as a groundbreaking investigative reporter, was soon banished to the paper’s Cupertino bureau, a spot he considered “the newspaper’s version of Siberia.” In 1997, after additional run-ins with his editors, including their refusal to run his follow-up reporting on the “Dark Alliance” series, he quit the paper altogether.

But a year later, he was redeemed when CIA’s inspector general, Frederick Hitz, released his 1998 report admitting that the CIA had known all along that the Contras had been trafficking cocaine. Reporter Robert Parry, who covered the Iran-Contra scandal for The Associated Press, called the report “an extraordinary admission of institutional guilt by the CIA.” But the revelation fell on deaf ears. It went basically unnoticed by the newspapers that had attacked Webb’s series. A later internal investigation by the Justice Department echoed the CIA report.

But no apology was forthcoming to Webb, despite the fact that the central finding of his series had been proven correct after all.

 

‘STAND UP AND RISK IT ALL’

It was eight days after Webb’s death when a few hundred of us gathered in Sacramento Doubletree Hotel’s downstairs conference room for an afternoon memorial service. Photo collages of Webb were posted on tables as mourners filed into the room. There he was featured in an Esquire magazine article recounting his saga. Family members and friends, longtime colleagues, and SN&R staffers packed into the room.

My own distress at Webb’s passing wasn’t fully realized until my eyes lit on his Pulitzer Prize propped on a table just inside the entryway. It was the first one I’d ever seen. I wondered how many more exceptional stories he could have produced if things had gone differently.

“He wanted to write for one of the big three,” said Webb’s brother Kurt. “Unfortunately, the big three turned [on him].”

Praise for the absent journalist — his smarts, guts, and tenacity — flowed from friends, colleagues and VIPs at the event. A statement from now U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, then a senator, had been emailed to SN&R: “Because of [Webb]’s work, the CIA launched an Inspector General’s investigation that found dozens of troubling connections to drug-runners. That wouldn’t have happened if Gary Webb hadn’t been willing to stand up and risk it all.”

Renner was hesitant to say if those who watch Kill the Messenger will leave with any particular take-home lesson. “I want the audience to walk away and debate and argue about it all,” he said of his David and Goliath tale. And then, “I do believe [the film] might help create some awareness and accountability in government and newspapers.” And what would the real live protagonist of Kill the Messenger have thought of it all? It’s at least certain he’d have been unrepentant. In the goodbye letter his ex-wife received on the day of his suicide, Gary Webb told her: “Tell them I never regretted anything I wrote.”

Bridgeworthy

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Bridgeworthy

 

Clouds of Sils Maria (Olivier Assayas, US/France/Switzerland/Germany) A cunning backstage drama occupying the middle ground between Olivier Assayas’ naturalistic dramas and reality-bending puzzles, Clouds of Sils Maria is set in the Swiss Alps and more nearly in the charged intimacy between an aging actress (Juliette Binoche) and her young assistant (Kristen Stewart). The grand dame has been cast in the same play in which she made her name decades earlier, only now she’s playing the older half of a Sapphic duo. “The play’s the thing,” and as actress and assistant rehearse lines they are simultaneously testing the bounds of their shared privacy. Further complicating things, Assayas’s brash characterization of the young starlet (Chloë Grace Moretz) cast opposite Binoche in the play invariably recalls Stewart’s own tabloid trials; like any hall of mirrors, entering Clouds of Sils Maria is much simpler than finding your way out. Assayas certainly isn’t the first filmmaker to examine slippages between actor and role, and yet he seems uniquely sensitive to rendering performance as simultaneously being a matter of artifice and absorption — the fact that it’s never entirely one thing or the other is what keeps things interesting. Fri/3, 8:45pm, Sequoia; Mon/6, 1pm, Smith Rafael. (Max Goldberg)

Dracula vs. Frankenstein (Al Adamson, US, 1971) MVFF had the bright idea this year of inviting Metallica to be its artists-in-residence, with each of the four members selecting a new or revival feature for the program. The most eccentric choice by far is guitarist and diehard horror fan Kirk Hammett’s. Drive-in schlock king Al Adamson’s 1971 cult classic is a triumph of lurid incoherence starring genre veterans Lon Chaney Jr. and J. Carrol Naish (both in their last film appearances), the director’s busty peroxided wife, Regina Campbell, Russ Tamblyn of 1961’s West Side Story (and Adamson’s 1969 biker epic Satan’s Sadists), and as Count Dracula, one Zandor Vorkov — aka Roger Engel, a goateed stockbroker who got the part because the filmmakers couldn’t afford forking out $1,200 for their first choice, John Carradine. Cobbled together from stock footage, a prior abandoned feature, and whatever trendy ideas came to mind (LSD, biker gangs, etc.), Dracula vs. Frankenstein is the ultimate exploitation-movie example of make-do disorder so profound it achieves a sort of surrealist genius. Fri/3, 10pm, Smith Rafael. (Dennis Harvey)

 

Imperial Dreams (Malik Vitthal, US) Focused on survival rather than violence, Malik Vitthal’s accomplished first feature offers a strong riposte to those who dismiss crime in African American communities as some kind of pervasive racial characteristic. Released from a prison stint on an assault charge, Bambi (John Boyega) wants nothing more than to keep his nose clean and reconnect with his four-year-old son (played by twins Ethan and Justin Coach). The latter has been raised — if you can call it that — by Bambi’s strung-out mother (Kellita Smith) and drug-dealing uncle (Glenn Plummer); the boy’s own mother (Keke Palmer) is still stuck in prison herself on an unrelated charge. It’s no healthy environment for a kid, or an adult either, since the uncle keeps trying to force Bambi back into illegal doings. Our protagonist can’t get a job without a driver’s license; can’t get a license without paying the back child support his imprisoned ex didn’t even file for; as a parolee, can’t move into government housing with his brother (Rotimi Akinosho); and can’t seem to make a move without local cops suspecting the worst of him. This low-key, Watts-set drama is sobering but not hopeless, and the tenderness between father and son never feels like a sentimental ploy. Sat/4, 5:30pm, Lark; Sun/5, 2pm and Oct 8, 11:30am, Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

 

Diplomacy (Volker Schlöndorff, France) Based on Cyril Gely’s play — itself inspired by real-life events — this drama from Volker Schlöndorff (1979’s The Tin Drum) is set during the waning days of World War II and stars the actors who originated the stage roles: Niels Arestrup as weary German military governor von Choltitz, and André Dussollier as crafty Swedish consul-general Nordling. Diplomacy puts a tighter focus on chaotic Paris, circa August 1944, than previous works (like 1966’s similarly-themed Is Paris Burning?), with most of the action confined to a hotel suite as the men discuss von Choltitz’ orders, handed down from a spiteful Hitler, to blow up Paris as the Allies loom. Nordling’s negotiating skills are already known by history, but how he got there, as imagined here, makes for tense, tightly-scripted and -acted viewing. Sat/4, 8pm, Sequoia; Oct. 8, 3:30pm, Smith Rafael. (Cheryl Eddy)

 

Charlie’s Country (Rolf de Heer, Australia, 2013) David Gulpilil memorably made his film debut as the nameless aboriginal youth whose ability to live off the land in harsh Outback terrain saves two lost British children in Nicolas Roeg’s 1971 Walkabout. Forty-three years later he’s an embittered hostage to “civilization” yearning for that near-extinct way of life. Living on a reservation in northern Australia, chafing under the regulations of well-intentioned government overseers (or “thieving white bastards,” as he calls them), he tries to regain some sense of independence and harmony with nature by hunting — only to have his weapons confiscated. Peers who remember traditional ways are dying out or being hauled off to urban hospitals where they feel completely alienated. This latest from ever-idiosyncratic Aussie director Rolf de Heer (2006’s Ten Canoes, 1993’s Bad Boy Bubby) is one of his more conceptually simple efforts, sans elements of fantasy, black humor, or outrageousness. But it’s all the more poignant for its clear-eyed purity of intent. Sun/5, 7:45pm, Lark; Oct. 8, noon, Sequoia. (Harvey)

Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem (Ronit Elkabetz and Shlomi Elkabetz, Israel/France/Germany) Ever felt trapped in a relationship? Odds are what you went through was nothing compared to the maximum-security imprisonment suffered by the titular protagonist in siblings Ronit and Shlomi Elkabetz’s Israeli drama. The former plays a middle-aged woman who was married off at age 15, and three decades of incompatibility later has decided the only solution is divorce. (By this point she’s already lived separately with most of their children for several years, supporting them with her own work.) But that can only be granted by a Rabbinical Court whose three members seem to see almost no reason why man should put asunder what God purportedly joined together in matrimonial contract. Seemingly out of sheer spite, the strictly religious (and humorless) husband played by Simon Abkarian further drags the process out for months, even years by refusing to cooperate when he doesn’t flat-out refuse to show up for mandated court sessions. Set entirely in the plain courtroom, this Israeli Oscar submission is claustrophobic both physically and psychologically — the strangling sensation of being in a situation our heroine’s culture and laws won’t permit escape from is excruciating at times. Mon/6, 7:30pm, Sequoia; Oct. 8, 6pm, Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

 

What We Do in the Shadows (Jermaine Clement and Taika Waititi, US/New Zealand) Before you groan “Oh no, not another mockumentary horror spoof,” be informed that this is THE mockumentary horror spoof, rendering all other past and prospective ones pretty well unnecessary. Vijago (Taika Waititi) is our 379-year-old principal guide as a film crew invades the decrepit Wellington, New Zealand, home he shares with three other undead bloodsuckers: Callow newbie Deacon (Jonathan Brugh), who refuses to do his assigned domestic chores; medieval Transylvanian warlord Vladislav (Jermaine Clement), still “a bit of a perv” torture-wise; and Nosferatu-looking mute Petyr (Ben Fransham), who’s scarier than the rest of them combined. When the latter recklessly “turns” local layabout Nick (Cori Gonzalez-Macuer), his loose lips — really, you don’t want to go around telling every pub acquaintance “I’m a vampire!” when you really are — threaten this fragile commune of murderous immortals. Though it loses steam a bit toward the end, Shadows is pretty hilarious for the most part, with its determined de-romanticizing of vampire clichés from Bram Stoker to Twilight. Tue/7, 7:45pm, and Oct. 9, 4pm, Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

The Theory of Everything (James Marsh, UK/US) It’s instant attraction when Stephen Hawking (Eddie Redmayne) meets Jane Wilde (Felicity Jones), though a dark cloud passes over the sweet romance between the Cambridge students when Stephen learns he has motor neuron disease. The odds are against them, but they get married anyway; as Stephen’s fragile condition worsens, his fame as a brilliant physicist grows. Though The Theory of Everything suffers from biopic syndrome (events are simplified for dramatic convenience, etc.), director James Marsh (2008’s Man on Wire), working from Jane Hawking’s memoir, does offer an intimate look at an extraordinary marriage that ultimately failed because of utterly ordinary, ultimately amicable reasons. In the end, the performances are far more memorable than the movie itself, with Redmayne’s astonishingly controlled physical performance matched scene for scene by Jones’ wide-rangingly emotional one. Oct. 9, 7pm, Smith Rafael. (Eddy)

In Order of Disappearance (Hans Petter Moland, Norway/Sweden/Denmark) Stellan Skarsgård makes like Liam Neeson in this bloody yet droll revenge saga. His unfortunately named Nils Dickman is a Swedish émigré living in a remote Norwegian community, working as a snow plowman. When their only son is kidnapped and killed — the innocent victim of a co-worker’s stupid plan to steal cocaine from major-league drug traffickers — his wife bitterly assumes he must have been the hapless addict that circumstances paint him as. But Nils refuses to accept that explanation, his own dogged investigations (and heavy fist) soon exposing a complex web of goons responsible, most notably rageaholic vegan racist villain Ole (Pal Sverre Hagen). He triggers full-scale war between local and Serbian crime factions to eliminate those few perps he doesn’t off himself — an ever-rising body count marked by onscreen titles commemorating each latest casualty. Hans Petter Moland’s film has been compared to Tarantino, and indeed there are similarities, but the frozen-north setting and bone-dry humor are Scandinavian as can be. Oct. 10, 5:45pm, Smith Rafael; Oct 12, 2:45, Sequoia. (Harvey)

MILL VALLEY FILM FESTIVAL
Oct 2-12, $8-14
Lark Theater
549 Magnolia, Larkspur
Cinearts@Sequoia
25 Throckmorton, Mill Valley
Smith Rafael Film Center
1118 Fourth St, San Rafael
www.mvff.com

TIFF 2014: Three more notables, plus a lucky top 13

Sue Vaughan
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TIFF 2014: Three more notables, plus a lucky top 13

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks reports from the recent 2014 Toronto International Film Festival. Previous installment here!

Three films at this year’s Toronto Film Film Festival achieved a consistently exhilarating cinematic aesthetic. 

The first was instant horror classic Goodnight Mommy (Austria), which had critics tripping over each other as they ran out of the theatre. I overheard one woman hailing the psychological terror film as the best movie she had seen at TIFF in five years.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fv859onWKPU

With art-porn filmmaker Ulrich Seidel as producer (see 2012-13’s Paradise Trilogy: Love, Faith, Hope), the eerie film evokes high levels of hypnotic and unspoken terror. DO NOT READ ANY SPOILERS about this fiction debut from Austrian filmmakers Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala. There is not a false note in the film and I cannot wait to watch it again and again and again. 

Next up was Joshua and Ben Safdie’s visceral indie Heaven Knows What (US). Anyone who witnessed their previous panic-inducing ditty Daddy Longlegs (2010) should take note. With the determination of an early-1980s Abel Ferrara film combined with Martin Bell’s seminal homeless youth documentary Streetwise (1984), the Safdies give Heaven star Arielle Holmes a chance to reinact her real life story, in all of its abrasive glory. Also worth a mention: the ear-crushing soundtrack, brimming with sludged-out remixes of Tomita and Tangerine Dream as well as “hardstyle” favorite Headhunterz and Norwegian church-burners Burzum. 

Lastly, Peter Strickland’s follow-up to his 1970s-psychedelic Berberian Sound Studio (2012) is another nostalgic throwback, this time reveling in the psychosexual castles of Jean Rollin films. The Duke of Burgundy (UK) follows the sadomasochistic relationship between two mysterious women. Like its predecessor, in this film Strickland pays a never-ending amount of attention to detail along, with multiple layers of style to burn. Along with burgeoning British retro-genre filmmaker Ben Wheatley (A Field in England, 2013), Strickland seems to polarize cinephiles. Make sure to experiment with these little-films-that-could before making any hasty decisions.

Best of the 2014 Toronto Film Fest

1. Lav Diaz’s From What is Before (Philippines)

2. Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy’s The Tribe (Ukraine)

3. Abel Ferrara’s Welcome to New York: Uncut Version (France/US) and Pasolini (France/Italy/Belgium) 

4. Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Look of Silence (Denmark/Indonesia/Norway/Finland/UK) 

5. Joshua and Ben Safdie’s Heaven Knows What (US) 

6. Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala’s Goodnight Mommy (Austria)

7. Zhang Yimou’s Coming Home (China) 

8. Sergei Loznitsa’s Maidan (Ukraine) 

9. Eugène Green’s La Sapienza (France/Italy)

10. Peter Strickland’s The Duke of Burgundy (UK)  

11. Mike Leigh’s Mr. Turner (UK) 

12. Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Winter Sleep (Turkey/France/Germany) 

13. Tsai Ming-liang’s Journey to the West (Taiwan/France) 

This Week’s Picks: Sept. 24 – 30, 2014

Michael Redmond
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WEDNESDAY 24

 

Jean-Pierre Gorin

The title of the Pacific Film Archive’s terrific Jean-Luc Godard retrospective is “Expect Everything From Cinema,” but in the aftermath of May 1968, Godard’s radical deconstructions of film form suggested a less sanguine outlook. His comrade in the collectivist Dziga Vertov Group, Jean-Pierre Gorin, visits the PFA tonight to lecture on this frequently underestimated period. Always a lively presence, Gorin will stick around for another night to introduce a screening of Ici et ailleurs (1976), an hourlong reckoning of 1970 footage shot in Palestinian refugee camps, charged by subsequent events (specifically the 1972 Munich Olympics). “The film’s complex, layered text and imagery, its anguish and skepticism all confute its agit-prop approach,” writes James Quandt, “and the result is as touching and beautiful as it is incensing.” (Max Goldberg)

Gorin speaks Wed/24 and Thu/25 at 7pm; each event $9.50

Pacific Film Archive Theater

2575 Bancroft, Berk.

(510) 642-1412

www.bampfa.berkeley.edu

 

 

 

50th Big Book Sale

Claiming to be the “biggest book sale west of the Mississippi,” the 50th annual Big Book Sale at Fort Mason is a collector’s dream, with over 500,000 books, DVDs, CDs, vinyl, tapes — you name it — all to be scavenged for under $3. (At a super big sale on Sunday, prices plummet to $1.) If that isn’t exciting enough, Friends of the SF Public Library have hidden prizes amongst the towering stacks of words, so follow the clues and you could win tickets to the SF Symphony, DeYoung, the Roxie, and more! All proceeds benefit the SF Public Library’s education programs. (Haley Brucato)

Through Sun/28, 10am-6pm; free

Fort Mason Center

2 Marina, SF

(415) 441-3400

www.friendssfpl.org

 

THURSDAY 25

 

 

Slaughterhouse-Five

Become “unstuck in time” with Billy Pilgrim as he recounts his life, spent largely as an American prisoner of war and witness to the firebombing of Dresden, in this satirized theatrical adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut’s anti-war 1969 classic, Slaughterhouse-Five. Produced by Custom Made Theatre Co. — known for its socially conscious and intimate productions — this is sure to be an emotionally-moving and humorous 100-minute performance (without intermission), mirroring Vonnegut’s own nonlinear narrative style. (Haley Brucato)

Through Sat/27 at 8pm; also Sun/28 at 7pm, $35-$40

Gough Street Playhouse

1620 Gough, SF

(501) 207-5774

www.custommade.org

 

 

 

 

Oakland Underground Film Festival

The Oakland Underground Film Festival is back for its sixth year, and the programming is, as the East Bay kids say, hella great. Opening night films are Aussie writer-director Hugh Sullivan’s sci-fi rom-com The Infinite Man (a hit at South by Southwest and Fantasia), and Brazil-set martial arts saga Falcon Rising — featuring the high-flying Michael Jai White, star of 2009 OAKUFF hit Black Dynamite. There’s also ¿Qué Caramba Es La Vida?, a doc about female Mariachi musicians; a late-night screening of 1988 cult classic Heathers (how very!); multiple shorts programs (including “Sick and Twisted Horror Shorts”); Nick Cave docudrama 20,000 Days on Earth, and more. (Cheryl Eddy)

Through Sun/28, $10

Grand Lake Theatre

3200 Grand, Oakl

 

Humanist Hall

390 27th St, Oakl

www.oakuff.org

 

 

FRIDAY 26

 

decker.

San Franciscans may think they have the market cornered on psychedelia, but things sound a little different in the desert — dusty, moody, lonely, and super atmospheric. All of these are apt words for decker., a Sedona-based “desert folk” act led by singer-songwriter Brandon Decker that won hearts with its soulful live act at SXSW, among other stages. This show, which serves as a record release party for the band’s fifth album, Patsy, will actually be a double-helping of soul: Oakland favorites Whiskerman, with Graham Patzner’s whiskey-coated vocals at the helm, will help open the evening. (Emma Silvers)

With Whiskerman and Brother Graham

9pm, $12

Bottom of the Hill

1233 17th St, SF

(415) 626-4455

www.bottomofthehill.com


SATURDAY 27

 

5th Annual SuperHero Street Fair

Villain or hero? You decide. For the fifth year, thousands of event-goers will be disguised in their favorite capes, masks, and tights, donning a sword or perhaps a whip, to fulfill their ultimate superhero fantasies. Thanks to the co-creators of How Weird Street Fair, Sea of Dreams NYE, and Decompression Street Fair, this heroic outdoor fetish-fest will bump the costume-ridden streets with seven electronic music stages, light installations, comic exhibits, climbing walls, cartoon art, and a Jack Kirby museum. But the founders challenge each to first ponder one thing: “What creativity and superpowers do you bring to the everyday world?” (Haley Brucato)

1pm-11pm; $15

Waterfront Boardwalk Oasis

1700 Indiana, SF

www.superherosf.com

 

 

 

Yatra: Masters of Kathak and Flamenco

In his collaboration with Jason Samuel Smith, Kathak virtuoso Chitresh Das explored common and different qualities in their improvisatory approach to percussive dance-one donned tap shoes, the other ankle bells. So, now Das has taken the idea closer to home. Flamenco, as historians have speculated for a long time, may have had its origins in Northern India—Kathak’s own territory—from where gypsies brought it through the Middle East and North Africa to Spain. In Yatra: Masters of Kathak and Flamenco, Flamenco dancer Antonio Hidalgo Paz and Das bring their own musicians, who hopefully will have a collaborative moment of their own. What do we know for sure that they have in common? Fierce feet, verticality, an almost reverential use of the music, expressive use of arms and hands, and an immaculate sense of timing. (Rita Felciano)

Sept. 27 8pm, Sept. 28, 2pm, $28-$58

Palace of Fine Arts

3301 Lyon St, SF

(415) 333-9000

www.kathak.org

 

 

Iranian Film Festival

Iran’s rich cinematic tradition has perservered despite the country’s political upheaval and unrest — and a new generation of filmmakers continue to emerge and share their stories. The Iranian Film Festival spotlights indie films made by or about Iranians, no matter where they live. Its two-day run packs in 12 programs, most of which include a feature and multiple shorts. True tales include Oliver Stone’s Untold History of the United States, about the CIA’s role in the 1953 coup in Iran; and Abbas Kiarostami: A Report, a doc about the pioneering filmmaker. There are also several empowering films about women, including Sepideh — Reaching for the Stars, about an Iranian woman who dreams of a near-impossible career as an astronaut, and Iranian Ninja, about, yes, Iran’s first female ninja. (Eddy)

Through Sun/27, $11-12 (passes, $60-120)

San Francisco Art Institute

800 Chestnut, SF

www.iranianfilmfestival.org

 

 

SUNDAY 28


Hushfest

How do you get away with throwing a bonkers dance party on public Ocean Beach in broad daylight? Pipe the music directly into the crowd’s headphones, that’s how. The Silent Frisco crew has found the ultimate underground vibe, above ground. Here’s how it works – gather at the party spot (imbibe your libations beforehand, please, no drugs or alcohol on the beach), pay $20 for special wireless headphones, and dance in the sand with a huge gaggle of other wildly, silently gesticulating aficianados. DJs at this annual event around include genius duo Psychmagik, who rejigger deepest funk-rock memories of the 1970s, Rob Garza of Thievery Corporation, and Fort Knox Five. Yes, you can still yell “woo!” (Marke B.)

11am, $20

Ocean Beach, SF

www.silentfrisco.com


MONDAY 29


John Darnielle

Mountain Goats devotees know him as the prolific pen and idiosyncratic voice behind the band’s complex story-songs — some 14 studio albums of ’em, over the course of 18 years. But with Darnielle’s richly imagined and darkly memorable debut novel, Wolf in White Van, the lyricist proves his writing chops go well beyond the CD insert, weaving a mysterious tale through the eyes of a narrator we won’t soon forget: All readers know at the novel’s outset is that our loner protagonist runs a complex, interactive adventure game from his house, and that he was seriously disfigured at some point in his youth. In the process of uncovering his full story, we find ourselves sympathizing with people we might never expect. At the only Bay Area stop of his book tour, Darnielle will read from the novel and discuss it with author Robin Sloan. (Silvers)

7pm, free

Green Apple Books on the Park

1231 9th Ave, SF

www.greenapplebooks.com



TUESDAY 30


Royal Blood

Up-and-coming UK duo Royal Blood may have formed just last year, but the band is already making quite a name for itself on the basis of awesomely blues-fueled, snarling garage rock, which is showcased on the new, self-titled album that came out last month on Warner Bros. Records. That release debuted at No. 1 on the British charts, and the band is up for a prestigious Mercury Prize. Tonight is your chance to catch the explosive band in an intimate setting — the newly remodeled Masonic — before the pair likely moves on to much bigger venues. Royal Blood opens for The Pixies. (Sean McCourt)

7:30pm, $50-$75

The Masonic

1111 California, SF

www.sfmasonic.com

 

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Flooding the streets

Michael Redmond
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Flooding the streets

news@sfbg.com

In New York City’s Times Square on a muggy, gray Sunday afternoon at the historic People’s Climate March, everything went silent for a minute as a massive crowd, led by indigenous people from around the world, raised fists in the air to support communities suffering the harshest effects of climate change.

In this canyon of glittering commerce, surrounded by corporate icons such as Chase Bank, Bank of America, Gap, McDonald’s, and Dow Jones, the silent coalition then burst into a thunderous crescendo meant to symbolize action and demand climate justice.

On Sept. 21, a veritable ocean of humanity, estimated at up to half a million people — a diverse global tapestry hailing from South Bronx to South Dakota, Kenya to the Philippines — flooded Manhattan’s streets with calls for climate change action two days before a major United Nations Climate Summit that few expected to produce much, if any, change. The next day [Mon/22], a more confrontational “Flood Wall Street” civil disobedience action drew thousands.

The New York march, part of a worldwide day of action spanning more than 2,700 rallies in 159 countries, represented the largest, loudest sign yet that the world is waking up en masse to the climate crisis. Stretching for miles through Manhattan’s mid-section, wave after wave of contingents illustrated the crisis’ universal effects and broadening response: Indigenous people’s groups from around the world, labor unions, faith and LGBTQ groups, low-income communities of color. More than 1,400 organizations endorsed the march.

The People’s Climate March also reflected the urgency and rising response from communities of color and indigenous people who bear the brunt of climate disasters. As many attested, these climate-hammered communities are bringing economic and ecological justice issues to the forefront of a movement often criticized for being predominantly white.

“I’m here because I have a chronically asthmatic daughter,” said Tanya Fields, a 34-year-old mother of five and executive director of the Bronx-based Black Project. In poor waterfront communities from New York’s Far Rockaway and the Bronx, to New Orleans, “communities are not being prepared for the inevitable repercussions” of climate change, Fields said. “When you look at the intersection of climate change and capitalism, those who are have-nots clearly are much more vulnerable. When we talk about creating a more resilient world, we’re also talking about protecting the most marginalized.”

Iya’falolah Omobola, marching with a Mississippi environmental justice group called Cooperation Jackson, said her community has been hit hard by a confluence of climate change, poverty, and health struggles.

“We have a lot of issues directly related to climate, but also to the fact that there are no jobs, there’s no public transportation to get people to jobs,” she said. “There has to be a community-led solution as opposed to the system that keeps compounding the problem.”

Behind a banner stating, “Climate affects us the most,” 300 or so marched from the Brooklyn-based El Puente Leadership for Peace and Justice, including many youth.

“Many of our young people are from the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico. We know what’s happening to our people there in terms of climate change, so we’re coming together,” said El Puente Executive Director Frances Lucerna. “The connection between what happened here when Hurricane Sandy hit and what’s happening in our islands, in terms of beach erosion and extinction of species, is devastating.”

Marchers from Africa, Latin America, South Asia, and beyond highlighted the underlying “first world” causes behind the climate crisis. Marifel Macalanda, of the Asian Pacific Indigenous Youth Network in the Philippines, said she was in New York “in solidarity with indigenous peoples worldwide,” urging corporations to “stop plundering our resources. They are the primary reasons we are having this climate crisis right now.”

Meima Mpoke, who traveled from Kenya along with 20 of his compatriots, added, “We are here to say to the industrialized world, you are the cause of this.” The UN Summit, Mpoke said, “should produce some action, particularly to show who is causing the climate change.”

Marching with a large Bronx contingent of Percent for Green, Alicia Grullon emphasized similar struggles in poor US communities. The South Bronx is “a dumping ground” for New York’s toxins, and “the asthma capital of the country,” she said. The UN summit presented “an unusual gift for policymakers to do something new … and we’re afraid they’re not going to do that and we’re here to remind them of that great opportunity they have.” However, she added, the Summit gave corporations a big seat at the table: “That’s not representing needs of the people.”

Mychal Johnson, co-founder of South Bronx Unite, was one of just 38 civil society representatives invited to attend the UN Summit. “I won’t have a speaking role,” he said, but “our presence hopefully will speak volumes.” The gulf between the massive public march and the closed-doors UN summit was “a grave contrast,” Johnson said. “A great deal of corporations have been invited, but for so long, the voices of the many have not been heard. We know what corporations are doing to cause harm to the planet, and hopefully this [march] will show people coming together all over world to make sure that legally binding agreements come out of these climate talks.”

 

DIM HOPES FOR UN SUMMIT

Billing itself as “catalyzing action,” Tuesday’s UN Climate Summit issued bold pronouncements ahead of its proceedings — but social justice groups from around the world were not buying it.

“The Climate Summit will be about action and solutions that are focused on accelerating progress in areas that can significantly contribute to reducing emissions and strengthening resilience,” the Summit website promoted. “Eradicating poverty and restructuring the global economy to hold global temperature rise below 2 degrees Celsius are goals that — acted on together — can provide prosperity and security for this and future generations.”

But critics blasted the UN climate agenda for emphasizing voluntary reforms and “partnerships” with businesses and industries that are fundamentally part of the problem. One week before the People’s Climate March, global social movements including La Via Campesina, Grassroots Global Justice Alliance, and Indigenous Environmental Network — representing a total of more than 200 million people — issued a statement decrying the “corporate takeover of the UN and the climate negotiations process,” Common Dreams reported.

“The Summit has been surrounded by a lot of fanfare but proposes voluntary pledges for emissions cuts, market-based and destructive public-private partnership initiatives such as REDD+, Climate-Smart Agriculture and the Sustainable Energy for All Initiative,” according to the statement. “These are all false solutions of the green economy that seeks to further commodify life and nature and further capitalist profit.”

 

BIGGER TENT, SMALLER MESSAGE?

Despite concerns about the Summit, the People’s Climate March drew criticism from some activists for not making any demands, and for spending big on public relations while opting for a nonconfrontational “big tent” that some said diluted the movement’s message and impact.

A “Flood Wall Street” direct action Monday drew thousands for civil disobedience, issuing a strong message: “Stop Capitalism. End the Climate Crisis. Flood, blockade, sit-in, and shut down the institutions that are profiting from the climate crisis,” the event’s website urged. “After the People’s Climate March, wearing blue, we will bring the crisis to its cause with a mass sit-in at the heart of capital.”

Flood Wall Street’s more confrontational approach and its naming of capital illustrates unresolved differences about where the movement should focus its energy: Will it work for market reforms, such as 350.org’s popular fossil fuels divestment campaign, or press for larger systemic change? As it erects a big political tent drawing broad mainstream support, will the climate movement be able or willing to push bold demands that may confront capital and corporate power?

In a widely read critique for Counterpunch, writer Arun Gupta argued that the focus on drawing a big crowd came at the expense of a sharper message and impact. “[W]hen the overriding demand is for numbers, which is about visuals, which is about PR and marketing, everything becomes lowest common denominator. The lack of politics is a political decision.”

In an e-mail comment, Bobby Wengronowitz, who helped organize for the Flood Wall Street actions, said he supported the big march, but added, “We need to match the scale of the crisis. We need to get the US and other rich countries on a 10 percent emissions reductions per year plan. That requires white privileged folks to do what indigenous people have been doing for 500 years — to put their bodies on the line … I’m all for big tent, but this march, even if the final tally is 500K does NOT do it.”

A three-day Climate Convergence, featuring talks, films, and teach-ins, offered protesters a dose of critical thinking, urging, “Demand an end to fossil fuels, mobilize for system change, living wage jobs now!” At an event on climate change and the public sector, a panel of organizers and authors raised questions about the focus on market-driven approaches, discussing the potential for addressing climate change through a revitalized public sector.

 

NEW COALITIONS AND HOPE

On the day of the big march, the sheer immensity of the gathering and the expressions of hope were palpable.

“Today I marched peacefully alongside humans of all class and race, of all gender and sexuality, among anarchist, indigenous, labor unions, different political parties and so many more,” said Patrick Collins, who rode the People’s Climate Train from San Francisco. “[S]eeing the over 1,000 different groups come together in the march who all have different ideologies but are willing to look past differences and agree on common ground does give me some sort of hope.”

Many marchers also expressed hope for new coalitions to pack a potent punch in the fight for climate justice. Labor unions were out in force — teachers, nurses, janitors, food workers, and farmworkers — marching for economic justice, green jobs, and more.

Erin Carrera, a registered nurse and member of National Nurses United, said it was “a monumental moment to be here today with all these labor organizations, because labor and environmentalists have not always been on same page—but I think everyone’s coming to realize that there are no jobs on a dead planet.” Organized labor, Carrera said, “needs skin in the game, because it’s the working class that’s going to be most vulnerable … today gives me so much hope that we have turned a corner in people waking up and working together.”

 

 

 

Aboard the People’s Climate Train

As our cross-country People’s Climate Train passed through Azure, Colo., above a stunning crimson and white rock gorge under a deep-blue sky, James Blakely delivered a presentation on the ecological crisis in the Alberta Tar Sands. Blakely, an activist with 350.org in Idaho, described toxic tailing ponds filled with mining refuse, polluted waterways, dust clouds, and buffalo die-offs. Aboard the train, one of two ferrying hundreds from California to New York’s mass mobilization, our group — ranging in age from 19 to 68 — alternated between snapping photos of the awe-inspiring beauty outside, to probing conversations about rescuing our imperiled planet. Through the Amtrak window, California’s drought-withered cornfields stood wilted and barren, skeleton-like. In the Sierras, forest fires blurred the horizon with smoky haze. Late at night in the Nevada desert, huge factories and refineries churned away. Coal trains traversed the land, spewing fossil fuels. There were reminders of beauty, too. At about 5am, my sleepless eyes took in an ethereal pre-dawn scene. Gnarled sandstone rock formations rose near the tracks in Utah like moon faces; followed by a salmon-hued sunrise splashing across mesas tufted with sage and juniper. Liz Lamar, an activist with the Sierra Club and the Climate Reality Project in Oxnard said the cross-country passage made her “even more passionate about going on the march, by passing through such beautiful scenery.” The People’s Climate Train provided an apt backdrop for workshops and conversations about the causes and victims of climate crisis, and the prodigious challenges ahead. Sonny Lawrence Alea, a recent environmental studies graduate from San Francisco State University, said the ride offered “a great reminder of what we’re going to New York for. This land is full of opportunities, and we get to connect with the environment, take in the beauty, and reflect on the history of the land.” (Christopher D. Cook)

TIFF 2014: Foreign favorites, part two (Asia and beyond)

Sue Vaughan
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0
TIFF 2014: Foreign favorites, part two (Asia and beyond)

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks reports from the recent 2014 Toronto International Film Festival. Previous installment here!

Zhang Yimou’s Ju Dou (1990) was an unofficial remake of the American film noir The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946) — and it was also a showcase for the 25-year-old Gong Li. I’ve grown up with each of his films over the past decades, including classics To Live (1994) and The Road Home (1999). His latest, Coming Home (China), is his most gut-wrenching film yet. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GsKijZmtlM

Zhang began his studies at the Beijing Film Academy in 1978, after the death of Mao Zedong and the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976. He quickly blossomed into the leader of the Fifth Generation of Chinese filmmakers, and has gone through his fair share of controversy with the Chinese government and later with audiences who felt his films had lost their contrarian political stances. His latest heartbreaker is set during the Cultural Revolution, as it follows a university professor who is sent to labor camps, leaving his own wife and daughter to fend for themselves along with the negative status of being an “intellectual.” 

Zhang was in attendance for the Coming Home screening, and spoke at length about how China’s youth have never heard any of this history and how this film is not just one family’s struggle, but represents stories of millions of people that are being forgotten. Gong’s remarkable turn as a traumatized peasant ranks as one the year’s best performances and shame on the Oscars (in advance) for not recognizing her (yet again). As an aside: this is Zhang’s 18th feature and eighth time working with Gong; someone really needs to be putting together a complete retrospective. Qigang Chen’s Coming Home soundtrack is still haunting me weeks after the screening. This film is more proof that sentimentality should not be considered a dirty word in cinema. In fact, those that fight nostalgic tendencies are often the ones that have the most to hide.

Hong Sang-soo’s Hill of Freedom (South Korea) is yet another mini-masterpiece from the filmmaker, and another hilarious take on awkward, drunken relationships between 40-somethings. Hong upends linear storytelling, as usual, and showcases the legendary Korean actress Moon So-ri. (Her most recent Hong film was 2012’s In Another Country, with Isabelle Huppert.) With a running time at only 66 minutes, Hill of Freedom makes for the perfect appetizer on any film festival night.

In Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy’s The Tribe (Ukraine), an all deaf-mute cast leads the way to one of the most explosive films of the year, and it does so without a single line of dialogue or subtitling. This otherworldly experience forces audiences to pay attention to every action that these excluded teenagers make. While it ruthlessly emphasizes the violent, transgressive, and explicitly sexual nature of the teens, there is an intense structuralist method being utilized here that multiple viewings will be necessary to further pinpoint. 

Belarusian filmmaker Sergei Loznitsa’s feature debut was the remarkable narrative My Joy (2010), which consisted of (according to the filmmaker) “140 cuts in the whole film.” With his third film, Maidan (Ukraine), he has created a jaw-dropping observational documentary of the Ukrainian people’s uprising in Kiev from December 2013 to February 2014. It is comprised of a series of fixed long shots that will be burned into your skull for the rest of your life, though your patience may be tested during the film’s 133 relentless minutes. 

Each sequence slowly gathers hundreds of faces, historically patriotic songs, and ultimately a unified people before, during, and after the government’s terrifying late night attacks. The film is not just a testament to the present-day political moment, but is a study in uncompromising cinema. This film has to be seen on a large screen. And if any local film festival to you is brave enough to program it, attend it all costs. Warning: A few audience members I spoke to were furious with the film for not “getting to know” any of the film’s inhabitants up close and personal.

Eugène Green is an American-born, naturalized French filmmaker that I had never heard of until his showstopper La Sapienza (France/Italy) screened on my final day at TIFF. With a plot that must be an homage to Roberto Rossellini’s Journey to Italy (1954), this eloquent exploration of a lifeless marriage caught me by surprise with its direct approach to the couple’s interactions. It follows Robert Bresson’s philosophy of removing cinema’s “masks,” and I found myself incredibly moved as a middle-aged man shared his genuine love for 17th century architect Francesco Borromini. Kino Lorber has acquired the film for a US release later this year — and with it, hopefully a larger audience for Green.

 

This was the first year that TIFF put together an international shorts program (“Short Cuts”), and art-house favorite Claire Denis led the pack with Voilà l’enchantement (France), a 30-minute tale involving an interracial couple and no sets. The mesmerizing actor Alex Descas shines in this wonderfully dramatic exercise. Tsai Ming-liang also continued his short film output with Journey to the West (Taiwan/France) — part of his “Walker” series. This time, Tsai brings his hidden camera to France and places both his regular actor Lee Kang-shang and the iconic Denis Lavant in unison on the streets of Marseille. The film runs close to 60 minutes, and there is truly nothing more enjoyable than watching these two performers hypnotizing the unaware locals (as well as the moviegoers around you). Tsai’s previous announcement of retirement will hopefully be soon forgotten.

 

TIFF 2014: Foreign favorites, part one

Sue Vaughan
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0
TIFF 2014: Foreign favorites, part one

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks reports from the recent 2014 Toronto International Film Festival. Previous installment here!

** Working steadily for over 40 years, achieving more than 20 features, Mike Leigh has stayed true to his “kitchen sink realism” aesthetic. Contemporary audiences could all too easily take him for granted. His latest, Mr. Turner (UK), is a rigorous and immensely rewarding journey that explores the life of British artist J. M. W. Turner (1775-1851). 

Spall won the award for Best Actor at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, not just for emulating Turner’s cartoonish and almost frightening physique, but also inhabiting and truly expressing the ghastly terror one struggles with after the death of a loved one. Recalling Jane Campion’s dazzling An Angel at My Table (1990), Leigh’s film places emphasis on the immense difficulties that an artists put themselves — and the others around them — through, and cinematographer Dick Pope (who has shot ten of Leigh’s films since 1990, and won a special jury award at Cannes for his work on Mr. Turner) gives every frame an almost spiritual look. 

** Olivier Assayas’ Clouds of Sils Maria (France/USA) feels like a remake of his Maggie Cheung showpiece Irma Vep (1996), with Juliette Binoche and Kristen Stewart playing out the filmmaker’s latest enchantments. Stewart, who plays the personal assistant to Binoche’s famous-actress character, is an absolute revelation, holding her own during the most fascinating and even erotic scenes of the film.

Clouds is deliciously layered with self-referential mirrorings of its stars’ real-life careers; it also contains ambiguity that left me talking to others about the film for days. The film was shot in 35mm, which is remarkably utilized during the many depth-of-field sequences in its Swiss-mountains setting.

** The Dardenne Brothers have added yet another stunning film to their collective résumé with Two Days, One Night (Belgium/France). The drama follows a woman (Marion Cotillard, in a stunning, panic-driven performance) as she desperately tracks down each of her fellow factory workers in hopes of saving her job, giving the audience an eye-opening look at the state of middle-class Belgian neighborhoods. 

** Jean-Luc Godard’s Goodbye to Language 3D (France) offers a purposefully playful take on 3D, forcing viewers to constantly readjust their focal points toward not just the images but the subtitles as well. This fast and furious farewell to our language of the past (and present?) is overflowing with so much energy, it should be screened twice in a row. 

** Ruben Östlund’s Force Majeure (Sweden/Norway/Denmark/France) lived up to its title when took this year’s Cannes Film Festival by storm, winning the Jury Prize in the Un Certain Regard section. This often surprisingly hilarious look at a Swedish bourgeoisie family slowly spills into much darker terrain, creating a minefield of gut-wrenching gender-politics. Similar to Julia Loktev’s gripping The Loneliest Planet (2011), director Östlund does an astounding job weaving through relationship expectations. With this being the Swedish entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 87th Academy Awards, hopefully someone local will program the filmmaker’s previous three films  — The Guitar Mongoloid (2004), Involuntary (2008), and Play (2011) — which look just as mesmerizing.

** Mia Hansen-Løve’s Eden (France), an ode to the 1990s Electronic Dance Music scene, received countless write-ups due to the fact that the film includes the members of Daft Punk in the film. This humorously parallels the movie’s story, as it follows a French DJ who created the “French Touch” but whose legacy — like many in every youth movement — fell short of success. This was definitely one of the hottest cinephile tickets of the festival, and those who were patient with this two-part, 131-minute odyssey were rewarded with quite a poignant punch. 

The director made a splash with her hypnotic The Father of My Children (2009), which won the Special Jury Prize in the Un Certain Regard section at the Cannes Film Festival, and followed it up with the coming-of-age Goodbye First Love (2011). Eden has a built-in audience of EDM fans who will be educated on quite a number of unsung heroes from 1990s; added to that is the melancholic role played by Greta Gerwig, which should intrigue many non-EDM fans.

Questions of the week: Who is the walrus? And who is Liam Neeson gonna take down next? New movies!

Sue Vaughan
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Questions of the week: Who is the walrus? And who is Liam Neeson gonna take down next? New movies!

If Jesse Hawthorne Ficks’ ongoing Pixel Vision posts about the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival have you longing for your own festival experience, check out the San Francisco Silent Film Festival’s one-day “Silent Autumn” series at the Castro Theatre, as well as Cine+Mas’ San Francisco Latino Film Festival, which opens tonight at the Brava Theater and runs through Sept. 27 at various venues.

First-run picks o’ the week include Liam Neeson’s latest lone-wolf action movie, an ensemble movie starring Tina Fey and Jason Bateman, and Kevin Smith’s new joint, in which Justin Long turns into a walrus. Yep, you read that right. Read on for reviews and trailers!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ng4MD66WyU

The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby Writer-director Ned Benson’s The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby began as separate films about a failed marriage, told from the points of view of the husband (James McAvoy), and then the wife (Jessica Chastain). Because Americans will happily binge-watch entire TV seasons but still get the shakes when confronted with a two-part film, the segments (titled Him and Her) are getting wide release in the edited-together Them. (Diehards will have a chance to seek out the complete work eventually, but for now, this review concerns only Them.) As the film begins, Chastain’s Eleanor (yep, named after the Beatles song) flings herself off an NYC bridge. She survives physically, but her mental state is still supremely fragile, so she checks out of her Manhattan life and her marriage to Connor (McAvoy), and digs in at the chic suburban saltbox occupied by her parents (Isabelle Huppert and William Hurt) and sister (Jess Weixler), a single mother with a young son. Meanwhile, Connor mopes around his failing restaurant with his chef BFF (the suddenly ubiquitous Bill Hader), and pays occasional visits to his own moping father (Ciarán Hinds). The estranged couple circles each other, in flashbacks and occasional run-ins, and the audience is slowly made privy to the tragedy that drove them apart and has them both reeling from grief months later. Even in mash-up form, this is a delicate film, enhanced by Benson’s confidence in his audience’s intelligence; what could have been a manipulative tear-jerker instead feels authentically raw, with characters whose emotional confusion leads them to behave in realistically frustrating ways. The casting is note-perfect, with a special nod to Viola Davis as Eleanor’s world-weary college professor. I’ll be seeking out Her just to catch more of that performance. (2:03) (Cheryl Eddy)

The Iceman A palace guard accused of murder (martial arts star Donnie Yen) and three vengeful brothers are all frozen mid-battle — only to defrost 400 years later and pick up where they left off. (1:46) Four Star.

Los Angeles Plays Itself Remastered and newly cleared for fair use, Thom Andersen’s incisive 2003 film essay on narrative cinema’s many representations and misrepresentations of Los Angeles plays a single night at the Castro. Andersen’s impressively choreographed montage zigzags through a vast litany of film history, submitting erotic thrillers, middlebrow Oscar bait, and avant-garde outliers to the same materialist protocol. Observing Hollywood’s tendency to falsify geography and transform landmarks of modernist geography into villainous hideouts, Andersen’s treatment of mainstream ideology is acidly funny but never condescending. To the contrary: Los Angeles Plays Itself is driven by an unshakeable faith that another kind of film — and with it another kind of world — is possible. In methodically deconstructing countless car chases and phony denouements, the native Angeleno lays groundwork for the fresh appreciation of the diverse neorealisms found in the work of directors like Kent Mackenzie (1961’s The Exiles), Nicholas Ray (1955’s Rebel Without a Cause), Fred Halsted (1972’s LA Plays Itself), Charles Burnett (1979’s Killer of Sheep), and Billy Woodberry (1984’s Bless Their Little Hearts). A true work of termite art and an impassioned argument for “a city of walkers, a cinema of walking,” Los Angeles Plays Itself is the closest thing to a cineaste’s Death and Life of Great American Cities. (2:49) Castro. (Max Goldberg)

The Maze Runner In a post-apocalyptic world, a youth (Dylan O’Brien) finds himself among a group of boys trapped at the center of a mysterious maze. Based on the YA novel by James Dashner. (1:53) 

This Ain’t No Mouse Music! See “Joyous Blues.” (1:32) Elmwood, Roxie, Smith Rafael.

This Is Where I Leave You Jason Bateman plays Judd Altman, the hollow center of a clan of snarky, squabbling siblings — Wendy (Tina Fey), fractiously married with kids and pining for her high school sweetheart (Timothy Olyphant); Paul (Corey Stoll), who runs the family sporting goods store; and Phillip (Adam Driver), a philandering über-fuckup currently dating his former therapist (Connie Britton) — reunited somewhere in eastern seaboard suburbia by the death of their father. This vaguely sketched individual’s last wish, they are informed by their mother (Jane Fonda), a therapist turned author who mined their adolescence for pop psych bestseller gold, was that, his atheism notwithstanding, they conform to Judaic tradition and sit shivah for him. A seven-day respite of quiet reminiscing and clarifying reflection, broken up by periodic babka-and-whitefish-salad binges, could be good for Judd, whose recent misfortunes also include coming home to find his wife (Abigail Spencer) between the sheets with his shock jock boss (Dax Shepard), resulting in a divorce-unemployment double whammy. But there is no peace to be found at the Altman homestead, where fuses blow, siblings brawl, in-laws conduct high-volume international business transactions and reproductive rites, and Wendy’s latchkey toddler wanders the property with his portable potty. Director Shawn Levy (2013’s The Internship, 2010’s Date Night) and writer Jonathan Tropper, who adapted the script from his novel, don’t want any of the siblings, or satellite characters, to feel left out, and the story line is divvied up accordingly. But the results are uneven — lumps of comedy and genuine pathos dropped amid the oppressive exposition, pat resolutions, and swings in pacing from slack to frenetic. (1:43) (Lynn Rapoport)

Tusk Michael Parks has a gift for looking like he’s in a different movie than everyone else, and it’s possible that ineffable skill of his has found its best use to date in Kevin Smith’s new fuck-you horror-comedy Tusk. When jerky podcaster Wally (Justin Long) finds a video that begins like “Star Wars Boy” but ends with dismemberment, Wally flies to Canada to interview the “Kill Bill Boy” (so named for the sword wielding and spurting stump). Wallace reaches his destination and is importuned by the funeral. This is one of a handful of scenes that exists to make us happy when Wally meets magical storyteller Howard Howe, an ex-sailor full of sea tales and an dark plan to turn Wally into a Franken-walrus. The story is based on something Smith hashed out in his sModcasts (excerpted during the credits) and when you look for author surrogate (not that you should) Wally’s impossible to distinguish from Smith. Asshole podcaster? Fights for permission to work freely? Body issues? All Wally needs is a dachshund and a jersey. Tusk isn’t up to the level of Smith’s early output, but it’s right in line with the decline in quality he’s been facing since critics broke his spirit, studios turned cold shoulders, and cynicism naturally set in. I hope whatever soul coughing Tusk represents will provide Smith momentum and license to leave any transformative hardships behind him — there are always beacons of hope (an uncredited Johnny Depp provides a good one here). Despite fundamental frustrations, Tusk has some deep and inky moments. When Howe takes Wally’s leg from him (leveling him to a “Kill Bill Kid”-styled punch line) Wally wails impotently, and Howe laughs — at what, it’s not certain (perhaps it’s really Parks, guffawing at Long’s performance?), but whatever that gloriously complicated motivation was, in the mingling of cries emerges an eerie but profoundly communal squall. (1:42) (Sara Maria Vizcarrondo)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6Ttj9tXzCA

A Walk Among the Tombstones The latest in Liam Neeson’s string of films in which he plays a tough guy uncannily adept at hissing orders (or threats) through a telephone is as pitch-black as its eerie title suggests. Set conspicuously in 1999, when Y2K and far more sinister threats loomed (see: a poignant shot of the World Trade Center), Tombstones is the grim tale of Matt Scudder, a loner with both an NYPD career and a prodigious drinking habit wedged 10 years in the past. He maintains his bare-bones lifestyle by doing off-the-books PI work, but none of his dirty-deeds experience can prepare him for his next case, a nightmarish pile-up of missing women sliced to pieces by a van-driving maniacs. Working from Lawrence Block’s novel, writer-director Scott Frank (2007’s The Lookout) emerges with surprisingly layered characters that extend beyond the archetypes they initially seem to be at first; besides Neeson’s Scudder, there’s a street-smart youth who becomes his sorta-helpful sidekick (Brian “Astro” Bradley), and a vengeful drug dealer (Dan Stevens) with a junkie brother (Boyd Holbrook). Even the murderers behave in unexpected ways. And if its story hews a bit too closely to Urban Noir 101, it’s bleak as hell, and has the guts to make relentlessness one of its primary objectives. (1:53) (Cheryl Eddy)

Wetlands It begins, like many a classic coming-of-age tale, with an unbridled case of hemorrhoids, followed by a barefoot meander through possible sewage to the vilest public restroom captured on film since 1996’s Trainspotting. None of this seems to faze Wetlands’ outspoken heroine and narrator, 18-year-old Helen (Carla Juri), a skateboarding, sexually adventurous young maniac who admits to having a markedly lax attitude toward personal hygiene. Viewers of director-cowriter David Wnendt’s film, however, may want to refrain from visiting the concession stand just this once — chewing on Milk Duds is likely to become negatively evocative as Helen embarks on a round of tactile explorations involving a tasting menu of bodily excretions. The biotic high jinks continue when she winds up in the hospital in the wake of a viscerally enacted shaving incident, from which vantage point, occasionally under general anesthesia, she revisits scenes from both her fraught childhood and her teenage exploits, wandering between the homes of her divorced parents: an anxious, uptight germophobe mother (Meret Becker) and a checked-out, self-indulgent father (Axel Milberg), whose inadvisable rapprochement she hopes to engineer from her hospital bed. Impressively, amid the advancing waves of gross-out, a poignant story line emerges, and, like Helen’s handsome, bemused nurse Robin (Christoph Letkowski), the object of her wildly inappropriate advances, we find ourselves rolling with the shock and revulsion, increasingly solicitous and bizarrely charmed. (1:49) (Lynn Rapoport)

The Zero Theorem See “Waltz Work.” (1:46) 

Indian Joe suffers a tragic injury, keeps his sense of humor

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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Indian Joe suffers a tragic injury, keeps his sense of humor

We spotted Indian Joe, an iconic San Francisco character who’s famous for emulating the look of rock legend Alice Cooper, on the sidewalk outside the Bay Guardian office Monday morning. Donning his signature top hat, he beamed and said hello. But something was wrong.

Joe was sitting in a wheelchair, and the lower half of his right leg was gone.

He filled us in on how it happened: Less than a month ago, a concrete block fell onto his leg at a recycling facility operated by Recology, instantly crushing his ankle and foot. He’d gone to the recycling center, located at Pier 96 on Amadour Street in San Francisco, on Aug. 18, to help a friend unload recycled cardboard.

They’d gone numerous times before. He said they used the same practice for unloading his friend’s pickup truck that they and other recyclers always use, which involves tying one end of a rope securing the bundle of cardboard to a concrete block with an eyelet sticking out of it, and driving forward a few feet to pull the cardboard off the truck bed. But on this day, the concrete somehow came loose and crushed Indian Joe’s leg, causing him to lose a limb.

The day after we encountered Joe on the street, we stopped in to see him at the Hotel Alder, a Sixth Street SRO where he’s lived for four years. He shares his room with a sweet gray cat named Thin Lizzy, named after the rock band. Jack Ottaway, a photographer who’s acted as Joe’s caretaker since the accident, was with him, preparing to take him to a doctor’s appointment later that morning.

Joe said that after the concrete block fell onto his leg, a number of Recology employees came running over but didn’t immediately free him from the enormous weight he was trapped under, even though he could see a forklift nearby. Finally the concrete was moved aside, and he was rushed to the hospital by ambulance. “I heard them in the ambulance as they were talking to [San Francisco General Hospital],” he recalled, “and they were saying, ‘we’re going to have to amputate his leg.’”

Joe is still experiencing serious pain and he said he’s been having nightmares about the accident. He got emotional when he explained what had happened, but he’s maintained his sense of humor throughout the ordeal. “I may be down, but I’m not out. The first bionic Indian!” he laughed.

“I’m getting ready to go swimming,” he jokingly told a neighbor later on, top hat in place, as his caretaker wheeled him toward the elevator on their way to the doctor. “I’m gonna do the high dive!”

A few days after the operation, Joe celebrated his 52nd birthday in the hospital. He received a giant get well soon / happy birthday card signed by students from Crocker Middle School. They’d taped a picture of Alice Cooper on the front and covered the card in hand-written messages.

Earlier on the day of the accident, Joe had gone to De Marillac Academy, a school that educates low-income, underserved youth from the Tenderloin, to deliver a “motivational talk.” It’s one of several schools, including Crocker, where he regularly speaks to youth, telling his personal story. “We talk about hunger, homelessness, and what it’s like being Native American,” he explained. “They all love me to death.”

Joe was homeless on the streets of San Francisco for many years before moving into the SRO. “Over the years, the city’s been good to me,” he said. He’s made appearances in two documentary films. One of them, the Emmy-winning “A Brush With the Tenderloin” by filmmaker Paige Bierma, focuses on a Tenderloin mural painted by local artist Mona Caron. Indian Joe is painted into the mural.

“People recognize me,” Joe said. “I got to wearing my top hat, and that became my trademark over the years.” Then came the Alice Cooper makeup, which a friend did for him the first time. Walking down the street, “I felt so self-conscious, and people were looking at me,” he said. “And then I thought: There’s a lot weirder people than me in San Francisco!”

Joe said he grew up in British Columbia, and his family is a part of the Shuswap Tribe. While living on the streets, he said, he became a victim of violence more than once: “I was stabbed eight times,” he noted, lifting his shirt to show the scars. “I was shot in the back with a 9 millimeter.” He also said he kicked a decade-long heroin addiction. “I just told the devil, here’s the needle, I quit,” he said. The withdrawal “was five years of hell,” he said, but since then, a few people have approached him to say that he inspired them to give it up, too.

When Joe sits on the sidewalk outside of his SRO in his wheelchair, practically every other passerby stops to greet him, shake his hand, and ask him how he’s getting along. But he’ll be making many more visits to the doctor in the near future, and meeting with his lawyer.

Attorney Tanya Gomerman, who is representing him, told the Bay Guardian that she and her team are “currently investigating the facts of the injury,” and believe that “Recology was negligent in maintaining their premises in a reasonably safe condition.”

Reached by phone, Recology spokesperson Adam Alberti said the concrete block, called a push wall, wasn’t supposed to be used for the purpose of helping to unload recycled cardboard from the back of a truck. But Alberti said he didn’t have enough information to explain why attendants wouldn’t have intervened to prevent an unsafe practice. “Recology is saddened by this accident and is evaluating all aspects of its operations,” Alberti said. “Our sympathies go out to the customer.”

Rep Clock: Sep 17-23, 2014

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Schedules are for Wed/17-Tue/23 except where noted. Director and year are given when available. Double features marked with a •. All times pm unless otherwise specified.

ARTISTS’ TELEVISION ACCESS 992 Valencia, SF; www.atasite.org. $6-10. “ATA Lives!”: •¡O No Coronado! (Baldwin, 1992) and Wild Gunmen (Baldwin, 1978), Fri, 7; Sonic Outlaws (Baldwin, 1995), Fri, 9. “Other Cinema:” “Anomalies From the Archive:” Technicolor N.G., performance and talk by artists and archivists Walter Forsberg and John Klacsmann, Sat, 8:30.

BALBOA 3630 Balboa, SF; cinemasf.com/balboa. $7.50-10. “Thursday Night Rock Docs:” Holding on to Jah (Hall, 2011), Thu, 7:30.

CASTRO 429 Castro, SF; (415) 621-6120, www.castrotheatre.com. $8.50-11. •Repo Man (Cox, 1984), Wed, 7:30, and The Return of the Living Dead (O’Bannon, 1985), Wed, 9:15. •Experiment in Terror (Edwards, 1962), Thu, 7, and Petulia (Lester, 1968), Thu, 9:25. “Midnites for Maniacs:” “Diegetic Odysseys Double Feature:” •Inside Llewyn Davis (Coen and Coen, 2013), Fri, 7:20, and Coal Miner’s Daughter (Apted, 1980), Fri, 9:30. “SF Silent Film Festival: Silent Autumn:” “Another Fine Mess: Silent Laurel and Hardy Shorts (1928-29),” Sat, 11am; The Son of the Sheik (Fitzmaurice, 1926), with a new score by the Alloy Orchestra, Sat, 1; “A Night at the Cinema in 1914,” short films with a World War I focus and with music by Donald Sosin, Sat, 3:30; The General (Keaton, 1926), with Alloy Orchestra, Sat, 7; The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Wiene, 1920), Sat, 9. For tickets and more info, visit www.silentfilm.org. Frozen (Buck and Lee, 2013), Sun, 1, presented sing-along style. This event, $11-16. •Los Angeles Plays Itself (Andersen, 2003), Sun, 6, and Model Shop (Demy, 1968), Sun, 9:05. “A Celebration of Arturo Galster (1959-2014),” Mon, 7:30. Free event. •The World According to Garp (Roy Hill, 1982), Tue, 7, and The Birdcage (Nichols, 1996), Tue, 4:45, 9:30.

CENTURY THEATERS @ PACIFIC COMMONS 43917 Pacific Commons, Fremont; www.theworldindiefilmfest.com. $15. “The World’s Independent Film Festival,” films raising awareness about global, cultural, and social issues, Sat-Sun.

“CINE+MAS PRESENTS: SAN FRANCISCO LATINO FILM FESTIVAL” Various venues including Opera Plaza Cinema, 601 Van Ness, SF; www.sflatinofilmfestival.org. Sixth annual festival celebrating work from Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, and other Latin American countries, plus the US, including documentaries, narratives, and short films. Sept 19-27.

COURTHOUSE SQUARE 2200 Broadway, Redwood City; www.redwoodcity.org. Free. Captain America: The Winter Soldier (Russo and Russo, 2014), Thu, 8:45.

EXPLORATORIUM Pier 15, SF; www.exploratorium.edu. Free with museum admission ($19-25). “Off the Screen:” Technicolor N.G., performance and talk by artists and archivists Walter Forsberg and John Klacsmann, Thu, 8. “Saturday Cinema:” “Experimental Films by Kids from the Film-Makers’ Cooperative,” Sat, 1, 3.

GOETHE-INSTITUT SF 530 Bush, SF; www.goethe.de/ins/us/saf/enindex.htm. $5 suggested donation. “100 Years After WWI:” Majub’s Journey (Knopf, 2013), Wed, 6:30.

GRAND LAKE 3200 Grand Lake, Oakl; www.mecaforpeace.org. $10. Is the Man Who Is Tall Happy? (Gondry, 2013), Wed, 7.

MECHANICS’ INSTITUTE 57 Post, SF; milibrary.org/events. $10. “CinemaLit Film Series: Critics’ Choice, Classic and Quirky Americana:” Bedside (Florey, 1934), Fri, 6.

PACIFIC FILM ARCHIVE 2575 Bancroft, Berk; (510) 642-5249, bampfa.berkeley.edu. $5.50-9.50. “Alternative Visions:” “Films of James Broughton (1948-81),” Wed, 7. “Jean-Luc Godard: Expect Everything from Cinema:” Tout va bien (Godard and Gorin, 1971), Thu, 7; One P.M. (Pennebaker, 1971), Sun, 5; Letter to Jane: Investigation of a Still (Godard and Gorin, 1972), Sun, 7. “Eyes Wide: The Films of Stanley Kubrick:” Lolita (1962), Fri, 7:30. “James Dean, Restored Classics from Warner Bros.:” Giant (Stevens, 1956), Sat, 7. “Activate Yourself: The Free Speech Movement at 50:” “Pigs, Parks, and Protesters: Films by San Francisco Newsreel (1968-69),” Tue, 7.

PALACE OF FINE ARTS 3301 Lyon, SF. “Reel Rock Tour:” Valley Uprising (2014), Wed, 7. More info on this screening ($20) at http://reelrocktour.com. Days of My Youth (2014), Fri, 8. More info for this screening (tickets $16.25) at www.skimovie.com.

ROXIE 3117 and 3125 16th St, SF; (415) 863-1087, www.roxie.com. $6.50-11. God Help the Girl (Murdoch, 2014), Wed-Thu, 9:30. Second Opinion: Laetrile at Sloan-Kettering (Merola, 2014), Wed-Thu, 7, 8:45. “Frameline Encore:” Lady Valor: The Kristin Beck Story (Herzog and Orabona, 2014), Thu, 7. Free screening. Memphis (Sutton, 2013), Sept 19-25, 7, 9 (also Sat, 2; Sun, 3; no 7pm show Sept 25). This Ain’t No Mouse Music (Simon and Gosling, 2013), Fri-Sat, 7, 9:30 (also Sat, 2:30, 4:30); Sept 21-25, 7, 9:15 (also Sun, 4:30). Musical performances and director in person Fri and Sat; visit website for details. Microbirth (Harman and Wakeford, 2014), Sat, 4:30. “Roxie Kids:” “Charlie Chaplin Shorts,” Sun, 2. Free admission for kids under 12.

SMITH RAFAEL FILM CENTER 1118 Fourth St, San Rafael; (415) 454-1222, www.cafilm.org. $6.50-$10.75. Take Me to the River (Shore, 2014), Wed-Thu, call for times. This Ain’t No Mouse Music (Simon and Gosling, 2013), Sept 19-25, call for times. “Alec Guinness at 100:” The Man in the White Suit (Mackendrick, 1951), Sun, 4:30, 7:30.

TANNERY 708 Gilman, Berk; lostandoutofprintfilms.blogspot.com. Donations accepted. “Berkeley Underground Film Society:” Queen of Burlesque (Newfield, 1946), Fri, 7:30; “LOOP presents:” “Cheap Thrills,” burlesque shorts, Sat, 7:30; The Blue Angel (von Sternberg, 1930), Sun, 7:30.

YERBA BUENA CENTER FOR THE ARTS 701 Mission, SF; www.ybca.org. $8-10. “Invasion of the Cinemaniacs:” Pietà (Kim, 2012), Thu, 7:30; Little Fugitive (Ashley, Engel, and Orkin, 1953), Sun, 2. *

 

Family fish fry

Erica Hanna
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Family fish fry

arts@sfbg.com

THEATER Ireland’s exceptional Enda Walsh may have gained wider attention and a bigger paycheck for his stage adaptation of indie film Once, but his real work for the stage is in more intricate little plays — far darker, funnier, and more polyphonous dramas like 1996’s Disco Pigs and 2007’s The Walworth Farce, the latter seen in Berkeley in 2009 when Cal Performances hosted Druid Theater of Galway’s superb production.

The New Electric Ballroom, currently up at Shotgun Players’ Ashby Stage in a Bay Area premiere, is something of a companion piece to The Walworth Farce. Written around the same time, it too revolves around the twisted and twisting routine of a vicious familial regime. This time it’s a fishy tale of three sisters in a kind of Chekhovian-Irish blend of suspended animation, crammed together in a tin-roofed shack (rendered in expansive detail by ever-impressive scenic designer Erik Flatmo) where together they replay the glorious promise and ignominious catastrophe of a night two of them experienced as teenagers and the other never experienced at all.

Claustrophobic and (presumably) foul-smelling, their little shack nevertheless transforms regularly into a paradisiacal nightclub as they relive its intoxicating crush of bodies, “and its tide of badly suppressed sex,” from the vantage of partial and incomplete memories.

Ada (Beth Wilmurt), at 40 the youngest sister, seems to sublimate her own deeply repressed desires in spurring on a longstanding feud between her older 60-something sisters, the racier Breda (Anne Darragh) and the still innocent Clara (Trish Mulholland), each of whom had eyes and more for some big-handed young man in the parking lot of the titular local nightclub of their youth. Together, they’re the ABCs of sex, though maybe in reverse order, enacting the daily ritual that is their torture and their solace, a purgatorial pause in the merciless flow of time.

Village loner and oddball Patsy (Kevin Clarke), meanwhile, forever proffering a tray of the day’s catch to this hostile household of shut-ins, is literally fishing for compliments, the poor bastard. In his rubber boots and rough clothes he presents himself with decorous care and insistent charm, like a seriously underappreciated only child.

But that’s in keeping with this little sadomasochistic community of private hells, in which characters take turns spilling out their lives to a mostly indifferent room. Indeed, you could almost think of the play as a series of monologues — beautifully written ones. Walsh has a gift for a subtly heightened vernacular. Unlike the self-conscious falsetto lyricism in so much new drama, it never cloys but rather sings out plainly in a gritty, open-throated pitch. These monologues are attention grabbers. But nearly as striking are the ominous, rueful, anticipatory silences they set off, like dark and slow-roiling waters tugged by the moon.

Although the play has a streak of wild and easy humor running through it, director Barbara Damashek leans toward the more serious side of things in her interpretation, emphasizing the dark corners to the point that they tend to look not all that dark. It might look otherwise were the humor more foregrounded and intense. The play seems to demand a manic, barely contained intensity that registers only weakly here — even the sight of older women made up in garishly exaggerated makeup and parading around in teenage garb lacks some of the macabre, obscene humor and pathos you feel it wants to contain. And it makes the play feel thinner, a bit reedy. Her actors, while highly capable, only intermittently produce the kind of deeply etched tensions between them that you’d expect from these obsessive and long-festering relationships.

This is still a worthwhile show, though, with solid acting doing service to a lively litany of punishing doubts and irrepressible hopes — until the flotsam of lost time finally washes ashore, electrifying (briefly) an otherwise dull, ruthless, and necessary domesticity. *

 

THE NEW ELECTRIC BALLROOM

Through Oct. 5

Wed-Thu, 7pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm (Oct. 5, show at 2pm), $20-$30

Ashby Stage

1901 Ashby, Berk

www.shotgunplayers.org

New SFBG columnist dives into SF sex culture head first

Sasha Cuttler
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New SFBG columnist dives into SF sex culture head first

[Editor’s Note: The Bay Guardian welcomes and presents our new sex columnist, Krissy Eliot, whose columns you can find here every Thursday and in our print edition on an occasional basis, including in next week’s Sex Issue. Enjoy.]

I moved to the Bay Area seven months ago to escape my repressed, small town life on the East Coast and learn what it’s like to live in a sexually liberated culture. I intended to bump elbows and uglies with sex educators and activists and get a job writing about those experiences. I fantasized about becoming a sexual avenger for the oppressed millennial women being churned out of the small towns in America. I came here to make a difference.

And I’ve gotten off to a good start.

I’ve had a stranger stroke my clitoris at an orgasmic meditation conference, attended a lesbian sex party, shared a sexy tale on stage at Bawdy Storytelling, experimented with THC lube, and gone to a cuddle therapy session (and these are just some of my adventures). 

These activities may seem normal to a born and bred San Franciscan, but this place is like another dimension for me.

I lived in rural Maryland for most of my life. Unlike SF, we didn’t have orgasmic meditation or diverse lifestyles. We had churches, liquor stores, and a Wal Mart. I lived in a suburban area that was surrounded by farmland (I’ll never forget the acrid stench of cow poop every morning as I rode the bus through the winding country roads of my youth, Walkman clutched in my sweaty teen fingers).

There were about five black people in my high school, one Asian person, and two lesbians (who were basically the school pariahs). The rest of the students were hillbillies, stoners who loathed hillbillies, or members of the marching band. And no matter what group you belonged to, there was a 99 percent chance that you had conservative, religious parents who believed sex out of wedlock made you a heathen. (Reading the Scarlet Letter in 10th grade reinforced these life lessons). I was no exception to the status quo — with a God-fearing mother and a socially suicidal spot in the marching band’s color guard squad. 

I had no sexual prospects.

That’s not to say I didn’t experiment as a little kid. My girl friends and I were licking each other’s vulvas in my parents’ basement when I was 7 years old — cuddled together on pillows inside forts my older brother built with his Mickey Mouse blankets. I think I realized sex acts were condemned when my brother told my parents that I’d flashed my coochie at his friends. I remember hiding at the top of the stairs, tears running down my cheeks, shaking — as I was called down to the living room where my father was seated on a chair, waiting to bend me over his knee. 

For me, SF is such a strange place not because of the abundance of sex, but because of the blasé attitudes towards it. 

A popular local host and MC told me that none of my ideas on sex would shock anyone because the locals here have “seen and heard it all” and plenty of people in SF already write about sex. An editor of a local newspaper told me that I couldn’t possibly “out sex” anyone in my writing. And while I was sitting in the corner of a bohemian tea party in the city, I rattled off my desire for coital adventure to some hippie who told me that I “possess a curiosity and perspective on sex that most San Franciscans don’t.”

It seems that the sex scene in SF has taken on air of cockiness. A “we’re the big dogs” point of view. And since I’m a small town pup, it seems people expect me to earn my place in the pack, conform, and fade into the background.

I’m not trying to forge new ground with a freakier sex act (it might literally kill me with the shit San Franciscans do), and I’m certainly not calling myself a sexpert. I’m just want to filter a culture through a fresh lens. Why do the people of SF seem to think this isn’t valuable? Has America’s fabled sexual utopia grown into an old dog unwilling to learn new tricks? Or more importantly — new perspectives?

The fact that the people here seem so jaded makes me wonder if there’s an entirely different sexual dysfunction here — one of boredom or arrogance. Have I escaped one oppressive place to fall victim to another? Has living in a sexually charged bubble over the years caused the locals to be less open to the ideas of outsiders?

I guess I’ll find out.

 

Readers can contact Krissy and view her previous work at www.krissyeliot.com.

Legal aid funding for undocumented youth clears board committee

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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Legal aid funding for undocumented youth clears board committee

Brian, who is 12, came to the United States from Guatemala with his younger brother, Edwin, who is seven. They arrived in a car driven by a coyote, an adult who ferried them across in an arrangement made with their family. But the brothers were quickly detained by Border Patrol agents.

When they were taken into custody, Brian explained through a translator, they heard sirens and went running into a field. The coyote ran in the other direction, leaving them alone. Brian said that when border agents shouted “stop!” he couldn’t understand what they were saying. But when Edwin tripped and fell, they both came to a halt, and were soon apprehended. They spent the next month in a Texas facility, where other Central American youth were also being held.

Brian and Edwin spoke to the Bay Guardian just before a Sept. 10 committee hearing of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, concerning a proposal to provide emergency legal aid for undocumented youth. Just before the interview, the brothers stood on the grand marble staircase in San Francisco City Hall, surveying the stately surroundings with wide eyes. But when asked what life was like in Guatemala, where they had stayed with their grandmother, Brian’s face got very serious. 

“It was bad,” he said. “We couldn’t live in peace. There were too many gang members. They often killed children and young teenage boys.”

 

Brian and Edwin. GUARDIAN PHOTO BY REBECCA BOWE

The brothers are relatively lucky – they have legal counsel provided by Dolores Street Community Services, and their parents are here with them in San Francisco – yet they are both in deportation proceedings, and could still end up being sent back to Guatemala.

During the hearing at today’s Budget & Finance Committee meeting, more youth shared stories of their own harrowing journeys to the United States and asked the supervisors to approve funding to provide legal counsel for undocumented kids facing deportation proceedings in San Francisco immigration court.

A girl named Natalie, who is 10, described being held in a detention facility she called the “freezer” because of the uncomfortable temperature. “It was unbearably cold. It was freezing,” she said during testimony. “We had to cover ourselves with aluminum foil.”

Others described horrific violence in their home countries in Central America, and spoke about their journeys to the United States on a dangerous freight train that’s earned the nickname The Beast.

Lawyers and advocates weighed in, too. One speaker read a prepared statement from Dana Leigh Marks, president of the National Association of Immigration Judges, who wrote that due to violence and instability in Central America, “The cases we deal with are often in effect death penalty cases.”

As the Guardian previously reported, the supplemental funding request was proposed by Sup. David Campos, who noted during the hearing that he felt a personal connection with the kids because he himself was once an undocumented youth arriving to the United States from Central America.

Yet when Campos introduced the budget supplemental proposal at last week’s Board of Supervisor’s meeting, Board President David Chiu – Campos’ opponent in the race to represent District 17 in the California Assembly – noted that he had secured funding during the budget process for the expansion of a legal aid program to ensure immigrant youth would have access to pro bono legal counsel.

“Unless we actually fund nonprofits to provide that support, pro bono counsel cannot help in the way that we need them to,” Campos said during the Sept. 10 hearing.

Chiu suggested at last week’s full board meeting that a grant awarded to the Lawyer’s Committee for Civil Rights of the Bay Area, for $100,000, was intended to aid unaccompanied youth and could leverage pro bono legal representation valued at some $8 million. But Oren Sellstrom, legal director at the Lawyer’s Committee, said during the Sept. 10 hearing, “The grant we received is not focused either on unaccompanied youth or on the rocket docket,” referring to expedited immigration court proceedings. Sellstrom said he thought the additional funding proposed by Campos was needed.

In the end, the members of the Budget & Finance Committee – Sups. John Avalos, Eric Mar, and Mark Farrell – voted unanimously to recommend approval of $1.063 million per year for two years, slightly less than the $1.2 million per year Campos had originally sought.

After the hearing, Campos told the Bay Guardian he was “cautiously optimistic” that the full board, which votes on the supplemental on Tue/16, would approve the funding. His office is working with the Mayor’s Office on Housing and Community Development to expedite the process of securing contracts if it wins full approval.

Farrell, the more conservative member of the committee, said he’d had concerns walking into the hearing but was struck by youth’s accounts of their experiences. He said he had previously represented undocumented immigrants as an attorney and was sympathetic to their cases. “I had some concerns about the fact that during our own budget process, every year, we cannot fund enough services,” he told the Bay Guardian.

But at the end of the day, Farrell said, “This is a situation we cannot turn our back on in San Francisco.”

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