Thompson on Hollywood

Make Way for BFI's 'The Hitchcock 9,' the Master of Suspense's Earliest Surviving Works

News

Beginning with June screenings presented by the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, the British Film Institute is bringing stateside “The Hitchcock 9,” a national tour of Alfred Hitchcock’s nine earliest surviving works, all in newly restored 35mm prints. According to the Institute, this is the largest restoration project they have ever undertaken.

By Beth Hanna and Ryan Lattanzio
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March 20, 2013 1:29 PM
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Soderbergh to Give State of Cinema Address at San Francisco International Film Festival 2013

Festivals

Brainy Steven Soderbergh, who has earned stripes as both indie and studio director, will deliver the 10th annual "State of Cinema" address at the 56th San Francisco International Film Festival on April 29. The festival runs April 25 thru May 9. This should prove more than informative.

By Beth Hanna
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March 14, 2013 12:50 PM
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San Francisco Int'l Film Fest Names Doc and Feature Titles Competing for Cash Prizes

Festivals

The 56th San Francisco International Film Festival, which runs April 25 - May 9, announces the films competing for its New Directors Prize and the Golden Gate Award. A total of $70K will be awarded by the festival this year...

By Sophia Savage
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March 5, 2013 1:10 PM
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San Francisco Film Society Announces Significant Funding Increase to Extend Filmmaker360 Programs

News

The San Francisco Film Society has announced a significant increase in funding to its Filmmaker360 programs, thanks to the society's collaborative relationship with the Kenneth Rainin Foundation. Filmmaker360 supports narrative feature filmmakers through cash grants, residencies and script workshops...

By Beth Hanna
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January 10, 2013 12:58 PM
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Brownlow Restoration of Abel Gance’s 'Napoleon' Triumphs at Oakland’s Paramount Theater

Reviews

If at all possible, you should get yourself over to the Paramount Theater in Oakland next weekend (March 31 and April 1) for the final two performances of Kevin Brownlow’s 5½ hour restoration of Abel Gance’s 1927 "Napoleon," accompanied by Carl Davis conducting the Oakland East Bay Symphony in the performance of his score.

By Meredith Brody
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March 26, 2012 7:02 PM
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Bingham Ray Moves West to Run San Francisco Film Society

Bingham Ray is back on the festival acquisition beat. But this time, after decades in indie distribution and a recent stint consulting at SnagFilms and the Film Society of Lincoln Center, Ray will be making a move to the Bay Area as executive director of the San Francisco Film Society, which runs year-round programs including the annual San Francisco International Film Festival. He will be filling the role left vacant by Graham Leggat, who served the SFSS for seven years; he died of cancer in late August.

By Anne Thompson
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October 19, 2011 12:03 PM
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San Francisco Jewish Film Festival: From Simone Weil to Kirk Douglas

San Francisco critic Meredith Brody reports from the city's Jewish Film Festival:The graphics for this year’s San Francisco Jewish Film Festival feature a number of inspiring calligraphed words, including faith, justice, courage, pleasure, passion, drama, family, transformation, and humor. The list is surprisingly light on Yiddish: I can only puzzle out haimish and nosh on the version that flashes on the big screen, and chutzpah and schtick when perusing the catalogue cover at my leisure.

By Meredith Brody
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August 13, 2011 8:50 AM
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SFIFF 54: Wrapping Up the Fest, Days 13-15: The Arbor, Bromberg, Let The Wind Carry Me, Winners, Etc

Meredith Brody wraps up SFIFF 54 and the many films of days thirteen, fourteen and fifteen:After the San Francisco International Film Festival’s second weekend, I feel like the toboggan is slowing down before it crosses the finish line. Day Thirteen, for example: joining Creative Director Miguel Pendas’ SF Film Noir locations tour, which he puts on (along with a tour devoted exclusively to locations for Vertigo) for guests and press, is irresistible to me, but effectively knocks out most of the day. Miguel totes ten companions around SF’s hills and valleys in a van (with an indefatigable driver who manages to pull over where there’s no place to pull over). We see sites for The Maltese Falcon, Sudden Fear, The Sniper, The Lady from Shanghai,Dark Passage, The House on Telegraph Hill, The Midnight Story (the only one I’ve never seen), The Line-Up, and more.

By Meredith Brody
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May 7, 2011 1:18 AM
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SFIFF 54: Day Twelve: Tilva Rosh, Hands Up, Ulysses and the Tindersticks do Claire Denis

On day 12 of the San Francisco International Film Festival, Meredith Brody reports back on her French triple bill (Hands Up is the stand out), Tilva Rosh, Ulysses, and finishes the day off right with English rock/jazz band Tindersticks playing excerpts from their film scores for Claire Denis movies.Amazingly, after getting stuck into CNN-land for two hours of repetitive Osama Bin Laden-chat last night, I still manage to watch the two DVDS of Festival movies that I brought home: I’m Glad My Mother is Alive, by the father-son duo of prolific Claude Miller and his son, neophyte Nathan Miller (giving nepotism a good name). Again something of a message picture (since I’d started the day with Roman Goupil’s Hands Up), about mayhem that ensues when an angry young adoptee finds his biological mother and insinuates himself into her new family (the title means one thing for the first two-thirds of the movie and then tips off its ending, alas).

By Meredith Brody
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May 5, 2011 8:48 AM
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SFIFF 54 Day Eleven: Film Fest Instructor's Guidebook, Hands Up, Something Ventured, Bin Laden

On day eleven of the San Francisco International Film Festival, Meredith Brody talks Hands Up (a "kind of a Bizarro-world Disney film"), Citizen Kane, Something Ventured and its billionaires, and The Salesmen (which she tries tricking herself into liking by thinking of Jeanne Dielman). At the end of her day, Osama bin Laden news trumps everything:Somewhere in the Film Festival Introducer’s Guidebook there must be a rule (more like a law!) that if it’s a nice day outside the introducer must thank the audience for ignoring the manifold pleasures awaiting them outside and instead huddling together in a dark auditorium.