As the oldest film festival in North America, the San Francisco International Film Festival (SFIFF) celebrated its 50th anniversary April 26-May 10 with a variety of special screenings, events and awards. Following a period of inapt leadership under previous management, the second fest helmed by executive director Graham Leggat saw SFIFF beginning to regain its stride while facing increasing competition from a variety of high-profile festivals with rising influence on the U.S. circuit.
When the San Francisco Film Society launched the SFIFF in 1957, the domestic festival scene was wide-open. By contrast, this year’s calendar saw SFIFF running almost concurrently with the Tribeca Film Festival and closely followed by both CineVegas and the Los Angeles Film Festival. The three younger fests have gained increasing prominence in the last several years, challenging the perceived hegemony of more established festivals and successfully competing for film selections, premieres, guests and sponsorship. (Ironically, Tribeca and LAFF are both programmed by former SFIFF staffers.)
The heart of the International’s New Directors narrative section is the annual Skyy Prize juried competition for first-time feature filmmakers, which confers a $10,000 award. Among the 11 films selected this year, Joachim Trier’s
Reprise delves into Oslo’s hip urban literary scene, focusing on the rising careers of several young Norwegian authors. The underdeveloped storyline falters in the early going with the mental breakdown of one of the principal characters and labors to recover momentum in later reels, but a lack of engaging drama and a bleak visual palette hamper the nonlinear narrative, leading to an unconvincing resolution.
A freewheeling Hong Kong mockumentary,
The Heavenly Kings leverages the popularity of Asian-American actor and Canto-star Daniel Wu to create a full-blown fictional side project. Wu, who also directs, forms the band Alive with three buddies and despite their near-complete lack of musical ability, the group soon finds popularity in an amusingly faked send-up of Asia’s pop culture fixations. As Wu’s DV production charts the quartet’s fairly predictable ups and downs, some viewers may miss
Kings’ clever central conceit, namely that the band’s entire concert tour was staged as an elaborate piece of performance art for the sake of the film.
Ultimately the Skyy Prize went to
The Violin, Francisco Vargas Quevedo’s black and white period portrayal of peasant political unrest in 1970’s rural Mexico, which also took the best narrative feature audience award, while the audience prize for best documentary feature was given to
A Walk to Beautiful, an account of impoverished Ethiopian women seeking scarce medical care for injuries suffered in childbirth.
Out of competition, the New Directors program continued with
Eagle vs. Shark, Taika Waititi’s nerdy New Zealand romantic comedy about a pair of mismatched mid-20s lovers brought together by video gaming. Although not without occasional offbeat humor, the film’s mannered performances and deliberate quirkiness prove altogether too precious, overwhelming its genuine though understated charms.
On Fire, a French drama from Claire Simon that initially portends a serious case of youthful romantic obsession, percolates nicely for the first hour and then sputters into melodramatic machinations after a teenage girl literally begins playing with fire in an attempt to fulfill her unrequited crush on a married, middle-aged firefighter.
Festival opener
Golden Door [pictured above], Emanuele Crialese’s period saga of Italian immigrants journeying to America in the 1900’s that premiered at the 2006 Venice Film Festival, was prominent among the international cinema selections. While the choice may have appeared suitable given the title’s resonance with the fest’s 50th anniversary, critical response was noticeably mixed prior to Miramax’s late-May U.S. release.
Longtime fans of Irish music and film, San Francisco audiences received writer-director John Carney’s
Once with two simultaneous sold-out screenings. A winsomely charming near-romance rich in character detail, Carney’s film grafts a minimal narrative about a Dublin street musician and the immigrant Czech pianist who unexpectedly walks into his disheartened life onto a selection of resonant folk-pop tunes, coaxing winning performances from its two non-pro leads. For many, the low-budget
Once represents an authentic and increasingly scarce variety of top-quality filmmaking that relies primarily on the inspiration and skill of the creators and performers, rather than the infusion of mini-major resources.
SFIFF’s special event presentations centered on the Film Society Awards Night fundraiser, which featured an evening of tributes to filmmaking veterans Spike Lee (directing), Robin Williams (acting) and Peter Morgan (screenwriting). Multi-hyphenate George Lucas received the one-time Irving M. Levin Award, named after the festival’s founder, for his various roles promoting cinema arts.
Celebrity filmmakers were also prominently featured in one of the fest’s three world premieres, Gary Leva’s hagiographic
Fog City Mavericks, a documentary focusing on the careers of Lucas and other prominent Bay Area filmmakers (among them Francis Ford Coppola, John Lasseter, Phil Kaufman, Walter Murch and Saul Zaentz), which drew a long list of industry luminaries to the Castro Theater screening, but only lukewarm response from critics.
SFIFF wrapped after 15 sprawling days with
La Vie en Rose, Olivier Dahan’s indulgent period biopic of the French singer Edith Piaf. Throughout the 140-minute film, overstuffed with minor characters and digressive incidents, Marion Cotillard evinces a brave, intense performance as the emotionally wounded “little sparrow” that’s likely to be enthusiastically recalled come awards season.
While attendance hit approximately 84,000 this year, assuring SFIFF’s status as the preeminent Northern California regional festival, achieving a similar stature among other major city fests both domestically and internationally may remain an ongoing challenge.
Labels: Festivals
# posted by Jason Guerrasio @ 7/10/2007 11:15:00 AM
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