Sunday morning in San Francisco, Kevin Kelly, founding editor of Wired magazine, delivered the State of Cinema address. Kelly has worked in digital technology since his founding role with The Well, in 1985, one of the first "true" online communtities. So he had a lot to say about what the future, inevitably and obviously digital all the way, will look like for motion pictures.

He opened his talk with a little factoid about life today: the amount of screens everywhere. "Anywhere we are waiting, there are screens," he said. (gas stations, grocery lines, etc.)

He hit many points about why and how cinema has been and will continue to change:

- the home theater has been morphing. "Theres a whole system of underground groups of state of the art home theaters."

-3D cinema may have a future. "People want to use 3D to try and get customers into theaters." This was also a large topic discussed at last year's Future of Cinema Conference in Cannes, since this was also where Michael Peyser's U23D - "the first live-action 3D concert movie" premiered. 

-Because of all new possibilitites and venues for distribution thanks to the Internet, there are all new rules for timeframes for movies. Think Youtube.  "Before you either made home movies or real movies. Now we have a middle. More than a home movie, less than a masterpiece."

-Tools are no longer a big decider for who is making movies and who is not. Since inexpensive video cameras are everywhere now, it's not the tools that prevent people from making movies. The only necessity now is the "ambition of the artist."  Also because of accessible, inexpensive tools for production (cell phone cameras) and distribution (youtube) we now have soooo much content out there. People emphasize the crap. But, this just means there's more to weed through. "in order to have really great stuff you have to allow bad stuff."

-Computational Photography Filmmaking- Take a film, extract out a person, and reassemble the story that you want (I wasn't quite sure what he was talking here)

-Videos are everywhere, and this will only increase. "It's similar to text everywhere. We don't even notice it. The moving image is becoming ubiquitous." When the printing press came out and text began to dominate, everyone was complaining about the loss of oral communication. This was known as the Gutenburg shift. Now, the same thing is happening with the shift from text to video. "We went from oral to written and now we're going to screen. There was a lamentation then. I think because of this shift to a visual culture literary skills will be lost."

- What about the question of the literary form of film? How do we summarize, condense, make abstracts of films? How fast can we watch a film and still understand it? Eventually we will want to be able to link to certain frames in films, or even to certain things in frames. We don't have this technology yet.

- "It's the liquidity" of the medium. Film is becoming like this. Transformable.

-copy copy copy. "Freeconomy." What do we do? How do we make money? The copy machine is "the intermedia." (Mr. Kelly though is not worried about new media economy). "Where attention is money will follow. Stories have an incredible capacity to hold attention."

-For the future: the first lesson we learned on the web is that We can do it! Nobody believed in the internet when it first came (...)

courtesy of http://fest08sffs.org 

51st SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
WINNERS ANNOUNCED AT GOLDEN GATE AWARDS CEREMONY
WEDNESDAY, MAY 7, 2008

New Directors Award: Vasermil, Mushon Salmona (Israel, 2007)

New Directors Special Jury Mention: Wonderful Town, Aditya Assarat (Thailand, 2007)

FIPRESCI Prize: Ballast, Lance Hammer (USA, 2007)

FIPRESCI Special Jury Mention: Glasses, Naoko Ogigami (Japan, 2007)

Chris Holter Humor in Film Award: Time to Die, Dorota Kedzierzawska (Poland, 2007)

Golden Gate Awards

Bay Area Documentary Feature: Faubourg Tremé: The Untold Story of Black New Orleans, Dawn Logsdon (USA, 2008)

Documentary Feature Special Jury Prize: Forbidden Lie$, Anna Broinowski (Australia, 2007)

Documentary Short: The Ladies, Christina A. Voros (USA, 2007)

Bay Area Short, First Prize: The Cabinet, Todd Herman (USA, 2007)

Bay Area Short, Second Prize: On the Assassination of the President, Adam Keker (USA, 2007)

Narrative Short: Thick Skinned, Jean-Bernard Marlin, Benoit Rambourg (France, 2007)

Animated Short: Madame Tutli-Putli, Chris Lavis, Maciek Szczerbowski (Canada)

New Visions: Cabinet, Todd Herman (USA, 2007)

Work for Kids and Families: When I Grow Up, Michelle R. Meeker (USA, 2007)

Youth Work: Writing History with Lightning: The Triumph and Tragedy of America's First Blockbuster, Charlotte Burger (USA, 2007)


Previously announced Golden Gate Award winners (Television)

TV Documentary Long Form: Calavera Highway, Renee Tajima-Peña (USA/Mexico, 2007)

TV Documentary Short Form: The Mystery of the Second Painting, Muriel Edelstein (France, 2007)

TV Narrative Long Form: Operation Turquoise, Alain Tasma (France, 2007)

###

 Documentary 1000 Journals showed at the San Francisco International Film Festival this week.  Director Andrea Kreuzhage and also the main subject of the film, Someguy, were in attendance for a Q and A after a screening Wednesday.  1000 Journals is the directing debut for Kreuzhage, who has worked in the film industry since 1986 with companies Beyond Films and Sony Classics, on films like Strictly Ballroom (1992) and Bookies (2003), to name a few.

In the summer of 2000, a man living in San Francisco who calls himself Someguy launched 1000 journals into the world in an experiment called the 1000 journals project.  Someguy's idea initially sprouted by his interest in bathroom graffiti.  Constantly struck by the meaning and power of bathroom graffiti, Someguy thought perhaps he could make a book with photos of the graffiti in it, so he could share it.  Or better yet, what if people could add their own thoughts?  This is where he got the idea to launch the journals.

Some journals were shipped out and left in random spots on the earth, others were distributed to fans who had heard about the project online.  All were inscribed with a stamp and Someguy's address: the plan was to send the journals out, have them fill up, and then eventually get them back, read them, and figure out some way to share them.  There was a waiting list: more people wanted to write in the journals than Someguy had planned for.   

 An interesting statistic opens the film.  In Kindergarten, most kids raise their hand when asked if they are artists.  A few years later, less kids raise their hands. In high school, only a few kids out of a classroom might raise their hand.  And if asking a bunch of adults, you'd be lucky to find any person raising their hand.  Think about it: where did our creativity go?  Aren't we all artists at some level?

The film interviews writers and follows the path of a few journals.  The journals tap into this unused creativity:writers and artists fill journals with life stories, words of wisdom, jokes, quotes, pictures, paintings, and art.  Some are glad to share it with the next person on the waiting list, others are so sad to say goodbye.  All love to read each other's stories, art and thoughts.  "There's something amazing about connecting people together," Someguy said about the project.  At this point, 2008, about 80 journals' whereabouts are known,  The rest are still out there somewhere.  

The film is quite engaging- I highly reccomend it.  Its affective-ness stems from its portrayal of the simple beauty and power of human connection.   

 Here's what's going on at the San francisco International Film festival today, May 3rd.  The "scoop do jour"- Visit http://fest08.sffs.org/news/ for links and more.

Video Scoop
The latest video edition of Scoop du Jour features scenes from Film Society Awards Night with honorees and guests in attendance, plus an interview with filmmaker Guy Maddin (My Winnipeg) about his foray into “docu-fantasia.”

Who’s in Town?
Arriving today are directors Peter Galison (Secrecy), Lance Hammer (Ballast), Yousry Nasrallah (The Aquarium), Alex Rivera (Sleep Dealer) and Renee Tajima-Peña (Calavera Highway); actor Ludivine Sagnier (A Girl Cut in Two); producer and screenwriter Lolis Eric Elie (Faubourg Tremé: The Untold Story of Black New Orleans); and subject Armando Peña (Calavera Highway).

A Homecoming
Tuesday night’s presentation of the Golden Gate Persistence of Vision Award to Errol Morris in Theater One of the Kabuki was a return of sorts for the documentarian. “Twenty years ago, The Thin Blue Line played in this very theater and it was the start of my career as an employed filmmaker,” Morris recalled. Upon receiving his award, Morris expressed his gratitude to “UC Berkeley for throwing me out of the philosophy department. Thanks to their kindness and largesse, I am here today.” It was his work as a PhD candidate in philosophy that spurred him on his current career path. “I was a troubled grad student. I wanted to write my dissertation on insanity because I was going insane.” He began interviewing mass murderers. It was the mid-1970s, “the heyday of mass murders.” He found them endlessly fascinating and has been fueled by a curiosity to probe the minds of interesting people to this day. “If anybody knows of a 12-step program for withdrawing from interviews, I would love to hear about it,” Morris joked. While the filmmaker does interview his subjects for marathon stretches at a time, his questions remain empathetic. “People ask me, why don’t I make people confess? I say, “Because I’m not a Catholic priest. I’m a nice Jewish boy from Long Island.’” –JP

Woven Tales
If director Sherad Anthony Sanchez’s film professor hadn’t rejected his script for Huling Balyan ng Buhi (or The Woven Stories of the Other), the film would never have been made. Her rejection strengthened his resolve to make this elliptical tale of politics, culture and shamanism set amid the lush landscape of the Mindanao region of the Philippines. Giving some sociopolitical context to the region, Sanchez told Thursday’s audience at the Kabuki that there was a tendency to blame the problems of Mindanao on Muslim insurgencies but in reality the problems are caused by the war between the military and the communists at the expense of the local people and their culture. At 24, Sanchez is one of the youngest directors in the Philippines. He admitted being under a lot of pressure while making the film. He responded to his critics by saying, “This film is not for you or for the people in Manila. This is a story for my people; about how they receive the stories from the shamans.” Casting nonprofessionals by picking them up on the street, or in this case the woods, Sanchez relied on his instincts to guide him. And it hasn’t failed him so far. He fondly recalled the biggest compliment he got from the Mindanao people. As he was saying his goodbyes, he thanked the shaman. She turned to him and said, “We trusted you because we knew that you were a shaman too.” Huling Balyan ng Buhi screens today at the Kabuki at 4:00. –SS

(...)

courtesy of fest08.sffs.org

Video Scoop
The video edition of Scoop features interviews with Mike Leigh, director Ted Thomas (Walt & El Grupo), and director Barry Jenkins (Medicine for Melancholy).

Who’s in Town?
Arriving today are directors Patricio Lanfranco (The Judge and the General), Jonathan Levine (The Wackness), Mahmoud al Massad (Recycle), Jirí Menzel (I Served the King of England) and Robb Moss (Secrecy); subject Juan Guzmán (The Judge and the General); and jurors Florence Almozini, Rebeca Conget and George Perry.

House Call
London-based neurosurgeon Henry Marsh, subject of the fascinating documentary The English Surgeon, answered questions from the audience Thursday together with director Geoffrey Smith. The film, which last week took top prize at Toronto’s Hot Docs Festival, chronicles Marsh’s visit to Kiev, Ukraine to operate on a young man with a brain tumor. It took a couple of days of shooting in London and three weeks in Ukraine to make the film. “We probably wouldn’t have survived more,” admitted Smith. Marsh’s schedule was intense and the crew had to follow him all day. Cameras did not bother Marsh during the central operation, which is shown in detail in the film. “Surgeons are risk seekers,” he said. Surgeries are already scary because human life is at stake, noted Marsh, so the cameras were only “a mild addition” to the overall stress. Marsh added jokingly, “Like all surgeons, I am a narcissist.” The patients, too, had no trouble with the filming, consenting to appear in the documentary. “They had a lot more to worry about than our being there,” Smith suggested. Marsh has been going to Ukraine for 17 years, two or three times a year, usually on long weekends. On his first visit, he found the hospital had no electricity, no disinfectants and extremely dilapidated equipment. The only Ukrainian doctor who admitted things were indeed terrible was Igor Kurilets, who became Marsh’s friend and collaborator. While the situation has changed a lot since the 1990s, many people are still too poor to afford medical care. Several Ukrainian-born viewers came to the Kabuki screening specifically to thank the doctor for bringing help and hope to their country. The English Surgeon screens today at 6:15. –MB

Smooth Operator
“I’ve never had such a 100 per cent unreliable character before,” said Anna Broinowski, director of the documentary Forbidden Lie$. The film’s subject, Norma Khouri, was a writer whose riveting 2001 book about a victim of an honor killing in her native Jordan was proven to be a hoax. At the time, Broinowski was not much interested in reading a propaganda piece on the rise of anti-Islamic sentiment. But when it became apparent that neither the book nor Khouri’s life story were true, Broinowski became intrigued with the woman who managed “to convince the whole world that she was a Jordanian virgin,” which, by the way, was also false. Working on the movie, the filmmakers had to double-check everything. Dealing with Khouri, who comes across as a master con artist and an obsessive liar, was exhausting. (Broinowski recalled experiencing “some sort of a Stockholm Syndrome,” phoning her producer Sally Regan to say she was starting to believe the film’s notorious subject.) Forbidden Lie$ got an emotional reception in the Middle East, where people felt deeply insulted by Khouri’s book. Broinowski is convinced that Western media present their own version of “Middle East, Inc.” instead of the real thing. “My film is about truth, about (...)

 from http://fest08.sffs.org/news/

Video Scoop
The video edition of Scoop du Jour features interviews with Novikoff Award recipient Jim Hoberman and interviewer/colleague Kent Jones; plus 1000 Journals director Andrea Kreuzhage and her film’s artist/subject Someguy; and Golden Gate Persistence of Vision Award recipient Errol Morris (Standard Operating Procedure).

Who’s in Town?
Arriving today are directors Serge Bozon (La France), Mia Hansen-Løve (All Is Forgiven), Mark Kidel (A Journey with Peter Sellars), Naoko Ogigami (Glasses) and Ran Tal (Children of the Sun); Kanbar Award recipient Robert Towne (Shampoo); Kanbar Award presenter Warren Beatty (Shampoo); Peter J. Owens Award recipient Maria Bello (The Yellow Handkerchief); Founder’s Directing Award presenter Marianne Jean-Baptiste; and FIPRESCI juror Kim Linekin.

Driving Miss Keeler
Before Jim Hoberman was a revered film critic, he was a chauffeur? An audience member let the cat out of the garage at Sunday’s Novikoff Award ceremony when he asked about that little known notch on Hoberman’s resume. “I was [Broadway star] Ruby Keeler’s chauffeur,” Hoberman confirmed. “She was in a revival of No, No, Nanette in 1972.” Interviewer Kent Jones jumped in. “She thought she was getting a real chauffeur, but she ended up with a hippie,” he joked. “With a rented Chevrolet,” added Hoberman. “I would drive her and her sister down to the theater, where there was every denomination of Cadillac. Keeler was having a war with the producer and I was an unwitting tool of humiliation.” Worry not, aspiring writer/cabbies out there. You too could someday hold a Novikoff Award in your driving gloves. As if he hadn’t suffered enough, Hoberman also remembered his daughter’s incessant viewing of Keeler’s signature film, 42nd Street. “But I came to appreciate it.” –JP

Critical Encounters
Talking about his earliest forays into cinema, Hoberman said he loved going to the movies as a kid and vividly remembered all three movie theaters in his Flushing Meadows neighborhood in Queens. “I became interested in making films in high school; that’s when I got an 8mm movie camera” he recalled. His interest in writing grew in tandem with seeing a lot of New Wave and underground films. As a faithful reader of the Village Voice, Hoberman devoured the writing of Andrew Sarris, Jonas Mekas and Manny Farber, learning critical lessons from each: the art of film appreciation from Mekas, film history from Sarris and from Farber an ecumenicalism that took in everything from photography to comic strips and the history of Hollywood. This learned and multireferential style became the hallmark of Hoberman’s writing. –SS

Memories Mean Movie Magic
Director Dorota Kedzierzawska, 93-year-old leading lady Danuta Szaflarska and cinematographer Arthur Reinhart received a standing ovation by an enchanted audience for their warm and wonderful film, Time to Die, about an elderly lady facing her twilight years with fierceness and a furry friend by her side. Having collaborated with Szaflarska on earlier films, Kedzierzawska knew she had to write the perfect script for her. Though it took her 16 years, it was worth the wait for Szaflarska, who called it “the most interesting role of my career to date.” In directing her, Kedzierzawska recalled, laughing, “In all the scenes where she has to climb the stairs she would run up and down. I had to keep reminding her that sh (...)

 Here is what's going on today at the festival in San Francisco, courtesy of                   fest08.sffs.org

Who’s In Town?
Arriving today are directors Dorota Kedzierzawska (Time to Die) and Guy Maddin (My Winnipeg); actor Danuta Szaflarska (Time to Die); cinematographer Arthur Reinhart (Time to Die); and Founder’s Directing Award recipient Mike Leigh (Topsy-Turvy).

What to Do?
By chance, Newton I. Aduaka’s harrowing Ezra, about child soldiers in Sierra Leone, debuted at SFIFF Sunday, on Sierra Leone’s independence day. While the dramatic tale of one boy’s kidnapping by a guerilla group and his violent attack on his own family’s home is clearly set in Sierra Leone, this is never explicitly stated. Aduaka said leaving the location unspecified was a conscious choice. “I had researched other conflicts, beyond Sierra Leone—in Liberia, Uganda, the Congo. I saw certain patterns: child soldiers, wars over natural resources. I wanted to tell a story that would resonate beyond Sierra Leone, and also speak about conflicts outside of the African continent.” The Fespaco (Pan-African Film Festival) grand prize­–winning film documents the reconciliation hearings the boy soldier Ezra endures. When asked about American reaction to the film, Aduaka recalled the North American premiere at Sundance. “People there were deeply moved, but they also felt an element of guilt,” he said. “I don’t care about that. I can’t tell you what to do about this situation. I want you to think about it, what interests you or touches you about the situation. That’s what you can do.” Ezra screens today at the Kabuki at 3:30. –JP

A Second Rescue
Stranded: I’ve come from a plane that crashed on the mountains is Gonzalo Arijon’s poignant retelling of a group of men from Uruguay who survived for over two months in the Andean cordillera after their plane crashes on the way to Chile. The shocking tale is familiar to many, having been the basis for a bestselling book and then screen adaptation, but Arijon felt compelled to tell the story from a fresh point of view. “The story is in each memory of the 16 guys,” he told Sunday’s capacity audience. “When the book appeared, even for the 16 survivors the story became the story of the book; the book was the official story.” Arijon’s longtime friendship with several of the survivors allowed a sense of intimacy in the recounting of what lengths they had to go to in order to survive, and of what Arijon calls, “another dimension or emotional proposition for the viewers.” His film is a combination of deeply personal interviews and affecting reenactments, but Arijon sees the latter as something else entirely. “I don’t know what to call these kinds of images, it’s not reenactments at all; it’s more like images from the memory, like souvenirs.” Stranded screens today at the Kabuki at 3:15. –RNA

Beauty and Brains
It was not easy to get permission to film La Corona, according to codirector Amanda Micheli. Press crews typically film the beauty pageant itself, held in a Bogatá women’s prison, but the filmmakers’ idea was to follow the daily preparations for the pageant. Their persistence paid off with the authorities, and they ended up filming inside the prison for two months. Allowed two hours twice a day, they were always accompanied by a guard, who would escort them out at the first sign of conflict or impropriety. “But really, it depended on which guard it was,” Micheli tells Scoop. Some were lenient enough to let the camera capture two girls smoking pot, for example. The Academy Award–nominated La Corona, by Micheli and Isabel Vega, screens this evening as part of the documentary shorts program, (...)