This is a little late to be posted- but we did just want to give a nod to the youth short films screening as part of the on Saturday afternoon in the Audre Lorde Room at the . The whole viewing lasted about an hour or so, but it managed to showcase a whole lot of youth talent in a brief time period.
Yes, we’ll admit we went to the ‘youth shorts’ with some preconceptions about youth films (maybe we were picturing our own painful camcorder films from years ago). But what we saw from these young women blew away our notions. Sitting in the folding chairs of the Women’s Building, we got a little sneak preview of tomorrow’s women directors.
We were particularly impressed with Melissa Wee’s about, well, the title kind of sums it up.
After the films, there was a brief Q A with filmmaker, America Velasques (who directed a great music video, “The Fall Of”) and Liz Nord, youth coordinator at (Teaching Intermedia Literacy Tools, a nonprofit teaching film and media skills to youth). We’re pretty amazed by all the for youth to learn about film here in the Bay Area.
Kinda makes our own high school years look a little shabby in comparison. What happened to taking piano lessons in a slightly-senile woman’s living room?
SFist Jessie, contributing.
We did a confused circle around the first floor of the Saturday night, until we noticed the sign which you see at your right, telling us to go upstairs for the , featuring movies all directed by women.
We got to a classroom-sized room and settled into a folding chair just as people were starting to trickle in and, more importantly, right as the snacks were being unpacked.
Clearly the SFWFF runs on ! Mmmm.
The shorts they'd selected for this presentation were scrupulously diverse: in time period (from the 1890s to the modern day), issues (animal rights, , pro-choice), style (digital, experimental, biographical), race ( , Jewish, many women of color), and length (from 4 minutes to 25).
Impressive.
Like with any shorts series, some are always better than others -- we particularly liked the one on and are intrigued to see what happens with . We must confess we didn't really get , though, and we spent the whole profile of hoping the filmmaker knew about before agreeing to go over to his apartment.
Given our short attention span, we really appreciated the opportunity to see so many little snippets of so many interesting stories. They should screen more documentary shorts around here -- it's the perfect length for nonfiction film!
So when we had a craving for a burger the other night, we decided to take our East Bay selves down to 4th Street in Berkeley. A decidedly dead nighttime destination, save for one or three stalwart and stellar restaurants, including -- where we almost took a hosting job, just to be closer to the food; -- satiating sibling of Oakland's ; and purveyors of fresh organic heritage meats and house-made charcuterie .
While Eccolo's lunch menu boasts a tempting list of burger preparations we have yet to try, (we'll go there next, we promise!
) -- we know that, day or night, we can always get our grilled ground beef groove on at Café Rouge, even if the burger is not listed on the dinner menu (usually the case). Nothing makes you feel so in the know as when you order a dish out of thin air.
We made our reservation, fully intending to order that lovely juicy 1/2-lb.
burger and crispy fries ($11). (Yes, yes, many good burgers exist in the Bay Area at other restaurants for under $10; our specific snooty foodie type of craving is a sickness.)
Did SFist Julie get that 1/2-lb.
burger? Jump on through to find out! (Hint: Answer involves grilled sardines.
).
Picture of burger from Cafe Rouge website; picture of Cafe Rouge by SFist Julie.
pssst!
SFist Wendy...
! SFist Wendy..
..!
Time to wake up!
We’d looked forward to a little excitement after our long day, but there was none to be had until we’d left the theater last night. We struggled through the first half of the film, which was plugged as a Buddhist love story, sans much dialogue or plot, meeting the questioning “can we leave yet?
” glances of our generous friend (generous because he endured the film with us) every fifteen minutes or so.
And just when it seemed promising because the setting changed, we discovered we’d encountered a really dry version of .” Once the very limited original dialogue began repeating itself, we realized we were listening to the same (still dry) conversation about the downfalls of a monk’s poultry diet again.
We’ll give Syndromes this, though – the film’s lighting and scenery were indeed at times dreamy and intriguing and certainly set the stage for a pleasant nap.
We go to this screening of every year! We are now the people in the audience who shout, "Chi-hui!
!!!
" when the and music video programmer comes to the front of the theater and says we're in for a "real treat." We don't even know Chi-hui and we almost said hi to him when we saw him on the street the other day. We're stalking the poor music director, that's how into the music video program we are.
This is our first post- Music Video Asia and we did find ourselves wondering how hard it would be to find video clips to include for you guys to check out. The answer is: pretty hard! The US ones aren't too bad, but a lot of the excellent foreign clips appear to have been recut for this screening -- for instance, the excellent Filipino band 's for the song "Martyr Nyebera" is only on YouTube in Tagalog.
The song is still great but you miss about half of the hilarious jokes. (The video is still worth watching, though.)
And the clip above?
From our other favorite band in this year's screening, the all-female Japanese ska band, . The video for "Hana No Suku Dance" isn't on YouTube, though, so we've substituted their TV ad for Pocky, above. You what they're like.
( just played last week, so you'll probably be hearing more from them soon.)
After the jump -- some more YouTube clips of the highlights of this year's video cavalcade! Including: a positive Bay Area rapper and a negative British anti-Bush rapper banned from MTV for his anti-war sentiment, among others.
Ever since we read of (we'll abbreviate that ) from last year's DocFest, we've totally wanted to see this documentary, about brilliantly-coiffed Japanese men who are paid to socialize with women in local bars, in a reverse of the infamous "hostess bars" of Japanese fame. Lucky for us it came back to town as part of the !
As SFist Mihi so wisely put it in her review, "Don't hate the player, hate the game." As we got totally caught up in the -like mind games between the host men and the troubled women they service, we ended up completely confused about who's the cat and who's the mouse, and concluded that everyone in the movie is psychotic.
It's hard to say who's fooling whom, and who's onto the joke -- which we suppose was probably the point.
Plus, the interactions get so complicated that midway through the movie you start thinking you need to start writing things down in .
SFist Mihi's way funnier than we are, so read for the plot summary (and spoilers) in the movie -- we'll just add that the screening was packed with people, all of whom we were eyeing suspiciously when the lights went back up in the theater (Is that person into this movie as a joke? Or is that person a little too into the movie?
), and that before the screening, they announced that GHS:TOLT had won the " " award for 2006 (technically, it's called the "Best Movie Not Playing In A Theater Near You" award). Dude, that's not an award you want to win!
GHS:TOLT plays again on in Berkeley (rush tickets only) and in San Jose.
SFist Mihi leaps through the for some warm-hearted, life-changing anime!
This is why we go to film festivals. Once in a while you get to see that you probably would have missed if it weren't for film festivals, but has made your life just a little bit better.
A movie that transforms you. A movie that makes your heart swell and your soul sing. A movie that makes you weep silent streams of bittersweet tears for a youthful version of yourself who felt that life was all about possibilities and less like an episode of .
Okay, we're probably way over-selling it, but the animated Japanese flick, [site is in Japanese], is probably the best movie we've seen in a long long time. It played on St. Patrick's Day at the and we were feeling a little sleep-deprived from a late night and overwhelmed by all the drunk, freakishly tan girls on Muni wearing tight green t-shirts and Mardi Gras beads.
(Is every now a federally sanctioned occasion to flash boobies?)
"The Girl Who Leapt Through Time" is a winning story of adolescence with a little bit of magic thrown in. We were worried at first to see the animation girls wearing such scandalously short skirts and wondered if the movie was going to stray into the X-rated as many manga do.
The characters are so richly drawn and the story is so engrossing that eventually we forgot about the porno-skirts and stopped wondering if the animators were going to throw in a Sharon-Stone-crossing-her-legs-in-the-Basic-Instinct moment. We saw a bunch of kids at the Castro, but we have to warn you that this probably isn't a "cartoon" for super little kids. There's none of that spastic Pixar/Disney energy.
Take an older kid though, or anyone who's just a kid at heart.
The Girl Who Leapt Through Time plays on at the PFA in Berkeley.
SFist Mihi kicked it Rotoscope-animated style at the Friday night.
We love a good Cinderella story and apparently so do a bunch of people on dates. , a modern interpretation of a 9th century Chinese folk tale played at the Van Ness AMC 1000 on Friday night and the place was lousy with well-groomed couples holding-hands and making kissy faces at each other.
Unfortunately, there's something about placing this Chinese Cinderella tale in a massage parlor in New York's Chinatown that disturbed us in the same way did.
The "stepsisters" in this case are the gals who gonk logs and offer a little anal invasion for tips.
Yu Xian--Cinderella in this tale -- scrubs the floors. Sure, we wanted things to turn out well for Yu Xian, like we did for Julia Roberts but even though she's not actually giving hand-jobs, there were some pretty troubling moments in this movie that had us scratching our heads.
Some freaky immigrant exploitation, promised violence to tender parts, , and some queasiness, after the jump.
The world premiere of played on Saturday night at the Castro Theatre and the house was packed.
One of the themes running through the was about how there weren't enough Asian-American men in movies.
Clearly things have not improved since out of the three movies we saw over the weekend, two of them featured the same dude ( ) as the male lead (and the third one was a Japanese anime).
is the story of a struggling 28 year-old Asian-American actor (the perspicacious Ken Leung) in L.A.
who strikes up an unlikely friendship with a 16 year-old girl (played by of ABC's " "). He's forced to confront both his identity crisis and his troubled relationship with his father when he inherits a house in Shanghai where he meets the lovely (who also stars in an ABC series, " " and who is in SFIAAFF film this year too).
After the jump: donkeys in Compton or taking the bus in LA?
And the director's poignant story about his father.
SFist Wendy makes it a weekend of romance at the !
This was a good weekend, thanks in large part to the Asian-American film festival.
We spent part of the past two days at the checking out a couple of remarkably different films: Lou Ye’s , and former SFIAAFF director ’ , a Bollywoodesque adaptation of , featuring the ever-stunning , aka “ .” Both films packed the theater.
We imagine that a meeting of Summer Palace's tormented heroine Yu Hong and magical matchmaker Tilo from Mistress of Spices might have worked wonders.
Perhaps some sesame seed, a little fenugreek, maybe a bit of cardamom would have helped Yu Hong...
although we’re pretty sure Tilo would advise against the red chili pepper.
Tianammen Square, the most beautiful woman in the world in Oakland, and -- get SFist Wendy some black gold, stat!: after the jump.
Preview for the movie , which premiered last night at the . (Movie's not rated but this clip probably should be rated R for violence.) The clip is a pretty good example of what the movie's like (though the movie is better lit).
If you describe a movie as " ," you're going to get a lot of attention. This screening of Baby was totally sold out, and the rescreening on Tuesday at 7:30 at the AMC 1000 is completely sold out as well (though same-day rush tickets will be made available). Tickets remain for Sunday Saturday the 24th in San Jose.
For a certain set of Asian-American movie watchers, Baby is going to become their -- this intense story focuses on 18-year-old Baby, who's just finished up seven years in prison and returning to his San Gabriel Valley home and its complicated gang politics scene. As Baby struggles to find his footing after the killing of his mentor, his estrangement from his straight-living friends, and his caring but dissolute father, events take their natural course.
Traffic was terrible on our way to the due to the St. Patrick's Day parade -- either Chris Daly's running for District 6 again or they're giving out for celebrants. We were on our way to see , or, as we've been calling it all week, " 's cats.
" (N.B.: Ross Mirkarimi is .
)
What started out as a project about the drawings of homeless SoHo street artist and cat-lover Jimmy Mirikitani turned into a quest to save a man from his present and from his past when filmmaker Linda Hattendorf found Mirikitani coughing on an empty street on the evening of September 11, 2001, with no place to go for shelter. Hattendorf invited him into her house, and over the next four months, struggled to find him permanent housing and social services support in the government system that Sacramento-born Mirikitani rejected after his internment at during World War II.
screened with the short film , about the reclaiming of the as a symbol of Japanese-American history and Asian-American political activism.
It looked as though there were a large number of internment survivors in the audience, and their tears were audible when Jimmy Mirikitani returned to Tule Lake for a memorial event in the film. ( is where most of the Japanese-Americans in Northern California were sent.)
The gratitude on the part of the audience to the filmmakers for preserving an often-forgotten part of history, and to Linda Hattendorf for reaching out to a fellow human being was palpable, and then to cap it all off, a pleased-as-punch Jimmy Mirikitani grabbed the microphone at the end of the Q A and sang what sounded like a traditional Japanese song, to cheers all around.
The Cats of Mirikitani and Pilgrimage screen again in next Saturday.
The moving and inspirational has the distinction of being the first movie to sell out in this year's -- and the buzz only got better once the SFIAAFF announced that local San Francisco hula troupe would perform before the screening. We met up with SFist Jim at the AMC 1000 lobby, and he took the gorgeous picture above.
(We took some pictures too, but the place was so crowded and we're so short we had a hard time seeing anything. Also, Jim is a much better photographer than we are.)
The theater was filled with aloha spirit and Hawaiian-print shirts, and the line for rush tickets was around the building by 5:30 p.
m. (for a 7 p.m.
screening). We've never seen one of those huge theaters in the AMC 1000 filled for a documentary before! Before the movie screened, they did a show of hands, and it looked like maybe one-fourth of the ticket holders were hula dancers themselves.
Na Kamalei is the second in a three-part documentary series that director is filming about hula dancing, and this one focuses on an all male hula troupe in Honolulu. The troupe director (hulu kumu), Robert Cazimero, is a in the Hawaiian music scene, and the movie focuses on his troupe Halau Na Kamalei's 2005 training and performance for the top hula dancing competition in the world, the for their 30th anniversary.
Male friendship, Hawaiian pride, and the thrill of competition, after the jump -- along with more pictures of Na Lei Hulu I Ka Wekiu.
SFist Julie, our East Bay eater, stops by Tamarindo in Old Historic Oakland for a glorious Mexican meal.
Small plates are certainly tr s chic these days (even if our propensity for mixing foreign phrases is not), but usually, the price tag is not quite as nice of a fit. Not that we're above spending a fortune on small bites of delicacies.
We do have our weaknesses in that area.
However, we were glad to find that at , we could have the best of all worlds: lovely gourmet Mexican food, served up in small-bites portions, for small enough prices that we could stuff ourselves silly on the stuff.
Our friends whom we invited to join us for this culinary exploration had been looking at the restaurant's website all week -- perusing the and salivating. You see, we are hardcore meat eaters, but our friends are (gasp) vegetarians, or, well, lacto-ovo-pesco veggies, which is not the most restrictive variety, but still, for primarily plant-eaters and devout carnivores to be equally excited about one menu is certainly a notable event.
The real-life experience did not disappoint.
After the jump: five rounds of food! Peel-your-own-shrimp, chipotle pur e, and tamarind aqua fresca, among many others. This post is making us hungry.
SFist tends to stick pretty close to SF but this week’s in San Jose has been calling to us and we made it all way to the SoBay to check out the world premier of Indestructible. Indestructible is the autobiographical documentary of Ben Byers beginning when he is diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s (ALS) disease at the age of 31. is a neurodegenerative disease that is often viewed as a death sentence because those afflicted with it usually die within a few years of being diagnosed.
Unlike Alzheimer’s, ALS sufferers retain full mental facility even as their muscular system wastes away and they become unable to walk, feed themselves or speak.
The narrative of Indestructible is focused on Byer’s search for hope via treatments all over the world and on his interactions with his young son. After undergoing a risky and experimental surgery in China, Byers returns to the US to be with his son John.
John steals the show with his hammy love of the camera and the way in that he accepts his father’s illness as part of life. In one scene, which is both painful and heartwarming at the same time a five year old John feeds his father spaghetti. Byers and his family attended the premier of the film.
After it showed there was a brief Q A session during which it became that many in the audience were related to sufferers of ALS. They expressed thanks for the hope they felt this film offered them and their loved ones. Byers himself has outlived the expectations of doctors that were presented when he was diagnosed, though his speech has continued to deteriorate and he is now in a wheel chair.
Despite the depressing nature of ALS, Indestructible is an upbeat film. The theme of the film is framed during an interview with the famed neurologist (think ) when he quotes Freud as saying, “Love and work are the cornerstones of our humanity”. In focusing the film so closely on his work as a filmmaker and on his love for his family (Byer’s siblings and parents also feature prominently in the film) Byers demonstrates the humanity and humor that can be retained even in the face of debilitating disease.
Indestructible shows again as part of the .
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