Though she sadly won't be bringing a little gold man back to the Bathtub, we know Quvenzhané was "the man" of the night; the smile alone says it all. A big heartfelt congratulations to Benh Zeitlin and all of the Beasts of the Southern Wild crew for triumphing so much and journeying this far - it still was an amazing moment for independent filmmakers!
"The Only Oscar GIF You Need, Starring Quvenzhané Wallis" by Jezebel.com
This year we can add to funding an Oscar nominated film (fingers-crossed for Beasts of the Southern Wild's four nominations!) that we will now be qualifying one! The San Francisco International Film Festival has been chosen as an Academy-Award qualifying festival in the Documentary Short Subject category. Short documentaries of no longer than 40 minutes, which receive Best Documentary Short award, may be eligible to enter the Documentary Short Subject competition for the concurrent season (this year the season runs from September,1 2012 to August 31, 2013), provided the film meets all the requirements set forth in the Academy-Award official rules. This year's SFIFF Documentary Shorts in competition will soon be announced. In the meantime, find the rules posted on oscars.org/rules.
It's now only 67 days to SFIFF56! As we are locking and stocking programs and staff, the pressure is amounting for the big drop...the trailer (for some). Instead of panicking, we're going to laugh. Taking a cue from the 29th San Francisco
International Film Festival Trailer in 1986, watch recurring Saturday Night Live
character Father Guido Sarducci (Don Novello) spoofs Charlie Chaplin's The Immigrant
as he endures a comical journey to the San Francisco International Film Festival.
See what's new? The laurels! We're still beaming with smiles that Fruitvale won this year's Sundance Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award and anticipate a huge reception for it's first Bay Area premiere (TBD, as far as we know). Once again, we can't help to remind and inspire you that Fruitvale was funded by two SFFS/KRF Filmmaking grants. The final deadline for applying to our Spring 2013 round is TODAY!
It's the season for Oscar pools and we can't help but honor a long-standing tradition of honing in our own intuitions for the chance of winning a trophy ourselves. Not only is this a shared and celebrated form of gambling with many film folks, we could not agree more with Indiewire's The Playlist about the lack of accessibility to watch the nominated Live-Action, Animated & Documentary shorts. If you're also in need to brush-up before you place your bets or interested in fantastic shorts, head over to their round-up of this year's contenders' synopses, trailers, and even some full-length videos!
SFFS FilmHouse resident Cheryl Dunye needs your help! Tribeca Film Institute chose her as a finalist for their newest initiative, the Heineken Affinity Award. With the public's help, one out of the ten filmmakers will receive a $20,000 cash reward. We encourage our community to participate and vote for Cheryl!
Watch Cheryl introduce herself and her upcoming project (Per)mission, a filmformance/interdisciplinary piece illuminating the
personal and political scenarios (past, present, future) of Cheryl:
Oh your weekend may have never seen so many classics before! When The Criterion Collection announced their generous offer of hundreds of films to stream for FREE on Hulu until February 17, we knew who to turn to for the quick picks, SFFS Programmers.
Woman in the Dunes, dir Hiroshi Teshigahara (Japan, 1964) — "a strange, beautiful and frightening Marxist allegory about relentless, dehumanizing power."
Fanny and Alexander, dir Ingmar Bergman (Sweden, 1972) – "Bergman's masterpiece."
Over the years of SFIFF we've seen many forms of love, and we would love to share them with you. Scroll over the images for captions.
Getting antsy to see Shane Carruth's sophmore effort Upstream Color? Check out his directorial debut Primer - Grand Jury Prize winner at Sundance 2004 - on Netflix.
Quite by accident, an engineer builds a machine that can transport the user back in time. But his discovery comes with an ominous caveat: At the heart of this puzzling device, nothing is as it seems on the surface. - Netflix
We asked directors Joe Brewster and Michèle Stephenson to reflect on their experience screening their Special Jury Award-winning, SFFS-supported film American Promise at Sundance.
Joe: This has certainly been a roller-coaster ride for us. We were accepted into our dream festival and left Park CIty, Utah with an amazing outcome. We were honored with a special Jury Prize for achievement in documentary filmmaking and we received amazing reviews from the critics. Yet, there is a cloud of worry looming over my head and I cannot pinpoint why. It is not the 12 inches of snow outside my Brooklyn doorstep nor the cough I acquired from our nightly Sundance celebrating. My concern is that our Sundance storybook beginning was just that - a beginning. What happens next?
Michèle: I guess the concern (or fear) is that this will not continue. And since returning to Brooklyn we clearly have not been recipients of the same attention and adulation. We are back to life as parents , soccer practice and PTA meetings. That’s not a bad thing, because the Sundance pace was unsustainable. I have Joe's same concerns. I want my work, 13 years worth of it, to be seen and respected by our peers. I want to be assured that we will make a difference in how the subject of academic achievement of Black boys is handled. But we can’t guarantee anything. So, we work, we wait and we worry.
Idris: That sentiment is pretty typical in this family. My parents have invested so much time and effort into the making of this film but they can’t even relish this moment. Well, me, I’m gonna relax and enjoy the moment before I need to get into my mid-term groove. My parents' dedication to this project has been inspiring to me and I’m proud of them but if someone dropped a shitload of money in their pockets right now, they would still be nervous about tomorrow.
Joe: I’m not sure things are that simple. We have high expectations and we need to manage them. The reality is that acceptance to a festival is just the first step toward the realization of our goals for the film, behavior change. We are coming to terms that every festival, every newspaper review, every community screening will be a struggle. I guess this realization is the painful truth of film campaigns, results always require lots of hard work and uncertainty.
Michèle: But we had plans and we were prepared for post-Sundance journey. Over the next two years we will take American Promise on the road, hosting community screenings nationwide and partnering with organizations whose mission includes supporting Black males' academic, social and emotional growth. We are also completing a book, American Promise, scheduled for an October 2013 release (Random House) for parents and other stakeholders aimed at helping to close the academic achievement gap. We are also supporting an effort to raise $100,000 for Big Brothers Big Sister's Mentoring Brothers In Action Initiative and enlist 100 new mentors (of any background) for Black males, who have the hardest time finding mentors. So, if you are reading this blog and you want to reduce Joe’s anxiety level, send $10.00 to Big Brother’s and Big Sisters by text, text BIG1 to 80100.
Joe: Or, you could just send me a note and say keep up the struggle my brother.
Doc Alliance Films launched a new project The Greats of World Documentary Film with a retrospective of 17 documentary films by Agnès Varda. Varda is no stranger to SFFS, having five films in SFIFF throughout the years. These shorts are FREE to stream until February 17! We agree with our source tipper, Director of Finance Keith Cowling, this is "pretty cool."
Three new titles added today to our growing list of SFIFF-related films available to stream on Netflix! Watch Oscar-nominated documentary How to Survive a Plague, Sundance award-winning documentary The Queen of Versailles, and SFIFF55 favorite 17 Girls. See our full list on our WATCH page.
The San Francisco Film Society wrapped its 56th San Francisco International Film Festival with 263 screenings of 158 films from 51 countries, which were attended by over 210 filmmakers and industry guests from over 21 countries around the globe. During its 15-day run, SFIFF56 showed 67 Narrative Features, 28 Documentary Features and a total of 63 short films.
This year the International awarded over $70,000 in prizes—one of the largest cash totals distributed by a U.S. film festival—to emerging and established filmmakers from ten countries around the world. Below are the award winning films.
