Exhibition | Fiscal Sponsorship | Resources

2009 SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL

Highlighted film titles link to SFIFF pages that contain film synopses, credits, print sources, running times, countries of origin and ticket purchase links.

Al Más Allá
A Mexican film crew led by a self-important director pursues the story of three fishermen who find a wayward package of cocaine off the Mayan coast in this sly, semi-fictional documentary ruminating on globalization’s erasure of local culture.
SFFS Exhibition: 2009 SFIFF
Attendance: 491
Web site: http://www.lourdesportillo.com

Art & Copy
At their best great ad campaigns are magic, transcending grubby mercantilism to open new ways of thinking, seeing, being. Doug Pray (Scratch, Surfwise, Hype!) showcases the creative minds behind the most brilliant and influential campaigns of our time.
SFFS Exhibition: 2009 SFIFF
Attendance: 877
Web site: http://www.artandcopyfilm.com

D tour
Pat Spurgeon, charismatic drummer for local indie rockers Rogue Wave, needs to keep playing music—and a new kidney. This remarkable travelogue follows his double quest during an eventful tour, mixing interviews with performances by Rogue Wave and Ben Gibbard.
SFFS Exhibition: 2009 SFIFF
Attendance: 885
Web site: http://www.dtourmovie.com

Every Little Step
Every Little Step captures the exhilarating and agonizing process of casting the 2006 Broadway revival of the 1975 smash hit musical A Chorus Line. The echoes between the present-day process and the musical are endless, and the filmmakers brilliantly tease out the most telling moments.
SFFS Exhibition: 2009 SFIFF
Attendance: 429
Web site: http://www.sonyclassics.com/everylittlestep

Ferlinghetti
This portrait of poet and City Lights cofounder Lawrence Ferlinghetti traces a legendary and remarkably influential literary life, from the early Beats and the Howl censorship trial to the infamous antiwar banner hung outside the bookstore, “Dissent Is Not Un-American.”
SFFS Exhibition: 2009 SFIFF
Attendance: 838
Web site: http://ferlinghettifilm.com

For the Love of Movies: The Story of American Film Criticism
For a century, film critics have made the case for great films. Who will make the case for these ink-stained devotees? Enter Gerald Peary, who offers this stimulating tour through the rise, fall and reorientation of film criticism in the U.S.
SFFS Exhibition: 2009 SFIFF
Attendance: 412
Web site: http://www.fortheloveofmovies.net

Go Go 70s
Based on the story of real-life ’70s rock group the Devils, Go Go 70s is a worthy addition to the recent canon of Korean films that reevaluate the country’s history from authoritarian rule to civilian democracy in the late 20th century.
SFFS Exhibition: 2009 SFIFF
Attendance: 413

New Muslim Cool
From behind the headlines on the War on Terror comes this unexpected yet utterly American story: an intimate portrait of Hamza Pérez, Puerto Rican-born former drug dealer turned politically conscious hip-hop musician, community activist, family man and devoted Muslim.
SFFS Exhibition: 2009 SFIFF
Attendance: 798
Web site: http://www.newmuslimcool.com

Our Beloved Month of August
Faced with the always annoying dilemma of having no money and no cast, director Miguel Gomes decided to make his film anyway. Shot during the summer music festivals in rural Portugal, what results is a playfully challenging hybrid of fiction and documentary.
SFFS Exhibition: 2009 SFIFF
Attendance: 186
Web site: http://www.osomeafuria.com

The Paranoids
In this wry comedy of errors from Argentina, an unaccomplished screenwriter who works children’s birthday parties for a living tries not to sleep with his best friend’s girlfriend, but fails at that, too.
SFFS Exhibition: 2009 SFIFF
Attendance: 717
Web site: http://visitfilms.com/VisitFilms/The_Paranoids.html

Rembrandt’s J’Accuse
“Just because you have eyes does not mean you can see,” challenges the great director/contrarian Peter Greenaway in his new cine-essay, which reveals the mysteries hidden in plain sight in one of the most famous paintings of all time, Rembrandt’s The Night Watch.
SFFS Exhibition: 2009 SFIFF
Attendance: 733
Website: http://www.contentfilm.com/index.php/film_tv/all_film_tv/515.html

Sacred Places
Cameroonian filmmaker Jean-Marie Téno profiles a poor but lively neighborhood in the capital of Burkina Faso, where a cine club proprietor tries to include Burkinabe films among the action and Bollywood fare.
SFFS Exhibition: 2009 SFIFF
Attendance: 414
Web site: http://www.jmteno.us

Soul Power
The cream of African American rhythm-and-blues musicians, including B.B. King and James Brown, visit their ancestral homeland and come together with their African counterparts, including Hugh Masekela and Miriam Makeba, for an exhilarating, three-day 1974 music festival in Kinshasa, Zaire.
SFFS Exhibition: 2009 SFIFF
Attendance: 326
Web site: http://www.sonyclassics.com/soulpower

Summer Hours
Olivier Assayas’s richly meditative new film opens with a burst of activity in bright summer sunlight as the pinging energy of a French family gathering fills the spacious country estate of Hélène (Edith Scob) on the occasion of her 75th birthday.
SFFS Exhibition: 2009 SFIFF
Attendance: 721
Web site: http://www.ifcfilms.com/viewFilm.htm?filmId=1537

(Untitled)
A self-obsessed “new music composer” falls for an aggressively fashionable downtown gallery owner in this deadpan satire on contemporary art, commerce, creativity and love among spectacular narcissists. From the director of Bartleby.
SFFS Exhibition: 2009 SFIFF
Attendance: 618
Web site: http://parkerfilmcompany.com/untitled.php

Youth Bring the Truth
They may be underage, but they’re not to be underestimated. Young filmmakers are grabbing their cameras and tellin’ it like they see it. From voting to NAFTA, Vietnam to immigration, their take on the world is both fresh and focused. Ages 11 and up.
SFFS Exhibition: 2009 SFIFF
Attendance: 440

Z32
Israeli “docu-essayist” Avi Mograbi reveals the deepest longings of a nation in conflict in this genre-breaking and original work in which a young Israeli soldier participates in a revenge operation and speaks of his experiences to his girlfriend.
SFFS Exhibition: 2009 SFIFF
Attendance: 271


PAST EXHIBITIONS

Highlighted film titles link to SFIFF pages that contain film synopses, credits, print sources, running times and countries of origin.

1000 Journals
Long fascinated by messages and doodles scrawled on bathroom walls and other public spaces, San Francisco graphic artist Someguy became a kind of 21st century Johnny Appleseed when in August 2000 he disseminated the first of 1,000 blank journals.
SFFS Exhibition: 2008 SFIFF
Attendance: 652
Youth Education Attendance: 168
Web site: www.1000journals.com
 
2nd Verse: The Rebirth of Poetry
It's the annual Brave New Voices Poetry Slam, a San Francisco event that in 2005 (the year recorded here) attracted some 350 teenage poets from 36 U.S. cities, plus a smattering of international participants.
SFFS Exhibition: 2008 Youth Education
Attendance:  242
Web site: www.2ndversefilm.com
 
Amandla: A Revolution in Four-Part Harmony
Interviews, archival footage and filmed performances highlight the role of music in the South African struggle against apartheid.
SFFS Exhibition: 2006 Youth Education
Attendance: 180
 
Anita O’Day: The Life of a Jazz Singer
Anita O’Day was one of the greatest American jazz singers, and this is her astonishing story.
SFFS Exhibition: 2008 SFFS Screen
Attendance: 337
Web site: www.anitaodaydoc.com

The Art & Science of Lucasfilm
SFFS Event: 2008 Youth Education
Attendance: 285
 
August Rush
A drama with fairy tale elements, where an orphaned musical prodigy uses his gift as a clue to finding his birth parents.
SFFS Exhibition: 2007 Youth Education
Youth Education Attendance: 184
Web site: augustrushmovie.warnerbros.com
 
Boxers and Ballerinas
Shot in three countries over a two year period, Boxers and Ballerinas explores the U.S.-Cuba conflict thru the eyes of four youths: a boxer and a ballerina in Havana and Santiago de Cuba and a boxer and a ballerina exiled in Miami.
SFFS Exhibition: 2005 SFIFF
Attendance: 1,010
Youth Ed Attendance: 561

Favela Rising
One night in a favela, an impoverished barrio on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, an infamous druglord shot and killed four policemen, launching what the favela residents refer to as “The Massacre.”
SFFS Exhibition: 2006 SFIFF
Attendance: 392
Youth Ed Attendance: 171
Web site: www.favelarising.com
 
Fog City Mavericks
Since the early days of cinema, when Charlie Chaplin honed his craft hereabouts and the Essanay Company made a legend of Bronco Billy, the San Francisco Bay Area has been a hotbed of moviemaking ingenuity.
SFFS Exhibition: 2007 SFIFF
Attendance: 1,304
 
Freedom Writers
A young teacher inspires her class of at-risk students to learn tolerance, apply themselves and pursue education beyond high school.
SFFS Exhibition: 2007 Youth Education
Attendance: 124
Web site: www.freedomwriters.com
 
Ghetto Fabulous
SFFS Exhibition: 2006 Youth Education
Attendance: 45
 
A Journey with Peter Sellars
This absorbing profile of Peter Sellars accompanies the world-renowned American theater and film director over a busy two-year period.
SFFS Exhibition: 2008 SFIFF
Attendance: 277
Copresenter: San Francisco Opera
 
Mad Hot Ballroom
The refined world of ballroom fox-trots collides with the chaos of New York City schoolkids in this documentary cross between Spellbound and Strictly Ballroom.
SFFS Exhibition: 2005 SFIFF
Attendance: 1,445
Youth Education Attendance: 399
Web site: paramountvantage.com/madhot
 
Murch
There are film editors, and then there’s Walter Murch.
SFFS Exhibition: 2007 SFIFF
Attendance: 896
Youth Education Attendance: 119
 
My Kid Could Paint That
A look at the work and surprising success of a four-year-old girl whose paintings have been compared to the likes of Picasso and has raked in hundreds of thousands of dollars.
SFFS Exhibition: 2007 Youth Education
Attendance: 60
Web site: www.sonyclassics.com/mykidcouldpaintthat
 
Once
A modern-day musical about a busker and an immigrant and their eventful week in Dublin, as they write, rehearse and record songs that tell their love story.
SFFS Exhibition: 2007 Youth Education
Attendance: 659
Youth Education Attendance: 94
Web site: www.foxsearchlight.com/once

Opera Jawa
"In a pig’s liver, one can see an entire life." This porcine prediction, made by a sage street singer at the beginning of masterful Indonesian director Garin Nugroho’s gorgeous, otherworldly epic.
SFFS Exhibition: 2008 SFFS Screen
Atttendance: 152

Outsider: The Life & Art of Judith Scott
This moving documentary short celebrates the astonishing life of a deaf woman with Down syndrome who became a world famous sculptor.
SFFS Exhibition: 2007 SFIFF
Attendance: 317
Youth Ed Attendance: 18
Website: www.judithscottdocumentary.org/
 
Phoenix Dance (short)
Dancer Homer Avila loses a leg to cancer and discovers the limitations and capacities of his body when Alonzo King choreographs a pas de deux for him.
SFFS Exhibition: 2007 Youth Ed
Attendance: 60
Website: www.karinafilms.us/phoenix.html

Piece by Piece
Students at DCTV take on the difficult issue of stereotyping, raise questions and ponder solutions.
SFFS Exhibition: 2006 Youth Education
Attendance: 80
Web site: www.piecebypiecemovie.com/site.htm

The Rape of Europa
Based on Lynn H. Nicholas’ award-winning book of the same name, this fascinating documentary is an epic exploration of how failed artist Adolf Hitler looted, plundered and pillaged the great art of Europe during World War II.
SFFS Exhibition: 2007 SFIFF
Attendance: 1,311
Web site: www.rapeofeuropa.com
 
The Reel Youth Revolution
SFFS Exhibition: 2007 SFIFF
Attendance: 689
Youth Education Attendance: 524
 
Strange Culture
Everything changed for conceptual artist Steve Kurtz on the morning of May 11, 2004, when he awoke to discover that his 45-year-old wife Hope had died in her sleep.
SFFS Exhibition: 2007 SFIFF
Attendance: 678
Youth Education Attendance: 61
Web site: www.strangeculture.net
 
Touch the Sound
Thomas Riedelsheimer’s marvelously meditative study of a Scottish artist who creates touchingly impermanent pieces.
SFFS Exhibition: 2005 SFIFF
Attendance:  231
Web site: www.touch-the-sound.com

Vitus
Fredi M. Murer’s upbeat film about an exceptional boy who learns to find his own way in life is an admonitory tale for average folk as well.
SFFS Exhibition: 2007 SFIFF
Attendance: 359
Youth Education Attendance: 224
Web site: www.sonyclassics.com/vitus
 
Wonders Are Many
Award-winning director Jon Else revisits the subject of his 1981 documentary The Day After Trinity—J. Robert Oppenheimer and the creation of the atomic bomb—but fashions a completely different film with this fascinating look at the making of the San Francisco Opera’s 2005 world premiere of Doctor Atomic.
SFFS Exhibition: 2007 SFIFF
Attendance: 749
Web site: www.wondersaremany.com

Young at Art
The SFUSD Student Art Festival.
SFFS Event: 2008 Youth Education
Attendance: 238
 
Youssou N’Dour: Return to Gorée
One of the best-known singers in the world, N'Dour has been credited with developing a form that blends traditional African praise-singing with musical styles from around the world.
SFFS Exhibition: 2008 SFFS Screen
Attendance: 228

Youth Be Told
SFFS Exhibition: 2004 SFIFF
Attendance: 787
 
Youth Gone Wild
SFFS Exhibition: 2006 SFIFF
Attendance: 432
Youth Education Attendance: 257
 
Youth Media Mania
SFFS Exhibition: 2008 SFIFF
Attendance: 309
Youth Education Attendance: 271


FISCAL SPONSORSHIP

HIghlighted film titles link to sffs.org "Current Projects" pages, alphabetically listing SFFS fiscally sponsored films, containing synopses and Web site links where available. Below each title is the filmmaker's name.

The Amazing Adventures of a Song-Catcher (No Mouse Music)
Chris Simon

And We Will Dance
Steve Childs

Bands in Barracks
Julie Cho

The Billy Maze Story
William Saunders

Conversations with Clowns
Dalia Vidor

Creating Success
Linda H Romano

D tour
Jim Granato

Dirty Poole
Jim Tushinski

Elaine Badgley-Arnoux Project
William Farley

Etude in Black
Mal Karman

Explorations of the Shadow World: ShadowLight Legacy DVD Collection
Larry Reed

Ferlinghetti
Chris Felver

For Use & Beauty: The Architecture of Alfred Browning Parker
Holly du Rivage

Freewheel
Austin  Alward

The Independent Revolution
Brandon Miller

Jack London: 20th Century Man
Holly Million

Jazz Tour San Francisco
Frank Zamacona

Keeper of the Beat
David  L. Brown

Play Like a Lion
Joshua Mellars

Powerplay in Relationships
Gabriele Hoff

Pretty People
Arika Yanaka

Rebel Rhythm Rockabilly
Larry L. Sherman

Regarding Susan Sontag
Nancy Kates

Songs Along a Stony  Road
George Csicsery

Soul of a Nation
Elizabeth O'Connell

Sound Tracks
Stephen Talbot

The Sprocket Ensemble
Nik Phelps

Third Rock
David L. Brown

Tillie Olsen: A Heart in Action
Annie Hershey

Who Is Paco Gomes?
Skye Christensen

Without A Net
Kelly J. Richardson

Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin
Arwen Curry

Xavier Viramontes: Printmaker
Michel Fraser




RESOURCES

The following list of resources offers interested audience members more information and ways to become involved in The Arts

Asian American Jazz Orchestra

Asian Art Museum of San Francisco

Bay Area Blues Society

City Lights Foundation

Counter Pulse

826 Valencia

Jazz Heritage Center

LA County Museum of Art

Museum of Modern Art

National Dance Education Organization

New Museum of Contemporary Arts

NCIBA: Northern California Independent Book Awards

Oakland East Bay Symphony

San Francisco Conservatory of Music

San Francisco Film Museum

San Francisco School of Fine Art

SF Screenwriters Collective