Stranger than Fiction, surfing the zeitgeist of reality, the 11th Annual SF DocFest highlights the best new docs—November 8-21, 2012 in San Francisco and November 9-15 in Berkeley
This year’s SF DocFest features “Big Boys Gone Bananas,” a thriller like documentary by tenacious Swedish filmmakers Fredrik Gertten (above) and Margarete Jangård which tells how they stood up to the Dole Food Company as it bullied them and launched a lawsuit against their 2009 documentary “Bananas” which addressed a lawsuit brought by Nicaraguan plantation workers against the corporation. Photo: Anna Sivertsson
Sometimes you want more from a film than pure entertainment, you want substance, to feel held and enthralled by an issue. There’s nothing more gripping than the reality bite that a great doc provides, particularly when it sheds light on something you know nothing about. The San Francisco Documentary Film Festival (SF DocFest), now in its 11th year, is organized by SF IndieFest, and presents over 50 of the hottest new documentary films from around the world that entertain and inform on just about every subject imaginable. Highlights of this year’s eclectic mix include exciting films about predatory corporations, sinking Venice, birthmothers who relinquished children to adoption, the Miss India pageant, remote Salina (an island off Sicily), Somali piracy, the confessions of love addicts, and the world championship ping pong tournament for over the age of 80. This festival always includes lots of young local filmmakers too. This year, three films—Spencer McCall’s The Institute, Sam Banning’s Cruel and Unusual, and Kelly J. Richardson’s Without a Net— were made right here in the Bay Area, while the opening and closing night films feature local subjects.
It all starts in San Francisco on Thursday, November 8, at 8 p.m. at Brava Theatre with Jeffrey Durkin’s Working Class about San Francisco artist Mike Grant and San Diego artist Mike who have both been involved in underground art for years and have an affinity with the working class. Loosely inspired by Charles Dickens’ novel A Tale of Two Cities, the doc explores how their cities shape their lives and artistic processes. After the film, join director Jeffrey Burkin and the two Mikes for an after party with complimentary beer and wine plus music and an art show featuring work by both Mike Maxwell and Mike Giant.
Sam Banning’s “Cruel and Unusual” premieres at SF DocFest on the heels of the November 6 election, when California’s voters passed Proposition 36 which revised the state’s strict Three Strikes law. This important documentary explores the devastating effects that CA’s Three Strikes Law has had on nonviolent offenders for nearly two decades through the stories of three individuals sentenced to life for theft or forgery.
The festival then runs for 11 days (November 9-21, 2012) at San Francisco’s Roxie Theatre and for 7 days at Berkley’s Shattuck Theatre (November 9-15, 2012). Film descriptions and full festival schedule are online at www.sfindie.com.
The festival closes with British director Jesse Vile’s Jason Becker: Not Dead Yet, a touching music doc. In 1991, Jason Becker was on his way to guitar-god status, tapped to play for David Lee Roth at just 19. Then, the diagnosis: what he called a “lazy limp” in his leg was ALS (AKA Lou Gehrig’s Disease). Jason would not go on tour, and might not make it 5 more years. But two decades later, Jason’s still here, making music. This is a radiant story of dreams, love and the strength of the human spirit. Jesse Vile uses fresh interview footage as well as a wealth of archival material to tell a story that will enthrall the uninitiated as well as the guitarist’s fans. Winner of the Audience Award at Cinequest.
ARThound recommends:
Big Boys Gone Bananas!* : Swedish director Fredrik Gertten’s remarkable follow-up to his controversial 2009 documentary Bananas!* about a successful negligence lawsuit by Nicaraguan plantation workers against the Dole Food Company. This film recounts the hellacious campaign waged by the Dole Food Company to block Bananas!* which was slated to have its world premiere at the 2009 Los Angeles Film Festival. This documentary gives you excellent idea of exactly what it’s like to be slapped with a cease and desist order by a huge corporation with a battery of lawyers and PR professionals who devote their lives and endless funds to achieving their goal, whether or not their claims have any real merit. To his credit, Gertten did not back down and ultimately had the entire Swedish Riksdag on his side and was able to defeat Dole. This is an inspiring film that recounts a heartening uphill battle for truth and freedom of expression for documentary filmmakers who take the job of exposing corporate wrongdoing seriously. (Sweden, 2012, 88 min) (Screens Saturday, November 17, 2012, at 9:30 PM at the Roxie Theatre and Tuesday, November 20, 2012, at 9:30 PM at the Shattuck Theatre.)
A Girl Like Her: Can you ever really recover from the loss of a child, one that you were coerced into giving up? After watching Ann Fessler’s quietly devastating documentary which reveals the hidden history of over a million young women who became pregnant in the 1950s and 60s and were banished to maternity homes to give birth, surrender their children, and then return home alone, your answer will be no. Yet, these young women were told to keep their secret, move on and forget. But, really, how can a woman EVER forget that and what are the consequences?
Producer, director, editor, archival film researcher, Ann Fessler tackles rich territory in her expertly-rendered 48 minute documentary which is the result of extensive groundbreaking interviews she conducted between 2002-5 with over 100 women who surrendered children to adoption during the 28 years that followed WWII, the years before Row v. Wade. Fessler, a professor of photography at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), is the well-known author of The Girls Who Went Away (Penguin Press, 2006), chosen as one of the top 5 non-fiction books of 2006 by the National Book Critics Circle and by readers of Ms. magazine in 2011 as one of the top 100 feminist books of all time. She is also adopted and brings rich understanding and truth-seeking to her filmmaking. It’s impossible not to be moved by the voices of these women as they speak about the devastating long-term impact of surrender on their lives. Many of the women Fessler interviewed had never spoken of their experiences before but candidly share that they have been plagued by grief and shame and regret and anger since relinquishing. (2011, 48 minutes) (Click here to read ARThound’s full review.) Screens Friday, November 17, 2012 at 5 PM and Sunday November 18, at 12:30 PM, both at Roxie Theatre and Saturday, November 10, 2012 at 5 PM at Shattuck Theatre.
Clip from Ann Fessler’s A Girl Like Her
One Year’s Remainder (il resto dell’anno): Were you ever on vacation on at a popular summer tourist destination and wondered what it would the pace of life is like off season? Michele Di Salle and Luca Papaleo’s meditative film is set in the island of Salina, in the Aeolian archipelago, north of Sicily. This island, known to most only as a summer destination, reveals its real beauty after the departure of the tourists, during the solitude of fall and winter in which its thousand inhabitants deal with the slow passage of time. This magical film relies on the simplest of storytelling—no interviews, no narrating voice, only the power of images shot with natural light that changes from day to day. (Italy, 75 minutes, 2011) Screens Sunday, November 18, 2:45 PM and Wednesday, November 21, 2012 at 9:30 PM, both at Roxie Theatre.
Stay tuned to ARThound for more festival recommendations.
Details: Regular tickets are $12 at the door; $10 in advance. A “DocPass,” good for admission to all films at the festival as well as the Opening Night Party and Roller Disco Benefit Party is $160. The same all access pass is only $25 for those under 21. More information: www.sfindie.com or (415) 820-3907.
10th San Francisco Documentary Film Festival, or DocFest, starts this Friday and the lineup is all over the map
The 10th San Francisco Documentary Film Festival starts Friday, October 14, 2011 with a lineup of 60 amazing, engrossing, and quirky films.
The 10th San Francisco Documentary Film Festival, or DocFest, starts this Friday, October 14, 2011, and over two weeks presents 60 of the most engrossing non-fiction films on the circuit right now. Sponsored by SF Indiefest, DocFest runs October 14 – 27, 2011 at the Roxie Theatre in San Francisco and Oct. 14-20 at the Shattuck Theatre in Berkeley. Highlighting the 10th SF DocFest is Dirty Pictures, Etienne Sauret’s film about Dr. Alexander “Sasha” Shulgin, the godfather of psychedelic drugs and one of the great chemists of the 20th century, and his quest to unlock the complexities of the human mind with psychedelics. Over a course of five years, Sauret followed and Shulgin and his wife, Ann, tracking how they interact with their community and the influence of Shulgin’s work on neuroscience and medical research. Closing Night brings “With Great Power: The Stan Lee Story,” an engrossing profile of the legendary creator of comic super heroes including Spider-Man, Iron Man, X-Men and many others. Now 87, Stan Lee’s name appears on more than one billion comics in 75 countries in 25 languages and the film profiles him and the industry his helped build.
These political times call for answers, and short of answers—inspiration. The Docfest 2011’s current crop of political titles provide both with great expositions like the environmental call-to-arms Patagonia Rising, an essential profile of Novel Peace Prize nominee Gene Sharp, the father of current (nonviolent) revolutionary political thinking in How to Start a Revolution, the eye-opening The After Party about the ubiquitousness and danger of surveillance cameras in our lives, and Your Legal Shorts featuring local 1st Amendment hero Josh Wolf. These and others give us powerful information that can prompt us to caution, to outrage and hopefully to action. Stay tuned to ARThound for reviews.
Details: DocFest runs October 14 – 27, 2011 at the Roxie Theater, 3117 16th St. in San Francisco, and Oct. 14-20 at the Shattuck Theatre, 2230 Shattuck Ave, in Berkeley. Parties will be at CellSpace, 2050 Bryant @ 18th St. in San Francisco.
All tickets are $11. There is a $1.39 service charge for advance tickets, highly encouraged to ensure admission to these popular screenings. The DocFestPass, good for admission to all films at the festival, as well as the Opening and Closing Night Parties, plus the annual Roller Disco Costume Party, will be $160. The BerkeleyPass is good for all screenings at the Shattuck and is $60. The YouthPass is good for all screenings at the Festival and is $25 for those under 21. The 5FilmVoucher is $50; the 10FilmVoucher is $90. Multiple people may use multiple vouchers to attend the same screening on a space available basis. Choose films in advance at www.sfindie.com to assure admittance to the films you want to see. Advance tickets are available at 800-838-3006 or www.sfindie.com
ARThound 