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 11^th 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.

“A Girl Like Her,” Ann Fessler’s quietly devastating documentary addresses mothers of a certain generation who gave up babies for adoption….chances are you know someone who did this too, screens Sunday at the 35th Mill Valley Film Festival

Filmmaker and award-winning author, Ann Fessler, put out a call for original high school yearbook photos of women who surrendered children for adoption between 1945 and 1973 and was swamped with hundreds of photos. Her documentary, “A Girl Like Her,” screens twice at the 35th Mill Valley Film Festival. Image courtesy: Ann Fessler

Can you ever really recover from the loss of a child, one that you were coerced into giving up?  After watching Ann Fessler’s documentary A Girl Like Her (2011), 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 her award-winning autobiographical films on adoption, Cliff & Hazel (1999) and Along the Pale Blue River (2001) have been influential in the adoption community.

Clip from Ann Fessler’s A Girl Like Her

A Girl Like Her remains true to the spirit of Fessler’s book.  Protecting the privacy of her interview subjects, she has mixed audio clips of at least a dozen women telling select fragments of their stories in gripping detail against a backdrop of fascinating period footage from home movies, educational films and newsreels about dating, sex, “illegitimate” pregnancy, and adoption.  The restrained titles of some of these films alone—such as “How Much Affection, from 1957, produced by the McGraw Hill Book Company as part of its Marriage and Family Series—are enlightening indications of where sex education stood.

Fessler offers a sociologically rich and important deconstruction of a devastating double social standard that was in effect in those days.  As the sexual revolution amped up in the postwar years, and more and more young people were having sex, birth control was restricted and abortion was either prohibitively expensive or life threatening.  At the same time, the post WWII economic boom ushered millions of American families into the middle class, exerting its own pressures to rigidly conform to a model of family perfection and decency.  The message enforced by the interviews is clear: it was the girl who set the level of conduct of a date and her fault if she let things get out of control.

Most single young women who became pregnant (and 1.3 million did), came from upwardly mobile white middle class families.  They were not only labeled “sluts” but they were trapped with no attractive options.  One birthmother points out, “We weren’t even allowed to say “pregnant,” we had to say “expecting.”  They were shunned by their family and friends, expelled immediately from their high schools, sent away to maternity homes to give birth, and were often treated with contempt by those doctors, nurses, and clergy who were supposed to be of comfort and assistance.  After giving birth, they were not informed of their rights and were hounded by social workers to sign their babies over.   The legal papers they signed frequently stated or implied that they had abandoned their babies.

Filmmaker and award-winning author, Ann Fessler put out a call for original high school yearbook photos of women who surrendered children for adoption between 1945 and 1973 and was swamped with hundreds of photos. Her documentary, “A Girl Like Her,” screens twice at the 35th Mill Valley Film Festival. Image courtesy: Ann Fessler

One interviewee explained the awful conundrum that single black women were in.  In the heyday of Martin Luther King, when education was hailed as the great leveler, if a young black woman became pregnant, she was expelled from school and not welcome to return after giving birth.  She was therefore effectively trapped permanently in a low wage, unable to escape poverty.

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.

If the film suffers from anything, it is length…the film begs for even more rich stories. And today, when the future of the Roe decision and women’s reproductive rights stand are again jeopardized, Fessler brings the important and long-overlooked history of single women in the 1950’s through early 1970’s into the arena.  In the adoption community, a commonly used but unverified statistic is that 1 in 7 people are directly touched by adoption. Chances are you know a birthmother who relinquished a baby or an adopted person from this era.  In revealing the painful legacy that permanently impacted so many birthmothers, Fessler has finally and respectfully given them a voice and created a powerful collective portrait that will benefit everyone touched by adoption. The film is a primer in empathy for adoptees from this generation struggling to understand why their birthmothers gave them up.  Understanding the social circumstances which surrounded relinquishment and that what is written on adoption papers may not reflect the truth, rather what a young mother was forced to sign off on, is critical.  The film may also serve as a healing bridge for birthfathers, who many assume escaped scott free, but who also have also reported feeling guilt.

(Screens: Sunday, October 7, 2012 at 1:30 PM at 142 Throckmorton Theatre and Wednesday, October 10, at 7 PM at Rafael 3)

The festival’s homepage is here and there are three ways to purchase tickets:

Online: To purchase tickets for MVFF screenings, browse the film listings—the full schedule is online here. When you find a film you would like to see, click “buy tickets” to put the tickets in your cart. You can continue browsing, or click “check out” to complete your order. Tickets purchased online incur a $1.50 processing fee per order.

Tickets you have purchased online are available for pick-up at the Mill Valley Film Festival Box Office(s). Seating is guaranteed until 15 minutes prior to screening. No late seating.

In-Person at pre-festival Box Offices:

SAN RAFAEL TICKET OUTLET
1104 Fourth Street, San Rafael 94901
Sept. 11– 15, 4:00pm–8:00pm (CFI Members)
Sept. 16: 10am – 7pm
Sept. 17 – Oct. 3: Weekdays 4:00pm – 8:00pm, Weekends 2pm – 8:00pm
Opening Night, Oct. 4: 2:00pm – 11:00pm
Festival Hours, Oct. 5 – 14: Weekdays 3:00 – 10:00pm, Weekends 10:30am – 10:00pm
Note: Monday (10/8) & Friday (10/12) are weekend hours

MILL VALLEY TICKET OUTLET
ROOM Art Gallery
86 Throckmorton Avenue, Mill Valley 94941
Sept. 16: 10am – 2pm
Sept. 17 – Oct. 2: 11:00am – 4:00pm
MILL VALLEY CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
85 Throckmorton, Mill Valley 94941
Oct. 3: 11:00am – 4:00pm
Oct.4: 2:00pm – 11:00pm
Oct. 5 – 14: Weekdays 3:00pm – 10:00pm, Weekends 10:30am – 10:00pm
Note: Monday (10/8) & Friday (10/12) are weekend hours

BY PHONE: toll free at 877.874.6833
NOTE: If you have trouble purchasing online and cannot purchase tickets in person, leave a message on box office voicemail: 877.874.6833.
All orders placed over the phone are subject to a charge of $10.00 per transaction. Tickets delivered via mail (USPS) incur a $3.50 convenience fee.

RUSH Tickets: If seats are available, tickets will be sold at the door beginning at 15 minutes prior to screening. Those tickets are cash only. No discounts.