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  • Deadlines

    Opportunities: Center for Asian American Media Fellowship Program

    Oct 17, 2011

    Furthering CAAM's work to nurture Asian American media professionals and advance the field of Asian American media, the second annual CAAM Fellowship Program will connect young, talented individuals with leading professionals in the field. ELIGIBILITY: Participating fellows will have access to the leading Asian American talent in film, television and digital media. Each fellowship will be individually tailored to best fit the needs of the fellows and advisers. Fellowships will range from fully integrated collaborations to regular feedback on current projects to an ongoing dialogue about professional development. AWARDS: The CAAM Fellowship Program Retreat will allow the mentor-mentee pairs to spend two full days together in a quiet and peaceful environment where they can focus on the mentees' career, whether it is a script being developed or an acting career that needs some guidance. DEADLINE: October 17, 2011. WEBSITE: caamedia.org/filmmaker-resources/fellowship/caam-fellowship-program-2011/.

  • Events

    An Evening with John Lithgow

    Oct 4, 2011

    The Booksmith and Berkeley Arts & Letters join forces to bring celebrated actor John Lithgow to the Sundance Kabuki for an evening in discussion of his new autobiography, 'Drama: An Actor's Education.' More info/tickets at brownpapertickets.com.

  • October 4 2011

    An Evening with John Lithgow

    Oct 4, 2011

    The Booksmith and Berkeley Arts & Letters join forces to bring celebrated actor John Lithgow to the Sundance Kabuki for an evening in discussion of his new autobiography, 'Drama: An Actor's Education.' More info/tickets at brownpapertickets.com.

  • Home

    'Vigilante, Vigilante' Opens Can of Worms

    Michael Fox
    Aug 18, 2011

    Filmmakers find themselves outside the 'buffer' zone as film about graffiti-abaters hits local screens, and streets. Editor's note: Vigilante, Vigilante: The Battle for Expression, a Bay Area-made film on graffiti "abatement," opened with a clamor last weekend at the Roxie, as San Francisco's Department of Public Works made an issue of cleaning up the film's street-art advertising campaign. The filmmakers responded that they've asked that their materials not be posted illegally, but that hasn't stopped DPW requesting them to cease and desist attracting audiences via wheatpaste. What follows is sf360.org's interview...

  • News & Blogs

    'Vigilante, Vigilante' Opens Can of Worms

    Michael Fox
    Aug 18, 2011

    Filmmakers find themselves outside the 'buffer' zone as film about graffiti-abaters hits local screens, and streets. Editor's note: Vigilante, Vigilante: The Battle for Expression, a Bay Area-made film on graffiti "abatement," opened with a clamor last weekend at the Roxie, as San Francisco's Department of Public Works made an issue of cleaning up the film's street-art advertising campaign. The filmmakers responded that they've asked that their materials not be posted illegally, but that hasn't stopped DPW requesting them to cease and desist attracting audiences via wheatpaste. What follows is sf360.org's interview...

  • August 16, 2011

    'The African Queen'

    Aug 18, 2011

    Canonized director John Huston's 'The African Queen,' now mostly remembered for its tumultuous production history, was also the director's biggest grossing film, securing Humphrey Bogart his first Oscar for acting. The Alameda Theatre screens this battle-of-the-sexes classic on film Wednesday and Thursday only. More info at alamedatheatres.com.

  • August 18, 2011

    Teens Tackle Production at SFFS Young Filmmakers Camp

    Kim Nunley
    Aug 12, 2011

    The second year of the Film Society's movie-making summer camp puts youth on location.

  • Home

    Teens Tackle Production at SFFS Young Filmmakers Camp

    Kim Nunley
    Aug 12, 2011

    The second year of the Film Society's movie-making summer camp puts youth on location.

  • News & Blogs

    Teens Tackle Production at SFFS Young Filmmakers Camp

    Kim Nunley
    Aug 12, 2011

    The second year of the Film Society's movie-making summer camp puts youth on location.

  • Festivals

    Film Society Awards Night Shines Light on ’70s, City

    Susan Gerhard
    Apr 29, 2011

    Beginnings, endings and the dazzling cinema in between honored in SFFS's annual awards show.

  • Home

    Film Society Awards Night Shines Light on ’70s, City

    Susan Gerhard
    Apr 29, 2011

    Beginnings, endings and the dazzling cinema in between honored in SFFS's annual awards show.

  • May 5, 2011

    Film Society Awards Night Shines Light on ’70s, City

    Susan Gerhard
    Apr 29, 2011

    Beginnings, endings and the dazzling cinema in between honored in SFFS's annual awards show.

  • April 28, 2011

    Terence Stamp Honored with Owens Award

    Dennis Harvey
    Apr 25, 2011

    Terence Stamp has treated acting not as a job, but as a restless quest for new frontiers.

  • Festivals

    Terence Stamp Honored with Owens Award

    Dennis Harvey
    Apr 25, 2011

    Terence Stamp has treated acting not as a job, but as a restless quest for new frontiers.

  • Home

    Terence Stamp Honored with Owens Award

    Dennis Harvey
    Apr 25, 2011

    Terence Stamp has treated acting not as a job, but as a restless quest for new frontiers.

  • April 28, 2011

    Explosive Actors, Anecdotes Light Up SFIFF54’s Midnight Awards

    Kim Nunley
    Apr 24, 2011

    Zoe Saldana and Clifton Collins, Jr., share candid thoughts with a raucous audience.

  • Festivals

    Explosive Actors, Anecdotes Light Up SFIFF54’s Midnight Awards

    Kim Nunley
    Apr 24, 2011

    Zoe Saldana and Clifton Collins, Jr., share candid thoughts with a raucous audience.

  • Home

    Explosive Actors, Anecdotes Light Up SFIFF54’s Midnight Awards

    Kim Nunley
    Apr 24, 2011

    Zoe Saldana and Clifton Collins, Jr., share candid thoughts with a raucous audience.

  • News & Blogs

    54th San Francisco International Film Festival Will Present Founder’s Directing Award to Oliver Stone

    Apr 7, 2011

    Press release: The San Francisco Film Society announced today that Oliver Stone will be the recipient of the Founder’s Directing Award at the 54th San Francisco International Film Festival (April 21–May 5). The FDA will be presented to Stone at Film Society Awards Night, Thursday, April 28 at Bimbo’s 365 Club. The Film Society’s Youth Education program will be the beneficiary of the fundraiser honoring Stone. The soon-to-be-announced recipient of the Peter J. Owens Award for excellence in acting and Frank Pierson, recipient of the Kanbar Award for excellence in screenwriting will also be honored. More at sffs.org.

  • April 7, 2011

    Uncomplicating the Casting Process

    Kim Nunley
    Apr 5, 2011

    Hester Schell’s ‘Casting Revealed’ helps filmmakers hire quality actors.

  • First Person

    Uncomplicating the Casting Process

    Kim Nunley
    Apr 5, 2011

    Hester Schell’s ‘Casting Revealed’ helps filmmakers hire quality actors.

  • Home

    Uncomplicating the Casting Process

    Kim Nunley
    Apr 5, 2011

    Hester Schell’s ‘Casting Revealed’ helps filmmakers hire quality actors.

  • April 7, 2011

    Uncomplicating the Casting Process

    Kim Nunley
    Apr 5, 2011

    Hester Schell’s ‘Casting Revealed’ helps filmmakers hire quality actors.

  • First Person

    Uncomplicating the Casting Process

    Kim Nunley
    Apr 5, 2011

    Hester Schell’s ‘Casting Revealed’ helps filmmakers hire quality actors.

  • Home

    Uncomplicating the Casting Process

    Kim Nunley
    Apr 5, 2011

    Hester Schell’s ‘Casting Revealed’ helps filmmakers hire quality actors.

  • Home

    SFIAFF Director Primed for Debut

    Michael Fox
    Mar 7, 2011

    Masashi Niwano, the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival's new director, speaks about bringing new worlds to this world cinema event.

  • March 10, 2011

    SFIAFF Director Primed for Debut

    Michael Fox
    Mar 7, 2011

    Masashi Niwano, the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival's new director, speaks about bringing new worlds to this world cinema event.

  • Q & A

    SFIAFF Director Primed for Debut

    Michael Fox
    Mar 7, 2011

    Masashi Niwano, the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival's new director, speaks about bringing new worlds to this world cinema event.

  • In Production

    Rajendra Serber's Confident Steps into Film

    Michael Fox
    Apr 13, 2010

    From Michael Powell to Carlos Saura to Sally Potter, a stratum of directors has progressively reimagined the relationship between dance and film.

  • Reviews

    Streetfilms' Two-Wheeled Revolution

    Adam Hartzell
    Mar 31, 2010

    Pedestrians have always propelled cinema narratives, but the bicycle has rarely had a starring role.

  • Screenwriting

    Carmen Madden on Watching People, Writing Characters

    Lisa Rosenberg
    Nov 16, 2009

    Writer/director Carmen Madden's writing reflects just how intimately she comes to see and know a screenplay's world and the characters that inhabit it.

  • Legal

    A Challenge to Filmmakers

    George Rush
    Nov 3, 2009

    George Rush skips legal concerns and instead speaks to a larger issue: the lack of quality independent filmmaking today.

  • Q & A

    Anita Monga and the SF Silent Film Festival

    Sura Wood
    Jul 11, 2009

    During her tenure at the venerable Castro Theatre, film programmer Anita Monga made her mark shepherding the venue to international prominence.

  • Festivals

    Nights on the Towne: Film Society Awards Night

    Susan Gerhard
    May 4, 2008

    You know a festival is working its way into your brain when, in a landscape of intersecting ideas, you begin to witness the collisions.

  • Festivals

    SFIFF51: The Miller Brothers on writing, pitching, acting, directing, and hitting one out of the ballpark

    Susan Gerhard
    Apr 16, 2008

    Touching Home by Bay Area-raised identical twins Logan and Noah Miller is a largely autobiographical coming-of-age film that radiates sincerity.

  • Reviews

    Danny Glover, "Honeydripper," and Us

    Dennis Harvey
    Feb 27, 2008

    In Honeydripper it will no doubt be pleasure to see Danny Glover play a familiar character: The good man trying to gain a leg-up when fortune has rained on his hopes.

  • Reviews

    Reviews: "Brand Upon the Brain!", "Golden Door"

    Matt Sussman
    Jun 12, 2007

    Brand is no short supply of Guy Maddin's usual firecrackers: apostrophe, hyperbole, and of course, catastrophe.

  • Reviews

    Reviews: "Police Beat"; "The Page Turner"

    Dennis Harvey
    Apr 3, 2007

    It's taken over two years for Police Beat to go from one of the most praised films at Sundance to a theatre near you.

  • Reviews

    Music Videos At the Museum

    Max Goldberg
    Nov 29, 2006

    MTV's boat has long since sailed, but music videos are as ubiquitous on YouTube and Myspace as YBCA brings music videos to its downstairs gallery.

  • Reviews

    Reopening "Pandora's Box"

    Dennis Harvey
    Nov 7, 2006

    Many stars are forgotten for a while, then “rediscovered” and newly appreciated by a later generation. But the case of Louise Brooks is somewhat unique — she was, really, only a “star” in retrospect. Her Hollywood profile was headed that-a-way when she foolishly (according to the industry) abandoned it to make a couple European movies. When she returned, her moment had passed.

    A paltry if promising career and early dead-end-at the time, it constituted barely a blip on the radar. Yet those European films grew in stature over ensuing years, and with that the gradual realization that Brooks had been one of the great screen presences, however briefly. Her striking look — porcelain skin, alert features, sleek jet-black flapper bob — and naturalistic acting haven’t dated at all.

    As a result, it seems there’s more interest in her with each passing year. The latest evidence is critic and historian Peter Cowie’s new book “Louise Brooks: Lulu Forever,“ published in time to commemorate the centenary of her birth. He’ll be signing copies and presenting a special commemorative film program at the Balboa this Sunday. The evening promises a rarely screened feature, a short and trailers showcasing Brooks, as well as “special guests, door prizes and more.” (Cowie will also appear the prior night at the Smith Rafael Film Center to screen a new 35mm print of her best-known vehicle “Pandora’s Box.”)

    Why the fuss? Why, indeed, is there such a thing as The Louise Brooks Society (which is co-presenting this event with The Booksmith)? The explanation is all on-screen, in any role where she wasn’t entirely wasted.

    Kansas-born Brooks started out as a dancer, first in touring troupes and then in Broadway revues. This led to Hollywood in 1925, where bit parts led steadily to larger ones, finally female leads in two good 1928 Paramount releases: Howard Hawks’ rollicking “A Girl in Every Port” and William Wellman’s more delicate “Beggars of Life.”

    She hadn’t set the world on fire yet, but was certainly expected to graduate from starlet to star. Paramount was not pleased, however, when she chose — just as “talking pictures” were becoming the rage — to end her contract and accept a silent-film offer in Germany. This was G.W. Pabst’s “Pandora’s Box,” drawn from Franz Wedekind’s play “Lulu,” and with beguiling lack of affectation she played that titular seducer/destroyer of both men and women, herself finally destroyed by Jack the Ripper. Perhaps even better (if less shocking) than that famous classic was a second Pabst movie, “Diary of a Lost Girl,” in which her victimized innocent is indelibly touching. She also starred as an exploited beauty-contest winner in a French film, 1930’s “Prix de Beaute.” These are all wonderful movies in which she was superb. But for a long time they were little seen outside their home countries — particularly in the U.S., where silent cinema was already stone-cold-dead.

    Returning to Hollywood, Brooks was now — at age 24 — a has-been. She unwisely turned a couple good offers and accepted a handful of humiliatingly poor ones, including bit parts. Those few who remembered her considered her “difficult” and past expiration date. Her last movie role was a nondescript heroine in a nondescript 1938 “Z” western, “Overland Stage Raiders” — one of a zillion such that John Wayne starred in before becoming an “A”-list star.

    Found living in seclusion in the mid-‘50s, Brooks was surprised and delighted that latterday film buffs not only remembered but worshipped her. She returned the favor by writing very intelligently about her own movies and the art form in general (mostly famously in the essay collection “Lulu in Hollywood,” which is still in print). She admitted sabotaging her own career as readily as she enjoyed her new iconic status in retirement, dying at a no doubt satisfied age 80 in 1985 — secure in the knowledge that her legend would continue to grow.

    [“Pandora’s Box” plays Sat., Nov. 11, at 7 pm, Smith Rafael Film Center, 1118 4th St., San Rafael. $6.25-9.50. (415) 454-1222. “Celebrating Louise Brooks: An Evening of Rare Films,” issues Sun., Nov. 12, at 7:30 pm, Balboa Theatre, 2630 Balboa, SF. $6-8.50. (415) 221-8184.]

  • Q & A

    Mary Woronov Visits Midnight Mass

    Dennis Harvey
    Aug 3, 2006

    An appreciation of the great actress of cult and mainstream films, before her appearance at a Midnight Mass screening of Death Race 2000.

  • Q & A

    Tracy Flannigan Watches Tribe 8 "Rise Above"

    Dennis Harvey
    Jul 10, 2006

    SF360 spoke to the director of Rise Above: The Tribe 8 Documentary, showing at the Red Vic Movie House and an imminent DVD release.

  • Q & A

    Nothing and Everything Sacred in Reygadas' Films

    Susan Gerhard
    Mar 27, 2006

    Filmmaker Carlos Reygadas discusses his life and work upon the release of his second film, Battle in Heaven.


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