This Week at SF Film Society | NEW PEOPLE Cinema is the continuation of HERE, MICHAEL, and the double feature of Eric Rohmer films, LE RAYON VERT (SUMMER), and FOUR ADVENTURES OF REINETTE AND MIRABELLE!
HERE
(Directed by Braden King)
Through May 17 1:45, 6:30pm
Braden King’s debut feature is a carefully composed romantic drama detailing the fraught relationship between Will, a satellite-mapping expert, and Gadarine, the exuberant Armenian-born photographer he meets while conducting a survey of the country. Deciding on impulse to travel together, the film details their unique journey and the dramatic personal transformations it leads each of them through. With memorable performances by Ben Foster and Lubna Azabal as the couple and remarkable footage of the Armenian landscape, Here reinvents the romantic road-trip film with poetic visual and verbal flourishes. MORE INFO >>
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MICHAEL
(Directed by Markus Schleinzer)
Through May 17 4:15, 9:00pm
Superb performances enrich this restrained drama about a quiet pedophile’s home life with a kidnapped boy. Michael is employed at an Austrian insurance company. A solitary and somewhat irritable worker, his behavior gives no indication that at home he has a 10-year-old boy locked in a soundproof room in the basement. By telling this dark story with the cool, impassive gaze of an outside observer which sometimes results in a kind of grim humor, and without making any attempt to explain Michael’s behavior, director Markus Schleinzer creates a strongly disquieting portrait of evil. MORE INFO >>
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LE RAYON VERT (SUMMER)
(Directed by Eric Rohmer)
*Double feature of classic Eric Rohmer films
May 18 – 24 2:15, 6:45pm
Declared the best movie of the year in 1986 by Andrew Sarris, Le Rayon Vert is frequently cited as a career triumph in a filmography that includes numerous great films. Rohmer stock player Rivière, who assisted in writing her largely self-created role, delivers one of the most captivating lead performances in any of the filmmaker’s works. MORE INFO >>
**Double feature of classic Eric Rohmer films FOUR ADVENTURES OF REINETTE AND MIRABELLE
(Directed by Eric Rohmer)
*Double feature of classic Eric Rohmer films
May 18 – 24 4:30, 9:00pm
Over the course of four episodes, two young women—one from the city, the other from the country —meet and bond over an exquisite atmospheric event just before daybreak known as the “Blue Hour” and then room together in Paris, where they encounter many of the inevitable characters of a modern city. MORE INFO >>
This Week at SF Film Society | NEW PEOPLE Cinema is the continuation of THE DAY HE ARRIVES followed by HERE and MICHAEL!
THE DAY HE ARRIVES
(Directed by Hong Sang-soo)
Through May 10 3:00, 5:00, 7:00, 9:00pm
High Modernist master of contemporary South Korean cinema Hong Sang-soo returns, and then returns again, to his cherished tableaux of endlessly looped and ever loopier time travels in Seoul in this black-and-white twice-told tale about a drunken filmmaker and the women he torments and is tormented by. MORE INFO >>
Watch Trailer:
HERE
(Directed by Braden King)
May 11 – 17 1:45, 6:30pm
Braden King’s debut feature is a carefully composed romantic drama detailing the fraught relationship between Will, a satellite-mapping expert, and Gadarine, the exuberant Armenian-born photographer he meets while conducting a survey of the country. Deciding on impulse to travel together, the film details their unique journey and the dramatic personal transformations it leads each of them through. With memorable performances by Ben Foster and Lubna Azabal as the couple and remarkable footage of the Armenian landscape, Here reinvents the romantic road-trip film with poetic visual and verbal flourishes. MORE INFO >>
Watch Trailer:
MICHAEL
(Directed by Markus Schleinzer)
May 11 – 17 4:15, 9:00pm
Superb performances enrich this restrained drama about a quiet pedophile’s home life with a kidnapped boy. Michael is employed at an Austrian insurance company. A solitary and somewhat irritable worker, his behavior gives no indication that at home he has a 10-year-old boy locked in a soundproof room in the basement. By telling this dark story with the cool, impassive gaze of an outside observer which sometimes results in a kind of grim humor, and without making any attempt to explain Michael’s behavior, director Markus Schleinzer creates a strongly disquieting portrait of evil. MORE INFO >>
This Week at SF Film Society | NEW PEOPLE Cinema is the continuation of THE TURIN HORSE followed by 55TH SF INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL!
THE TURIN HORSE
(Directed by Béla Tarr)
Through April 19 2:00, 5:30, 8:30pm
Purportedly Béla Tarr’s final film, this masterpiece takes its scenario from a traumatic incident in Friedrich Nietzche’s life when he witnessed a horse being mercilessly whipped. Wondering what happened to the horse, the Hungarian auteur crafts a relentless film depicting the domestic life of a horse-cart driver and his daughter. Detailing the bare components of their impoverished daily lives, their existence worsens when their horse refuses to eat, drink, or pull a cart. Hinting at apocalypse with howling winds, scorched-earth terrain and gas lamps going mysteriously dark, Tarr’s incomparable but challenging film shows the persistence (and fruitlessness) of human effort in spite of everything. MORE INFO >>
Watch Trailer:
55TH SF INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
April 20 – May 3
Held each spring for 15 days, the International is an extraordinary showcase of cinematic discovery and innovation in one of the country’s most beautiful cities, featuring 200 films and live events, 14 juried awards and $70,000 in cash prizes, upwards of 100 participating filmmaker guests and diverse and engaged audiences with more than 70,000 people in attendance. For a full list of SFIFF films playing at SF Film Society Cinema visit HERE
This Week at SF Film Society | NEW PEOPLE Cinema is the continuation of THIS IS NOT A FILM followed by THE TURIN HORSE.
THIS IS NOT A FILM
(Directed by Jafar Panahi and Mojtaba Mirtahmasb)
Through April 12 1:00, 3:00, 5:00, 7:00, 9:00 pm
Banned from making films for twenty years and under house arrest, Iranian director Jafar Panahi circumvents the edict through a technicality. He will read his latest screenplay aloud on-camera and invites his friend, documentarian Mojtaba Mirtahmasb, to record him. They start out with a relatively straightforward day-in-the-life presentation as Panahi discusses the creative process, fields phone calls, feeds a pet iguana and watches clips from his prior films for inspiration. But, unable to resist his calling, he begins performing as though he were directing, mapping off his rug to set the scene, acting out some of the roles and interviewing a visitor who works in his building. The line between what is and is not a film is broached with reverberating import. Filmed on HD and camera phone, this is do-it-yourself, imaginative, revolutionary filmmaking at its zenith. MORE INFO >>
“If this is not a film, it is, among other things, a statement of creative resistance in the face of tyranny and a document of intellectual freedom under political duress.”
—A.O. Scott, New York Times
Watch Trailer:
THE TURIN HORSE
(Directed by Béla Tarr)
April 13 – April 19 2:00, 5:30, 8:30pm
Purportedly Béla Tarr’s final film, this masterpiece takes its scenario from a traumatic incident in Friedrich Nietzche’s life when he witnessed a horse being mercilessly whipped. Wondering what happened to the horse, the Hungarian auteur crafts a relentless film depicting the domestic life of a horse-cart driver and his daughter. Detailing the bare components of their impoverished daily lives, their existence worsens when their horse refuses to eat, drink, or pull a cart. Hinting at apocalypse with howling winds, scorched-earth terrain and gas lamps going mysteriously dark, Tarr’s incomparable but challenging film shows the persistence (and fruitlessness) of human effort in spite of everything. MORE INFO >>
This Week at SF Film Society | NEW PEOPLE Cinema is the continuation of HOUSE OF PLEASURES followed by QARANTINA and THIS IS NOT A FILM.
HOUSE OF PLEASURES
(Directed by Bertrand Bonello)
Through April 5 2:00, 4:30, 7:00, 9:30pm
(2:00 & 4:30pm shows only on April 3)
Ambitious and elegantly made, Bertrand Bonello’s film depicts life in a Paris brothel at the turn of the 20th century. Staying within the house’s walls for all but two brief (but important) moments, the scenario details the clients and day-to-day lives of a variety of the working women within including Madeleine, who suffers a terrible fate at the hand of a client; voluptuous new girl Pauline; Algerian beauty Samira (‘Secret of the Grain’’s Hafsia Herzi); and the no-nonsense madam Marie-France (the always wonderful Noémie Lvovsky). Using a variety of techniques, including split screen and an anachronistic soundtrack, ‘House of Pleasures’ reflects on the world’s oldest profession in an entirely new way. MORE INFO >>
“Not many films have ever approached the possibilities afforded by the slippery subjectivity of cinematic time so directly, or with such intelligence. 4 stars” —Slant Magazine
Watch Trailer:
QARANTINA
(Directed by Oday Rasheed)
April 3 7:00 pm
The Film Society’s Artist in Residence program brings an international filmmaker to San Francisco for a two-week residency. Iraqi filmmaker Oday Rasheed will present his drama ‘Qarantina,’ network with local filmmakers and visit Bay Area high school and college classrooms.
*The screening will be followed by an in-depth discussion with Oday Rasheed, moderated by Terry McCarthy.
A broken family under patriarch Salih lives uneasily within the gated courtyard of a dilapidated house in Baghdad. Meriam, Salih’s daughter, has fallen silent, refusing to tell her father what’s wrong. Salih’s young second wife, Kerima, and his preteen son, Muhanad, provide Meriam with some protection from her father. Meanwhile, with the family hard up for money, Muhanad must work in the street shining shoes and, more ominously, the entire household must cohabitate with a sullen and imperious boarder, a man who works as a hired killer and has taken Kerima as his mistress. In ‘Qarantina’ Rasheed gorgeously captures today’s Baghdad, a moody and colorful place in the grip of a brooding listlessness. This stunned atmosphere is furthered by the performances of the formidable cast, who suggest unexpected sources of resilience in the wake of catastrophe. MORE INFO >>
THIS IS NOT A FILM
(Directed by Jafar Panahi and Mojtaba Mirtahmasb)
April 6 – April 12 1:00, 3:00, 5:00, 7:00, 9:00 pm
Banned from making films for twenty years and under house arrest, Iranian director Jafar Panahi circumvents the edict through a technicality. He will read his latest screenplay aloud on-camera and invites his friend, documentarian Mojtaba Mirtahmasb, to record him. They start out with a relatively straightforward day-in-the-life presentation as Panahi discusses the creative process, fields phone calls, feeds a pet iguana and watches clips from his prior films for inspiration. But, unable to resist his calling, he begins performing as though he were directing, mapping off his rug to set the scene, acting out some of the roles and interviewing a visitor who works in his building. The line between what is and is not a film is broached with reverberating import. Filmed on HD and camera phone, this is do-it-yourself, imaginative, revolutionary filmmaking at its zenith. MORE INFO >>
“If this is not a film, it is, among other things, a statement of creative resistance in the face of tyranny and a document of intellectual freedom under political duress.”
—A.O. Scott, New York Times
