SF DocFest Is Back, Baby!

The documentaries featured in the 23rd edition of the San Francisco Documentary Film Festival (hereafter “SF DocFest”) have subjects that go beyond the typical cable or broadcast television subjects of nature, history, or food and their “just the facts (or ideas), ma’am” approach.  The best of them tickle a viewer’s curiosity or introduce an unexpected (to the viewer) slant on the world around them.  Running from May 30 – June 9, 2024, this year’s festival presents films about (for starters): the man who brought Tiki culture to the U.S., a rock guitarist breeding hard rock chickens, the most grueling tour in indie wrestling, the Unarius Academy of Science, and an endurance race where, among others, a four-poster bed on wheels races a souped-up ice cream truck.

The 91 non-fiction films being shown this year at SF DocFest were chosen once again by the proverbial mad geniuses at the San Francisco Independent Film Festival.  All in-person screenings will be held at the Roxie Theater, which gives attendees the opportunity to see some of the filmmakers in person and ask them questions.  For viewers understandably shy about COVID exposure or who don’t live in the Bay Area, SF DocFest will make its films available online for the duration of the festival.

Kick your SF DocFest experience off with a Zombie in hand while you watch the Opening Night Film “The Donn Of Tiki.”  If you love hanging out at Trad’r Sam or Smuggler’s Cove, you can thank Ernest Raymond Beaumont Gantt aka Donn Beach.  Alex Lamb and Max Well’s film sifts through both fact and far wilder lore to examine the life of the man who made Tahitian Rum Punch and other tropical drinks popular in the United States.  Besides affairs and connections with the Mob, what other bits of naughtiness did Gantt get into?  For those bummed by what they learn about Donn Beach in this film, they might try seeing if Last Rites (the site of the film afterparty) will do a Cobra’s Fang or something Tiki-adjacent.

The Donn Of Tiki

Culturally influential in a different way is artist Jim Phillips.  Odds are if you’re more than a day visitor to the worlds of rock posters, surf, or skateboards, you’ve probably seen Phillips’ work.  John Edward Makens’ feature “Art And Life: The Story Of Jim Phillips” recounts the tumultuous life of this pioneering Santa Cruz, California artist, who went from doing art for Surfer Quarterly to eventually becoming art director for Santa Cruz Skateboards.  Even enduring the loss of his studio, financial hardship, and a cancer diagnosis hasn’t dimmed Phillips’ passionate commitment to his art.

Going further southward in California brings us to El Cajon, California.  That San Diego County city happens to be the home of The Unarius Academy Of Science, which brands itself as an “extraterrestrial-channeling spiritual school.”  Jodi Wille’s feature “Welcome Space Brothers” tells the story of the Academy and its spiritual leader/filmmaker Ruth E. Norman, better known as Archangel Uriel.  Readers with long memories will remember Wille’s previous SF Bay Area appearance at the 2015 SFFILM Festival, where she presented several Unarius films.     

Luke Mistruzzi’s “Uncle Bardo” can be called an experimental animated short with a touch of documentary.  It concerns an estranged family member who awakens from a near-death experience but is lost between two worlds.

The title of Steven Gong’s short “Memory Palace” refers to a technique for using familiar spaces to find out what poignant memories and complicated emotions they evoke.  In Gong’s case, those spaces are the suburbs, a big city, and his Chinese ancestral hometown.     

aeryka jourdaine hollis o’neil’s experimental short “in the interval” delivers a meditation on autonomy, safety, and compounded loss through a combination of family portrait and a collage of Black trans memory and longing.

Welcome Space Brothers

The late Oscar-winning director Jonathan Demme began the project that would become “Guardians Of The Flame,” but this film wound up being completed by Daniel Wolff.  It immerses viewers in New Orleans Black masking culture through the story of the artistry and activism of three generations of the incredibly talented Harrison family.  Not only are they fighting to recover from the aftereffects of Hurricane Katrina, but they have to fight off cultural appropriation.

Fan of Hip Hop or Funk?  Then you need to check out Emilio Domingos’ documentary “Black Rio! Black Power!”  The 1970s Rio de Janeiro phenomenon known as the Black Rio Movement was a lot more than just a bunch of soul music dances.  The music scene provided key spaces for young Blacks to affirm “I Am Somebody” and even nurture resistance via Black pride to the military dictatorship which kept Brazilians under its thumb.  Sound familiar?

Back in the 1980s and 1990s, fear of children allegedly becoming irredeemable super-predators led the city of Tacoma, WA to put the screws on children committing violent crimes.  Gilda Sheppard’s “Since I Been Down” looks at the legacy of dumping a society’s most vulnerable children into the criminal justice system.  Are there non-hysterical reasons why children commit violent crime?  Can the now adult targets of those old fear-based punitive measures model new modes of justice?

Producer Ben Crump and director John Beder are behind the short “How To Sue The Klan.”  It recounts how America’s first hate group the Ku Klux Klan lost its aura of untouchability thanks to a landmark 1982 civil case brought against the Klan by five Black women and a Black civil rights lawyer.

For a more personal perspective on the Sanctuary City movement, check out Florencia Krochik and Theo Rigby’s feature “If I Could Stay.”  Subjects Jeanette and Ingrid are two undocumented Latinx immigrant mothers.  To evade capture by the assholes of La Migra, both women frequently seek sanctuary in local churches.  As they fight for their legal status, these two Latinx women also wind up inspiring the White faith communities to become allies. 

Black Rio! Black Power!

Matt Moyer and Amy Toensing’s Slamdance Grand Jury Prize Award-winning feature “Inheritance” takes viewers into the lives of an Ohio Appalachian extended family dealing with multi-generational opioid addiction.  Over 11 years, the film follows various family members’ struggles with overcoming their addiction using methods ranging from labor to religion.  Providing a dramatic focus for the film is Curtis, a bright and hopeful 12-year-old at the film’s start.  By the time Curtis reaches 18, will he have broken the cycle of alienation and addiction that trapped his relatives?   

Has SF DocFest jumped the shark by making its Centerpiece documentary a film about the kitschy “Painter Of Light” Thomas Kinkade?  Guess again.  Miranda Yousef’s debut documentary “Art For Everybody” uses a discovered trove of incredibly emotionally dark paintings unmistakably painted by Kinkade as a launching pad to uncover the real man behind the painter who marketed his work to American evangelicals. 

Inaki Onate’s short “Notes On The Death Of A Cinema” will touch the hearts of those who treat going to the cinemas of yesteryear as a near-religious experience.  The imminent closure of a small cinema in Buenos Aires’ Constitucion district becomes an opportunity for reflection.    

Does “analog” film still matter?  Peter Flynn’s feature “Film Is Dead, Long Live Film!” answers that question with a loud “yes” via its dive into the secretive yet shrinking world of private film collectors.  On one hand, the FBI have branded such collectors pirates.  On the other hand, these collectors’ efforts have saved pre-video films that would otherwise be lost to history.  

Dennis Scholl and Kareem Tabsch’s “Naked Ambition” is a portrait of the forgotten cultural icon who launched Bettie Page to stardom, popularized the bikini, and invented the selfie.  Her name was Bunny Yeager and she was a photographer whose work appeared in mid-20th century men’s magazines.  But behind the visual titillation her photos gave to men (and more than a few women), Yeager’s work also made her models much more than objects to be stared at.

Kim Jong, Alfaman, And The Probe: A LeMons Race

Meet Hampus Klang, guitarist for Swedish hard rock band BULLET.  When he’s not on tour, he raises chickens and exhibits them at competitions.  One day, he decides to meld his two interests to create a line of hard rock chickens that he calls “Party Queens.”  Bjorn Rallare’s offbeat film shows how Klang finds happiness in a life that might not be as strange as the ordinary viewer may think.

The Nimatron, the first electronic game machine, dates back to the 1939-1940 New York World’s Fair.  But in director Robert A. Emmons, Jr.’s short “Game Of Nim,” this machine and its inventor Dr. Edward U. Condon turn out to be more than just historical curiosities.  They may provide insight into one of America’s greatest health epidemics.

What happens when you democratize race car driving?  You might get the 24 hour car endurance race which holds the Guinness World Record for “Most Participants In A Car Race.”  That race is 24 Hours of LeMons aka “Burning Man for Cars.”  For $500 or less, prospective  participants create insanely designed vehicles on wheels such as a hybrid car-plane or an ice cream truck that can easily go 100 mph.  Yasmin Sanie-Hay’s short “Kim Jong, Alfaman and The Probe: A LeMons Race” follows the process of three different teams from initial car assemblage to the finish line.

How far would you go to live your dreams?  For the indie wrestler wannabes profiled in Stephan Peterson and Sonya Ballantyne’s “The Death Tour,” it means traveling for a couple of weeks through Canada’s Frozen North, going to remote First Nations communities, and showing their wrestling chops in competition.  Those who make it through “the Death Tour” will know if they have what it takes to make it in pro wrestling…as evidenced by the famous alumni who’ve previously taken the Tour.

The Dalkurd football team began as a way for Kurdish refugees in Sweden to occupy themselves.  But as Kordo Doski’s rousing “Allihopa: The Dalkurd Story” shows, this underdog Swedish football team has done well enough in the divisions that it’s on the verge of entering the top tier of Swedish soccer.  It’s not all sports with the members of Dalkurd, though.  Its players are well aware that they belong to the world’s largest ethnic group lacking a homeland, and they would very much like to change that state of affairs.

The Death Tour

Did you know Gogol Bordello frontman Eugene Hutz is a Romani born in Ukraine?  Now he’s finally returning home to the country of his birth because Putin’s incursion has put Ukraine’s sovereignty and cultural identity under threat.  Can the music of Hutz and his band rally other Ukrainians to fight the Russian foe?  The tale of Hutz’ return to Ukraine is recounted in Nate Pommer and Eric Weinrib’s feature “Scream Of My Blood: A Gogol Bordello Story.”

Anton Shtuka’s emotional documentary “Warning! Life Goes On” follows a Kharkiv street artist on a visit to the recently liberated Ukrainian city of Iyzum.  It’s a bittersweet journey as the Russian occupiers left behind a city with a preponderance of “mutilated houses and crushed cars.”  But as the artist meets and talks with local residents, he discovers such incredible stories of survival as a man who hid 70 people in his basement or kids who have become accustomed to air raids.

SF DocFest’s Closing Night Film happens to be Mitch McCabe’s timely experimental documentary “23 Mile.”  This mix of verite cinema and video diary follows notable events in the swing state of Michigan during the presidential election year of 2020.  These events include the negative public reactions to the COVID lockdowns and the abortive plot to kidnap Governor Gretchen Whitmer.

If none on these S.F. DocFest films scratch your curiosity itch, there may be others showing this year which may do the job   Part of the fun of such a search is being surprised by what you discover once these films are approached with an open mind.

(S.F. DocFest runs from May 30 to June 9, 2024 with both online and in-person screenings.  For further information, go here.)