Support the Roxie Theater by Enjoying the Fraenkel Film Festival!

San Francisco’s beloved Roxie Theater (3117 – 16th Street, SF) has repeatedly been there over the decades to host film festivals you wouldn’t find in Ron de Santis’ Florida and to present films too offbeat for the average cineplex crowd.  But being a venue for the types of filmgoers and filmmakers who aren’t primarily reliant on Hollywood entertainment products still costs money.  Becoming a Roxie Theater member is one way of giving back to this essential institution, especially now during its current membership drive.     

Another way to give back is by attending the Fraenkel Film Festival, which runs July 9-20, 2024 at the Roxie.  The festival’s name comes from the Fraenkel Gallery, the venerable Geary Boulevard gallery whose exhibitions explore “photography and its relation to other media.”  This year, the gallery celebrates its 45th anniversary by doing this fundraiser festival at the Roxie.  Daily double bills for the festival have been curated by visual artists whose work has been exhibited at the institution.  Personal significance to the day’s curator rather than membership in the core world cinema canon influenced these selections.  “Wild Strawberries” and “Tokyo Story” may be here, but so are “The Straight Story” and “Blade Runner (The Final Cut).”  All festival ticket proceeds go towards keeping the Roxie’s doors open.

Some of the films will be presented in 35 mm.  Of the artists participating in this festival’s curation, only Richard Misrach has been confirmed to appear in person.

Things kick off on July 9 with a screening of the Coen Brothers’ update on “The Odyssey,” “O Brother, Where Art Thou?”  In Depression-era Mississippi, Everett McGill (George Clooney) escapes from a prison chain gang accompanied by fellow convicts Pete (John Turturro) and Delmar (Tim Blake Nelson).  As they search for freedom and a hidden treasure, the trio will encounter a Klan rally, a trio of Siren-like women, and accidental radio stardom.

Carrie Mae Weems chose the July 10 show, a double bill of the Ingmar Bergman classic “Wild Strawberries” and Barry Jenkins’ Academy Award-winning “Moonlight.”  The Bergman film tells the story of how a trip to accept an honorary degree becomes for recipient Professor Isak Borg a journey into the regrets of his past and the making of peace with his approaching death.  In the Jenkins film, young Black gay Chiron is followed at three different periods of his life as he struggles to survive bullying and the illicit drug world.  

Get an unusual double bill with Kota Ezawa’s choices for the July 11 screening.  In Wim Wenders’ urban fantasy “Wings Of Desire,” the angel Damiel (Bruno Ganz) wants to give up his role as an immortal witness to humanity when he falls for the lonely trapeze artist Marion.   In David Lynch’s “The Straight Story,” Alvin Straight’s odyssey to mend relations with his estranged brother relies on his riding from Iowa to Wisconsin on a used snail-like John Deere lawn tractor.

The Cranes Are Flying

Christian Marclay’s double bill on July 12 might be called an homage to the art of making images.  In the Jean-Luc Godard classic “Contempt,” young screenwriter Paul Javal’s rewrite job of Fritz Lang’s script for an adaptation of “The Odyssey” is threatened by his wife Camille’s (Brigitte Bardot) contempt for his implicitly pimping her out to vulgar producer Jerry Prokosch. Michelangelo Antonioni’s “Blow-Up” takes viewers to then-Swinging London, where cynical trendy fashion photographer Thomas (David Hemmings) thinks he may have accidentally photographed a murder taking place in a park…or has he?

Lee Friedlander shows off his Humphrey Bogart love on July 13 with a double bill of Bogart classics.  In World War One East Africa, prim missionary Rose Sayer (Katherine Hepburn) talks dissolute riverboat captain Charlie Allnut (Bogart in his sole Academy award-winning performance) into taking his riverboat “The African Queen” on a mad mission to sink a German gunboat.  In “Casablanca,” cynical nightclub owner Rick Blaine’s (Bogart) desire to stay out of involvement in World War II goes out the window when former flame Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman) re-enters his life to seek help for herself and her fugitive Resistance leader husband Victor Laszlo.  This film is bursting with such well-known lines as “Here’s looking at you, kid” and “round up the usual suspects.”

Aside from being personally significant, why Robert Adams chose a double bill of Yasujiro Ozu and Elaine May for the July 15 double bill will be up to the curious viewer to discover.  The Ozu film is his classic “Tokyo Story,” which tells the story of 60-ish couple Tomi and Shukichi Hirayama’s slowly heartbreaking visit to post-WWII Tokyo to see their other adult children and their families.  The May film is her debut feature “A New Leaf,” a dark comedy about bankrupt ex-playboy Henry Graham’s (Walter Matthau) nefarious scheme to marry botany professor and klutzy heiress Henrietta Lowell (May) and then murder her for her money.

July 16 sees Sophie Calle’s pick of two digital feature films.  Agnes Varda’s genial documentary “The Gleaners And I” begins as a look at modern-day gleaners (marginal people who survive by foraging on what others throw away) before moving on to show how digital filmmaking is another type of gleaning and also that heart-shaped potatoes are cool.  Lars von Trier’s “The Idiots” is a button-pushing dark comedy about Karen, who joins Stoffer’s group of men and women rebelling against bourgeois expectations.  The group’s weapon of rebellion is its members publicly acting as if they’re developmentally disabled. 

The Hiroshi Sugimoto double bill on July 17 takes two different looks at Japanese culture.  The acclaimed “Kwaidan” adapts a quartet of Japanese ghost stories from the work of Lafcadio Hearn, including the tale of a woodcutter who meets a woman in the snow and a blind biwa player whose nightly musical performances have an otherworldly audience.  Akio Jissoji’s Locarno Grand Prix award-winning “This Transient Life” tells the story of well-off yet rebellious siblings Masao and Yuri.  The brother and sister go from (respectively) a fascination with Buddhist statuary and a refusal to marry to having an incestuous relationship.

Blade Runner: The Final Cut

For those who enjoyed seeing Nan Goldin give the opioid-profiteering Sackler family reputational heartburn, they might want to check out her July 18 double bill of anti-war films.  Stanley Kubrick’s horrifying “Paths Of Glory” recounts Colonel Dax’s (Kirk Douglas) efforts to save three infantrymen from being executed as scapegoats for the failure of a suicidal attack. General Mireau, who had ordered the assault, had hoped the attack’s success would get him promoted.  Mikhail Kalatozov’s Cannes Palme d’Or-winning classic “The Cranes Are Flying” recounts how lovers Veronika and Boris get separated by the onset of World War II, and mainly depicts the emotional traumas endured by Veronika during the course of the war.

The July 19 double bill, picked by Martine Gutierrez, goes science fiction.   First up is Ridley Scott’s cult classic “Blade Runner (The Final Cut).”  A blade runner (a policeman who hunts bioengineered humanoids aka “replicants”) is what Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) used to be…until he gets forced out of retirement to track down and terminate a quartet of rogue replicants who have hidden themselves in a noirish future Los Angeles.  In the futuristic New Port City of Mamoru Oshii’s philosophical anime drama “Ghost In The Shell,” Major Motoko Kusinagi’s hunt for the mysterious hacker known as the Puppet Master soon reveals governmental intrigue and questions about the nature of consciousness in a future where cybernetic augmentation of the human body is commonplace. 

The festival concludes with Richard Misrach’s July 20 double bill of skewed looks at the near future.  Peter Weir’s chilling yet oddly funny “The Truman Show” concerns an ordinary everyman named Truman Burbank (Jim Carrey) who is unaware that his entire life on Seahaven Island is nothing more than a carefully constructed 24/7 reality show that’s gained worldwide popularity.  Philip Kaufman’s epic “The Right Stuff” adapts Tom Wolfe’s book about the first fifteen years of the American space race by telling the stories of the astronauts who became the Mercury Seven.  Before the screening, Misrach will interview Kaufman.

Whether you’re finally seeing an old classic you’ve heard about for years or are getting reacquainted with an old but favorite film, dump the tiny hand-held screen and the tinny earphones so you can catch these films where they were meant to be seen: on the Roxie screen.