There are Six (Yes 6!) Film Fests in SF This Weekend

A standing joke among art film moviegoers is that a week cannot go by without somebody somewhere holding a film festival.  But what do you do when this coming weekend has six different film festivals happening around San Francisco?  (If you count the United Nations Association Film Festival, which also starts up this weekend but in Palo Alto, the number goes up to seven.)  The answer is to talk briefly about each of them. 

San Francisco Dance Film Festival

The 15th edition of San Francisco Dance Film Festival has been showing films about dance (e.g. performance, documentaries, screendance shorts) since October 4, 2024.  However, this last in-theater weekend goes all-in with screenings at Shack 15 (Second Floor, Ferry Building, SF), the Delancey Street Theater (600 The Embarcadero, SF) and the Brava Theater (2781-24th Street, SF).  Afterwards, from October 21 to November 3, 2024, Marquee TV will stream selected programs from the festival.

This year’s festival offers more than 90 dance-themed films from over 25 countries such as Fiji, France, Hong Kong, the Bahamas, and of course the United States.  The film subjects include the monotony of Mondays, an orchestral electronic music performance, and even World War II Japanese-American incarceration.

Some of the films to check out are:

“Obsessed With Light” (8:00 PM on October 19, 2024 at the Delancey Street Theater) from directors Sabine Krayenbuhl and Zeva Oelbaum introduces modern viewers to the achievements of early 20th Century visual artist Loie Fuller.  She pioneered the idea of using electric light for the stage and invented a spectacle that combined dance, fabric, and movement.

Andre Musgrove’s “The Deepest Dance” (7:30 PM on October 17, 2024 as part of the “Spotlight Shorts” program screening at SHACK15) features professional dancer Arianda Hafez conducting a choreographed routine among a variety of sunken shipwrecks.  She dives, tumbles, and flips through the sea with nothing but the air in her lungs.

“Organized Hope” (6:30 PM on October 20, 2024 at the Brava Theater as part of the “Bay Area Shorts” program) from Amy Selwert concerns a dancer who journeys both inside his mind with its weight of past memories and outwards towards an uncertain future.  Could daily practices of forgiveness, survival, and resilience be his key to survival?  Inspired by Kintsugi’s belief in increased beauty through endured stresses.

Cine + Mas Latino Film Festival

Technically, this 16th edition of the Cine +Mas Film Festival is actually in its second weekend of celebrating Latin cinema from Mexico, Chile, and other Spanish-speaking countries.  Opening weekend was October 11.  However, for those who didn’t take in the festival from the start, selected films will be made available on the website from October 21 on for temporary home viewing.

This particular weekend, Cine + Mas will have screenings taking place at Artists’ Television Access (992 Valencia Street, SF), the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (701 Mission Street, SF), Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts (2868 Mission Street, SF), and the Roxie Theater (3117-16th Street, SF).  Of the films being offered this weekend, the curious might want to make time for Marusia Estrada’s “Phantom Love” (6:30 PM on October 17, 2024 at Artists Television Access).  This documentary’s subjects are Felix “Quiti” Giron (62 years old) and Evanglina “Evy” Gracia (73 years old), aka the last two residents of the abandoned Sonora Mountain town of Pilares de Nacozari.  This duo used to fill the town’s emptiness 8with their love…until they separated about a year ago and have stopped contacting each other.  Now an international mining company wants to seize the town for their own uses.

The “Queerido Shorts” program (3:15 PM on October 19, 2024 at the Mission Cultural Center For Latino Arts) offers a package of LGBTQ+-themed shorts of varying degrees of emotional intensity.  The featured shorts include Jose Luis Zorrero’s “Beso de Lengua!” (a first date soon involves an unusual and riveting game), Kohl Avalos Bybee’s “Dusk” (a special outfit for a dance celebrating the wearer’s gender non-conforming identity), and Daniel Eduvijes Carrera’s “El Paisa” (a street rescue by a charismatic vaquero may spur goth skater Fernando to step out of the closet).

3rd i San Francisco International South Asian Film Festival

Another Mission District film festival is the 22nd edition of the 3rd i San Francisco International South Asian Film Festival.  Taking over the Roxie Theater from October 18-20, 2024, this festival presents films from South Asia and its diaspora, with films hailing this year from India, Pakistan, Canada, and the US.

Fawzia Mirza’s semi-autobiographical “The Queen Of My Dreams” (which also played the recent Frameline) tells of queer Pakistani grad student Azra’s return to Pakistan for her father’s funeral.  But going back also means coming to terms with her conservative Muslim mother’s past and her own memories of growing up in rural Canada. (7:15 PM on October 18, 2024)

Shuchi Talati’s Sundance and SXSW award-winner “Girls Will Be Girls” (6:00 PM on October 20, 2024) is a coming-of-age tale set in 1990s India.  16-year-old Mira goes to a private boarding school located in the Himalayan Mountains.  But if keeping her good grades isn’t hard enough, the teen must also negotiate her budding feelings for a slightly older boy as well as an unexpected love triangle involving her mother.

Making its San Francisco premiere is Payal Kapadia’s Cannes Grand Prix Award-winner “All We Imagine As Light” (3:00 PM on October 19, 2024).  It follows three women who work at the same hospital as they navigate life in modern Mumbai to varying degrees of success.  Prabha begins to chafe at the continued absence of her husband, who’s working in Germany.  Anu wants privacy to be with a Muslim boy named Shiaz.  Parvati tries to resist a greedhead construction company’s pressure to move out of the apartment she’s lived in for a couple of decades.  

This year’s Third i may not be screening a new Bollywood musical.  But for those who like their musicals mixed with nationalist rabble-rousing, Robin Sukhadia’s lecture “Two Paths, One Nation” (1:00 PM on October 20, 2024) uses the popular acclaimed films “Lagaan” and “RRR” to look at how the themes and symbolism of these paeans to nationalist resistance reflect broader cultural and political currents in modern India.  (The Broke-Ass readers out there will like that this is a free event.)

Also of interest is Sama Pana’s portrait of cartoonist Rachita Taneja “Drawing A Line” (1:15 PM on October 19, 2024).  Taneja, under her “Sanitary Panels” pseudonym, uses a style reminiscent of Randall Munroe’s webcomic “xkcd” to create cartoons challenging Indian sociopolitical taboos around such subjects as menstruation, climate change, and LGBTQIA+ rights.  Unsurprisingly, she faces criminal prosecution from government officials simpatico to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision of India’s illiberal democratic future.

Green Film Festival Of San Francisco 2024

Because the Third i festival is occupying the Roxie Theater, the S.F. Indie folks have moved live screenings of their annual festival of environmental-themed films to the Balboa (3630 Balboa Street, SF) and 4-Star Theaters (2200 Clement Street, SF).  Running from October 17-27, 2024, the Green Film Festival of San Francisco (like the Short Film Festival of San Francisco and the Cine+Mas Film Festival) offers both an in-theater component and an online component.  The 43 films being shown at the Green Film Festival this year hail from such places as Zimbabwe, South Korea, the Netherlands, and Ukraine.  The environmental films here go beyond documentaries to include adventure films, narrative fiction and even an environmentally-themed midnight movie or two.  

Ben Judkins’ documentary “The Cigarette Surfboard” (5:15 PM on October 20, 2024 at the Balboa Theater) follows surfer Taylor Lane, who creates a working surfboard out of 10,000 cigarette butts littering California’s beaches.  How can Lane use his creation to spread an environmental message?

David Abel’s true-life adventure “In The Whale” (6:00 PM on October 24, 2024 at the 4-Star Theater) recounts the time Michael Packard got swallowed by a humpback whale while lobster diving off Cape Cod.  Fortunately, the whale spat Packard out of its mouth after 30 seconds, and the diver reached the surface.  The story became a news sensation.  But it’s what happened to Packard after the hoopla died down that would prove more life-changing.

Felt “Oppenheimer” whitewashed the more uncomfortable parts of dropping the atomic bomb?  Then you need to see the World Premiere of the 2K Academy Film Archive restoration of Judy Irving and Chris Beaver’s documentary “Dark Circle” (6:00 PM on October 23, 2024 at the 4-Star Theater) on its 40th anniversary.  How have ordinary citizens, for good and ill, been affected by America’s development of nuclear weaponry and energy?   The film’s answer to this question takes viewers to the Rocky Flats plutonium factory (the one that contaminated an area near Denver, Colorado) and California’s Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant (the one that’s built on top of active earthquake faults).  Needless to say, U.S. government officials have been openly unhappy with this film while TV broadcasters refuse to screen the documentary despite its winning a National Emmy.

Her kidney stone removal inspired director Sofie Benoot to make her experimental essay film “Apple Cider Vinegar” (6:00 PM on October 22, 2024 at the Balboa Theater).   The film is a quest to understand humanity’s past and its connection to living things, an urgent subject given the effects of climate change.  Sian Phillips’ narration guides this film as it discovers surprises on this planet humans call home.  The journey will take viewers to see hidden web cams capturing jungle life, Palestinian quarry workers, and people who live on Fogo’s lava fields in Cape Verde.

Stanislav Kapralov’s documentary “Searching For Nika” (12:00 PM on October 19, 2024 at the Four-Star Theater) begins as a personal search for his family’s dog Nika.  The canine had run away after the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the shelling of Kyiv.  But his personal journey leads to something far bigger after he joins Ukrainian volunteers trying to save animals.  Whether it’s finding food for the dogs in a shelter or helping horses find a safe home, the filmmaker becomes part of a humanitarian movement to save as many animals as possible from being war victims.

San Francisco Short Film Festival 2024

Running during the same period and in the same venues as the Green Film Festival, the 2024 San Francisco Short Film Festival presents 95 short films from around the world and even the Bay Area.  Some of the films listed in the Green Film Festival, such as “The Chileno Valley Newt Brigade” and “Abnormal Prime Time,” can be found here as well.

But this festival also has:

Ryan George Kittleman’s animated “Edson’s Gravy” (8:15 PM on October 21, 2024 at the 4-Star Theatre) adapts poet Russell Edson’s ode to the titular condiment.  Think a Dali-like transformation of the everyday into a dream-like offbeat fable.  Particularly remarkable is that Kittleman’s film is the first big screen adaptation of Edson’s work.

Natasha Adorlee’s dance film “Intimite Revelee” (8:15 PM on October 24, 2024 at the 4-Star Theater) depicts slice-of-life moments of public and private intimacy for three couples.  But because all three couples are queer, these normally mundane and tender moments challenge the intolerant who consider these expressions of love somehow abnormal.

Robert Philipson’s documentary “Rockland Palace” (6:15 PM on October 19, 2024 at the 4-Star Theater) introduces viewers to a piece of dishy queer history.  During the Roaring Twenties, the titular New York City venue hosted the city’s largest drag balls.  This film reimagines what one of those balls was like, using snippets of actual conversation immortalized in the 1933 gay novel “The Young And Evil.”

A drug that lets the user shed the boundaries of their physical self seems to be just the thing for an isolated socially anxious night janitor.  She discovers the drug while cleaning up after a high-end Barcelona party.  But as it’s soon revealed in Pablo Pagan’s “Voyager” (8:00 PM on October 22, 2024 at the Balboa Theater), the janitor’s new freedom carries a very heavy price tag.

Ready for a trip back to the days of Super 8 filmmaking?  Then check out Danny Plotnick’s “Elevator To Stardom” (8:15 PM on October 18, 2024 at the 4-Star Theater), a return by the director to the format he used for his award-winning films of the 1980s and 1990s.  The story is the evergreen one of the student group film shoot that goes horribly wrong.  This result is not terribly surprising given that the group includes a monomaniacal film student and the group member aggrieved by a particular student’s blowhard behavior.  Add into the mix the type of stupidity that college kids excel at, and you’ve got a fun exercise in seat-of-your-pants filmmaking.  

Doc Stories 10

Under one name or another, the SFFILM organization has put on an annual film series celebrating the best recent documentaries.  The 2024 edition is the 10th year of this series, which will be celebrated from October 17-20, 2024 at the Vogue Theater.  If you had time for just one film series this weekend, make it this one as this program offers only in-person screenings of such highly acclaimed films as these:

Real-life David and Goliath stories don’t come any better than Brett Story and Stephen Maing’s “Union” (1:30 PM on October 19, 2024).  Chris Smalls hopes to negotiate for better pay and working conditions by forming the Amazon Labor Union at the Staten Island Amazon Fulfillment Center known as JFK8.  However, Amazon has a history of going to ferocious lengths to keep the union out of its warehouses….and traditional labor unions aren’t much help.  Can the Amazon Labor Union get to the union election point anyway and win?

Raoul Peck, who had previously appeared at Doc Stories with his classic “I Am Not Your Negro,” returns with “Ernest Cole: Lost And Found” (11:00 AM on October 19, 2024).  Cole was a South African photographer who showed the world the true face of apartheid life in South Africa through his searing monograph “House Of Bondage.”  Yet emigrating to the United States didn’t translate to Cole living either an easier or freer life.  Why did his living situation become a state of precarity?  How did 60,000 valuable negatives of Cole’s photographs wind up in a Swedish bank vault?

Political interference with government attempts to curb the worst effects of climate change is not something that happened in recent years.  As shown by Bonni Cohen, Pedro Kos, and Jon Shenk in “The White House Effect” (4:30 PM on October 202, 2024), there have been decades of failed US policies intending to address climate change thanks to political maneuvering.

Sara Jane Moore went to prison for attempting to assassinate then-US President Gerald Ford.  In Robinson Devor’s new film “Suburban Fury” (7:30 PM on October 20, 2024), Moore gets the chance to tell her side of the story.  Yet because the would-be assassin insisted on being the only person interviewed for the film, there’s no way to verify her claim that, say, she’s actually an FBI asset tasked with ingratiating herself with radical activists.  How Devor tries to work around Moore’s limitation makes for an interesting documentary study of an unreliable narrator.

Doc Stories 10’s hot ticket film will likely be the collectively-made prize-winner “No Other Land” (6:00 PM on October 19, 2024).  In the West Bank area known as Masafer Yatta, its Palestinian residents struggle to build a life on the land.  However, the Israeli Defense Forces have been repeatedly evicting the residents and destroying village infrastructure.  Supposedly the land will be an IDF training ground, but it’s likely a dodge to seize lands for more illegal Israeli settlements.