49th San Francisco International Film Festival Features Diverse Selection of 23 Documentaries

From Politics to Religion to Sports to Music, Films Will Appeal to a Wide Audience

March 28, 2006

San Francisco, CA—The 49th San Francisco International Film Festival (April 20–May 4) features a strong selection of documentary features, ranging from the entertaining to the powerful to the inspirational. Representing 13 countries, these 23 films will appeal to a wide audience. The 12 documentary features in the Golden Gate Awards competition—Beyond the Call, The Bridge, Encounter Point, Favela Rising, Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple, Runners High, Shooting Under Fire, The Shutka Book of Records, Smiling in a War Zone, Strangers in the Neighborhood, They Chose China and Workingman’s Death—are described in the GGA press release. Comprising the other half of the Festival’s documentary features, showing out of competition, are 11 equally engaging films.

“The documentaries are often some of the most sought after films in the Festival,” said Linda Blackaby, director of programming for the San Francisco Film Society. “This is an indication of how interested and engaged with the world, in all its multifaceted splendor and struggles, the members of the Festival audience are. This year’s selections cover a wide range of human experiences and documentary styles, and they are all fascinating.”

Four documentaries delve into the world of politics to expose the truth and to let the voices of the powerless be heard. The disenfranchisement of Black voters is explored in American Blackout (USA), as director Ian Inaba examines the political career of Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney (D-Georgia). While tracking McKinney’s career, Inaba reveals a host of ways in which Black political power is systematically squelched, reminding us that African Americans have long fought for the right to vote, and that war rages on today. In the powerful documentary Iraq in Fragments (James Longley, USA), the voices of Iraqis—from Sunni to Shiite to Kurd—are heard as they speak about their thoughts, dreams and concerns about their country and the U.S. invasion. The Dignity of the Nobodies (Argentina), Fernando E. Solanas’s (A Social Genocide, SFIFF 2005) second chapter in a series of four documentaries, focuses on those who have suffered the most and their struggle to fight back against the corporate sacking of Argentina. On the lighter side, audiences will take a trip into the world of politics with a comedic twist in Al Franken: God Spoke (Chris Hegedus and Nick Doob, USA), as the former Saturday Night Live writer tackles Bill O’Reilly, Ann Coulter and other voices of right-wing America while promoting his best-selling book Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them.

The intersections of personal, political, spiritual and cultural worlds are explored in three documentaries. In Twelve Disciples of Nelson Mandela (South Africa/USA), filmmaker Thomas Harris reflects on the life of his stepfather, an activist from the African National Congress who fought for justice while living in exile. Christian Frei’s The Giant Buddhas considers the cultural importance of the Buddhas of Bamiyan in Afghanistan, and the broad implications of their destruction by the Taliban. And in the beautiful and tranquil film Into Great Silence (Germany), Philip Groening (L’Amour, l’Argent, l’Amour, SFIFF 2001) takes viewers into the world of the monks in the Grand Chartreuse monastery in Grenoble, France.

Environmental issues, high school sports, insomnia and heavy metal music round out this year’s selection of documentaries. In Who Killed the Electric Car? (USA), Chris Paine investigates the connections between consumers, politicians, automobile makers and Big Oil while tracking the remarkable emergence and literal crushing of the American-designed electric car. In Ward Serrill’s inspirational and entertaining film The Heart of the Game (USA), the politics of race, class and sex arrive center court as the audience meets a high school girls basketball team in Seattle, and the headstrong star player who represents their greatest challenge. Alan Berliner explores his lifelong battle with insomnia in Wide Awake (USA), integrating found footage and interviews with family members in a dizzying meditation on sleep and the creative process. And Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey (Sam Dunn, Scot McFadyen and Jessica Joy-Wise, Canada) is a supremely entertaining look at heavy metal music incorporating the views of fans, rock gods and codirector Sam Dunn.

Founded in 1957, the vanguard San Francisco International Film Festival is the longest-running film festival in the Americas. Held each spring for two weeks, the International is an extraordinary showcase of cinematic discovery and innovation in the country’s most beautiful city, featuring some 200 films and live events with more than 100 filmmakers in attendance, presenting some 22 awards and attracting a diverse audience of nearly 80,000 people.

The 49th International runs April 20–May 4, 2006 at the Kabuki 8 Theatres, the Castro Theatre and the Cowell Theater at Fort Mason Center in San Francisco; the Pacific Film Archive Theater in Berkeley; and Landmark’s Aquarius Theatre in Palo Alto, as well as several smaller venues. To purchase tickets and for ticket information log on to www.sffs.org, call 925.866.9559 or visit the Main Ticket Outlet at the Kabuki 8 Theatres (1881 Post Street) or the Satellite Ticket Outlet at Virgin Megastore (2 Stockton Street). For additional information log on to www.sffs.org or call 415.561.5000.

San Francisco Film Society, presenter of the flagship SFIFF, is a nonprofit arts and educational organization dedicated to celebrating the world of film and media in all its glorious forms. In early 2006 the Film Society unveiled SF360, a broad-spectrum series of initiatives designed to showcase the extraordinary vitality, variety and innovation of the San Francisco Bay Area film and media scene, including www.sf360.org, SF360 San Francisco Movie Night, SF360 InSchool Cinemas and the SF360 Festival of Festivals.

The Film Society will present the first annual San Francisco International Animation Festival from October 11–15, 2006 and a new SF International Youth Media Festival in 2007.

First to 50: SFIFF will hold its landmark 50th anniversary in April 2007.