49th San Francisco International Film Festival Reveals its Dark Side with the Late Show

Selection Includes a Suspicious Koala in a Business Suit, a Hallucinating Call Girl, Hard Core Rockers and a Brutally Shocking Horror Film

March 28, 2006

San Francisco, CA—The 49th San Francisco International Film Festival (April 20–May 4) is delighted to reveal the selection of films screening as a part of The Late Show. The Late Show, movies that will keep you up late, offers the nail-biting horror of The Descent, the tongue-in-cheek absurdity of Executive Koala, a mind-bending trip into soft-core porn with The Glamorous Life of Sachiko Hanai and the hard rock–driven Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey. The Late Show audience can enjoy Stella Artois beer, courtesy of the Festival, prior to the screenings taking place on both Friday and Saturday evenings at the Kabuki 8 Theatres.

The Late Show opens Friday, April 21 at 10:30 pm with Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey, an intelligent, humorous and affectionate documentary about heavy metal music, its myriad forms and rabid fans. Directed by Sam Dunn, Scot McFayden and Jessica Joy-Wise, the film features some of the genre’s most noted heroes while attempting to dispel its stigma as the bastard stepchild of the airwaves.

Next up on Saturday, April 22 at 11:15 pm is Mitsursu Meike’s The Glamorous Life of Sachiko Hanai. In this riotous amalgam of political satire, apocalyptic comedy and steamy erotica, an escort specializing in teacher-student scenarios acquires a mysterious cylinder that could cause nuclear havoc. A fervid example of the Japanese pinku eiga genre, this film is for mature audiences only.

The Late Show continues on Friday, April 28 at 10:30 pm with Executive Koala, in which a dutiful employee with a giant koala head must contend with complex office politics while worrying that he may be responsible for his girlfriend’s death. This unforgettable genre hybrid comes from Minoru Kawasaki, Japan’s leading director of meatball off-the-wall comedies.

Audiences will find it difficult to sleep after The Descent, which closes the program on Saturday, April 29 at 11:30 pm. This brutal horror film taps into the primal fears all humans share—the unknown, the dark, their physical limitations and, of course, death. With its superb cast of kick-ass female characters and knockout cinematography that carefully chooses what to show and what to simply hint at, writer/director Neil Marshall has fashioned an instant horror classic.

When describing The Late Show, programming associate Rod Armstrong puts it best: “From hard rock to soft porn, The Late Show spotlight offers everyone films worth staying up late for.”

Stella Artois is the exclusive sponsor of The Late Show.

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.