Tilda Swinton To Deliver State Of Cinema Address at 49th San Francisco International Film Festival

Provocative and Eloquent Actor/Producer to Speak About the Future of Filmmaking

March 28, 2006

San Francisco, CA—The San Francisco Film Society today announced that Tilda Swinton will deliver the fourth annual State of Cinema address at the 49th San Francisco International Film Festival (April 20–May 4). Each year a distinguished member of the international film community is asked by the Festival to speak about issues facing the film world today. Beautiful, brilliant and fearless, Tilda Swinton has long been one of art and popular cinema’s shining lights as well as one of its most articulate observers. She will speak her mind about her art and craft at 5:30 pm on Saturday, April 29 at the Kabuki 8 Theatres.

“In my mind I see Tilda delivering our State of Cinema address in a floor-length gold brocade gown with a crisp white Elizabethan collar, hands held up in benediction like a Hindu idol, seemingly eight feet tall, spitting fire about the things she loves and the things she hates in her life and craft and in the beautiful compromised world around her,” said Graham Leggat, Film Society executive director. “But probably the reality will be even more riveting.”

In an acclaimed talk in honor of Derek Jarman at the 2002 Edinburgh Film Festival, Swinton commented on the state of modern artistic endeavor saying, “The dead hand of Good Taste has commenced its last great attempt to buy up every soul on the planet, and from where I’m sitting, it’s going great guns. Art is now indivisible from the idea of culture: culture from heritage: heritage from tourism.” She is bound to bring provocative ideas like these—and more—to her address at the Festival this spring.

The San Francisco International Film Festival has long followed Swinton’s career, playing War Requiem (SFIFF 1989) from her remarkable collaboration with director Derek Jarman as well as John Maybury’s Man to Man (SFIFF 1993), Sally Potter’s Orlando (SFIFF 1993), Tim Roth’s The War Zone (SFIFF 1999), Scott McGehee and David Siegel’s The Deep End (SFIFF 2001) and Bay Area filmmaker Lynn Hershman Leeson’s Conceiving Ada (SFIFF 1998) and Teknolust (SFIFF 2002). Most recently she sent a shiver down the spine of viewers young and old as the icy White Witch in the Walt Disney Pictures’ holiday hit The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005).

The previous State of Cinema speakers have been Michel Ciment, longtime editor of the influential French film magazine Positif; B. Ruby Rich, renowned film critic, curator and cultural commentator; and Brad Bird, Oscar-winning director/writer of The Incredibles.

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.