San Francisco Film Society Extends Citywide Focus At 50th San Francisco International Film Festival

SFIFF50 Events Showcase Ongoing Commitment to Bay Area Film and Media Scene

April 3, 2007

San Francisco, CA – Special events at the 50th San Francisco International Film Festival (April 26–May 10) will showcase the San Francisco Film Society’s ongoing commitment to the Bay Area film and media scene, which reaches its fullest expression with the Film Society’s full slate of year-round SF360 programs and events.

SFIFF50 Satellite Venues
The Film Society continues to expand the geographic and experiential scope of its programming during the 50th International, bringing special Festival events to Satellite venues throughout the city over its 15-day run.

• An outdoor screening of Décio Matos Jr.’s Fabricating Tom Zé will take place at El Rio, 3158 Mission Street, on Tuesday, May 1 at 8:30 pm. One of Brazilian music’s unsung pioneers, Zé gets hips swinging in this on-the-road documentary bursting with rhythmic energy.
• Jon Else’s Wonders Are Many will screen at Intersection for the Arts, 446 Valencia Street, on Sunday, May 6 at 7:00 pm and 9:30 pm. The film is a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at the making of Doctor Atomic, an opera about J. Robert Oppenheimer, created in 2006 for San Francisco Opera by composer John Adams and director Peter Sellars.
• Ken McMullen’s live cinema performance Arrows of Time will be presented at McBean Theater in the Palace of Fine Arts, 3601 Lyon Street on Sunday, April 29 at 2:00 pm. In this presentation from the Festival’s KinoTek section, composed in real time onstage, documentary footage of Jacques Derrida and John Berger collides with interviews of physicists at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center and a fictional crime story.
• At Mighty, 119 Utah Street, on Wednesday, May 9 at 9:30 pm, in another KinoTek event, titled Halou, Tarentel and the GreenWorld, beloved local bands Halou and Tarentel will take the stage for contrasting and intense multimedia performances that merge electronic and psychedelic music with dreamy visuals. Videos made by the winner and finalists of the SFIFF50 GreenWorld Contest will also screen.

SFIFF50/Dialogues
The panel discussion SF360 Film Culture Confidential: Stories from the SF Film Frontiers comes to House 2 of the Sundance Cinemas Kabuki on Sunday, April 29 at 1:00 pm. San Francisco frontiersmen and women from the worlds of film production, distribution and exhibition will relate their best “only in San Francisco” stories. Panelists include: Stefanie Coyote, San Francisco Film Commission; Kevin Epps, Straight Outta Hunters Point and the Hip Hop Film Festival; Allyce Bess, Roxie Film Center; Taro Goto, SF International Asian American Film Festival; and Peter Acworth, Kink.com. Produced by Susie Gerhard, editor, SF360.org, and moderated by the San Francisco Chronicle’s Eve Batey, formerly of SFist.

SF360 Year Round Programs and Events
The above SFIFF50 special events are part of the Film Society’s ongoing initiatives to showcase the variety and vitality of the Bay Area film and media scene, many of which are presented under the organization’s SF360 banner, namely:

• SF360.org This copublication of indieWIRE and the San Francisco Film Society offers daily Internet coverage of a wide spectrum of Bay Area filmmaking and technology for local and national audiences. Readers and members enjoy live feeds from a wide variety of bloggers, online social networking, a weekly events newsletter as well as a weekly features newsletter and snapshots from all points on the Bay Area film map.

• SF360 Film+Club The SF360 Film+Club takes movies out of the theater and puts them in the club. Film+Club returns to Mezzanine on Wednesday, April 4 to celebrate the URB Next 1000 Issue with a screening of Doug Pray’s Infamy, an intense journey into the dangerous lives and obsessed minds of six of America’s most prolific graffiti artists. Chicago DJ Flosstradamus will perform after the film. The monthly social screening series takes place at Mezzanine, 444 Jessie Street, between Mint and Sixth Street, just off Market.

• SF360 Movie Scene The San Francisco Film Society recently partnered with Comcast San Francisco to produce SF360 Movie Scene, a weekly television program devoted to showcasing the variety and excitement of the San Francisco Bay Area independent film scene. The show, on Comcast SF Channel 11, is hosted by Rod Armstrong of the Film Society and Cheryl Eddy of the San Francisco Bay Guardian. For 30 engaging minutes on the first Monday of each month, Eddy and Armstrong review and discuss current selected San Francisco arthouse and independent theatrical releases, report on and offer insights into the most interesting happenings on the SF filmmaking and film festival fronts and chat with guests who are making a mark on the Bay Area film landscape.

• SF360 San Francisco Movie Night San Francisco Film Society and Ironweed Film Club invite Bay Area film lovers to SF360 San Francisco Movie Night, a quarterly event providing a unique opportunity for Bay Area residents to get together with their friends, watch a great film and engage in lively, relevant discussion. Each film chosen will screen at house parties and community venues citywide followed by a wrap party. The goal is to transform the Bay Area into an expanded cinema, with disparate pockets of viewers watching the same film at the same time, connected not by physical location but by digital technology and a driving interest in social change.

• SF360 Live During SFIFF and throughout the year, SF360 Live hosts a roving salon of panels, discussions, book signings and special presentations, notably at the downtown SF Apple Store.