San Francisco Film Society Presents Second Annual San Francisco International Animation Festival Sponsored by Esurance

The Pixar Story, Animating the Internet Panel, Music Videos, Family-Friendly Komaneko: The Curious Cat and Award-Winning Shorts from Around the World

September 28, 2007

San Francisco, CA – The San Francisco Film Society Society announced today the second annual San Francisco International Animation Festival (SFIAF), a four-day event celebrating one of the most fertile, creative and productive forms of media. SFIAF will sample the wide breadth of animation with a selection of the finest, boldest and most exciting animated films and videos from around the world, including frame-by-frame and computer-assisted animation. The Festival explores the breadth of animation with eclectic programs of feature-length and short films encompassing artistic, commercial and industrial media, visual and special effects, art-house films and children’s cartoons. SFIAF will screen November 8–11 at Landmark’s Embarcadero Center Cinema.

Sean Uyehara, programming associate for the Film Society said, “The SF International Animation Festival attempts to look at animation as a multi-faceted object. So, we are interested in works that push at the definition of animation. Are all of the films in the Festival animated? We're pretty sure they are, but don't quote us on it.”

Thursday, November 8 Opening Night
6:45 pm The Pixar Story
Leslie Iwerks, USA 2007, 87 min
Detailing the meteoric rise of the Bay Area-based juggernaut, The Pixar Story is a live-action documentary that illustrates the cross-pollination of expertise at the base of the pioneering company. In particular, the film traces the backgrounds and fortuitous intersection of John Lasseter (animator), Ed Catmull (scientist) and Steve Jobs (entrepreneur), which gave rise to one of the most successful film production companies in filmmaking history. Featuring candid interviews with these principals along with George Lucas, Roy Disney, Brad Bird, Tom Hanks and many others, in concert with great historical footage of the early days at locations such as Pixar, CalArts, Disney Studios and the University of Utah’s computer graphics laboratory. The Pixar Story offers a new perspective on the animation business for novices and experts alike. This special screening and reception will feature director Leslie Iwerks and an onstage discussion with a bevy of Pixar artists.
8:00 pm Reception with Leslie Iwerks, director of The Pixar Story
9:30 pm The Pixar Story (see above)

Friday, November 9
2:00 pm Free panel discussion Animating the Internet at the Apple Store, 1 Stockton Street (at Ellis). The Internet opens animation to new methods of production, distribution and exhibition and through its interfaces and interaction potentially provides a different medium for animated work. This panel will explore the state of animation in the online environment. Panelists include Tiffany Shlain (founder, Webby Awards), Tom Sicurella (digital content lab mentor, American Film Institute) and Phil Robinson (animator, W!LDBRAIN).

7:00 pm Top Drawers
Don’t let the title of this shorts program fool you. While it does present hand-drawn work from master animators such as Joanna Quinn (Dreams and Desires: Family Ties), Georges Schwizgebel (Jeu) and Signe Baumane (Teat Beat of Sex), it also includes intensely crafted computer-generated imagery, claymation and stop-motion techniques. The program runs from highlight to highlight, including the Platform International Animation Award-winning I Met the Walrus, which features archival audio of a teenager’s interview with John Lennon; Annecy Festival standout Bully Beef; Wendy Morris’s conceptual rendition of connections between the colonial Belgian Congo and Germany’s invasion of Belgium; and two new works by local audience favorites Kelly Sears (Devil’s Canyon) and Semiconductor (200 Nanowebbers, Brilliant Noise). Sears’s Drift is the latest installment in her series on frontierism and madness. Semiconductor’s Magnetic Movie visualizes scientific concepts of magnetic forces and fields, based on interviews conducted at the NASA Space Sciences Laboratory, UC Berkeley. This program contains sexually explicit imagery and is not suitable for children.
Apnee (Claude Chabot, France, 4 min); Bully Beef (Wendy Morris, Belgium, 6 min); Dinner Table (Song E. Kim, South Korea/USA, 3 min); Dreams and Desires: Family Ties (Joanna Quinn, USA, 10 min); Drift (Kelly Sears, USA, 9 min); I Met the Walrus (Josh Raskin, Canada, 5 min); Irresistible Smile (Ami Lundholm, Finland, 7 min); Jeu (Georges Schwizgebel, Canada, 4 min); Magnetic Movie (Semiconductor: Joseph Gerhardt, Ruth Jarman), England, 5 min); Teat Beat of Sex (Signe Baumane, USA/Italy, 4 min); Theme (Kenji Hirata, USA, 8 min); Zlydni (Stepan Koval, Russia, 12 min)

9:00 pm Film Noir
D. Jud Jones and Risto Topaloski, USA, 2007, 100 min
It’s universally understood that you’re in a pinch if you wake up beneath the Hollywood sign next to a dead cop. Things are a bit more dicey if you also have amnesia. As you piece together your identity and find out that you’re a sadistic bastard wanted by good and bad guys alike, you know you’re in for some serious trouble. This is our hero’s predicament, and the question of just how he will find himself forms the premise of Film Noir. Representing a truly global approach to filmmaking, this French-distributed, English-language film was produced by a primarily Serbian crew. Filled with twists and turns and gleaming with an aesthetic reminiscent of classic black-and-white Hollywood flicks, Film Noir adds flashes of color and a generous helping of explicit sex gleefully updates the form. (For mature audiences).

Saturday, November 10
1:00 pm Best of Annecy 2007
The Annecy International Animated Film Festival, headed by Executive Director Serge Bromberg, is widely regarded as the most important festival for animation in Europe if not the world. This slate of award-winning shorts from the 2007 Annecy Festival includes a dark Aardman delight, artistic sheep, a satire on the controversial new wall in Israel and an update on the Jack the Ripper story.
Beton—The day-to-day life of an enclosed military world is disturbed by the appearance of a black kite behind its high walls. (Michael Faust, Ariel Belinco, Israel, 6 min); Devochka Dura— Ordinary love by no ordinary girl. (Zojya Kireeva, Russia, 7 min); Méme les Pigeons Vont au Paradis—A priest conducts a frenzied chase to save a soul in peril. (Samuel Torneux, France, 9 min); Pearce Sisters—A black tale of love, loneliness, guts, gore, nudity, violence, smoking and tea. (Luis Cook, England, 9 min); Premier Voyage—Excessively energetic ten-month-old Chloe and her father share their first real conversation during a train trip. (Grégoire Sivan, France, 10 min); Runt—If you wanna eat it, you gotta kill it. (Andreas Hykade, Germany, 10 min); Shaun the Sheep “Still Life”—A farmer takes up oil painting and is determined to create a masterpiece. But when his back is turned, Shaun and Co. decide to have a go. (Sadler Christopher, England, 7 min); t.o.m.—A young boy’s journey. (Tom Brown, Daniel Benjamin Gray, England, 3 min); Welcome to White Chapel District—A neighborhood in London comes alive to relate the story of Jack the Ripper to a passing camera. (Marie Viellevie, France, 5 min)
2:45 pm Komaneko: The Curious Cat (Komadori eiga Komaneko)
Tsuneo Goda, Japan 2006, 59 min. Intertitles in Japanese with English translation.
Komaneko is a burgeoning animator. She creates puppets and sets, then films them stop-motion style. She has a series of adventures with her friends Radi-Bo, a ghost and a Bigfoot-like creature whom she tries to document with her 8mm camera. Featuring a sweet soundtrack with little dialogue, except a few strategically placed “meow, meow, meows,” Komaneko: The Curious Cat depicts new friendships, creativity and the conflicting emotions that accompany a childhood filled with wonder. Director Tsuneo Goda has created Japan’s first major stop-motion animated film. It is a delicate, beautiful and undeniably cute work enlivened through brilliant technique. This screening will delight children of all ages. (Recommended for ages four and up). Special admission for children 12 and under $7.

4:30 pm Maker’s Dozen
This 13-film shorts program presents fresh, sweet and savory morsels for your enjoyment. Anchored by the multiple-award-winning Madame Tutli-Putli, an astonishingly beautiful Hitchcockian tale of a woman confronting herself, Maker’s Dozen surveys the landscape of animation techniques and forms. Humorous shorts such as Siggraph favorite Raymond, which illustrates pseudo-scientific breakthroughs in human locomotion, and the understated graduation film Pingpongs, a tender look at a longstanding marriage, commingle with Billy Collins’s poignant action poems in Sundance Forgetfulness and Today and the political exposé Court Order–In Memoriam Peter Mansfeld, a record of a turbulent period in Hungarian history. Rounded out by the truly unique Forest in Winter, a cross between a Russian version of Little Red Riding Hood and a cute Japanese commercial for snack food, and Wolf Daddy, a South Korean tale of a philandering beast, this program offers treats for all.
Court Order—In Memoriam Peter Mansfeld (Zoltan Szilagyi Varga, Hungary, 8 min); Forest in Winter (Jake Portman, Bill Sneed, England/USA, 5 min); How She Slept at Night (Lilli Carre, USA, 4 min); Lovesport: Paintballing (Grant Orchard, England, 2 min); Madame Tutli-Putli (Chris Lavis, Maciek Szczerbowski, Canada, 17 min); Naked (Sex) (Mischa Kamp, Netherlands, 6 min); One D (Mike Grimshaw, Canada, 5 min); Pingpongs (George Gendi, England, 6 min); Raymond (Bif, France, 5 min); Sleeping Betty (Claude Cloutier, Canada, 10 min); Sundance Forgetfulness (Julian Grey, Canada, 2 min); Today (Jerry Van De Beek, Betsy De Fries, USA, 2 min); Wolf Daddy (Chang Hyung-Yun, South Korea, 10 min)
6:30 pm Film Noir (see Fri. 9 pm)

9:15 pm Play It by Eye
This program of animated music videos provides a generous helping of the most creative, beautiful and risky new works alongside some recent classics. A program for the design-conscious and the musically curious, Play it by Eye brings cutting-edge and trendsetting commercial work to the big screen. The eclectic mix ranges musically from Beck and M. Ward to The Knife and Aesop Rock representing an equally compelling visual mélange. Each video incorporates a unique style and approach to musical interpretation, and some challenge technical boundaries. In fact, a few videos here challenge the definition of animation itself. Directors such as Michel Gondry, Nima Nourizadeh, Alex & Martin and Floria Sigismondi share screen time with up-and-comers like Roboshobo and Japanese artist Motomichi Nakamura.
Aesop Rock: None Shall Pass (Jason Herring, USA, 4 min); Air: How Does It Make You Feel (Alex + Martin, England, 4 min); Beck: Cell Phone’s Dead (Michel Gondry, England, 4 min); Camera: Out on the Water (Frater, England, 4 min); Dan Deacon: Crystal Cat (Jimmy Joe Roche, USA, 4 min); Drinking Out of Cups (Liam Lynch, USA, 3 min); Fujiya Miyagi: Ankle Injuries (Wade Shotter, England, 5 min); Hot Chip: Over and Over (Nima Nourizadeh, England, 4 min); Jamiroquai: Don’t Give Hate a Chance (Alex + Martin, England, 4 min); Kasabian: Shoot the Runner (Alex + Martin, England, 4 min); Kiss Kiss: The Machines (Roboshobo, Canada, 3 min); The Knife: Silent Shout (Andreas Nilsson, Sweden, 4 min); The Knife: We Share Our Mother’s Health (Motomichi Nakamura, USA, 4 min); M. Ward: Chinese Translation (Joel Trussell, Eric David Johnson, USA, 4 min); The Raconteurs: Broken Boy Soldier (Floria Sigismondi, Canada, 4 min); Smog: Rock Bottom Riser (Brendan Cook, Paul McNeil, Australia, 6 min); The White Stripes: 7 Nation Army (Alex + Martin, England, 4 min); Yuki: Sentimental Journey (Nagi Noda, Japan, 6 min)

Sunday, November 11
1:00 pm Komaneko: The Curious Cat (see Sat. 2:45 pm)
2:45 pm Best of Annecy 2007 (see Sat. 1 pm)

Ticket prices: Single tickets–General admission $11/students, seniors & persons with disabilities $10/SFFS members $9; CineVoucher 8-packs–General public $80/SFFS members $64; Opening Night film and reception–General public $18/SFFS members $15; Komaneko: The Curious Cat–Special admission for children 12 and under $7.

Box office: Online at www.sffs.org; by phone 925.866.9559; or by fax 925.866.9597. Opens October 15 for SFFS members and October 22 for the general public. For group sales call 415.561.5047 or email achin@sffs.org.
Full schedule and information: www.sffs.org and 415.561.5000.

The second annual San Francisco International Animation Festival is sponsored by Esurance. Since 2004, Esurance, the online auto insurance company, has made the insurance industry more animated with its pink-haired superhero, Erin Esurance. Additional support comes from venue sponsors Landmark Theatres, Embarcadero Center and Gallery One; hotel sponsor Hotel Tomo; beverage sponsor Peroni Beer and media partners San Francisco Magazine and San Francisco Bay Guardian.

The San Francisco Film Society, presenter of the 51st San Francisco International Film Festival (April 24–May 8, 2008), is a nonprofit arts and education organization dedicated to celebrating international film and the moving image.