MANNY FARBER to RECEIVE MEL NOVIKOFF AWARD at
46th SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL




Ex-film critic to be interviewed on stage by writer ROBERT POLITO

Manny Farber will receive the Mel Novikoff Award at the 46th San Francisco International Film Festival (April 17 - May 1, 2003). Named for the pioneering San Francisco art and repertory film exhibitor, Mel Novikoff (1922-1987), the Award acknowledges an individual or institution whose work has increased the public's awareness and enjoyment of international film. The Novikoff Award will be presented to Manny Farber on April 21 at 5:30 pm at the AMC Kabuki 8 Theatres, followed by an onstage interview conducted by writer Robert Polito (who is currently editing a collection of Farber's art and film criticism) and a screening of Taiwanese master Hou Hsiao-hsien's 1996 film about small-time gangsters and bar girls, GOODBYE SOUTH, GOODBYE (SFIFF 1997). Farber himself has chosen this film as one of his favorites of the last decade.

"Manny Farber is an original voice that redefined film criticism and helped shape the sensibilities of those who are passionate about film," says Carl Spence, director of programming. "On behalf of the Mel Novikoff committee it gives me great pleasure to recognize one of the most perceptive and inspirational film critics of our time."

If anyone can be said to have turned film criticism into an art itself, it's Manny Farber. He developed a whole new way of talking about movies with his startling, hotwired prose. Forget about plot, psychology, motivation, studio-generated hype-that's what other critics wrote about. Starting as a film critic in the early '40s, and for the next 35 years, Farber wrote about the spaces in between what everyone else was writing about-texture, gesture, random details of composition. He was the master of The Moment: the moment in history in which we look at a film, and the individual moments in a film itself. He diagrammed a slice of a movie, dissecting an actor's gesture or the way the camera gazed at a group of people on a porch, made the whole movie spin on its axis around that moment and connected it all to paintings, photographs, history and the world around him.

He loved actors, especially the ones on the fringes, the bit actors who played from left field and "managed to dry out whatever juicy glamour and heroics were in the film"- like the stock company guys in Preston Sturges's films, Elisha Cook, and all the bartenders, shop girls, short-order cooks, gunsels and hired help.

He blew apart Big Movie after Big Movie, like THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES ("a horse-drawn truckload of liberal schmaltz") and CITIZEN KANE ("haunting every A picture out of Hollywood"), and championed the scrappy, offhand stuff of his day, like COOGAN'S BLUFF with Clint Eastwood ("a cunning nonverbal actor"), Sam Fuller's FIXED BAYONETS ("I wouldn't mind seeing it seven times") and Rainer Werner Fassbinder ("He has a fantastic painter's eye"). His signature article, "White Elephant vs. Termite Art" (1962) skewers the pompous, self-conscious Hollywood "masterpiece" ("an expensive hunk of well-regulated area") and champions the movie that "always goes forward eating its own boundaries and, likely as not, leaves nothing in its path other than the signs of eager, industrious, unkempt activity."

His influence as writer goes far beyond the film world. William Gibson, for instance-an enormously influential writer himself (NEUROMANCER, PATTERN RECOGNITION)-has written, "He grasps and expresses the deep language of cinema more surely and with greater prehensile glee than any writer I've ever read. A national treasure, a true sensei of popular culture."

There is no more proof needed of Manny Farber's influence on cinema-indeed, on all of popular culture-than the fact that, though he hasn't written a word about film for almost 30 years (he gave up writing film criticism in 1977 for painting and teaching), he is more talked about and read now than when he was actively writing.
The Mel Novikoff Committee members include: Francis J. Rigney (Chairman), Helena R. Foster, Martin Foster, Maurice Kanbar, Philip Kaufman, Edith Kramer, Tom Luddy, Gary Meyer, Peter Scarlet, George Gund III (ex-officio) and Carl Spence (ex-officio). Previous recipients of the Mel Novikoff Award are Dan Talbot (1988), the USSR Filmmakers' Association (1989), Donald Richie (1990), Pauline Kael (1991), Jonas Mekas (1992), Andrew Sarris (1993), Naum Kleiman (1994), The Institut Lumière (1995), David Robinson (1996), Judy Stone (1997), the Film Arts Foundation (1997), Adrienne Mancia (1998), Enno Patalas (1999), Donald Krim and David Shepard (2000), Cahiers du Cinéma (2001), San Francisco Cinematheque (2001) and David Francis (2002).

The 46th San Francisco International Film Festival runs April 17-May 1, 2003 at the AMC Kabuki 8 Theatres "The Home of the Festival", the Castro Theatre, the Pacific Film Archive Theater in Berkeley and the CinéArts at Palo Alto Square in Palo Alto. Advance ticket packages and Festival passes go on sale beginning February 17. Individual tickets for San Francisco Film Society members will be available beginning March 25, with individual tickets for the general public available starting March 31. To purchase tickets and for ticket information log on to www.sffs.org or call 925-275-9490. The Main Box Office, located in the atrium of the AMC Kabuki 8 Theatres at 1881 Post Street will open for Film Society members on March 25 and for the general public on April 1. There will also be a Satellite Box Office at Crocker Galleria, 50 Post Street, second floor, opening on March 26. For up-to-date Festival information log on to www.sffs.org or call 415-931-FILM.

The 46th San Francisco International Film Festival (April 17-May 1, 2003) is presented by the San Francisco Film Society, a nonprofit organization whose goal is to lead in expanding the knowledge and appreciation of international film art and its artists by showcasing the most compelling, thought-provoking international films, special tributes, major restorations and today's brightest stars.