47TH San Francisco International Festival Selects B. Ruby Rich for State of Cinema Address

The 47^TH San Francisco International Film Festival (April 15–29) has chosen renowned film critic, curator and cultural commentator B. Ruby Rich to give its annual State of Cinema address.  She will speak at the AMC Kabuki 8 on Sunday, April 18 at 5 pm, with a screening of the award-winning SUITE HABANA (2003) to follow. Each year, the Festival selects a distinguished member of the film community to speak about current cinematic trends and future possibilities. Last year’s address was given by Michel Ciment, the longtime editor of the influential French film magazine Positif.

“San Francisco is the only film festival to have a State of Cinema address, which we inaugurated last year.  This year’s speaker, B. Ruby Rich, is one of the most informed film journalists in the nation,” said Roxanne Messina Captor, executive director of the Festival. “Her vast knowledge about world cinema and her wide-ranging intellect will certainly provide the audience with interesting food for thought at this year’s address.”

B. Ruby Rich has contributed to the Guardian (UK), The Nation, New York Times Arts & Leisure, Sight and Sound, The Advocate, Village Voice and other journals. She is known locally for her features in the San Francisco Bay Guardian and is also Adjunct Professor of Film Studies at the University of California, Berkeley and host of the Key Cinema Club. She is the author of Chick Flicks: Theories and Memories of the Feminist Film Movement and is currently at work on two new volumes: The Rise and Fall of the New Queer Cinema and Film After 9/11. She is featured in the new documentary In the Company of Women, airing on the IFC cable channel in March.

Rich has a long history of involvement with film festivals, having been a guest director at Telluride (1996), International Programmer for Toronto (2002) and an ongoing member of the Sundance national advisory board. She has been a member of many film festival juries and has recently been researching the hidden political histories of film festivals and their impact on the geopolitics of culture.

Throughout her career, Rich has consistently identified and championed significant film movements and important filmmakers outside the commercial mainstream. Her dedication to standards independent of formulas and dollars has led to a focus on women’s cinema, New German Cinema, the legacy of Italian Neorealism, New Latin American Cinema, the new British cinema of the Eighties, the New Queer Cinema, Neo-Noir, “fact-crossed” documentary and most recently, the emerging genre of multiplex warrior movies.

The 47th San Francisco International Film Festival runs April 15-29, 2004 at the AMC Kabuki 8 Theatres "The Home of the Festival," the Castro Theatre, the Pacific Film Archive Theater in Berkeley and the Century Cinema 16 Mountain View. Tickets for San Francisco Film Society members will be available on March 23 and for the general public on March 30. To purchase tickets and for ticket information log on to www.sffs.org, call 925.275.9490, or visit the Main Box Office, located in the atrium of the AMC Kabuki 8 Theatres at 1881 Post Street or the Satellite Box Office at Crocker Galleria, 50 Post Street, second floor, opening on March 30. For up-to-date Festival information log on to www.sffs.org or call 415.931.FILM.

The 47th San Francisco International Film Festival (April 15-29, 2004) is presented by the San Francisco Film Society, a nonprofit arts and educational organization dedicated to celebrating international film and the moving image.