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Our reporters covered filmmaker Q&A sessions at this year's San Francisco International Film Festival for the Festival's daily newsletter, Scoop du Jour. Here is a selection of some of the interchanges with the audience.
Héctor Menis, producer of the Argentinean Little Sky, went to the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley to see Whisky Romeo Zulu, made by his compatriot Enrique Piñeyro. “It is impossible to do all my work and see movies,” says Héctor. “I get to watch films only at festivals.” He estimates that in the last year he has attended 45 international film festivals. “I don’t live in Argentina, I live in planes,” he lamented. The director of Little Sky, María Victoria Menis, got the idea for her movie from a tiny newspaper item. Three young people were shot by the police, and the last words one of them said were, “Please, help my child!” “That was the whole story,” recalled producer Héctor Menis. The director had to imagine the entire backstory. Héctor and María Victoria have been married for 31 years. Their whole family is really into movies. One of their four children is a filmmaker, and another studies at a film school in Argentina. They all had cameos in the film.
—Maria Belilovskaya
Filmed in Barcelona on Super 16 for $600,000, Tempus Fugit was written partly in response to the recent American film, The Time Machine, to give “those characters who are usually in the background, out of focus” the chance to be heroes, and that “normal people can be powerful too,” said director Enric Folch. The film has been very popular in fantasy film festivals worldwide, and although Enric told audiences after the film that he’s still looking for a distribution deal, he’s received more than one offer to remake the film, one of them being from a Bollywood director, so it’s not impossible that the future might bring a singing and dancing version of the story. Folch’s film has won a Golden Gate Award for television narrative.
—Julie Davis
Filmmakers Alexandra Hontalas Adams (Thank You) and Edward Elliot (Wired), both 15 years old, presented their films to a cafeteria full of third, fourth and fifth graders at Fairmount Elementary School Wednesday. The children pelted the filmmakers with questions as Edward explained what found footage was. Alexandra’s film is a comedy about a boy’s struggle to write an appropriate thank-you card. She expounded on the difficulties of writing thank-you notes. “My grandmother,” she lamented, “has given me the same earrings for several years in a row.” After the screening, both filmmakers were approached for their autographs. Wired and Thank You are part of the Youth Voices and Visions program in the Festival.
—Kristin Cato
“I don’t know what to say since I am not allowed to tell you the plot of the film.” That was how Arnaud Desplechin introduced his film Kings and Queen to a packed house. He allayed the audiences fears of the 150-minute film by saying, “It’s long, but don’t worry, it has lots of subplots.” Well, it was (long. Though an audience member said she hoped the film wouldn’t end) and it did (have lots of subplots.). The film explores the inextricably linked lives of former lovers, mental asylum inmates, a father and daughter, psychiatrist therapy sessions and much more. Desplechin said that his inspiration for the film stemmed from “the films that I miss. Those that I saw when I was ten or 12.” He said that he strived to make something personal from his own experiences. He sees Kings and Queen as homage to the bravery and the loneliness of women.
—Sadaf Siddique
A three-iron is the least used club in golf because it’s the most difficult to use, but it’s also very powerful, explained director Kim Ki-Duk, who gave a spirited Q&A for his film 3-Iron. Ki-Duk has had a film in the Festival two years running (the previous years’s entry was Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter . . . Spring). Before the film, Ki-Duk told audiences to expect a lot of “fantastic elements” and that “it’s possible you might worry about your house.” The movie’s tale of a housebreaker who enters homes while their owners are away on trips and helps himself to their food and living space, explored the idea of becoming invisible even in the middle of society. Ki-Duk personally demonstrated the martial arts–like exercises that main character Tae-Suk uses to accomplish this after the film. “Go home and try to practice, see what you can accomplish!” Ki-Duk laughed. His reputation as Korean cinema’s “bad boy” was discussed as well. Why is he thought to be so rebellious? “I think people think I’m like the movies I make,” he replied. Judge for yourself whether or not his reputation is earned. Ki-Duk also admitted that he worked as stunt man for the film’s golfing scenes and shots of Tae-Suk riding his motorbike so that if anything went wrong, “It’s nobody else’s fault.”
—Julie Davis
If you were wondering where all the loud laughter was emerging from April 30 at the Kabuki, the mystery has been solved. That would be House 3 where Abel Raises Cain was being screened. A delightfully intimate and uproariously hilarious film on the life and pranks of media hoaxster Alan Abel, the film brought the house down. In the Q&A that followed, Jenny Abel revealed that she filmed her parents for over a year and her father mooned her in protest. Both her parents Alan and Jeanne Abel were present much to the delight of the audience. Alan Abel declared the film to be “a magnificent embarrassment” and said that he was considering filming a documentary on his daughter in retaliation. Jenny said that she needed to make this story about her parents. “I felt that their story needed to be told.” The audience asked if Alan Abel had any more pranks up his sleeve, to which Jenny responded, “Some people thought that Dad was behind the weapons of mass destruction.” Alan Abel added, “Making people laugh was for the greater common good, and laughter is the only medicine without any side effects.” Jenny Abel codirected the film with her boyfriend Jeff Hockett. The couple was actually set up on a blind date by her father. Talk about keeping it all in the family!
—Sadaf Siddique
The film Champions is about a group of people in a remote Czech village whose lives revolve around drinking and betting on the results of the hockey world championship. It is also “about the Czech mentality and losing illusions,” said director Marek Najbrt at the Q&A after the April 28 screening. For him, sports are “a kind of a drug for civilization, and in the Czech Republic politics is very much tied to sports, especially when they play against Russia. It brings confidence to a whole nation. But I think it is a mistake, because it is not really good when national self-esteem is based only on sports,” said the director. Marek found his actors in theater groups in the Czech Republic. Their performance is so convincing that the audience asked whether the director got the actors drunk. “They didn’t have to drink. They are very good actors,” was the answer. His biggest challenges? Time and the budget: He had only 39 days of principal shooting.
—Maria Belilovskaya
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