Apr 2, 2013
Festival
The San Francisco Film Society announced today that global icon and San Francisco resident Philip Kaufman will be the recipient of the 2013 Founder’s Directing Award at the 56th San Francisco International Film Festival (April 25-May 9). The award will be presented to Kaufman at Film Society Awards Night, Tuesday May 7 at Bimbo’s 365 Club.
The Film Society and its year-round programs in exhibition, education and filmmaker services will benefit from the fundraiser honoring Kaufman. Ray Dolby, the previously announced recipient of the George Gund III Award, and the soon-to-be-announced recipients of the Peter J. Owens Award for excellence in acting and the Kanbar Award for excellence in screenwriting will also be honored at the star-studded event. Previous honorees have included Judy Davis (Owens Award 2012), Robert Redford (Owens Award 2009), Francis Ford Coppola (FDA 2009), Werner Herzog (FDA 2006) and James Schamus (Kanbar Award 2010). Katie and Todd Traina are chairs of this year’s Film Society Awards Night gala.
“Phil Kaufman’s films reach high and carry us with them-intelligent movies with grown-up characters in very real worlds,” said San Francisco Film Society Executive Director Ted Hope. “As heroic as they may be, his characters are always truly human, complex and unpredictable. He’s never been one to shy away from the subjects Hollywood normally names verboten-politics, power, sex, and pleasure thrive under Phil’s lens. With his films, Phil shows us what life can be, and in doing so, shows us the true power of art. He hails from our city, has made it his home, and embodies it within his work, and I can think of no one more fitting to honor in my inaugural year.”
Kaufman will also be honored at An Evening with Philip Kaufman at the Castro Theatre, Sunday May 5, 7:30 pm. An onstage interview and a selection of clips from his notable directing career will be followed by a screening of Invasion of the Body Snatchers (USA 1978, 115 min.). Based on a novel by Mill Valley author Jack Finney, it was shot entirely in San Francisco. Pauline Kael wrote in The New Yorker: “Invasion of the Body Snatchers is the American movie of the year. A new classic…it may be the best movie of its kind ever made.”
Philip Kaufman grew up on the north side of Chicago and graduated from the University of Chicago. In 1960, he relocated his family (his wife, screenwriter Rose Kaufman and his son and future producer, Peter Kaufman) to the San Francisco Bay Area. A year later the Kaufman family headed for Europe where he taught math at an American school. While working on a novel, Kaufman found himself enthralled by the New Wave of filmmaking breaking over the continent. After being encouraged by the author Anaïs Nin to pursue his aspirations, he filmed the mystical comedy Goldstein, which he cowrote and directed with a friend. Starring members of the Second City comedy troupe and shot on a shoestring budget, the picture won the Prix de la Nouvelle Critique at the 1964 Cannes Film Festival.
Moving between Los Angeles and San Francisco before finally settling in the Bay Area, Kaufman, a man of many interests, has memorably detailed the story of the Mercury 7 astronauts in The Right Stuff (USA 1983)–which won four Academy Awards-the lives and careers of writers Anaïs Nin in Henry & June (USA 1990), the Marquis de Sade in Quills (USA 2000) and Ernest Hemingway and Martha Gellhorn in Hemingway and Gellhorn (USA 2010). He’s adapted works of great literary value like The Unbearable Lightness of Being (USA 1988), which received two Academy Award nominations, as well as more populist fare, including Michael Crichton’s Rising Sun (USA 1993). It is this astonishing range and versatility that distinguishes him as an auteur, author, and director of the highest rank. From Lena Olin and her unbearably light bowler hat to the chilling final freeze-frame in Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Kaufman is responsible for numerous unparalleled and indelible cinematic moments.
The Founder’s Directing Award is presented each year to a master of world cinema and is given in memory of Irving M. Levin, visionary founder of the San Francisco International Film Festival in 1957. It is made possible by Fred M. Levin and Nancy Livingston. The award was first bestowed in 1986 on iconic filmmaker Akira Kurosawa, and for many years carried his name.
The award has brought many of the world’s most visionary directors to the San Francisco International Film festival over the years. Previous recipients are Kenneth Branagh, England; Oliver Stone, USA; Walter Salles, Brazil; Francis Ford Coppola, USA; Mike Leigh, England; Spike Lee, USA; Werner Herzog, Germany; Taylor Hackford, USA; Milos Forman, Czechoslovakia/USA; Robert Altman, USA; Warren Beatty, USA; Clint Eastwood, USA; Abbas Kiarostami, Iran; Arturo Ripstein, Mexico; Im Kwon-Taek, Korea; Francesco Rosi, Italy; Arthur Penn, USA; Stanley Donen, USA; Manoel de Oliveira, Portugal; Ousmane Sembène, Senegal; Satyajit Ray, India; Marcel Carné, France; Jirí Menzel, Czechoslovakia; Joseph L. Mankiewicz, USA; Robert Bresson, France; Michael Powell, England; and Akira Kurosawa, Japan.
For more information or tickets to Film Society Awards Night, contact Trista Kendall at 415-561-5049 or tkendall@sffs.org.
Tickets to An Evening with Philip Kaufman are $20 for SFFS members, $25 for the general public. Box office opens April 2 for SFFS members, April 5 for the general public, online at festival.sffs.org.
For general information visit festival.sffs.org.
To request interviews or screeners, contact your SFFS publicist.
For photos and press materials visit sffs.org/pressdownloads.
56th San Francisco International Film Festival
The 56th San Francisco International Film Festival runs April 25-May 9 at the Sundance Kabuki Cinemas, the Castro Theatre and New People Cinema in San Francisco and the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley. Held each spring for 15 days, the International is an extraordinary showcase of cinematic discovery and innovation in one of the country’s most beautiful cities, featuring 200 films and live events, 14 juried awards and $70,000 in cash prizes, upwards of 100 participating filmmaker guests and diverse and engaged audiences with more than 70,000 in attendance.