Mar 19, 2014
Festival
The 57th San Francisco International Film Festival (April 24-May 8) announced today that for the first time in nearly a decade it will present not one but two of its highly praised silent film presentations accompanied by live music performances. A consistent audience favorite, these programs unite contemporary musicians of international and local renown with lost, rare and classic films from the silent era. Multi-talented musician and songwriter Stephin Merritt (The Magnetic Fields), already familiar to SFIFF patrons for his 2010 performance with 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, will be presenting a new original score to one of Tod Browning’s (Freaks, Dracula) most mind-bending excursions, circus crime thriller The Unknown, live at the historic Castro Theatre on Tuesday, May 6 at 8:00 pm. Thao Nguyen, another multi-talent immediately familiar to San Francisco audiences, will perform live with her band The Get Down Stay Down to a selection of classic and inventive silent shorts and present a small selection of her own short films at the Castro Theatre on Tuesday, April 29 at 8:00 pm.
“We are beyond thrilled to present two brilliant programs by two of the most talented composer-songwriters working today,” said San Francisco Film Society Programmer Sean Uyehara. “Both will be fun and surprising programs-each artist is incisive, whip-smart and, frankly, hilarious, but in intriguingly different ways.”
As the leader of the band the Magnetic Fields, Stephin Merritt has always played the outcast. Merritt, among whose other projects is the 6ths, a band named for the most difficult word to pronounce in the English language, has always maintained an affinity for the literally and figuratively unspeakable. It’s only fitting that this new score pairs him with some of silent cinema’s quintessential iconoclasts, director Browning and master monster Lon Chaney. The film also features then-relative-newcomer Joan Crawford. In The Unknown, a characteristically outré offering from Browning, Chaney plays a supposedly armless circus performer named Alonzo. He can do anything with his feet that most do with their hands, but he carries a terrible secret: Not only does Alonzo possess hands, he uses them to strangle people to death. Those who attended Merritt’s wonderful performance accompanying the strange silent film adaptation of Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea in 2010 might recall that he hinted at the possibility of playing live with a trio of films over the years at SFIFF. This will be his second.
Reaching back into her musical catalog, Thao Nguyen and her band The Get Down Stay Down will perform with an assortment of classic, complex and funny films from the silent era. Included amongst them are Charlie Chaplin’s anarchic The Pawnshop, Robert Florey and Slavko Vorkapich’s groundbreaking The Life and Death of 9413: A Hollywood Extra, alchemical animation by Harry Smith and classic newsreels. The evening will also feature a few short works with sound, including original videos that Nguyen made in collaboration with filmmaker Lauren Tabak and one created especially for this event. As anyone who has had the pleasure of seeing the Get Down Stay Down live knows, Nguyen is a force of nature-an adept guitarist with the wild and beautiful voice of an angry angel. Honed through years on the road touring (notably live scoring the “Radiolab Live: In the Dark” tour in 2012), and collaborating with a variety of talented artists including SFIFF 2012 alumna Merrill Garbus (tUnE-yArDs), Nguyen’s juggernaut-like performances speak to resiliency, hope and an infectious, catalytic energy. April 29 promises to be a special night, as she and the band perform to a program of films for the very first time.
Tickets to Stephin Merritt with The Unknown are $25 for SFFS members, $30 for the general public. Tickets to Thao and The Get Down Stay Down are $18 for SFFS members, $22 for the general public. Box office opens to SFFS members online at sffs.org on March 19, and March 21 for the general public.
In recent years the San Francisco Film Society has presented the following live music and film programs-many of which were commissioned as world premieres-at the San Francisco International Film Festival: Waxworks with Mike Patton, Scott Amendola, Matthias Bossi and William Winant; Buster Keaton Shorts with Merrill Garbus (tUnE-yArDs) and Ava Mendoza; Claire Denis Film Scores 1996-2009 with Tindersticks; 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea with Stephin Merritt; The Lost Worldwith Dengue Fever; The Golem with Black Francis; The Phantom Carriage with Jonathan Richman; Heaven and Earth Magic with Deerhoof; Street Angel with American Music Club; Sunrise with Lambchop; A Page of Madness with Superchunk; Jean Painlevé: The Sounds of Science with Yo La Tengo; and Tom Verlaine: Music for Film.
For general information visit sffs.org/Exhibition/SF-Intl-Film-Festival
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For photos and press materials visit sffs.org/pressdownloads.
57th San Francisco International Film Festival
The 57th San Francisco International Film Festival runs April 24-May 8 at the Sundance Kabuki Cinemas, 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 nearly $40,000 in cash prizes, upwards of 100 participating filmmaker guests and diverse and engaged audiences with more than 65,000 in attendance.