Nov 18, 2015
SFFILM
San Francisco, CA — The San Francisco Film Society has announced the latest group of individuals and institutions to be added to Essential SF, the Film Society’s ongoing compendium of the Bay Area film community’s most vital figures and institutions. Each fall a new group of local cinematic luminaries is added to the growing list of diverse talent, and this year’s inductees-filmmaker and curator Craig Baldwin, longtime film distributor California Newsreel, Mill Valley Film Festival Director of Programming Zoë Elton, journalist Michael Fox and filmmakers Jenni Olson and Jennifer Phang-will be feted by special guest presenters and Film Society staff at a special private reception. Essential SF 2015 is made possible by the generous support of the San Francisco Film Commission.
“It’s an immense privilege to be a part of the wonderful Bay Area film community,” said Rachel Rosen, SFFS director of programming. “Essential SF is a way for the Film Society to acknowledge the richness of innovation and talent that makes this community so brilliant and unique, and to call attention to the amazing individuals and organizations we think have really made a difference in local film culture.”
A key event in the Film Society’s year-round appreciation of local talent, Essential SF was inaugurated in 2010 to shine a light on the region’s exciting and diverse contributions to the filmmaking world. Those honored previously at Essential SF include: Richard Beggs, Les Blank, Canyon Cinema, Joan Chen, Ninfa Dawson, Nathaniel Dorsky, Cheryl Eddy, Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, Susan Gerhard, Joshua Grannell, David Hegarty, Liz Keim, Kontent Films, Karen Larsen, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Allie Light and Irving Saraf, Anne McGuire, H.P. Mendoza, Anita Monga, Rick Prelinger, B. Ruby Rich, Marlon Riggs (posthumously), ro•co films, Gail Silva, Kent Sparling, Judy Stone, Wholphin and Terry Zwigoff.
2015 ESSENTIAL SF INDUCTEES
Craig Baldwin is a filmmaker and curator whose interests lie in archival retrieval and recombinatory forms of cinema, performance and installation. He is the recipient of several grants, including those from the Rockefeller Foundation, Alpert Award, Creative Capital, Phelan, AFI, FAF and California Arts Council. Over the last two decades, his productions have been shown and awarded at numerous international festivals, museums and institutes of contemporary art, often in conjunction with panels, juries and workshops on collage and cultural activism. Baldwin’s own weekly screening project, Other Cinema, has continued to premiere experimental, essay and documentary works for over a quarter century, recently expanding into DVD publishing. Baldwin’s credits include the satirical collage piece Tribulation 99: Alien Anomalies Under America (SFIFF 1992); the feature-length sci-fi spoof Spectres of the Spectrum; and his latest “collage-narrative” feature, Mock-Up On Mu (SFIFF 2008).
California Newsreel has produced and distributed social issue films for activists and educators since its inception. It was founded as San Francisco Newsreel on May 1, 1968, producing and distributing films on the anti-Vietnam War movement as well as on the Black and other liberation struggles. California Newsreel continues to integrate media production and distribution with the media needs of contemporary social movements. In the mid-1990s, California Newsreel broadened its collection into the largest library of African-produced features and documentaries in the United States, including works by the internationally renowned directors Ousmane Sembene, Cheick Oumar Sissoko and Djibril Diop Mambety. Over the past five decades, California Newsreel has evolved into a leading resource center for advancing racial justice through its unparalleled collection of films on African American life and history. Cornelius Moore joined the staff of California Newsreel in 1981 and is a co-director of the organization.
Zoë Elton works in film and theatre as a curator, writer and educator, and serves as Director of Programming for the Mill Valley Film Festival. Involved with MVFF since its inception, her creative leadership and vision have long driven its well-regarded international programming. Her festival initiatives include the festival’s innovative Videofest, Active Cinema and the recent Mind the Gap women’s program. She frequently conducts interviews with festival guests including Sir Ian McKellen, Ang Lee, and Helen Mirren, both onstage and in print. She’s also reviewed films for KVOT in Taos, New Mexico, and contributed a chapter to the book Coming Soon to a Festival Near You. She has served on juries for the Rockefeller Foundation, the Haas Foundation’s Creative Works Fund and the Independent Spirit Awards. A graduate of New College of Speech and Drama in London, she recently won a Milley Award for Creative Achievement.
Michael Fox began writing about movies in 1987, a year and a half after he moved to San Francisco for a job in a completely unrelated field. He has contributed to dozens of regional and national publications, with extended runs at Release Print, Film/Tape World, SF360, the East Bay Monthly, j. and KQED Arts. Fox has written program notes and articles for the San Francisco International Film Festival since 1996 and the Mill Valley Film Festival since 2002, and originated and wrote the “Reel World” column in SF Weekly for more than a decade. He also hosted KQED’s dimly-yet-fondly remembered TV show on independent film, “Independent View.” Fox curates and hosts the long-running Friday night CinemaLit film series at the Mechanics’ Institute, and teaches documentary classes in Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) programs at UC Berkeley and SF State University. He is a founding member of the San Francisco Film Critics Circle.
Jenni Olson‘s most recent feature-length essay film The Royal Road premiered at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival earning wide acclaim for its innovative storytelling style. Her film The Joy of Life premiered at Sundance in 2005 and earned her the Marlon Riggs Award for courage and vision in Bay Area filmmaking from the San Francisco Film Critics Circle. Olson is former festival co-director of Frameline; co-founder of the LGBT website PlanetOut.com; author and LGBT film history expert (The Queer Movie Poster Book); a founding advisory board member of the UCLA/Outfest Legacy Project for LGBT Film Preservation; a Canyon Cinema advisory board member; SF Jewish Film Festival board member and founder of the Outfest Queer Brunch at Sundance. Olson has served as an advisor on dozens of projects and continues to champion LGBT films and filmmakers on a daily basis in her day job as VP of Marketing at Wolfe Video.
Jennifer Phang is a 2015 recipient of the inaugural San Francisco Film Society Women’s Filmmaker Fellowship and was recently selected as one of six narrative and documentary women directors for the 2015-16 Women at Sundance Fellowship. At Sundance 2015, Phang’s sophomore feature Advantageous won a US Dramatic Competition Special Jury Prize. The film was supported by the Sundance Feature Film Program and a San Francisco Film Society FilmHouse Residency and was bought by Netflix at Sundance. Phang’s award-winning debut feature Half-Life premiered in 2008 at the Tokyo International and Sundance film festivals. It went on to screen at SXSW and was distributed by Sundance Channel. Phang is currently developing the features The Canopy and Look For Water, as well as an episodic project.
To request interviews contact bproctor@sffs.org.