Community Screening: Land of Gold
SFFILM’s free screening of Land of Gold is presented in partnership with SF Opera and the Castro Theatre, both celebrating their centenary anniversaries. The film will be preceded by a performance from members of the Opera’s Adler Fellows program, a multi-year residency for opera’s most promising young artists.
PROGRAM DETAILS
Thu, Apr 28 at 7:30 PM
Castro Theatre
7:30 pm: SF Opera Adler Fellows Performance
7:45 pm: Land of Gold
Music
The film will be preceded by a performance from members of the Opera’s Adler Fellows program, a multi-year residency for opera’s most promising young artists.
Film
Soprano Julia Bullock mesmerizes in this entrancing documentary that brings to vivid life John Adams’ and Peter Sellars’ opera Girls of the Golden West and the Gold Rush era that inspired it.
Guests Expected
Director Jon Else is expected to attend.
PRESENTED IN PARTNERSHIP WITH
Description
California history unfolds along with the making of an opera in Jon Else‘s (Festival POV award 2004) entrancing documentary. Returning to the work of composer John Adams and librettist/director Peter Sellars, the subjects of his film Wonders Are Many (Festival 2007), Else peeks behind the curtain as the pair prepare their collaboration Girls of the Golden West for its 2017 San Francisco Opera premiere. Ostensibly a look at the nuts-and-bolts of production from informal rehearsals to glittering opening night, the documentary also investigates the Gold Rush era that inspired the show. Soprano Julia Bullock is mesmerizing, as the opera’s star and the film’s narrator, employing passages from a real-life diary to make vivid the boom-and-bust of a rapacious time.
Free admission with RSVP
A cinematographer, producer, and writer as well as director, Jon Else counts among his films Arthur and Lily (Festival GGA 1976), The Day After Trinity (Festival 1980/2004), Yosemite: The Fate of Heaven (1989), Sing Faster: The Stangehands’ Ring Cycle (1999), and Wonders Are Many (Festival 2007). Among his honors are four Emmy awards, two Oscar® nominations, and, in 2004, the Festival’s Persistence of Vision Award. From 1997-2014, he was director of the documentary program at the Graduate School Of Journalism at UC Berkeley.
Film Details
Language English
Year 2021
Premiere California
Runtime 82
Country USA
Director Jon Else
Producer Jon Else, Camille Servan-Schreiber
Print Source After Image Public Mediarichard@afterimagepublicmedia.org
Closed Captions Closed captions are not available for this screening.
Audio Description Audio description is not available for this screening.
American Sign Language (ASL) Interpretation American Sign Language (ASL) interpretation is not currently scheduled for this event. For more information about ASL interpretation at our events, e-mail ADA@SFFilm.org.
