May 8, 2015
Festival
San Francisco, CA – The San Francisco Film Society wrapped its 58th San Francisco International Film Festival (April 23-May 7) with 252 screenings of 183 films from 47 countries, which were attended by over 315 filmmakers and industry guests from over 15 countries. Over 15 days, SFIFF58 showed 67 narrative features, 35 documentary features and a total of 79 short films, and presented ten one-time only live events.
SFIFF58 awarded nearly $40,000 in prizes to emerging and established filmmakers with films representing 13 countries. Thanks to its unique programming choices and the always-enthusiastic San Francisco Bay Area audiences, the Festival sold out 114 screenings this year. Of particular popularity were the screenings and events featuring attending filmmakers. SFIFF58 was able to welcome a record number of guests to the Festival to engage with audiences through in-depth post-screening Q&As.
“What an exhilarating time for audiences and programmers alike,” said Noah Cowan, SFFS executive director. “Over the past two weeks, we welcomed guests from all over the world, celebrated storytelling in its many vibrant forms, and piloted innovative ideas to enhance the festival experience. We are especially proud of the series of dynamic expanded conversations using film as a conduit to discuss the key issues and obsessions of contemporary culture. The programming team, led by Rachel Rosen, and I are grateful our sophisticated Bay Area audiences have embraced these exciting changes.”
Sponsors and Partners
Among SFIFF58’s over 135 sponsors, leading partners were Rdio, RBC Capital Markets, Blue Angel Vodka, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Bank of the West, TV5 Monde, the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office San Francisco, the San Francisco Film Commission, Dolby, the French American Cultural Society, and the Consulate General of France in San Francisco. NET-A-PORTER.COM generously sponsored the 2015 Film Society Awards Night Gala. Pereira O’Dell is the Festival’s creative agency partner, Muse Brands is its design partner, and its website is powered by Ingeniux. Media sponsors included 7×7 and SF Weekly. Joie de Vivre Hotels and Resorts provided substantial support as the festival’s Premier Hotel Sponsor. More than 30 restaurant, beverage and food sponsors supported the Festival, technical companies provided essential equipment, media partners promoted programming, numerous consulates and cultural organizations helped bring in special guests, and hundreds of hotel rooms were donated for Festival filmmakers.
Star-Studded Nights
Numerous guests graced the stage during SFIFF58, starting on Opening Night with Steve Jobs: Man in the Machine director Alex Gibney and continuing throughout the 15-day event. Scores of Festival screenings featured actors and filmmakers who participated in on-stage introductions and Q&A sessions with SFIFF audiences; these guests included Guillermo del Toro, Richard Gere, Jonathan Gold, Miranda July, Guy Maddin, Bob Mankoff, Breckin Meyer, Oren Moverman, Stanley Nelson, Alan Poul, Ryan Phillippe, Shira Piven, Isabella Rossellini, Winona Ryder, Jason Schwartzman, Jason Segel, Claressa Shields, Gaspard Ulliel, Alex Winter and Edgar Wright, among many others.
Film Society Awards Night, the fundraising gala cochaired by Christine Aylward, Heidi Castelein and Victoria Raiser, honored four world-class film talents at The Armory on April 27. Honorees were Guillermo del Toro, recipient of the Irving M. Levin Directing Award, presented by Edgar Wright; Richard Gere, recipient of the Peter J. Owens Award for acting, presented by director and producer Francis Ford Coppola; Paul Schrader, recipient of the Kanbar Award for excellence in storytelling, presented by producer Alan Poul; and Maurice Kanbar, recipient of the George Gund III Craft of Cinema Award, presented by Governor Jerry Brown. A hilarious, yet tender memorial for Robin Williams was presented by Christopher Columbus. Film Society Awards Night was proudly sponsored by NET-A-PORTER.COM, the world’s premier online luxury fashion destination.
Additional award recipients who were honored during the Festival included renowned observational filmmaker Kim Longinotto, who received the Golden Gate Persistence of Vision Award; and film scholar Lenny Borger, who was awarded the Mel Novikoff Award.
The Festival’s Big Nights continued successfully with the Bay Area premiere of the Centerpiece film, The End of the Tour, featuring a Q&A with director James Ponsoldt and actor Jason Segel. The festivities ended on a high note with the Closing Night screening of Experimenter, attended by director Michael Almereyda and actor Winona Ryder.
Other notable personalities spotted attending SFIFF festivities included actor Delroy Lindo, actor Keanu Reaves, artist Boots Riley and actor Marisa Tomei, among many others.
Award-Winning Films
Nearly $40,000 in prizes was awarded by Golden Gate Awards juries at SFIFF this year. The Festival’s Golden Gate Awards were held on Wednesday, May 6 at Rouge | Nick’s Crispy Tacos. Nine films were in juried competition for the $10,000 Golden Gate New Directors Prize, given to a first-time filmmaker whose work exhibits a unique artistic sensibility. The jury, composed of producer and BFI Senior Production Executive Lizzie Francke, writer and filmmaker Ryan Fleck and producer Laura Wagner, selected Laura Bispuri’s Sworn Virgin (Italy/Switzerland/Germany/Albania/Kosovo). $15,000 went to winners in two categories: Documentary Feature ($10,000) and Bay Area Documentary Feature ($5,000). The Golden Gate Award Documentary Feature competitions jury was comprised of filmmakers Kristine Samuelson and Robert Greene, and journalist Susan Gerhard, who presented the Golden Gate Award for Documentary Feature to Western (USA) by Bill Ross IV and Turner Ross. Special jury recognition was given to Laurent Bécue-Renard’s Of Men and War (France/Switzerland). The jury presented the Golden Gate Award for Bay Area Documentary Feature to Very Semi-Serious (USA) by Leah Wolchok and honored T-Rex (USA) by Drea Cooper and Zackary Canepari with special recognition.
The Golden Gate Award Short Film jury consisted of filmmakers Grace Lee and Jonathan Duffy and curator Liz Keim, who awarded $9,000 in cash prizes. Best Documentary Short was given to Rosie Reed Hillman’s Cailleach (Scotland). The Best Narrative Short was awarded to Una Gunjak’s The Chicken (Germany/Croatia). The prize for Best Bay Area Short went to The Box (USA) by Michael I Schiller, who in his acceptance speech noted the honor of bringing to light his subject: teens in solitary confinement in the United States. The award for Best Animated Short went to A Single Life (Netherlands) by Marieke Blaauw, Joris Oprins, Job Roggeveen, and the GGA for New Visions Short was given to Jonn Herschend’s Discussion Questions (USA).
The Family Film jury was comprised of Arts Education consultant Amy Balsbaugh, third grade teacher at Grattan School Susan DesBaillets and Head of Education and Community Programs at The Walt Disney Family Museum Hillary Lyden who awarded Best Family Film to The Story of Percival Pilts (Australia/New Zealand) by Janette Goodey and John Lewis. Honorable Mentions were given to James Ford Murphy’s Lava (USA) and Yulia Aronova’s One, Two, Tree (France/Switzerland). The Youth Works jury was comprised of local high school students Diana Garcia, Ramses Mosley-Wise and Sean Rossiter, with adult supervisor Lisa Landi, producer of Film School Shorts at KQED. The Golden Gate Award for Youth Work went to Two and a Quarter Minutes by Joshua Ovalle (USA), which received a $1,000 cash prize, including $500 donated by KQED. Honorable Mention was given to The Off / Season, Lance Oppenheim (USA), which received a $250 cash prize donated by KQED.
The SFIFF58 Audience Awards gave festival-goers the opportunity to select their favorite narrative and documentary feature. The Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature went to James Napier Robertson’s The Dark Horse (New Zealand), with Anna Muylaert’s The Second Mother (Brazil) also tallying high votes from filmgoers. The Audience Award for Best Documentary Feature was a tie, given to Drea Cooper and Zackary Canepari’s T-Rex (USA) and Jason Zeldes’ Romeo is Bleeding (USA), with Liz Garbus’ What Happened Miss Simone? (USA) also scoring well with SFIFF audiences.
Live & Onstage and Special Events
This year’s Live & Onstage program presented festival gems, including a double dose of an audience favorite-pairing live music by contemporary musical talents with film projection. On May 5, Cibo Matto performed a new score to a selection of films curated by Programmer Sean Uyehara in collaboration with the band, engrossing audiences in the historic Castro Theatre. On May 6, local favorites Kronos Quartet played Aleksandra Vrebalov‘s haunting composition, originally commissioned for their performance, with films of original 35mm nitrate footage, pieced together by Bill Morrison in a unique visual exploration of World War I from footage that has never been viewed by modern audiences. Visionary Douglas Trumbull delivered the much-anticipated State of Cinema address, introducing audiences to the immersive cinema experience of the future. Miranda July swore audiences to secrecy with her New Society event, co-presented by SFMOMA. Welcome, Space Brothers: The Films of the Unarius Academy of Science with Jodi Wille brought one of the biggest crowd-pleasers of the festival for cinema lovers and the sartorial alike, as Cinefamily LA programmer Jodi Wille introduced San Francisco audiences to the films of the Unarius, joined onstage by members of the Unarius Academy in their otherworldly costumes.
The Live & Onstage program also included Boomtown: Remaking San Francisco, addressing the ever-shifting economy of San Francisco through a variety of perspectives. Audiences absorbed Tim Redmond’s housing crisis analysis, chanted along with Black Lives Matter protestors, watched works in progress The Last Black Man in San Francisco (Joseph Talbot) and Never a Cover (Susie Smith, Lauren Tabak), enjoyed Sutro Tower: From Eyesore to Icon (Elisabeth Spencer) and West is San Francisco: A Symphony in Kodachrome (B. Berzins, Jim Granato, Nicole Minor, Doug Schultz, Anjali Sundaram and Phoebe Tooke), and witnessed nostalgia for the shifting cityscapes in Vero Majano‘s storytelling over Mission archival footage and Jenni Olson‘s narrative over San Francisco images in clips from The Royal Road.
Collaborations
SFIFF proudly teamed with several organizations on substantive programming collaborations, including the Telluride Film Festival (to present Stanton Kaye‘s Brandy in the Wilderness and Barbara Loden‘s Wanda), SFMOMA (co-presenting partner for Miranda July‘s New Society), Alamo Drafthouse (guest curators of the Dark Wave section), California College of the Arts (series producer for Cinema Visionaries: Alex Gibney) and long-standing partner Pacific Film Archive (guest curators of Nothing But a Dream: Experimental Shorts). Taking the audience experience beyond the traditional festival filmmaker Q&A session, the San Francisco Film Society programmed enhanced screenings collaborating with luminary figures from many of the Bay Area’s key culture, technology and civic institutions-plus several notable out-of-town guests. These screenings included special introductions, guided discussions, and in-depth analyses. Representatives of such groups as the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Human Rights Watch and the Black Panther Party, and iconic individuals like Rachel Kushner, Nansun Shi and David Thomson, joined SFIFF filmmakers and programmers to explore the issues in a wide variety of Festival films.
Cinema by the Bay
SFIFF58 featured 13 shorts and 12 feature-length films from local talent or about the area across Festival sections. Among the Bay Area features were Advantageous by Jennifer Phang, How to Smell a Rose: A Visit with Ricky Leacock in Normandy by Les Blank and Gina Leibrecht and The Royal Road by Jenni Olson. Bay Area shorts were also abundant and included: Hotel 22 (Elizabeth Lo), Time Quest (John Dilley), Tradesman’s Exit (Tom E. Brown), The Box (Michael I Schiller), Blackout: John Burris Speaks (Terence Nance), The Boombox Collection: Boots Riley (Mohammad Gorjestani), Discussion Questions (Jonn Herschend), A Long Way from Home (Jay Rosenblatt), Lava (James Ford Murphy), My Big Brother (Jason Rayner), Not Just a Tree: Friends of the Urban Forest (Reyna Colt-Lacayo, Marwaun Brooks, Walden Smith, Mauricio Romero), Stranded (Clio Gevirtz), Under the Heat Light an Opening (Zachary Epcar) and Ed & Pauline (Christian Bruno, Natalija Vekic).
Schools at the Festival
SFFS Education’s Schools at the Festival (SATF) program, run by Youth Education Manager Keith Zwolfer, welcomed more than 4,450 students (ages 6-18) and teachers from schools across the Bay Area attending 17 screenings of feature films and shorts programs over the course of the two-week Festival. Each screening included Q&A discussions with filmmakers and special guests. Twenty-six local and international guests (screenwriters, producers, directors, actors and animators) also discussed their films and craft in Bay Area classrooms during SATF’s 20 school visits, reaching an additional 1,176 elementary, middle and high school students and educators. Celebrating its 25th year, SATF aims to develop media literacy, broaden insights into other cultures, enhance foreign language aptitude, develop critical thinking skills and inspire a lifelong appreciation of cinema.
Master Classes
SFIFF58 featured three Master Classes with various film professionals and industry leaders. The San Francisco Film Society joined California College for the Arts in presenting Cinema Visionaries: Alex Gibney, an engaging conversation with the director of Steve Jobs: Man in the Machine. In Designing Interactive Narratives, Ben Adair of Detour, Michael Epstein of Walking Cinema and Eli Horowitz explored how three unique approaches to interactive video, audio events and writing harness the powers of cutting-edge media technologies and the ingenious strategies of forward-thinking artists to produce nimble, immersive, site-specific story worlds. At The Walt Disney Family Museum, Pixar Animation Studios director James Ford Murphy and Pixar sculptor Greg Dykstra presented Discovering Characters in Pixar’s Lava: A Sculpting Workshop for Kids, where participants aged 8-15 created their own volcanic characters.
SFIFF58 Screening At Home
The San Francisco Film Society launched the SFIFF Online Screening Room, which provides an opportunity for SFFS members to stream select feature and short films free of charge for a limited time. Through this pilot program made possible by technology partner FORA.tv, the SFIFF Online Screening Room offers 14 feature films and 11 shorts from the official SFIFF58 lineup. Each film became available to stream online starting the day of its final Festival screening, and will remain online through May 31. SFIFF ticket buyers who are not yet members will have an opportunity to access a curated set of short film content to try out the site. Visit watch.sffs.org for more information.
Filmmaker360
SFIFF58 featured a number of films supported by the Film Society’s Filmmaker360 program. The supported films that screened as part of this year’s Festival represent each of the several ways in which the San Francisco Film Society provides funding and creative services for independent film projects from around the globe as part of its year-round filmmaker services programs. Six SFFS-supported films hit Bay Area screens for the first time at the Festival and were lovingly received by local audiences, including a number that already garnered much acclaim on the global festival circuit, and a world premiere. Jennifer Phang’s Advantageous and Leah Wolchok’s Very Semi-Serious were developed as the respective directors took part in the SFFS FilmHouse Residency program; Bill Ross IV and Turner Ross’s Western and Jenni Olson’s The Royal Road were part of the SFFS Project Development program; Unexpected by Kris Swanberg was awarded a SFFS / KRF Filmmaking Grant for postproduction in the fall of 2014; and Romeo is Bleeding by Jason Zeldes was a 2014 Documentary Film Fund winner.
For general information visit festival.sffs.org.
To request interviews or screeners, contact your Festival publicist.
For photos and press materials visit sffs.org/pressdownloads.