Mar 25, 2013
Festival
The San Francisco Film Society is pleased to partner with the California Academy of Sciences’s NightLife series with the presentation of Reel to Real. This special cinema-themed NightLife event takes place Thursday April 4, 6:00-10:00 pm at the California Academy of Sciences (55 Music Concourse Drive in Golden Gate Park), and is open to adults ages 21 and over. In addition to the Academy’s usual array of music, creatures and cocktails, the Film Society will pepper the halls with screenings and film-inspired activities evoking science and wildlife designed to delight the geeky cinephile in all of us.
For tickets and more information, visit calacademy.org/events/nightlife.
Kicking things off will be your chance to measure your personal ardor with a screening of local filmmaker Brent Hoff‘s short documentary The Love Competition. In the film, participants try to experience the emotion of love while being scanned by an MRI machine run by Stanford neuroscientists. Hoff will be on hand to answer questions, as will neuroscientists who will be able to measure the amount of love you have on the spot. Love hard, everyone.
Meanwhile, upcoming San Francisco International Film Festival (April 25 – May 9) participant, director Mauricio Baiocchi, who will screen his short animated film The Cicada Princess, based on the short but sweet life of a very special insect. Following the screening he will present puppets and materials from the film in an interactive discussion on how puppet-style animation is created.
Later, SFFS teams with Zoetrope All-Story magazine to present a look at the development of the Academy (the other Academy) Award-nominated film Beasts of the Southern Wild. The film-which was financially supported by SFFS through a SFFS / Kenneth Rainin Foundation Filmmaking Grant early in its production-will be examined and its production process explored by SFFS’s Filmmaker360 director Michele Turnure-Salleo. Following that, there will be a live reading of Lucy Alibar’s magical realist play of the same title, which was originally published in Zoetrope and later served the basis for the script that Alibar and director Benh Zeitlin adapted into the film’s script.
Underground in the aquarium’s coral reef, musician and digital artist Sue Costabile will present live cinema-a video piece that is generated, composed and edited live in real-time-titled Fish is Fish, based on a children’s story about life from a fish’s perspective. All sounds in the piece are made from the recordings of snapping shrimp and other reef animals. Projected images will consist of hand drawn animation inspired by the aquarium and reef itself produced on the spot.
Filmmaker Rick Prelinger will present a series of science-based “ephemeral films,” a term he coined to designate moving image media that has a prescribed and therefore limited use. In this case, he investigates how “science” is used in archival educational films to present a specific ideology. Prelinger’s presentations are always funny and insightful, and this presentation will be a good precursor to the west coast premiere of his SFIFF film No More Road Trips? (Sunday May 5 at the Castro Theatre).
Finally, past SF360 Film+Club participant, Stones Throw Records founder and hip hop icon Peanut Butter Wolf returns to San Francisco for a special VJ set. PBW has perfected the art of mixing sound and projected image simultaneously, and we will be treated to one of his sets under the Piazza’s glass-roofed atrium once the sun sets.
Tickets are $12 general admission, $10 for California Academy of Sciences members, available online at calacademy.org. All NightLife attendees must be age 21 or over, with valid ID.
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.
California Academy of Sciences
The California Academy of Sciences is home to an aquarium, planetarium, natural history museum, and research and education programs, which engage people of all ages and backgrounds on two of the most important topics of our time: life and its sustainability.