Nov 4, 2013
SFFILM
The San Francisco Film Society will present its fourth annual Essential SF event at5:00 pm, November 24 at the Roxie Theater (3117 16th Street). Essential SF is the Film Society’s ongoing compendium of the Bay Area film community’s most vital figures and institutions, and each fall a new group of local cinematic luminaries is inducted at Cinema by the Bay. At a short ceremony hosted by filmmaker Carlton Evans, this year’s inductees-sound designer Richard Beggs, experimental filmmaker Nathaniel Dorsky, Castro Theatre organist David Hegarty, film programmer Anita Monga and film collective Kontent Films-will be feted by special guest presenters and Film Society staff. This event is free and open to the public.
For complete program information, visit sffs.org/Exhibition/Fall-Season.
“We’re so lucky to live and work in such a vibrant filmmaking community,” said Rachel Rosen, SFFS director of programming. “Essential SF is our opportunity to bring attention to some of the people who make film culture in San Francisco exceptional. It’s a wonderful community event, celebrating both the well-known and unsung heroes of the Bay Area film scene.”
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: Les Blank, Canyon Cinema, Ninfa Dawson, Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, Susan Gerhard, Joshua Grannell, Karen Larsen, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Allie Light and Irving Saraf, Anne McGuire, H.P. Mendoza, Rick Prelinger, Marlon Riggs (posthumously), Gail Silva, Judy Stone, Wholphin and Terry Zwigoff.
2013 ESSENTIAL SF INDUCTEES
Richard Beggs
A sound designer and mixer on 65 feature films since 1976, Beggs has worked with Francis Coppola, Barry Levinson, Sofia Coppola, Alfonso Cuarón and other major directors. He won an Academy Award for sound for Apocalypse Now (1979) and a TEC Award for Outstanding Creative Achievement in Film Sound, and has received seven Golden Reel sound nominations. He is an associate fellow of Berkeley College at Yale University and sits on the board of directors of the San Francisco Arts Education Project. His most recent project is Gia Coppola’s Palo Alto.
Nathaniel Dorsky
Nathaniel Dorsky was born in New York City in 1943 and has been making films since he was ten years old. He went to college for a year and then began working both in the film industry for a living and on his own poetic films since he was 20. He has received awards and grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation and LEF, among many others. His book Devotional Cinema is an eloquent testament to the power of the moving image and art in general.
David Hegarty
David Hegarty is currently in his 35th year as organist of San Francisco’s Castro Theatre. He also plays pre-film concerts at the Stanford Theatre in Palo Alto and is a monthly recitalist at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor. An avid film music researcher, he specializes in transcriptions of great film music from Hollywood’s Golden Age. As a concert artist, Hegarty has appeared in such diverse venues as Washington DC’s Kennedy Center, San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral, the Crystal Cathedral, with the Oakland Pops Orchestra, and with the San Francisco Symphony at Davies Symphony Hall.
Kontent Films
Founded in 2000, Kontent is a faction of award-winning and difference-making filmmakers banded together to form an artistic convergence, not necessarily a business model. The Kollective’s work spans feature films, shorts, commercials, brand films and television programming. Led by Executive Producer Teri Heyman and Founder Mark Decena, Kontent finds itself in its adolescent years unvexed by what they want to be when they grow up. Once, there were genres: big screens and small screens, creators and consumers. Content is now indivisible, story-driven, and collectively capable of anything. Especially if it begins with a K.
Anita Monga
Anita Monga is Artistic Director of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival. A founding member of the Film Noir Foundation, Monga programs Noir City and advises and contributes to other film festivals. She programmed the Castro Theatre for many years and before that the York Theater and the Roxie Cinema.
To reserve a ticket to Essential SF, RSVP to gga@sffs.org.
To request interviews contact bproctor@sffs.org.
For photos and press materials visit: sffs.org/pressdownloads.
Cinema by the Bay is supported by the San Francisco Film Commission and Fandor, event sponsors The Lab and Salt & Honey Catering and media sponsors The Bold Italic, SF Weekly, San Francisco Bay Guardian and San Francisco Examiner.