Apr 20, 2017
Festival
San Francisco, CA — SFFILM wrapped the 60th San Francisco International Film Festival (April 5–19) with 249 screenings of 181 films from 51 countries, which were attended by some 200 filmmakers and industry guests from 15 countries. Over two weeks, the 60th SFFILM Festival showed 66 narrative features, 36 documentary features, two New Visions features, two television series, and a total of 75 short films. The Festival awarded nearly $40,000 in prizes to emerging and established filmmakers with films representing ten countries. Particularly popular were the many screenings and events featuring attending filmmakers and guests as well as those with enhanced Q&As. For the third year in a row, SFFILM Festival welcomed a record-breaking number of artist and filmmaker guests to the Festival, who engaged with audiences through in-depth post-screening conversations.
Audiences warmly embraced the Festival’s new venue configuration, with throngs of film lovers crowding the sidewalks of San Francisco’s South of Market and Mission districts. Spurred by an 8% increase in total event capacity, Festival attendees flocked to the city’s newest and oldest cinema screens—from the Alamo Drafthouse New Mission and new Festival venues SFMOMA and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, to the beloved classic arthouses the Roxie Theater, the Victoria Theatre, and the Castro Theatre—and across the bay to BAMPFA. Festival filmmaker guests and filmgoers alike took advantage of the bustling cultural life of the city, partaking of the countless sources of world-class food, drink, and entertainment.
“What an amazing year,” said Noah Cowan, SFFILM Executive Director. “Through partnerships local, national and global, we were able to create a special birthday celebration for the city of San Francisco, Bay Area audiences, and our followers online. We are grateful to the many people who took this journey with us, and we can’t wait to do it again!”
Star-Studded Nights
Numerous guests graced the stage during the 60th SFFILM Festival, starting on Opening Night with Landline leading actresses Jenny Slate and Abby Quinn and continuing throughout the 15-day event. Scores of Festival screenings featured actors, filmmakers, writers, musicians, and other creative professionals who participated in on-stage introductions and Q&A sessions with Festival audiences; these guests included Kevin Bacon, Ellen Burstyn, Nancy Pelosi, William R. Hearst III, Usher Raymond IV, Francis Ford Coppola, President of Pixar and Disney Animation Studios Ed Catmull, Bill Nye, James Gray, President of the World Bank Dr. Jim Kim, Griffin Dunne, Brett Ratner, Asian Dub Foundation, Matt Bomer, Martin Starr, Katharine Ross, Will Oldham, Maude Apatow, Michael Almereyda, DeVotchKa, Gigi Gorgeous, Chief Creative Officer/Senior Visual Effects Supervisor at Industrial Light & Magic John Knoll, Joan Chen, Peter Nicks, Peter Bratt, Dolores Huerta, Kronos Quartet, Alex Wolff, Danielle Macdonald, James Schamus, and Nick Thune, among many others.
Some of world cinema’s most iconic figures were honored with special tributes and Festival awards. Tom Luddy, co-founder of the Telluride Film Festival and icon of international cinema, received the Mel Novikoff Award. Visionary Bay Area artist and filmmaker Lynn Hershman Leeson received the Golden Gate Persistence of Vision Award. Emmy Award®-winning filmmaker, artist, and writer Eleanor Coppola received the George Gund III Craft of Cinema Award. In addition to the award recipients, the Festival paid tribute to philanthropist and community leader Gordon Gund; Academy Award®-nominated actor and multifaceted artist Ethan Hawke; Academy Award®– Golden Globe®– and BAFTA®-nominated and Guinness World Record-holder James Ivory; and Academy Award®-winning screenwriter, director, producer, and novelist John Ridley. In an unprecedented display of popular appreciation at the SFFILM Festival, thousands of screaming fans flocked to the Castro Theatre to see global superstar, actor, producer, and humanitarian Shah Rukh Khan at his special tribute program.
The Festival’s Big Nights continued successfully with the Bay Area premiere of the Centerpiece film, Patti Cake$, featuring a Q&A with director Geremy Jasper and breakout star Danielle Macdonald. The festivities ended with the Closing Night screening of The Green Fog – A San Francisco Fantasia, the world premiere of an SFFILM-commissioned visual collage film by cultural iconoclast Guy Maddin and co-directors Evan Johnson and Galen Johnson, with a score from San Francisco native composer Jacob Garchik, performed live by Kronos Quartet.
Award-Winning Films
Nearly $40,000 in prizes was awarded by Golden Gate Awards juries at the 60th SFFILM Festival. The Festival’s awards ceremony was held on Sunday, April 16, at The Lab. Ten 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 Village Voice film critic Bilge Ebiri, Austin Film Society’s Head of Film & Creative Media Holly Herrick, and last year’s New Directors Prize winner, filmmaker Philippe Lesage, selected Natalia Almada‘s Everything Else (Mexico/USA/France). Additional cash prizes went to two winners in the competition’s non-fiction feature categories, where 10 films were in juried competition for the McBaine Documentary Feature Award ($10,000) and the McBaine Bay Area Documentary Feature Award ($5,000). The Golden Gate Award Documentary Feature competitions jury was comprised of journalist and programmer David Ansen, film editor Nels Bangerter, and Founder of Ambulante and No Ficción Elena Fortes, who presented the McBaine Documentary Feature Award to Brimstone & Glory (USA) by Viktor Jakovleski. Special Jury recognition was given to School Life (formerly In Loco Parentis) by Neasa Ní Chianáin and David Rane (Ireland/Spain). The jury presented the McBaine Bay Area Documentary Feature Award to The Force (USA) by Peter Nicks.
The Golden Gate Award Short Film jury consisted of Vimeo Senior Curator Jeffrey Bowers, journalist Inkoo Kang, and film curator David Reilly, who awarded a total of $10,000 in cash prizes. The Best Narrative Short was awarded to Univitellin (France) by Terence Nance. Best Documentary Short was presented to The Rabbit Hunt (USA) by Patrick X Bresnan. The GGA for New Visions Short was given to Rawane Nassif‘s Turtles Are Always Home (Qatar/Lebanon/Canada). First Prize for Best Bay Area Short went to In The Wake of Ghost Ship (USA) by Jason Blalock, Second Prize was awarded to American Paradise (USA) by Joe Talbot, with a Special Jury Prize to A Brief History of Princess X (Portugal/France/UK) by Gabriel Abrantes. The award for Best Animated Short went to Hot Dog Hands (USA) by Matt Reynolds.
The Family Film jury was comprised of Common Sense Media Editor-in-Chief Jill Murphy, author Jim Averbeck, and educator Alexandre Petrakis, who awarded $1,000 in cash prizes and Best Family Film to Valley of a Thousand Hills (South Africa/UK) by Jess Colquhoun. A Special Jury Prize went to Julia Pott‘s Summer Camp Island (USA). The Youth Works jury was comprised of Bay Area high school students Ethan Bresnick, Shamaurea Sanford, and Melinna Equihua, with adult supervisor Jill Shackleford, Associate Producer of KQED’s Film School Shorts. The Golden Gate Award for Youth Works went to Caleb Wild‘s Cycle (USA), which received a $1,000 cash prize.
The Google Breakthrough in Technology Award jury was comprised of Google’s Computer Science in Media and Industry Relations teams, including Courtney McCarthy, Women’s & Kids Lead Strategist in Computer Science in Media; and Julia Hamilton Trost, Content Partnerships Lead, Google VR. Arthur Rodger ‘Harley’ Maranan won the Google Breakthrough in Technology Award for N.O.VI.S., (USA), receiving a $500 cash prize donated by Google Inc.
The 60th SFFILM Festival Audience Awards gave festival-goers the opportunity to select their favorite narrative and documentary features. The Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature went to Alejandro Jodorowsky‘s Endless Poetry (Chile/Japan/France), with Geremy Jasper‘s Patti Cake$ (USA) also scoring highly with Festival audiences. The Audience Award for Best Documentary Feature went to Peter Bratt‘s Dolores (USA), a 2016 SFFILM Documentary Film Fund winner for postproduction, while Rina Castelnuovo-Hollander and Tamir Elterman‘s Muhi – Generally Temporary (Israel/Germany) also resonated with Festival audiences.
SFFILM Launch
SFFILM continued its landmark anniversary celebration with the announcement of a brand-new initiative designed to provide a platform to a select group of exceptional films starting their journey into the distribution world. The inaugural Launch program introduced a new opportunity for debuting films to benefit from the special audience makeup of the Bay Area as they find distributors and exhibitors to champion them. The program proved an almost immediate success, with the 60th SFFILM Festival Launch film Leaning into the Wind – Andy Goldsworthy purchased by Magnolia Pictures soon after its world premiere. The other launch films were Jeff Unay‘s The Cage Fighter (USA), Peter Livolsi‘s The House of Tomorrow (USA), Rina Castelnuovo-Hollander and Tamir Elterman‘s Muhi – Generally Temporary (Israel/Germany), and People You May Know (USA) by Sherwin Shilati.
Live & Onstage
This year’s Live & Onstage program presented a variety of Festival gems, pairing live contemporary music with a variety of on-screen audience favorites and showcasing one-time-only onstage performances that use cinema in new ways to connect with audiences. George Lucas‘s 1971 dystopian psychodrama THX 1138 was brought to life with chilling intensity in the historic Castro Theatre by the live score of Asian Dub Foundation, one of the most musically inventive bands working today. Two programs were presented in partnership with Headlands Center for the Arts: Parallel Spaces: Will Oldham and Jerome Hiler, in which music-maker Will Oldham, working with trio Bitchin Bajas and local musician Cornelius Boots, introduced a new live score to a presentation of short films by San Francisco-based avant-garde filmmaker Jerome Hiler; and director Terence Nance’s experimental dual live performances 18 Black Girls / Boys Ages 1–18 Who Have Arrived at the Singularity and Are Thus Spiritual Machines. The Man with a Movie Camera with DeVotchKa showcased DeVotchKa harmonizing their Russian-inspired rhythms and stylistic diversity with Dziga Vertov’s immensely influential 1929 film. And More THINGS in Films feasted festivalgoers for the second year in a row with an evening of stories about objects in films from writers, artists, and filmmakers including writer, artist, and the former creative director of McSweeney’s Brian McMullen, the fabulous Oakland based art collective Bonanza, and Headlands Director of Programs Sean Uyehara. The evening was MC’d by Scott Vermeer and his musical sidekick Nick Stargu.
Special Events
In addition to Live & Onstage, several other special events punctuated the Festival calendar. Kicking things off was a special screening of the American classic, Citizen Kane, that included an onstage conversation between film historian David Thomson and William Randolph Hearst’s grandson, William R. Hearst III—one of the first times a Hearst family member addressed the film publicly. Audiences were also treated to a presentation of the first two episodes of Jill Soloway‘s new adaptation of Chris Kraus‘s provocative book, I Love Dick. Series stars Kevin Bacon and Griffin Dunne joined screenwriter Sarah Gubbins to introduce the special screening to Festival audiences.
As part of a series of free screenings, audiences congregated at PROXY, an outdoor food, arts, and retail environment for a screening of Damon Davis and Sabaah Folayan‘s Whose Streets?. Comprised mostly of local activists’ on-the-ground footage, this vivid documentary was a startlingly immediate portrait of citizen activism and an ongoing conservative movement to criminalize protest. Two other free screenings were presented at the SFFILM Festival: Rivers and Tides-Andy Goldsworthy Working with Time, Thomas Riedelsheimer‘s contemplative and insightful 2001 portrait of artist Andy Goldsworthy; and Defender, Jeff Adachi and Jim Choi‘s urgent documentary showcasing public defender Adachi’s fight for a young man’s freedom while exposing black-crime bias in ostensibly liberal San Francisco.
A number of other Bay Area anniversaries were marked this year, with several San Francisco-based artists and artistic institutions joining the Festival in celebrating landmark occasions in 2017. Featured at the newly renovated theater at SFMOMA were the 20th anniversary screening of renowned actress Joan Chen‘s astonishingly confident directorial debut Xiu Xiu: The Sent-Down Girl and Canyon Cinema 50: Guy Maddin Presents The Great Blondino and Other Delights, a presentation of William T. Wiley’s inspired classic of the west coast avant-garde The Great Blondino coupled with several short films from Canyon Cinema’s collection, curated by Guy Maddin in honor of the organization’s historic anniversary. At the Roxie Theatre was Disposable Film Festival 10th Anniversary, which featured a conversation with event founder Carlton Evans, interspersed with selections from a decade of DFF’s top shorts, exemplifying the burgeoning impact of ubiquitous technology on the next wave of cinema.
SFFILM reinforced its organizational commitment to artists whose work explores the intersection of film and technology by featuring a series of special events at the intersection of Film & Tech, which began with the inaugural Creativity Summit, produced in partnership with Pixar Animation Studios and WIRED. Bringing together an impressive group of innovators in the fields of computer animation and virtual reality (VR), the summit kicked off with the annual State of Cinema address by Ed Catmull—president of Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studios—whose keynote dispelled the myth that art and technology are incongruous and addressed the importance of skepticism when exploring new technology by citing historic successes and failures that paved the way for this revolutionary time for creative expression. Catmull’s address was immediately followed by a moderated onstage discussion of the topic between Catmull and four other Pixar artists. The afternoon featured two additional conversations: Storytelling with VR: A Discussion with Colum Slevin and Jess Engel and Technology & Creativity: How These Powerful Forces Mesh and Spur Innovation, a conversation between John Knoll, Chief Creative Officer and Academy Award-winning Senior Visual Effects Supervisor at Industrial Light & Magic; and Diana Williams, Creative Producer of the Lucasfilm Story Group, about how technology and storytelling influence each other.
As a companion to the Creativity Summit, festival-goers took advantage of the opportunity to engage in two days of immersive storytelling through the popular VR Days program, held this year at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Featuring the great work coming out of the Bay Area and from around the world, VR Days allowed audiences to experience some of the year’s finest VR work and meet the artists behind this cutting-edge medium during VR DAYS conVRsations. Animated Worlds featured the makers behind ASTEROIDS! and Pearl (2017 Academy Award® nominee) from Google Spotlight Stories; at Cinematic Narratives, some of the leading voices in narrative VR work from Felix & Paul Studios, the New York Times, and Oculus shared their artistic process and lifted the veil of mystery around telling great stories in VR; at Shooting Great Stories, artists pushing the boundaries of the form demystified the creative process of development through production and highlighted the great work being shot on Nokia’s OZO Camera; and finally, Youth-Produced 360 Film gave audiences a lesson in the 360 Filmmakers Challenge, the only formal program in which students were invited to be creators of 360° video content.
Collaborations
There was an exciting array of special collaborations as part of this year’s Festival, which elevated and enhanced various individual screenings from the main Festival slate with a number of very special guests. Designed to illuminate key themes in the Festival program and address pressing social issues, the collaboration screenings included luminary figures from many of the San Francisco Bay Area’s key cultural, technology, and civic institutions—plus several notable out-of-town guests—who participated in special introductions, guided discussions, in-depth analyses and much more. With Bending the Arc, Dr. Jim Kim, President of the World Bank and subject of the film, participated in a post-screening discussion exploring the challenges of global health care. Bill Nye: Science Guy featured a post-screening Q&A and conversation with film subject Bill Nye, co-directors David Alvarado and Jason Sussberg, producer Kate McLean, and Dr. Eugenie C Scott, the former Executive Director of the National Center for Science Education, moderated by Tom McFadden, host of the YouTube show Science with Tom. City of Ghosts director Matthew Heineman participated in a post-screening Q&A with Sarah Leah Whitson, Executive Director of Human Rights Watch’s Middle East and North Africa Division. Marie Curie. The Courage of Knowledge included a post-screening conversation, produced in partnership with the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, focused on women in science and how things have (and have not) changed for them in male-dominated fields, wiht Planetary Protection Engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory Moogega Cooper, Professor Emeritus at the UC Berkeley Center for Theoretical Physics Mary K. Gaillard, and neuroscientist Indre Viskontas. Nobody Speak: Trials of the Free Press featured a post-screening conversation about the film with Vickie Baranetsky from Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, Gennie Gebhart from Electronic Frontier Foundation, and Amy Pyle from the Center for Investigative Reporting. Following The Paris Opera, a post-screening Q&A took place with Michael Shilvock, General Manager of the San Francisco Opera. A very special screening of Serenade for Haiti included a post-screening live musical performance by film subjects Bernadette Stella Williams (cello) and Father David Cesar (viola) with the San Francisco Girls Chorus and Haitian drummer Jeff Pierre and his drumming ensemble. After a screening of This is Everything: Gigi Gorgeous, subject Gigi Gorgeous and filmmaker Barbara Kopple were joined on-stage by Manager or Unscripted Development at YouTube Originals Ian Roth for a post-screening a conversation about YouTube, social media and its impact on our lives.
SFFILM Makers
The 60th SFFILM Festival featured a number of films supported by the SFFILM Makers grant and residency programs. The supported films that screened as part of this year’s Festival represent each of the several ways in which SFFILM provides funding and creative services for independent film projects from around the globe as part of its year-round artist development programs. Nine supported films hit Bay Area screens for the first time at the Festival and were lovingly received by local audiences, including several features and shorts that garnered acclaim on the global festival circuit. Festival Centerpiece film Patti Cake$ (USA 2016), first-time feature director Geremy Jasper’s dynamic and inspiring film, was a Spring 2014 SFFILM / KRF Filmmaking Grant winner. In addition to Patti Cake$, three documentary features, one narrative feature, one narrative short, and four documentary shorts—all of which received funding or creative support through various SFFILM artist development programs—were included in this year’s Festival lineup. San Francisco native Peter Bratt’s Dolores and Oakland-based filmmaker Peter Nicks’ The Force both received Documentary Film Fund Awards. Directing and screenwriting team Alex and Andrew Smith’s Walking Out was a SFFILM / KRF Filmmaking Grant winner, and Andrew Smith is a current FilmHouse Resident. Joe Talbot, director of the narrative short American Paradise, is a current FilmHouse Resident and the feature film expansion of his short recently won a SFFILM / KRF Filmmaking Grant. Mohammad Gorjestani, director of the documentary shorts Happy Birthday Mario Woods, Happy Birthday Philando Castile, and The Boombox Collection: Zion I, and Mario Furloni and Kate McLean, co-directors of the documentary short Gut Hack, were all FilmHouse Residents during the development of their films. McLean’s FilmHouse residency also included the development of Festival documentary feature Bill Nye: Science Guy, on which she is a producer.
World Cinema Spotlight
Each year, the Festival reflects on the field of international filmmaking with its World Cinema Spotlight, a thematic series that brings to light hot topics, reinvigorates genres, celebrates underappreciated filmmakers, or focuses on national cinemas. In a rich offering of feature films and shorts programs, this year’s Spotlight, Argentina: A National Cinema in Movement, highlighted the chaos, vitality, and variety unique to the current cinema of Argentina. Feature films presented included Nele Wohlatz‘s The Future Perfect (Argentina), Matías Piñeiro‘s Hermia & Helena (USA/Argentina), Eduardo Williams‘s The Human Surge (Argentina/Brazil/ Portugal), and The Winter (Argentina/France) by Emiliano Torres.
Schools at the Festival
SFFILM Education‘s Schools at the Festival (SATF) program, run by Associate Director of Education Keith Zwolfer, had a record breaking year, welcoming 7,400 students (ages 6-18) and teachers from schools across the Bay Area attending 15 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. For the first time this year, all students were able to attend SATF screenings for free, through the generous support of Google and the Nellie Wong Magic in Movies Education Fund. Twenty-six local and international guests (actors, animators, directors, producers, and subjects) also discussed their films and craft in 19 different Bay Area classrooms during SATF’s 29 school visits, reaching an additional 875-900 elementary, middle, and high school students and educators. Celebrating its 27th 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
The 60th SFFILM Festival featured three Master Classes with film professionals and industry leaders. During Finding Characters in Unlikely Places with Pixar’s Newest Short, Lou: A Workshop for Kids, Pixar Animation Studios Director Dave Mullins taught participants how to draw the newest Pixar star and guided them through sculpting and drawing exercises as they create their own characters. In We Are All Storytellers: A Pixar in a Box Workshop for Girls, Rosana Sullivan, a story artist from Pixar Animation Studios shared with the audience how she began telling stories and developed her storytelling skills, and then led the girls in creativity exercises, empowering them to start thinking of themselves as storytellers and inspiring them to develop the unique ideas that they already have inside of them. The third and final master class was Two or Three Things That Frighten Me in Vertigo: David Thomson Master Class, during which the famed film historian illuminated for audiences the sinister beauty and cruel play with desire in what is now allegedly “the best movie of all time.”
SFFILM Screening Room & App
On the occasion of the landmark 60th Festival, SFFILM re-launched the SFFILM Screening Room, a curated film streaming service available to SFFILM members through an innovative web platform and mobile app. More than ten feature films from the Festival lineup were made available on the service after their public screenings and will remain available for streaming through May 30. More films will be added to the service each month. The SFFILM mobile app, which became available on iOS and Android devices March 15, provides access to SFFILM Screening Room content on the go as well as helpful tools to stay up to date on year-round SFFILM screenings and events. Available for streaming now are the following titles: Story of a 3-Day Pass by Melvin Van Peebles (France); Yourself and Yours by Hong Sang-soo (South Korea); Tania Libre by Lynn Hershman Leeson (USA); The Stopover by Delphine Coulin and Muriel Coulin (France/Greece); Godless by Ralitza Petrova (Bulgaria/Denmark/France); Everything Else by Natalia Almada (Mexico/USA/France); Half-Life in Fukushima by Mark Olexa and Francesca Scalisi (Switzerland/France); The Human Surge by Eduardo Williams (Argentina/Brazil/Portugal); Life After Life by Zhang Hanyi (China); Duet by Navid Danesh (Iran); Ma’ Rosa by Brillante Ma Mendoza (Philippines); By the Time It Gets Dark by Anocha Suwichakornpong (Thailand/France/Netherlands/Qatar); Donkeyote by Chico Pereira (Spain/Germany/UK); Park by Sofia Exarchou (Greece/Poland); and The Student by Kirill Serebrennikov (Russia). The SFFILM Screening Room service is available exclusively to SFFILM members on the web at sffilm.org/watch.
Sponsors and Partners
The 60th San Francisco International Film Festival was supported by more than 200 sponsors and partners. These included SFFILM’s lead sponsor, First Republic Bank; premiere creative partner Muse Brands; premiere venue partner SFMOMA; premiere technical partner New Box; premiere marketing partners Pereira & O’Dell and Ingage Media; and major sponsors the New York Times, Dolby, FORA.tv, SHOWTIME Networks, IMBDPro, Google, Joie de Vivre, 150, INGENIUX, NOKIA, Blue Angel Vodka. Of note, the FORA.tv sponsorship enabled an expansion of the wildly popular Online Screening Room, which allows SFFILM members to stream films year-round at watch.sffilm.org and on an iOS app. The 60th SFFILM Festival supporting partners were Film SF and San Francisco Recreation & Parks. Supporting sponsors included Fort Point Beer Company, Francis Ford Coppola Winery, Don Julio Tequila, Bulleit Frontier Whiskey, French American Cultural Society, Consulate General of France in San Francisco, Hong Kong Economic & Trade Office, VMG Partners, SAG-AFTRA, Tree Frog Treks, Olly, Theory, Meyer Sound, Bloom Farms, Health-Ade Kombucha, LUNA, Peet’s Coffee, Chronicle Books, TV5 Monde, Kickstarter, Captain Morgan Rum, Even/Odd Films, Omni, Riverview Systems Group, Singani 63, Sparkling Ice, and ZAP Zoetrope Aubry Productions. The 60th SFFILM Festival event partners were Pixar Animation Studios, WIRED, BAMPFA, The Bosco, Bright Event Rentals, Mezzanine, LifeFactory, PROXY, Roxie Theater, Victoria Theatre, The Walt Disney Family Museum, Castro Theatre, and Regency Center; venue partners were the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Dolby Cinema at 1275 Market, Alamo Drafthouse New Mission, and SFMOMA. Support from consulates and cultural institutions was provided by the Consulate General of Israel to the Pacific Northwest in San Francisco, the Consulate General of Sweden, the Consulate General of Switzerland in San Francisco, Spain Arts & Cultures, the Consulate General of Mexico; and supporting sponsor the Consulate General of France in San Francisco, which partnered with supporting partner the French American Cultural Society to sponsor the Contemporary French Cinema program.
The 60th SFFILM Festival was also generously supported by media partners DoTheBay, Indiewire, KIQI – Hecho en California, KQED Public Broadcasting, SF Weekly, SF Examiner, SF Station, and UpOut. VR Days was made possible through a special collaboration with Pixar Animation Studios and WIRED, VR Days presenting sponsor NOKIA, and supporting sponsors Samsung, New York Times VR, Google, and Oculus. The Festival is also grateful for the participation of technical sponsors Brickley Production Services, Flying Moose Pictures, Holzmuller Productions, RF Audio, VER, and WorldStage; hotel sponsors Axiom Hotel, Executive Hotel Vintage Court, The Fairmont San Francisco, Galleria Park Hotel – a Joie de Vivre Hotel, Hotel Kabuki – a Joie de Vivre Hotel, Hotel Majestic, Hotel Rex – a Joie de Vivre Hotel, Hotel Zelos, Hotel Zetta, Joie de Vivre Hotels, Inn at the Presidio, InterContinental, King George Hotel – A Greystone Hotel, Nob Hill Inn, Parc 55, Serrano Hotel, The Marker – a Joie de Vivre Hotel, and Tilden Hotel; beverage sponsors Sonoma County Distilling, Tullamore DEW, Compass Box Whisky, and Seven Stills Whiskey; and restaurant and food purveyors Alter Eco Foods, Bar Agricole, Bare Snacks, Cala Restaurant, Casa Sanchez, Coletta Gelato, Dandelion Chocolate, Hawker Fare, James Standfield Catering, Judy’s Breadsticks, Justin’s Nut Butter, Kettle Brand, La Mediterranee, Venga Empanadas, The Perennial, Poesia Osteria Italiana, The Taco Shop @ Underdogs, Town Hall, Sol Food Restaurant, and GigaBites.
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60th San Francisco International Film Festival The longest-running film festival in the Americas, the San Francisco International Film Festival (SFFILM Festival) is an extraordinary showcase of cinematic discovery and innovation in one of the country’s most beautiful cities. The 60th edition runs April 5-19 at venues across the Bay Area and features nearly 200 films and live events, 12 juried awards with close to $40,000 in cash prizes, and upwards of 100 participating filmmaker guests.
SFFILM Presenter of the San Francisco International Film Festival, SFFILM is a year-round nonprofit organization delivering screenings and events to more than 100,000 film lovers and media education programs to more than 10,000 students and teachers annually. In addition to its public programs, SFFILM supports the careers of independent filmmakers from the Bay Area and beyond with grants, residencies, and other creative development services.
For more information visit sffilm.org.