During the next two weeks, 177 films will screen from more than 50 countries. It’s the largest film event in Northern California, and more than 10 percent of all movie tickets sold in San Francisco this year will be to a movie in this festival (kind of mind-blowing when you think about it – wow, SF really likes independent films!) Aw yeah, Nug readers – the SF International Film Festival is on. It’s the oldest film festival of its kind in the United States, and considered to be one of the Top-10 film festivals in the world. Sure, it’s a venerated, lauded institution and this is their main event, with a ton of notable world premieres, North American premieres and West Coast premieres scheduled — like the scheduled world premiere of Andy Garcia’s documentary on Cachao. Andy Garcia not only directs and acts as a lead in the documentary, but he is rumored to appear at the opening of the film. But why we love it: because even in a post-Netflix world, occasionally movies are a once-in-a-lifetime event. In 2003, we watched a screening of Oliver Stone’s movie about Fidel Castro, “Comandante.” It was scheduled to air on HBO three months after the film festival – big whoop. It was presumed that if you missed it at the film festival, it seemed certain that you would be able to watch it a few months. But what happened next sealed the movie’s fate: just a few weeks after the screening, Castro went on a rampage and executed a few people without proper trials. The international climate changed and for some reason, Stone was forbidden to screen the movie ever, anywhere, ever again. Stone, the only American film director ever granted permission by Castro to make a documentary about him, with exclusive months-long access to the reclusive revolutionary – all to be shelved like the McGruder film, and will need something like Freedom-of-Information-Act request to ever see the light of day. Who knew that one of Nugget’s early posts to this blog would be one of the few things ever to be written about it?
1. Buy your tickets ASAP 2. Try to attend the first screening of a movie if possible 3. Schedule your movies at least three hours apart if possible 4.Try to see at least five movies; ten is better 5. It’s OK to arrive hungry – the Kabuki has great food Of course, the cocktails are nice, but it’s really all about the movies. Once you try attending the film festival, and Kevin Spacey sees you raise your hand and let you ask him a question about why he funded a documentary about a old piano player who travels around from nursery home to nursery home to entertain friends during all of their last days that made the audience both cry and laugh, you will be hooked. And fight us for our seats next year. So don’t miss out. But tickets to the Film Festival now at http://fest08.sffs.org/ |
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