It doesn't surprise me in the least that Jeff Adachi's documentary The Slanted Screen: Representations of Asian American Men In Film & Television was sold out to the Center for Asian American Media's membership before it ever reached the general public. One can only hope that the Center will negotiate an additional screening because this documentary deserves to be enjoyed by more than its own. It certainly speaks to more than its own; undoubtedly Adachi's intention. As the press notes state, "anyone fascinated by media criticism, politics, civil rights, or film and television history" will be attracted to this film.
Identity politics have repeatedly demonstrated that marginalized minorities hunger for accurate and appropriate cinematic representation. Adachi has successfully satisfied this hunger and accomplished for Asian American males what The Celluloid Closet did for its queer constituency and The Bronze Screen for Chicanos. The premise of The Slanted Screen is articulated in its project summary: "Movies and the mass media help form our world view, shape our identities, and define our roles—onscreen and off. Unfortunately, these effects frequently work to the detriment of some groups—including Asian American men. Too often, film and television misrepresent the world they claim to reflect. Their stories revise history, and rationalize inequities. Rather [than] portray[ing] three-dimensional individuals, their characters manifest prejudice, and reinforce bigotry. Moreover, their ubiquitous and persistent messages encourage viewers to internalize confining definitions of identity and self-worth. Ironically, film and television images extol our fundamental ideals of democracy and equality, and at the same time, betray them."
Darrell Hamamoto, Associate Professor of Asian American Studies at U.C. Davis, writes in Monitored Peril: "Images of control are used as an iconic shorthand to explain, justify and naturalize the subordination of Asian Americans within a society that espouses formal equality for all."
In order to understand history, to situate ourselves within history, we must be engaged by it first and foremost and Adachi has provided an informative, engrossing well-structured vehicle to review how Hollywood's Dream Factory has portrayed Asian Americans from the turn of the century through the turn of the millennium. Utilizing a wealth of clips and interviews Adachi has balanced a recapitulation of representations past with divided concerns over future representation. By its thorough methodology, the documentary achieves solidarity with other minorities in film endeavoring a mutual historical task. It is one of those cases of enantiodromia, where by diving headlong into the particular concerns of a specific minority, by unveiling "the symbiotic relationship between stereotypes and prejudice", we come out addressing the issues that affect us all, aiming for a society more just for all. That is, at any rate, the hope. The Slanted Screen inspires hope that stereotypes might eventually be no longer necessary.
Wednesday, 8 March 2006
2006 SFIAAFF—The Slanted Screen
Tuesday, 7 March 2006
MALAYSIAN CINEMAS: Amir Muhammad
Amir Muhammad has become one of my favorite independent Malaysian filmmakers … and I haven't even seen one of his films! How can this be? Could it be because at last year's San Francisco International Film Festival—which showcased a sextet of Malaysian films and a concomitant panel discussion—he came off as intelligent, articulate and downright hilarious? It must be. It's been a while since I've had someone make me laugh so hard and so often as this young man whose wit and wisdom skewers stereotypes with unflinching intent.
I was sick during the festival last year and couldn't make it to the screening of Tokyo Magic Hour, but I recovered just enough for the panel discussion. Amir governed the session with enough quips to woo Comedy Central.
When an audience member lamented the fact that Yasmin Ahmad (Sepet) could not attend the Malaysian panel and, thereby, balance out the all-male representation, Amir wryly explained that Yasmin's husband had beaten her and would not let her leave the house and "that's the way we Muslims like it." The audience roared with disapproving laughter.
When Saw Teong Hin spoke about being "crucified" over his mainstream film Princess of Mount Ledang, Amir protested that it was clear he was not a Muslim, using words like "crucified." A good Muslim would have said "whipped."
When concerns were posed about piracy in Malaysia, Amir countered that "piracy is the best film school", providing Malaysian independent filmmakers opportunities to see movies that the censors will not allow.
I regret that I didn't feel quite well enough to mingle with the Malaysian filmmakers after the panel; I would have liked to have befriended Amir. It seemed a given. A day later I saw him at the screening of The Hero and, without missing a beat, we reached our hands out to each other. "You are so funny," I told him. "You ask the best questions," he responded.
Afterwards, of course, I began to research Amir's work by reading the reviews. For the sixth issue of Firecracker, Robert Williamson expressed his appreciation of Tokyo Magic Hour.
Novelist Lawrence Durrell once wrote that a new lover can make a city a new world and Tokyo Magic Hour—prefaced by the quote "All love affairs take place in foreign cities"—seems to confirm the disorientation that appears in the midst of an affair. Muhammad asked a group of Japanese film students to shoot images of Tokyo which he then compiled and manipulated to create a visual accompaniment to a series of traditional Malaysian poems. He specified that shooting should take place at sunset—the time at which things fade away (thus, the film's title).
http://www.firecracker-magazine.com/
Earlier on, the ever-prescient Chuck Stephens was already championing 6horts—Muhammad's "first forays into short-form satire, low-tech trenchancy, and occasional sensuality"—predicting that the next Southeast Asian filmmaker everyone would be talking about and claiming to have discovered would be Amir Muhammad:
http://www.sfbg.com/39/13/cover_ae04_undiscovered.html
Robert Williamson continued his exploration of Muhammad's films in the tenth issue of Firecracker wherein he wrote up The Big Durian. A durian, it appears, is a foul-smelling but sweet-tasting fruit common to Malaysia and—whereas Americans fondly refer to New York City as the Big Apple—Malaysians nickname their capital city the Big Durian. Williamson is keen to note that Muhammad has successfully harnessed digital technology to "surreptitiously delve into sensitive areas that otherwise might be considered off-limits." The Big Durian examines the sociocultural undertones of a politically-sensitive event, rarely discussed in Malaysian society, namely that of a soldier known only as Private Adam running amok with an M-16 through a predominantly-Chinese district of Kuala Lumpur, killing one and injuring two. Past the amplifications spelled out in Williamson's review, what struck me was the discovery that the term "amok" (as in Duck Amok) is one of only two Malay words to have established themselves in English. More interestingly, Muhammad ponders that this might have specific and unique relevance to the Malay mindset.
http://www.firecracker-magazine.com/
More recently, Muhammad has been interviewed by Benjamin McKay for Criticine:
http://www.criticine.com/interview_article.php?id=18
And even more recently, in the wake of his just-completed documentary The Last Communist (Lelaki Komunis Terakhir), Muhammad has created a blog to track the life of the piece though he is quick to assert that his blog "isn't a promotional tool disguised as personal musings" but rather "a promotional tool that isn't disguised as anything else."
http://lastcommunist.blogspot.com/
A delightful development for a fan such as myself who might one day actually see one of his films!
I was sick during the festival last year and couldn't make it to the screening of Tokyo Magic Hour, but I recovered just enough for the panel discussion. Amir governed the session with enough quips to woo Comedy Central.
When an audience member lamented the fact that Yasmin Ahmad (Sepet) could not attend the Malaysian panel and, thereby, balance out the all-male representation, Amir wryly explained that Yasmin's husband had beaten her and would not let her leave the house and "that's the way we Muslims like it." The audience roared with disapproving laughter.
When Saw Teong Hin spoke about being "crucified" over his mainstream film Princess of Mount Ledang, Amir protested that it was clear he was not a Muslim, using words like "crucified." A good Muslim would have said "whipped."
When concerns were posed about piracy in Malaysia, Amir countered that "piracy is the best film school", providing Malaysian independent filmmakers opportunities to see movies that the censors will not allow.
I regret that I didn't feel quite well enough to mingle with the Malaysian filmmakers after the panel; I would have liked to have befriended Amir. It seemed a given. A day later I saw him at the screening of The Hero and, without missing a beat, we reached our hands out to each other. "You are so funny," I told him. "You ask the best questions," he responded.
Afterwards, of course, I began to research Amir's work by reading the reviews. For the sixth issue of Firecracker, Robert Williamson expressed his appreciation of Tokyo Magic Hour.
Novelist Lawrence Durrell once wrote that a new lover can make a city a new world and Tokyo Magic Hour—prefaced by the quote "All love affairs take place in foreign cities"—seems to confirm the disorientation that appears in the midst of an affair. Muhammad asked a group of Japanese film students to shoot images of Tokyo which he then compiled and manipulated to create a visual accompaniment to a series of traditional Malaysian poems. He specified that shooting should take place at sunset—the time at which things fade away (thus, the film's title).
http://www.firecracker-magazine.com/
Earlier on, the ever-prescient Chuck Stephens was already championing 6horts—Muhammad's "first forays into short-form satire, low-tech trenchancy, and occasional sensuality"—predicting that the next Southeast Asian filmmaker everyone would be talking about and claiming to have discovered would be Amir Muhammad:
http://www.sfbg.com/39/13/cover_ae04_undiscovered.html
Robert Williamson continued his exploration of Muhammad's films in the tenth issue of Firecracker wherein he wrote up The Big Durian. A durian, it appears, is a foul-smelling but sweet-tasting fruit common to Malaysia and—whereas Americans fondly refer to New York City as the Big Apple—Malaysians nickname their capital city the Big Durian. Williamson is keen to note that Muhammad has successfully harnessed digital technology to "surreptitiously delve into sensitive areas that otherwise might be considered off-limits." The Big Durian examines the sociocultural undertones of a politically-sensitive event, rarely discussed in Malaysian society, namely that of a soldier known only as Private Adam running amok with an M-16 through a predominantly-Chinese district of Kuala Lumpur, killing one and injuring two. Past the amplifications spelled out in Williamson's review, what struck me was the discovery that the term "amok" (as in Duck Amok) is one of only two Malay words to have established themselves in English. More interestingly, Muhammad ponders that this might have specific and unique relevance to the Malay mindset.
http://www.firecracker-magazine.com/
More recently, Muhammad has been interviewed by Benjamin McKay for Criticine:
http://www.criticine.com/interview_article.php?id=18
And even more recently, in the wake of his just-completed documentary The Last Communist (Lelaki Komunis Terakhir), Muhammad has created a blog to track the life of the piece though he is quick to assert that his blog "isn't a promotional tool disguised as personal musings" but rather "a promotional tool that isn't disguised as anything else."
http://lastcommunist.blogspot.com/
A delightful development for a fan such as myself who might one day actually see one of his films!
Monday, 6 March 2006
ANIMATION: Badger and Tale of Tales
Although my favorite—Badger—did not win the Academy Award for best animated short, I am mollified by Doug Cummings' filmjourney.org linkage to where Badger can be viewed in its entirety:
http://www.beam.tv/beamreels/beamreel.php?RjjrhXnjZp
I'm also grateful to Doug for his informed profile of Russian animator Yuri Norstein whose piece—Hedgehog in the Fog—won my heart at Jonathan Marlow's recent Yerba Buena fare Cabinet of Curiosities. Doug's profile includes a link to Peter Finn's Washington Post article on The Overcoat, a Norstein animation 20 years in the making.
http://filmjourney.weblogger.com/2005/08/05
Jonathan made me eager for more Norstein and Doug recommended Norstein's Tale of Tales. I located the third volume of Masters of Russian Animation at Virgin and was delighted to see it included Tale of Tales. So I didn't think twice, bought it, and came home to savor it.
"Tale of Tales," Doug writes, "juxtaposes images of innocence and gaiety with images of war and vanishing soldiers, nostalgic visions of childhood with a parent downing a bottle of vodka. The Soviet censors, baffled by the film's poetry, assumed it had to be subversive and demanded that Norstein make extensive changes. He refused, and luckily, had just been awarded a State honor that made it virtually impossible for the authorities to suppress the work."
Tale of Tales is laminated with enchantment. Layer by layer. A suckling baby is sung a lullaby, wooing it to sleep lest the little grey fox abduct him to take him into the scary woods where a green apple glows wet with rain.
The little grey fox is maligned. He is sweet, clever and curious. He flirts with himself in shiny hubcaps. The exhaust fumes of cars make him sneeze and his sneeze startles birds into flight. A hot potato burns his paws. A young girl jumps rope with a steer that, every now and then, likes to take its turn. A poet anguishes over what to envision, what to say. Women and men dance underneath a streetlight and each time the record skips another husband / father / son is lost to the ravages of war. A one-legged veteran plays a sad concertina. A fish floats in the sky catching the attention of an idle cat who, by caterwauling, teaches the poet how to orate. A boy imagines himself befriending winter birds on a tree limb above him. Is the baby dreaming all of this? Is this where the lullaby has taken him? Is this where it has taken us? Whimsical and poignant, Tale of Tales masterfully purveys a deep realm where images are deftly woven into feelings.
http://www.beam.tv/beamreels/beamreel.php?RjjrhXnjZp
I'm also grateful to Doug for his informed profile of Russian animator Yuri Norstein whose piece—Hedgehog in the Fog—won my heart at Jonathan Marlow's recent Yerba Buena fare Cabinet of Curiosities. Doug's profile includes a link to Peter Finn's Washington Post article on The Overcoat, a Norstein animation 20 years in the making.
http://filmjourney.weblogger.com/2005/08/05
Jonathan made me eager for more Norstein and Doug recommended Norstein's Tale of Tales. I located the third volume of Masters of Russian Animation at Virgin and was delighted to see it included Tale of Tales. So I didn't think twice, bought it, and came home to savor it.
"Tale of Tales," Doug writes, "juxtaposes images of innocence and gaiety with images of war and vanishing soldiers, nostalgic visions of childhood with a parent downing a bottle of vodka. The Soviet censors, baffled by the film's poetry, assumed it had to be subversive and demanded that Norstein make extensive changes. He refused, and luckily, had just been awarded a State honor that made it virtually impossible for the authorities to suppress the work."
Tale of Tales is laminated with enchantment. Layer by layer. A suckling baby is sung a lullaby, wooing it to sleep lest the little grey fox abduct him to take him into the scary woods where a green apple glows wet with rain.
The little grey fox is maligned. He is sweet, clever and curious. He flirts with himself in shiny hubcaps. The exhaust fumes of cars make him sneeze and his sneeze startles birds into flight. A hot potato burns his paws. A young girl jumps rope with a steer that, every now and then, likes to take its turn. A poet anguishes over what to envision, what to say. Women and men dance underneath a streetlight and each time the record skips another husband / father / son is lost to the ravages of war. A one-legged veteran plays a sad concertina. A fish floats in the sky catching the attention of an idle cat who, by caterwauling, teaches the poet how to orate. A boy imagines himself befriending winter birds on a tree limb above him. Is the baby dreaming all of this? Is this where the lullaby has taken him? Is this where it has taken us? Whimsical and poignant, Tale of Tales masterfully purveys a deep realm where images are deftly woven into feelings.
Sunday, 5 March 2006
Imagining the Real—Rwandan Genocide On Film
"What fascinates me most in existence is the peculiar necessity of imagining what is, in fact, real."—Philip Gourevitch.
I borrow the title for this entry from Philip Gourevitch's book, We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families, a chilling account of the 1994 genocide and aftermath in Rwanda.
At this time last year Terry George's Hotel Rwanda was nominated for three Oscars. It won none but it certainly inspired me to consider other films in the pipeline or in distribution exploring the genocidal massacre that took place in Africa little over a decade ago. This year Kimberlee Acquaro and Stacy Sherman's documentary short God Sleeps in Rwanda is nominated for an Oscar and I hope it wins! It's a short film focusing not so much on the genocide itself as its aftermath. Female survivors of that tragedy have had to not only reconstruct their personal lives but their communities as well, rebuilding families, roads, homes, taking on professions that until then had been denied women and being afforded that opportunity only because most of the men are dead; Rwanda has been left 70% female. Emancipated by default, the documentary implies promise in the role of women reconstructing Rwanda, even as it targets the strategic murder of Tutsi men and rape of Tutsi women as a genocidal program of racial cleansing. Some of these raped women offer accounts of becoming infected with AIDS or becoming pregnant with unwanted children. The moral choices required of these young women—who have already suffered so much—is sobering even as it is inspiring. Acquaro and Sherman's vigilant determination to maintain focus and to try to summon continuing interest in the plight of Rwanda deserves commendation.
Farai Chideya talks with Kimberlee Acquaro about God Sleeps in Rwanda for NPR. This six-minute audioclip will be of note to those who have already seen the documentary because of its follow-up stories of a couple of the women portrayed, and explains in detail the legislative importance of the war crime trial for rape of the female Minister of Women and Family:
Looking back: In 2001, 100 Days—a low budget film on the subject—was released, but never widely distributed. I've yet to track it down.
Hotel Rwanda. For what it was, and for the palatable information it provided a wide public, Hotel Rwanda succeeded. Performances were sound all around. But this was one of those instances where, knowing how events really went, the fictionalizations proved grating. For example: in the scene where Paul Rusesabagina's wife and family are being evacuated and run into the machete threats, the truth is that her back was actually broken in that encounter. This wouldn't work for the arc of the story, I know, and I understand why genocide must be presented in digestible portions, but, it bothered me for the remainder of the film, eroding at its truthfulness.
The Belgian "randomization" of hutu/tutsi and its horrific consequence was only one of the many bitter facts I sifted from this tragedy. This randomization was admirably and succinctly laid out in the film. I understand that some of these hostilities were indigenous, but how they were exploited through foreign intervention was of necessary focus.
I was pretty much disgusted by Paul Rusesabagina being "summoned" to the White House just so President George Bush could get some pr licks.
Sometimes In April. Haitian director Raoul Peck filmed Sometimes in April. "The monster, says Raoul Peck, doesn't come from nowhere. It is slowly conjured into being, and just about everybody is complicit in its creation. 'You look aside the first time when someone is slapped in public. You don't say anything. The next day, they kill him in front of you and you don't say anything. Then, on the third day, they can come and take your wife and rape your wife. And then it's too late for you to do anything. That is how the monster arrives. It starts with little things."
Geoffrey Macnab interviews Raoul Peck for the Guardian.
Though there were several comments in Macnab's interview of Peck, I was struck by the comment that "the western media in the spring of 1994 was far more preoccupied with the suicide of Nirvana's Kurt Cobain."
Also: "Back in January, Peck held the world premiere of Sometimes in April in a huge stadium in the Rwandan capital of Kigali in front of an audience of thousands of people, many of whom had lost relatives during the massacre. 'I could only imagine making this film if the Rwandans were the first to see it. Whatever the critics say doesn't matter to me. The only people whose judgment I would accept are the Rwandan people.' "
In possibly what is the most cynical, embittered review I have ever read, Jon Jost lambastes Raoul Peck's Sometimes in April for Senses of Cinema.
"For the spectator," he writes, "it lurches this direction and that, a stern slap on the hands here, a soft tear-milking there, a brutal guilt-tripping, a satirical send-up of Western 'human concern' articulated by the henchmen of the White House, all stirred together in an unpalatable mixture which probably fails as politics and certainly fails as art."
Jost continues his tirade: "[T]he spectator, perhaps having been led to a little bit more information than they had had earlier . . . , leaves, soured in spirit, subdued and, if the whole formula works as it should, then will convert this sense of guilt—no, not into meaningful action like refusing to pay their taxes to corrupted governments who did this—but into self-worth. I went and spent two awful hours watching this difficult, unpleasant film about how awful we are (through the prism of people I could relate to: i.e., nice middle-class professionals), and I feel bad, and then I feel good that I felt bad and that certifies my moral worth. And the next time a Rwanda-type thing rises—which is basically all the time, which is right now—the worthy spectator will do what they did the last time around: nada."
And that's just for starters. Jost then takes on the whole notion of "fiction" and the impossibility of cinema to truthfully account for human atrocities. Ultimately, Jost thinks Sometimes in April makes good (H)BO, as in bullshit, as in box office.
Other reviewers have been equally unkind, though none as committed to regaling against Western civilization as we know it. Not only does Jost take on Peck's project, but, it's Berlinale setting, the Eisenman Holocaust Memorial, the Lieberskind Jewish Museum, and any film project that proposes fiction can tell truth more readily than non-fiction, or that purports to some high end when it is nothing more than thinly-veiled "opportunistic careerism, a social climb literally over the piles of bodies of others not so long ago departed."
One part of me applauds Jost for his unflinching approach and wants to say his pessimism is redeemed by its honesty, but another part of me simply pities him for despising the human race so completely. Certainly a distinct read amongst the reviews on this subject matter.
Amy Taubin's Art & Industry column for Film Comment, focusing on Raoul Peck's Sometimes In April, describes how the film's scraping noises unnerved her. She gives a fairly favorable review to the film.
Taubin likewise praises the HBO website for its additional commentary, namely interviews with the director, actor Idris Elba, and HBO representative Sam Martin, plus its Human Rights Watch information.
I finally caught Sometimes in April as part of a free HBO package last month. As Taubin described, it's structured as a Cain and Abel story. And what struck her, struck me. There is a scene where the UN is evacuating all white citizens. The Rwandans are begging to be included in the evacuation and are, of course, denied. The UN trucks load up, head out, and no sooner do they leave than Hutus begin appearing out of everywhere, carrying clubs and machetes, sharpening the blades by scraping them against the street as they approach their victims. I haven't been able to get that image and that sound out of my mind. The massacre of the Catholic school girls was also horrifically portrayed. I was glad to get a glimpse of how the witness hearings were conducted. All in all, I appreciate the HBO production, even though admittedly the score is saccharine and manipulative, undermining the film's credence.
Shake Hands With The Devil. "Lieutenant General Romeo Dallaire can still smell Rwanda. He wrote about this in his 2003 memoir, Shake Hands With the Devil, and it's written on his face too—the unrelenting stench of the 800,000 bodies that rotted in mass graves, filled the streets of Kigali and dammed the Kagera River over 100 bloodstained days in 1994. Dallaire knows the smell because he was there, from August 1993 until September 1994, as the sometimes Head of Mission and full-time Force Commander of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda. What transpired, he would later write, was "a story of betrayal, failure, naivete, hatred, genocide, war, inhumanity and evil"—one which Dallaire didn't merely observe, but in which he played a leading role. He is, as many now know, one of modern history's great and tragic witnesses, not just for what he saw, but for his accurate prediction of it and his ultimate inability to prevent it. He is, simply put, the boy who cried genocide. And it has taken much of the world the better part of a decade to respond to his call."
Peter Raymont filmed a documentary by the same name andScott Foundas reviews Shake Hands With The Devil for the L.A. Weekly .
Raymont writes: "Shake Hands With the Devil could hardly be more different in its approach than Terry George's Oscar-nominated Hotel Rwanda, an unrepentantly Hollywoodized portrait of the approximately 1,200 fortunate Rwandans who found refuge within the walls of Kigali's posh Hotel Des Milles Collines. Of course, that story is also true, and the film deserves credit, at least, for not telling its African story through a white interlocutor, a la Richard Attenborough's Cry Freedom. But in its narrowly focused rush to inspire, Hotel Rwanda trivializes its protagonists by turning their plight into a succession of false climaxes and false hopes, a schematic game of will they or won't they make it out alive. In Toronto, where it was possible to see both films virtually back to back, the disparity was particularly telling. Where Hotel Rwanda (notwithstanding Don Cheadle's fine, honest performance) offers us a spoonful of sugar to make the genocide go down, Shake Hands With the Devil fills our nostrils with the same pungent aroma that still haunts Dallaire."
Shooting Dogs. I haven't seen this one yet. BBC Films production cast John Hurt in a David Belton's film about a Catholic priest who struggles to save the lives of Tutsi children. Variety's Adam Dawtrey wrote-up the upcoming March premiere of Shooting Dogs in Kigali, Rwanda. Aside from its "rougher edge" (compared to Hotel Rwanda), Dawtrey nonetheless affirms its "sense of place, a raw authenticity and an unflinching desire to testify to the reality of what happened."
The film, after touring Africa, will be seen in Britain and France but has no distributor for North America. Evidently, according to distrib execs, American interest in the subject is already exhausted. "The irony," Dawtrey emphasizes, "is that this Western indifference to Africa is the very subject of this movie. In a key scene, a British news reporter explains how she cried every day in Bosnia but hasn't shed a tear in Rwanda, because the victims are African and she cannot identify with them. This failure of empathy, the movie suggests, is why the West wouldn't intervene to stop the genocide." (Variety, January 30-February 5, 2006, vol. 401:11, p. 14.)
The Night of Truth. Another fictionalized account of the Rwandan massacre—The Night of Truth—is described as having "Shakespearean resonances" and is the first ever sub-Saharan African feature to be directed by a woman, Fanta Régina Nacro. Philip Kemp writes it up for the September 2005 issue of Sight and Sound:
A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali. Currently a French-Candadian production of Gil Courtemanche's novel A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali is ramping up to be filmed, possibly in Rwanda.
I borrow the title for this entry from Philip Gourevitch's book, We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families, a chilling account of the 1994 genocide and aftermath in Rwanda.
At this time last year Terry George's Hotel Rwanda was nominated for three Oscars. It won none but it certainly inspired me to consider other films in the pipeline or in distribution exploring the genocidal massacre that took place in Africa little over a decade ago. This year Kimberlee Acquaro and Stacy Sherman's documentary short God Sleeps in Rwanda is nominated for an Oscar and I hope it wins! It's a short film focusing not so much on the genocide itself as its aftermath. Female survivors of that tragedy have had to not only reconstruct their personal lives but their communities as well, rebuilding families, roads, homes, taking on professions that until then had been denied women and being afforded that opportunity only because most of the men are dead; Rwanda has been left 70% female. Emancipated by default, the documentary implies promise in the role of women reconstructing Rwanda, even as it targets the strategic murder of Tutsi men and rape of Tutsi women as a genocidal program of racial cleansing. Some of these raped women offer accounts of becoming infected with AIDS or becoming pregnant with unwanted children. The moral choices required of these young women—who have already suffered so much—is sobering even as it is inspiring. Acquaro and Sherman's vigilant determination to maintain focus and to try to summon continuing interest in the plight of Rwanda deserves commendation.
Farai Chideya talks with Kimberlee Acquaro about God Sleeps in Rwanda for NPR. This six-minute audioclip will be of note to those who have already seen the documentary because of its follow-up stories of a couple of the women portrayed, and explains in detail the legislative importance of the war crime trial for rape of the female Minister of Women and Family:
Looking back: In 2001, 100 Days—a low budget film on the subject—was released, but never widely distributed. I've yet to track it down.
Hotel Rwanda. For what it was, and for the palatable information it provided a wide public, Hotel Rwanda succeeded. Performances were sound all around. But this was one of those instances where, knowing how events really went, the fictionalizations proved grating. For example: in the scene where Paul Rusesabagina's wife and family are being evacuated and run into the machete threats, the truth is that her back was actually broken in that encounter. This wouldn't work for the arc of the story, I know, and I understand why genocide must be presented in digestible portions, but, it bothered me for the remainder of the film, eroding at its truthfulness.
The Belgian "randomization" of hutu/tutsi and its horrific consequence was only one of the many bitter facts I sifted from this tragedy. This randomization was admirably and succinctly laid out in the film. I understand that some of these hostilities were indigenous, but how they were exploited through foreign intervention was of necessary focus.
I was pretty much disgusted by Paul Rusesabagina being "summoned" to the White House just so President George Bush could get some pr licks.
Sometimes In April. Haitian director Raoul Peck filmed Sometimes in April. "The monster, says Raoul Peck, doesn't come from nowhere. It is slowly conjured into being, and just about everybody is complicit in its creation. 'You look aside the first time when someone is slapped in public. You don't say anything. The next day, they kill him in front of you and you don't say anything. Then, on the third day, they can come and take your wife and rape your wife. And then it's too late for you to do anything. That is how the monster arrives. It starts with little things."
Geoffrey Macnab interviews Raoul Peck for the Guardian.
Though there were several comments in Macnab's interview of Peck, I was struck by the comment that "the western media in the spring of 1994 was far more preoccupied with the suicide of Nirvana's Kurt Cobain."
Also: "Back in January, Peck held the world premiere of Sometimes in April in a huge stadium in the Rwandan capital of Kigali in front of an audience of thousands of people, many of whom had lost relatives during the massacre. 'I could only imagine making this film if the Rwandans were the first to see it. Whatever the critics say doesn't matter to me. The only people whose judgment I would accept are the Rwandan people.' "
In possibly what is the most cynical, embittered review I have ever read, Jon Jost lambastes Raoul Peck's Sometimes in April for Senses of Cinema.
"For the spectator," he writes, "it lurches this direction and that, a stern slap on the hands here, a soft tear-milking there, a brutal guilt-tripping, a satirical send-up of Western 'human concern' articulated by the henchmen of the White House, all stirred together in an unpalatable mixture which probably fails as politics and certainly fails as art."
Jost continues his tirade: "[T]he spectator, perhaps having been led to a little bit more information than they had had earlier . . . , leaves, soured in spirit, subdued and, if the whole formula works as it should, then will convert this sense of guilt—no, not into meaningful action like refusing to pay their taxes to corrupted governments who did this—but into self-worth. I went and spent two awful hours watching this difficult, unpleasant film about how awful we are (through the prism of people I could relate to: i.e., nice middle-class professionals), and I feel bad, and then I feel good that I felt bad and that certifies my moral worth. And the next time a Rwanda-type thing rises—which is basically all the time, which is right now—the worthy spectator will do what they did the last time around: nada."
And that's just for starters. Jost then takes on the whole notion of "fiction" and the impossibility of cinema to truthfully account for human atrocities. Ultimately, Jost thinks Sometimes in April makes good (H)BO, as in bullshit, as in box office.
Other reviewers have been equally unkind, though none as committed to regaling against Western civilization as we know it. Not only does Jost take on Peck's project, but, it's Berlinale setting, the Eisenman Holocaust Memorial, the Lieberskind Jewish Museum, and any film project that proposes fiction can tell truth more readily than non-fiction, or that purports to some high end when it is nothing more than thinly-veiled "opportunistic careerism, a social climb literally over the piles of bodies of others not so long ago departed."
One part of me applauds Jost for his unflinching approach and wants to say his pessimism is redeemed by its honesty, but another part of me simply pities him for despising the human race so completely. Certainly a distinct read amongst the reviews on this subject matter.
Amy Taubin's Art & Industry column for Film Comment, focusing on Raoul Peck's Sometimes In April, describes how the film's scraping noises unnerved her. She gives a fairly favorable review to the film.
Taubin likewise praises the HBO website for its additional commentary, namely interviews with the director, actor Idris Elba, and HBO representative Sam Martin, plus its Human Rights Watch information.
I finally caught Sometimes in April as part of a free HBO package last month. As Taubin described, it's structured as a Cain and Abel story. And what struck her, struck me. There is a scene where the UN is evacuating all white citizens. The Rwandans are begging to be included in the evacuation and are, of course, denied. The UN trucks load up, head out, and no sooner do they leave than Hutus begin appearing out of everywhere, carrying clubs and machetes, sharpening the blades by scraping them against the street as they approach their victims. I haven't been able to get that image and that sound out of my mind. The massacre of the Catholic school girls was also horrifically portrayed. I was glad to get a glimpse of how the witness hearings were conducted. All in all, I appreciate the HBO production, even though admittedly the score is saccharine and manipulative, undermining the film's credence.
Shake Hands With The Devil. "Lieutenant General Romeo Dallaire can still smell Rwanda. He wrote about this in his 2003 memoir, Shake Hands With the Devil, and it's written on his face too—the unrelenting stench of the 800,000 bodies that rotted in mass graves, filled the streets of Kigali and dammed the Kagera River over 100 bloodstained days in 1994. Dallaire knows the smell because he was there, from August 1993 until September 1994, as the sometimes Head of Mission and full-time Force Commander of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda. What transpired, he would later write, was "a story of betrayal, failure, naivete, hatred, genocide, war, inhumanity and evil"—one which Dallaire didn't merely observe, but in which he played a leading role. He is, as many now know, one of modern history's great and tragic witnesses, not just for what he saw, but for his accurate prediction of it and his ultimate inability to prevent it. He is, simply put, the boy who cried genocide. And it has taken much of the world the better part of a decade to respond to his call."
Peter Raymont filmed a documentary by the same name and
Raymont writes: "Shake Hands With the Devil could hardly be more different in its approach than Terry George's Oscar-nominated Hotel Rwanda, an unrepentantly Hollywoodized portrait of the approximately 1,200 fortunate Rwandans who found refuge within the walls of Kigali's posh Hotel Des Milles Collines. Of course, that story is also true, and the film deserves credit, at least, for not telling its African story through a white interlocutor, a la Richard Attenborough's Cry Freedom. But in its narrowly focused rush to inspire, Hotel Rwanda trivializes its protagonists by turning their plight into a succession of false climaxes and false hopes, a schematic game of will they or won't they make it out alive. In Toronto, where it was possible to see both films virtually back to back, the disparity was particularly telling. Where Hotel Rwanda (notwithstanding Don Cheadle's fine, honest performance) offers us a spoonful of sugar to make the genocide go down, Shake Hands With the Devil fills our nostrils with the same pungent aroma that still haunts Dallaire."
Shooting Dogs. I haven't seen this one yet. BBC Films production cast John Hurt in a David Belton's film about a Catholic priest who struggles to save the lives of Tutsi children. Variety's Adam Dawtrey wrote-up the upcoming March premiere of Shooting Dogs in Kigali, Rwanda. Aside from its "rougher edge" (compared to Hotel Rwanda), Dawtrey nonetheless affirms its "sense of place, a raw authenticity and an unflinching desire to testify to the reality of what happened."
The film, after touring Africa, will be seen in Britain and France but has no distributor for North America. Evidently, according to distrib execs, American interest in the subject is already exhausted. "The irony," Dawtrey emphasizes, "is that this Western indifference to Africa is the very subject of this movie. In a key scene, a British news reporter explains how she cried every day in Bosnia but hasn't shed a tear in Rwanda, because the victims are African and she cannot identify with them. This failure of empathy, the movie suggests, is why the West wouldn't intervene to stop the genocide." (Variety, January 30-February 5, 2006, vol. 401:11, p. 14.)
The Night of Truth. Another fictionalized account of the Rwandan massacre—The Night of Truth—is described as having "Shakespearean resonances" and is the first ever sub-Saharan African feature to be directed by a woman, Fanta Régina Nacro. Philip Kemp writes it up for the September 2005 issue of Sight and Sound:
A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali. Currently a French-Candadian production of Gil Courtemanche's novel A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali is ramping up to be filmed, possibly in Rwanda.
2006 SFIAAFF—Parineeta (The Married Woman)
The second Bengali film offered at this year's San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival—Parineeta (The Married Woman)—is shades away from Kaalpurush (Memories in the Mist). Parineeta, which according to the festival program is the fifth screen adaptation of Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyaya's popular classic, and the directorial debut of Pradeep Sakar, shifts the setting of Chattopadhyaya's novel away from the turn of the century to the Calcutta of the 1960s.
Sarat babu (as Chattopadhyaya is affectionately known) is something of the D.H. Lawrence of Bengal, with whom he shared the gift of "an almost psychic insight into the female heart." As the press notes read, "His ability to see the essential woman, veiled as she was in thick layers of social conditioning, in the confirmatory nods to custom and tradition, and in a cloak of self-deception that females wore out of habit, was novel for its time." The Bengali novelist died in 1938 and is best remembered among cinephiles for Devdas, a book he wrote when he was 17 years old and different versions of which have appeared at least 11 times on the Indian screen.
As Taro Goto capsulizes for the festival program: "Shekhar (heartthrob Saif Ali Khan), son of a wealthy businessman, and Lolita (radiant newcomer Vidya Balan), an orphan living with her uncle's family, are neighbors and childhood friends who fail to recognize the intense love between them until a businessman from London, Girish (Sanjay Dutt), arrives and sparks a love triangle. When Shekhar's nefarious father plots to usurp Lolita's uncle's home and turn it into a hotel, he also engineers a rift between Shekhar and Lolita. Their spectrum of emotions—from torrid passion to wistful longing—are delivered in melodic tunes that recall the old-world charm of yesteryear. A refreshing throwback to the unbridled romanticism of a bygone era, Parineeta is Bollywood cinema at its irresistible, old-fashioned best."
http://www.asianamericanfilmfestival.org/films/film_detail.php?i=88
Here is the official website with trailer (sans English subtitles):
http://www.parineetathefilm.com/
In January 2006 Parineeta held court at various Mumbai award ceremonies: Vidya Balan and director Pradeep Sarkar won best debut at the 2nd Apsara Film and Television Awards. Balan won Most Promising Newcomer (female) at the 12th annual Screen Awards. Sarkar won hottest young filmmaker at the Star Screen Awards, where Swanand Kirkere and Shantanu Moitra were awarded standout lyricist and standout music director trophies, respectively.
The ensemble followed through into February 2006 where Parineeta dominated the technical categories at the 51st Filmfare Awards—winning for Best Sound Design, Art Direction and Choreography. Vidya Balan won the Face of the Year and Best Female Debutant awards; and Shantanu Moitra won the R.D. Burman Award for best music director.
http://www.apunkachoice.com/scoop/bollywood/20060122-2.html
http://www.apunkachoice.com/scoop/bollywood/20060226-0.html
http://www.apunkachoice.com/scoop/bollywood/20060112-2.html
Parineeta also screened in the International Forum of New Cinema at the Berlin Film Festival, where it was written up by Derek Elley for Variety:
http://www.variety.com/index.asp?layout=features2006&content=jump&jump=review&head=berlin&nav=RBerlin&articleid=VE1117929519&cs=1&query=parineeta&display=parineeta
"A most interesting occurrence that attracted everybody's attention," Taran Adarsh reported from the Berlinale, "was that majority of the audience were heard humming the tune from the famous song 'Piyu Bole' after the screening. Watching Germans fall in love with the music says all about how well the music of the film was appreciated at the Festival."
Am I the only one who recognizes Oscar Hammerstein and Harry Ruby's "A Kiss To Build A Dream On" in this score?
http://www.indiafm.com/news/2006/02/24/6741/index.html
Planet Bollywood reviews Parineeta and seem to agree with Variety that the effort to trim the movie's length might have been at the sacrifice of a more successful ending; one not so "overcooked":
http://www.planetbollywood.com/Film/Parineeta/?CID=2
Amardeep Singh reviews Parineeta and moderates some insightful commentary:
http://www.lehigh.edu/~amsp/2005/06/parineeta-star-is-born.html
Dinesh Raheja for rediff.com:
http://in.rediff.com/movies/2005/jun/10pari.htm
Subhash K. Jah for Bollywood.com:
http://www.bollywood.com/archives/2005/06/parineeta_premi_1.html
Sarat babu (as Chattopadhyaya is affectionately known) is something of the D.H. Lawrence of Bengal, with whom he shared the gift of "an almost psychic insight into the female heart." As the press notes read, "His ability to see the essential woman, veiled as she was in thick layers of social conditioning, in the confirmatory nods to custom and tradition, and in a cloak of self-deception that females wore out of habit, was novel for its time." The Bengali novelist died in 1938 and is best remembered among cinephiles for Devdas, a book he wrote when he was 17 years old and different versions of which have appeared at least 11 times on the Indian screen.
As Taro Goto capsulizes for the festival program: "Shekhar (heartthrob Saif Ali Khan), son of a wealthy businessman, and Lolita (radiant newcomer Vidya Balan), an orphan living with her uncle's family, are neighbors and childhood friends who fail to recognize the intense love between them until a businessman from London, Girish (Sanjay Dutt), arrives and sparks a love triangle. When Shekhar's nefarious father plots to usurp Lolita's uncle's home and turn it into a hotel, he also engineers a rift between Shekhar and Lolita. Their spectrum of emotions—from torrid passion to wistful longing—are delivered in melodic tunes that recall the old-world charm of yesteryear. A refreshing throwback to the unbridled romanticism of a bygone era, Parineeta is Bollywood cinema at its irresistible, old-fashioned best."
http://www.asianamericanfilmfestival.org/films/film_detail.php?i=88
Here is the official website with trailer (sans English subtitles):
http://www.parineetathefilm.com/
In January 2006 Parineeta held court at various Mumbai award ceremonies: Vidya Balan and director Pradeep Sarkar won best debut at the 2nd Apsara Film and Television Awards. Balan won Most Promising Newcomer (female) at the 12th annual Screen Awards. Sarkar won hottest young filmmaker at the Star Screen Awards, where Swanand Kirkere and Shantanu Moitra were awarded standout lyricist and standout music director trophies, respectively.
The ensemble followed through into February 2006 where Parineeta dominated the technical categories at the 51st Filmfare Awards—winning for Best Sound Design, Art Direction and Choreography. Vidya Balan won the Face of the Year and Best Female Debutant awards; and Shantanu Moitra won the R.D. Burman Award for best music director.
http://www.apunkachoice.com/scoop/bollywood/20060122-2.html
http://www.apunkachoice.com/scoop/bollywood/20060226-0.html
http://www.apunkachoice.com/scoop/bollywood/20060112-2.html
Parineeta also screened in the International Forum of New Cinema at the Berlin Film Festival, where it was written up by Derek Elley for Variety:
http://www.variety.com/index.asp?layout=features2006&content=jump&jump=review&head=berlin&nav=RBerlin&articleid=VE1117929519&cs=1&query=parineeta&display=parineeta
"A most interesting occurrence that attracted everybody's attention," Taran Adarsh reported from the Berlinale, "was that majority of the audience were heard humming the tune from the famous song 'Piyu Bole' after the screening. Watching Germans fall in love with the music says all about how well the music of the film was appreciated at the Festival."
Am I the only one who recognizes Oscar Hammerstein and Harry Ruby's "A Kiss To Build A Dream On" in this score?
http://www.indiafm.com/news/2006/02/24/6741/index.html
Planet Bollywood reviews Parineeta and seem to agree with Variety that the effort to trim the movie's length might have been at the sacrifice of a more successful ending; one not so "overcooked":
http://www.planetbollywood.com/Film/Parineeta/?CID=2
Amardeep Singh reviews Parineeta and moderates some insightful commentary:
http://www.lehigh.edu/~amsp/2005/06/parineeta-star-is-born.html
Dinesh Raheja for rediff.com:
http://in.rediff.com/movies/2005/jun/10pari.htm
Subhash K. Jah for Bollywood.com:
http://www.bollywood.com/archives/2005/06/parineeta_premi_1.html
The Dark Room—Uphill Both Ways in "Stuff and Things"
A decade or two back (who's counting?) while under the thrall of John Baldessari, I embarked upon a photography project whose working title was "Stuff and Things." The premise, derivative as it may have been, was to photograph storefront signage that included either "& Things" or "& Stuff". So here and there across the great United States I would photograph businesses with such names as "Guns & Stuff" or "Boots & Things". In Oxtotitlan, Chiapas, Mexico I even came across a store called "Quesos y Cosas", and I figured I could never get better than that so the project died a wheezy death in a foreign country with the taste of lime on papaya lingering on the tongue. Nevertheless I still retain a fondness for the project and for John Baldessari.
Recently, reviewing the calendar for the Dark Room's Bad Movie nights, I came across a plug for an upcoming performance of "Stuff and Things" by the sketch comedy group Uphill Both Ways. How could I resist? So after watching the trance films at Oddball Films, I walked over a block or so to the Dark Room to catch "Stuff and Things."
http://www.darkroomsf.com/index.htm
Uphill Both Ways is comprised of sketch comedians Colin Benoit and Dave McKew and technician Chip Clofine. They announced that they have made it as finalists into the International Sketch Comedy Competition upcoming in Los Angeles so it's quite possible Uphill Both Ways might be famous before you know it. As is, they had a packed house of adoring, appreciative fans, of which I have become a member.
The program biographies state that Colin Benoit "is many things. Colin does lots of stuff. He is interested in things, he likes to look at stuff, and when he eats, he stuffs his face with things until he's stuffed. He's been doing this sketch comedy thing since college, where he met up with that Dave guy, who was also doing comedy stuff. Since then, he's done even more stuff, and even a few things. In his spare time, he studies infrared imaging and spectroscopy of luminous infrared galaxies as it applies to computational nuclear astrophysics.
"Dave McKew, the more articulate of the UBW duo, says, 'What Colin said, but also additional stuff.'
"Chip Clofine has been working for Uphill Both Ways doing technical stuff, including sound things and light things, since January 2003. 'Working with these two idiots is absolutely embarrassing,' adds Chip."
Their humor is broad slapstick fueled by charmingly clever ideas and piqued by frequent adlibs and truly bad wigs. Their first sketch—"A Slow Morning At Montgomery Station"—done totally in voiceover on a dark stage, might be a conceit only San Franciscans could appreciate: a hilarious gender squabble between the female voice that announces the trains going towards Daly City and the male voice announcing the trains going towards the East Bay. What commuter hasn't been caught between these two? Laughing from the get-go at this brilliant joke, I sat back to enjoy the next 17 skits. Three of them were films, and that's why I review Uphill Both Ways here on The Evening Class because of their multimedia approach towards comedy. The first film—Rock/Paper/Scissors Peace Conference—can actually be viewed at Uphill Both Ways' website and warrants a peek:
http://uphillbothways.com/what.htm
Among that rich amusing assortment of video samples, I further recommend the "Pope Audition" sketch captured live and ridiculous at The Dark Room.
The second film—Roll Credits—riffs on the idea of a relationship's breakup, with each individual offering their final credits on the screen. The third—Sock Puppet Porn—eroticizes the bare hand and might explain why black socks end up missing at the laundromat.
Uphill Both Ways has one more performance of "Stuff and Things" this coming Friday, March 10, at 10:00 p.m. at The Dark Room, then they go on tour, and won't be back until May. The Evening Class wishes them the best at the International Sketch Comedy Competition in Los Angeles!
Recently, reviewing the calendar for the Dark Room's Bad Movie nights, I came across a plug for an upcoming performance of "Stuff and Things" by the sketch comedy group Uphill Both Ways. How could I resist? So after watching the trance films at Oddball Films, I walked over a block or so to the Dark Room to catch "Stuff and Things."
http://www.darkroomsf.com/index.htm
Uphill Both Ways is comprised of sketch comedians Colin Benoit and Dave McKew and technician Chip Clofine. They announced that they have made it as finalists into the International Sketch Comedy Competition upcoming in Los Angeles so it's quite possible Uphill Both Ways might be famous before you know it. As is, they had a packed house of adoring, appreciative fans, of which I have become a member.
The program biographies state that Colin Benoit "is many things. Colin does lots of stuff. He is interested in things, he likes to look at stuff, and when he eats, he stuffs his face with things until he's stuffed. He's been doing this sketch comedy thing since college, where he met up with that Dave guy, who was also doing comedy stuff. Since then, he's done even more stuff, and even a few things. In his spare time, he studies infrared imaging and spectroscopy of luminous infrared galaxies as it applies to computational nuclear astrophysics.
"Dave McKew, the more articulate of the UBW duo, says, 'What Colin said, but also additional stuff.'
"Chip Clofine has been working for Uphill Both Ways doing technical stuff, including sound things and light things, since January 2003. 'Working with these two idiots is absolutely embarrassing,' adds Chip."
Their humor is broad slapstick fueled by charmingly clever ideas and piqued by frequent adlibs and truly bad wigs. Their first sketch—"A Slow Morning At Montgomery Station"—done totally in voiceover on a dark stage, might be a conceit only San Franciscans could appreciate: a hilarious gender squabble between the female voice that announces the trains going towards Daly City and the male voice announcing the trains going towards the East Bay. What commuter hasn't been caught between these two? Laughing from the get-go at this brilliant joke, I sat back to enjoy the next 17 skits. Three of them were films, and that's why I review Uphill Both Ways here on The Evening Class because of their multimedia approach towards comedy. The first film—Rock/Paper/Scissors Peace Conference—can actually be viewed at Uphill Both Ways' website and warrants a peek:
http://uphillbothways.com/what.htm
Among that rich amusing assortment of video samples, I further recommend the "Pope Audition" sketch captured live and ridiculous at The Dark Room.
The second film—Roll Credits—riffs on the idea of a relationship's breakup, with each individual offering their final credits on the screen. The third—Sock Puppet Porn—eroticizes the bare hand and might explain why black socks end up missing at the laundromat.
Uphill Both Ways has one more performance of "Stuff and Things" this coming Friday, March 10, at 10:00 p.m. at The Dark Room, then they go on tour, and won't be back until May. The Evening Class wishes them the best at the International Sketch Comedy Competition in Los Angeles!
Saturday, 4 March 2006
2006 SVFF Program; 2006 SFIFF Headliners Announced
The 9th Annual Sonoma Valley Film Festival is running April 5-9:
http://www.cinemaepicuria.org/index.htm
Here's a sneak peek at their program line-up; Platinum Premiere passes are still available:
http://www.cinemaepicuria.org/movies/2006MiniGuide.htm
Meanwhile, the San Francisco International Film Festival has announced its headliners:
http://www.sfiff.org/festival/index.html
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/03/04/DDG8CHI4CR1.DTL
Werner Herzog will receive this year's directing award, and Ed Harris gets the Peter J. Owens acting award. Peter Chan's Perhaps Love will open the festival (the first Hong Kong feature to ever do so in the festival's nearly 50-year history) and the closing night film will be Robert Altman's A Prairie Home Companion.
http://www.cinemaepicuria.org/index.htm
Here's a sneak peek at their program line-up; Platinum Premiere passes are still available:
http://www.cinemaepicuria.org/movies/2006MiniGuide.htm
Meanwhile, the San Francisco International Film Festival has announced its headliners:
http://www.sfiff.org/festival/index.html
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/03/04/DDG8CHI4CR1.DTL
Werner Herzog will receive this year's directing award, and Ed Harris gets the Peter J. Owens acting award. Peter Chan's Perhaps Love will open the festival (the first Hong Kong feature to ever do so in the festival's nearly 50-year history) and the closing night film will be Robert Altman's A Prairie Home Companion.
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