Two-Week SF International Film Festival Kicks Off At Castro
SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) – The annual San Francisco International Film Festival opens its 59th season Thursday with new venues and 173 films, including a full range of documentaries and narrative features, short films, tributes, awards, live performances, and of course, actor and filmmaker attendees.
This year's festival will be centered at Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, located in the newly furbished New Mission Theater.
The five-screen theater is within easy walking distance of other screening venues, including the Roxie and Victoria, as well as the venerable Castro Theatre. Other screenings and events will be held at the UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA) in Berkeley.
This year's opening film is "Love and Friendship," a Whit Stillman social comedy based on a Jane Austen novel but with a decidedly contemporary worldview that screens at the Castro at 7 p.m. Thursday night.
The screening will be followed by an opening night party at Public Works in the Mission District.
Also based on a novel -- this time by Philip Roth -- the centerpiece film, "Indignation" by James Schamus, is set in the early 1950s, when a 19-year-old working class Jewish student from New Jersey confronts an entirely different universe at a small, conservative Midwestern college.
"The Bandit," this year's closing film by Bay Area filmmaker Jesse Moss, documents the making of the 1977 action comedy, "Smokey and the Bandit" and showcases the film's actor Burt Reynolds and its director Hal Needham.
The Kanbar Award for excellence in storytelling will be given this year to screenwriter/director Tom McCarthy for the Oscar-winning "Spotlight."
The award will be presented on April 25; the following night, McCarthy will be honored at BAMPFA, where he will be interviewed onstage and his 2003 film "The Station Agent" will be screened, along with clips from his career.
Mira Nair, groundbreaking director of "Monsoon Wedding" and the upcoming "Queen of Katwe" is the recipient of this year's Irving M. Levin Directorial Award.
The Persistence of Vision Award will be awarded this year to Aardman Animations, whose co-founder, Peter Lord, will be at the Castro on May 1, where some of Aardman's greatest hits, including the Wallace and Grommet "Wrong Trousers," will be screened.
On April 30, Pulitzer Prize-winning film critic Wesley Morris will deliver the State of Cinema address at the Victoria Theatre. Now a critic-at-large for the New York Times, Morris is recognized for his insights into cinema in the larger cultural context.
The two-week festival concludes on May 5. For more information and to purchase tickets, visit the San Francisco International Film Festival website.
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