We love documentaries -- they're like reality TV, with a popcorn stand! So you know we're totally psyched for SF Indiefest's sixth annual Docfest, which starts up tomorrow and goes through next week! Friday's big opening movie is "What Would Jesus Buy?", about the much-beloved street activist Reverend Billy and his Church Of Stop Shopping. Rev. Billy will be there in person with his message against overconsumption -- which we're sure is well worth spending......

Last week's winner, the SF Weekly: Someone's angry with the Bouncer. Local progressive Adam Werbach is a Walmart sellout. Why won't anyone endorse the mayor? Cover article: the back story about the Haight neighborhood activist killed in an S/M session gone wrong. These drawings illustrating the piece are pretty rad, though (see left) -- did Matt Smith do 'em? A Hank Williams Birthday Karaoke Sing-Off???? There's a tear in our beer too! The anti-war Berkeley......

"Tales Of Mere Existence" By Levni R. Yilmaz Esq Email Lev. Buy a Comic/DVD set from Lev! http://www.ingredientx.com/buy/main.htm For more comics, animations and correspondence, kindly visit http://www.ingredientx.com If you gravitate towards isolated, obsessive nerd habits like I do, also consider a visit to: http://www.myspace.com/tales_of_mere_existence HEY!!! I'm going to be premiering a new, very different "Tales" movie at the SF Underground Film Fest on Sept 1st at the Bridge Theatre. The show will be hosted......

Lev is going to be premiering a new, very different "Tales" movie at the SF Underground Film Fest on Sept 1st at the Bridge Theatre. The show will be hosted by the Great Peaches Christ. This is almost always my fave show of the year. Details here: http://www.peacheschrist.com/underground.html......

HEY!!! I'm going to be premiering a new, very different "Tales" movie at the SF Underground Film Fest on Sept 1st at the Bridge Theatre. The show will be hosted by the Great Peaches Christ. This is almost always my fave show of the year. Details here: http://www.peacheschrist.com/underground.html "Tales Of Mere Existence" By Levni R. Yilmaz Esq Email Lev. Buy a Comic/DVD set from Lev! http://www.ingredientx.com/buy/main.htm For more comics, animations and correspondence, kindly visit......

Someone from the same security company outside the Hitler satire movie we saw the day before was outside the Castro for last night's SF Jewish Film Fest movie too, which was Hothouse, a Sundance award-winning documentary about Palestinians incarcerated in Israel for terrorist crimes. It was a stark reminder of the human cost of the subject of the movie (and we are extremely grateful that we live in a place where one security guard is......

Question: Is the world ready for a German-Jewish black comedy mercilessly satirizing Adolf Hitler? At yesterday night's screening of My Fuhrer (Mein Fuhrer -- Die wirklich wahrste Wahrheit uber Adolf Hilter) at the SF Jewish Film Fest, the mood of wicked glee was somewhat sobered by the person that we abruptly realized was security standing in front of the theater. (Nothing happened, though, as far as we know.) The premise of the movie is that......

SFist Wendy skips Harry Potter for the SF Jewish Film Fest! Who woulda thought. . . . we weren’t the only ones not completely immersed in isolation with the final Harry Potter book this weekend... although we did see a couple books neatly tucked under the seats at the Castro Theater on Saturday at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival. If you weren’t there, well, then you missed out on a couple of good romantic......

Yay! SFist Mihi's back on the scene, covering the opening night festivities for the SF Jewish Film Fest! The San Francisco Jewish Film Festival (SFJFF) is the first and only Jewish film festival in the world. At least that's what the President of the SFJFF said at the Castro Theatre last night when he introduced the opening night movie, Sweet Mud. This is the kind of thing that makes us so proud to live here.......

Isn't it awesome to live in this city? It's a beautiful summer, all our political news is extremely entertaining, and we have tons of amazing film festivals all the freaking time! So many, in fact, that you've got not one but TWO to pick from this weekend! At the Castro this weekend, the organists are warming up -- it's time for the Silent Movie Festival. This year's lineup features a series of Hal Roach comedies,......

--CounterPULSE is hosting Paint Out!, a breast cancer fundraiser with comedians, slam poetry, and women getting their chests painted ($50 mininum donation to get painted). 3:30-7:30, $25, 1310 Mission St. (x 9th). --It's the last day of the Queer Women of Color Film Fest at the Brava Theater (2781 24th St., x York). Today's program: Short documentary showcase at 3 p.m. and love stories at 7 p.m. Free. --Bzzzzzzzz -- it's also the last......

Monday nights are the Contemporary Jazz Orchestra Big Band nights at North Beach mainstay Jazz at Pearl's. They play the classic jazz orchestra works (Ellington, Mingus) and also some hard bop. Two shows (one at 8, one at 10), $15 + 2-drink minimum, 256 Columbus (x Pacific). Other events: --Salsa and swing dance lessons at Julie's Supper Club, with burlesque performers on the hour. 8-11 p.m., $6 after 8 p.m. (half hour lesson), $10 by......

Droll NPR commentator (who was previously fired for cursing) Sandra Tsing Loh brings her one-woman show, "Mother On Fire," to the Women's Building tonight! For a 9 night run! The show's about her travails trying to find an appropriate school for her kindergarten age daughter in the California school system and ran for 7 months in LA. Here's the one-liner. "I looked at public schools, private schools, parochial schools -- even Baptist school. It turns......

After having watched Key of G and Tierney Gearon: The Mother Project on the very fancy SF Int'l Film Fest screener DVD machines this afternoon, we're thinking the theme of the afternoon was family obligations. (This is as good a reminder as any to get a Mother's Day present for next week, folks!) Key of G, a local film, is a portrait of a 22-year-old Mission resident named Gannet with a very rare form......

We knew very little about the SF Int'l Film Fest's Private Fears in Public Places but were intrigued by the title. Turns out the play is based on an English play by the same name (which explains the British subtitles), and the French movie is actually called “Coeurs” or “Hearts,” which is definitely not as good of a title. The film turned out to be almost soap-operish with its sad music and shots of......

Okay, we're not going to lie. When we read the description of the Iranian movie A Few Days Later... in the SF Int'l Film Fest guide as "a gorgeous minimalist portrait of a woman crushed by indecision," it made us a little nervous. We tend to like our movies maximalist and chatty! More singing and dancing mermaids, please! But we love the stark look of Iranian films (the "gorgeous" part) and the movie was......

The SF Int'l Film Festival isn't just about great national and international movies -- they've got music events, gala events, talks about the state of cinema, an online presence through SF360.com, and -- what we stopped by to see this afternoon -- a series of panels about the state of cinema today. Today's panel was about the state of the film scene in San Francisco, and included basically every single movie-related constituency group in......

We hope we've worked you into a frenzy with all these free passes to SF Int'l Film Fest movies this weekend! Here's our last set -- after this, you're on your own to catch all the fantastic films they're screening from now until May 10. (Don't forget to check back at SFist for our reviews of the movies too.) Want to check out some film this Sunday afternoon? The Unforeseen, a documentary set in one......

We've been slightly afraid of Tribe 8 lead singer Lynn Breedlove ever since she crashed into us in a riotgrrl mosh pit, causing us moderate injury -- but that shouldn't stop you from checking out her short film "Godspeed," based on her book about speed freak bike messengers, which is screening next Wednesday, April 11, as part of the Third Annual SF Women's Film Festival! The Women's Film Fest has put together an eclectic group......

SFist Sara S's got the jujubes! Please don’t mistake us for fans of human suffering but it’s high time a film was made to tell the uninformed public about the genocide in Rwanda. Beyond the Gates, at the Embarcadero, is a smart, engaging, often (rightly) painful view of the conflict from the view of a Catholic training college manned by John Hurt and Hugh Dancy. It’s a tearjerker but it’s really edifying to see how......

SFist Wendy makes it a weekend of romance at the SF Asian-Am Film Fest! This was a good weekend, thanks in large part to the Asian-American film festival. We spent part of the past two days at the Castro checking out a couple of remarkably different films: Lou Ye’s Summer Palace, and former SFIAAFF director Paul Mayeda Berges’ Mistress of Spices, a Bollywoodesque adaptation of Chitra Divakaruni’s novel, featuring the ever-stunning Aishwarya Rai, aka......

Preview for the movie Baby, which premiered last night at the SF Int'l Asian-Am Film Fest. (Movie's not rated but this clip probably should be rated R for violence.) The clip is a pretty good example of what the movie's like (though the movie is better lit). If you describe a movie as "the Asian American Boyz N The Hood," you're going to get a lot of attention. This screening of Baby was totally......

Traffic was terrible on our way to the Asian-Am Film Fest due to the St. Patrick's Day parade -- either Chris Daly's running for District 6 again or they're giving out green beads for celebrants. We were on our way to see The Cats of Mirkitani, or, as we've been calling it all week, "Ross Mirkarimi's cats." (N.B.: Ross Mirkarimi is not Japanese.) What started out as a project about the drawings of homeless SoHo......

SFist Sara S. on this weekend's movie offerings. She tells us "There is nothing good coming out in mainstream movies this weekend," so it's all the little microcinemas around town this week! C'mon, what about Sandra Bullock in "Premonition"? Okay, Sara, point taken. At the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts on Wednesday the 21st, the Film Arts Foundation is presenting a documentary on twenty years of the SF Graffiti scene, called Piece by Piece.......

It's almost Noise Pop time in San Francisco again! While SFist (and Bagel Radio DJ!) Krissy keeps you covered on the nonstop jingle-jangle clang-clang of the local indie rock scene, don't forget that NoisePop always presents an excellent array of music-related film as well. This year's Noise Pop Film Fest runs from Feb. 28 through March 4, and is featuring movies like: a documentary about 924 Gilman, a Sonic Youth concert video shot by concertgoers,......

Yes, yes, we usually start with last week's winner, but we're so excited about getting voted best local blog by the Guardian that we're dispensing with convention and starting off with them. Boo yah! Wanna know the best thing about being best local blog? Our listing is on the same page as Gavin Newsom's, for "best local politician," and the rabidly non-Newsom SFBG does such a tooth-grindingly good job making lemonade out of lemons for......

Last week's winner, the East Bay Express. The man who invented the suction-cup Garfield was defrauded by a friend. A civilly-disobedient city of Walnut Creek refuses to sign a California state loyalty oath, and can't get paid. Cover article: Michael Savage. The title "Savage Hate" is pretty good. Cat show this weekend. SF Jewish Film Fest. I Like Eating satisfies as always, at the second brewpub in California, and the new food critic checks out......

The crowd at the Kabuki Theater on Friday night had more hip-hoppers than usual, as SF Int'l Asian-American Film Fest attendees eagerly lined up three-deep for the sold-out showing of No Sleep Til Shanghai, a documentary following Chinese-American rapper Jin Au-Yeung's 2-week 8-city tour of Asia. The excitement reached a fever pitch in the pre-screening intros, with eager Asian-American MCs shouting out "Holla!" as Jin himself called in on the producer's cell phone to say hi. "There's probably a lot of Asians there, right? So TURN OFF YOUR CAMCORDERS!" Best part: everyone laughed.... but no one actually turned their camcorder off. Jin is a Queens-based rapper who stormed into battle dominance on 106th and Park with his quick rhymes and sharp racial analysis -- he's often been called the Asian Eminem, though to Jin's credit, he seems profoundly uncomfortable with that title. Jin was then signed to the Ruff Ryders label, and released his first album, "The Rest Is History" in 2004. In support of that album, he went on an 8-city 2 week tour of Asia, camera crew in tow. It was his first time in Asia (other than Hong Kong). After the jump, Jin meets some lovely Asian ladies, freestyles in Cantonese and Mandarin, and does an awful lot of interviews. Picture from No Sleep Til Shanghai...

In case of Wednesday, this car will be unoccupied. Tonight! The group NetSquared is holding its monthly get-together at Varnish Art Gallery at 77 Natoma Street (at 2nd). NetSquared's mission is effecting social change through the Internet, and tonight's topic is how blogs can save the world (really!). 6-8 p.m., free admission, RSVP required. Thursday: We are so psyched for the Asian-American Film Fest this year! We're (seriously) thinking about taking the whole week of March 16-23 off from work! Help kick off the festivities at their launch party, running from 9-12 at 111 Minna. Music from DJ AJAX from NRG 92.7 and they'll be showing film clips. Oooh, show something from Chinese Restaurants!! $5 admission, free for Center for Asian-American Media members. and Friday: The San Francisco Chamber Orchestra is dedicated to free performances of chamber music for the public. Tonight's theme: "Valentines to a Cello." Acclaimed cellist Matt Haimovitz will be performing an unaccompanied Bach suite (you know, the famous ones, like Yo-Yo Ma played on the West Wing) and one of Schoenberg's last tonal pieces before he went all serialist screeek-schronk-schreek on us. Free! ...

We're getting ready for Valentine's Day! Take your pick: sex parties, the South Bay, the Dating Game, theater, or the gift that keeps on giving, fennel. We're also in full-fledged festival mode: IndieFest, the Korean-American Film Fest (check out our interview with Korean auteur Kang Je-gyu -- thanks, contributor Mihi!), WonderCon. Lots and lots and lots and lots of movie reviews! And we hope you had a nice time at our two Dalva parties -- it's always great to see you. Welcome to our new column, Whines And Dines, which covers SF from the dog's eye view. SFist Jeremy is proud to announce the winner of our online 7x7 poll, "I will take and maybe read a free 7x7" at 30%. "Earth First should punish 7x7 for wasting trees" came in third, at 27%. It was a week of police brutality by the Chron, and Chron brutality by the police. Cab fares and real estate are both going up -- and lumber is falling down. Plus -- news flash! SF hates Bush. (We are loving the "rename Bush Street" movement a well-meaning someone has launched.) Plus -- Mavericks ruled. ...