Results tagged “indiefest”

SFist interviews Jeff Ross, founder of Indie Fest

Unholy Women, a Japanese horror movie played at the unholy hour of 11:45pm on Saturday night. We brushed our teeth, put cold cream on our face, bundled up in our jammies and trundled over to the Roxie for the last Indie Fest showing of the U.S. premiere of this movie. Unholy Women is comprised of three shorts featuring some scary-ass women. Two of the vignettes employed the usual horror movie tropes; knife wielding ghosts, dead children, mothers who have gone bonkers and the always scary, looking-in-the-mirror-and seeing-something-frightening (besides your own bad hair-do) looking back at you bit--that makes us jump in our seat every damn time.

The two SF Indie Fest films we watched on Friday night at the Victoria Theatre made for a very thought-provoking juxtaposition. The short film was related to us through the countless anecdotes of the many amazing artists, performers and activists who have called Greenwich Village home over the years. There is a second screening of these films again tonight at the Victoria Theatre at 9:30.

We've been doing far too much reading about relevance and contemporary classical music as of late, so we're looking forward to the opportunity to hear it in a nice room with other people. The SF Tape Music Festival going on all weekend at ODC Theater (3153 17th St at Shotwell) features three distinct programs of audio art over a pristine 16-speaker surround sound system. We like the mix of legends (Brian Eno, with a world premiere, Gyorgy Ligeti and James Tenney, both recently deceased) and locals (Cliff Caruthers, George Cremaschi, Mary Clare Brzytwa, and more). (8pm)

This week's giveaway comes from The Finches, a local duo who play endearing folk pop. The songs are refreshingly gentle and Carolyn's voice rings with a true sincerity. See them Saturday afternoon at 2pm when they play a free in-store at Amoeba, or celebrate their CD release at Cafe Du Nord on Wednesday night with The Moore Brothers, Colossal Yes and The Mantles. We're giving away a copy of their brand new CD Human Like A House to one lucky winner. (Contest ends 1/30. Winner will be notified via email.)

How DARE you suggest that independent movies are pretentious, self-satisfied, masturbatory, and heavy-handed? What an accusation. Just glance at the SF Indie Fest's puke-green website, which just struggled to life a few days ago; here's a few of our favorite excerpts from the films' descriptions.

SFist interviews JL Aronson, director of Danielson: A Family Movie

We can't count the number of times we've left a movie announcing "That sucked! This is what they should have done..." And then we'd go on in great detail to our long suffering better half, who had to sit through both the flawed work AND our backseat screenwriting and direction.

We snickered to ourselves when we learned that the movie was selected to be screened at the SF Indie Fest this year. The anime/manga/arcade game phenomenon from Japan featuring import car racing down Japanese mountain roads using drifting techniques (steering though corners while maintaining the highest speed possible) was the be scourge of our existence a couple of summers ago.

SFist reviews the world premiere of "Pirates of the Great Salt Lake" at the Roxie in San Francisco

A review of Twitch, a short playing at the SF Indie Fest.

As we find ourselves gearing up for this year's SF Indie Fest (of which we're a sponsor! whoo yay us!) we find ourselves wondering ... is it enough? All these festivals that SF has -- the Indie Fest, Frameline, the Int'l Fest, Hole in the Head, the recently-concluded Noir Fest -- sure, they're all swell, but is that all there is?

Okay, indie filmmakers. Today's lesson: ECONOMY. In these difficult, troubled times, you absolutely must not allow a single frame of your piece to go to waste. Economize, consolidate, and slash your movie until you're eliminated every single extraneous moment. And if that leaves you with a movie that's only two minutes long, fine -- they'll be two minutes the world will love, instead of thirty that we'll all hate. And in case you need a lesson in What Not To Do, look no further than most of the offerings in Frameline's , a misleadingly-titled collection of gay sci-fi, fantasy, and horror.

divey café in Oakland, that wasn't really what we had planned. Of course, we could have paid more attention to which link we clicked on, but we digress.

The newly single, and recently more vocal, Gavin Newsom can have his pick of the staff to bring as a date to someone's first anniversary party. Congratulations to all the happy couples who got hitched last year in San Francisco -- especially friends of SFist Ed and Norm up in Silverton, Washington. You guys are such a cute couple. Sorry about the damn state Supreme Court.

A funny little thing happened to the movie . Of course, this movie shows just how wide the definition of "indie" is in that while most of the movies being shown at Indie Fest appear to be made by someone with a video camera and a budget of whatever is left on their AmEx card, this one had a big enough budget to get Queen, the Who, and U2 for the soundtrack.