Paul Auster: Sure, metafictionist Auster wrote the screenplays to Smoke, Blue in the Face, and The Brooklyn Follies, but he also penned the phenomenal collection of PoMo detective-fiction tales, The New York Trilogy, his best work to date. Auster appears live with San Francisco International Film Festival Director Graham Leggat after a screening of his latest film, The Inner Life of Martin Frost. Witness him in action at 7 p.m. at the Jewish Community......

-- Madcat Women's International Film Festival -- Frame by Frame: Experimental film festival's night focusing on animation, claymation, and digital shorts all directed by women. Starts at 8:30 p.m. at El Rio, 3158 Mission; $7-$20. -- "Fashion Rewind: Play It. Make It. Wear It.": Art Institute of California-San Francisco students create original fashions with the two themes in mind: recycled materials and music icons. So...we have no idea what to expect. But you will......

The Centerpiece film at the San Francisco International Film Festival was the satirical romantic comedy Delirious....

SFist interviews David and Edie Ichioka, makers of the documetnary "Murch" about film editor Walter Murch, now showing at the San Franicsco International Film festival ...

SFist Wendy covers both South and North Africa with the SFIFF! Who needs Coachella when there’s Oppikoppi, a rock music festival held in South Africa every year? Really, we would have loved to have been at Coachella this weekend, but if you couldn’t be there, the SF International Film Festival was a great place to be instead. Last night, at Bunny Chow, John Barker’s debut feature film, we roadtripped to Oppikoppi along with a......

We'd like to thank SFist Rita for sharing weekly-reading duties! Last week's winner: the SF Weekly. Spare the glare - oops, the fancy new Federal Building's got some lighting and climate control issues. Cover article: The SF International Film Festival keeps on keeping on and tries to attract young audiences with downloadable movies (what beautiful cinematography, well, it's probably beautiful, from what I can infer from the teensy screen of the video iPod ... even......

Tonight's the opening night for the San Francisco International Film Festival! It's two weeks of everything in the world you can think of that's related to film: new indie favorites, an old (remastered) Disney darling, foreign films, documentaries, film-related music concerts, and even panel discussions -- one of which is moderated by film fanatic and former SFist editor Eve Batey! We're totally there (with the big glitter sign that says "I Love You Sanjaya,"......

Theatrical Releases April 13th, 2007 We haven’t seen everything on the roster for this week but we have seen Hot Fuzz and we strongly suggest it. Hot Fuzz does for cop/buddy action films what Pegg, Wright and Frost’s Shaun of the Dead did for zombie films. Fuzz is every bit as researched and diligent as was Shaun. Afterwards you can hit the pub and discuss which you think is funnier. ...

It's been forty-nine years of great cinema for the SF International Film Festival (SFIFF), and starting April 26 through May 10 2007, it'll be fifty! To celebrate their gold anniversary, the SFIFF is not only presenting the always-dazzling film festival itself, but hosting a huge array of events as well: from tributes to Spike Lee (and a screening of When The Levees Broke), and awards to locals George Lucas and Robin Williams, an address about......

We here at SFist are always eager to be entertained, whether in the form of governmental coiffure trends or pop cultural parodies. TradeMark of the Evolution Control Committee moved here from Ohio a few years back and never fails to entertain us with his copyright-skirting mash ups, a genre he pretty much founded back in the 80s. Evolution Control Committee performs tonight at a Creative Commons Salon and Fundraiser at Shine (1337 Mission between......

Even though we are way way past school age, we still get a little melancholy at the close of summer. Fortunately, our friends across the -ist network know that the shenanigans don't need to end just because the big yellow buses are back on the roads. So, grab your sunscreen and your favorite hangover cure, as we take a tour of end of summer fun from -ist cities all over the damn place. SFist Tourist......

If it weren't for our life as an -ist, we're not sure we'd ever leave our apartment. Fortunately, to fully -ist, one must seek out the new, the fresh, and the unknown. Brand new, or just new to us, that's what we're all about this week. Phillyist keeps it fresh by getting a new motto, learning to prioritize, and taking in an experimental indie rock show. Torontoist does their first post in franglais, gets ready......

Saturday: We can't wait to see the precursor to the U.S. National Rubik's Cube Championship at the Exploratorium this Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Come by any time between 11 and 4 to see some of the best cubers in the business show their stuff, which, we assume, does not involve pulling apart the damned thing. You can watch this for free, with Exploratorium admission. Sunday (technically): OK, this event takes place on Saturday at midnight,......

Thursday night the Castro Theatre looked like a giant faculty meeting of humanities professors from some crunchy liberal arts university. But what can you expect from the West Coast premiere of a Robert Altman movie based on an old timey public radio show that originates in Minnesota of all places, don't cha know? A Prairie Home Companion closed the San Francisco International Film Festival Thursday night to a sell-out crowd. Despite the fact that......

While mainstream America's attention has been focused on TomKat's recent offspring and Brangelina's pending progeny, we joined San Francisco's arthouse hipster crowd at the Kabuki late Wednesday night for the local unveiling of Drawing Restraint 9, the creative brainchild of Matthew "most important American artist of his generation" Barney and the inimitable Björk. It was screened as part of the SF International Film Festival in collaboration with SFMoMA, which mounts a major solo exhibition......

The opening night screening of a film festival is like having sex with a celebrity -- the experience itself is never that impressive, but it makes for a fun memory and it's nice to be able to say that you did it. Such was our feeling at last night's opening of the San Francisco International Film Festival, which kicked off with the North American premiere of Perhaps Love. The marathon began with San Francisco......

It would have been hard to miss the fact that the San Francisco International Film Festival kicks off tonight, as their unstoppable PR machine has been busily garnering placement in every media outlet in town. Even your still occasionally shunned (believe it!) SFist is in on the fun, as we have 5 -- count them -- 5 staffers with all-access passes to the festival, eager to provide our readers with daily coverage of the......

With January's merger between AMC and Lowes theatres, the company they became, AMC Entertainment Inc, is required by U.S. Department of Justice and the attorneys general of California to sell the Kabuki and 1000 Van Ness theatres. While the Van Ness property remains available, today the long-rumored purchase of the Kabuki by Robert Redford's Sundance Cinemas was officially announced. Expected to become "a state-of-the-art independent movie house", Sundance plans on beginning renovations to the......

We've got quite a diversity of recommendations this week - from the politically conscious, to the "sick and twisted", to the, well, sick and twisted and Russian. Check it out! First on our list is the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival, which runs February 19- 26 at the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley and March 10, 16, 23, 30 at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. This year the festival......

We hate to admit it, but all this modern mania for Brokeback Mountain has simply passed us by. At this point, we're dreading the inevitable trip to the Embarcadero to watch the damn thing, borne solely out of our sense of obligation to stay on the cutting edge of anything related to buggery. (And even that motivation has waned, now that the movie's being advertised as a heterosexual love story.) Honestly, it's only barely......

We told you once, and we'll tell you again: you have less than two weeks to submit an entry to the 49th San Francisco International Film Festival, (which will run April 20 to May 4, 2006). The work can be documentary, narrative or experimental, animated or live action, and can be of any length. The final deadline for submissions is Friday, December 9. To make things interesting, the festival has two cash award categories......

To live in the Bay Area is (frequently) to be able to count more than one aspiring filmmaker in one's circle of acquaintance. The next time you're at some dinner party/Zeitgeist get-together/orgy at the Power Exchange and someone starts blabbing on about their unfulfilled creative vision, remind them of the opportunities available to them to get said vision out there to the masses. For example, the 2006 San Francisco Women's Film Festival is presently......

The Madcat Women's International Film Festival continued last Wednesday night at El Rio with intermittantly interesting animated shorts in Amok-imation. Highlights: "Give AIDS the Freeze," a 1950s social hygiene film, repurposed with a scratchy overlay of messages about AIDS. Footage of a stodgy scientist entombed in an animated condom with the message "Insist that he wear one" -- cute and clever. Also good: "Small & Deep, Love Stories." High-falutin' title, but nevertheless humble and......

Hello, Mr. Fancy Pants! The San Francisco International Film Festival has chosen Graham Leggat to be their new Executive Director (replacing Roxanne Messina Captor). We just want to burn our resume after looking at his, which includes the Film Society of Lincoln Center, the New York Film Festival, and Film Comment magazine. It'll be interesting to see what he brings to the 49th Festival (April 2006 - May 4, 2006), given the mixed response......

SFist interviews Lila Yomtoob...

Wow, we almost fell like real film writers when we realize that we've actually seen some of the movies we're recommending this week. First, there's Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus, which opens at the Balboa tonight. SFist Krissy reviewed this "creative non fiction" film which attempt to answer the question "Why does so much music and writing come out of the south?" She dug it and we think you will too. If you come......

If the last few weekends have been movie famine, this weekend is movie feast. So many richly diverse options this weekend that you have no real reason to go out in the horrible sunlight until Monday morning. We're so happy that Crónicas is finally opening in the Bay Area, at the Lumiere. We saw this Ecuadorian thriller when it premiered at the San Francisco International Film Festival, and were bowled over by its dark......

We're not going to insult your intelligence by implying that you might not have heard that Revenge of the Sith opened this weekend, or that you aren't already going to see something at the final weekend of The San Francisco Documentary Film Festival. So, with those "givens" out of the way, what else is out there? In one of those blue moon type events, we agree with Mick LaSalle that Layer Cake is an......

As we mentioned, SFist will be Docing around the clock at the fourth San Francisco Documentary Film Festival. There are so many fascinating films playing that you really owe it to yourself to catch a couple this week or next. If you're looking for a more abbreviated festival, The Bridge plays host to the 2nd Annual Pleiades International Film Festival. Benefitting the Peninsula Humane Society & SPCA, the festival of international short films runs......

Wow. After the splendor that was the San Francisco International Film Festival, we're just bushed. Still, we'll forge ahead and force ourselves to see some movies this weekend, we guess. The things we do! The Sex Worker Arts Festival winds down this weekend with several film screenings at The Roxie Saturday and Sunday. Support your local sex workers and check out some of this provocative (both intellectually and erotically) cinema.......