This year's SF DocFest opened with Mana: Beyond Belief (the film's site is here), with our own SFist Rita in attendance. After that crazy-linky last sentence, how can you not want to win passes to this Friday's opening night of Mana at the Roxie? We'll even let you pick the screening time! Enter below to win a pass for two to Mana: Beyond Belief at the Roxie this Friday, July 8. If you win,......

Every year it rules -- the Scripps Howard spelling bee. Is it that whiff of old world middle school mores? Is it the adorable freaked out word-geek kids, too young and frightened to disguise their feelings on stage? "Can I get a definition, please?" The rad ESPN "Under Pressure" ad? The snotty-voiced lady commentator? ("It's the schwa -- it gets you every time.") Naw. It's the bell! Today was the 78th Spelling Bee championship, broadcast live on ESPN, and dang it if we didn't watch the whole darn thing. Love it. Love it every year. Your obligatory Northern California angle? Aliya Deri, an 8th grade speller from Pleasanton who was sponsored by the Chron came in second (went out on "trouvaille" in the 19th round, like a champ). And the Contra Costa Times' sponsoree, home-schooled Evan O'Dorney from Danville, made it to the eighth round (going out on "athyriosis"). Our other favorite thing about the spelling bee? News articles laboriously attempting to use the championship word in the title. And yes, we love Spellbound too (which we saw first at the 2002 SF DocFest). Just for the marimba music alone! ...

This was our first time at the Li'l Roxie, and we hope it won't be our last! (Please, please, say the rumors aren't true!) We squeezed past the teeny-tiny hallway and into a long, narrow, but spacious, comfy, and well-proportioned closet, and settled into our squeaky chair (we apologize to all our neighbors) for 90 minutes of SF DocFest electoral rage. We also picked up a ballot on our way in -- before you ask, it was an IndieFest optical scan, where choices (or "ratings") are marked with a circle. Call It Democracy, by Matt Kohn, is an exploration of the problem of electioneering in the 21st century -- from the oddities of the electoral college to Supreme Court shenanigans to missing electronic ballots to Colorado's electoral-vote splitting movement in 2004. Okay, we're not too liberaler-than-thou to admit it -- electoral reform is really not the most interesting topic in the world to us. So it's with a great deal of relief that we can report that this movie is not like one of those long DailyKos tinhat-wearing posts that you skip, or a long filmstrip with blue states and red states, or anything like that. The clips are interesting! The movie moves at a brisk pace! We didn't find ourselves trying to gouge our eyes out with a stick! That's good, right? Cameos by stapler-throwers John Bolton and Kevin Shelley, after the jump. ...

All the culture jammers said hey (haaaa-yeeee) on Friday night at the Women's Building, for the first SF DocFest screening of Pop-aganda: The Art and Crimes of Ron English by Pedro Carvala, and the film short Fridge by Brian Perkins and friend of SFist Jason Blalock. Pop-aganda is a profile of the artist Ron English, who's made a specialty of 1) guerrilla billboards and 2) paintings about the commodification of pop culture, and Fridge is about magnetic poetry in San Francisco. Like the films' introducer said, "these films are -- well, I don't want to say pranky....", to a resounding "whoo!!!" in the crowd. What happens when you take a refrigerator into the streets of San Francisco, and ladies with Mickey Mouse boobies, after the jump. Pop-Aganda and Fridge play again on May 21 at 10 p.m. Art by Ron English...

It was the usual scene outside the Roxie during a film fest -- odd groups of people clumped in odd places on the sidewalk, frantic-looking pedestrians just trying to get into Truly Med, people with official badges and clipboards walking around -- is it the love of indie film that drives them? What makes people act so oddly around things they love? Well, we thought you'd never ask! Kicking off the 2005 SF DocFest is Mana: Beyond Belief, an experimental documentary exploring the power of material things to inspire belief. Or, in other words: fetish objects. Not necessarily sexual objects (though there's a funny scene with a man wearing a codpiece), but tangible things that have power over people -- like Elvis. Or the shroud of Turin. Or funeral rituals in Asia. Or tuna fish in Japan. Mana is defined as "the power that exists in things" -- Check out the filmmakers' website for more information. Picture from Mana: Beyond Belief, (c) Strange Attractions, Inc. and ADR Productions. Camera: Van Carlson. Thanks to Chris from Larson Productions! Sorry we were so late!...

Sfist wants to encourage all of you Bay Area folks to get out there and actually use your degrees in film for something other than the local pub quiz...