Results tagged “sffilmsociety”

The always-reliable and smartly-snapping Drew Altizer stopped by the SF Film Society's red carpet awards ceremony on Saturday and passes along these views of the scene!

Total number of people pictured in this week's Swells society column: 100. (It's all pictures and captions this week, with no dishy Catherine Bigelow text, we're sorry to report.)

We're begging for your help here, readers -- begging! Can someone with a digital camera PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE go to this event and send us your pictures of Chris Daly getting thrown into a swimming pool? We'll throw in some SFist swag if you do! We'd go ourselves, but admission is $125 (and we don't have a digital camera anyways).

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?

We can't explain it any better than SF Film Society Exec Direc Graham Leggat put it to us: "We're interested in creating a public/private partnership between the city, corporations, foundations, media arts organizations, the school districts, and other interested parties, to install a network of digital projectors in select high school auditoriums around the city. You would then use broadband or satellite or hard drives to supply independent content... non-Hollywood content, with lesson plans and curriculum support, and appearances by filmmakers."

Okay, this next component of the SF Film Society's new SF360 program is a bit low-concept, but you're a smart cookie so you should pick it up pretty quick. Listen: "We want to explore the way new platforms help us bring new work to new audiences," Graham Leggat, Exec Direc of the SFFS told us in an interview. So to that end, they're going to select one film, then work with distribution partners like the Iron Weed film club to get that movie out in front of as many people as possible. "And then we'll have materials and organizational tools [for] clubs and discussions," Graham went on. "We'll get local celebrity chefs to creature recipies and add social value to the social aspect of the evening. ... And then at 8 on Wednesday night, the fireworks will go off and folks will turn on their DVD." This is all getting a bit highbrow for us -- "The city is in fact an expanded theater, where everybody focusses on one film at one time and discussing it, if they want to, online. So you have a citywide event that's distributed and yet concentrated. New platforms, new work, new social formations, new audiences, new experiences."

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We saw the saddest obituary last week in the Chron, for the death of Sarah Tucker, a 26-year-old Mission resident who was killed in a hit-and-run bicycle accident on Polk and Geary Street on Thursday January 12. Witnesses reported seeing a black Honda CRV run a yellow light, and heard Tucker loudly shout "Hey!" before she was struck. The driver, reported to be an African-American man in his 40s, then turned off his headlights to hinder the reading of his license plate and drove away. Tucker, who was wearing her helmet, suffered severe head injuries and died shortly afterwards. Tucker, as she was known, was returning home from the Tango, Tango dance party when she was killed. Tucker was a fundraiser for the Cal Academy of Sciences by day and a filmmaker/DJ at night, volunteering for the SF Film Society, screening movies for the SF Int'l Film Fest, and running the Pretty Young Thing dance party at the Make-Out Room, among many other activities. As the obit says, "Sarah loved pugs, soul music, dancing, acronyms, sticky buns, fashion and aesthetics." If you see a black Honda CR-V with a large dent in its side on the passenger door, call SFPD Inspector Pat Tobin of the hit-and-run division at (415) 553-1641 or the confidential tip line (415) 575-4444. There's a $10,000 reward for information leading to an arrest. Please, folks, ride and drive safely out there. You probably love pugs and sticky buns too.

Well, we enjoyed being all coy and evasive for a while, but now that the SF Film Society has officially announced their SF360 campaign, we're free to reveal to you all the juicy details, like a new broadbanded network of digital projectors that they're installing around the city; or a brand new film festial-convention-market for animation; or their new initiative to, as Executive Director Graham Leggat put it, turn all of SF into an "exploded theater." Neat!

We have to admit, we weren't buying it two weeks ago when the San Francisco Film Society invited us to a pre-Sundance rally at the posh Adagio Hotel. The haute couture, the DJ, the tiny appetizers and free beer -- "surely," we thought, "this must be nothing more than an excuse to have one of those bourgeois parties we're always protesting alongside our Communist friends." But no! No! Just like when we famously predicted that Nixon would ride his troubles out, back in the 70s when SFist was an underground Russian-language zine, we were wrong. Man oh man, the SF Film Society is up to some really cool stuff, you betcha, and we can't wait to tell you what it is. But we promised them we'd wait until they made an official announcement next week. So until then, here's a hint: their announcement does not involve a 32-pound box of hair. OR DOES IT????????