NEWS/
SCOOP DU JOUR
MONDAY 28 APRIL
Video Scoop
The video edition of Scoop du Jour features interviews with Touching Home’s writers/directors/actors Logan and Noah Miller and their star Ed Harris, as well as a glimpse inside the Midnight Awards.
Who’s in Town?
Arriving today are directors Dikayl Rimmasch (Cachao: Uno Más) and Geoffrey Smith (The English Surgeon); actor Andy Gillet (The Romance of Astrea and Celadon); and Golden Gate Persistence of Vision Award recipient Errol Morris (Standard Operating Procedure).
Home Run
No seat was left vacant at the world premiere of Logan and Noah Miller’s personal and powerful directorial and acting debut, Touching Home. In the Q&A afterward, initial unease at being in the spotlight gave way to extravagant gestures and role-play as the brothers began to unwind. The film, a family drama, explores their attempt to make it into major league baseball as well as their relationship with their homeless father (portrayed by veteran actor Ed Harris, who was also on hand for the screening). “There was lots of love and honesty in the film,” Harris said, “and I was glad to be a part of it.” In thanking Harris, Logan said the film “gave us the opportunity to say a lot of things we didn’t say [before].” Noah agreed they are forever grateful to Harris for allowing them to say goodbye to their dad. The brothers then recounted how they got the actor interested in the project during Harris’s 2006 SFIFF tribute. Trying to get backstage, they posed as “local independent filmmakers” with an appointment. Just as their ruse was about to be discovered, Harris walked over. They led him to a back alley and, setting their laptop on a garbage can, showed him footage they had shot. Harris agreed to read their script. The brothers admitted their inexperience as filmmakers carried its share of fears and doubts. “I think the best moment was when Harris said to us, I am here to help you realize your dream, so if there is anything that I am doing that you don’t like, just tell me,” Noah said. What’s not to like? Touching Home screens again tomorrow at 12:30. –SS
The French Perspective
Friday night, the Pacific Film Archive played host to two French filmmakers presenting very different films. First-time filmmaker Jean-Bernard Marlin’s short, Thick Skinned, tells the story of an adolescent retreating into violence, while SFIFF veteran Philippe Faucon’s Two Ladies examines Jewish-Muslim relations in France through a friendship that emerges between two Algerian women. Both films were made with nonprofessional actors. Marlin’s cast came from Corsica; he found his star, who portrays an alternately menacing and sensitive kid, at a school on the island. “His nickname was Jason—a reference to the movie Halloween,” Marlin recalls. “We asked him, who is your idol? He said, Tony Montana [from Scarface]. This was exactly true of the character as he had been written in the film.” The coincidence seemed too serendipitous to deny, and the youngster got the role. Faucon, who cowrote his script with his wife, knew from the start he would be casting nonprofessionals. “In general, these characters are not well represented in French cinema, and there are no professional actors to play them.” And why was he, a white Frenchman, compelled to write a story about elderly women with clashing cultural backgrounds? Because, he says, “I live next to these characters. I’m married to a woman from Algeria and she lives in these two communities at the same time. These immigrant women, they had to learn a new language, raise children in a new country. They’ve been in this country for a long time, and only now are their stories being told.” These two films screen together again today at 2:45 at the Kabuki. –JP
Journey of the Journals
Andrea Kreuzhage’s 1000 Journals traces how 1,000 blank journals, sent out into the world by a San Francisco artist, fill up with writing, art and scraps of memories. Kreuzhage, who spoke during a lively Q&A after Saturday’s screening along with artist and subject Someguy, said she was glad to be back in the city where the journey of the journals began. Most of the audience were online supporters of the project through the 1000 Journals Web site, MySpace and Facebook. It was by following the project’s progress online that Kreuzhage learned one of the journals had come back. “The interesting [point] to me was . . . 999 didn’t,” she said. She began researching, writing and fantasizing about the missing journals, wanting to tell their story through film. Some sleuthing later, one journal surfaced five miles from her home. Recalling the happy coincidence, she said, “I wrote to the artist and asked if I could visit her and take a look at the journal. There I met her husband who later composed the score for the film.” Only six journals have made it back to Someguy so far. On the possibility of gallery showings the artist affirmed, “I want people to have access to them. If they end up on my coffee table that would be kind of boring.” For now, audiences have the documentary as well as excerpts collected in the Chronicle Book, The 1000 Journals Project. There’s also a 1001 Journals Web site for those game to start their own. 1000 Journals screens tonight at 9:00 at the Kabuki. –SS
Today’s Best Bets
At the Kabuki today, Monday April 28, you can still buy tickets for Anne Aghion’s documentary about Antarctic exploration, Ice People, screening at 3:30 and featuring a Q&A with the director. Tickets are still available for Craig Baldwin’s Mock Up on Mu, screening at 9:15 with the filmmaker in attendance; and Italian auteur Ermanno Olmi’s One Hundred Nails at 5:00.
