If it’s April (and I’m assured it’s), it have to be time for the San Francisco Worldwide Movie Competition. This yr’s pageant begins Thursday, April 21, and wraps up on Friday, Might 1, and whereas most occasions are scheduled in San Francisco, Pacific Movie Archive will once more signify the pageant within the East Bay. There are over 100 movies and occasions to select from, and you’ll see all the calendar on the pageant’s web site.
Of the movies I used to be capable of pre-screen, two stand out as should sees. From Romania’s Radu Muntean (The Paper Will Be Blue) comes Întregalde (screening at PFA at 7:45 p.m. on Saturday, April 30, its title referring to a sawmill that figures within the story), an unimaginable to categorize story of a wintertime humanitarian help journey to Transylvania.
Whereas there aren’t any vampires readily available, the movie cannily makes use of horror film tropes to inform its story of three help employees actually caught in the midst of nowhere. Whereas its storyline is simplicity itself, Muntean’s screenplay takes many sudden twists and turns, constructing intense suspense and repeatedly defying conference and expectations. It’s uncommon for me to see a movie that genuinely stored me on the sting of my seat; this one did.
Virtually pretty much as good is Riotsville, USA (4:30 p.m. on Sunday, Might 1, at PFA), a documentary consisting fully of archival information footage and excerpts from late Nineteen Sixties navy movies. Director Sierra Pettengill makes the case that the militarization of American police started many years earlier than the passage of the Clinton Crime Invoice.
Among the movie’s most outstanding footage comes from a fake city — dubbed “Riotsville” by the Pentagon — the place navy items and police forces skilled within the wonderful artwork of suppressing interior metropolis uprisings. Shot in colour, that footage depicts principally younger white troopers, some sporting Beatle wigs, upending vehicles and smashing home windows. Riotsville, USA casts gentle on a beforehand hidden piece of historical past that doesn’t also have a Wikipedia entry.
Oakland is the main focus of two worthwhile documentaries. In Black Moms Love and Resist (screening at San Francisco’s Roxie Theater at 8:30 p.m. on Friday, April 29), director Débora Souza Silva follows the efforts of Wanda Johnson (the mom of Oscar Grant) and Angela Williams (whose son Ulysses was badly overwhelmed by police in Troy, Alabama) to sort out injustice and police brutality. Centered, deliberate and at all times cool below hearth, Ms. Johnson is a power of nature. She and Ms. Williams will attend the screening.
In I Didn’t See You There (3 p.m. on Saturday, April 30, at PFA), Oakland-based filmmaker Reid Davenport brings his wheelchair-eye view to The City. Scooting round his Fox Theater neighborhood — dominated by an enormous circus tent (courting the shoot to late 2019; I bear in mind considering that tent appeared badly misplaced!) — Davenport expresses his frustrations with individuals who block curb cuts and bus drivers who boss him round.
For those who’re within the temper for one thing that includes a real-life film star, 892 (7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, April 27, on the Castro Theatre) options John Boyega (Finn within the final three Star Wars episodes) as an ex-marine attempting to pry his advantages unfastened from the Veterans’ Administration. Boyega provides a superb (if Forest Whitaker-inflected) efficiency because the justifiably indignant vet; he’s ably supported by Nicole Beharie (42) as a wired financial institution supervisor. Primarily based on a real story, 892 gained the Particular Jury Award at this yr’s Sundance.
John Seal has lived in Oakland since 1981 and has been writing for Berkeleyside since 2009. He spends his spare time watching and studying about films.
