Bay Area Viewing

San Francisco filmgoers just got lucky. Extremely lucky, if you're fond of films made west of the Americas, east of Europe (and south of Russia).

The area's most beautiful theatre is currently hosting the most complete retrospective of Satyajit Ray's work that this country has ever seen. 28 features, two shorts (although strangely not the little-seen short Two) - two works in Hindi, the rest in Bengali. Ray, like Kurosawa, is better appreciated here than in his home country. It's a shame, really, because he was immensely talented (writer, director, composer, occasional actor, art director, sometimes camera operator). He unleashed Pather Panchali on the world in 1955, a fantastic first film by any standard and often credited as his greatest achievement.

Far from it. His Apur Sansar, the third film in the Apu trilogy, marked his first work with the great actor Soumitra Chatterjee (a collaboration that continued for thirty years until Ray's penultimate work, Ganashatru/An Enemy of the People). Together they made what the writer/director called his greatest motion picture, the amazing Charulata, which he adapted from a novel by Rabindranath Tagore. Apart, Ray created one of the finest achievements in cinema, Indian or otherwise - the landmark Pratidwandi/The Adversary. If you've never seen a Ray film (and, outside of a smaller retrospective several years ago, it would not be surprising if you haven't), take a trip to Palo Alto where, for eleven weeks, it is as close to Calcutta as California can get.

Meanwhile, if Japan is more to your liking, a substantial series that debuted a few weeks ago as part of the New York Film Festival moves west. Fortunately, two venues are hosting the screenings to honor the centenary Yasujiro Ozu's birth - folks on the east side of the Bay can pay a handful of repeated visits to the Pacific Film Archive, whereask audiences in San Francisco proper can attend a similar (yet smaller) selection at the Castro. The recent Vancouver International Film Festival, in the midst of a tribute to Ozu regular Aoki Tomio (star of Passing Fancy and numerous films of the 1930s), could not even secure a single print from this retrospective. We get essentially all of them, including his universally acclaimed classic Tokyo Story (considered by critics in the recent Sight & Sound poll as one of the ten greatest films of all time) and his silent rarity, I Flunked, But... (a fantastic college comedy set in the economically depressed Japan of the late-1920s which, if nothing else, shows the diversity of Ozu's abilities behind the camera). 35 films in all. Consider it a necessary education.

Shiraz

Last, and certainly not least, another occasion to spend far too many hours in the dark heads our direction this weekend. It could be said that a new festival starts in the Bay Area every week. The latest game in town, beginning its first annual event, is the San Francisco International South Asian Film Festival. It would be easy to overlook this effort except for two key points. It is produced by 3rd I, an impressive organization that sponsors a number of ongoing film events showcasing works from countries represented by the overarching umbrella of "South Asia." Second, the programming for this two-day festival is quite remarkable. From Bollywood hit Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham, starring screen legend Amitabh Bachchan and not to be missed, to Franz Osten's 1928 silent narrative film Shiraz (a highly recommended Indian epic featuring a new score performed live by musicians from the Ali Akbar College of Music); from the superb Arundhati Roy documentary DAM/AGE and the controversial, so-called "Fassbinder-esque" Flying with One Wing to the UK production Road to Ladakh, described by GreenCine's dear friend Phurba (writer of our Bollywood primer) as "a visually captivating film that centers on two completely opposite and lonely souls who are drawn together by a series of coincidences but torn eventually apart by faith." SFISAFF hosts an array of significant works, most never before screened in San Francisco. Festival events occur at the Castro and the Roxie. Consult the schedule at the site for exact dates and times.

informatively (and opinionatedly),
Jonathan Marlow

Posted by dwhudson at October 30, 2003 9:18 AM