Green Screen. Preview.

June is festival season along the Pacific, what with the Seattle International Film Festival continuing for a few more weeks and a number of exceptional events happening in San Francisco throughout the month - Frameline, (Yet) Another Hole in the Head and so forth. First up is the Green Screen Film Festival, a ride-along with the UN World Environment Day. Not to be confused with the GreenCine Online Film Festival, which coincidentally begins the same day - today.

One could endlessly comment on the wonderful films that Tom Luddy assembled for the program. One could argue that we already have. However, to settle on only a handful to highlight, you must catch Werner Herzog’s Lessons of Darkness (the experience on video, as with most films, pales in comparison to seeing it on the screen); Darwin’s Nightmare, a devastating winner of numerous awards at festivals throughout Europe, all of them deserved; the stunning Letter That Was Never Sent by Mikhail Kalatozov (I Am Cuba), an extremely rare film that could easily be ranked among the great works of Soviet cinema; Marcel Pagnol’s wonderful Harvest (Regain), introduced by Alice Waters (followed by a program of films by the great Les Blank, one of which - Garlic is as Good as Ten Mothers - will be presented in Aromaround). All of this and I haven’t bothered to mention almost-President Al Gore’s introduction of The Real Dirt on Farmer John or a free screening Judith Helfand's toxic comedy Blue Vinyl.

Instead, I insist that you attend (if you’re in the neighborhood) fellow Swede Stefan Jarl’s afternoon of films at the Castro on Sunday (or evening of films Monday at the Smith San Rafael Film Center). Beginning with his mentor Arne Sucksdorff’s Cannes-winner The Great Adventure, Jarl is feted throughout the afternoon with four of his outstanding films. This pair of programs clearly places him among the greatest documentary filmmakers in the world. Don’t take my word for it, though. After five days of extraordinary screenings, we can compare notes.

Posted by dwhudson at June 1, 2005 11:34 AM