Goings on. Bay Area.

Another 10th anniversary: The Sonoma Valley Film Festival has quietly opened and runs, or rather, strolls on through Sunday. As Susan Gerhard writes at SF360, "SVFF is all about the good life. Every screening is preceded by 'gourmet food and wine pairings,' winery excursions are offered, and 'casual mingling with celebrity chefs and star winemakers' is billed right up there with the possibility of hoisting glass with some rising director or glamorous thespian. Which is not to say all this wining and dining comes at the expense of a solid program."

"SF360.org checked in with a few friends in the San Francisco filmmaking scene to see what they're looking forward to in the 50th edition of the SF International Film Festival."

"[A]s Michael Jacobs's documentary Audience of One reveals, the quixotic [Richard] Gazowsky has hit endless snags in his quest to be the next Mel Gibson (or George Lucas) with his 'Ten Commandments meets Star Wars" epic, Gravity: In the Shadow of Joseph," writes Cheryl Eddy in the San Francisco Guardian. "It seems unquestioning faith can only go so far before naïveté, technical inexperience, and long-overdue rent get in the way." Audience of One screens at the San Francisco International Film Festival on May 3 and 7.

Back at SF360: Max Goldberg on Tsai Ming-liang's I Don't Want to Sleep Alone, screening at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts on April 19, 21 and 22, and Alberto Lattuada's Mafioso.

Michael Guillén notes that Sound of the Soul: The Fez Festival of World Sacred Music opens tonight at the Roxie before moving on to San Rafael on Sunday and Monday. He talks with filmmaker Stephen Olsson. Also: "Yet another film I caught at the 2006 Toronto International Film Festival and which I'm pleased to discover on the SFIFF50 line-up is Hirokazu Kore-eda's Hana."

More on Sound of the Soul from G Allen Johnson in the San Francisco Chronicle, where he also reviews Mafioso and Journey From the Fall.

Posted by dwhudson at April 13, 2007 2:22 PM