Various Films

Description

55th San Francisco International Film Festival @ BAM/PFA
1:00
Step Up to the Plate,
Paul Lacoste (France, 2011)

(Entre les Bras). “Time flies,” muses Michel Bras, peeling photographs off a bulletin board. The hawkeyed master chef is retiring from the day-to-day operation of the Michelin-recognized restaurant he built on a hill in the L’Aubrac region, 465 kilometers from Paris. Letting go is never easy, though, and Michel can’t help but hover as his congenial son Séba sets about making his mark. Paul Lacoste’s contemplative and sublime study of artistry and family is calibrated to the turning of the seasons, evoking the connection to the earth’s bounty that shapes the restaurant’s ever-changing menu but also the circle of life and the transition of generations. Michael Fox

Photographed by Yvan Quéhec. (90 mins)

Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley
http://bampfa.berkeley.edu/filmseries/sfiff_2012

Special Pricing
BAM/PFA members, San Francisco Film Society members, UC Berkeley students: $11
General admission: $13
Non-UC Berkeley students, seniors, and disabled persons: $12


3:20
A Secret World
Gabriel Mariño (Mexico, 2012)

(Un mundo secreto). The final day of high school marks the beginning of an emotional journey for María (Lucia Uribe), a young loner who sets off from Mexico City toward the Pacific Coast. What she is doing and where she is going is anybody’s guess. The glimpses director Gabriel Mariño offers into her inner life reveal a desperate imagination and a broken heart, while retaining a profound sense of mystery. Moving through the stark yet beautiful landscape and a series of distinct encounters, A Secret World offers glimpses into the emotional landscape of disconnected Mexican youth. Stephen Beachy

Written by Mariño. Photographed by Iván Hernández. With Lucia Uribe, Roberto Mares, Olivia Lagunas, Claudia Rios. (93 mins)

Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley
http://bampfa.berkeley.edu/filmseries/sfiff_2012

Special Pricing
BAM/PFA members, San Francisco Film Society members, UC Berkeley students: $11
General admission: $13
Non-UC Berkeley students, seniors, and disabled persons: $12


5:40
Marina Abramovic: The Artist Is Present
Matthew Akers (U.S., 2011)

Marina Abramovic has been called “the grandmother of performance art,” although she’s as youthful as ever in Matthew Akers’s fascinating, visually crisp documentary portrait, tracking Abramovic’s celebrated 2010 Museum of Modern Art retrospective. The Serbian-born artist made work in the 1970s concerning the limits and conceptions of the body that have long since become part of the modern art canon, yet she still continues to athletically press at the boundaries of performance art. Marina Abramovic: The Artist Is Present confidently meets built-in challenges, giving the oft-reviled, ephemeral medium of performance a sympathetic, mainstream platform and humanizing a woman who defies age as easily as stereotypes. Glen Helfand

Photographed by Akers. (105 mins)

Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley
http://bampfa.berkeley.edu/filmseries/sfiff_2012

Special Pricing
BAM/PFA members, San Francisco Film Society members, UC Berkeley students: $11
General admission: $13
Non-UC Berkeley students, seniors, and disabled persons: $12


8:15
Unfair World
Filippos Tsitos (Greece/Germany, 2011)

(Adikos kosmos). An honest cop with a strict moral code attempts to uncover the truth behind a brutal crime—and accidentally kills a man in the process. From its opening image of a shabby, exhausted figure draped over a lonely park bench, fighting to stay awake in the dead of night, Filippo Tsitos’s prize-winning examination of moral exertion quickly establishes a tone of clinical precision and atmospheric stillness. Part procedural potboiler, part character study, part minimalist comedy, Unfair World quietly unravels a complex ethical puzzle of justice, forgiveness and human frailty that proves no good deed goes unpunished. Landon Zakheim

Written by Tsitos, Dora Masklavanou. Photographed by Polydefkis Kyrlidis. With Antonis Kafetzopoulos, Theodora Tzimou, Christos Stergioglou, Sofia Seirli. (108 mins)

Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley
http://bampfa.berkeley.edu/filmseries/sfiff_2012

Special Pricing
BAM/PFA members, San Francisco Film Society members, UC Berkeley students: $11
General admission: $13
Non-UC Berkeley students, seniors, and disabled persons: $12

More Info

Link

http://bampfa.berkeley.edu/filmseries/sfiff_2012

Call

(510) 642-1412

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