The Sex Worker Film and Arts Festival kicks off nine days of film, performance, and lectures in an exuberant manner this week. Sex work activist Siouxsie Q is opening the festival with a live version of her acclaimed podcast, The WhoreCast, at the Center for Sex and Culture this Saturday.

Siouxsie and The WhoreCast have been through a lot this year. The show, formerly known as This American Whore, underwent an identity crisis when Chicago Public Media, which produces This American Life, demanded that she change the name.

Although she eventually had to comply, Siouxsie Q didn't come out of it too badly: The WhoreCast is now the only show about whores that has been publicly endorsed by Ira Glass as "charming."

More »

​

Happily ever after, as most of us over the age of 20 well know, doesn't exist. Despite this truth or perhaps because of it, most films dearly love that heady pursuit of romantic bliss -- the beginning. Mostly this is fine, as film is a perfect tool for the catharsis of fantasy. But for many a person like myself, we children of messy and neglectful parents, films have also been our teachers. Through their influence and engagement, I have grown up. Which is why the film Before Midnight, the latest of the Before trilogy by Richard Linklater, is such a gift. Delving deep into the story of a middle-aged couple in the midst of marriage, parenthood, and a certain poignant bitterness, It is a much-needed telling of what happens after the shoe is found to fit.

More »

Go inside The Insider

By Alyssa Jaffer

Infamous investigative reporter Lowell Bergman, whose investigation of the tobacco industry in the '90s was dramatized in the motion picture The Insider tells us about his experience and the process of projecting his life's work on the big screen.

That tobacco is bad for you was an open secret known well before 1996. What made cigarettes contentious at the time was that the tobacco manufacturers' recommended use was enough to kill you. In addition, the addictive effects of nicotine were underplayed and for the first time, former President Bill Clinton's administration wanted to separate the federal government from the tobacco industry.

Bergman, a producer for CBS' 60 Minutes at the time, first took interest in the tobacco trade when he received documents stating that cigarettes were the biggest cause of fire in the United States. He needed an expert to verify the conclusion that cigarettes are deadly in more ways than one.

Enter Jeffrey Wigand, former Vice President of Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corporation.

More »

WaxWorks, a silent German Expressionist film from 1924 will be reimagined with a modern score of musical madness...

Honoring the long-held tradition of coupling together contemporary musicians with classic silent films, this year's SF International Film Festival has forged a psychedelic, improvisational aficionado dream team, sure to shock, scintillate, and maybe even offend.

Mike Patton, of Faith No More, Mr. Bungle, and Peeping Tom, among other strange sublime bands, has joined up with three genre-bending percussionists, Scott Amendola (Scott Amendola Trio, Nels Cline, Jeff Parker, Charlie Hunter), William Winant (John Cage, Mr. Bungle, John Zorn, Lou Reed) and Matthias Bossi (Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, The Book of Knots, Skeleton Key) to perform an original "score" for WaxWorks (Das Wachsfigurenkabinett), a silent, German fantasy-horror flick from 1924.

More »

Freda, hard at work

The San Francisco International Film Festival is underway, and while we recently offered our 10 Must See-Films, those certainly aren't the only 10 movies you should see. Indeed, if that list had gone up to 11 -- and, really, shouldn't they all? Down with base-10 tyranny! -- we absolutely would have included Good Ol' Freda. So, consider this our official extra recommendation: You should totally check out Ryan White's heartwarming documentary about the Beatles' secretary, Freda Kelly.

More »

The 56th annual San Francisco International Film Festival kicked off last night at the Castro Theater, screening What Maisie Knew to a packed house of well-coiffed cinephiles clamoring for buttered popcorn and a plush seat beneath the silver screen.

As dusk crept along the streets of the Castro, so, too, did bevies of stilleto-ed blondes and blazer-ed critics; all types of culture hounds gathered to celebrate on the makeshift red carpet outside the theater.

By 6:45 (the movie didn't start until 7:12) the Castro was a pleasant madhouse; staff darted about with clipboards, the candy counter churned out its confections and the throng of movie-goers already seated clapped along with the gilded organ.

More »

Knows a lot about movies

Director Steven Soderbergh's much-discussed retirement from directing feature films notwithstanding, there is quite possibly no better filmmaker to assess the current status of the filmmaking arts, as Soderbergh will do this Saturday at the San Francisco International Film Festival's State of the Cinema address.

A restless innovator and a lifelong student of the movies, Soderbergh's eclectic filmography demonstrates the kind of searching, experimental creative energy that is difficult to imagine petering out. Despite swearing off features, Soderbergh's desire to create has in no way flagged; he has discussed focusing on painting, on directing plays and musicals, on a 12-hour miniseries adaptation of John Barth's enormous satirical novel, The Sot-Weed Factor, and on an extensive revision of his own 1991 film, Kafka.

I think it's safe to say that Soderbergh isn't retiring at all -- but he is, apparently, leaving behind a medium that is undergoing vast changes, after spending 25 years (and 25 features) immersed in it.

More »

The Human Rights Film Festival at the University of San Francisco is the 11th annual event, and like previous years, the lineup is sure to galvanize audiences with a mixture of shorts and features that span the globe. Shorts programs feature work by USF students and alumni. The award-winning feature, Dear Mandela, which follows three South Africans who struggled to prove that the Slums Act was unconstitutional, is followed by a Q&A with the filmmakers.

More »

Linsanity

Marking a transition from what was formerly the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival, this year the Center for Asian American Media introduces CAAMFest, an 11-day smorgasbord of music, food, digital media -- and film -- featuring the work of Asian and Asian-American artists from all over the world. Although the festival's artistic horizons have expanded to include other forms of expression, the primary focus is on film, with a number of high-profile screenings and premieres scheduled.

More »

Courtesy 408 Films

Evan Jackson Leong, the director of "Linsanity"

In the opening minutes of Evan Jackson Leong's documentary, Linsanity, basketball star Jeremy Lin remembers security guards stopping him when he was walking into the players' entrance at Madison Square Garden, not recognizing he was on the team.

"That scene has a lot of layers," Leong says. "It shows a lot about racism and how Jeremy deals with it -- he can laugh about it. He doesn't let it bother him. He's on the team, and they don't know he's on the team and never think an Asian guy would be on the team."

More »