‘Mostly British’ film series at Vogue Theatre

https://www.sfgate.com/movies/article/Mostly-British-film-series-at-Vogue-Theatre-3171461.phptly

Delfin Vigil, Chronicle Staff Writer Published 4:00 am PST, Friday, February 20, 2009

It’s a mostly British invasion.

The San Francisco Neighborhood Theater Foundation, with help from the California Film Institute, is hosting its first film series at the recently acquired Vogue Theatre on Sacramento Street. Called the Mostly British Film Series, the weeklong event runs Thursday through March 5 and features about a dozen films, both new and classic, from the United Kingdom, Ireland and Australia.

Opening the mini film festival is the U.S. premiere of “Genova,” a suspense thriller starring Colin Firth and directed by Michael Winterbottom of “24-Hour Party People” fame. Much of the Mostly British Film Series program includes movies, such as “Genova,” with well-known actors and directors but that have had limited distribution in America.

Another example is Australia’s “The Black Balloon,” which stars Toni Collette as a mother raising an autistic son in middle-class Sydney. “The Black Balloon,” which won several Australian Film Institute Awards (basically, the Australian Oscars), screens at 7 p.m. Feb. 28 and March 3 at the Vogue. It will also show March 4 at the Christopher B. Smith Rafael Film Center in San Rafael where a few other films in the series are being screened.

Oscars), screens at 7 p.m. Feb. 28 and March 3 at the Vogue. It will also show March 4 at the Christopher B. Smith Rafael Film Center in San Rafael where a few other films in the series are being screened.

“We’ve had special opera programs on Sundays and children’s movies on Saturday morning, but this is our first stab at a film series,” said Jack Bair, a member of the nonprofit foundation that purchased the nearly 100-year-old Vogue Theatre in 2007.

“We hope this will be the first of many film series and festivals to be held at the Vogue,” added Bair, who is also the San Francisco Giants general counsel.

Closing night for the series will be the West Coast premiere of “Hunger,” a rather intense story set in a prison near Belfast. “Hunger” was directed by none other than Steve McQueen – that is to say, the other Steve McQueen, a British director.

Mustn’t Miss the British Film Festival in San Francisco

http://www.snoety.com/dont-miss-the-british-film-festival-in-san-francisco

February 15, 2009

Already seen Revolutionary Road, Slumdog and Benjamin Button? Looking for new options? If you’re from San Francisco or are on your way there, don’t miss this film festival with flicks from across the pond …

Check out The Mostly British Film Series showing from February 26 to March 5, at the Vogue Theatre.

Snoety’s friend Ruthe Stein is helping to organize the festival where you’ll see recent British, Australian and Irish films like Genova with Colin Firth and Hunger (winner of 20 international awards). Then, check out the classics like the 1969 comedy Age of Consent (being shown on a pristine archival print) with James Mason and Helen Mirren. A full list of all the movies showing can be found here on the Vogue Theatre’s site.

Here are some highlights:

February

Thu., 2/26, 8:00 pm — Genova (UK, Colin Firth, Catherine Keener) US PREMIERE!

Thu., 2/27, 7:30 pm — Three Blind Mice (AU) SPECIAL SNEAK PREVIEW!

Sat., 2/28, 7:00 pm — The Black Balloon (AU, Toni Collette)

March

Wed., 3/4, 7:00 pm — Bitter and Twisted (AU) DIRECTOR PRESENT!

Thu., 3/5, 8:00 pm — Hunger (UK) Golden Camera Winner at Cannes, WEST COAST PREMIERE

May

Thu., 5/14, 7:30 pm — Easy Virtue (UK, Colin Firth, Kristen Scott Thomas, Jessica Biel) SNEAK PEAK!

The film series is presented by The San Francisco Neighborhood Theater Foundation in partnership with the California Film Institute.

‘Batman’s’ Nolan started on a shoestring budget

PUBLICATION: San Francisco Chronicle (CA)

SECTION: Datebook DATE: February 22, 2009, Page: R26

By Ruthe Stein Chronicle Movie Correspondent

Last fall the Los Angeles County Museum of Art held a 10-year anniversary screening of Christopher Nolan’s debut movie, “Following.” When a camera scans the door to a flat, the audience burst out laughing. The reason: A Batman poster is prominently displayed on the door, and Nolan went on to direct “Batman Begins” and its sequel, “The Dark Knight.”

“I would love to say it was fate or destiny, but it is a total coincidence,” Nolan, 38, said recently from his Los Angeles office. The flat belonged to a cast member, who just happened to have a thing for the Caped Crusader.

Yet looking over Nolan’s charmed career, it’s hard to deny destiny’s hand, or at least a finger poking the way. “Following” is a perfect example. While the efforts of most first-time filmmakers lay buried in a bottom drawer, “Following” quickly developed an audience. An enthusiastic response at the San Francisco International Film Festival and other festivals led to a distribution deal for the 71-minute movie. It proved a persuasive calling card, gaining Nolan entree into major studios and helping him secure a budget in the low millions for his next film, “Memento.”

That seemed like a fortune to Nolan, who had shot “Following” for $6,000 in black and white. The entire cast and crew could fit into a cab.

“London taxis are a bit bigger,” Nolan said.

The film took a year to complete because the cast and crew had day jobs and could work – if you call receiving no salary work – only on weekends. He instructed them not to leave England unexpectedly and not to cut their hair.

A compelling story weaving in aspects of timeless film noir and crime fiction explain why “Following” seems as fresh today as it did a decade ago. Plans are under way for an encore theatrical release and a Blu-ray edition later in the year.

Bay Area audiences don’t have to wait to see “Following” on a big screen. It’s a highlight of the Mostly British Film Series at the Vogue in San Francisco and the Rafael in San Rafael. As a volunteer programmer who was one of the local critics to initially recognize Nolan’s talent, I suggested “Following” for the series’ “classics” division.

Lessons Nolan learned shooting on the cheap proved invaluable on “Memento” and, subsequently, “Insomnia” and “The Prestige.” He even applied them to the almost $400 million Batman franchise.

Because of limited time to shoot “Following,” he devised a “very efficient process of focusing on the specific shot that is in the frame – that you are shooting right then and there – and how it is involved in the story. That absolute focus of my attention has carried me through everything I’ve done since,” he said.

Jeremy Theobald, an actor friend of Nolan’s, plays an aspiring writer at loose ends who starts following people around London, not with the intention of harming them but merely to observe their lives. (For old times’ sake, Nolan cast Theobald as a Gotham Water Board technician in “Batman Begins.”)

The character is loosely patterned after Nolan, who wasn’t working at the time and was doing some serious hanging out.

“I lived in a very crowded part of London. As soon as I went out my front door there would be a crowd of people around me,” said Nolan, who turned this into a memorable shot of Theobald surrounded by strangers.

“I got interested in the notion of how you are bumping up against strangers all day but seek a separate place for your own comfort. As soon as you break that distance – even in a small way, like walking at the same pace as someone else – it’s considered a peculiar thing to do.”

Nolan never dared try it.

“I was worried about getting into a fight,” he said.

Many scenes were shot on rooftops. Nolan found he could move his film outdoors that way without having to deal with a bureaucracy that insisted on permits.

He was fortunate in having use of his parents’ spacious residence for a scene in which a burglary takes place. In between filming, the house really was burglarized.

“I had intended to go back and shoot some items, but they had been stolen for real,” Nolan said.

“Following” makes liberal use of flashbacks and flash-forwards to keep the viewer alert – a device Nolan would build on in “Memento,” in which he adopted a reverse chronological order “to put the audience into the head of the protagonist, who doesn’t know what he has just done.”

It was a huge help for him to be able to show “Following” to movie executives to allay their fears about “Memento’s” unusual narrative approach.

Back in his indie days, Nolan always imagined himself directing Hollywood blockbusters. He never doubted he could make the transition. The hardest adjustment on “Batman Begins” was “the physical scale of the film and having to do large-scale action sequences and large-scale special effects.”

He may pick up the Caped Crusader’s story again, but not before a few detours. Nolan just signed a deal to direct a sci-fi action film he wrote called “Inception” – returning to the single-word titles that have served him well. After that, he’s considering bringing the 1960s British TV series “The Prisoner” to the big screen. Nolan is a fan of the show, which starred Patrick McGoohan as a British secret agent who is captured. Nolan leaves the door open to anything, even shooting in black and white again. It hardly matters, he said, because he’s color blind.

A responsibility has been pressed on Nolan this awards season that he couldn’t have imagined in his worst nightmares. Heath Ledger, who as the Joker walks away with “The Dark Knight,” died of an accidental overdose in January 2008. Ledger is winning every award for best supporting actor, including, almost certainly, tonight’s Oscar. Nolan has been eloquent in accepting these prizes for Ledger with “an awful mixture of sadness but incredible pride.”

Following runs during the Mostly British Film Series presented by the San Francisco Neighborhood Theater Foundation and the California Film Institute. It screens at 9:30 p.m. Friday and 7 p.m. next Sunday at the Vogue Theatre in San Francisco and at 7 p.m. March 2 at the Christopher B. Smith Rafael Film Center in San Rafael. For Vogue ticket information, call (415) 346-2288 after 3 p.m. or go to www.voguesf.com. For the Rafael, call (415) 454-1222 or go to www.cafilm.org. “I got interested in the notion of how you are bumping up against strangers all day but seek a separate place for your own comfort.”

REP PICKS
Director Christopher Nolan

PUBLICATION: San Francisco Chronicle (CA)

SECTION: NinetySixHours DATE: February 26, 2009

By G. Allen Johnson   EDITION: Advance Page: F20

The Mostly British Film Series “When I was 20, I wrote a version of the script that had aliens and car chases,” said Australian director Christopher Weekes of his film “Bitter & Twisted,” an “American Beauty”-esque look at a dysfunctional family. “But when I was 24, my mother died suddenly. My mom was a single parent. It was important for me to do something with my life, to turn a negative into a positive,” he said. Weekes, 28, will travel to San Francisco for the first time to present his film Wednesday at the Vogue (it also shows at 2 p.m. Saturday). It’s part of a startup festival that curates 17 mostly new movies, and neglected classics, such as “The Dark Knight” director Christopher Nolan’s first film, “Following,” and Helen Mirren, from 1969, in Michael Powell’s “Age of Consent.” The festival opens tonight with Michael Winterbottom’s latest, “Genova.” Through next Thurs. Vogue Theatre, 3290 Sacramento St., S.F. (415) 346-2288. www.voguesf.com; Mon.-Wed., Smith Rafael Film Center, 1118 Fourth St., San Rafael. (415) 454-1222. www.cafilm.org

S.F. welcomes Mostly British lineup

 PUBLICATION: San Francisco Chronicle (CA)  DATE: February 20, 2009

By Delfin Vigil Chronicle Staff Writer 

It’s a mostly British invasion.

The San Francisco Neighborhood Theater Foundation, with help from the California Film Institute, is hosting its first film series at the recently acquired Vogue Theatre on Sacramento Street. Called the Mostly British Film Series, the weeklong event runs Thursday through March 5 and features about a dozen films, both new and classic, from the United Kingdom, Ireland and Australia.

Opening the mini film festival is the U.S. premiere of “Genova,” a suspense thriller starring Colin Firth and directed by Michael Winterbottom of “24-Hour Party People” fame. Much of the Mostly British Film Series program includes movies, such as “Genova,” with well-known actors and directors but that have had limited distribution in America.

Another example is Australia’s “The Black Balloon,” which stars Toni Collette as a mother raising an autistic son in middle-class Sydney. “The Black Balloon,” which won several Australian Film Institute Awards (basically, the Australian Oscars), screens at 7 p.m. Feb. 28 and March 3 at the Vogue. It will also show March 4 at the Christopher B. Smith Rafael Film Center in San Rafael where a few other films in the series are being screened.

“We’ve had special opera programs on Sundays and children’s movies on Saturday morning, but this is our first stab at a film series,” said Jack Bair, a member of the nonprofit foundation that purchased the nearly 100-year-old Vogue Theatre in 2007.

“We hope this will be the first of many film series and festivals to be held at the Vogue,” added Bair, who is also the San Francisco Giants general counsel.

Closing night for the series will be the West Coast premiere of “Hunger,” a rather intense story set in a prison near Belfast. “Hunger” was directed by none other than Steve McQueen – that is to say, the other Steve McQueen, a British director.

For a complete schedule of film screenings, party reception information and list of attendees, go to www.voguesf.com.