Editor’s Note: A much needed festival featuring a wide range of restorations of mostly forgotten movies will launch its first edition at San Francisco’s Roxie, Thursday, September 24-Sunday, September 27. Re:Vision will showcase 14 feature films. This is a festival that challenges audiences to discover movies they didn’t know existed but are likely to spread the word so the films might play across the country and beyond. 

Noma Faingold interviewed Kathy Rose O’Regan, Executive Director of San Francisco Film Preserve for EatDrinkFilms.

The San Francisco Bay Area has long been a great place to see not only adventurous new movies from around the globe but also films from the history of cinema, both acknowledged classics and forgotten gems. Led by the year-round programming at the Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive, Roxie, Rafael Film Center, the Niles Essanay Silent Movie Museum, and the Stanford Theatre, with the recent addition of adventurous curation at Cinema SF’s Balboa/4-Star/Vogue group and the Orinda, we are reminded of the Golden Age of Bay Area Repertory Cinema. Spurred by the success of Mel Novikoff’s Surf (and later Castro Theatre) in San Francisco and Pauline Kael’s Studio & Guild in Berkeley there were well over two dozen rep houses in San Francisco and surrounding cities during the 1970s-1990s. With so much competition  for our eyeballs (people can only see one movie at a time in theaters) they came and went with the advent of home video cutting into the audiences in a major way. Many repertory programmers (myself included for Landmark Theatres and the Balboa) urged distributors to make new and/or often restored versions on 35mm prints of films for our theaters. As attendance and box office grosses declined, studios stopped making these prints resulting in the quality of a VHS tape often being better than beat-up old film prints and few the theaters adapted or closed.

Those lucky to live here have choices from dozens of film festivals every year. Most focus on new works in a variety of exciting contexts. Only two have been committed to movies from the first half of the 20th Century, the San Francisco Silent Film Festival and Noir City. As they have grown with avid fans often selling out movie palaces, part of their mission has been to work with film archives to fund and oversee beautiful restorations to screen in their festivals and elsewhere.

I often thought it would be wonderful to host genre festivals as the rep houses used to do with a focus on horror/science fiction/fantasy or Pre-Code (the Roxie has a series coming up) or comedy, for example. And to include shorts on each program, a policy largely lost in movie theaters. For years I have watched with jealousy as New York’s MoMA presented their annual “To Save and Project” and UCLA’s “Festival of Preservation” but few of those movies were seen locally. 

And now we get this major addition to bring us a wide variety subjects and styles with 20 short subjects, one or two showing before each feature. (comments by Gary Meyer)

The Interview

By Noma Faingold.

After graduating from art school at the Galway Mayo Institute of Technology in Ireland (now called Atlantic Technological University Galway), Kathy Rose O’Regan wasn’t sure what she would do with her degree in fine art printmaking. “I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with my life,” she said.

O’Regan, who moved to San Francisco 20 years ago, spent most of her 20s bouncing around in forgettable jobs, especially bartending. “I knew had to figure it out because I didn’t want to stay in the service industry,” she said.

Her lifelong passion for cinema eventually led her to a couple of film-related internships, including at Oddball Films, an archival and historical resource known around the world. Located in the Mission District, Oddball Films was founded by the late Stephen Parr, an avant-garde film and video producer.

 O’Regan, who has been working in the field since 2011, never saw herself as a filmmaker. Instead, she found her very specific niche in the industry: preservation and restoration. “I realized that it was a track that could make me really happy and be a really stimulating way of working,” she said.

She enrolled in an intensive, year-long program at the George Eastman Museum in Rochester, New York, to earn a certification in film restoration and preservation.

Upon her return to San Francisco, she lived in the Mission before moving to the Outer Sunset District with her husband, George Fox, 16 years ago.

After a number of years working at such local non-profit organizations as the Bay Area Video Coalition and the San Francisco Silent Film Festival (an annual event which debuted in 1996), O’Regan, 42, is now Executive Director of the San Francisco Film Preserve, founded by Robert Byrne, currently the hands-on board president. A spinoff of the S.F. Silent Film Festival, SFFP was formed only two years ago and is presenting its first film festival, called Re:Vision – Festival of Restoration and Rediscovery.

SFFP takes its four-pronged mission of restoration, preservation, access and advocacy seriously. Each objective is being realized with the launch of Re:Vision. “There’s no point to restoring film if you don’t show it to anybody,” O’Regan said.

The festival, celebrating the work of archives and archivists around the world, will offer 14 programs, each containing both a restored feature film and a short. Re:Vision will showcase films from 18 countries, representing with a wide variety of eras, styles and genres (including queer cinema).

O’Regan’s favorite selection in Re:Vision is “My Name Ain’t Suzie,” from 1985, screening on opening night. Directed by Angie Chen, the film, set in the late 1950s and the 1960s, is centered around sex workers in Hong Kong.

Aesthetically, it’s divine – the color profile, the cinematography,” O’Regan said. “It’s fast paced in some ways, but it’s also meditative look at female autonomy. The themes are very important, but it’s also an incredibly entertaining movie. The music is great. The performances are wonderful. The sets are just a riot of color.”

SFFP worked with small U.S. distributor Kani Releasing (specializing in underseen Asian cinema) and Celestial Pictures to bring the film to a San Francisco audience. Director Chen will introduce “My Name Ain’t Suzie” via video message.

One of the restoration projects spearheaded by SFFP is the 1928 silent romcom, “The Garden of Eden,” being screened the afternoon of September 27, with live accompaniment by the Club Foot Orchestra. The stylish, provocative Jazz Age comedy, directed by Lewis Milestone, was a big production filmed toward the end of the silent era. “It’s a delightful film,” O’Regan said. “It’s very forward-looking.”

The restoration process is almost always a long, arduous operation. It is costly, as well (as much as $50,000). It starts with research and requesting whatever materials might be available through archivists, including the U.S. Library of Congress and the George Eastman Museum. Essentially, SFFP goes through material frame by frame and works with lab technicians to create a full restoration. “Our aim is always to bring a film back as close as possible to how it would have appeared to audiences upon its original release,” O’Regan said.

Garden of Eden trailer:

 

SFFP has been working on restoring several short films, from the silent era and beyond. Before some features there will be a selection of the experimental animated works by Len Lye, rarely seen on the big screen.

 

O’Regan may have experienced the pinnacle of her career on June 20 of this year, when the SFFP restoration project, “Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans,” the 1927 Academy Award winning (at the first ceremony) romantic drama, directed by F.W. Murnau of Germany and starring Janet Gaynor, premiered on opening night of the 40th IL Cinema Ritrovato Festival at the Piazza Maggiore in Bologna, Italy.

More than 7,000 spectators watched the 4K digital and 35mm restoration, compiled from surviving international archival elements, on a giant outdoor screen, while listening to Orchestra del Teatro Comunale di Bologna play a new score composed and conducted by Timothy Brock.

O’Regan, who worked on “Sunrise” for two years, was emotional when she introduced the film that evening. “It was astonishing seeing a sea of people watching this 100-year-old film. I started crying as soon as I got off stage,” she said. “People were thanking us for the restoration afterwards. For some, it was the first time they’d ever seen a silent film. There’s nothing quite like seeing a silent movie with an orchestra. It’s very powerful.”

O’Regan said there is great demand around the world to show “Sunrise.” There are already 14 bookings at festivals and independent screenings. She promises the masterpiece will come to San Francisco in the near future.

The original trailer for “Sunrise.” We can’t wait to see the difference after restoration.

 

Re:Vision – Festival of Restoration and Rediscovery, is being presented by the San Francisco Film Preserve at the Roxie Theater, September 24-27. Information  and tickets at the Roxie site.

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The You Tube channel offers a terrific selection of videos about the San Francisco Film Preserve’s work.

Capsule Reviews of Three Films at Re:Vision

The inaugural Re:Vision – Festival of Restoration and Rediscovery, presented by the San Francisco Film Preserve, dares film enthusiasts to embark on a cinematic adventure by discovering out-of-circulation films, brought back to life by dedicated people and organizations with the singular goal of sharing valued works. The eclectic slate of 14 programs will be screened at the Roxie Theater, September 24-27. Here are three very different feature film selections worth checking out:

“My Name Ain’t Suzie” (1985) Opening night, September 24, 7 p.m.The fast-paced, lushly-shot period drama, directed by Angie Chen, is so compelling that it’s surprising it hasn’t been remade (as opposed to being restored) into a big-budget Hollywood film.

Set in the red-light district Wan Chai of Hong Kong from the late 1950s through the 1960s, “My Name Ain’t Suzie” is centered around sex workers, primarily serving servicemen of the U.S. Navy.

What makes the unflinching story unusual is that it’s not only female-focused, it follows the fascinating metamorphosis of Shui-Mei (played by Patricia Ha), from a poor, young woman, living on the outskirts of town and fishing to survive to become a successful madam of a brothel (along with other thriving business ventures). She protects the women who work for her and leads by example.

Shui-Mei’s transformation into a glamorous and self-assured woman is remarkable, given that several traumatic things happen to her as the plot thickens, such as violence, confronting mob corruption and relationship betrayal. She never acts like a victim. The sophisticated fashion and sparkly set design is complimentary to Shui-Mei’s tenacious persona.

The Outcasts (1982) September 25, 8:30 p.m.

“The Outcasts,” directed by Robert Wynne-Simmons, provides an origin of the sub-genre known as folk-horror. With the opening of hearing Irish violin music, the viewer is transported to another time and place, in this instance, a rural, poor and harsh setting in 1810. The story is based on Irish mythology. It is akin to a Grimm’s fairytale or magical realism.

It’s about death, fear, bullying, grief, loneliness, jealousy, superstition, poverty, hard living and resilience. It’s actually not that scary. Even when the two main characters, outcasts Scarf Michael, an elusive fiddler (Mick Lally) and village reject Maura (Mary Ryan), wake up in a dilapidated cemetery, which frightens a disoriented Maura, Michael reassures her by saying, “The dead are our friends.”

The rugged Ireland landscape of rocky, muddy walking paths and unforgiving winters, adds to the mystery as the story unfolds. There’s not a lot of joy among the villagers. Even a wedding celebration quickly turns confrontational and messy.

A handful of existential dilemmas and bewitching ambiguity (including the ending) keep things interesting.

“The Waiting Room” (1973) September 27, 1:20 p.m. Expected guest: writer/director and Fresno resident Karen Sperling.

I’m not going to mislead anybody. “The Waiting Room,” a dreary and psychologically murky film, is kind of weird. However, director/writer/starKaren Sperling was perhaps ahead of her time in grappling with the stifling, conventional trappings of being a woman in the early 1970s.

In “The Waiting Room,” it’s not just young women and their mothers who are expected to adhere to traditional roles. No one is given room to carve out their own path or go against societal norms. Characters expressing feminist views are dismissed.

The story proceeds in a disjointed way, depicting female characters who are either ridged, confused, frustrated, delusional, or all of the above. They are living under the patriarchy. The male characters (husbands and doctors) are the protectors or are they the oppressors?

Much of the low-budget “The Waiting Room” is shot at Manhattan State Hospital, a fluorescent-lit, sterile setting so institutional, it is claustrophobic.

The trancelike tone of the dialogue and the opaque background in several scenes reinforces a no-way-out feeling among most of the characters. Key themes of “The Waiting Room” (the title has more than one meaning in the film) are about choices and whether marriage is the end-all and be-all. More than 50 years later, has that much changed? The tradwife and manosphere movements, rolling back of women’s rights and proliferation of reality shows like, “The Bachelor” and “Real Housewives of …” are displays of regression.

“The Waiting Room” is believed to be the first feature film made by an all female crew.

Noma Faingold is a writer and photographer who lives in Noe Valley. A native San Franciscan who grew up in the Sunset District, Faingold is a frequent contributor to the Richmond Review and Sunset Beacon newspapers, among others. She is obsessed with pop culture and the arts, especially film, theater and fashion. Noma has written about poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, artists Tamara de Łempicka, Isaac Julien, and Wayne Thiebaud, numerous independent filmmakers, and singer/songwriters Janis Joplin, Diane Warren, and Linda Smith for EatDrinkFilms.

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