ANIMATION EXPLORES NEW DIMENSIONS IN 2022

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By Robert Bloomberg

In 1928, inspired by the talkie that changed the world, “The Jazz Singer,” Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks created “Steamboat Willie,” the first cartoon with fully synchronized music and sound effects, demonstrating the potential power and delight of animation. 

The ten films in this year’s Animation Show of Shows perfectly illustrate the culmination of that potential. Most of the shorts, curated and presented by Acme Filmworks founder Ron Diamond, require no subtitles and rely solely on that marriage of image and sound.

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GROWING UP IN LOVE WITH THE MOVIES

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By Meredith Brody

(November 5, 2022)

I’ve been a film buff ever since I first saw a re-issue of Cinderella at the Grand Lake Theater in Oakland when I was just a tot.

I wasn’t able to fully exercise my film buff inclinations for the next decade or so, as I was dependent on my parents for transportation. They made the movie choices, as well. Oddly, since they were both New Yorkers and went to movies weekly or more often as children, there was a joke amongst my siblings and I: “They take us to two movies a year, whether we need them or not.”

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THE BEST PROGRAMMING IN TOWN: French Noir

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By Meredith Brody

(November 5, 2022)

San Francisco is lucky to have Donald Malcolm’s French Noir Series, “The French Had a Name for It” at the Roxie.

The upcoming festival programs 15 films over four days at the Little Roxie, and once again I will be there for all of it.  It unspools on Sunday November 6 and Monday November 7, and the following on Saturday November 12  and Sunday November 13.    

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SIGN THE SHOW: A Benefit, Not a Burden

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By C.J. Hirschfield

October 22, 2022

I can’t imagine being denied access to movies, plays, comedy shows, or concerts; you probably can’t either. And yet that’s how it is for 40+ million Deaf and Hard of Hearing (HOH) Americans, whose attempts to get venues and artists to understand their need for consistent, high-quality professional and well-lit sign language interpreters are met with barrier after barrier.

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SANTOS: Skin to Skin

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By Gaetano Kazuo Maida

October 16, 2022

“The drum is like a heartbeat.” —John Santos

I grew up in the Bronx in the ‘50s. This was in an old Italian neighborhood, full of grape arbors and fig trees (even a goat!), but by the time I was eight our neighbors on one side and across the street were from Puerto Rico, and on the other side were African Americans; it’s mostly Caribbean now. My public school was a ten block walk from home and most of my classmates there were Jewish. My parents were a mixed couple (Japanese/Sicilian) and most of their friends were mixed in one way or another as well, so I had a strong sense of a wonderfully polyglot community that ill-prepared me for the rather homogeneous and affluent population of my elite public high school. But it did open my ears to a wide variety of music. The soundtrack at home was folk, blues, soul (long story), flamenco, and opera, but in the streets it was doo-wop and Afro-Caribbean.

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