By Noma Faingold
“Each of my paintings is a self-portrait.”
Tamara de Łempicka, artist
Group of Four Nudes (1925). © 2023 Tamara de Łempicka Estate, LLC
THE DIVA OF ART DECO- Łempicka
Category Archives: Films: Interviews
SECRETS FROM THE MOVIE SET
An Interview with Producer Paul Zaentz
By Gary Meyer
(updated November 21, 2024)
34 Oscar nominations.
22 Wins including 3 Best Pictures.
That is only a fraction of the awards the Bay Area ‘s Saul Zaentz won for the terrific movies he brought to the international big screen.
The Berkeley FILM Foundation and the California Film Institute presented the Saul Zaentz Film Celebration, an event honoring the legacy of the legendary independent film producer, November 15-17, 2024, at the Smith Rafael Film Center in San Rafael, California.
Amadeus shows at Davies Hall with the SF Symphony the score live on music. on Nov. 29-30, 2024. Tickets and info here.
Doc Stories Revisits 2015’s “Janis: Little Girl Blue”
The 10th edition of the San Francisco International Film Festival’s annual documentary celebration offers eleven programs of new films plus a Documentary Filmmaking & Activism Workshop for Teens and two free panel discussions.
By Noma Faingold
(October 14, 2024)
Most people have never seen Janis Joplin live. Those who have could feel her lifeforce, her pain, her palpable need to be loved, her raw bluesy delivery and her desire to be unforgettable. She died of a heroin overdose in 1970, becoming a member of the rock and roll 27 Club, along with her contemporaries Jimi Hendrix, Ron “Pigpen” McKernan, and Jim Morrison.
Maybe the next best thing in experiencing the essence of Joplin and learning about all aspects of her life is by watching the 2015 documentary, “Janis: Little Girl Blue,” directed by Amy Berg, being shown during the 10th Anniversary of SFFILM’s Doc Stories (October 17-20). The free community screening will be at 4 p.m. on October 17, at San Francisco’s Vogue Theatre, with Berg as a special guest.
SONGWRITER DIANE WARREN IS RELENTLESS
An interview with Film Director Bess Kargman
By Noma Faingold
(July 18, 2024)
Director Bess Kargman knew going in that prolific songwriter Diane Warren, the subject of her latest documentary, doesn’t fully trust anybody. “It’s not in her nature,” Kargman said. “The biggest challenge was earning her trust. I had to navigate when to push her. She would get really anxious sitting in a chair too long and being away from her work.”
Diane Warren: Relentless screens on August 3, at 3:30 p.m., at the Piedmont Theatre, (4186 Piedmont Ave., Oakland) during the 44th Annual San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, July 18-August 4. Complete Festival Information and tickets.
Laugh and Eat with Mel Brooks
In connection with Gerald Peary’s interview with Mel Brooks we offer some tasty bites from the comedian.
Continue reading
Partners in Food and Film: An Interview
An Interview with SIFF27 Culinary Excellence Award winner, Chef Susan Feniger and filmmaker Liz Lachman.
By Geneva Anderson
(March 20, 2024)
When Los Angeles filmmaker and Emmy award winner Liz Lachman (“Pin-Up,” “Getting to Know You”) set out to make her first feature-length film about partner, Chef Susan Feniger, opening her first solo restaurant in Los Angeles in 2009, she already had lots of footage. The idea of capturing Susan’s journey in realizing “Street,” a dining concept that would bring a variety of global street foods together under one roof and doing this without her longtime business partner and co-chef Mary Sue Milliken, had been simmering for 13 years. Continue reading
Why December 4th is the Date To Reintroduce Yourself To… THE LOST CONTINENT OF CLASSIC FRENCH FILM NOIR
By Owen Field
(Including fragments of an interview with Midcentury Productions’ Don Malcolm.) (November 30, 2023)
THE FRENCH HAD A NAME FOR IT is one of the world’s best-kept open secrets, spilling out a world of film noir—or, more accurately, perhaps, a “lost continent” that has been relentlessly explored at the Roxie Theater in San Francisco since November 2014.
Lino Ventura in WITNESS IN THE CITY (UN TEMOIN DANS LA VILLE)
“Pandora’s Box” – A Stunning Film on the Big Screen at the Spectacular Paramount
By Nancy Friedman
(April 25, 2023)
Maligned, misunderstood, and mercilessly censored when it was released in 1929 – and virtually forgotten for the next three decades – Pandora’s Box (Die Büchse der Pandora) is today acknowledged as one of the masterpieces of silent cinema. That honor is attributable in part to the artistry of director Georg Wilhelm Pabst and cinematographer Günther Krampf, two giants of German film. But the film’s real magic resides in the indelible performance of its American star, Louise Brooks, whom the film historian David Thomson has called “one of the most mysterious and potent figures in the history of the cinema.” The British film critic Pamela Hutchinson has said that Brooks – with her impish smile, dancer’s lithe body, and gleaming black helmet of bobbed hair – “both defines the Roaring Twenties and stands outside it. She is timeless.”
Club Foot Orchestra Plays “Pandora’s Box”
By Nancy Friedman
(April 24, 2023)
How many times has Richard Marriott seen Pandora’s Box? When I suggested 50, he said that number was conservative. “Probably double that,” he guessed.
A House Made of Splinters
By C.J. Hirschfield
(March 8, 2023)
Some feature length documentaries transport you across the world, into space, or under the ocean, exploring fantastic and fascinating environments that you never could have imagined.
The Academy-Award nominee A House Made of Splinters takes place under just one roof, and the drama is no less compelling for it. Inside the walls of an Eastern Ukraine temporary shelter for children, there is compassion, friendship, love, and joy, mixed with fear, pain, and lost childhood.
This Ocean Film Festival Does More Than See the Sea
By Nancy Friedman
April 1, 2022
Here’s what you can expect at any film festival: new films, fun swag, revealing Q&A sessions with filmmakers, stimulating conversations in the lobby or in the line for the restrooms. At the International Ocean Film Festival—North America’s oldest and largest ocean film festival–you can expect all that and something more: a call to action.
