OY, HAVE I GOT A FILM FOR YOU A Preview of the 39th San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, 2019

By Gary Meyer

One of the challenges for any film festival is finding the perfect opening night movie.

A curator wants a terrific movie first but also it must be a crowd pleaser— Not too experimental or heavily political. You don’t want to alienate the opening night audience who may not be as adventurous as those attending many other movies during the event. They need to leave the theater in a good mood and hopefully want to return for more shows. But you want it to be a movie that also means something to people and leaves them thinking as well as entertained.

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Opening Night photo by Pat Mazzera

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FRENCH NOIR IN THE SPRING, TOO? INCROYABLE!

A Date with Double Exposures: Don Malcolm’s “Gallic Evangelism”

Reaches A Fever Pitch As He Aims for 101 French Noirs in 5 Years…

AS TOLD TO OWEN FIELD

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An increasing fraction of the “noiristas” who travel from the Castro Theatre (lone dowager of San Francisco’s once-abundant “movie palace” tradition) to the upstart Roxie are grasping the odd, counterintuitive idea that their favorite “genre” (don’t let’s start THAT argument here!) might have a different history than the one commonly purveyed.

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A FRENCH DISCOVERY FROM THE OTHER SIDE OF THE LOST CONTINENT

Don Malcolm and Phoebe Green explain the particulars of their new French revival series to Owen Field.Enree lobbby card.jpgThe first of four films taking lovers of THE FRENCH HAD A NAME FOR IT into non-noir regions of classic French cinema will play in the intimate confines of the Little Roxie Theatre in San Francisco on April 4 at 6:30 pm, with a repeat screening on Saturday April 6 at 4:30. Consider it a “Sneak Preview” for a potentially landmark collection of cinematic discoveries rivaling the ongoing French noir juggernaut that enters Year 5 with two series later in 2019. Continue reading

THE FRENZY OF FRENCH 5 AND ITS FABULOUS FIXATION ON THE FRENETIC FIFTIES (part one)

A two-part exoneration by Anastasia Lin 

including conversation snippets with Don Malcolm

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  1. JUST WHAT IS HE DOING TO US THIS TIME?

Is there such a “thing” as “too much of a good thing?” Devotees (and I use that term, er, charitably) of internet porn might disagree, but even cinephiles (who also like to watch…) may feel that the inestimable Don Malcolm, he of the flashlight and the Lost Continent, just might have had his pith helmet too tightly affixed with his latest Roxie extravaganza: a 20-film collection of forgotten French film noir that moth-flames the 1950s with a heightened level of relentlessness. Continue reading