On Monday evening, SFIFF53 is presenting a short documentary about the life and work of Gary Snyder, The Practice of the Wild, and I recommend it; the film is interesting, plus this event will be a rare chance to see Snyder in person, as he doesn’t do much in the way of public appearances any longer. After the jump, read a few more words about the film with some choice quotes from an interview I did with Snyder and with Jim Harrison, who is also a substantial part of the film. …more

Coverage of the San Francisco International Film Festival by Rumpus Film editor Jeremy Hatch.

There’s some great, possibly-overlooked-by-you stuff coming up in the festival today through Sunday, and these picks will give you the details on: a documentary by Tim Hetherington about a platoon in Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley; Kore-Eda’s new, touching film about an inflatable sex doll that comes to life; a doc about an Argentinian DIY filmmaker; Roger Ebert honored in person; the highly anticipated first film from San Francisco’s Joshua Grannell, better known as drag diva Peaches Christ; a documentary about a guy who recovers from a trauma by building and photographing a miniature WWII town; and a one-time screening of a new epic film that, according to Sean Uyehara, is 2/3rds political chess game, 1/3 kung fu action classic. Schedule details and more description after the jump.

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Coverage of the San Francisco International Film Festival by Rumpus Film editor Jeremy Hatch.

When programming director Rachel Rosen took the stage at the Kabuki last Friday night to present the Persistence of Vision Award to Don Hertzfeldt, she said, “let’s face it: we live in a narrative feature-length world,” and talked about how much more difficult it is to succeed by making films that lie outside that definition. (Pretty much impossible, given how difficult it is to succeed by making films that lie within them.)

Don Hertzfeldt’s films, though narrative, are otherwise about as far outside that definition as is possible. They’re short animations whose every frame is hand-drawn on paper and photographed, drawing by drawing, with a 35mm animation camera from the 1940s, and he has often created the entire soundtrack himself as well. As Rosen described it, this is a “painstaking, artisanal process” and then described his body of work as ranging “from the incredibly simple to the fantastically dense.” For 15 years, Hertzfeldt has succeeded in making films his way, and so the Film Society presented him with what amounts to a lifetime achievement award. At the age of 33.

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Coverage of the San Francisco International Film Festival by Rumpus Film editor Jeremy Hatch.

This is my third year covering film in San Francisco, but this opening night, which took place last Thursday, was the first I’ve ever attended, for any festival. For one thing, I really wanted to go to this particular one: Micmacs is the new film from Jean-Pierre Jeunet, the director of Amélie and Délicatessen, and he would be there in person! But there’s another reason I’ve never previously been: opening nights tend to be gala affairs, and almost every means of gaining admission is way beyond my budget. But this year, an avenue was open to me: I got an invitation to cover the event for the Rumpus. So there I was, and here I am. …more

Coverage of the San Francisco International Film Festival by Rumpus Film editor Jeremy Hatch.

Today and over the next few days, I’ll be filing reports on the festival events and one-time screenings I attended over the weekend — opening night, Don Hertzfeld, Walter Murch, Sam Green’s Utopia in Four Movements — but for now I just want to throw out some more film and event recommendations for today and the next few days, now that I’m a few days older and slightly wiser. Click through to read them.
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Coverage of the San Francisco International Film Festival by Rumpus Film editor Jeremy Hatch.

At the press conference for the festival given a few weeks ago, programming director Rachel Rosen characterized the selections as, overall, showing a return to basics and beauty — there is much less shaky cam work and jagged editing than there has been in recent years, and more of a return to classical presentation. She also discerned a number of genre-crossing films — films that blur the line between documentary and fiction, or between one genre and another — as well as an interest in the creative process itself.

What we’ve seen so far definitely bears this out. As I mentioned the day before yesterday, we’ve been watching selected films and listening to buzz over here for the past two weeks, and so we hereby present our initial picks, just a day later than promised, after the jump.

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The largest and, arguably, the most glamorous film festival in San Francisco is about to get underway for the 53rd year in a row, and the Rumpus has been watching selected films and listening to buzz for the past two weeks. (The full schedule and tickets are available online from this page.)

Read on for my initial recommendations on events to attend in this first dispatch from the festival! Tomorrow’s dispatch will recommend films.

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