San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Reel Local News:
“Pioneers: First Women Filmmakers” comes to the Roxie.
“Pioneers: First Women Filmmakers,” culled from the upcoming Kino Lorber boxed set of silent-era shorts highlighting the contributions of women, begins at the Roxie Theater Oct. 12-13. These women worked side by side with giants of the era like John Ford, Mack Sennett and Charlie Chaplin, only to be forgotten. Lois Weber, Alice Guy-Blaché, Lule Warrenton and writer and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston are among the filmmakers represented in the program of shorts, shown in 2K and 4K restorations.
UC Santa Cruz film and media Professor Shelley Stamp, who curated the set, appears both days in conversation about the films. Stamp is also co-authoring a book, “Women and the Silent Screen of America,” and wrote “Lois Weber in Early Hollywood.”
The program concludes Nov. 6 with a screening of “The Curse of Quon Gwon: When the Far East Mingles With the West.” The silent melodrama of love and jealousy is a rarity shot in Oakland in 1917 by Marion E. Wong, producer-director and president of the Oakland’s Mandarin Film Company. www.roxie.com
Satyajit Ray films and more: From his first 1955 film, “Pather Panchali,” about the travails of an impoverished Bengal family, director Satyajit Ray (1922-91), was a giant of world cinema, renowned for his acutely observed portrayals of life in his country.
“Satyajit Ray: Intimate Universes,” Thursday, Oct. 4-Oct. 21, the seventh season in the SFFilm/San Francisco Museum of Modern Art “Modern Cinema” series, looks at the career of a filmmaker regarded as one of the greatest of the 20th century.
The series is also a culmination of a relationship between SFFilm and Ray that began in 1957 when “Pather Panchali” showed at the San Francisco International Film Festival. The festival screened 17 more of Ray’s films. In 1992, SFIFF gave him its directing prize, the Kurosawa Award, posthumously.
The are 15 films in “Satyajit Ray: Intimate Universes,” not only by Ray but also by filmmakers who inspired him or who were inspired by him, including “Bicycle Thieves” (1948), Vittorio De Sica’s neorealist drama that moved Ray to become a director; and Martin Scorsese’s “Taxi Driver” (1976). Among Ray’s films in the program are “Pather Panchali,” “Apur Sansar (The World of Apu)” (1958) and “The Elephant God” (1978).
The films screen in SFMOMA’s Phyllis Wattis Theater. www.sf film.org
Greengrass tribute: Director Paul Greengrass screens his latest film, “22 July,” and receives a Mill Valley Film Festival award during the California Film Institute’s “A Tribute to Paul Greengrass,” Tuesday, Oct. 2, at the Smith Rafael Film Center. The film also screens Oct. 7 and 9 during the festival.
“22 July” focuses on the 2011 terrorist attack in Norway when a right-wing extremist detonated a car bomb in Oslo and then murdered 69 people at a youth summer camp.
Among Greengrass’ other films are “Bloody Sunday” (2002), “United 93” (2006) and best picture Oscar nominee “Captain Phillips” (2013). www.cafilm.org
Film clips: East Bay filmmaker Denise Zmekhol is among 12 recipients of a 2018 International Documentary Association grant for her film “Skin of Glass.” The film is about the crowning achievement of her late father, architect Roger Zmekhol: a 25story Sao Paulo office tower.
Ron Stallworth, whose book “Black Klansman” served as the basis for Spike Lee’s recent drama “BlacKkKlansman,” appears Oct. 13 at SF’s Litquake along with a screening of the film. Michael Imperioli of “Sopranos” fame, a co-screenwriter of “Summer of Sam” and actor in several of Lee’s films, will promote his debut novel, “The Perfume Burned His Eyes,” at Litquake on Oct. 17. https://litquake2018
“Super Fly,” the 1972 blaxploitation classic starring Ron O’Neal as a drug dealer who sets out to make one last score, screens at Oakland’s New Parkway on Friday, Oct. 5. www.thenewparkway.com