SFFS SCREEN
Alamar
July 30–August 5, 2010
July 30–August 5, 2010
SFFS SCREEN
Making Plans for Lena
August 6–12, 2010
August 6–12, 2010
SFFS SCREEN
Vengeance
August 13–19, 2010
August 13–19, 2010
SFFS SCREEN
Army of Crime
August 20–26, 2010
August 20–26, 2010
SFFS SCREEN
The Two Escobars
August 27–September 2, 2010
August 27–September 2, 2010
SFFS SCREEN
Dogtooth
September 3–9, 2010
September 3–9, 2010
Releases
53rd San Francisco International Film Festival to Present Founder's Directing Award to Walter Salles
Renowned Brazilian Filmmaker to Be Honored at Film Society Awards Night and Onstage Tribute Featuring In Search of On the Road (a Work in Progress)
3/15/2010
The San Francisco Film Society announces that Walter Salles will receive the Founder’s Directing Award at the 53rd San Francisco International Film Festival (April 22–May 6). The Founder’s Award will be presented to Salles at Film Society Awards Night, the organization’s annual black-tie fundraiser, Thursday, April 29 at the Westin St. Francis.
The Film Society’s much-lauded Youth Education program will be the beneficiary of the black-tie fundraiser honoring Salles. Also honored at the gala event will be James Schamus, recipient of the Kanbar Award for excellence in screenwriting, and the soon-to-be-announced recipient of the Peter J. Owens Award for excellence in acting. Carla Emil and Rich Silverstein are chairs of this year’s Film Society Awards Night, and Penelope Wong and Timothy Kochis are the honorary chairs.
The onstage tribute to Salles, 6:45 pm, Wednesday, April 28 at the Sundance Kabuki Cinemas, will include a clip reel of career highlights, an onstage interview and a special screening of In Search of On the Road (a Work in Progress), an hour-long edit prepared specifically for the Festival of a documentary about Salles’s effort to make a documentary about Jack Kerouac, the seminal novel On the Road and the Beat Generation.
“Since breaking out with Central Station, Walter has been a guiding light for a generation of directors,” said Graham Leggat, executive director of the San Francisco Film Society. “We’re very excited to be able to honor this master filmmaker, whose career continues to inspire not only filmmakers in his native Brazil and throughout Latin America but also around the world.”
Walter Salles’s work, both as a documentary and narrative film director, centers on themes of displacement and the search for identity. He was born in Rio de Janeiro and lived in France and the United States, where he attended film school at the University of Southern California, before resettling in his native country. He began a career as an award-winning documentarian in the 1980s and turned to narrative features in 1991 with Exposure, a thriller about a photographer avenging the death of a prostitute. Though he continued to make documentaries, primarily for European television, his second fiction film, Foreign Land (SFIFF 1995), codirected with Daniela Thomas, toured the festival circuit and added momentum to his move into narrative filmmaking. Foreign Land, a mystery yarn that addressed the fallout from Brazil’s economic collapse of the 1990s, was also one of the first key films of a resurgent Brazilian film industry.
His next feature Central Station (1998), a metaphorical road story about a cynical older woman and a homeless nine-year-old, earned a Golden Globe for best foreign language film, the Berlin Film Festival Golden Bear for best film, an Academy Award nomination for best foreign language film and more than 50 other international awards. Central Station helped establish Salles as a prominent member of a new wave of filmmakers emerging from Latin America including Alfonso Cuarón, Alejandro González Iñárritu and Guillermo del Toro.
Behind the Sun (2001), a period drama about a young man caught in an age-old family feud in a remote Brazilian farming community, garnered a Golden Globe nomination for best foreign film. In 2004, Salles directed The Motorcycle Diaries, based on José Rivera’s adaptation of Ernesto “Che” Guevara’s journals. The three-year struggle to get the movie made, in the face of studio indifference, paid off when it was selected for the official competition at Cannes and won the British Academy of Film and Television Award for best foreign film and the Academy Award for best song.
Salles’s first foray into the Hollywood system was Dark Water (2005) a remake of the Japanese thriller by Hideo Nakata, starring Jennifer Connelly, John C. Reilly and Tim Roth. His 2008 Brazilian feature Linha de Passe, which he again codirected with Thomas, premiered in the official competition at Cannes and won the best actress award for Sandra Corveloni in her first appearance on screen.
In addition to his work as a director and screenwriter, Salles also produces works by many young Latin American filmmakers. He coproduced the multiple Academy Award nominee City of God, codirected by Fernando Meirelles and Katia Lund, and produced Karim Ainouz’s acclaimed Madame Satã. In 2005, he produced Lower City, the first film by his former assistant director Sergio Machado which became an official selection at the Cannes Film Festival. In 2006, he produced Ainouz’s second film, Suely in the Sky (SFIFF 2007), selected by the Venice Film Festival. Through Videofilmes, the Rio-based production company that Salles runs with his brother, João, he has produced the last three films of Argentinean director Pablo Trapero. Recently he also produced Eryk Rocha’s first film, Transeunte, now in postproduction.
For the past five years, Salles has been involved in the restoration of Mario Peixoto’s Limite (1931), one of the most important films in Brazilian cinematic history. He is on the filmmakers board of the World Cinema Foundation, an organization founded by Martin Scorsese and dedicated to preserving and restoring neglected films from around the world.
The Founder’s Directing Award is presented each year to a master of world cinema and is given in memory of Irving M. Levin, founder of the San Francisco International Film Festival. It is made possible by Fred M. Levin and Nancy Livingston. The award was first bestowed in 1986 on iconic filmmaker Akira Kurosawa, and for many years carried his name.
The award has brought many of the world’s most visionary directors to the San Francisco International Film festival over the years. Previous recipients are Francis Ford Coppola, USA; Mike Leigh, England; Spike Lee, USA; Werner Herzog, Germany; Taylor Hackford, USA; Milos Forman, Czechoslovakia/USA; Robert Altman, USA; Warren Beatty, USA; Clint Eastwood, USA; Abbas Kiarostami, Iran; Arturo Ripstein, Mexico; Im Kwon-Taek, Korea; Francesco Rosi, Italy; Arthur Penn, USA; Stanley Donen, USA; Manoel de Oliveira, Portugal; Ousmane Sembène, Senegal; Satyajit Ray, India; Marcel Carné, France; Jirí Menzel, Czechoslovakia; Joseph L. Mankiewicz, USA; Robert Bresson, France; Michael Powell, England; and Akira Kurosawa, Japan.
For tickets and information for Film Society Awards Night only call 415-561-5005.
Tickets for the onstage tribute at the Sundance Kabuki Cinemas are $20 for San Francisco Film Society members and $25 for general admission. For tickets and information visit www.sffs.org or call 925-866-9559.
For interviews contact hilary@sffs.org
For photos and press materials visit sffs.org/pressdownloads
San Francisco Film Society
The San Francisco Film Society is a nonprofit arts and education organization dedicated to celebrating the world of film and media in four core areas: Internationalism and Cross-Cultural Exchange, Educating and Inspiring Bay Area Youth, Showcasing Bay Area Film Culture and Exploring New Media. Its activities are organized via three major program areas: Exhibition, Education and Filmmaker Services.
The Film Society shows the best of world cinema year-round on its SFFS Screen and presents the San Francisco International Animation Festival, New Italian Cinema, Cinema by the Bay and French Cinema Now each fall. SFFS presents more than 300 days of programming each year, reaching a total audience of more than 100,000 people. Its acclaimed Youth Education program introduces international cinema and media literacy to more than 10,000 teachers and students annually.
SFFS publishes a daily online magazine, SF360.org, with broad-ranging news and features on Bay Area film culture and provides crucial support to the Bay Area filmmaking community through Filmmaker Services, including grants, residencies, fiscal sponsorship, production assistance and development, networking and conference events and professional-level filmmaker classes and workshops.
53rd San Francisco International Film Festival
The 53rd San Francisco International Film Festival runs April 22–May 6, 2010 at the Sundance Kabuki Cinemas, the Castro Theatre and the Clay Theatre in San Francisco and the Pacific Film Archive Theater in Berkeley. Held each spring for 15 days, the International is an extraordinary showcase of cinematic discovery and innovation in the country’s most beautiful city, featuring 15 juried awards, 200 films and live events with upwards of 100 participating filmmakers and diverse audiences of 80,000+ people.
For tickets and information, go to www.sffs.org or call 925-866-9559.
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The Film Society’s much-lauded Youth Education program will be the beneficiary of the black-tie fundraiser honoring Salles. Also honored at the gala event will be James Schamus, recipient of the Kanbar Award for excellence in screenwriting, and the soon-to-be-announced recipient of the Peter J. Owens Award for excellence in acting. Carla Emil and Rich Silverstein are chairs of this year’s Film Society Awards Night, and Penelope Wong and Timothy Kochis are the honorary chairs.
The onstage tribute to Salles, 6:45 pm, Wednesday, April 28 at the Sundance Kabuki Cinemas, will include a clip reel of career highlights, an onstage interview and a special screening of In Search of On the Road (a Work in Progress), an hour-long edit prepared specifically for the Festival of a documentary about Salles’s effort to make a documentary about Jack Kerouac, the seminal novel On the Road and the Beat Generation.
“Since breaking out with Central Station, Walter has been a guiding light for a generation of directors,” said Graham Leggat, executive director of the San Francisco Film Society. “We’re very excited to be able to honor this master filmmaker, whose career continues to inspire not only filmmakers in his native Brazil and throughout Latin America but also around the world.”
Walter Salles’s work, both as a documentary and narrative film director, centers on themes of displacement and the search for identity. He was born in Rio de Janeiro and lived in France and the United States, where he attended film school at the University of Southern California, before resettling in his native country. He began a career as an award-winning documentarian in the 1980s and turned to narrative features in 1991 with Exposure, a thriller about a photographer avenging the death of a prostitute. Though he continued to make documentaries, primarily for European television, his second fiction film, Foreign Land (SFIFF 1995), codirected with Daniela Thomas, toured the festival circuit and added momentum to his move into narrative filmmaking. Foreign Land, a mystery yarn that addressed the fallout from Brazil’s economic collapse of the 1990s, was also one of the first key films of a resurgent Brazilian film industry.
His next feature Central Station (1998), a metaphorical road story about a cynical older woman and a homeless nine-year-old, earned a Golden Globe for best foreign language film, the Berlin Film Festival Golden Bear for best film, an Academy Award nomination for best foreign language film and more than 50 other international awards. Central Station helped establish Salles as a prominent member of a new wave of filmmakers emerging from Latin America including Alfonso Cuarón, Alejandro González Iñárritu and Guillermo del Toro.
Behind the Sun (2001), a period drama about a young man caught in an age-old family feud in a remote Brazilian farming community, garnered a Golden Globe nomination for best foreign film. In 2004, Salles directed The Motorcycle Diaries, based on José Rivera’s adaptation of Ernesto “Che” Guevara’s journals. The three-year struggle to get the movie made, in the face of studio indifference, paid off when it was selected for the official competition at Cannes and won the British Academy of Film and Television Award for best foreign film and the Academy Award for best song.
Salles’s first foray into the Hollywood system was Dark Water (2005) a remake of the Japanese thriller by Hideo Nakata, starring Jennifer Connelly, John C. Reilly and Tim Roth. His 2008 Brazilian feature Linha de Passe, which he again codirected with Thomas, premiered in the official competition at Cannes and won the best actress award for Sandra Corveloni in her first appearance on screen.
In addition to his work as a director and screenwriter, Salles also produces works by many young Latin American filmmakers. He coproduced the multiple Academy Award nominee City of God, codirected by Fernando Meirelles and Katia Lund, and produced Karim Ainouz’s acclaimed Madame Satã. In 2005, he produced Lower City, the first film by his former assistant director Sergio Machado which became an official selection at the Cannes Film Festival. In 2006, he produced Ainouz’s second film, Suely in the Sky (SFIFF 2007), selected by the Venice Film Festival. Through Videofilmes, the Rio-based production company that Salles runs with his brother, João, he has produced the last three films of Argentinean director Pablo Trapero. Recently he also produced Eryk Rocha’s first film, Transeunte, now in postproduction.
For the past five years, Salles has been involved in the restoration of Mario Peixoto’s Limite (1931), one of the most important films in Brazilian cinematic history. He is on the filmmakers board of the World Cinema Foundation, an organization founded by Martin Scorsese and dedicated to preserving and restoring neglected films from around the world.
The Founder’s Directing Award is presented each year to a master of world cinema and is given in memory of Irving M. Levin, founder of the San Francisco International Film Festival. It is made possible by Fred M. Levin and Nancy Livingston. The award was first bestowed in 1986 on iconic filmmaker Akira Kurosawa, and for many years carried his name.
The award has brought many of the world’s most visionary directors to the San Francisco International Film festival over the years. Previous recipients are Francis Ford Coppola, USA; Mike Leigh, England; Spike Lee, USA; Werner Herzog, Germany; Taylor Hackford, USA; Milos Forman, Czechoslovakia/USA; Robert Altman, USA; Warren Beatty, USA; Clint Eastwood, USA; Abbas Kiarostami, Iran; Arturo Ripstein, Mexico; Im Kwon-Taek, Korea; Francesco Rosi, Italy; Arthur Penn, USA; Stanley Donen, USA; Manoel de Oliveira, Portugal; Ousmane Sembène, Senegal; Satyajit Ray, India; Marcel Carné, France; Jirí Menzel, Czechoslovakia; Joseph L. Mankiewicz, USA; Robert Bresson, France; Michael Powell, England; and Akira Kurosawa, Japan.
For tickets and information for Film Society Awards Night only call 415-561-5005.
Tickets for the onstage tribute at the Sundance Kabuki Cinemas are $20 for San Francisco Film Society members and $25 for general admission. For tickets and information visit www.sffs.org or call 925-866-9559.
For interviews contact hilary@sffs.org
For photos and press materials visit sffs.org/pressdownloads
San Francisco Film Society
The San Francisco Film Society is a nonprofit arts and education organization dedicated to celebrating the world of film and media in four core areas: Internationalism and Cross-Cultural Exchange, Educating and Inspiring Bay Area Youth, Showcasing Bay Area Film Culture and Exploring New Media. Its activities are organized via three major program areas: Exhibition, Education and Filmmaker Services.
The Film Society shows the best of world cinema year-round on its SFFS Screen and presents the San Francisco International Animation Festival, New Italian Cinema, Cinema by the Bay and French Cinema Now each fall. SFFS presents more than 300 days of programming each year, reaching a total audience of more than 100,000 people. Its acclaimed Youth Education program introduces international cinema and media literacy to more than 10,000 teachers and students annually.
SFFS publishes a daily online magazine, SF360.org, with broad-ranging news and features on Bay Area film culture and provides crucial support to the Bay Area filmmaking community through Filmmaker Services, including grants, residencies, fiscal sponsorship, production assistance and development, networking and conference events and professional-level filmmaker classes and workshops.
53rd San Francisco International Film Festival
The 53rd San Francisco International Film Festival runs April 22–May 6, 2010 at the Sundance Kabuki Cinemas, the Castro Theatre and the Clay Theatre in San Francisco and the Pacific Film Archive Theater in Berkeley. Held each spring for 15 days, the International is an extraordinary showcase of cinematic discovery and innovation in the country’s most beautiful city, featuring 15 juried awards, 200 films and live events with upwards of 100 participating filmmakers and diverse audiences of 80,000+ people.
For tickets and information, go to www.sffs.org or call 925-866-9559.
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