Special series featuring film scores, cinema from the African diaspora and a festival curated by movie-loving visual artists are happening this week.
The San Francisco Symphony celebrates the art and expressiveness of movie music in three programs in its Summer With the Symphony series. On Thursday and Friday in Davies Symphony Hall, 1961’s “West Side Story,” the romantic tragedy directed by Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins, will show on the big screen, while the orchestra performs Leonard Bernstein’s original score live. Sarah Hicks conducts. On July 25-26, “Matilda,” the Danny DeVito–directed tale about a little girl with an unusual gift, screens, with composer David Newman conducting his original score. On July 23 at Frost Amphitheater in Stanford and July 24 in Davies Hall, the symphony presents “James Bond Forever,” a concert of music from the 007 movies; the program does not contain film clips. Visit sfsymphony.org for more information.
The Museum of the African Diaspora and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art are presenting a series of award-winning films from Africa and across the African diaspora. Titled “Limitless,” and held in conjunction with the MoAD exhibition “Unbound: Art, Blackness, and the Universe,” the series features cinema from Brazil, Nigeria, Zambia, the Caribbean, the United States and elsewhere. Screenings are on Thursdays through July 30. On July 9 at MoAD, “Executive Order” screens. The thriller from filmmaker Lazaro Ramos is about a lawyer who sues the Brazilian government for reparations for the descendants of enslaved Africans. On July 16 at MoAD, the program is “A Collection of Short Films.” “Mami Wata,” a fantasy thriller from Nigerian filmmaker C.J. “Fiery” Obasi, screens at MoAD on July 23. American filmmaker Kahlil Joseph’s documentary-fiction hybrid “BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions” screens at SFMOMA on July 30. All programs start at 6 p.m. Visit moadsf.org.
Cinema and visual art come together at the Fraenkel Film Festival, a series presented by San Francisco’s Fraenkel Gallery and curated by major gallery artists who love movies. Screenings are at the Roxie Theater, July 8-18. Proceeds benefit the Roxie. Brian De Palma’s “Carrie,” selected by artist Christian Marclay, opens the series. It screens at 6:20 p.m. Wednesday; Thursday’s films are “Pickup on South Street,” selected by Nan Goldin, at 6:15 p.m.; and “Get Out,” selected by Carrie Mae Weems, at 8:15 p.m. Screening on Friday are “Persona,” selected by Robert Adams, at 6:20 p.m.; and “Princess Mononoke,” selected by Martine Guttierez, at 8:30 p.m. Saturday’s movies include “The Princess Bride,” selected by Elisheva Biernoff, at 1:20 p.m.; and “North by Northwest, selected by Lee Friedlander, at 6 p.m. Visit roxie.com for a complete schedule.
The Balboa Theater hosts a three-film series honoring actor-dancer Julia Carmen, whose 45-year career includes collaborations with John Cassavetes, Robert Redford and John Carpenter. Screenings at 7 p.m. feature horror and thriller fare. On Tuesday, it’s “In the Mouth of Madness” (1994), directed by Carpenter. Wednesday’s film is “Night of the Juggler” (1980), directed by Robert Butler; and Thursday’s film is “Fright Night Part 2” (1988), directed by Tommy Lee Wallace. Carmen is scheduled to attend all programs. Visit balboamovies.com
New releases include “Mary Oliver: Saved by the Beauty of the World,” opening in Bay Area theaters Friday. Filmmaker Sasha Waters (“Garry Winogrand: All Things Are Photographable”) celebrates the life and work of Oliver (1935-2019), the beloved and accoladed American poet known for her unrhymed free verse, accessible tone and reverence for the natural world, in this documentary.
Via archival materials, interviews and poetry recitations, the film follows Oliver from her Ohio childhood in a “very dark and broken house” to her Bohemian years in Greenwich Village to the life she built in Provincetown, Massachusetts, with her partner of 40 years, Molly Malone Cook.
Oliver wrote more than 30 books, including bestsellers, and received a Pulitzer Prize (for “American Primitive”), among other honors. She was also an out lesbian, a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, and a lover of dogs. Immensely private, Oliver seldom did interviews, saying that she wanted her work to speak for itself. Providing insight into Oliver’s process and priorities are the film’s interviewees — Oprah Winfrey, Stephen Colbert, Steve Buscemi, Maria Shriver, Lucy Dacus, Nick Flynn, and other friends and admirers. Their stories and observations help the film shine as an informative and heartfelt picture of the poet.
There’s no shortage of praise for Oliver. Winfrey describes Oliver’s “Wild Geese” as a “poem that has saved lives.” Colbert cries when reading one of Oliver’s poems aloud. John Waters, the nonconformist filmmaker and longtime friend of Oliver, meanwhile, provides irreverent counterbalance, jokingly trashing Oliver.
“Romeria,” a graceful coming-of-age tale from Spanish filmmaker Carla Simon (“Summer 1993”), opens at the Roxie Theater on Friday. Set on the Galician coast, the drama follows 18-year-old Marina (Llúcia Garcia), an aspiring filmmaker who, to qualify for a scholarship, must meet with her estranged paternal grandparents and receive a signature. Her journey lands her in a tangle of extended family members and troubling buried truths about her parents. A shift into fantasy terrain makes for risky but intriguing storytelling on Simon’s part.
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