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THE FESTIVAL OF SICK AND TWISTED ANIMATION COMES TO THE CASTRO THEATRE SEPT.20-28 It will move in October to the Palace of Fine Arts Theatre and the UC Theatre in Berkeley. It will be shown in Nov. at the Lark in Larkspur.
The 1996 edition features "25 animated scatological short films" including Todd Kurtzman's Marylou, Don Hertzfeld's Ah Lamour and Genre, Curt Hill and Dan Bushnell's gross Blackhead and Weiner, Corky Quakenbush's Condom Complaint, Gregory Ecklund's Buttcheese Platter, five new episodes of Craig McCrackin's No Neck Joe, Dave Smith's sick Tie Die Rick (set in our own Haight-Ashbury), David Donar's Big Dumb Fat Stupid Baby, Arron Springer's Baby's New Formula, Kevin Kalliher's Home Honey I'm High, and 9 other shorts. Three oldies are included that are well worth seeing again. They are John Dilworth's Dirty Birdy, Bill Plympton's How to Make Love to a Woman and Philip Hunt's Ah Pook is Here. The show also includes Mike Grimshaw's Quiet Please, the most disgusting/sickest short ever made.
ASIFA-SF MEMBERS GET A DISCOUNT ADMISSION FOR THE MAKING OF TOY STORY, WITH RALPH GUGGENHEIM at Film Arts Foundation, Wed. Sept. 11 at 7pm. Guggenheim was the producer of the hit feature and is vice president of Pixar's features division. Admission to the event is $8 for FAF and ASIFA members, $12 for nonmembers. FAF is located at 346 9th St. 2nd floor, SF CA 94103 (415) 552-8760.
DON'T FORGET TO WATCH THE 'LIVING ROOM FESTIVAL' IF YOU ENJOY SHORT FILMS AND VIDEOS - FRIDAYS AT 11 ON KQED-TV The September 6 program on the body includes Debra Callabresi's Quilted by Hand. The film, made with thousands of pieces of fabric, presents a loving portrait of her grandmother and her life on a Midwest farm.
The Sept. 13 program on language will feature a most unusual animated (?) work. It is a computer generated video called Alphabetically Sorted by Rebecca Bollinger and it features a list of words on the screen that was generated by a computer. It also has a computer generated voice (Victoria Highclass) that reads the words as if they were poetry. Also in this show is The F Word (lots of moving graphics) by Marcia Jarmel and Erin Gallagher, and George Griffin's Little Routine. Griffin's personal work about putting his daughter to bed is a brilliant display of his creative vision.
The love and hate show on Sept. 20 includes Lorie Loeb's Rewind, It Could Have Been Me. The film, with music by Holly Near, is a powerful depiction of how a mother became homeless. Loeb teaches animation at SF City College's Fort Mason campus and is substituting for Pat Amlin this fall at SF State. Before moving to the Bay Area she taught animation at NYU and assisted Jane Aaron on her films for several years.
The 1995 "Living Room Festival" series was programmed by representatives from the American Indian Film Festival, ASIFA-SF, BAVC, The Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame, Canyon Cinema, Cine Accion, The Corporation on Disabilities and Telecommunications, Frameline, The Jewish Film Festival, NAATA, Poetry Film Workshop and The Video Project. Karl Cohen was the ASIFA-SF representative.
The "Living Room Festival" has been a rare and wonderful chance to see unusual shorts on KQED for four seasons. Jack Walsh, who created and produces the series, has been dedicated to bringing unusual films to Bay Area TV. Unfortunately, funding for the arts has been cut so heavily, Walsh and his board have decided to end the program. In past years they have presented 12 shows, this year there was only funding for 8.
A word of caution. Don't watch the show at a large party. I was invited to see a program at a party organized by one of the contributors to the series. It was in a large charming house on a hill above Cole Valley. It was a wonderful evening until the show came on and an older woman, who was said to be an actress and was obviously insecure, kept making comments about sensitive personal works she didn't understand. People tried to quiet her down. When she commented that the delivery of the text in one work was all wrong she was asked to turn around and meet the creator of the film she had just insulted! She fled from the room. It was much nicer watching the show with her gone, but the damage had been done. So watch the remaining programs in the quiet surroundings of your home.