This year's SF INDIEFEST, San Francisco's first independent film festival of the year, will take place virtually from February 4-21, 2021. This year's selection includes 42 shorts and 38 features from 20 countries. Two of the three world premieres are, notably, Asian selections – including Bay Area Asian-American production “Girl in Golden Gate Park” (JP Allen, 2021) and spicy Japanese fiction “Body Remember” (Keita Yamashina, 2021). Other notables include the film festival's only international premiere, “Roll” (Daichi Murase, 2020) — which had previously premiered in the Nara International Film Festival — a reckless coming-of-age film caught between celluloid and of course, a romantic interest.
The rest of the major film slate can be found below.
FESTIVAL OPENING NIGHT
THE BOOK OF VISION
Director: Carlos S. Hintermann
In present day, Eva (Lotte Verbeek), a promising young doctor, leaves her brilliant career to study the history of medicine in a remote university. She begins to call everything into question after discovering a manuscript titled “The Book of Vision”: her nature, her body, her illness, and her sealed fate. Johan Anmuth (Game of Thrones star Charles Dance) is an 18th-century Prussian physician in perpetual conflict between the rise of rationalism and ancient forms of animism. Far from a proper scientific text, Anmuth authored the manuscript to focus on the feelings, fears, and dreams of over 1800 of his patients, whose spirits still wander through the pages. The story of Anmuth and his patients cause Eva to question the separation of the past, present and future, while confronting the challenges of modern medicine and its limitations with respect to her own body.
Carlos Hintermann describes his film as “a game of mirrors between two dimensions” with time jumps “inspired by the type of storytelling in video games.” The Book of Vision pays tribute to the inexorable force of life and the need for constant rebirth. Each interrupted experience, each fall, and each unresolved love story inhabits a specific space and time, yet is in continuous evolution. The film is executive produced by Terrence Malick.
CENTERPIECE FILM
SUMMERTIME
Director: Carlos López Estrada
Over the course of a hot summer day in Los Angeles, the lives of 25 young Angelinos intersect. A skating guitarist, a tagger, two wannabe rappers, an exasperated fast-food worker, a limo driver—they all weave in and out of each other's stories. Through poetry, they express life, love, heartache, family, home, and fear. One of them just wants to find someplace that still serves good cheeseburgers.
Inspired by a spoken-word showcase featuring 25 diverse high school performers, Carlos López Estrada (Blindspotting) proposed a collaboration to develop the performers' work into a loose, interconnected narrative, allowing the non-actors to express themselves and their relationship to the city. Summertime is a free-verse poem—of the kids, by the kids, for the kids. The young poets radiate vitality, honesty, and profound emotion. By the time they wind up together in a tricked-out mega-limo overlooking the city, we believe in what their crazy, creative togetherness represents: hope. As the driver says, “Y'all got a pocket full of dreams, so don't let me down.
CLOSING NIGHT
PUPPY LOVE
Director: Michael Maxxis
A prophetic young dishwasher with brain-damage (played by Sean Penn and Robin Wright-Penn's son, Hopper Penn) and a homeless prostitute (Paz de la Huerta) addicted to crack and heroin are brought together through obscene circumstances to embark on a perverse journey through the gutter. Featuring a musical score by Portugal the Man and an original soundtrack produced by Butch Vig (Nirvana, Garbage), this semi-biographical film was inspired by director/writer Michael Maxxis' cousin, Morgan. Rosanna Arquette, Michael Madsen, and Wayne Newton support the cast.
VANGUARD AWARD: RODRIGO REYES
In its 23rd year SF IndieFest is proud to honor local Oakland-based filmmaker, Rodrigo Reyes, with its Vanguard Award. As a filmmaker Rodrigo Reyes pushes artistic boundaries and redefines the cinematic form, especially with his eagerly anticipated new hybrid documentary, 499.
Stranded in modern-day Mexico, a 16th-century conquistador (Eduardo San Juan) begins a journey, visiting bereaved relatives of murdered activists, exploring haunting strip clubs, and traversing misty mountains in 499. As the time traveler crosses over dunes and through bustling cities, he details accounts of how the Spanish dehumanized the societies with whom they met, and with what impunity they maneuvered and battled. There are hints of remorse over the violence they unleashed, but these are few and far between.
The film combines documentary and fiction to draw a parallel between the apocalyptic sacking of Tenochtitlan and the harsh reality of many modern-day Mexicans. The carefully crafted cinematography and the dream-like style of the film serve as a gentle backdrop for the restrained tenacity and stubborn hope of all the migrants, activists, and grieving mothers. In bringing these issues to the forefront, 499 can provide a way for a country and it's citizens to finally start healing from centuries old wounds.
499 is the fourth feature film from Mexican-born American director, Rodrigo Reyes, who is based in Oakland, California. In 2020, it won the Best Cinematography Award in the documentary competition at Tribeca Film Festival and was also awarded the Special Jury Prize in its international competition at the Hot Docs Documentary Film Festival.
Rodrigo Reyes has garnered positive reviews in the New York Times and received significant support for his work from such organizations as Film Independent, Sundance Institute, Tribeca Film Institute. In 2017, he received the Guggenheim Fellowship and is currently the Creative Director of the BAVC MediaMaker Fellowship where he mentors new up and coming filmmakers.
SF IndieFest prides itself on recognizing those unconventional, creative risk-taking filmmakers that are redefining the cinematic form and are someone to watch. Rodrigo Reyes is the latest filmmaker the festival has recognized. Past honorees include Sean Dunne, Robert Greene, Jamie Meltzer, Penny Lane, Lise Swenson, Sara Archambault, Don Argott, Sheena Joyce and Melody Gilbert.
Tickets
Regular film tickets are $10. The Full All Access Binge Pass, good for all screenings and parties at the Festival, is $135. For more information and tickets, visit www.sfindie.com or call 415-662-3378. Most programs will screen on demand from February 4-21, 2021.
FULL PROGRAM DESCRIPTIONS AVAILABLE AT SFINDIE.COM
