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Q3.15

At the top of the Rafael’s summer quarter, we are pleased to welcome modern dance legend Anna Halprin back to our stage to present and discuss her new collaboration with Swiss filmmaker Ruedi Gerber. For someone who has marked many milestones throughout her career in dance, Anna is about to achieve yet another one, as she […]

2015 at the Rafael

News

The first quarter of 2015 brings a host of major foreign film releases to the Christopher B. Smith Rafael Film Center. In January the Rafael again presents For Your Consideration, a selection of countries’ submissions to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Karen Davis and Janis Plotkin, senior programmers for the Mill Valley […]

Q3.15

News

2015 at the Rafael

News

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Q3.15

News

Performance and the lives of performers are strands that run through the Rafael’s upcoming programs, from the Grateful Dead concert film and Les Blank’s “lost” film about Leon Russell, to the remarkable new documentary Listen to Me Marlon, in which the acting legend Brando speaks to us intimately about his life and work. Perhaps performance is not an unusual theme for us, given the number of music films and documentaries we show in the first place, as well as our keen interest in the personalities that populate our screens.

Extraordinary numbers of personalities and screens were on display recently at the Cannes Film Festival, the biggest such event in the world. For us it represents going into high gear for the upcoming Mill Valley Film Festival, since some of the films and makers will likely figure in our 38^th edition this October.

But Cannes is quite a spectacle in itself. More than 30,000 accredited professionals descend on Cannes for the duration of the festival. The most ubiquitous images that reach us from Festival de Cannes are the shots from the red carpet that leads to the 2,300 seat Lumi`ere, but there are screenings of all sizes and various importance taking place throughout the city all the time.

The official Cannes poster memorialized Ingrid Bergman, who, like Orson Welles, would have turned 100 this year. Like last year’s poster portrait of Marcello Mastroianni, the Bergman image represents the two pillars of what Cannes has come to symbolize: art and glamour. While we assume the casual fan is dazzled by the glamour, we “professionals” are expected to concentrate on the art. But no one is immune from being dazzled now and again, and Cannes is an appropriate place for that to happen.

– Richard Peterson
Director of Programming, Smith Rafael Film Center

2015 at the Rafael

News

The first quarter of 2015 brings a host of major foreign film releases to the Christopher B. Smith Rafael Film Center. In January the Rafael again presents For Your Consideration, a selection of countries’ submissions to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Karen Davis and Janis Plotkin, senior programmers for the Mill Valley Film Festival, organized this series, with some of the films having also played at the recent MVFF.

Both foreign and English-language MVFF highlights return to our screens in several theatrical engagements: Mr. Turner, Beloved Sisters, Mommy, What We Do in the Shadows, Magician: The Astonishing Life & Work of Orson Welles and Living Is Easy with Eyes Closed.

But we’re also excited to offer some noteworthy releases that are new to theRafael and CFI, including the Russian Cannes-award-winner Leviathan and the outrageous Argentine Oscar-entry Wild Tales, a satire of human behavior chock-full of surprises.

As for more surprises in the category of coming attractions, we are happy to be working once again with the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences on two exclusive presentations at the Rafael. This will be our second edition of Hollywood Home Movies, featuring never-before-seen footage from the Academy Film Archive. In addition, Little Annie Rooney, a freshly restored Mary Pickford classic will grace our theater on tinted 35mm film. And for those following Science on Screen, we continue this ongoing series with two unique presentations this quarter.

People frequently ask whether or not a particular title will be coming to the Rafael. Often the answer is simple, but sometimes not. Our theatrical engagements, for the most part, are determined by the film’s distributor, which may or may not let us play the film we want, as well as by the timing of the movie’s release in the San Francisco Bay Area. A film might open in theaters one week after the Festival, but in other cases it could take more than a year to get to us, if at all. The most frustrating situation occurs when there are multiple titles available to us that need to open at the same time. After all, we only have three screens.

Some of the films in For Your Consideration have American distributors, but others don’t, and they may never find one. We have booked films from overseas distributors, just as we work eagerly and directly with individual American filmmakers, but it can be riskier and more expensive when we have the only theatrical engagement in the country and we’re “winging it,” creating our own marketing and publicity materials.

Whether or not we’re working with a distributor, we strive to provide our audiences with the best films and viewing experiences we can muster, ensuring that the Rafael is your first-choice location to see any film.

Half Sized Blog Element (Single Author Style)

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Q3.15

2015 at the Rafael

Q3.15

2015 at the Rafael

Full Sized Blog Element (Big Preview Pic)

Q3.15

2015 at the Rafael

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