2012 German Gems

2012 marked the end for Ingrid Eggers' German Gems Film Festival. As reported in the San Francisco Chronicle, Eggers said "I gave it long, deep thought...The Bay Guardian gave me a lifetime achievement award. Once you get that, it's time to quit." Apparently, whatever animus existed between Eggers and the managers of her former festival, Berlin and Beyond, has dissipated to the point that she can claim, B&B is "is back on track."

I thank and congratulate Ms. Eggers for her many, fine years of programming excellent German language cinema in San Francisco. I'll miss her programming.

Unfortunately, the 2012 German Gems ran up against a Henri-Georges Clouzot series at the PFA. I was only able to see one film at the day long event at the Castro Theater.

Under Control; documentary; directed by Volker Sattel; German with subtitles; (2011)

The Castro runs previews before some its screenings. In December, I saw a funky, 1970s looking festival trailer for the 2012 German Gems. I'm still not sure what it was all about but if I had to guess, I think it was referencing Under Control which was filmed at various operating and abandoned nuclear power plants in Germany. I think the outfits in the trailer where riffing on the hazmat/radiation protection suits worn by workers at nuclear power plants.

Let me start by stating (or admitting given your viewpoint) that I am an electrical engineer. More accurately I have degrees in electrical engineering; I don't do engineering work anymore. My specialty was power engineering. Although I didn't specialize in nuclear power, my understanding of how a nuclear power plant works is better than the layman or man-on-the-street. With that out of the way, I was fascinated by the imagery in Under Control. Shot on 35 mm and at times, looking like an outtake from 2001: A Space Odyssey , the film beautifully captured the design of nuclear power plants. The effect was similar to what I read about Manufactured Landscapes which I haven't seen.

As the camera panned across control panels, fuel rod storage pools, the interior of containment buildings, etc., I recalled why I became an engineer. I think it is beautiful to see scale models and pipes and cable trays forming geometric patterns. However, I wondered how many in the audience understood what they were looking at. The dialog was minimal at times.

More problematic was the lack of a narrative. The film seemed to take place at several power plants. Some were still in operation, others were shuttered, still another was converted into an amusement park. I wasn't sure which power plant I was looking at. At one point, it seems like there is an emergency like a stuck valve which would lead to a containment breach or nuclear meltdown. The plant is evacuated. I think that would have made the news but I don't recall anything like that. Was it an exercise? Was it staged for the film? I don't know, it was never mentioned again. The fact that they were using 1960s & 70s looking switches and panels (like the original Star Trek) made me scratch my head. Why hadn't they upgraded that equipment and controls?

In essence, the filmmakers go to nuclear power plants and beautifully film the routine processes and tasks the employees must do as well as the equipment and facilities. Then it hops around to employees of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the crumbling ruins of an abandoned plant(s), etc. The overarching theme seems to be that we (or at least Germany) built these plants to control nature - harnessing the energy of the atom for our increasingly energy-intensive lifestyle. Now, 40 or 50 years later, the people are under control of the nuclear plants - operational safeguards and procedures dealing with the nuclear waste control the lives of those who work at or live near these power plants. I found the premise to dubious. Let's not forget the status quo when these plants were built. In Germany, they were burning coal to generate electricity. Who knows how much air pollution was avoided due to these nuclear power plants? Would they be any less "under control" if there was coal plant spewing NOX and SOX emissions and asthma rates were doubled? Society is all about controls which are more restrictive than anything shown in Under Control.

Avoiding a debate on nuclear power, the film seems to wants decry of the constraints imposed by generating nuclear power. The land use, the storage issues, etc. I just didn't find the arguments compelling. Instead, I found the images compelling.

If anything, I was saddened by the demise of nuclear power in Germany. The images in Under Control hearkened back to the days when society confidently "conquered" the environment. Engineers used to design and build big, ambitious projects like dams to tame rivers, long tunnels to defeat mountains, bridges to span the impassable and nuclear power plants to power a nation. Now, lawyers and environmentalists subvert those ambitions. Is it better for society? Perhaps; solar or wind generation brings a host of problems that most people don't consider. Most of these issues are because we can't "control" the output but for me, it's sad too. The enlightened societies won't allow a nuclear power plant to be built or in Germany, even remain in operation because the risk are too high. Society wants renewable power on demand without any risks and at low costs. It makes me recall why I stopped being an engineer...

As you can see, my take Under Control is intensely personal and unique. I liked the film despite its flaws but I can't really recommend it...except to some of my classmates from engineering school.

2012 is 38 Days Away

The first quarter of the year has long been the busiest for me in terms of film festivals. The 2012 festival schedule has already been lined-up.

German Gems - January 14 at the Castro Theater and January 15 in Point Arenas
Noir City - January 20 to 29 at the Castro Theater
SF IndieFest - February 9 to 23 primarily at the Roxie
Cinequest - February 28 to March 11 primarily at the Camera 12 in San Jose
San Francisco Asian American Film Festival - March 8 to 18 in San Francisco, Berkeley and San Jose

If the Mostly British Film Festival stays on schedule, it should be held in early February at the Vogue Theater.

German Gems has cut back to one day at the Castro. Festival Founder Ingrid Eggers received a Goldies Lifetime Achievement Award from the San Francisco Bay Guardian. In the profile, the SFBG states "Her current film festival project — the smaller-scale German Gems — is set to screen for a third year in January 2012. After that, Eggers is not so sure. 'It's incredibly expensive to put on even such a small festival,' she admits ruefully..." To paraphrase Churchill, "Now this may not be the end. It may not even be the beginning of the end. But it is, most assuredly, the end of the beginning."

Noir City's December 14 kick-off double feature has been announced: Lady on a Train (1945) and Christmas Holiday (1944). Deanna Durbin is the common thread.

Also, there is a series currently at the PFA called Southern (Dis)comfort.

The South has never shaken its past. It sits like mist on the land, seeping into the drawl of the everyday. Secession, the cotton gin, a God-fearin’ people, slavery, pecans and poke salad, moonshine, hounds and possums, a big Rebel yell—there’s enough cultural ammo here to fight the Civil War all over again. Those munitions will never run dry as long as Southern artists (and a few carpetbaggers) plow the fertile fields of Dixie mythology, milling it into a genre all its own, the Southern Gothic. This genre wallows in the grotesque, prefers the randy to the restrained, knows Jim Crow isn’t the national bird, considers blood for an old debt paid, plunders the plantation, and imagines it all residing inside a delirious melodrama like one big corn mash-up.

I've seen a few of the films in the series at the PFA. Curator Steve Seid said that there were so many films that he and fellow curator Peter Conheim wanted to include in the series that they couldn't fit them all in at the PFA. A dozen of the overflow films will be screened at the Roxie in December. Neither PFA or the Roxie have announced the Roxie titles although Seid said they saved the more sleazy ones for the Roxie's run. I think he mentioned the Southern Fried exploitation classic, Two Thousand Maniacs! would get a screening at the Roxie.

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Since I haven't reported it in awhile, I have seen 371 films or film programs year-to-date. The cost is $3,144 but that's a little inaccurate. Some of the money was in the form of charitable donations which are tax deductible. On this date in 2010, I had seen 359 films so I'm running ahead of last year's pace.

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Another digression is that I've noticed that AMC has been showing John Wayne films on Saturdays. I've always been a fan of Wayne and having watched so many portions of his films the past few months, I can see why. In the 1950s and 1960s, Wayne didn't so much play an icon as poke fun at the icon he had become.

In particular, his Western films show Wayne blending his heroic persona with a fair amount of humor (occasionally at his own expense). Among the films of the era I enjoy are Rio Bravo, El Dorado, The Cowboys, The War Wagon, The Sons of Katie Elder and True Grit. In these films, Wayne toyed with his own film persona which was firmly established by the time. I also note that Wayne certainly wasn't worried about being shadowed by his co-stars who include Dean Martin, Robert Mitchum & Kirk Douglas. There were also two outstanding films from his final decade and a half in which Wayne played his parts without much humor creeping into his performances: John Ford's classic, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence and Wayne's final, elegiac film, The Shootist.

All in all, the Duke made some entertaining films as he was winding down his career. I read that Quentin Tarantino asks his dates what they think of Rio Bravo. If they don't love it, he assumes they are not a good match. If I were a woman, I'd pass Tarantino's test which is appropriate because I have a man-crush on Tarantino based on his films.