23rd San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival-March 11–16, 19, 20. Presented by NAATA, the National Asian–American Telecommunications Association. Please note program change: Schizo, a tale of a slack–jawed teenager and his drunken uncle confronting motley criminals in Kazakhstan, will be shown at 4 p.m. on Sunday, March 20. Thirteen features and three short films from the Philippines, Taiwan, the U.S., Hong Kong, Iraq, Japan, South Korea, Canada and the U.K. Among many highlights of the 23rd SFIAAF screenings at PFA are new films by internationally renowned directors Ken Loach (A Fond Kiss, a tale of inter–cultural romance in Scotland) and Bahman Ghobadi, (Turtles Can Fly, about the life of a 13–year–old satellite dish repairman in Kurdish northern Iraq). Fruit Chan's Dumplings is a delightfully wicked comedy about the quest for youth and beauty in present-day Hong Kong, and South Korean director Park Chan–wook's Oldboy is an incendiary tale of revenge that received the Grand Prix at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival. The eponymous protagonist of Cutie Honey, based on comics and a TV anime by Go Nagai, is a sexy superheroine who fights crime while wearing a flashy pink vinyl suit. In Keka, from the Philippines, director Quark Henares blends action, suspense, romance, and dark comedy as his heroine works at a call center, goes on dates, hangs out with friends, and moonlights as a serial killer. Furious emotions tear apart a suburban family in Quentin Lee's Ethan Mao, a drama about a son who becomes a street hustler when his homophobic father throws him out of the house. Cavite, set in an impoverished Filipino town, is a gritty psychological thriller that pits a Filipino-American against the Islamic terrorists who have kidnapped his mother and sister. Evolution of a Filipino Family is an extraordinary epic that tracks the diminishing fortunes of the Gallardo family during fifteen years of martial law imposed by former President Ferdinand Marcos. This engaging ten–and–a–half–hour feature will be screened, with a dinner break, on Saturday, March 19. Three extraordinary documentaries will be shown at PFA. And Thereafter is a haunting portrait of a survivor–Young–Ja Wike, a Korean war bride whose life in America has been one of isolation and rural poverty. In 62 Years and 6500 Miles Between, director Anita Chang depicts the courage of her 100–year–old grandmother, known in Taiwan as "Democratic Grandma." The People of Angkor are a lively group of peddlers, laborers, and monks who inhabit the glorious temple ruins in Cambodia.
For details, see the series schedule.

Games People Play II-March 2, 9, 30, April 6, 20. The games continue in this series with an emphasis in March and April on cybergaming-from films that predate and anticipate today's trends (Tron, Death Race 2000, eXistenZ); to recent avant–garde works (including Sheik Attack, 2080, and Deathstar) whose themes in some ways parallel gaming concerns; and a program of machinima, a new strain of animation drawing on gaming software.
For details, see the series schedule.

Edgar G. Ulmer: The Man from Planet B-March 18, 20, 24–26, April 1, 2. Arianné Cipes Ulmer, the director's daughter, will appear in person on April 1 and 2. Ann Savage, star of Detour, will be our guest on March 25. Celebrating one of Hollywood's most ingenious creators, a director who created stylish films on tight deadlines and miniscule budgets. Ulmer began his career as a German Expressionist set designer and assistant to theater legend Max Reinhardt and director F. W. Murnau. People on Sunday/Menschen am Sonntag, Ulmer's first film as a director, was a collaboration with a future Who's Who of European emigrés to Hollywood: Robert Siodmak co–directed, and Billy Wilder and Fred Zinneman helped write the film. In 1934 in Hollywood he made his only film for a major Hollywood studio, The Black Cat, which was the first film to team the popular horror stars Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff. Thereafter Ulmer's career earned him the title, "The King of Poverty Row," as he worked with tiny budgets and hectic schedules for small, independent production companies. His individual style could shine through in this atmosphere, as producers tended not to meddle with directors, lest time or money be lost. In 1937, Ulmer went to New York to direct Natalya Poltavka, a musical comedy in Ukrainian for the immigrant community. He stayed on the East Coast to direct several box office hits in Yiddish: Green Fields, The Light Ahead, and the charming comedy American Matchmaker. He also managed, on a four–day shooting schedule, to film a socially conscious black film (with Sidney Bechet music), Moon over Harlem. From 1942 to 1946, Ulmer directed 11 features for the financially challenged Producers Releasing Corporation, working on six–day shooting schedules and creating some marvellously atmospheric and visually arresting films, including Bluebeard, Strange Illusion, and Detour. After the collapse of PRC, Ulmer directed The Strange Woman, starring Hedy Lamarr and George Sanders, and Ruthless, featuring Zachary Scott and Sydney Greenstreet. Ulmer's 1951 science–fiction film The Man From Planet X is a stylish tale of a strange visitor to earth who lands on a foggy Scottish island.
For details, see the series schedule.

An Evening with Frederick Wiseman-Friday, April 8. Please note program change. We are happy to welcome the great documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman to PFA to introduce his film Central Park (1989), which the Washington Post called "One of the most accessible and salutary films ever made by master documentarian Frederick Wiseman...Central Park celebrates...the 840 acres in the middle of Manhattan where New Yorkers retreat and repair and lapse into modes of behavior one might actually classify as civilized."
For details, see the series schedule.

Marina Goldovskaya: A Woman with a Movie Camera-April 7, 13–15, 17. Marina Goldovskaya in residence, April 13–17, introducing her films, and giving a lecture on April 14. Free First Thursday screening, April 7. Marina Goldovskaya is courageous and gifted witness to Russian culture, community and political struggles. In her struggle against the "citadel of ideology" in her native Russia, she created such films as an exposé of the first Soviet prison camp, Solovky Power (1989); many credit this film with accelerating the breakup of the Soviet Union. The Shattered Mirror: A Diary of a Turbulent Time (1992) reflect the lives of ordinary citizens at a moment when Russia was poised on the brink of reform and change, and Lucky to Be Born in Russia (1994) uses a similar structure to discuss the momentous events of the October 1993 armed confrontation in Moscow. Social and political history are seen in the lives of the residents of The House on Arbat Street, a fascinating depiciton of a "moderne" apartment house built in the earlly 1900s. In The Prince is Back (1999/2003) she presents viewers with an intriguing real-life character: Prince Evgeny Meschersky who wants to reclaim an ancestral home. Goldovskaya is a professor in the film department at UCLA, and has recently made Art and Life: Finding the Thread, a six–year view of the myriad creative activities of artist, opera and theater director, activist, and professor Peter Sellars.
For details, see the series schedule.

Crying in Color: How Hollywood Coped When Technicolor Died-April 3, 9, 16. The wonderfully knowledgeable and amusing author and film studies professor Russell Merritt presents a lecture (illustrated with film clips) and three films that demonstrate a new look that came to Hollywood cinematography in the 1950s, when Eastman Kodak finally broke the near–monopoly of three–strip Technicolor and allowed directors and D.P.s the chance to create a new pallette. Confectionary French aristocracy in Scaramouche (1950), emotionally expressive difffused hues in John Huston's Moulin Rouge, a biopic about Toulouse–Lautrec, and the repressive side of small–town America conveyed in color in Vincente Minnelli's Some Came Running (starring Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Shirley Maclaine).
For details, see the series schedule.

Women of Color Film Festival-Thursday through Sunday, March 3–6. Prominent and emerging filmmakers will be seen in this tenth–anniversary edition of this vibrant festival, presented concurrent to the Empowering Women of Color Conference on the UC Berkeley campus. A UC Berkeley student initiative, the Women of Color Film Festival spans a variety of styles, points of view, and subjects, from a short film about San Francisco's first woman cable car operator (Getting a Grip); to Our Cosmos, Our Chaos, a surreal animated view of the history of Korea; to Dam/Age, an inspiring documentary showing novelist Arundhati Roy campaigning against the Narmada Dam project in India. Cosponsored the the Empowering Women of Color Conference, the Gender Equity Center, and the YWCA.
For details, see the series schedule.

Readings on Cinema-March 3, April 7, 12. Booksignings and film screenings with authors Michael Renov (The Subject of Documentary/Tarnation); Marilyn Fabe the popular lecturer in the UC Berkeley film studies program with Closely Watched films and a screening of Annie Hall; and Nathaniel Dorsky, who sill appear in person with his films on April 19, and will read from his book Devotional Cinema and introduce three of his films on April 12.
For details, see the series schedule.

Alternative Visions-March 1, 8, 29, April 5, 12, 19. In person appearances by Nathaniel Dorsky (see above) Andrew Noren, with elegant new videos, Michael Kitlin with his new film The Birdpeople, about birdwatchers; and Betzy Bromberg with a Darkness Swallowed, a lovely meditation on loss and memory.
For details, see the series schedule.

48th San Francisco International Film Festival at PFA-April 22 – May 5. The newest and best in world cinema. Listings of all Festival films at PFA will be available on the BAM/PFA website, www.bampfa.berkeley.edu, starting March 30. BAM/PFA members can begin buying advance tickets that day, the general public on April 5.
For details, see the series schedule.