The local festivals opening this week are all wet, in that one is actually focused on oceanic issues, while the other is devoted to films from a nation long largely defined by its relationship to the sea.
The San Francisco International Ocean Film Festival, which opens this Thu/7 at Fort Mason’s Cowell Theater, has since 2004 provided a platform for “ocean literary and education through film.” Subjects ranging from aquatic conservation to creature life to water sports (not that kind) will be covered in programs encompassing eight features (not counting some streaming-only selections), plus many shorts and mid-length works.
These works are primarily from North America, but also represented are Europe, South Africa, Indonesia, Argentina, several South Pacific island nations, and even Antarctica. There are also several free panel discussions, and a student film competition. In addition to a full schedule through Sun/10 at the Cowell, programs will be shown at the Roxie (the afternoons of Sat/9 & Sun/10) and the Smith Rafael Film Center (Fri/8-Sun/10). For complete info, click here.
With the longest coastline on the Mediterranean, Greece has generated stories of the sea since Homer’s day. No doubt there will be a few more in the 19th annual San Francisco Greek Film Festival, which is being held in person at the Delancey Street Screening Room Fri/8-Sat/16. (There will also be a “virtual” online festival component, with separate programming.)
The opening night feature, Araceli Lemos’ Holy Emy, is a magical realist immigrant narrative in which two young Filipinas living in Athens have opposing relationships with the spiritual world—one is a devout Christian, while the other seems to have nascent supernatural powers. The official closer on the 16th is Grigoris Karantinakis’ historical epic My Beloved Smyrna, which revisits that ancient port city (now called Izmir) in 1922, when amidst its Turkish military capture at the end of the Greco-Turkish War, possibly as many as 125,000 Greeks and Armenians perished in the “Great Fire of Smyrna.”
In between, the fest offers a mix of fiction features, documentaries and shorts that include two odd-couple gay romances, Aligned and The Man With the Answers. For full program and ticket info, click here.
The struggle for survival that marks both many ocean-life ecological and Greek historical narratives is also variously illustrated in several new streaming releases:
Barbarians
Not about Visigoths wielding axes or some such (you’ll get that sort of thing with Robert Eggers’ The Northman later this month), this UK first directorial feature from producer Charles Dorfman nonetheless makes modern life look pretty uncivilized. Filmmaker Adam (Iwan Rheon) and artist Eva (Catalina Sandino Moreno) are a successful couple, professionally and otherwise, who hope to finalize purchase of their luxe home in the English countryside.
So they’ve invited over developer Lucas (Tom Cullen) and his wife Chloe (Ines Spiridonov) for dinner, a date both elaborately planned-for and somewhat dreaded—because Lucas is a pushy alpha a-hole who seems to take great pleasure in intimidation. He’s also apparently acquired the larger general area this house sits on by duplicitous means, which really pissed off the family that’s owned it for generations. So just when small tensions erupt into major conflict between the two couples, they find they have an entirely different, vengeful outside threat to deal with.
This is one of those “Dinner Party From Hell” stories, in which the wealthy and privileged begin to look rather base even before bloody mayhem breaks out. Barbarians echoes a lot of prior movies (from similarly-themed recent Welsh The Feast to the likes of the Purge, Strangers, and Funny Games films), and is not among the best of them. Still, its particular juggling of social commentary, black comedy, home-invasion thriller, and horror, with a couple luridly soap-operatic plot twists thrown in, is effectively discomfiting. Bonus: This is one of the less-likely titles in recent memory to incorporate recreational hallucinogens (LSD, I assume). IFC Midnight’s release has bypassed the Bay Area in terms of theatrical dates, but is now available On Demand.
Bull
Another melee in the UK is this gruesome criminal-revenge drama from writer-director Paul Andrew Williams. Ten years after he was presumed dead—and the parties responsible made quite sure of it—Bull (Neil Maskell) is mysteriously back, wanting very much to know where his estranged wife (Lois Brabin-Pratt) and only child (Henri Charles) are now living. This is awkward for all, because ex-spouse Gemma’s daddy is the rather horrible Norm (David Hayman), and when she wanted Bull out of her life, he and his goons went about accomplishing that in a most unpleasant way. Now that the former son-in-law has returned somehow, they all fear for their lives. And they ought to, because Bull is a freakin’ psycho.
A Brit gangster opus that jumps the shark a bit in the end to flirt with a different genre, Bull brings no novelty of style or insight to its cruel, straightforward proficiency. What distinguishes it (apart from the near-impenetrable thickness of the accents) is sheer brutality, with harm of a lopped-off-body-parts degree visited even on some characters who’ve barely done our anti-hero any wrong. I’m not particularly squeamish about movie violence, but there has to be some point to it, beyond simple viciousness for its own sake. And Bull does not venture beyond that point—there’s nothing on its mind but giving you yer money’s worth in terms of sheer nastiness.
Can’t say I enjoyed it, though given that some people actually seek electric shocks for kicks, no doubt more than a few will savor the different jolts on tap here. In limited theaters (not locally) as of last Friday, Bull gets released to Digital and On Demand platforms Tues/5.
Meat the Future
If those two fiction features make it look like humanity is just one big dogfight, everybody tearing the flesh from everybody else, Liz Marshall’s documentary seeks to render our carnivorousness less rancorous. As narrator Jane Goodall notes at the beginning here, “Let’s face it, conventional animal agriculture is wreaking havoc. It occupies nearly half the world’s land, produces huge amounts of greenhouse gases, and is a potential breeding ground for health pandemics like COVID-19.” Also, meat consumption is expected to double by the year 2050, as the resources it depends on shrink. Clearly, an alternative is called for. But we all know that much of the world (and especially US) population has a “cold dead hands” attitude towards the notion of giving the stuff up to go veg.
Meet Dr. Uma Valeti, an Indian emigre turned Bay Area resident whose company (recently rebranded from Memphis Meats to Upside Foods) is developing means of producing “real meat” without livestock being harmed, fed, factory-raised, or indeed needed at all—this substance is grown from cells, not birthed from an animal. Purportedly it tastes just like the kind that requires slaughtering, not to mention myriad other “resource intensive” practices. Could this be our kinder, gentler, more environmentally friendly culinary future? Not if organizations like the US Cattlemen’s Association can help it—we see their reps, fearful of competition, accuse this “cultured meat” of “riding the coattails of beef” and other absurd objections.
But most likely nothing will stop this “next agricultural revolution” from happening, at least once it becomes affordable. (At the current still-early stage, it is estimated that such “clean meat” would retail near $50/lb.) More a sort of feature-length infomercial than a critical analysis, sweetened by some tracks by executive producer Moby, Meat the Future does not conceal its enthusiasm for this foodstuff horizon. But then by the end, the viewer is pretty likely to feel the same way. Giant Pictures is releasing the film to Digital platforms on Tues/5.
