Hell on Frisco Bay (2005-2008 archive)

Make no mistake, I'm no fan of ground-level ozone, a major component of smog that can collect over highly populated areas like Frisco Bay, especially on windless summer days.

I donated (admittedly not for entirely altruistic reasons) the only car I've ever owned nearly five years ago, and I haven't looked back since. So I feel fairly comfortable guessing that my transportation choices are not a major contributor to air pollution. I could probably stand to ride my bicycle more often, but at least I can say that when I'm in a motor vehicle, it's almost always a public bus. My $45 monthly MUNI pass puts me on local buses, trains and cable cars almost every day. It doesn't, however, take me to my favorite movie theatres outside the Frisco city limits.

No, for that I must pay a little extra. Excursions to the BART station closest to the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley cost $6.50 round-trip, while getting to Palo Alto and the Stanford Theatre and back costs $11.50. So I'm happy to get a little financial relief where I can find it, including the Spare the Air days when, due to a higher-than-desirable reading on an Air Quality Index, public transit is free all across the Frisco Bay area. With a July-August schedule as tantalizing as the PFA's latest is (the new Stanford web calendar is not up yet), I know I won't be able to attend everything I want to. So why not hope that the summer's four "Spare the Air" free transit opportunities might land on days when there's something particularly compelling playing in reach of CalTrain or BART.

Here then, are the four weekdays from now through the end of August which I'd most like to see a "Spare the Air" day declared:

Friday, June 29th. The Shohei Imamura series at the PFA comes to a close this weekend, and tonight the selections are his 1975 documentary Karayuki-san: the Making of a Prostitute and his 1997 Cannes prize-winner the Eel. But for a little more bang for my transit non-buck, I'd also consider heading down to the Union City BART station, hopping on AC transit, and seeing one of the programs in that weekend's 10th Annual Broncho Billy Silent Film Festival program in Niles: that afternoon there's a free in-person reminiscence with Diana Serra Cary (Baby Peggy). That evening is a screening of the Raven, Poe as directed by Charles Brabin of the Mask of Fu Manchu and the Valley of the Giants (which will be part of another upcoming Silent Film Festival on this side of the Bay). The trouble is, tickets to the Broncho Billy festival are selling out fast and "Spare the Air" days can sneak up on you with little warning. In other words, I probably need to make my decision now, without taking Air Quality Forecasts into account.

Thursday, July 19th. There's a mouth-wateringly thorough Abbas Kiarostami film series playing at the PFA through July and August, and though I'm woefully under-versed in this highly-regarded, influential filmmaker (I've seen only three of his features so far) I want especially to make an opportunity to expose myself to his never-before-imported early films. Tonight matches the Experience with the Wedding Suit as well as several shorter works. However, another option would be to bypass Berkeley and head to the El Cerrito BART station, where the Cerrito Speakeasy Theatre will be showing Miracle in Milan, the film Vittorio De Sica directed between Bicycle Thieves and Umberto D. The Kiarostami films are scheduled to play on other days as well, but this is the only currently-scheduled chance to see this 1951 landmark of Italian neorealism.

Friday, July 20th. Another outstanding "Great Director" retrospective coming to the PFA is a 14-film series of Max Ophuls films curated by Susan Oxtoby. The series brings together films from five different countries the German-born director worked in throughout the thirties, forties and fifties. It includes relatively well-known films such as Le plaisir (playing July 22) and the Reckless Moment (July 27) and Lola Montès (August 3), as well as more obscure titles like From Mayerling to Sarajevo (presented in 16mm on July 29) and the Tender Enemy (in 35mm, like the rest of the series, August 17th). But of all of the gaps in his filmography I'd like to fill, La ronde seems to be the most gaping. And of all his films I've seen only on videocassette that I'd like to take a better look at on a cinema screen, Letter From an Unknown Woman is the one I'd most urgently want to revisit. Since they're playing on the same night to open the series, this night is my highest priority attendance.

Friday, August 24th. As excited I am to sample the Kiarostami and Ophuls offerings, perhaps the upcoming PFA series with the greatest mind-blowing potential is From the Tsars to the Stars: a Journey Through Russian Fantastik Cinema in August. It's a collection of mostly-Soviet-era science fiction and fantasy films ranging from silent films like the Cameraman's Revenge (Aug. 10) and Aelita, Queen of Mars (Aug. 12) to the worlds imagined by post-Khrushchev Thaw filmmakers of both the popular (Ptushko) and art cinema (Tarkovsky) bent. But it's tonight's selections I'm quite possibly the most curious about, particularly the 2005 fake documentary First on the Moon which imagines an alternate history of Soviet spacecraft in which a cosmonaut named Ivan Kharlamov reached the moon more than thirty years before Neil Armstrong made his "small step for man."

Four runners-up, with complications:

Friday, July 6th. The only pair of films in the upcoming Barbara Stanwyck centennial series scheduled to play the PFA but not the Castro is Night Nurse with Stella Dallas. I've never seen the latter film, which was directed by King Vidor and sounds amazing. Unfortunately I will be busy with a prior engagement (not even involving movies) that evening and will have to miss out, Spare the Air or no.

Friday, July 13th. That a Theatre Near You non-series always brings mouth-watering titles to the PFA. This time around I've seen all but one of them (12:08 East of Bucharest July 14) before one way or another. There's not a one I wouldn't recommend, and only one (White Light/Black Rain) I'm not eager to see again. But the one I most would like to revisit is Apichatpong Weerasethakul's "elliptical" (sorry, Armond) investigation of modernity in a traditional society, Syndromes and a Century. But both of its scheduled screenings are during the weekend of the Silent Film Festival. D'oh! I guess I won't be revisiting this stupendous film again for a little while longer.

Tuesday, July 31st. This time it's not the PFA's Stanwyck films that are calling me strongly; if I catch the Lady Eve in this series it will probably be this Wednesday at the Castro, and Ladies They Talk About is the one film in the series I don't particularly like or want to see again. No, I'd like to get a free ride to Berkeley that day because Roda is hosting a screening of Film Fanatic, a documentary on an "ultra-Orthodox" Jewish filmmaker in Israel and one of the few films in the upcoming Jewish Film Festival not scheduled to screen at a Frisco venue -- only in Berkeley and Palo Alto (at the Aquarius July 29). It also happens to be one of the most intriguing-sounding films in that festival for me, a seeming counterpart to one of my favorite films from this year's Sundance, VHS-Kahloucha. Unfortunately, I have to work Tuesdays (and Sundays) so "Spare the Air" or not, this is going to be a no-go for me.

Tuesday, August 14th. Did I mention I normally work into the evening on Tuesdays? Late enough that I won't be able to make the 7PM screening of Andrei Tarkovsky's Stalker at the PFA unless I rearrange my schedule. Which I guess I'm just going to have to try to do, as Stalker just might be at the very top of the list of films I want to see on the big screen. Where it's been for several years, well before 2003, which was the last time I missed a one-day booking of this film because I was at work.

Note that I pointedly did not pick any Wednesdays; that's because in July and August those days at the PFA will be reserved for a series called Eco-Amok! an Inconvenient Film Fest, with Frogs, Phase IV and Habitat among the terrifying, yet environmentally conscious, titles. This post edges dangerously close to root-to-pollute as it is, and I don't want to tempt nature's sense of irony too brazenly.

In fact, I'm honestly quite likely to jump on BART and attend a good number of these screenings even without the lure of fare-free travel. Honestly, we'd all breathe easiest if the next few months on Frisco Bay were so smog-free that no "Spare the Air" days needed to be declared.

But if they're going to declare any, just don't let them be on Mondays. That's the day when the PFA's closed.