47th San Francisco International Film Festival at PFA
4/16/04 to 4/29/04
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47th SFIFF
- Upcoming
Films - Past
Films - Past
Events
Past Films
We Loved Each Other So Much
Friday, April 16 5pmThough a recent 15-year civil war has left the people of Beirut struggling to find common ground, this breathtaking film documents the binding importance of beloved singer Fairuz to people all over the Arab world.View DetailsThe Saddest Music in the World
Friday, April 16 7:10pmBreaking the wintry pall of Depression-era Winnipeg, Lady Port-Huntly (Isabella Rossellini), a bewitching beer baroness, announces a competition to determine which nation possesses the most sorrowful song. Soon maudlin musicians from every lamentable land descend in Guy Maddin's joyously stilted comedy.View DetailsSuite Habana
Friday, April 16 9:25pmThis is not the sunny Havana of baseball, revolution, and cha-cha-cha, but Suite Habana resonates with the poignancy of everyday existence and the quiet joy of small satisfactions as few films ever have.View DetailsThe Boy Who Wanted to Be a Bear
Saturday, April 17 1:30pmRecommended for age 7 and up. Special admission, children under 12: $6. This majestic animated family film pits Man against Beast in a tale of maternal love, family bonds, animal instinct, and survival. The Inuit legend follows the star-crossed paths of an Eskimo family and their polar bear counterparts.View DetailsDame la Mano
Saturday, April 17 3:10pmEvery weekend a tiny New Jersey nightclub called La Esquina Habanera is set ablaze with authentic African rumba, a largely improvised music always accompanied by joyful, passionate dance. Experience la musica with this group of working-class Cuban exiles.View DetailsControl Room
Saturday, April 17 6:30pmControl Room goes inside Al Jazeera headquarters as well as U.S. Central Command, site of the war in Iraq's most important battles: the press conferences. The battle for real "enduring freedom" is covering a war without being controlled.View DetailsThat Day
Saturday, April 17 8:50pmTrickster-philosopher Raoul Ruiz is in a particularly playful mood in this deliciously macabre farce set in a Swiss village whose denizens find the murder and mayhem all around them rather amusing, as will you. The fine ensemble cast includes Michel Piccoli. With short Life and Death of a Boring Moment.View DetailsThis Little Life
Sunday, April 18 1:30pmThrough the struggles of a mother and her premature infant, this captivating film by first-time feature director Sarah Gavron emphasizes the value and fragility of human life.View DetailsBack to Kotelnich
Sunday, April 18 3:45pmNear Moscow, Emmanuel Carrère begins a film about a married couple, one of whom works for what used to be the KGB. When one of them is later killed, Carrère returns to solve the mystery of the murder.View DetailsThe Missing
Sunday, April 18 6:45pmA grandmother looks for her missing grandson while a boy searches for his grandfather in this directorial debut by Tsai Ming-liang's lead actor. This portrait of contemporary Taipei finds its "missing" in the lost, the dead, and in the ever-changing cityscape.View DetailsAfter You
Sunday, April 18 8:40pmIn this elegant French comedy, an attentive maitre d' (Daniel Auteuil) who's trained to fix any problem aims his well-pressed tuxedo towards mending a suicidal man's life, but meeting the man's beautiful ex-girlfriend starts to overheat this reserved waiter's outlook.View DetailsVibrator
Monday, April 19 6:30 pmA guy, a girl, and a truck. This film of uncommon tenderness and sensuality unfolds on a road trip though northern Japan, as a truck driver and the woman he casually picks up discover a rare human connection.View DetailsLast Life in the Universe
Monday, April 19 9:00pmTadanobu Asano plays a suicide-obsessed librarian whose orderly life is disrupted by a yakuza killing and a chance meeting with a Thai bar girl in Pen-ek Ratanaruang's contemplative, enigmatic, quietly funny almost-romance, gorgeously photographed by Christopher Doyle.View DetailsBringing to Light
Tuesday, April 20 7:00pmTen stunning experimental films explore cinema's ability to transform and reimagine the world. Keenly wrought observations of place, animation, educational films, decaying celluloid, and an eclectic array of optical techniques bring to light hidden realities and unspoken emotions.View DetailsLoving Glances
Tuesday, April 20 9:00pmSrdjan Karanovic brings us this gently comic romance between young refugees in wartime Belgrade. Hilariously bedeviled by voices from their emotional past and the growing ethnic divide, the lovers decide whether love and hope are worth the risk.View DetailsVodka Lemon
Wednesday, April 21 7:00pmIn an isolated Armenian village, the quirky inhabitants do the best they can with their dubious post-Soviet freedoms. In this disarming gem, a widow and widower find that there is something more than snow between a man and a woman.View DetailsMaster, a Building in Copacabana
Wednesday, April 21 9:25pmWhen a documentary film crew spends a week talking to tenants in an apartment building in Rio de Janeiro's Copacabana neighborhood, they capture the charming stories of several lifetimes.View DetailsWhat the Eye Doesn't See
Thursday, April 22 6:30pmThis Peruvian Magnolia is an ambitious, suspenseful mosaic of stories and people, a portrait of a society exposing its broken moral compass, set against the backdrop of the fall of the Fujimori regime.View DetailsSave the Green Planet!
Thursday, April 22 10:00pmLee Byung-Goo must single-handedly save the world from a space invasion by kidnapping a suspected alien king posing as human. Or maybe he's just a wacko. This nutjob masterpiece will leave your head thoroughly spinning.View DetailsRoute 181-Fragments of a Journey in Palestine-Israel
Friday, April 23 1:30pmThis road-movie documentary is a provocative collaboration between Palestinian and Israeli filmmakers Michel Khleifi and Eyal Sivan as they remap, through poignant interviews, the contours of the 1947 partition line.View DetailsThe Corporation
Friday, April 23 7:30pmThis inspiring, infuriating, epic documentary details how corporations' sense of social responsibility has largely failed to keep pace with their power and influence, while saluting the committed citizens and visionary executives who speak out against irresponsible practices.View DetailsThe Story of the Weeping Camel
Saturday, April 24 2:00pmIn the Gobi Desert, Mongolian nomads raise their herds with all the love (and high expectations) they have for their own kids. When a mother camel snubs her young, measures must be taken. But can you guilt-trip a camel?View DetailsGod Is Brazilian
Saturday, April 24 4:00pmGod is stressed and needs a vacation. Searching for a temporary replacement, he enlists a lazy con artist and lovely young woman in a nutty yet poignant soul-searching journey through some gorgeous, remote regions of Brazil.View DetailsSince Otar Left
Saturday, April 24 6:45pmThis story of three generations of Georgian women is haunting in its depth and simplicity. Mother and daughter decide to protect their matriarch from the news of her son Otar's death, but the formidable 90-year-old has other plans.View DetailsTriple Agent
Saturday, April 24 9:25pmEric Rohmer's homage to Hitchcock is an espionage thriller with double agents agonizing over marriage indiscretions as well as assassination. Set in 1930s France, it follows an exiled Russian general's evenings with his wife...and his spying.View DetailsSilent Waters
Sunday, April 25 1:30pmThe sunny prospects of a loving family in Pakistan are challenged when Islamic fundamentalists come to town. A young man, caught up in the fervor, risks losing his family, and his soul, in this beautiful and moving first feature film.View DetailsJames' Journey to Jerusalem
Sunday, April 25 4:05pmJames, an African on a holy pilgrimage, has his faith tested when he is arrested as an illegal worker upon entrance to Israel in this sharply ironic fable about what happens when the Holy Land enters the global economy.View DetailsGoodbye, Dragon Inn
Sunday, April 25 6:30pmIt's a rainy night in Taipei, and a crumbling kino-barn is screening the action epic Dragon Inn. However, in Tsai Ming-liang's tribute to cinema, and to cinemagoing, the audience and staff seem more concerned with cruising for a different kind of "action."View DetailsThe Middle of the World
Sunday, April 25 8:50pmWhen an unemployed truck driver and his family cross northeastern Brazil by bicycle in search of a better life, family conflicts are inevitable. Wonderful light and lively music accompany this journey through a harsh landscape with dignity and hope.View DetailsCheckpoint
Monday, April 26 5:30pmThe checkpoints that Palestinians face when traveling between their communities form a roadblock between two sides of a conflict. A high-tech camera minimizing his presence, the filmmaker illustrates in shockingly tangible scenes that intimidation and compassion are curiously arbitrary.View DetailsLife Is Shorts
Monday, April 26 8:00pmMel Novikoff Award presented to Paolo Cherchi Usai. Jon Mirsalis on Piano. A sampler from George Eastman House, dedicated to all lovers of the whimsical, the unorthodox, and the idiosyncratic. From Italian divas to American comics, silhouette animation to social realism, a guided tour through the labyrinth of silent film.View DetailsNeverland: The Rise and Fall of the Symbionese Liberation Army
Tuesday, April 27 6:30pmNeverland chronicles the formation and fall of the Symbionese Liberation Army. Filmmaker Robert Stone's juxtaposition of archival footage and contemporary interviews with former SLA members plunges us into the early 1970s. With short Café 1996.View DetailsMagic Gloves
Tuesday, April 27 9:00pmIn this most deadpan of deadpan comedies, Alejandro, a car service driver, lives marginally in Buenos Aires. He is befriended by people who, like himself, circulate aimlessly, victims of an Argentine economic depression.View DetailsSquint Your Eyes
Wednesday, April 28 7:00pmA laid-back film as concerned with the perfection of a summer day as with parents and children, strivers and slackers, and how each defines happiness. A girl hides from her yuppie parents at her dropout ex-teacher's rural farm.View DetailsDoppelganger
Wednesday, April 28 9:25pmKiyoshi Kurosawa's Doppelganger uses the classic supernatural theme of the double to generate dread and tension. It's also a darkly funny and heartfelt work, held together by a dazzling dual performance by Koji Yakusho (Shall We Dance?).View DetailsThe Five Obstructions
Thursday, April 29 7:00pmIn this playfully profound documentary, Dogme demon Lars von Trier challenges great Dane filmmaker Jørgen Leth to remake his 1968 masterpiece The Perfect Human according to devious rules that test the elder statesman's creative and ethical limits.View DetailsThree Step Dancing
Thursday, April 29 8:55pmThe Sardinian landscape serves as a stunning backdrop to these interconnected, seasonal tales, told "with a talented eye for beautiful compositions and an unpatronizing feel for [the] peasant characters."-VarietyView Details
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