A Tribute to the San Francisco International Film Festival at 50

3/2/07 to 4/21/07

Leading up to the 50th anniversary of the festival-the first in the Americas to reach that landmark-we offer this series of SFIFF films past, to celebrate the festival's illustrious history and enjoy its discoveries all over again.

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  • The Little Girl Who Sold the Sun, April 13

  • Upcoming
    Films
  • Upcoming
    Events
  • Selected
    Objects
  • Past
    Films
  • Past
    Events

Past Films

  • The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On

    • Saturday, April 21 6:30pm

    From Japan's Kazuo Hara, one of the most provocative documentaries ever made follows a man obsessed with finding the truth about atrocities in the Pacific jungles of WWII.

  • The Firemen's Ball

    • Friday, April 20 8:30pm

    Milos Forman's Czech New Wave comedy had the censors scratching their pates over hidden meanings in memorable set pieces like the Mystery of the Missing Headcheese. “A poignant, hilarious movie in a rare genre, a tragicomedy of old age.”-Raymond Durgnat

  • The Match Factory Girl

    • Friday, April 20 7:00pm

    Aki Kaurismäki's grimly funny gender parable is also actress Kati Outinen's finest moment. She delivers a “beautiful, unsentimental performance (as a) deeply realized and affecting character.”-N.Y. Times

  • On the Beat

    • Saturday, April 14 6:30pm

    When everyone behaves correctly, being a Beijing cop isn't much fun. Ning Ying's sly satire on Chinese bureaucracy mid-'90s style.

  • The Little Girl Who Sold the Sun

    • Friday, April 13 7:00pm

    The last film from Senegal's Djibril Diop Mambéty, who created a vibrant genre-modern-day urban folklore-to look at a changing Africa. With Mambéty's Le franc.

  • Pastorale

    • Sunday, April 8 3:30 PM

    In this exquisite film by Georgian director Otar Iosseliani, a string quartet's visit to a small village is treated with the gentle satire usually associated with the Czech New Wave.

  • Seasons of Arthur Peleshian

    • Sunday, April 8 2:00pm

    Peleshian's three tone-poems The Four Seasons, In the Beginning, and We offer some of the most exciting photography and montage craftsmanship you'll ever see, while illuminating life in his native Armenia.

  • A Summer's Tale

    • Saturday, March 31 8:40pm

    Eric Rohmer's film, set at a coastal resort in Brittany, is “light, wistful, discreetly sexy . . . The movie draws you into a romantic quadrangle in which the emotional climate is as subtle and shifting as life itself.”-N.Y. Times

  • Medium Cool

    • Friday, March 30 9:15pm

    Haskell Wexler audaciously set a romance against the tumultuous 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, filmed documentary style. "Intensely American in its images and its ambition, it is an exciting piece of work that must be seen by anyone who cares about the development of modern movies."-Newsweek

  • Ivan's Childhood

    • Sunday, March 25 2:00pm

    Lyrical and brutal by turns, the great Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky's first feature tells of a child's experiences during WWII.

  • I Am Cuba

    • Wednesday, March 14 7:30pm

    Made in 1962 as an act of Soviet-Cuban friendship, and written by Yevgeny Yevtushenko, this is an extraordinary example of "pure" cinema in the service of politics. "A deliriously one-of-a-kind movie, wildly schizophrenic in its bizarre mix of Slavic solemnity and Latin sensuality."-Telluride Film Festival

  • The Cool World

    • Friday, March 9 9:25pm

    Shirley Clarke's jazz-infused feature about Harlem youth is “sharp, restless, whiplike.”-Variety. With Bruce Baillie's Castro Street.

  • Aparajito

    • Sunday, March 4 2:00pm

    The second film in Satyajit Ray's beloved Apu Trilogy. “Graceful, insightful, and moving.”-S.F. Chronicle. “The characterization of Apu lies in the heart of modern India.”-SFIFF

  • Shadows

    • Friday, March 2 7:00pm

    Time never caught up with John Cassavetes's first film; it's still ten minutes from now, inherently hip, mordantly funny, terribly sad, and very New York.