FILMS
- Crude
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This lively and gripping documentary follows the shifting course of a lawsuit brought by 30,000 Ecuadoreans against Chevron over its responsibility for the country’s contaminated waters and streams.
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- Joe Berlinger
- Documentaries
- USA/Ecuador/England
- 2009
- Delta
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In this visually breathtaking drama, a shy young man returns to his childhood home and encounters a sister that he has never met. Thus begins a not-so-appropriate relationship that leaves a fractured community in its wake.
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- Kornél Mundruczó
- World Cinema
- Hungary/Germany
- 2008
- Departures
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An out of work cellist finds a fresh start as a burial specialist, becoming a compassionate liaison between the living and the dead. 2009 Academy Award–winner for Best Foreign Language Film.
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- Yojiro Takita
- World Cinema
- Japan
- 2008
- Don’t Let Me Drown
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New York’s vibrant Mexican and Dominican communities take center stage in this lyrical look at the love between a young “Mexi-Yorker” boy and a Dominican girl, set in the immediate aftermath of 9/11.
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- Cruz Angeles
- New Directors
- USA
- 2008
- D tour
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Pat Spurgeon, charismatic drummer for local indie rockers Rogue Wave, needs to keep playing music—and a new kidney. This remarkable travelogue follows his double quest during an eventful tour, mixing interviews with performances by Rogue Wave and Ben Gibbard.
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- Jim Granato
- Documentaries
- USA
- 2008
- Easy Virtue
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In a welcome return from the director of The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, a bohemian American beauty turns a stuffy English family upside down in this jazzy update of Noel Coward’s play, with Jessica Biel, Kristin Scott Thomas and Colin Firth.
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- Stephan Elliot
- World Cinema
- England/USA
- 2008
- Empress Hotel
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Light and Saraf, an acclaimed local filmmaking duo, spent years documenting the eccentric and colorful residents of a Tenderloin residential hotel for the recently homeless. This moving feature paints a multifaceted portrait of a neighborhood and its residents.
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- Irving Saraf, Allie Light
- Cinema by the Bay
- USA
- 2008
- Every Little Step
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Every Little Step captures the exhilarating and agonizing process of casting the 2006 Broadway revival of the 1975 smash hit musical A Chorus Line. The echoes between the present-day process and the musical are endless, and the filmmakers brilliantly tease out the most telling moments.
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- Adam Del Deo, James D. Stern
- Documentaries
- USA
- 2008
- Everything Strange and New
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A carpenter who guts old houses dreams of a strange, new life without being able to envision its shape or form. Bay Area-based cinematographer/filmmaker Frazer Bradshaw’s semi-experimental narrative feature is an unflinching contemplation of spiritual inertia and downward mobility.
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- Frazer Bradshaw
- Cinema by the Bay
- USA
- 2008
- Ferlinghetti
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This portrait of poet and City Lights cofounder Lawrence Ferlinghetti traces a legendary and remarkably influential literary life, from the early Beats and the Howl censorship trial to the infamous anti-war banner hung outside the bookstore, “Dissent Is Not Un-American.”
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- Christopher Felver
- Cinema by the Bay
- USA
- 2009
