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New Experiences from San Francisco's Film and Media Frontier

Elizabeth Pepin hopes to clean up with sewage docJanuary 6

[SF360.org editor’s note: With this column, "In Production" shifts from bi-weekly to weekly. Check out the end of the column for a new feature—a brief roundup of news on local filmmakers.]

Spend enough time in and around the ocean, as surfer/photographer/filmmaker Elizabeth Pepin does, and you’re bound to see—or smell—something disgusting. For example, the beach at Rincon Point, the internationally known SoCal surf break on the border of Ventura and Santa Barbara counties, has some of the highest bacteria count in the state year in and year out. A word to the wise: Don’t forget your wetsuit.

The aging septic system at Rincon Point "supports" 72 homes, and this juncture of scenic beauty, recreation, hygiene and approaching disaster is one of four stories Pepin tracks in her current project, Wasted! If you’ve been waiting for a punk-rock doc about sewage and wastewater treatment—go on, admit it—it’s in the pipeline and (the economy willing) heading your way by year’s end.

"Waltz with Bashir": autobio-animation and the horrors of warJanuary 6

Just as the graphic novel has in recent decades completely altered the once strictly-kidstuff landscape of the “comic book,” so now animated features are beginning to embrace more grown-up stories and audiences than anything in the long history of “cartoons” before them. Last year there was the striking Persepolis, which adapted Marjane Satrapi’s tragicomic memoir about growing up a Western-leaning liberal in increasingly fundamentalist Iran. Now there’s Waltz with Bashir, another autobiographical Middle Eastern story, albeit a very different one in both form and content.

A veteran Israeli director of both nonfiction and narrative works, Ari Folman has created an “animated documentary” that expands the definition of that lattermost term.

Debra Chasnoff goes back to school with "Straightlaced"January 5

In eighth grade, Debra Chasnoff was already a tall, attractive brunette with beautiful blue eyes, who yearned to be noticed by a boy named Sammy but he didn’t have eyes for her. Although she had a crush on him, what he saw and wrote in the class yearbook was "To the girl who gets As in French class. I don’t know how or why."

Now a 51-year old prize-winning filmmaker and the mother of two boys, 14 and 20, Chasnoff laughed as she recalled being "devastated" by Sammy’s comment. "The thing he had noticed about me was that I was really smart and not that I was someone appealing to him. I felt a lot of pressure because I was smarter than you were supposed to be if you were a girl."

The Year in Film 2008: Oscar oddsJanuary 2

The critic’s groups have weighed in now. The drumbeat of awards speculation has been gradually thumping for months already—yet the Oscars remain months away. Hey, what else have we got to think about? It’s not like there are worries re: the economy, environment, or international unrest. But seriously, handicapping the prize doings for this year might turn out to be as interesting as 2008s big-name movies themselves.

Hollywood put out precious few kudos-baiting items until the annum’s last inning. Several of those hopefuls— Doubt, Revolutionary Road, Benjamin Button, The Reader, Valkyrie—have gotten more muted-to-mixed reviews than the studios were likely expecting. (I’m actually a fan of the first four, but not everyone is.) The year’s bulk of excellence may lie amidst indie, foreign and documentary features. But don’t expect the Academy to suddenly grow too adventurous in those directions, a few acting nominations and Slumdog Millionaire aside.

The Year in Film: What did women want?January 1

Two thousand eight was the year Hollywood wanted to woo women badly. Two of the year’s biggest blockbusters, Sex and the City: The Movie and Mamma Mia!, were both heavily marketed towards female demographics whom the studio execs hoped would identify with the strong female characters at each film’s center. That both films were also based on highly popular and lucrative pop cultural franchises probably didn’t hurt either. In a strange moment of synchronicity, there was also Diane English’s long-belabored remake of George Cukor’s 1939 classic ensemble comedy, The Women.

So what, if any, spurious conclusions can be drawn from these three faces of Eve? To some extent, all three films are examples of what I call "aspirational cinema."