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  • "An Afternoon with Aasif Mandvi"

    Aasif Mandvi, writer and star of the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival’s opening night film, Today’s Special, charmed the audience during an interview with Festival Director Chi-Hui Yang.

CALENDAR

Photo by Hilary Hart/SFFS.

Words from Sundance staffers

What is your name?
Elizabeth Duran.

What is your job at SFF?
Volunteer, Board Support, Executive Director’s Office

What do you do the rest of the year?
I work in the Development Department of the California Film Institute. We present the Mill Valley Film Festival and year-round programming at the Rafael Film Center, a beautifully restored art-deco movie house located in downtown San Rafael. I’m pretty proud of the work we do there; the programming for both is really solid.

[Editor’s note: Get more of each ongoing Sundance Film Festival blog entry by clicking through on the headline.]

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Photo by Hilary Hart/SFFS.

Words from Sundance staffers

What is your name?

Jesse Dubus.

What is your job at the Sundance Film Festival?

Theater Operations Runner.

What do you do the rest of the year?

I work in the Programming Department at SFFS and at the Berkeley Home
Office of the Telluride Film Festival, among some other things.

Why did you decide to start working at SFF?

Last year I had a break in my schedule in January for the first time,
and I decided to see what the fuss was all about.

[Editor’s note: Get more of each ongoing Sundance Film Festival blog entry by clicking through on the headline.]

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Photo by Hilary Hart/SFFS.

Words from Sundance staffers

What is your job at SFF?
I manage the outside of the venue at the Racquet Club Theatre, the festival’s second largest screening venue. Whether you’re filmmaker, programmer, talent, passholder/ticketholder, press member, staff member, or any of the other hundred types of people that come through, I make sure that everything runs smoothly before you get to the front door.

What do you do the rest of the year?
I’m a fine art photographer, creative consultant, FAA-certified safety professional, educator, travel addict/writer/photographer, film festival junkie, and proud Cal alumnus.

[Editor’s note: Get more of each ongoing Sundance Film Festival blog entry by clicking through on the headline.]

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Photo by Hilary Hart/SFFS.

Words from Sundance staffers

What is your name?
Michael Lyons.

What is your job at Sundance Film Festival?
Volunteer with the Works Crew.

What do you do the rest of the year?
I have a business in San Francisco teaching CPR & First Aid.

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Photo by Hilary Hart/SFFS.

Words from Sundance staffers

What’s your name?
Jon Ho.

What is your job at Sundance Film Festival?
Egyptian Theatre.Associate Crowd Liaison (ticket counter and filling out ticket info) for 4 years. Worked on radio with Mother and a floater for 1 year

What do you do the rest of the year?
Work in a hospital in Palo Alto part time. I work under a prop master as a set dresser for Independent or feature films, commercials and industrials. I also work as a producer, location manager, unit production manager for shorts, documentaries or Independent features around the Bay Area.

Why did you decide to start working at SFF?
Luck… Here is the story, I was going to school in San Francisco. A classmate was going to volunteer at Sundance and offered me a place to stay at her uncle’s place if I volunteered. Then all of the sudden, she decided not to go, and then I got a call from Sundance a month before the festival because of my radio experience from volunteering at other film festivals in the Bay Area. I learned that if you have a specific skill Sundance is looking for that it helps you land a position.

[Editor’s note: Get more of each ongoing Sundance Film Festival blog entry by clicking through on the headline.]

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Photo by Hilary Hart/SFFS.

Words from Sundance staffers

What is your job at Sundance Film Festival?
Steve: Crowd Liasion at the Egyptian and Terri: Theater Team at the Holiday.

What do you do the rest of the year?
Steve, Professor of Clinical Pharmacy at the University of California San Francisco, Terri, Dental Hygienist.

[Editor’s note: Get more of each ongoing Sundance Film Festival blog entry by clicking through on the headline.]

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Photo by Hilary Hart/SFFS.

Words from Sundance staffers

What is your name?
Jennie-Marie Adler.

What is your job at SFF?
Volunteer Coordinator. Specifically for all Press office, Film office, industry, Feature film, Development, Executive, Accounting, corporate relations, and ticketing volunteers.

What do you do the rest of the year?
I work at other film festivals in the Bay Area.

Why did you decide to start working at Sundance Film Festival?
In college I read Down & Dirty Pictures and started dreaming about one day working at Sundance.
[Editor’s note: Get more of each ongoing Sundance Film Festival blog entry by clicking through on the headline.]

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Photo by Hilary Hart/SFFS.

Words from Sundance staffers

What is your name?
Ilya Tovbis.

What is your job at Sundance Film Festival?
I work in the Film Office as the Shorts Associate (a volunteer position). I help check in shorts filmmakers, get them credentialed and oriented to Park City. We also help them navigate and enjoy their premiere Sundance screening.

What do you do the rest of the year?
I am a seasonal film festival employee at a couple of Bay Area Festivals and a freelance writer.

[Editor’s note: Get more of each ongoing Sundance Film Festival blog entry by clicking through on the headline.]

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Photo by Hilary Hart/SFFS.

Words from Sundance staffers

What is your name?
Ashley Soares.

What is your job at Sundance Film Festival?
Film Office Coordinator, Midnight and NEXT

What do you do the rest of the year?
I suppose you could call me a Festival Carny. Since early 2009 I have been jumping from festival to festival working in departments such as Publicity, Marketing, Film Office or Guest Services. I’m hoping this trend will continue, it’s a whole lot of fun!

[Editor’s note: Get more of each ongoing Sundance Film Festival blog entry by clicking through on the headline.]

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Cry freedom: "Howl" elicits adoration at the Library in Park City. (Photo courtesy SFF)

The greatest finds of my generation

Susan Gerhard: The harsh glare of the spotlight that brought Howl mixed reviews from critics on opening night of the Sundance Film Festival had melted into a warm glow by Saturday, when the Bay Area-made nonfiction feature played to an adoring audience at Park City’s Library venue. Programmer David Courier’s slip of the tongue as he celebrated "two of the most venerated documentary filmmakers of our time," Robert Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman (Oscar winners for Common Threads and The Times of Harvey Milk), by praising how the two were "making their first fourway—I mean FORAY—into dramatic films" offered an appropriately irreverent frame for a film about Allen Ginsberg’s development as a poet and the fate of his epic "Howl" in a 1957 San Francisco courtroom.

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Blog Feeds

An Eternal Thought in the Mind of Godzilla

Bayflicks.net

  • The General at the Paramount

    I’ve seen The General countless times, in classrooms, museums, theaters, festivals, and home. I’ve rented it on VHS, and have owned it on Laserdisc, DVD, and Blu-ray. Yet Friday night at Oakland’s Paramount Theater, I had what is probably my greatest General experience. And it wasn’t even,
    03.20.2010

  • What’s Screening: March 19 – 25

    The Asian American Film Festival plays through Sunday, and the Tiburon International Film Festival continue through the week. Creature Features Presents Horror Express, Balboa, Thursday, 7:00. Bay area film  buffs old enough to remember TV before the VCR have fond memories of KTVU (channel 2)
    03.19.2010

  • The Return of Cerrito Classics

    I’ve just received word that the Cerrito will revive its old Cerrito Classics series, now running the second Thursday night of each month. The series begins April 8 with Diva. Other films on the schedule include Chinatown, Born Yesterday, Jaws, To Catch a Thief, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Rosemary
    03.17.2010

Senses of Cinema

  • 2009 World Poll

    Numerous contributors from across the globe offer their selections and thoughts on their movie-going experiences in 2009. Readers should find it a fascinating overview of cinema from a multitude of countries and cultures.

  • Nollywood: The Video Phenomenon in Nigeria edited by Pierre Barrot translated by Lynn Taylor

    This is an essential book on one of the most explosive film movements in recent memory, rivalling the prodigious output of Iranian films in the 1990s; the Nigerian feature film industry, which, working almost entirely in video (both digital and analogue) has racked up an astounding 9,000 full-length

  • Building Bridges: The Cinema of Jean Rouch edited by Joram ten Brink

    Joram ten Brink’s interest in French Ethnographer-Cinéaste Jean Rouch’s (1918-2004) work “resurfaced” after the latter’s death in Africa. In October 2004, he organised the highly successful conference Building Bridges: The Cinema of Jean Rouch at London’s Institut Français. The confere

Hell On Frisco Bay

  • Twenty Years South

    Berkeley's Pacific Film Archive has a new calendar out, full of goodies. Oakland's Paramount has plans to show Wait Until Dark, The General and Captain Blood in March. San Rafael is getting a rare Jan Troell retrospective February 27-March 6. Even Sepastapol has its annual documentary festival March
    02.23.2010

  • The Film Preservation Mob

    The past week's big event in the blogosphere has been For The Love of Film: the Film Preservation Blog-A-Thon. It's not been "just" another Blog-a-thon devoted to a single film, filmmaker, genre or film subject, but a celebration of archivists and historians who have kept our cinema heritage alive a
    02.21.2010

  • Jesse Hawthorne Ficks Has Two Eyes

    Last month I compiled a set of sixteen lists from Frisco Bay film bloggers and enthusiasts of their favorite repertory screenings of 2009. As proud I am of the thoughtfulness of the taste-diverse participants, not everyone I invited to participate was able to do so before my deadline. Not long ago
    02.10.2010

Bright Lights After Dark

  • The Runaways Get Bio-Picked

    If the brief stardom of Buddy Holly and the even briefer star of Ritchie Valens should get the Hollywood biopic treatment, then why not the first all-girl balls-out rock act? The Runaways' story is something of stardom legend: one talented song writer/guitarist/occasional vocalist named Joan Jett an
    03.19.2010

  • Profondamente Italiano: Mid-August Lunch (Pranzo di Ferragosto)

    If you want an idea of real Roman life, look no further than Mid-August Lunch (2008). Gianni (Gianni Di Gregorio, who directed, scripted and stars) and his 93-year-old mother Valeria share a large, dark, rambling flat in the Trastevere neighborhood. Valeria (Valeria De Franciscis) has a touch of G
    03.17.2010

  • Peter Graves – The Night of the Hunter

    In a film career that spanned more than half a century, the late Peter Graves (1926-2010) was a dependable leading man, often at his best in non-leading roles, who worked memorably with Billy Wilder (Stalag 17), John Ford (The Long Gray Line), Roger Corman (It Conquered the World), Otto Preminger (T
    03.15.2010

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