The Week in Interviews, 6/27

And I’m going to include two from last week, as well.

Stephen Winter

Stephen Winter was blown away, as he should have been by Shirley Clarke’s groundbreaking 1966 documentary,PORTRAIT OF JASON, in which she pointed a camera at singer, hustler, junkie, and philosopher Jason Holliday for a marathon 12-hours. Only two hours, the final film, has ever been seen, and Winter wondered what went on for the other 10 hours. The result is JASON AND SHIRLEY, a bold, frank, and visceral look at two people, a female filmmaker and a gay black man who have been marginalized by society, and are ruthless in what they each want to get from the film that they are creating. Click here for the interview.

Next is the audacious and perspicacious Maya Forbes, whom I interviewed via phone from the Oakland Airport en route to Los Angeles.  With a trusty gin & tonic to assuage my mild fear of flying (the bar was, after all, the best place to set up my equipment, as you can see from the photos), we talked about her joyous, heartbreaking, and scathingly honest, not to mention semi-autobiographical, film, INFINITELY POLAR BEAR. In it Mark Ruffalo gives another of his emotionally raw yet complex performances as Forbes’ father, the scion of a wealthy family struggling with bipolar disorder and the custody of his two young daughters. If he doesn’t get an Oscar(tm) nomination for this, there is no justice.

To listen to the interview, click here.

Marc Silver

And here is Marc Silver, with whom I talked the next day via phone from Los Angeles while he was in my home base of San Francisco. That interview won’t be posted until his documentary, 3 1/2 MINUTES, is released later this month. This searing indictment of the racism ingrained in our culture, as evidenced by the shooting of Jordan Davis, an unarmed 17-year-old black youth, for playing his music too loudly at a gas station, is all the more eye-opening for the insights Silver brings as a Brit making a film about America. I did manage to cross paths with Silver just as I arrived back home, and he was preparing to leave for Los Angeles, and snapped this picture of him.

Sandra Bagaria

This week, it was Sandra Bagaria, subject of the film A GAY GIRL IN DAMASCUS: THE AMINA PROFILE, a documentary about virtual personas, real love, and the politics of the internet. Part detective story, part political thriller, it is a film that will make your jaw drop with its twists an turns, while making you call into question everything you thought you knew about the new media. As with 3 1/2 MINUTES, the interview will post closer to the film’s opening.

Last, but certainly  not least, Carlos Marques-Marcet was on the schedule, talking about 10,000 KM, his emotionally volatile film about long-distance love that swept the Goyas in his native Spain. That interview, too, will be published closer to the film’s opening next month, but in the meantime, here are some photos of the meet & greet we in the San Francisco Film Critics Circle were delighted to attend for the filmmaker (thank you again Broad Green Films for setting it up for us!).

Marques-Marcet, SFFCC President Tim SIka, SF Chronicle critic Ruthe Stein

SFFCC Members (l-r) Yar Wei, Tim Sika, Pam Grady, MIchael Guillen, and Jeffrey Anderson. Marques-Marcet in front joining in the toast.