Creature features and Buster Keaton are coming to Bay Area screens. Also on the slate: two new documentaries.
Films about animals, pets, and profound animal-human bonds screen at the inaugural “CritterFest,” a project of San Francisco IndieFest. Programs take place Thursday through Sunday at the 4-Star Theater, PROXY SF and online.
“Second Nature,” a documentary that explores same-sex pairings and sexual fluidity in the animal world, opens the festival. It’s directed by Drew Denny and narrated by Elliot Page.
Friday’s offering is a free outdoor screening of the animated comedy “The Secret Lives of Pets 2.”
Saturday matinee films are “Flamingos: Life After the Meteorite” and “Better Call Babs.” The latter is about a pet detective with a vigilante quality.
Sunday matinee screenings are “Wild Asia: Life at Extremes” and the Ukrainian documentary “The Ark,” which tells the story of a couple who turn their homestead into a sanctuary for animals displaced by war.
“Unspoken Bond,” a documentary about the scientific and emotional aspects of human-animal connections, closes the fest.
Short films and filmmaker Q&As complete the lineup.
Visit sfcritterfest.eventive.org for more information.
The Orinda Theatre, co-presenting with the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, hosts a centennial celebration of Buster Keaton’s classic silent comedy “The General” on Saturday at 7 p.m.
Conductor-composer Timothy Brock, conducting his original score performed by the San Francisco Conservatory of Music Orchestra, will provide live accompaniment.
Co-directed by Keaton and Clyde Bruckman, “The General” is set during the Civil War and centers on a railroad engineer (played by Keaton) from the South who must face off against Union soldiers to save his two loves — his fiancee, Annabelle; and his beloved locomotive.
Visit silentfilm.org for more information.
In “The Last Picture Shows,” filmmaker Rustin Thompson (“Slow Revolution”) pays tribute to an endangered wonder of the cultural world: the small-town, single-screen movie theater.
Part elegy and part underdog survival story, the documentary screens Sept. 20-21 at the Balboa Theater; Sept. 23 at the Rialto Cinemas Elmwood; Sept. 24 at the Smith Rafael Film Center; and Sept. 25, at the Orinda Theater.
Thompson documents his 10-state journey across the U.S. West — a project exploring the vanishing world of independently operated single-screen cinemas, which once were staple components of suburban American life.
He visits dozens of theaters, some shuttered, some struggling, and a few thriving. No corporate logos here — each theater has its own personality and moniker, like the Gem Theater, the Ruby Theatre and the Eltrym Theatre (the name of owner Myrtle spelled backwards). At the Desert Historic Theater, in Burns, Oregon, viewers meet owner “Tiny,” a friendly local who credits both luck and community support for his theater’s endurance.
Cinema operators discuss recent and current challenges: the COVID-19 pandemic, streaming, and distributors who require theaters to book a movie for multiple weeks — an arrangement that can hurt theaters financially if the movie is a dud. (“Shazam! Fury of the Gods” in an amusing bit, is cited as an example.)
Also acting as cinematographer, Thompson gives his Western locations — with their highways, open spaces and nightscapes lit by neon cinema signs — a poetic and mythic look. At the same time, he captures a down-to-earth quality in the operational cinemas he visits. The devotion shown by theater operators who continue to provide community members with a moviegoing experience is uplifting to witness. Hope eclipses sadness in this film.
In “The Oldest Person in the World,” filmmaker Sam Green (“32 Sounds”) chronicles his 10-year quest to interview every individual who bears the short-lived distinction of being the oldest human on Earth. What begins as an examination of longevity becomes a celebration of being alive in this slight but likable documentary.
The film screens at the Rialto Cinemas Elmwood in Berkeley on Saturday; the Roxie Theater on Sunday and Tuesday and the Smith Rafael Film Center, also on Sunday.
The journey begins in 2015, when Green, a Guinness World Records enthusiast, discovers that 116-year-old Susannah Mushatt Jones, the oldest known person in the world at the time, lives in Brooklyn, as does he.
Green attends Jones’ birthday party, where she falls asleep near her cake. Over the ensuing decade, he meets with a succession of the ever-changing “oldest person in the world” record holders. Some, like Jones, aren’t particularly quotable or forthcoming, while others shine. In Jamaica, Violet Brown, 116, recites from memory a lengthy poem she learned as a child. In Italy, Emma Morano, 116, says that the way to enjoy a long life is to “Stay away from men.”
The doc becomes increasingly personal for Green. He shares life-altering experiences with us — the birth of his son (“the youngest person in the world for a nanosecond”), and a cancer diagnosis.
Green also addresses the suicide of his brother, a tragedy that continues to haunt him.
Profundity is in short supply here. The sentimental tone of Green’s narration undermines a deeper emotional impact.
But the film hits more than misses, overall, due to the life-embracing tone that Green maintains amid themes of mortality and the common humanity displayed by its supercentenarian subjects.
As part of its “San Francisco: City of Neon Series,” the Roxie Theater presents a curated program of short films that document the midcentury neon-lit look of San Francisco’s Chinatown neighborhood at 4 p.m. Saturday.
Areas of focus include the restoration of the Golden Star Radio neon sign, and pioneering Chinese American broadcasters Tommy and May Chin Tong.
Proceeds benefit the effort to repaint and relight the Roxie’s own neon sign.
Visit roxie.com for more information.