The “double feature” craze keeps rolling. First came Turner Classic Movies’ “Two for One” series this Spring, in which an impressive lineup of filmmakers—Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Spike Lee, Nicole Holofcener and more—selected a quirky list of 12 twin bills for the cable TV network.
Now comes a slightly rowdier roster of impromptu programmers to rummage through cinematic history for our entertainment. A blue-chip group of fine-arts photographers, they have each personally chosen their own favorite potential double features, no holds barred, for theatrical screening.
The concept for such a flamingly eccentric experiment in film programming came from San Francisco art gallery owner Jeffrey Fraenkel, whose Fraenkel Gallery specializes in cutting-edge contemporary photography, especially in its relation to other visual arts.
Fraenkel’s idea was to ask some of today’s most provocative still photographers to select films that have personal meaning for them—not necessarily a “best of all time” list, but movies they wanted to share, movies that possibly influenced them in their own work. The mind reels at the possibilities. There’s an “art for art’s sake” aura about the concept that’s truly intoxicating.
The ideal venue for such a shared experience is, of course, the Roxie Theater in SF’s Mission District, whose maverick sensibilities match up step for step with Fraenkel’s. The resulting Fraenkel Film Festival, an 11-night retrospective series in celebration of the gallery’s 45th anniversary, showcases two different movies per evening, each double feature nominated by a different artist, now through July 20—with all proceeds benefiting the Roxie.
The Roxie’s hipster crowd is in for a cavalcade of rare treats. For instance, the July 19 “twofer” program, chosen by photographer and performance artist Martine Gutierrez, features director Ridley Scott’s transcendental sci-fi spectacle Blade Runner—a film that “has become notorious for its visual aesthetic, fashion and character design, impacting pop culture’s depiction of futurism, as well as my own,” according to Gutierrez. Screening in tandem with it is the 1995 Japanese anime cause-célèbre, Ghost in the Shell.
Nan Goldin’s portraits set the “Goldin standard” for their dreamy/gritty photographic coverage of the urban LGBTQ+ scene. Her cinematic choices for the Fraenkel fest (July 18) might seem surprising: Stanley Kubrick’s anti-war classic Paths of Glory, a World War I combat story that eschews false bravado in favor of Kirk Douglas’ humanistic outrage in the role of a conscientious French officer, gets paired up with Mikhail Kalatozov’s The Cranes Are Flying, a moving tale of young Russian lovers trying to survive the “Great Patriotic War Against Fascism,” a.k.a. World War II. Don’t miss this.
The Fraenkel festival’s films are just as bold and evocative as the artists who selected them. Who would have expected Lee Friedlander, creator of some of the most memorable “urbanites in their natural habitat” images of the 20th century, to want to show us a Humphrey Bogart double feature, co-starring Ingrid Bergman and Katharine Hepburn? The choices, Casablanca and The African Queen (July 13) prove every bit as nostalgic as Friedlander’s ostensibly deadpan documentary imagery.
Meanwhile, Sugimoto Hiroshi’s elegantly formal black-and-white photos, taken with an antique box camera, strive to express a changing world in more or less the same idiosyncratic terms as his chosen films, Kobayashi Masaki’s costumed horror movie, Kwaidan, and Jissôji Toshirô’s sexual shocker, This Transient Life (shown on July 17).
And let’s not forget Kota Ezawa, the Bay Area-based, Japanese-German social commentator and visual artist who no doubt admires the settings and attitudes on display in Wim Wenders’ glorious fable, Wings of Desire, and David Lynch’s whimsical “road picture,” The Straight Story (July 11).
Also from the realm of the philosophical, two sensitive psychodramas chosen by socially motivated photographer/installation creator Carrie Mae Weems: Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight and Ingmar Bergman’s Wild Strawberries (July 10).
For up-to-date info on the festival screenings, visit roxie.com. The Fraenkel Gallery is at 49 Geary St., Fourth floor, San Francisco. fraenkelgallery.com
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Through July 20 at the Roxie Theater, San Francisco.
