Synopses & Reviews
An extraordinarily beautiful city that has been celebrated, criticized, and studied in many films, San Francisco is both fragile and robust, at once a site of devastation caused by 1906 earthquake but also a symbol of indomitability in its effort to rebuild afterwards. Its beauty, both natural and manmade, has provided filmmakers with an iconic backdrop since the 1890s, and this guidebook offers an exciting tour through the film scenes and film locations that have made San Francisco irresistible to audiences and auteurs alike.
Gathering more than forty short pieces on specific scenes from San Franciscan films, this book includes essays on topics that dominate the history of filmmaking in the city, from depictions of the Golden Gate Bridge, to the movies Alfred Hitchcock, to the car chases that seem to be mandatory features of any thriller shot there.and#160;Some of Americaandrsquo;s most famous moviesandmdash;from Steven Spielbergandrsquo;s Raiders of the Lost Ark to Hitchcockandrsquo;s Vertigo to Don Siegelandrsquo;s Dirty Harry andmdash;are celebrated alongside smaller movies and documentaries, such as The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill, to paint a complete picture of San Francisco in film.and#160;A range of expert contributors, including several members of the San Francisco Film Critics Circle, discuss a range of films from many genres and decades, from nineteenth-century silents to twentieth-century blockbusters
Audiences across the world, as well as many of the worldandrsquo;s greatest film directorsandmdash;including Buster Keaton, Orson Welles, George Lucas, Francis Ford Coppola, David Fincher, and Steven Soderberghandmdash;have been seduced by San Francisco. This book is the ideal escape to the city by the bay for arm chair travelers and cinephiles alike.
Review
and#8220;Dubbed Radical Light, the history of local art film oddities ends up touching on pretty much every important social movement and technical innovation from the 1880s to the 1990s.and#8221;
Review
and#8220;A voluminous book that distills everything youand#8217;d ever want to know about this genre, culled from 10 years of research. Consider this your avant-garde education, not to mention your duty as a resident of a bohemian city.and#8221;
Review
and#8220;In Radical Light, San Franciscoand#8217;s deep countercultural roots reemerge as an unbroken antitradition stretching from the postwar proto-Beats to the identitarian activists and small-gauge geeks at centuryand#8217;s end.and#8221;
Review
“[A] freewheeling sampler” New York Times
Review
and#8220;At just over 300 pages, captures an extraordinary history, with contributions by dozens of filmmakers, historians, critics and curators.and#8221;
Review
and#8220;This wealth of material, much of it long forgotten or ignored, will be catnip to historians, practitioners, and programmers alike, providing fodder for reexaminingand#8212;and inspiration for makingand#8212;movies that matter.and#8221;
Review
and#8220;It is hard to imagine a book like this emerging from another source or another city, touching on the lives and accomplishments of so many of our greatest artist. . . You can acknowledge the gaps in your own understanding of film history and find remedy with this book.and#8221;
Review
and#8220;[A] freewheeling samplerand#8221;
Review
and#8220;San Francisco is the latest addition to this excellent series of urban guides. Scott Jordan Harris has selected 46 films with scenes in this beautiful city of streetcars, fogs and possibly the most famous bridge in the world, which was of course partially destroyed by the giant radioactive cephalopod in It Came from Beneath the Sea (1955). A great guide to the celluloid city."
Synopsis
This kaleidoscopic collection of essays, interviews, photographs, and artist-designed pages chronicles the vibrant and influential history of experimental cinema in the San Francisco Bay Area. Encompassing historical, cultural, and aesthetic realms,
Radical Light features critical analyses of films and videos, reminiscences from artists, and interviews with pioneering filmmakers, curators, and archivists. It explores artistic movements, film and video exhibition and distribution, artists' groups, and Bay Area film schools. Special sections of ephemeraand#151;posters, correspondence, photographs, newsletters, program notes, and moreand#151;punctuate the pages of
Radical Light, giving a first-hand visual sense of the period. This groundbreaking, hybrid assemblage reveals a complex picture of how and why the San Francisco Bay Region, a laboratory for artistic and technical innovation for more than half a century, has become a global center of vanguard film, video, and new media.
Among the contributors are Rebecca Solnit and Ernie Gehr on Bay Area cinema's roots in the work of Eadweard Muybridge and others; Scott MacDonald on Art in Cinema; P. Adams Sitney on films by James Broughton and Sidney Peterson; Stan Brakhage, Bruce Conner, Lawrence Jordan, and Yvonne Rainer on the Bay Area film scene in the 1950s; J. Hobeman on films by Christopher Maclaine, Bruce Conner, and Robert Nelson; Craig Baldwin on found footage film; George Kuchar on student-produced melodramas; Michael Wallin on queer film in the 1970s; V. Vale on punk cinema; Dale Hoyt and Cecilia Dougherty on video in the 1980s and 1990s; and Maggie Morse on new media as sculpture.
Copub: Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
Synopsis
"A superb collection, as exciting, in many ways, as the works it chronicles."and#151;Akira Mizuta Lippit, author of Atomic Light (Shadow Optics)
About the Author
Steve Anker is Dean of the School of Film/Video at California Institute of the Arts. Kathy Geritz is Film Curator at Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive at the University of California, Berkeley. Steve Seid is Video Curator at Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive and coauthor of Ant Farm: 1968and#150;1978 (UC Press).
Table of Contents
San Francisco: City of the Imagination
Omar Moore
The Golden Gate Bridge: Gateway, Escape Route and Battleground
Neil Mitchell
Scenes 1-8
1898-1947
City of Shadows: A Brief History of Film Noir in San Francisco
Brian Darr
Scenes 9-16
1951-1963
Alfred Hitchcock Presents San Francisco: The Master and the City by the Bay
Craig Phillips
Scenes 17-24
1967-1974
Faster Than a Speeding Bullitt: San Franciscan Cinemaand#8217;s Famous Car Chases
Mel Valentin
Scenes 25-32
1974-1984
Callahanand#8217;s City: Dirty Harry and the Mean Streets of San Francisco
Elisabeth Rappe
Scenes 33-39
1986-1995
Midnight Mission: Queer Culture and Midnight Movies in San Francisco
Jason LeRoy
Scenes 40-46
1996-2011
Backpages
Resources
Contributor Bios
Filmography