Indie As They Wanna Be

The 18th SF Independent Film Festival (SF IndieFest) is certainly not a supercharged, glamorpuss event, and its actors-writers-directors-editors-cinematographers are decidedly unsung, even in their own bedrooms.

The celebrity sightings are mostly limited to IndieFest Director of Programming Jennifer "Junkyard" Morris, curator of music docs Chris Metzler, and SF IndieFest founder-director-grand poobah Jeff Ross. There are five venues (518 Gallery, Alamo Drafthouse, Brava Theatre, Roxie Theater and the new Vortex Room, 3189 Mission St.), innumerable parties, tickets, passes and vouchers, as well as tributes to Robin Williams, films documenting Texas child-porn rings, and a Finnish film called "Bunny the Killer Thing." Below, find a report of the eight films I screened.

Preoccupied Gotham-based filmmaker Brandon Gibbons has fun at the expense of the white boys of Wall Street. This spoof of a mythical white-boy blowback to the 2011 Occupy Wall Street movement features authentic Wall Street footage, taunts that fall just short of mayhem, a couple of cute white boys in suits, and even shooting hoops and enough comedy at the expense of the 99% to show that we may lose our homes but never our sense of humor or the sense of life's ultimate meaninglessness. (Roxie, 2/12, 18, 7 p.m.)

Dead Hands Dig Deep I never thought I'd hesitate to recommend a film that offers heaping mounds of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll, but that's until I caught 20 minutes of Aussie director Jai Love's intimate portrait of Edwin Borsheim. Borsheim is the self-appointed leader of the shock metal band Kettle Cadaver. The most polite term for Borsheim is "S/M exhibitionist provocateur," but not in a good way. The dude is into a form of self-mutilation and personal bloodletting that I find disgusting and oddly tedious. There are chats with Borsheim's "bandmates," who appear a tad embarrassed to be party to this "crime against celluloid." IndieFest calls its single Roxie screening a "music spotlight." You've been warned. (Roxie, 2/21, 7 p.m.)

Hustlers Convention Mike Todd provides an entertaining historical dig through the back pages of the modern rap/hip-hop movement. "Hustler's Convention" refers to an almost-forgotten 1973 album by a now-elderly musician/wordsmith, Jalal Nuriddin, aka "Lightnin' Rod." Featuring iluminating chats with African American music heavies George Clinton, Ice-T and Chuck D, the film beautifully illustrates the old adage that you may not know that the revolution has occurred, even with an engraved invitation. This one truly is a music spotlight. (Roxie, 2/19, 7 p.m.)
Scene from director G.J. Echternkamp's Frank and Cindy. Photo: Courtesy SF IndieFest

Frank and Cindy The opening-night film is a witty fictional treatment of director G.J. Echternkamp' true-life family meltdown when his mom (played here by Rene Russo) agrees to let her new hubby, G.J.'s stepdad (a remarkable Oliver Platt), squander his college fund to fund dad's dream of a basement studio. This well-acted comedy-drama was presented in radio version on This American Life. (Brava Theater opening, 2/11, 7:30 p.m., followed by DJ Shindog's evening of 1980s/90s "one-hit wonders" at New Wave City)

Too Late The closing-night film is Dennis Hauk's tribute to a '70s brand of druggie noir. Indie vet John Hawkes is a private investigator in the fashion pioneered by a young Gene Hackman around the time of the Hackman/Arthur Penn collaboration "Night Moves." With a nifty supporting turn from Tarrantino regular Robert Forster, giving it just a whiff of Tarrantino's under-appreciated "Jackie Brown," this one was shot in five 22-minute takes in the Technoscope 35 mm format. (Roxie, 2/25, 9:15 p.m.)

Paradise Club Sadly, San Francisco filmmaker Carolyn Cavallero's feature debut is spoiled by an overwhelming accumulation of beginner's mistakes. It's a failed stab at a John Cassavetes-style hipster romp like his 1976 Ben Gazzara vehicle "The Killing of a Chinese Bookie." Cavallero's good intentions can't overcome such portentous rants as this one given by her young female exotic dancer: "I wanted to be one of the wild ones. The ones who broke free." The film is technically accomplished; the problems lie with the script. (Roxie, 2/13, 18, 9:15 p.m.)

And the Mudship Sails Away (Japan, 2013) The weird English title shouldn't scare you away from Hirobumi Watanabe's homage to early Jim Jarmusch, such as the 1984 three-lost-souls black comedy "Stranger than Paradise." A bitter unemployed man approaching 40 tries the patience of friends and family. The director's real-life 96-year-old grandmother lightens the proceedings with her deadpan scene-stealing. (Roxie, 2/14, 4:30 p.m.; 2/23, 9:15 p.m.)

The Winds That Scatter Christopher Jason Bell provides an achingly pertinent and timely look at a middle-aged Syrian immigrant's struggles to survive the double whammy of his outsider status and an American landscape grown hostile to the Muslim "other." (Roxie, 2/13, 4:30 p.m.; 2/16, 9:15 p.m.)

Info: sfindie.com