San Francisco Film Society Announces Partnership with Gucci and the Film Foundation to Present Two Restored Masterpieces From Cinema Visionaries at 52nd San Francisco International Film Festival

Film Society is Beneficiary of Private Party Celebrating the Opening of Gucci's New San Francisco Store

November 7, 2008

San Francisco, CA – Last night at a private cocktail party to celebrate the opening of Gucci’s new San Francisco store, the San Francisco Film Society announced the details of an exciting new partnership with Gucci and The Film Foundation, which will bring new prints of two masterpieces of world cinema restored by the Cinema Visionaries program to the 52nd San Francisco International Film Festival (April 23–May 7, 2009). SFIFF will host one of the first screenings of the restoration of John Cassavetes’ astonishing marital drama, A Woman Under the Influence (USA 1974, SFIFF 1984) and the North American premiere of the restored Le Amiche (Italy 1955, SFIFF 1995), Michelangelo Antonioni’s vivid portrayal of feminine anxiety, on Saturday, April 25 at the Castro Theatre.

A Woman Under the Influence, Cassavetes’ searing look at a woman beset by mental illness, starring Gena Rowlands and Peter Falk, echoed the feminist movement with its observations of claustrophobic domesticity. A key movie of the early 1970s, the film stands today as one of the foremost examples of Cassavetes’ unsparing realism. The restoration of A Woman Under the Influence was completed by the UCLA Film & Television Archive from the original 35mm camera and track negatives from John Cassavetes’ personal collection.

The real achievement of Le Amiche, starring Eleonora Rossi Drago, Valentina Cortese, Yvonne Furneaux, Madeleine Fischer and Anna Maria Pancani might be the deftness with which Antonioni handles the stories of eight different characters. He allows the plot to unfold and follows one character until he or she meets another who is involved in the story. Once all of the characters are introduced, Antonioni cuts back and forth between different storylines so gracefully that it never seems as though any one character is neglected. Le Amiche was restored by the Cineteca di Bologna at L’Immagine Ritrovata. The result of the work was a new interpositive fine grain master, new 35mm black-and-white positive prints and a new optical track negative.

The Film Society and the San Francisco International Film Festival were the beneficiaries of the evening hosted by William R. Hearst III and Alexander Payne and the host committee of Sloan and Roger Barnett, Jennifer and Doug Biederbeck, Karen and Frank Caufield, Juliet and Andre de Baubigny, Vanessa and Billy Getty, Katie and Todd Traina and Alexis and Trevor Traina.

Additional luminaries of San Francisco society who commemorated the opening of the luxurious new Gucci store, featuring Creative Director Frida Giannini’s design concept, included Graham Leggat, Haroula Spyropoulos, Connie Nielsen, Mayor Gavin Newsom, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, Vanessa Getty, Kamala Harris, OJ Shansby, Norman Stone, Maria Manetti Farrow, Angelique Griepp, Melanie and Larry Blum, Celeste and Anthony Meier, Nancy Livingston and Fred Levin and Scott Owens.

The Film Foundation and Gucci have created Cinema Visionaries, a traveling preservation screening program, to celebrate motion pictures that have been preserved or restored with funding from Gucci and the foundation.

For more information: www.sffs.org.

The San Francisco Film Society is a nonprofit arts organization dedicated to celebrating film and the moving image in all its glorious forms. SFFS year-round programs and events are concentrated in four core areas: Celebrating Internationalism; Inspiring Bay Area Youth; Showcasing Bay Area Film Culture; and Exploring New Digital Media. The Film Society shows the best of world cinema year-round on its SFFS Screen at the Sundance Kabuki Cinemas; presents the longest-running film festival in the Americas, the SF International (April 23–May 7, 2009), publishes a daily online magazine, SF360.org, with broad-ranging news and features on Bay Area film and media; and annually reaches more than 7,000 students ages 6–18 with its acclaimed media literacy programs, among many other activities.

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