Interview with Graham Leggat
“The San Francisco Film Society embraces the art, technology and innovation of the world’s most imaginative storytellers who use the moving image to celebrate humanity while educating, entertaining and enriching the audiences of the world.”
The San Francisco International Film Festival has been a visionary from its very beginning; and throughout its several decades, it has upheld that tradition. Each period of its life has been forward thinking in its own way, and it continues to be so. From December 4, 1957, when San Francisco International Film Festival founder Irving Levin kicked off the first International Film Festival, to the upcoming 50th anniversary, numerous people have contributed to the yearly endeavor of planning, producing, and staging what is the annual SFIFF. And this year is no different. Graham Leggat, the new executive director of the San Francisco Film Society gives us his take on the thriving and pioneering festival this time around.
Graham, what was it that made you decide to get involved in running the San Francisco Film Society?
Well, it’s one of the best planned film festivals in the country, if not the world. It’s a fantastic region for filmmaking, and in fact, renovation of all kinds. It’s an enlightened city government here and a great staff and board, and a fantastic film culture in San Francisco in both making films and watching films. There are some great writers here. I left a great job in New York. It is probably the only place I would have come to. The chance to run the show here was just something I couldn’t pass up.
Wow, that’s pretty amazing. And that’s quite a move, too. So what’s it like being involved in San Francisco at all as opposed to New York for you?
San Francisco is the opposite of New York. In New York there’s an overwhelming density of cultural offerings. And every sort of square inch of space has been developed in one way or another. San Francisco has a much greater openness. There’s much more opportunity, much more room to expand into new areas. San Francisco is a frontier for the kind of work that we do, and so in short, it’s extremely exciting to be here. This place is like a powder keg to me.
O. K., having been involved in this festival, why don’t you tell me about some of the highs that you’ve experienced.
Well, this is a big festival that tries to excel in a number of different areas, so we’re always trying to get the very best film speakers, interviewers, panelists, jury members, etc. And we hold ourselves to very high standards. Everyday we are on the phone or on email. I won’t say fighting, but doing our utmost to land films and talent that we think will be most exciting and most enlightening for our audiences, so all the highs and lows revolve around that, especially now, when we’re launching the program. We suffer setbacks and have glorious triumphs almost on an hourly basis. For a couple of weeks, it’s almost like a sporting event at this point. It has that kind of total engagement, an almost physical engagement and exhilaration; and like a sporting event, you don’t feel your injuries while you’re playing. You know that you wanted such and such a guest at such and such a film, and for some reason [he/she] is not available; and so it hurts a little bit. But you have to keep going as you would if you want to play. You just keep going and going. That’s the phase we’re in right now. Once the dust settles a little bit next week, we will know what’s in the program, and then we’ll start sort of shaping it, thinking about how we’re going to present it. And we’ll also notice things that we didn’t notice in the heat of the moment. For example, we have a suite of films about “X” theme or “X” region, which we may have been vaguely aware but didn’t realize fully until after the program is locked. Then we can start talking about motifs with journalists and filmmakers, and so on. It’s like putting the icing on the cake at the festival.
What’s the biggest film that actually came out of your festival?
This is the 50th International San Francisco Film Festival. We’re the longest running film festival in the Americas. No other festival from Alaska to Argentina has reached the 50-year markdown. So your question is not an easy question to answer since we have a full house section.
Tell me one or two that were great successes.
Back 20-odd years ago we did a world premier of She’s Gotta Have It by a little known filmmaker named Spike Lee. Since then he’s gone on to brilliant things. Last year, our State of Cinema address was given by British actress Tilda Swinton. She received a prestigious standing ovation after her talk. The transcript of that talk’s on our website. In the early ’90s’ festival, many Iranian films came to this country at a time when very few other cinemas were showing them. And Iranian cinema was one of the great national cinemas in the ’90s. The list goes on. The festival has technically invented beyond stage tributes, where actors, actresses, directors, and producers talk at length about their careers. We pioneered that in the late ’60s. We also were the first place to show the films of the great Japanese director Kurosawa. This festival has been a cultural treasure for the region, bringing the world to the Bay Area for literally half a century. It’s a pretty extraordinary legacy to have stewardship of.
Do you see certain trends in particular types of films that are coming in festivals annually?
You may say that, yes.
Is there any particular trend you are seeing a lot of in this particular festival?
Well, we’re not quite at the point where we can see that type of motif kicking out. But obviously the festival has always had a strong tradition of showing really good documentaries; and unfortunately over the last five years, the world has really gone to hell in a hand basket. So the documentary section despite—or probably because of—so many terrible state of affairs, for instance famine and so on, we have a very powerful suite of documentaries, and our audiences are very interested in them. So one trend is to see increasingly unflinching cold eye views of many of the difficult social issues around the world, whether it be global warming or wars in the Middle East or healthcare issues. We show all sorts of other documentaries, too, but you can see that documentarians with an eye for social issues are making stronger and harder hitting films. We see that very much in our festival.
What final words would you want to say in regards to this festival and possibly the future of it?
The San Francisco International has been visionary from its very beginning, and throughout its several decades it has upheld that tradition. Each period of its life has been visionary and forward thinking in its own way, and it continues to be so. We’re not only interested in upholding a great tradition, but in continuing to reinvent ourselves in relation to the contemporary world. So we have a section devoted to new platforms, new moving image platforms, and new audiences. We’re always so very interested in the amazing innovation and creativity that runs throughout the Bay Area. We have a special section devoted to the Bay Area filmmaking. We’re doing a world premier of a film called Fog City Mavericks, about the last four years of filmmaking in the Bay Area. As always, from the beginning, the city in this festival has always been very outward looking. This is a very international city. So the sense of bringing the world to San Francisco is something that is very important to us. So we’ll bring in more than a hundred filmmakers. And audiences just eat them up. They love it. It’ll be a blast!
For updates and to purchase tickets for the San Francisco International Film Festival, April 26 through May 10, visithttp://fest07.sffs.org.
Interviewed by Kaylene Peoples
Transcribed by Lisa A. Trimarchi
