The Royal Road

Closing Night | Q&A with Jenni Olson followed by a reception open to all ticketholders

The docks of Oakland; roadside marker bells in Pasadena; the Spanish king Carlos III; expansionism in 19th-century America; the Franciscan mission-founder Junípero Serra; The Golden Gate Bridge; Casanova’s Story of My Life; Jules Laforgue’s “Solo By Moonlight”; William Wyler’s Roman Holiday. The essential San Francisco filmmaker Jenni Olson’s latest essay film is an associative, inquisitive meditation on love, remembrance, and California history structured around a trip down El Camino Real. The Royal Road riffs often and exquisitely on Chris Marker’s Sans Soleil—both films include key, lengthy discourses on Hitchcock’s Vertigo—but this movie’s voice, alternately dispassionate, confessional, and melancholic, is entirely Olson’s own.

Screening with:

Becoming Anita Ekberg
Mark Rappaport, USA, 2014, digital projection, 17m
Did La Dolce Vita make Anita Ekberg a legend by giving her a 20-minute cameo, or was it the other way around? Through clips of both career-defining and forgettable roles, Mark Rappaport (From the Journals of Jean Seberg) traces the late Swedish actress’s ever-changing persona, noting the triumphs and limitations of being a sex goddess. U.S. Premiere

The Vanity Tables of Douglas Sirk
Mark Rappaport, USA, 2014, digital projection, 11m
Mark Rappaport probes the burdensome nature of beauty and bodily control through one of classical Hollywood’s most essential props: the vanity table. Employing clips from landmark films like Written on the Wind and All That Heaven Allows, the filmmaker delves into how Douglas Sirk, the master of melodrama and mise-en-scène, used this pejoratively named piece of furniture. U.S. Premiere