Program Guide - San Francisco International Film Festival - San ...

Mel noVIKoFF AWArd
bRuCE gOLdsTEiN
Named in honor of legendary San Francisco film
exhibitor Mel Novikoff (1922–87), this award
is given annually to an individual or institution
whose work has enhanced the filmgoing public’s
knowledge and appreciation of world cinema.
FEsTivAL sCREENiNg
Nights of Cabiria
MEL NOviKOFF AwARd PREviOus RECiPiENTs
2008 J. Hoberman
2007 Kevin Brownlow
2005 Anita Monga
2004 Paolo Cherchi Usai
2003 Manny Farber
2002 David Francis
2001 Cahiers du Cinéma
San Francisco Cinematheque
2000 Donald Krim
David Shepard
1999 Enno Patalas
1998 Adrienne Mancia
1997 Judy Stone
Film Arts Foundation
1996 David Robinson
1995 Institut Lumière
1994 Naum Kleiman
1993 Andrew Sarris
1992 Jonas Mekas
1991 Pauline Kael
1990 Donald Richie
1989 USSR Filmmakers Association
1988 Daniel Talbot
44
There are programmers, there are programmers’
programmers, and there is Bruce Goldstein, programmer’s
programmer and cine-showman extraordinaire.
Is there any aspect of movie exhibition where this guy
lacks firsthand knowledge? The teenage Goldstein
dropped out of college to run a movie house in the
outermost town on Cape Cod. Returning to New York by
way of London, he became a legendary publicist (for New
York’s no less legendary Thalia revival house). He’s now
a canny distributor (cofounder of Rialto Pictures, an outfit
dedicated to making the black-and-white art house hits of
the ’50s look better than new) and, since 1987, he’s been
the man who books the retrospectives and premieres the
restorations at New York’s Film Forum.
Film Forum director Karen Cooper recruited Goldstein
even as revival programs all over America were buckling
under the home-video onslaught. Taking a cue from posttelevision
Hollywood, he devoted his first series, Bigger
Than Life: Movies in Scope, to the wide screen. Showman
that he is, Goldstein believes in showing movies as they
were meant to be seen. (Indeed, dedicated to giving the
public the best that motion pictures have to offer, Bruce
is the most print-conscious of exhibitors.) Another early
Film Forum series was Gimmick-o-Rama, for which
Goldstein appropriated William Castle’s Percepto process,
wiring every third Film Forum seat with a small motor for
THE iNdisPENsibLE
MAN
By J. Hoberman
a screening of The Tingler—undoubtedly the first time
in three decades that the movie was shown in the form
that its director intended. (Goldstein has subsequently
presented The Tingler in Percepto in Paris, Munich
and Tel Aviv.) It’s thanks to Bruce’s various 3-D series
and individual presentations that Film Forum was for
many years the lone New York City theater with an oldfashioned
silver screen and the double-system interlock
necessary for 3-D projection. (When Martin Scorsese
purchased a number of vintage 3-D prints, he had to come
down to Houston Street to screen them.)
As anyone who has ever had the benefit of his voluminous
press kits can attest, Bruce Goldstein is an archivist as
well as movie historian who has organized pioneering
retrospectives for filmmakers ranging from Chantal
Akerman to Samuel Z. Arkoff—and also promoted them.
(For years, he kept Arkoff’s thank-you letter framed on
his office wall: “You’re a brilliant publicist!”) Bruce believes
honest ballyhoo is no vice. Old hands at the Thalia still
remember the Fay Wray scream-alike contest, complete
with man in monkey suit, that he organized for the 50th
anniversary of the original King Kong. No detail is too
small. Bruce spares no effort in producing a quarterly
calendar that is studied by buffs and emulated by
programmers across the nation. Coprogramming a theater
known for its cosmopolitan mix of the arcane and the