CINEMA BY THE BAY THE CREATIVE HEART OF THE WEST 74 Empress Hotel 75 Everything Strange and New 76 Ferlinghetti 77 My Suicide 78 (Untitled) 73
cinema by the bay 74 EmprEss HotEl WEST COAST PREMIERE UsA 2008 85 min Dir Allie Light, Irving Saraf proD Allie Light, Irving Saraf, Roberta Goodman CAm Andrew Clark, Irving Saraf ED Allie Light, Irving Saraf mUs Larry Seymour print soUrCE Light-Saraf <strong>Film</strong>s, 264 Arbor Street, <strong>San</strong> <strong>Francisco</strong>, CA 94131. FAX: 415- 469-0139. EMAIL: sarafilm@comcast.net. CAUsEs Disabilities, Economic Justice, Family Issues, Bay Area Community The tenants of the Empress Hotel, a Tenderloin facility established by the <strong>San</strong> <strong>Francisco</strong> Department of Public Health to house the recently homeless, come from widely diverse backgrounds. Each resident of these small furnished rooms has a story to tell, including the amateur boxer who has spent years of his life behind bars and still struggles with violent urges, the woman with two master’s degrees who found herself homeless when her specialized area of expertise fell into technological obsolescence, the former publisher who follows the spiritual voices he hears almost to the point of suicide and the recovering crack addict desperate to get her weight to rise above 84 pounds. Local filmmaking duo Allie Light and Irving Saraf masterfully imbricate the residents’ life stories and their daily interactions with service providers and building staff to craft a moving portrait of a building, a neighborhood and all of the lives that intersect within. Light and Saraf won an Academy Award in 1991 for their look at the S.F. Opera, In the Shadow of the Stars, and their most recent film bears the mark of two lifetimes of documentary craftsmanship, perhaps most admirably in its resolute reluctance to sentimentalize the plights of its marginalized subjects as they struggle with mental illness, drug addiction and poverty. The film leaves some of its stories hopefully, others precariously close to despair, but its patron saint, building manager Roberta Goodman, provides the greatest reason for optimism as she tirelessly tries to improve her residents’ lives. —David Gray AlliE liGHt irvinG sArAf Allie Light and Irving Saraf won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature for In the Shadow of the Stars (1991) and an Emmy for Dialogues with Madwomen (1994). As filmmaking partners, they have directed a number of documentaries, including Visions of Paradise (1982), a series of five portraits of folk artists, and Rachel’s Daughters: Searching for the Causes of Breast Cancer (1997), which aired on HBO. Longtime residents of the Bay Area, they both taught for many years at <strong>San</strong> <strong>Francisco</strong> State University. SAT APR 25 3:15 KABUKI EMPR25K MON APR 27 6:00 KABUKI EMPR27K WED APR 29 6:15 KABUKI EMPR29K
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