I can’t cover every Bay Area film festival. I try to cover the major ones and my favorites. So far this spring, I’ve written blog posts for the SFFilm Festival, the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, and Doc Week (already running).
Here are three other film festivals that will play in April. I can’t tell you much about these festivals, but I’ll give you an overview.
GLAS Animation Festival
April 6 – 10
Don’t expect anything from Disney here. But you can find various animated films – shorts and features – often quite edgy. The fest puts the films into categories, which they call programs. Titles include Affairs of the Art, Ghost Dogs, and Cinnamon, Thunderstorm. And yes, there’s a family-friendly section. Each program is followed by a discussion.
SF Greek Film Festival
April 8 – 16
You don’t have to know modern Greek to see this festival, but you should be able to read subtitles. The films screening cover Greece under Nazi occupation, magical healing powers, generation gaps, and group theory.
The Greek Film Fest will take place at the Delancey Screening Room, each night at 6:30pm.
SF Green Film Festival
April 14 – 24
Some film festivals, like GLAS, celebrate a genre. Others show films for and about an ethnicity or sexual preference – like the Greek fest. But still others like the Green Film Fest, have a message to say. In this case, it’s about saving the planet. These sorts of fests tend to focus almost entirely on documentaries, but this year there’s also a vintage science fiction film: Douglas Trumbull’s Silent Running, from 1972.
I loved this movie when it was new (my stepfather worked on it), but today it feels preachy and heavy-handed, and when you think about it, the concept is ridiculous. On the good side, the special effects make nice eye candy, the robots clearly influenced R2D2, and Bruce Dern gives a good performance in a nearly one-man show, and its heart is in the right place.
The Green Film Festival will screen at the Roxie. But you can also stream the film at home.
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