Michael Guillén: The SFFP website lays out the organization's objectives but doesn't provide much history. Can you tell me about the history of the organization? When it started, who started it, how long it's been around? I noticed Rob Byrne's helmship and wondered if the establishment of SFFP was in conjunction with or an offshoot of the Silent Film Festival?
Kathy Rose O’Reagan: SFFP started life as the preservation department of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival ("SFSFF"). While SFSFF occasionally restored films starting in 2012, by the time of SFFP’s founding two years ago the preservation department was working on up to nine projects simultaneously. In essence, by the summer of 2024, the preservation department of SFSFF had grown to such an extent that it was operating as almost a separate organization under the festival umbrella. It was at this juncture that the decision was made for the preservation department to become an entirely separate organization, allowing SFSFF to focus more fully on its mission dedicated to the superb presentation of silent cinema. SFFP’s first day of operation was October 1, 2024, with Robert Byrne as founder/Board President, and myself as Executive Director.
Guillén: Jonathan, I note that you're on SFFP’s board of directors so am wondering if you have been with them from the beginning? Can you speak to your involvement?
Marlow: I was invited to join the Board relatively early in the process (although not at its initial formation).
Guillén: I have especially enjoyed previewing František Vláčil’s Valley of the Bees (1968) [screening 3:00PM on Friday, September 25, 2026] and Robert Wynne-Simmons’ The Outcasts (1982) [screening 8:30PM on Friday, September 25, 2026]. Why were you motivated to include them in the festival's first edition? Why should San Franciscans take note?
Marlow: I have had an unreasonable fondness for Valley of the Bees (1968) upon my first viewing roughly a decade ago (as part of a larger pursuit in search of the work of composer Zdeněk Liška). I was aware of recent work on the film in parallel with a restoration of František Vláčil's better-known Marketa Lazarová (1967) but I had yet to see the restoration when we were making our selections. Fortunately, Rob had seen it during his many travels (and possessed a similar appreciation for the film).
As for The Outcasts (1982), that particular restoration had been shortlisted for the tenth-and-final edition of Camera Obscura the year-before-last, coincidentally enough! Kathy was keenly interested in presenting a superlative (albeit rarely-screened) example of Irish folk-horror at Re:Vision. Meanwhile, at the Orphans Film Symposium earlier in the year, Walter Forsberg presented a discussion on the work of Smithsonian Institution alum Karen Loveland, leading to an anomaly in her filmography: Witch (1973), intended for an installation at the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic. Not a short film, as such, but a miraculous ephemeral fragment which should be enjoyed by audiences of eclectic and refined interests, perfectly paired! There certainly isn't a comparable film in this series (or any other).
The guiding hand of the program followed a decided effort to disrupt conventional "canon-building" (which, itself, is a reflection of whatever is otherwise accessible—an avenue film restoration has the unique ability to repair). Therein, we'd wanted works from many different eras of filmmaking, representing as many countries as possible with a wide variety of genres, often genres not generally associated with the region, such as the quasi-noir of Bodil Ipsen's Mordets Melodi / Melody of Murder (1944) [screening at 8:40PM on Sunday, September 27, 2026].
The majority of these works are screening in the Bay Area for the first time or, at least, the first time in many decades.
Dakan / Destiny (1997), for instance, [screening at 5:45PM on Friday, September 25, 2026] had its local premiere at Frameline and was distributed domestically by California Newsreel yet hasn't screened in the area since its initial release. That screening is accompanied by Nancy, Henri and Elizabeth (1973), a fascinatingly candid documentary short recently preserved by Dino Everett at USC and brought to my attention by Michael Metzger at the Block Museum. Which is another way of noting that ideal suggestions come from all corners! A handful of additional selections in the program debuted at Il Cinema Ritrovato in June, where SFFP's luminous restoration of Sunrise (1927) premiered.
Guillén: Can you provide further insight into the process of shaping the program?
Marlow: With an expanding number of restorations in recent years, a majority of these films would make a belated appearance on Bay Area screens. There are a handful of grand showcases for restored and rediscovered works around the world but nothing of the dedicated sort along the western half of North America. I'd discussed the complications of seeing these archival efforts during one of my many conversations with Rob Byrne and he had already been thinking along the same route. Kathy Rose O'Regan, Executive Director of the San Francisco Film Preserve, immediately joined the discussion and then Elise Schierbeek, a recent addition as Collections Director of SFFP, completed the team.
Guillén: Mention has been made that the festival will have special guests. Can you say who?
Marlow: Each screening includes an introduction by a guest (and that makes all of the programs perpetually special in my humble estimation)! However, I'd particularly note an appearance and introduction from Karen Sperling prior to her remarkable sophomore feature-length The Waiting Room (1973) [screening at 1:20PM on Sunday, September 27, 2026]; introductory remarks from Peter Conheim (who restored the film) to Los Leprosos y el Sexo [Lepers & Sex] aka Santo vs. the Riders of Terror (1970) [screening at 9:00PM on Saturday, September 26]; and a video introduction from director Angie Chen ahead of her opening-night Hong Kong dramedy My Name Ain't Suzie (1985) [screening at 7:00PM on Thursday, September 24, 2026].
With the inaugural edition of the Re:Vision Festival of Restoration and Rediscovery (“SFFP”) about to launch this weekend (September 24-27, 2026) at San Francisco’s historic Roxie Theater, here are some selections to consider. The word that keeps surfacing to my mind with regard to SFFP’s inaugural program is that these films are all important, of consequence, too easily dismissed and forgotten, yet deserving of continued attention and, yes, even affection. They range wildly in genres and styles, which makes for a rich variety of spectatorial responses.
Dakan / Destiny (1997); dir. Mohamed Camara—Guinean filmmaker Camara has never shied away from controversial subjects and has, in fact, created an oeuvre based upon them. Denko (1993) tackled incest; Minka (1995) child suicide; and Dakan (1997) has earned its stature as the first Black African film on homosexuality, for which it was lauded at L.A. Outfest with the Grand Jury Award for Outstanding Foreign Narrative Feature.
From its opening sequence of two high-school boys kissing, Dakan makes no apologies for its homosexual subject matter. Manga and Sory are in love with each other and admit same to their parents, both who object and insist upon their separation. Sory’s father sends him off to college to learn business so he can take over the family fishing enterprise. Manga’s mother ships him off to a tribal witch doctor in hopes ritual magic will "cure" him. The through-line of their attraction for each other, however, pierces through all the efforts of others to force their conformity. Their love is—as dakan translated implies—destiny. Dakan is, then, more a study of how the true love of these two young men influences, agitates and transforms the sensibilities of those around them. It is their parents and the young women who believe they can change them that, in turn, are tasked with change. The film’s point-of-view positively emphasizes that the only behavior to be judged is anyone who tries to thwart a destined love.
Camara’s signature edginess is on full display during the witch doctor sequence where Manga’s mother is required to roll around in a muddy cemetery and instructed to steal a funeral shroud from a grave. Meanwhile, back at the village, a handful of dwarves assist the witch doctor in her aversion rituals. Camara doesn’t even shy away from an interracial romance. The upsetting of social taboos unabashedly comprises the film’s thrust.
For those unable to attend the festival, Dakan is available for streaming on YouTube.
The Outcasts (1982); dir. Robert Wynne-Simmons—Social taboos and superstitions run rampant in early 1800s Ireland, though the maligned love affair here is between Maura (Mary Ryan) a moody withdrawn girl and her demon lover Scarf Michael (Mick Lalley) who the locals suspect is the devil incarnate. But is he? Or is he simply an itinerant fiddler who has accepted the aspersions cast upon him, reining them in to negotiate his own survival? And is he, consequently, in a perfect position to counsel Maura on how to escape the backward village where she has been shunned as strangely aberrant and forced to live a miserable isolated existence as a suspected witch?
Difference is extolled as magical and transformative in The Outcasts in an atmospheric and absorbing narrative that is credited with singlehandedly reviving the cinema of Ireland after nearly a half century of no films being made. Its mythopoeic air was popular with audiences when it made its festival rounds, winning Best Film and Critics Prize at the Brussels International Fantastic Film Festival, and Best First Feature and Best Actress at the San Remo Film Festival. It earned a Special Prize for Originality and Jury Prize at the Fantasporto Film Festival 1984, and the Prix du Publique at Geneva Film Festival. The Arts Council of Ireland recognized it with an award.
Araya (1959); dir. Margot Benaceraff—Long before Brazilian social documentary photojournalist Sebastião Salgado stunned the world with his bracing photographs of the dignified beauty of manual labor worldwide, Araya captured the life of salineros at the natural salt mine Araya located on a peninsula in northeastern Venezuela. Though grueling physical labor is involved in extracting salt through methods centuries-old, a community of laborers eke out a living for themselves and their families.
Their quotidian tenacity is rendered poetic in Benaceraff’s essay structure, with abstracted black and white cinematography, and a score composed from sounds of the sea mixed with traditional Andalusian polo songs.
Araya shared the Cannes International Critics Prize with Alain Resnais's Hiroshima mon amour at the festival’s 1959 edition and SFFP audiences will have the privileged perspective of watching Araya on 35mm.
Tri / Three (1965); dir. Aleksandar Petrović—There’s something about black-and-white WWII narratives out of Eastern Europe that shred my soul each and every time. Their urgent testaments of resistance remain timeless.
Hailing from the former Yugoslavia, Tri—a proponent of the Yugoslav Black Wave—was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film at the 39th Academy Awards.
Tri concerns itself with the moral weight of bearing witness to the unavoidable atrocities of war. The film is structured in three segments. The first is in April 1941, the April War (sometimes called Operation 25), when Germans begin invading Yugoslavia. The second is towards the middle of the war where protagonist Miloš Bojanić (Bata Živojinović) has joined the partisans and is being relentlessly pursued by German soldiers. In the third section he has matured and been promoted as a high-ranking officer for OZNA, Communist Yugoslavia’s Secret Police.
In each segment Miloš is forced to watch people he cares for die. A kind of befuddled amazement in the first segment capsizes into abject despair in the second as he rages against an indifferent God. By the third, he is more circumspect but still feels for the plight of a woman who collaborated with the Nazis and is in queue to be executed.
It’s a marvelous character study that serves to critique the ravages of war, lustrously filmed by Tomislav Pinter in black and white, with compositional touches that halt breath and visual surprises, such as a dancing bear on a railroad platform.
For 13 years through their ¡Viva el Cine! sidebar, the Mill Valley Film Festival (MVFF) has celebrated the richness of Ibero-American cinema, featuring films in Spanish and Portuguese, as well as Latinx and Latin American stories from around the world. This initiative curates films that resonate with these communities, offering a space where history, culture, and identity come alive. The offerings range from shorts programs to feature films in both narrative and documentary genres, several recently lauded in their festival runs. Sony Pictures has picked up two major entries for theatrical from the fifteen on view in this year’s selection.
Bitter Christmas / Amarga Navidad (2026); Dir. Pedro Almodóvar—In recent political parlance it is often said that “the process is the punishment.” The same could be applied to creativity and its attendant hazards. Just when you think you can hold a mirror up to your relationships and winnow out an inspired theme or two, you discover the strategy doesn’t fly with friends and partners who object to being fictionalized without their consent. Which worries the point spotlighted by João Federici in his MVFF program capsule: “Who owns the story?”
Almodóvar cleverly layers his narratives—the one you’re supposed to accept as real and the one you’re supposed to accept as imagined—and it’s in the discrepancy between the two where the entertainment lies. With a vibrant palette of reds and blues that flows like a narrative trajectory of its own, it’s fascinating how gay film director Raúl Rossetti (Leonardo Sbaraglia) recklessly switches gender and inserts himself into a draft script as comely Elsa (Bárbara Lennie), an alter ego who isn’t quite as sensitive to the plight of her real-life counterpart Mónica (Aitana Sánchez-Gijón) as (s)he should be. Let alone that Raúl imagines his life partner Santi (Quim Gutiérrez) as an overly objectified blonde firefighter turned stripper in his spare time named Bonifacio (deliciously played by Patrick Criado). You know how they say truth is often said in jest? Well, fiction often reveals unintended truths, which is often not a laughing matter.
Bunker (2026); Dir. Florian Zeller—Yet another political conceit in our current moment is reportage from major media outlets, tech reporting, and broadcast networks extensively documenting the trend of ultra-wealthy individuals constructing underground bunkers, private compounds, and remote survival infrastructure. Bunker asks, “Why?” The billionaire (Paul Dano) who has asked architect Miguel Moreno (Javier Bardem) to design such an underground bunker finds the question naïve and the answer evident when confronted during a Zoom session. The more challenging question is why Moreno doesn’t recognize he’s bunkering down as well, against his wife Sofia (Penélope Cruz) and his blue-collar neighbor Toby (Stephen Graham)?
The ideas in Bunker are compelling and current and the performances strong enough to sustain them, but their execution, their articulation, is often heavy-handed and sometimes feel preciously metaphorical. At an art opening Miguel and Sofia question the paintings of an artist who paints scenes and then disguises them under a layer of black paint. A dispute with a neighbor results in a black tarp placed over a hole punched into a wall and it looks exactly like the black painting. I appreciate the exercise in concealing what asks to be revealed, but Bunker is indecisive on its feet; first it meanders and agonizes and then rushes towards insight head-on without looking both ways.
Cribbing from Peter Bogdonavich’s 1971 film The Last Picture Show for its title, and following through on that film’s melancholic, near elegiac, tone, Rustin Thompson’s documentary The Last Picture Shows (2026) incorporates clips from the Bogdonavich film to texture his journey into the American West—10 western states, 10,825 miles, 123 theaters—searching for what he describes as “traces of what was once a center of small-town life: the movie theater.”
Back in the aughts when the Blogosphere was ramping up, there was plenty of discussion among the Bay Area bloggers about the perils of digital disruption and the loss of repertory theaters in one neighborhood after the other in San Francisco and environs, but that was more of an urban complaint about many becoming fewer. The Last Picture Shows shifts focus to rural, smaller communities were the brick-and-mortar movie house is often the one and only. The loss, therefore, is much more critical and as poignant as dusk when the allure of their neon marquees begin to gleam.
It was during discussions of the loss of repertory houses in the Bay Area that I first turned on to Cinema Treasures, which at the time was still in its infancy. A quarter of a century later and it’s sensible that Cinema Treasures co-founder Ross Melnick surfaces as the documentary’s “expert” talking head, reserving remaining interview time for the owners and staff members (the “thoughtful caretakers”) of beleaguered independent movie theaters who recount their valiant efforts to stay afloat in competition with multiplexes and streaming services.
The Last Picture Shows’ audience is structured into its cautionary message. Why would urbanites care? Why would stay-at-home streamers care? But as community building, let alone community retention, strengthens in our post-COVID, post safety-in-place, world, the notion that we need community and a shared communal experience past NO KINGS protest rallies becomes a consistent refrain in Thompson’s documentary narrative. Which is to say that this documentary will primarily speak to those who really care. Thompson’s preach is to the theme’s choir.
For an essay film, I appreciated Thompson’s atmospheric catalog of movie house marquees and street fronts, their origin dates, some of which have been abandoned and forgotten as they fall into disrepair, some of which have been salvaged as they struggle to survive and—in some heartening examples—some which even thrive. Folks will, of course, shout out to their own. Bay Area audiences will be invested in the Monte Rio theater on the Russian River; but, here in Boise, Idaho, I gave a thrilled shout-out to the Parma Motor-Vu Drive-In in Parma, Idaho (which kicked into gear the same year I did: 1953). Thompson’s nostalgic tribute to drive-in theaters resonated warmly as I remembered how as a child it would thrill me to drive by a drive-in theater and see a cinematic image projected large against an evening sky. Better yet was to sneak into a drive-in theater, a giggle of kids hidden in the trunk, tumbling out once the car was parked on its slope with the speakers hooked onto the rolled-down windows.
Thompson’s footage of these movie houses and drive-in theaters are nearly photographic, more than filmic. They’re often planimetric, leaning into my love for ghost signs, harkening back to the redolent commercial era of the fifties. Utilizing postcard aesthetics, and reconstructing memories of certain moviehouses with inserted black and white photographs into current captures, The Last Picture Shows is clever and resilient in how it breaks up its focus with these textured stylistic flourishes.
Hopefully, its passion will prove contagious as The Last Picture Shows opens today in the Bay Area.
There are times when I regret that I no longer live in San Francisco and those regrets usually revolve around notions of film literacy emphasized by film preservation. I’m envious of my friends in the Bay Area who will be able (and should!) take advantage of the inaugural edition of the Re:Vision Festival of Restoration and Rediscovery (September 24-27, 2026) sponsored by the San Francisco Film Preserve (SFFP).
SFFP’s mission statement underscores restoration, preservation, access and advocacy: the four pillars that support a viable film culture. Adhering to the code of ethics laid out by the International Federation of Film Archives, SFFP aims to restore works in as faithful a manner as possible to their original appearance. When a restoration requires a new negative, SFFP commits to preservation and makes a new negative, which are then housed in the SFFP collection at the Library of Congress. Understanding, however, that access must be the end point of all preservation initiatives, SFFP is dedicated to providing access to films that were not previously accessible, either through their online portal or their thriving domestic and international loan program. The Festival of Restoration and Rediscovery is their latest initiative to provide access through the film festival experience, by which they advocate for the field of moving image preservation by raising awareness of preservation initiatives both within the Bay Area and beyond.
Venued at San Francisco’s historic Roxie Theater, Re:Vision will showcase astounding works of cinema from around the world across a wide variety of genres, decades, and styles. The ambitious and eclectic selection of films will be organized into 14 programs, each including a feature film and a short with added value of special introductions and guests.
Although I won’t be able to attend Re:Vision in person—missing out on the best value added of all: the audience—I’m grateful to Tim Buckwalter and Trista Ngo of Associated Publicity for the opportunity to cover the festival remotely. Here is one program you shouldn’t miss.
Valley of the Bees / Údolí včel (1968), Dir.: František Vláčil—"While his name lacks the recognition of other Eastern European filmmakers,” Jonathan Marlow writes in his program capsule, “writer / director / occasional actor František Vláčil could be considered among the greatest motion picture practitioners on the strength of his adaptation of Marketa Lazarová alone. Yet his follow-up, The Valley of the Bees [Údolí včel], is a similarly stunning period-piece of archetypal drama (and, like its predecessor and other works by the filmmaker, features an extraordinary score by Zdeněk Liška).”
For decades, The Valley of the Bees has only been available in faded prints or unsatisfactory transfers. The 2025 digital restoration was sourced from the original sound and image negatives preserved by the Czech National Film Archive in Prague.
Writing for the Village Voice in June 2002 in an essay entitled “Plastic Fantastic”, Michael Atkinson celebrated František Vláčil (who “with just a handful of films to prove it”) Atkinson extolled as “the Czech New Wave’s formalist, post-expressionist wrecking ball” and a master of “pure film” whose atmospheric, symbol-laden works stand as monumental achievements in Czech cinema. “His best movies display a lackadaisical attitude toward narrative clarity,” Atkinson continues “and a hypnotic plastic originality.”
Which begs an understanding of “plasticity” in film. The plasticity of film refers to cinema's unique capacity to shape, stretch, transform, and even shatter time and visual form. Borrowed from philosophy and material science—and significantly developed in film theory through thinkers like Catherine Malabou—plasticity describes a medium that can both receive a shape and blow it apart.
As outlined by film theorists Debarshi Arathdar and Jayjit Sarkar, the plasticity of film relates to the malleability of time. They opine that film acts as a "plastic" organism because time itself is cut, stitched, slowed down, reversed, or superimposed in the editing room. Time does not just pass; it is molded like clay.
In their overview of Catherine Malabou’s theories, Benjamin Dalton and Ben Tyrer track the term “plasticity” to its historic understanding of the physical flexibility and chemical makeup of celluloid (plastic-based film stock) but expand that historicity towards a more current metaphoric description of how stories, characters, and human emotions bend under pressure or trauma on screen.
Atkinson’s ascription of plasticity is pertinent. Summarizing the plot of The Valley of the Bees (read Wikipedia) reveals—as Atkinson terms it—a “slight” narrative. So why then is it so compelling and its images so indelible, so “gorgeous”? Atkinson suggests that it’s because Vláčil is in pursuit of cinematic rhythm and texture over standard narrative clarity.
Visual composition is certainly key and SFFP’s digital restoration is stunning. Vlácil’s lens is a painter’s eye, using a palette of chiaroscuro shades and camera placement that thrill the senses. In his Letterboxd review, Graham Williamson argues that Vláčil’s compositional talent stands comparison with Carl Dreyer and Stanley Kubrick.
At Sight and Sound, Michael Brooke concurs that “[Vláčil's films have] a painter’s eye for telling and / or dissonant detail, an intensely realized sense of period and place, a preference for music over dialogue and a strong affinity with landscapes and their natural flora and fauna [...] the wild sprawl of Marketa Lazarová and the formal rigor of The Valley of the Bees, rank alongside Bergman’s The Seventh Seal and The Virgin Spring, Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev and Welles’s Chimes at Midnight as the most convincing evocations of the medieval era ever committed to film.”
The Valley of the Bees is the final installment in František Vláčil’s trilogy of historical epics (directly following his most widely heralded work, Marketa Lazarová (1967) and its predecessor The Devil’s Trap (1962). As stated previously, the narrative is simple and swift. Set in thirteenth-century Europe, youthful Ondrej (Petr Čepek) offends his father who nearly kills him in a fit of rage. Instantly regretting his violence, the father swears to God that—if Ondrej is allowed to live—his father will commit him to join the repressive religious order of the Teutonic Knights. Ondrej survives and is punished accordingly. While training with the knights, Ondrej befriends and is mentored by Armin (Jan Kačer), recently returned from the Crusades, who aims to instill in Ondrej passionate abstinence from all things natural. There’s a strong homoerotic tinge to his blatant miosogyny (as there so frequently is) and—when Ondrej, unable to stand it any longer, escapes from the Order—Armin feels compelled to pursue him to punish him for his betrayal, behaving as emotionally as a spurned lover.
Ondrej’s determination to escape Armin’s retribution reminds me of the seminal fantasy housed within Nikos Kazantzakis’ The Last Temptation of Christ where a life separated from religious fundamentalism is imagined through a veil of pain. Ondrej wants only to be personally free to return home to lead a normal life with a wife and children. In his fanaticism Armin seeks to destroy that fantasy, which he has been indoctrinated to believe is sin.
Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey (2026) has grossed approximately $1.4 billion at the worldwide box office. Its domestic gross (US and Canada) has been $460 million; $123.5 million on its opening weekend. It is now Christopher Nolan's highest-grossing movie ever, passing 2012's The Dark Knight Rises ($1.08 billion). It has also seized the honors of being the highest-grossing R-rated film of all time and the highest-grossing IMAX release in history, earning more than $289 million in IMAX theaters alone.
But it was not the first filmic adaptation of Homer’s epic poem and—though an evident box office success—not necessarily the best. Mileage over the wine dark sea varies.
Somewhere in the back of my mind is a boyhood memory of having watched Mario Camerini’s Ulysses (1954) starring Kirk Douglas as Ulysses, Silvana Mangano in a dual role as Penelope and Circe, and Anthony Quinn as Antinous. Homer’s Odyssey inspired Dino De Laurentiis to produce filmic adaptations twice, first with Carlo Ponti for Camerini’s international co-production and then, again, for a 1968 television mini-series. I’m presuming I watched Ulysses dubbed on the boob tube as a boy—I’m not sure where else I would have seen it—but recently elected to watch it on Amazon Prime in its Italian version with English subtitles.
As summarized at Rotten Tomatoes: “Ulysses condenses Homer's epic into a visually sumptuous, but uneven adventure that can't overcome its muddled storytelling, stilted dialogue, and lack of truly heroic sweep.” Regardless of those demerits, Ulysses is just this side of entertaining, with my favorite sequence being the encounter with the cyclops Polyphemus that—interestingly enough—was directed by Mario Bava (though uncredited). Bava was hired to assist with the film's special effects but wound up serving as a camera operator and uncredited co-cinematographer for the film's entire shoot.
Adapting Homer’s sprawling epic poem into a two-hour format was bound to be fraught with strange conflations and glaring omissions. Several segments of Ulysses’ adventures are absent, most notably Ulysses’ seven-year tryst with Calypso. Not only did Mangano portray both Penelope and Circe (tears for Penelope; oozing sensuality for Circe), but the characterization of Circe was a blend with Calypso so, in essence, you could say Mangano played three roles. Quite enough of her!
The gods, though referenced by toppled statues, are decidedly absent in Ulysses, and what I found intriguing was the enhanced role of Eurycleia performed by French actress Louise Pauline Mainguené (known as Sylvie). In The Odyssey Eurycleia is the wet-nurse for both Ulysses and Telemachus and the palace overseer. In Ulysses she makes a point of distinguishing the women of the court who offer themselves to the suitors, collaborating in their attempted usurpation, from the women who remain loyal to Penelope.
In 1968, Dino De Laurentiis produced a second adaptation of Homer’s epic poem, this time directed by Franco Rossi for an eight-episode Italian miniseries. It’s offered in four two-hour French-dubbed sections (with English close captioning) on YouTube and well-worth the watch. For starters, it stars a delicious Bekim Fehmiu as Odysseus and features the incandescent Irene Papas as Penelope. With eight hours to visualize Homer’s poem it articulates major themes such as the ancient Greek practice of xenia (i.e., hospitality), which recurs in several scenarios throughout the epic, not only where it is being violated (by the suitors in the palace of Ithaca, let alone the cave of the cyclops Polyphemus) but as a key component of Telemachus’s visits to the courts of Menelaus and Nestor, and Odysseus’s stays at the homes of Circe, Calypso and the Phaeacians. In fact, so many of the stories that Odysseus recounts of his adventures are told within the context of a guest entertaining his host with news from the outside world. Before the internet and streaming services, there was oration.
Exteriors were shot in the former Yugoslavia simulating Ancient Greece and special effects were designed by Mario Bava who once again was commissioned to direct the cyclops sequence (naturally, my favorite). Though camera work consists primarily of pan and scans and zoom-in close-ups, the series has a consistent style that serves the narrative. There were some touches that I particularly liked, especially the sequence of Athena’s disguises, here and there an old man, a young shepherd, a baby; sometimes the shadowed silhouette of herself in armor cast upon a wall; and when in dialogue with her father Zeus an exchange between statues. In a choral capacity her voice is spread among groupings of women in the story’s revenge sequence.
Eurycleia’s role in determining which women in Penelope’s court have remained loyal to her is underscored by their punishment of having to clean up the bloody mess of the slain suitors, a segment that’s ordinarily lopped off scripturally to leave the revenge against the suitors as denouement.
One indelible image of Rossi’s adaptation was Irene Papas as Penelope in profile with a spiraling curl of her raven black hair (bostrychoi in ancient Greek) lit in such a way that it casts a perfectly parallel shadow against her neck. It’s such touches that embolden me to say that Rossi’s mini-series is my favorite of the Odyssean adaptations.
In 1997 a second mini-series based on Homer’s Odyssey was developed for television and I remember anticipating it with much excitement, only to be majorly disappointed when it aired. I’m sorry to say that a second viewing of Andrei Konchalovsky’s adaptation (available in two two-hour segments on YouTube) remains a checkered experience. Though the mini-series won Emmys for direction and special effects, it was a production deeply flawed by a star-studded cast recklessly miscast. Assante as Odysseus left me cold. And several of the other actors like Michael Pollard, Bernadette Peters and Vanessa Williams seemed to be capitalizing on their own notoriety more than losing themselves in their characters. It was, in fact, a clear case of characters purposely hidden behind celebrity.
The segment with the cyclops Polyphemus, ordinarily my favorite, seemed truncated, uninspired and buffoonish (think the Keystone Cops meet the Cyclops). And once again the segments on the Cicones and the Land of the Lotus Eaters were relegated to the cutting room floor (though lotuses were incorporated into the Circe sequence, as they were in Christopher Nolan’s Calypso sequence). I’ll concede that the Emmy for special effects was warranted, even if by today’s standards they seem a bit clunky. Some visuals especially stood out: Aeolus (Michael J. Pollard) gathering the winds of the world into a bag and their subsequent release; the sojourn into Hades; the appearances of a sprightly Hermes (Frederick Stuart) flittering mid-air. Though a brief appearance, I accepted Christopher Lee’s dark-toned Tiresias.
Greta Schacci’s portrayal of Penelope seemed frequently breathless and her masturbating with the lapping waves at seaside was a bit much. It must have been difficult for her to play the role in the company of Irene Papas who mastered the role in Rossi’s 1968 production, providing the depth and weight that Schacci eschewed. Papas returned to the narrative as Odysseus’s grieving mother Anticleia and, again, commanded the script in her few scenes.
But I mention all this to profile the character of Eurycleia, portrayed sensitively by Geraldine Chaplin. I had the great honor of interviewing Chaplin years later at the Panama International Film Festival and wish I had explored her thoughts on participating with the 1997 miniseries.
Eurycleia in Homer’s poem is Odysseus’s wet-nurse. As a girl, Eurycleia was bought by Laertes, Odysseus' father and brought into the court at Ithaca. Laertes treated Eurycleia as his wife, but she was never his consummated lover so as not to dishonor his real wife, Anticleia. She later nursed Telemachus, Odysseus' son.
Eurycleia is introduced at the tail end of the second chapter of Homer’s Odyssey. While Athena-Mentor is rounding up a ship and crew for Telemachus to sail to Pylos and Sparta, Telemachus petitions Eurycleia for provisions. She has been entrusted to guard his father’s storeroom checking its contents night and day, “guarding it all with great intelligence.” She takes an oath not to tell Penelope that Telemachus has left Ithaca until twelve days have passed, so as not to worry her any more than necessary.
Athena then places a sleeping spell on the Ithaca court, putting Penelope and all the suitors to sleep, while Telemachus boards his well-provisioned ship with his strong crew, Athena-Mentor at his side, ready to meet the kings of Pylos and Sparta to seek news of his father.
An extremely loose and strategically satiric adaptation of Homer’s Odyssey, Joel and Ethan Coen’s O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000) is arguably a much more pleasurable primer of that wandering tale than Nolan’s IMAX maudlin slog. I had forgotten the film’s Odyssean associations but was pulled smack dab into the riff with its preface:
“O Muse!
Sing in me, and through me tell the story
Of that man skilled in all the ways of contending,
A wanderer, harried for years on end….”
“Oh yeah!” I remembered. The film is redolent with Homeric hints. George Clooney, aptly named Ulysses Everett McGill (though through most of the film he goes by “Everett”), is the dapper, silver-tongued and escaped convict who wants nothing more than to get back to his wife Penny (think Penelope) portrayed by Holly Hunter. He’s misled his fellow inmates bad-tempered Pete (John Turturro) and sweet, dim-witted Delmar (Tim Blake Nelson) into believing they’re busting out to recover hidden treasure, much like Odysseus repeatedly misled his crew.
The three are assisted by a blind man (Lee Weaver) driving a handcar on a railroad, who prophetically tells them they will find a different fortune than the one they seek, much as the blind seer Teresias advised Odysseus in the Underworld. They find refuge in Pete’s cousin’s farmstead who breaks off their shackles, feeds them, and allows them to sleep in his barn. It all seems like southern hospitality (what the Greeks would term xenia) until they wake up to find Pete’s cousin has turned them in to the sheriff doggedly pursuing them. Bad manners for a host.
Adventures ensue. They fall in with Baby Face Nelson (Michael Badalucco) who has a thing for killing cows (think the bulls of Helios), which complicates things for them and then they’re seduced and sedated (with corn liquor and not lotus blossoms) by three beautiful sirens singing by the river while washing clothes (my favorite scene in the film). The way the three women shape the facial expressions on the men reminded me of Samantha Morton’s sculpting in Nolan’s film (my favorite scene in Nolan’s adaptation). When Everett and Delmar awaken all that’s left of Pete are his clothes and a hornytoad, which Delmar—to his comic horror—believes is Pete transformed. Seductive sirens, Circe and her transformations, lotus eaters and corn liquor all get tangled up in the Coen Brothers’ heady brew as the narrative traction bolts and lurches towards resolution.
But not without first dealing with a one-eyed Bible salesman Big Dan (John Goodman) who invites them for a picnic lunch, mugs them and kills the toad. Along comes political candidate “Homer” Stokes running against incumbent “Menelaus" O'Daniel, the grumpy governor of Mississippi. The nomenclature is skillfully woven into a story that likewise tips its hat to Preston Sturges and offers a Poseidon-like flood to beat all floods. “Sometimes you have to lose your way to get back home,” the Coens suggest. And sometimes you have to laugh to better understand and appreciate Homer.
Wolfgang Petersen’s Troy (2004), is loosely based on The Iliad more than The Odyssey, but I watched it nonetheless to see how Petersen characterized Odysseus, portrayed by Sean Bean. The narrative focus of Troy rests more on its protagonist Achilles (Brad Pitt) than Odysseus, though it is their friendship that proves influential in convincing Achilles to participate in the Trojan War, fighting alongside Agamemnon (Brian Cox) whom Achilles loathes.
The deep and destructive enmity that exists between Achilles and Agamemnon drives the entire plot of Homer’s Iliad. During their opening argument in Book 1, Agamemnon tells Achilles he hates him more than any other king, and Achilles threatens to sail home rather than submit to Agamemnon's greed. Thus, were it not for Odysseus’s influence and his wooing Achilles with the promise that his name would be draped in glory for generations to come, the Trojan War might have turned out quite differently. It was prophesized, after all, that the Greeks could not win the Trojan War without Achilles.
Odysseus is profiled once more in Troy during the sequence of the Trojan horse. Although Homer mentions the wooden horse only briefly in The Odyssey (and not at all in The Iliad), his audience was expected to already know the well-known myth, which credited the inspiration for the stratagem to divine intervention from the goddess Athena guiding Odysseus and his carpenter Epeius. However, as in Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, the gods are nowhere to be seen in Troy. If it is indeed Athena who inspires Odysseus to devise the Trojan Horse, it is done through his witnessing a fellow soldier whittle a toy horse for his child back home. The inspiration is, thus, talismanic, as it also is in a beginning sequence of Nolan’s adaptation where Odysseus is telling Penelope he must go to Troy and she should remarry. His son Telemachus is depicted as a toddler playing in the background. On the white blanket on his bed, is the silhouette of a small wooden toy horse. Here Athena is even less a presence than a narrative presumption.
A mere two years ago Uberto Pasolini directed The Return (2024), with much less fanfare than Christopher Nolan is receiving for his visual reclamation of Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey. The Return cast Ralph Fiennes as Odysseus, Juliette Binoche as his wife Penelope, and Charlie Plummer as his son Telemachus. Its focus lies less on the adventurous wanderings of Odysseus and more on the poem’s final chapters when Odysseus finally washes up on the shores of Ithaca after 20 years away and the events that follow suit.
The story of his return, or homecoming, is what the ancient Greeks called nostos (νόστος), an ancient Greek literary theme that describes a hero's epic homecoming or return by sea. Considered a pinnacle of heroism, the journey is typically long, arduous, and full of trials. Nostos is, as well, the root of the modern term nostalgia, which combines nostos (homecoming) with algos (pain) to describe the bittersweet longing for the past.
But as the adage popularized by Thomas Wolfe asserts: “you can’t go home again.” You can physically return to the places you once lived, but the relentless passage of time, coupled with personal growth and societal change, means the past is irrecoverably gone. Pondering the weight of this universal truth, Odysseus struggles with returning home because he knows he is not the man who left.
As Phil Cousineau synopsizes so beautifully in The Wisdom of the Odyssey: Twenty-Four Life Lessons From Homer’s Epic (2026:22-23): “Consider the marvel. Homer’s Odyssey is much more than an adventure story; less than a historical account of Mediterranean warfare during the Bronze Age. Instead, it is a spiraling, nonlinear story, a spiritual quest about the agony of returning and restoring home. A three-thousand-year-old tale about a traumatized warrior who loses his soul in battle and strives to regain it by overcoming his worst fears and by believing enough in the love of his wife and son to be pulled back home again.”
We call it post-traumatic stress disorder these days. Odysseus returns from the Trojan War to discover just how destructive his absence has been. His palace has been plundered by boorish suitors pressuring Penelope to believe him dead and remarry. His son has no masculine footing and resents his mother. His people are suffering from the violence let loose upon them. He left to the Trojan War with all of Ithaca’s strongest warriors, most who have died over the years, and he knows that by returning alone he will be hated by their widows and ashamed by his failure to return them home safely. He’s uncertain whether he should let anyone know he has returned or whether he should run away and escape detection. The Return is ponderous and even a bit heavy-handed with these themes.
What’s most notable is Pasolini’s decision to eschew divine intervention. As characters, the gods are once again missing in action in Pasolini’s script, particularly Athena. There is a sequence where a young woman is staring judgmentally at the unruly suitors and then mysteriously vanishes. Was she Athena in human form? Or was the scene solely to demonstrate that the suitors wanted to rape her? I’d wager the latter.
Removing the gods from the story relinquishes the levity of fantasy and distraction from otherwise bleak human affairs. Yet at the same time enforces the ancient Greek belief that the gods help those who help themselves, which is to say that the gods are less external agents influencing outcome and more internal presences that inspire and enthuse action. Humans must find inspiration within, find the gods within, to act appropriate to their circumstantial challenges. This leans into the modern appropriation of the Greek pantheon for Jungian archetypology, interpreting the gods as psychic influences that promote individuation.
Thus, Telemachus doesn’t receive guidance from Athena in any of her disguises and takes it upon himself to leave Ithaca to seek word about his father. He comes to this mindfulness on his own. Odysseus is not disguised as an old beggar by Athena, he has simply been away so long and been ravaged by time such that no one recognizes him at first.
There’s a lot of frustration and anger in The Return, despite the fact that Odysseus has come back to his wife, his son, and his kingdom. His absence has traumatized all of them and there are potent rebukes from both Penelope and Telemachus, and a suffering response from Odysseus knowing what he has done, even if it cannot be undone. He wrestles with the dark truth that for some men war becomes home.
The need to remember followed by the equal force of needing to forget permeates the tentative reconciliation of Odysseus with both wife and son. That they will remember and forget together becomes the film’s resolution.
“Is it true that when you're pretty it doesn't matter how you wear your hair? Do you think brandy is fattening?”—Frances Faye.
Known for his bisexual chic just before the AIDS pandemic broke up the party, cabaret singer and recording artist Peter Allen managed to record duets with some of the most popular lesbians of his time: Dusty Springfield backed him up on “Back Doors Crying”, Lesley Gore on “She Loves to Hear the Music”, and Frances Faye on “Just A Gigolo.” Though I was familiar with Dusty and Lesley, Frances Faye came as a revelation. Her sassy, upbeat, comic delivery scored this side of sophisticated. Recently, I was watching Bruce Weber’s Chop Suey (2001) and was pleased to see his tribute to Frances Faye, if not startled to discover she played the madam in Louis Malle’s Pretty Baby (1978).
As Bob Downe writes at YouTube: “Frances Faye (1912-1991) was one of the world's most loved and enduring nightclub entertainers, with a career spanning the late 1920s to 1980. She hit her stride on New York's 52nd Street in the '30s, becoming known as the ‘Zazou-zaz’ gal as she thumped the piano and belted out her funny, racy blues and jazz songs.”
Faye composed “Well All Right!”, which became a hit for the Andrew Sisters.
YouTube offers two early Frances Faye “soundies” from 1942, which were used in a Panoram coin-operated jukebox. “Soundies” were the historic precursors to the modern music video. The first is Faye’s cover of “I Ain’t Got No Body” and the second is “Shut Your Mouth For Uncle Sam.”
In this clip Frances Faye, Martha Raye, and Bing Crosby perform "After You," the scat-challenge number from the finale of the 1937 Paramount film Double or Nothing, with Harry Barris as the bandleader. The film also starred William Frawley and Andy Devine.
Television appearances were rare for Faye but she was billed twice on “The Ed Sullivan Show”, first on June 9, 1957 and then on May 22, 1960. Both times she belted out her signature song “Darktown Strutters Ball”, adding "Oif’n Pripotchik & Too-Ra-Loo-Ra-Loo-Ral" for her first appearance and “I Wish I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Kate” for her second. Faye was riding high in 1960. She had shattered Peggy Lee's record at New York's Basin Street East and had released perhaps the greatest Live album ever made: “Caught In the Act”, recorded at the Thunderbird in Las Vegas.
Also in 1960, she appeared on Hugh Hefner’s "Playboy’s Penthouse", singing "The Man I Love", "Just In Time", "Shimmy Like My Sister Kate" and "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered." This performance is a perfect example of Faye's famous double entendres and references to homosexuality and lesbianism. An admitted bisexual herself, involved with lifelong partner Teri Shepherd, Faye frequently hinted at this frequently in her act. On national television, she would often playfully alter pronouns in love songs or weave her girlfriend's name into the lyrics of song. For instance, in this performance she's inserted "it's a Teri, Teri day" into "The Man I Love" and in her Ed Sullivan performance she sang "why do all the boys treat Teri so right" in "Shimmy Like My Sister Kate." Visual quality is poor on the Hefner clip but the sound is fine, featuring great percussion from Jack Costanza and truly funny adlibs from Faye, so it’s worth at least a listen if not a watch.
In 1977 she made a rare television appearance where she was interviewed by Hugh Downs and sang "A Taste of Honey" and the John Lennon-Paul McCartney hit "Yesterday".
Frances Faye adored Sydney, Australia and Sydney adored her. The legendary nightclub entertainer made around 14 visits Down Under between 1961 and 1979, packing out legendary clubs like Chequers and the Silver Spade. In 1979 she appeared on the Mike Walsh Show. This was her last Australian visit. She had suffered a heart attack in 1978 and was visibly ready for retirement, which came in 1980.
In January of this year, LED—in partnership with the Alexa Rose Foundation—launched a unique new residency called Artist Haven, designed for performing artists with momentum and a record of excellence who are poised to benefit from working on a solo project or collaboration in an inspired space. Hosted at The Dixon, the program offers time, space, mentorship from LED's artistic and creative director, as well as a cash honorarium and additional resources for artists to deeply engage in their practice. It culminates in sharing their progress with a live performance or presentation. Artist Haven is an exciting new platform that inspires risk-taking, bold experimentation, and sustained creative exploration among artists in our community or those meaningfully tied to it.
Alex Davis, Director of the Alexa Rose Foundation, answered a few of my basic questions about the foundation’s mission and their collaboration with LED. Davis is a forward-looking leader who has invested in our region's arts and culture for twenty years. She brings inspiration and deep belief, working for a world where artists are embraced as leaders and must never apologize for their creativity.
A published author, Davis served as Board President of The Cabin literary center, ensuring generational diversification of audiences and a sustained legacy of exceptional board leadership. Originally from the south, Davis started her career with PBS and NPR stations in Atlanta, Georgia. With a commitment to the arts, stewardship of culturally significant sites—modern and historic—as well as joie de vivre in education, Davis helped build the foundation and clear the way for an historic Hyde Park cathedral's restoration and completion, now home to a youth arts institute with imaginative programming that breaks all the rules.
Inspired by the creative genius and collaboration on display in our region every day, Davis is a strategic thinking partner and steadfast champion for artists, arts leaders and people who envision stronger, more vibrant communities everywhere.
One of the first three recipients of the Artist Haven residency is Daniel Ojeda, who in 2024 likewise received the Alexa Rose Foundation’s Light of Day Grant. Daniel is a freelance choreographer and artist based in New York City and former Ballet Idaho Soloist. He has choreographed over 15 original works during his time at Ballet Idaho. His work has been featured all over the US including New York, Denver, Seattle, Salt Lake City, Detroit, and Dallas. And it makes me happy to say that I “knew him when”, which is to say that I have been aware of and engaged with his creativity since at least 2011 when I first relocated to Boise, Idaho from San Francisco, California.
At that time, I fell in with a group of young dancers, designers, musicians, and filmmakers, all of whom were familiar with each other’s work, often in collaboration, and Daniel was among them. It felt good to be included in such a community of talent and it has been fascinating to watch his maturation as an artist. To witness such creativity fills me with an audience member’s spiritual sense of gratitude. What struck me right off was the brilliance of his range. There was one day in particular that I remember watching his participation in a piece of public street theater mid-afternoon, only to see him that evening spotlighted at a Ballet Idaho performance on a professional stage. I remember thinking, “Ah, he’s crossing worlds like me.”
I attended Daniel’s choreographed piece for Project Flux during last year’s edition of the Treefort Music Festival, but have not had an opportunity to watch him dance since LED’s 2019 Red-HARE event at The Modern, so I was anticipating the chance to see him perform, though shortly before the doors opened he cautioned me to manage expectations as he wasn’t really going to be dancing much and that what he would be sharing was more of a multi-media spoken word piece that he had developed with Annika Barlow.
The premise was a simple (yet thoughtful) equation that childhood experiences that feel traumatic often lead to drama. When the trauma is recognized as misperceived, the drama, the acting out, becomes embarrassment. These embarrassments can then be processed into creative output. By extrapolating on process, Daniel and Annika revealed the process by which they developed the piece shared with their LED audience. Expressed through a textured mixture of memoir, stand-up comedy, audio-visual overlay, and a little bit of slapstick, my favorite moment in Daniel’s shared piece was when he and Annika sat in chairs and repeated the same choreographed movements to two different pieces of music. I found that fascinating.
Though he seemed reluctant to do so (though I’m not sure if this was staged), Daniel did finally dance a bit. Mention was made that he had not actually danced in two years and I asked him if that was true? He admitted that he has mainly been choreographing though he did a turn last year in The Nutcracker and has had his fill of that scene. A photograph of himself in white tights in company with a young seventeen-year-old sealed the deal for him once and for all.
At 72, that amused me but did remind me that dance is a circumscribed art form. The average career expectancy for a professional dancer spans roughly 10 to 20 years, with most performers retiring from the stage between their early 30s and mid-40s. Peak performance typically occurs in a dancer's 20s to early 30s, after which high physical wear leads to retirement, or a shift from performance to choreography. If it’s true that—despite modern techniques often allowing for more organic movement and greater anatomical flexibility—a heavy toll is exerted on joints and bones, I remain grateful to have witnessed Daniel in his prime as a performer, and anticipate his matured creativity as a choreographer.
Via LED: “Throughout his residency, Daniel has embraced this process with curiosity, openness, and a willingness to explore the unknown. Watching him follow his ideas, investigate new possibilities, and shape his work in real time has been a beautiful reminder of the power of artistic discovery and the importance of creating space for imagination.”
.jpeg)
.jpeg)
%20poster%20-%20Araya%20(film)%20-%20Wikipedia.png)
.jpeg)
.jpeg)
.jpeg)
.jpeg)
.jpeg)
.png)
.jpeg)
.jpeg)
.jpeg)
.jpeg)
.jpeg)
