August 2008

Saturday, August 2, 2008
Between the Imagined and the Real

The Moon and the Son: An Imagined Conversation (2005, 30 min.), by John Canemaker and Peggy Stern, is an autobiographical, animated film exploring the difficult emotional terrain of father/son relationships as seen through Canemaker’s own turbulent relationship with his father. Featuring the voices of noted actors Eli Wallach and John Turturro in the roles of father and son, this film combines memory, fact, conjecture, audio recordings, photos, and original animation to tell the story of an Italian immigrant’s troubled life and the devastating consequences of his actions on his family. Winner of the Academy Award for animated short in 2005.

Washing Walls with Mrs. G (1980, 6 min.), by Tony Buba, chronicles an afternoon spent with the filmmaker’s grandmother, who tells stories from the past. Tony’s mother and grandmother were both born in Tursi, Italy. This short, simple film is a loving and humorous portrait of family.

Saturday, August 9, 2008
Shared Secrets

Lost and Found (2006, 16 min.), by San Francisco independent filmmaker Natalija Vekic, tells the story of an imaginative twelve-year-old girl named Lolly who fills a void in her life by collecting found objects and making up stories about them. Over the course of a day, Lolly unravels the mystery of a found letter. Through the small gesture of returning the letter to its rightful owner, two strangers reveal a nurturing empathy as they uncover and share a moment of grief. Winner of the San Francisco International Film Festival 2006 Golden Gate Award.

Saturday, August 16, 2008
On the Margins

Ever feel like school just wasn’t your thing? Come watch an intriguing mash-up of several films examining outsiders, misfits, and mavericks in the field of learning and education. We’ll look at democratically-run schools where the kids make all the rules; music camps for misfit rockers—we’ll even explore our own museum’s legacy as a place where misfits have made a home for themselves.

Premier Screening

The Explainers (2008, 20 min.), by Bryan J. Welch, is a short documentary focused on our local, onsite youth program. Every semester, the San Francisco Exploratorium hires a few dozen high school students who serve as the floor staff of the museum, where they answer questions, explain exhibits, operate lasers, and dissect cow eyeballs. This documentary takes a look at the high school Explainer program—part job, part science academy, part family—and finds out why alumni call their experience “the best job ever.” This program will also include clips from various archival and contemporary documentaries.

Saturday, August 23, 2008
Hobo Graffiti

Who is Bozo Texino? (2007, 58 min.), by Bill Daniel, chronicles the search for the source of a ubiquitous and mythic rail graffiti—a simple sketch of a character with an infinity-shaped hat and the scrawled moniker, “Bozo Texino”—a drawing seen on railcars for over 80 years. Daniel’s gritty black and white film uncovers a secret society and its underground universe of hobo and railworker graffiti, and includes interviews with legendary boxcar artists Coaltrain, Herby, Colossus of Roads, and The Rambler. Shooting over a 16-year period, Daniel rode freights across the West carrying a Super-8 sound camera and a 16mm Bolex. During his quest, he discovered the roots of a folkloric tradition gone largely unnoticed for a century. Taking inspiration from Beat artists Robert Frank and Jack Kerouac, the film functions as both a sub-cultural documentary and a stylized fable on wanderlust and outsider identity.