Fraenkel Film Festival returns to Roxie as theater campaigns to purchase historic building

San Francisco Chronicle​

02-05-2025

After a well-received first run in 2024, the Fraenkel Gallery's Fraenkel Film Festival will return to the Roxie Theater this summer.
The news of the festival's second year comes as the nonprofit seeks to to raise $2 million to purchase the historic Mission District building it has occupied for the last 112 years. This includes the main, 234-seat Roxie Theater at 3117 16th St., the 50-seat Little Roxie theater, the office two doors down and the adjacent Dalva cocktail bar.
All proceeds from the Fraenkel Film Festival will go to the Roxie.
'Last year's Fraenkel Film Festival at the Roxie was a heartwarming and wildly successful collaboration that brought an entirely new, deeply engaged audience to the theater,' Roxie Executive Director Lex Sloan told the Chronicle. 'We're extraordinarily thankful for this ongoing partnership with Jeffrey Fraenkel and Fraenkel Gallery, which also acts as a meaningful fundraiser for our cinema. It's been especially well timed as we begin a capital campaign to invest in our future.'
From July 9-19, the Roxie plans to screen 21 films curated by the 21 living artists Fraenkel represents, including international art stars like Nan Goldin, Carrie Mae Weems, Hiroshi Sugimoto and Sophie Calle.
Founder Jeffrey Frankel, whose Union Square gallery is among the most important in the world specializing in photography, said the inaugural festival started as an experiment, tied to the 45th anniversary of the Fraenkel Gallery.
'The Roxie was the unquestionable best choice for an event like this,' he said. 'Our sensibilities seem to align in certain ways, but we were so surprised and happy with the response. … At least half the films had to have multiple screenings to accommodate the interest.'
This year, the festival will open with Peter Bogdanovich's 'The Last Picture Show' (1971).
Berkeley artist Richard Misrach said in a statement that he chose the Academy Award-winning melodrama because of how it 'speaks to the importance of film and the death of small towns all over America.'
'The film is also a harbinger of things to come decades later — in fact, at our particular historical moment — when screens began to disappear along with the communal experience of watching together in the dark.'
The screening will include a pre-recorded conversation with Misrach and the film's star, Jeff Bridges.
'There couldn't be a better choice for an opening night movie,' Fraenkel noted.
Oakland artist Kota Ezawa's selection is George Miller's 2015 sci-fi action movie 'Mad Max: Fury Road,' scheduled for the festival's second night. It's paired with Goldin's pick, the 1932 pre-code classic 'Merrily We Go to Hell,' directed by pioneering female director Dorothy Arzner.
'When I read The New Yorker review of 'Mad Max: Fury Road,' which compared the experience of watching this film to someone pressing their thumbs onto your eyes for two hours, I couldn't resist,' said Ezawa, who also noted the movie's themes of disability and female empowerment. 'The film doesn't disappoint.'
Other films span the gamut from Francis Ford Coppola's 1974 thriller 'The Conversation' selected by Canadian artists Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller; Jonathan Demme's Oscar-winning 1991 psychological horror 'The Silence of the Lambs,' selected by New York artist Wadell Milan; and Francois Truffaut's 1959 French coming-of-age classic 'The 400 Blows.'
Victor Fleming's 1939 musical favorite 'The Wizard of Oz,' selected by San Francisco artist Elisheva Biernoff; Alfred Hitchcock's 1954 suspense masterpiece 'Rear Window,' chosen by New York photographer Lee Friedlander; and Sofia Coppola's 2003 comedy-drama 'Lost in Translation' closes out the 11-day showcase.
General admission is $16 for all films, except for the opening night screening of 'The Last Picture Show,' which will be $20. A six-film pass is $72, while all other festival passes are $200. Tickets and passes are on sale now at https://roxie.com.
'There's a palpable difference in seeing a movie on a big screen in a theater and sharing the experience with other people,' said Fraenkel. 'It's better than just watching a movie at home — I don't care how big one's monitor is.
'And don't forget, a lot of the films in the film festival will be screened in 35 millimeter.'