Presented in Association with the San Francisco International Film Festival

The San Francisco International Film Festival’s Golden Gate Awards Competition in New Visions is unusually deep this year with eight films competing in the category, seven of which screen here (including four produced in the Bay Area). This program runs the gamut from pleasure to pain. From Bill Morrison’s blissful filmic essay on floods and disasters in The Highwater Trilogy to Sandra Davis’ meditation on frustration in Ignorance Before Malice, this program mixes the comfortable and difficult with an ease that may not always seem so easy. Also screening: Breath on the Mirror by Vanessa Woods and Sarah Friedland, The Denazification of MH by James T. Hong, The General Returns from One Place to Another by Michael Robinson, Muse of Cinema by Kerry Laitala, and When We Are Big by Eveline Ketterings. (Sean Uyehara)