Bay Area filmmakers Michael Coleman and Emmanuel Moran, who directed the film, will be on hand. One that caught my eye (or ear): “The Art of Listening,” a documentary about the philosophy of those who put the sound in music - from instrument makers and composers to engineers and artists. 19, at the Roxie Theater, Alamo Drafthouse New Mission Theater and the Swedish American Hall, with many filmmakers and artists in attendance. “The Art of Listening” and Noise Pop Festival films: The film portion of the Noise Pop Festival runs Thursday, Feb. 16, at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission St., S.F. As the narrator says in “The Naked Prey”: “Man, lacking the will to understand other men, became like the beasts. Human nature dictates that the fittest survive, not necessarily the most civilized. “To preserve the heritage of man’s greatness,” he says, without a trace of irony.īut to Wilde, a pre-med student and nationally ranked fencer before turning to acting, it was a very ironic statement indeed. Perhaps the key to Wilde’s work as a director comes when John’s wife (Jean Wallace, Wilde’s real-life wife) asks John why he is going to such great lengths to survive. Working with a significantly lower budget, Wilde pulls off some fairly amazing sequences in “No Blade of Grass,” although his ambition occasionally oversteps his meager resources. The first casualty in that film: a cockroach. “Beach Red,” a World War II film, opens with a 30-minute assault on a beach held by the enemy, an ambitious sequence that predates the Omaha Beach opening to “Saving Private Ryan” by three decades. In “The Naked Prey” (currently on Netflix), Wilde is a safari guide who is stripped naked and given a head start by African tribesmen who want to kill him for offending their honor (so gripping is Wilde’s filmmaking that the largely dialogue-free film was nominated for a screenplay Oscar). In Wilde’s films, violence is instrumental to survival, but while violence can forge societies, it can also lead to self-destruction. Eventually, John and his family join a larger group, leading to a startling conclusion. The group’s car is stolen, forcing them to proceed on foot the women are raped, there is infighting as well as clashes with other wandering groups of refugees, including a biker gang. “We have to fight to live, do you understand that?” John tells a child. Complete with an eye patch from an old war wound (could this have been an inspiration for Kurt Russell’s Snake Plissken in John Carpenter’s “Escape from New York” a decade later?), John leads the group across the countryside with clinical precision.Īnd he’s not afraid to kill, even a nice young couple in a farmhouse who won’t give them shelter. John (Nigel Davenport), an architect and former military man, heads out of London with his family - his wife, daughter and her fiance - joining forces with a wild young couple (the guy is good with a gun). Parliament seriously considers slaughtering half the population of London so the other half has a chance to survive. Cities in particular are vulnerable with no food, there is open looting and even cannibalism. Pollution and climate change have pushed the planet to the brink, and now a world virus is killing off all the grass, creating a global famine. The setup: The Earth is undergoing a perfect storm of self-destruction. And just as Gibson’s last three films as director - “The Passion of the Christ,” “Apocalypto” and “Hacksaw Ridge” (which is up for best picture and director at this month’s Academy Awards) - form a loose trilogy sermonizing on violence, so too does Wilde’s remarkable run in the late 1960s with “The Naked Prey,” “Beach Red” and the rarely screened “No Blade of Grass,” which plays for one time only at 7 p.m.
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