He introduces it as a “where Obama is leading us,” in “traditional America vs. secular progressive America”. What is scary about SF? We’re so despicably tolerant. We get to know our homeless. We talk about sex, and we condone marijuana. Be afraid, be very afraid.

Bill O’Reilly Smear from Huffington Post.

Great quotes that have been getting attention on some discussion groups:

“You wouldn’t go to the Presidio at night, I wouldn’t” - Bill
“Every city has a tenderloin, and North Beach is San Francisco’s” - Bill
“Lots of dopes everywhere. Those clinics are everywhere.” - Bill

[Image from Black Sea.]

Another one of the many, many film festivals of late November, the San Francisco Film Society’s New Italian Cinema series continues at the Embarcadero Cinema tonight through Sunday, November 23^rd. If you haven’t been to any of the films since it started Sunday, don’t fret: you’ve only missed three out of the twelve features that comprise the festival. So don’t write it off!

There are a number of good-to-great films in the lineup, as KQED’s Michael Fox reports here. The films for this afternoon and evening include two that Fox reviews: A Night at 4:30, and Cover Boy: The Last Revolution at 6:15. (Each has another screening on the 22^nd and the 23^rd, respectively.) Don’t miss Black Sea, pictured above, which screens at 7:00 on Friday and Saturday night.

Above all, don’t miss the closing night reception on Sunday from 7:30 in the former Gallery One space of One Embarcadero. The reception offers “complimentary Peroni beer, wine from Siena Imports and delicious appetizers from Fuzio Universal Bistro,” and it will be followed by a screening at 8:45 by a film I’ve been advised no one should miss: Gomorrah, a “hyper-realistic drama” based on Robert Saviano’s groundbreaking expose by the same name: “far from the glamorized portrait of the Mafia common in American films, Gomorrah is grim, gritty, almost documentary-like cinema—an exposé of widespread corruption and an impassioned demand that something be done to halt its spread.”

In other words, if you are weak of stomach, don’t hit the Peroni too hard before viewing this one. But don’t skip it, either.

Full schedule here; all films screen at the Embarcadero Cinema, in Embarcadero One. Advance tix here.

[Ai Qin Lin in Ghosts]

Nick Broomfield has directed 24 films, almost all of them investigative documentaries of one sort or another, some of them lightly fictionalized. Ghosts [trailer], which opens at the Roxie this Friday night, is in the latter group. It follows the story of Ai Qin, a young woman from Fujian province who pays a snakehead $25,000 to be smuggled into the UK. Once she finally gets there, she finds herself trapped in a situation where she has to do the worst jobs almost without respite. Her ordeal comes to a climax when she gets trapped by the rising tide with a crew of Chinese cocklers in Morecambe Bay, and nearly drowns there — as did twenty-three of her fellow workers. The film is based on Ai Qin’s actual journey, and all of the people who appear in it are non-actors who either were formerly, or currently still are, illegal immigrants. It’s a fascinating and moving film.

Last Friday we had a chance to sit down with Mr. Broomfield and talk about Ghosts a little bit. We discussed the undercover research he did, the unique challenges he faced in casting and working with non-actors, and the relief fund he has set up to aid the families of the victims at Morecambe Bay, since they are still liable to ruthless loan sharks for the huge debts the victims incurred in order to be smuggled to the UK. As Broomfield told me, “the family left behind in China, which is generally the very old and their children, are held as hostages, as a kind of surety for the loan. So if they default, they take it out on the family. It’s been known for them to get the kids and sell the kids, do awful stuff. So the people in England, they’re just literally working around the clock to fulfill these things, and they’ll do any job that comes along.”

The interview begins below and continues after the jump.

SF METBLOG: So, this film is something of a minor departure for you: it’s a narrative film, but it’s based on a great deal of hard research. How did you approach the research?

BROOMFIELD: Well, I personally worked undercover for a couple of weeks, living in a Chinese house. I was pretending to be an Afrikaner, because you get Afrikaners who do that kind of thing. Ai Qin and I paid some kind of introductory fee to these snakeheads, and they gave us the name of a gangmaster in Birmingham.

So we went up there and lived in this house for a couple of weeks. It was like ten people to a room, and we’d get up at 4:30 in the morning. It was very hard work. But I was able to at least get a basis to work from, first-hand knowledge of what the people were like and what the work was like, and to try and make something that was as real as possible.

[In addition] I had some Chinese students working for me. We’d go undercover and get statistics such as how much they were being paid per hour, how much tax they were having to pay the [recruitment agency], because they have all these recruitment agencies, these labor agencies, that are also very corrupt. [Certain individuals who worked there] would charge people some 42% tax, and they’d just pocket the money themselves. I wanted to document that kind of stuff as much as possible, and also to be able to name some of the people who were doing it, which we did in the film.

Really? I didn’t realize that. I assumed that all the individuals apart from Ai Qin were invented.

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TheStreet.com, a financial news website, is shutting its San Francisco office, reported Portfolio.com. The announcement doesn’t say how many jobs that would mean, but surely not that many compared with the 5000 worldwide job cuts announced last week by Sun, which has its HQ in Silicon Valley. The announcement follows that of Six Apart last week, where 18 lost their jobs.

Meanwhile CNet links to who’s firing, who’s hiring.

I wonder if the folks at TheStreet.com followed the advice they printed last month about layoff do’s and don’ts.

Updated to clarify the suspect in this case was not laid off.

Friday a 47-year-old engineer who had been canned earlier in the week allegedly killed his company’s CEO, the operations VP, and the HR lady, before fleeing. Yesterday police arrested Jing Hua Wu, former test engineer at a semiconductor company called SiPort Inc. and were holding him in the Santa Clara County jail pending arraignment on three murder charges.

Update: An earlier version of this post implied that the alleged shooter might have snapped after being laid off. But a recent report on Valleywag states the suspect was fired, and that the company has never laid people off. A report on KCBS radio Monday morning said the suspect was fired for poor performance, though a profile on the station’s website still says he was laid off.

I think the second (okay, well, third) weekend in November should be officially declared San Francisco’s Too Damn Many Film Festivals All At Once Weekend. Like a complete chump, I forgot to post about one of them in time for the opening: 3rd I South Asian Film Festival, which is pretty much how it sounds. This is their sixth time out. Check out the schedule here, and get your tickets here.

Tonight’s feature, screening at 8:30 PM, is called Kissing Cousins, and if I didn’t have a prior engagement, I’d drive out to the Brava tonight just to gaze at Rebecca Hazlewood on screen (pictured above with Samrat Chakrabarti at left) for 99 minutes. Although such devotion might be a little weird, since she’ll be there, along with producer Manish Goyal and director Amyn Caderali, one of the Bay Area’s own. Here’s the story, as told by Christopher Au:

Amir (Chakrabarti) is a professional heartbreaker. Except, he hasn’t dated any of the unfortunate souls with whom he breaks up—he’s just the hired messenger who bears the bad news. And for an additional fee, he can even get your stuff back! As his friends begin to couple up, get married and settle into new homes, they wonder if bachelor Amir will ever let his hardened heart fall in love.

When Amir’s gorgeous British cousin Zara (Rebecca Hazlewood, ER) visits him in Los Angeles, she fools his friends into thinking that she’s his girlfriend. But as Amir spends more time with Zara, she opens him up to feelings that have lay dormant for far too long. How long can they keep up this ruse of faux-love? Or will they become more than “just cousins”?

The rest of the schedule is pretty great too: it includes a wide range of documentaries; a screening of Om Shanti Om; A Throw of Dice, which is a 1929 silent film involving eastern splendor and torrid passions (what else?); and most irresistably, Hell’s Ground, which is best described as a Pakistani zombie flick: “They should have listened to the warnings of the creepy old guy at the chai stand a few miles back.” Yesssssss.

Oh yeah, they’re also playing the totally ignored, poorly covered Slumdog Millionaire on Sunday night at the Castro Theatre. Tickets are a bargain at $9 a show.

The San Francisco Film Society presents the Third Annual San Francisco International Animation Festival at Landmark’s Embarcadero Center Cinema, from Thursday through Sunday.

The opening film is Nina Paley’s Sita Sings the Blues (pictured above), which has been described as “Betty Boop meets bhangra.” It “updates the ancient Sanskrit epic Ramayana by weaving the settings of San Francisco’s Potrero Hill and ancient India with the traditions of shadow puppetry, 1920s-era American torch-singing and Bollywood.” Awesome. It plays at 7:00 and 9:15 PM Thursday night. Nina Paley is expected to attend.

The rest of the Festival includes “the talk of the 2008 Cannes Film Festival,” the documentary/fiction hybrid Waltz with Bashir; Idiots and Angels, the latest from animation legend Bill Plympton, who is also expected to attend; seven shorts programs with the filmmakers in attendance, one free panel discussion, and a “Meet the Maker” seminar with master animator Gene Deitch (he did the original Where the Wild Things Are). Check out the whole schedule here, and get your tickets here.

As I mentioned last week, this weekend is so stuffed full of book events — oddly enough, most of them on Thursday — that this post covers only the next three days. Highlights are Bizarro, Ben Ratliff, Chip Kidd, Opium’s Literary Death Match, and the final SF in SF event for the year. Get all the details after the jump.
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Today and tomorrow, Stacey’s Books is continuing their semi-annual License to Save for Literary License holders (it’s the store card). That’s 20% off anything in stock except periodicals. Now’s your chance to stock up on those Best American anthologies at a discount!

No book events (to my knowledge) are going on tonight.

But tomorrow November 8th is a big day:

First, Kathi Kamen Goldmark will be honored as the recipient of the 2008 Women’s National Book Association Award at the Century Club of San Francisco, in an event from 4:30 to 6:30 PM. Tickets or RSVP (for members) here. Amy Tan will be a guest speaker.

Kemble Scott says of Ms. Goldmark:

It would be tough to find a person who’s contributed more to the local literary scene. Kathi Kamen Goldmark helped launch Litquake, Book Group Expo, and The Rock Bottom Remainders - and her work as a literary escort means she has some of the best author anecdotes in publishing. She’s an accomplished writer and musician herself, making her one of the jewels in the Bay Area’s literary crown. Bravo!

Another event Saturday is at 7:00 PM at Book Bay Fort Mason (Building C). The San Francisco International Poetry Festival presents Vietnamese Poets of the Diaspora. Free event.

Your third option is something involving a little more booze and perversity. If that’s your thing, head out to the Make Out Room (22nd at Mission, don’t act like you’ve never been there) at 7:30 PM for Writers in Drag, featuring Michelle Tea, Austin Grossman, Stephen Elliott, Annalee Newitz and Jaime Cortez. The doorkeepers will exact a teensy-tiny cover charge of $3 to $5.

Sunday the 9th at 3 PM, Glen Park’s Bird & Beckett features Jeff Kaliss discussing his book I Want To Take you Higher: The Life and Times of Sly and the Family Stone. B&B owner Eric says: “Author Jeff Kaliss is a local hero, and for his book he scored the first face-to-face interview Sly has granted in 20 years! He even got Sly to write the intro and George Clinton to write the preface! Don’t miss this one!”

Funny thing, Sly’s been in the news lately. (Thanks for that item, Allan!)

Monday, November 10th has its own slate of literary events to watch out for, including Alison Bechdel (author of Dykes to Watch Out For) at the Booksmith on Haight at 7:30 PM.

Also, Lambda Literary Award finalist Sarah Schulman, author most recently of The Child, will appear at 7:30 at Books Inc. in the Castro.

Note: the John Hodgman/Dave Eggers event at the Herbst Monday night is already sold out, and I’ve been advised that rush tickets are not likely to become available for this one, considering the great fame of both authors. But if you’re a total Hodgman nut, fear not:

John Hodgman will make his next appearance on Tuesday night the 11th at 7:00 PM, at Book Passage in Corte Madera, which is just over the Golden Gate Bridge, at 51 Tamal Vista Blvd. The event is free, and if you show up early enough, you’re likely to get a good seat.

Wednesday the 12th at 7:00 PM, City Lights brings Charles Robinson & Al Young, who offer Jazz Idiom, a book of photography by Robinson and commentary by Young. Knowing these two, it’s bound to be a cool night, and it looks like a beautiful, fun book.

There are so many great events next Thursday and Friday, I’ll have to prepare a special edition of the Word Nerd early next week. Til then!

It’s tonight, and the exclamation point is mandatory. It’s the last event until next year for the Asian Art Museum’s Matcha series, and I think you can probably guess what the focus will be: “the food, music, and dance of Afghanistan.” The AAM continues:

[This grand finale is] In celebration of the highly anticipated, critically acclaimed special exhibition, Afghanistan: Hidden Treasures from the National Museum, Kabul. See what the press is saying about this “at once revelatory and heart-rending” show (New York Times).

The Bay Area’s own Ballet Afsaneh, a dynamic ensemble whose repertory focuses on Silk Road regions in Central Asia, will perform colorful, kinetic traditional dance. See Afghanistan, go on a guided tour, make jewelry inspired by the ancient Bactrian gold on view, nibble on tasty bites, mingle with friends over cocktails from the cash bar, and much more.

The museum is on Larkin, next door to Main Library. As always, the event runs from 5-9 PM and admission to it is $5. Plus, for that awesome wallet-friendly price, you can check out any exhibit you like. The full evening schedule is here on the event page.