Former Walker Artist in Residence Spencer Nakasako was honored at the The 25th San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival with a program that had him onstage in conversation with filmmaker Justin Lin. We’ve been working with him here at the Walker for many years, and we’re always happy to see Spencer get some recognition for his work. Congratulations.
Also to mark the occasion, SF360 published a new interview with Spencer about his past work and his unintentional development of the first-person camcorder documentary genre.

· R.I.P. Freddie Francis - Mr. Francis was a cinematographer responsible for some of the most beautiful work in Cinema. A viewing of The Elephant Man, Cape Fear (1991), or his last film, The Straight Story would make for a fitting tribute. Reported by Reverse Shot.
· Niki Caro (Her first two films, Whale Rider and North Country were both presented at the Walker.) is now slated to direct The Boy Who Fell Out of the Sky. IMDb reports.
· PingMag offers a new interview with Michel Gondry on the eve of The Science of Sleep’s opening in Japan.

Our Daily Bread, Nikolaus Geyrhalter’s incredible poetic documentary about the largely unseen world of food production will play at the Walker Cinema this weekend.
"The film's formal elegance, moral underpinning, and intellectually stimulating point of view also make it essential. Takes us inside worlds of wonder and terror."--New York Times

· Several of us here in Film/Video are fans of good design, especially when it pops on on film posters and DVD covers. If you are, too, I highly recommend checking out this post at On Five on the design process behind the covers for the Criterion Collection release of Jules Dassin’s Night and the City.
· David Bordwell at the Hong Kong Film Festival. His first report is up on his blog, and more are promised. It’s always a fun read.
· If you are anywhere in or near San Francisco tomorrow, I highly recommend taking in the San Francisco Film Society’s Trapped in the Closet sing-a-long. The event promises to be “an exploration of R. Kelly’s artistic canon.” I wish I could be there.
Melody Gilbert has a way of tapping into the zeitgeist. Her film Whole (2003) came out two years before the New York Times reported on a psychological disorder in which people are obsessed with having limbs amputated. Her newest film, Urban Explorers: Into the Darkness, delves into a culture I began noticing relatively recently: the clandestine and usually illegal exploration of deteriorating or forgotten elements of urban history, from abandoned factories to underground sewer tunnels. Inspired by a 2003 news report about the arrest of six local people who were mistaken for terrorists because of their night-vision goggles, rappelling equipment, and gasmasks, she set out to document this largely hidden endeavor (what one critic calls “tresspassing as hobby”), travelling from Minneapolis to Paris and beyond. Since then UE has blossomed with countless videos, blogs, clubs, meetups, and webrings dedicated to it.
The film gets its world premiere here as part of Women With Vision (through March 17) Friday and Saturday. Director Melody Gilbert will introduce the screenings.
The Walker blogs are among some of the more well regarded in the museum world, and we’re always working on making them better. With that in mind, we present to you a survey. It consists of 11 quick questions that will help us understand why you read our blogs. Your identity is totally anonymous. Down the road, we will be sharing some follow-up analysis on the new media blog.
The full survey is below, in this post, but if you have problems you can visit our dedicated survey page. If you’re reading this in an RSS reader or browser without javascript support, our survey should work, as it does not require javascript.

· indieWire posted John Sinno’s (producer of the Oscar nominated documentary Iraq in Fragments) open letter to the Academy regarding Jerry Seinfeld’s presentation (reflecting what he sees as the Acedemy’s discreditation for documentary work) of the Best Documentary Award at the recent Oscar proceedings.
· Yahoo/AP published a great piece about the opening of David Lynch’s visual art exhibition in Paris. Be sure to read the entire piece to get to the bizarre turn taken during the press conference.
· Michel Gondry, Leos Carax (the subject of a 2000 Regis Dialogue and Retrospective), and Bong Joon-ho are in negotiations to work together on a triptych film called Tokyo. Sounds pretty great to me. Reuters reports.