San Francisco (1968) Directed by Anthony Stern

San Francisco (Judex Films 1968)
Directed, photographed and edited by Anthony Stern
Produced by Iris Sawyer, Alan Callan and Jeremy Mitchell
Music by The Pink Floyd

Anthony Stern’s “San Francisco” could probably best be described as a film of visible and invisible journeys. It moves between day and night, the city centre and its outskirts, the shops and the counter-culture. The invisible journey travels between the two 1960s psychedelic capitals of the world - San Francisco and London. Stern shot the film in the city of its namesake but returned to edit it in London, firstly at the British Film Institute Production Board’s facilities in Waterloo and then at the Arts Lab in Drury Lane.
The music that accompanies the film is occasionally synched to various San Franciscan musicians - march bands, street musicians, bands on stage and the like. It was, however, recorded in London and was written and performed by The Pink Floyd. The track, entitled “Interstellar Overdrive”, at first drives the film, the flickering and flashing images matching the music’s propulsive beat. Later, however, as the music calms, our attention is led more explicitly to the images. Now the rapid cutting decreases and the film concentrates on a house and the ritualistic occult activity contained therein. These changes in music and image create a focus point and then, as the music returns triumphantly to its original pattern, a grand finale.
The use of The Pink Floyd‘s “Interstellar Overdrive” came about through an intermix of relations between Stern, The Pink Floyd’s Syd Barrett, and filmmaker Peter Whitehead. All three had lived in Cambridge and had exhibited their paintings in the upper room of the Lion and Lamb pub in the village of Milton. Stern later worked on several of Whitehead’s films and, through his friendship with Barrett, succeeded in bringing the three of them together again in London. This led to the use of “Interstellar Overdrive” in Whitehead’s “Tonite Lets All Make Love In London” and again in Stern’s “San Francisco”.
The version of “Interstellar Overdrive” that was used for “San Francisco” was released nowhere else and is exclusive to this film.

Video: AVI Xvid; 608 x 448; 1939 kbps @ 25 fps
Audio: MP3 @ 139 kbps

Duration: 15:07

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