Australian-born Mark Savage, 44, is a true D.I.Y. filmmaker, having begun making scads of short films while in his teens. He eventually graduated to features, shot on the cheap with lots of exploitation elements. He is also something of an expert on Hong Kong action cinema, having directed the "making of" documentary on Jackie Chan's Mr. Nice Guy (1997). But like a restless artiste, he is always experimenting with formats and ideas, such as shooting one feature, Defenceless (2004), without dialogue. Subversive Cinema has recently released a box set of Savage's films, including three features, Marauders (1986), Sensitive New Age Killer (2000) and Defenceless, as well as several short films, extensive production diaries and other extras.

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You've taken a lot of care to document all your movies, the thoughts and processes that went into them and even the afterthoughts. Are you thinking of posterity, or perhaps inspiring more young filmmakers? In what way would you like to inspire someone?

I have kept production diaries of my films because I like to document the process. It is a complex one. If other filmmakers benefit from my experiences, that's a positive thing.

Which of your films will best stand the test of time?

I don't know which of my films will best stand the test of time because time does strange things.

Unlike most big-budget action movies, Sensitive New Age Killer has really exciting, well-shot action sequences. You have all the basics: a sense of space, clean editing and a snappy, sustained pace. Most directors can't seem to handle all that. Could you say something about how you pulled it off?

Filmmaker Caveh Zahedi (who interviewed Henry Jaglom awhile back to very engaging affect) talked with Israeli director Amos Gitai, who has made the personal political repeatedly in his ever-increasing filmography.

On Sunday, July 23 at the Castro Theatre, the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival (SFJFF) will celebrate the cinematic vision of Gitai by awarding him the 2006 San Francisco Jewish Film Festival Freedom of Expression Award.

"Gitai is one of those rare filmmakers who are equally accomplished in documentary and narrative forms. I can think of no other filmmaker whose work personifies freedom of expression more than Gitai, both in terms of his courage in tackling complex issues in documentaries and the innovative structure of his narratives," commented SFJFF Program Director Nancy Fishman.

Caveh Zahedi's discussion with Gitai occurred as things reached a crisis point in the Middle East, a subject they arrive at near the end of their edifying conversation.

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Caveh: How did you end up studying architecture at Berkeley?

Gitai: I was finishing up my degree in Architecture, which I had begun studying at the main school of architecture in Israel. I was following in the footsteps of my father who was also an architect. He was a Bauhaus architect.

Does that mean that he had grown up in Germany?

Yes. He escaped when Hitler came to power and came to Israel, in the mid-thirties. But then he died and I started to study architecture. Later on, as part of my studies, I came to Berkeley to do my PhD.

So he died while you were studying architecture?

Yes, he died just as I was just beginning my studies.

Did you feel some kind of obligation to him to go into architecture?

Yeah.

The action in Venus gets rolling when the aging actor Maurice (Peter O'Toole) learns that he needs a prostate operation. Talk about an inconvenient truth. He's told that the most likely side effects of the procedure are incontinence and impotence - a sad way station on what seems to be the way out, but certainly not as bad as things could have been for a performer who is cast most often in this phase of his career as a corpse.

The surprise here is that there is life after impotence. There are even film roles, and in this case, there's libido, thanks to a skanky pouting twenty year-old, Jessie (Jodie Whittaker), who comes to London from a troubled life in the North to live with Maurice and another feeble actor, her uncle Ian (Leslie Phillips). She's the kind of nasty kid that even her mother doesn't love; that's why her family has turned her out of their own home. For those of you who have been reading the New York Post, she doesn't have anything on our recent Miss USA, Tara Connor, who gets my vote for this role over the antediluvian Anna Nicole Smith in what an American remake of Venus. Skanky or not, Jessie turns the aged Maurice priapic.

O'Toole, at 74, couldn't have had a better-timed comeback, or a part more suited to the leer of a matinee idol limping into the sunset. It's his movie. He's on camera more here than in any of his previous films. O'Toole broke his hip during the holiday break in mid-shoot, and a heated tent was a perk where he took refuge, even on the London streets, once the cameras stopped, yet he still completed the film. Could it have been that he was convinced he'd never get another script like this one? It couldn't have been that he needed the money, since Venus doesn't look like it needed much of a budget.

The screenplay for Venus is written by Hanif Kureishi, his second collaboration with director Roger Michell (after The Mother, another look at love between the old and the young, in which Daniel Craig plays a carpenter who gets involved with a newly-widowed grandmother who lacks emotional contact with her nouveau riche daughter). Both Kureishi and Michell recently turned 50, hence the new interest in old age.

Thanks to Kureishi 's lean script, with lots of space between zinger lines for nuances in the performances, all eyes are on O'Toole as the dissipated old actor whose instincts are refreshed by the sullen unschooled girl. (Kureishi admits to the obvious point that there is a bit of Pygmalion here, a bit of Educating Rita. What writer dares to measure himself against George Bernard Shaw?) Maurice takes the girl under his wing - exposing her to theater and literature and, he hopes, eventually, to himself. The question throughout the film is, "What can an impotent man hope to achieve in this kind of courtship?" From what we can tell, everyone but the impotent man is asking the question.