WAY BACK IN the 1980s, in the early days of Rev. Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition, I heard one of his top aides talking about how Jackson really wanted to find good progressive candidates to run for county assessor's offices in the Deep South. Why? Because that's where the money is.

I don't think he made much progress in the South, although years later, in San Francisco, Mabel Teng, who was an early Rainbow Coalition activist, wound up in the job. By then, Teng had come more or less full circle: she'd abandoned her progressive roots to become a loyal ally of Mayor Willie Brown and a cog in his corrupt machine – and then once again discovered some part of her activist self and ran for assessor as a reformer willing to take on downtown.

Now she's resigned, mysteriously and suddenly – which means Mayor Gavin Newsom has a chance to appoint someone who can do for the Assessor's Office what Dick Hongisto (long ago) and, later, Mike Hennessey did for the Sheriff's Department: take a messed-up, conservative political backwater and turn it into a beacon for progressive reform.

In other news Our cover story this week is on the San Francisco International Film Festival. Arts editor Johnny Ray Huston reports:

"Arriving just before the Cannes Film Festival unveils its next slate of movies, the San Francisco International Film Festival has its work cut out for it in terms of securing premieres. This year the SFIFF has reserved its Hollywood star power for the awards, which honor recent Oscar attendee Taylor Hackford (profiled in this issue by Kimberly Chun) and winner Paul Haggis (who wrote Million Dollar Baby), as well as Joan Allen, whose career – as Cheryl Eddy notes on page 46 – has been dominated by portrayals of mother figures.

"This year's fest has a quintessential San Francisco film in Jenni Olson's The Joy of Life, which, Susan Gerhard notes on page 40, just might play a role in the debate about whether to add a suicide barrier to the Golden Gate Bridge. But the I that stands for International is what distinguishes the SFIFF from smaller-scale local film events. I've had the great pleasure of checking out programmer Linda Blackaby's chosen films from Argentina, a diverse batch of excellent movies that confirm the country is home to an exciting new wave of talent. It's usually a pleasure to survey the vast realm of the SFIFF, and this year, there's no better place to dive in.

Tim Redmond