SEPTEMBER ARTICLE IN "NY PRESS' CRITIQUES THE FESTIVAL
There's usually an article or two at NYFF time critiquing this particular festival as an institution. I meant to refer Filmleaf readers to this year's Been to the NYFilm Festival? Didn't Think So by Simon Abrams and published in The New York Press of September 24, 2008. Abrams finds the venue stodgy, not entirely without reason (FSLC daytime offerings do get an older crowd). I don't know if the venue and the Society are as off-putting to young filmgoeers as he thinks. You will find bloggers and ragged T-shirts and jeans at the press screenings, but the Film Society of Lincoln Center certainly isn't the cutting edge spot for film in New York City; he got that right.
Anyway, this article includes quotes from Phililp Lopate and Richard Pena with a historical background survey. And it offers hope in the new green and Film Comments Selects series and the revamped and enlarged facilities that are coming shortly. And he acknowledges that for the industry and press, the NYFF is a splendid event.
FSLC and NYFF changes: Dennis Lim
Readers of NYFF coverage may be interested in changes in the FSLC staff and NYFF selection committee. This press release came during the past week:
Quote:
Dennis Lim joins New York Film Festival
Selection Committee
NEW YORK—The Film Society of Lincoln Center announced today that film critic and editor Dennis Lim will join the New York Film Festival’s selection committee following The Film Society’s Richard Peña and critics Scott Foundas, J. Hoberman and newest member Melissa Anderson in choosing the approximately twenty plus features that will make up the 2009 slate.
"Dennis is one of the most original voices in film criticism," remarks Peña, program director at The Film Society and NYFF selection committee chairman. "Comfortable with an exceedingly wide range of films, he brings fresh and often surprising points of view to his writing on cinema that challenges traditional orthodoxies."
Dennis Lim is the editor of Moving Image Source, the online publication of the Museum of the Moving Image. He writes frequently for The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times and was a film critic at The Village Voice from 1998 to 2006, as well as its film editor from 2000 to 2006. He is a member of the National Society of Film Critics, and he teaches in the Cultural Reporting and Criticism program at New York University.
"The New York Film Festival has held a special place in local and global film culture for decades" says Lim. "It’s been an event of enormous significance to me as a film lover and a film journalist, and I’m truly honored to be on the selection committee."
He replaces Kent Jones, who, until recently, was The Film Society’s associate director of programming and a member of the Festival’s selection committee.
There has been a shakeup (the term used in a NYTimes article two weeks ago) sincehe appontment of Mara Manus to head the Film Society. Some have not been rehired, and some have left. These include Jeanne Burney, the press director since the departure of Graham Leggett to direct the San Frencaico Film Society and festival. And others are leaving, perhaps 25% of the staff. Definitely many are ot happy with Manus' reputation for an "aloof", "corporate," bottom-line oriented approach (she comes from six years of directing New York's Public Theater). However, the arrival of Dennis Lim seems a positive sign.