Nyff 2009

[Chris Knipp]

Chinese documentary in the New York Film Festival focuses on minority squatters in Yunnan Province high up in the mountains at a former communist party seat. The Chinese entry into the Main Slate of the New York Film Festival, it comes with a big concurrent FSLC sidebar retrospective of classic Chinese films from 1949-1966 to mark the 60th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China. Compare: last year's NYFF Main Slate entry from Jia Zhang-ke, 24 City This one is a whole lot more rambling and random, with mixed results.

Zhao Dayong: Ghost Town (2009)

[oscar jubis]

*Kamikosen:
I'd like to see it. Actually, it'd be cool to watch the more historically-accurate, less tongue in cheek 1953 adaptation of the same novel. But it seems highly unlikely one would get that chance.

[oscar jubis]

*Ghost Town:
In my opinion, film festivals' main reason for being is to unearth films like this one and give audiences a chance to watch them. There isn't an IMdb entry for this film or this director. Obviously Foundas and Lim feel very strongly about it. Good for them. They are giving this independent film a chance to get recognition.If I was attending the NYFF, I would rather watch Ghost Town than any of the films in the fest that already have distribution deals. Yes, even the latest by my favorite French director.

[Chris Knipp]

Obviously one goes to festivals to see films not available (or not yet available) elsewhere, or, if one's a distributor, to find new ones to buy. I should not say dGenerate Films is distributing Ghost Town, rather that they are seeking festival slots for it. Its current length makes it un-distributable.

If you follow my links in the two reviews, you'll find more information, but I didn't realize Kanikosen was made into a film in 1953, origato for that info. The director was So Yamamura. It probably was less comic and ironic, but I don't know about more realistic. I don't see much about it online but this quote on Answers.com that ends: "'This version, filmed in the postwar period, serves as both an indictment of the prewar military government's power and of the postwar government's return to similar practices of artistic censorship.' -- Brian Whitener, All Movie Guide."

It may be a find, assuming that Foundas and Lim went through the other recent Chinese indie docs listed on that website I cite, but I am convinced that Ghost Town is not well edited. You might prefer to watch paint dry than to see the latest Quentin Tarantino movie, but I don't agree with you. It is true that the selection of Jia Zhang-ke's Platform for the New York Film festival was an event and that film was exciting and a revelation, his Unknown Pleasures even more so. Ghost Town is not such an event.

[Chris Knipp]

Marco Bellocchio nearly equals his reimagining of the Aldo Moro kidnapping in Good Morning, Night with the even more sweeping and iconic tale of Italian history: the wrenching saga of Beinto Mussolini's abandoned and imprisoned first wife and son. The style is operatic and swift-moving and elegantly melds actual footage with chiaroscuro scenes in which Giovanna Mezzogiorno plays the unhappy Ida Dalzer. An IFC film that was shown at Cannes, Telluride, and Toronto, and now at the NYFF.

Marco Bellocchio: Vincere (2009)

[Chris Knipp]

In his tiff thread here Johan notes today (Sept. 19, 2009):

The Bell Lightbox is the brand-new hub for cinema in Toronto, and will be ready in about a year I heard. (It's still under construction on King street). Their first program will be THE ESSENTIAL 100. . .

That's interesting. Lincoln Center is doing an overhaul ( goes back to the early Sixties), which includes the handsomely renovated Alice Tully Hall, where the public screenings of the NYFF are now going to be held. Across the street from the Walter Reade Theater, where most of the Film Society of Lincoln Center screenings take place including the NYFF press screenings, a big new film center is under construction, which will be finished in a year or so. All the new constructions designed by the architecture firm of Diller Scofidio + Renfro can be viewed on a website that links to over a dozen drawings. The Alice Tully and Julliard School parts are pretty much done, but not quite. It's more sweeping and angular than the old heavily rectalinear original buildings and the interiors are updated and more functional. What's hard to say is where they get the money for all this and how they're going to run the new three-part film center given that the FSLC has fired a lot of people, including ones who've worked there for 30 years, by reports 25% of the staff in the past year. Several people I've talked to have said most of the work will have to be done by "interns." That is people with low salaries, no security, and few benefits. But the building? It's grand.

Lincoln Center is impressive and will be more so and more functional no doubt, but I'm maybe more impressed by the layout in London of the arts and music and drama center at The Embankment, which seems both more organic and more accessible. Of course the Metropolitan Opera, the Jazz center, the Julliard School, the FSLC, New York City Ballet, and the Philharmonic are not to be sniffed at either. Still The Embankment seems a more fun place to hang out at in the eveing, with its various restaurants and its Thames-side views. By the way the LFF is coming soon, and I will be in London, but I don't expect to see the films. But Borys/Michuk will, and will report on them in the Festival Coverage sectioin. He just reported that he's gotten press credentials for it.

[Chris Knipp]

Press screenings for Mon. Sept. 20, 2009:

Today's screenings are The Art of the Steal (Don Argott, 2009, USA, 101 m. ) and A Room and a Half / Poltory komnaty ili sentimentalnoe puteshestvie na rodinu (Andrey Khrzhanovsky, 2009, Russia, 130m.)

Summaries of these films will be found now in the Festival Coverage thread here .

Coming later this week: new work by Lars von Trier and Bruno Dumont.

[oscar jubis]

Euro's Bad Boys have new provocations to offer, uh?

[Chris Knipp]

Two Euro bad boys in one week. I don't know if my heart can take it. Scott Foundas has a good piece on the new Dumont on CinemaScope that I expect to crib from for its detailed explanation of how Dumont actors have been reshuffled.

[Chris Knipp]

The story of the Barnes Foundation is one anybody interested in Post Impressionist and Modern art and the public trust needs to know about. This documentary by Don Argott is conventional but technically fine and loaded with good content.

Don Argott: The Art of the Steal (2009)

[Chris Knipp]

A fanciful recreation of the life and exile of the late Russian-American poet Joseph Brodsky by a documentary filmmaker and prizewinning animator (and one can see why: the animated segments are lovely), is, as 70, his first feature. Remarkable for its blending of different looks and styles of image to contrast periods.

Andrey Khrzhanovsky: Room and a Half (2009)

[Chris Knipp]

Centenarian Manoel de Oliveira's new film from a 19th-century short story seems more like a fable than a work of realistic fiction. (Portugal)

Manoel de Oliveira: Eccentricities of a Blond Hair Girl (2009_

[Chris Knipp]

Dogs, aquariums, killer sons, druggie lovers, and a sex change. (Portugal)

Joao Pedro Rodrigues: To Die As a Man (2009)

[Johann]

Excellent reviews Man!
I love the photos too.

Is Michael Moore's film showing at NYFF?
There are a handful of reviews on the imdb and one says that it's the most important film ever made, and that people should be ready to ACT, based on the outrage and anger that Moore stirs up about how corporations and "justice" systems act.

Curiously, that review is from TIFF, where the writer points out that there was a man in front of him who was annoyed to be there (with his girlfriend). He hated Moore, saying he didn't want to sit through another one of his propaganda films (paraphrasing).
Then, at film's end, the man's world seems shattered, and he stands up with everybody else in a standing ovation.

I will be there opening day.
Remember, it wasn't so long ago that Barack Obama was a pipe dream. He's been Prez for almost a year now!
Who's to say that massive reforms would be kickstarted to stop the psychopathic practices that corporations still employ, long after the Imperial Empire of Bush & Cheney allowed that shit to flourish?
This is a MAMMOTH film.
And I've only seen the trailer...

[Chris Knipp]

Thanks. I enjoy the pictures too.

Night before last at Lincoln Center there was a preview event for CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY and Mr. Moore was on hand out on the sidewalk giving a press conference, I gather; I saw the setup for it. But this film is not part of the NYFF. The NYFF generally is not a promotion point for big films about to open wide. The TIFF is.

This should be an interesting day for the screenings. The films are:

ANTICHRIST (Lars von Trier)

"Surely to be one of the year's most discussed films, Lars von Trier's latest chronicles a couple's efforts to find their love again after a tragic loss, only to unleash hidden monsters lurking in their souls. An IFC Films release"

LEBANON (Samoel Moaz)

"Debut director Samuel Maoz takes us inside an Israeli tank and the emotions of its crew during the 1982 invasion of Lebanon. "

I don't know what to expect from ANTICHRIST, really. I just hope it will be coherent. So many films barely are, and the word that this was made as the result of a major depression and that it's a farrago of Hieronymous Bosch-esque gore sound like more provocation and visuals than matter for though, but we'll see. What I hear is that LEBANON is, as is no surprise, about the 1982 Israeli Lebanon war, and that it is even better than BEAUFORT and WALTZ WITH BASHIR, but could be almost any war, because it all takes place inside an Israeli tank. We'll look into the assumptions behind such a statement, but since I was impressed by WALTZ WITH BASHIR and even more by BEAUFORT, I expect a well-made film.