Nyff 2016

[Chris Knipp]

FSLC announces shorts programs and new section, 'Explorations'


Jean-Pierre Léaud in The Death of Louis XIV ('Explorations')

Including works by Bertrand Bonello, Terence Nance, Jia Zhangke, Nadav Lapid, and starring Jean-Pierre Léaud. Below FSLC blurbs with some alterations and showtimes. A reliance on selections from Locarno (excluded from the NYFF Main Slate this year) may be noted.

Some titles the NYFF or sidebars have not chosen to weave in, from Venice, include Damien Chazelle’s La La Land (with Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone), Tom Ford’s Nocturnal Animals, Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival, Francois Ozon’s Frantz, Nick Hamm’s The Journey and Rebecca Zlotowski’s Planetarium. (She previously made Belle Épine and Grand Central.)


FILMS & DESCRIPTIONS


EXPLORATIONS

The Death of Louis XIV
Directed by Albert Serra
France/Portugal/Spain, 2016, 115 min
U.S. Premiere
The great Jean-Pierre Léaud, synonymous with French cinema for over half a century, delivers a majestic, career-capping performance as the longest-reigning French monarch during his final days. Albert Serra’s elegant, engrossing contemplation of death and its representation finds the extravagantly wigged Sun King slowly wasting away from gangrene in his bedchamber, surrounded by devoted servants, pets and a retinue of hopeless doctors. Filled with ravishing candlelit images and painstaking details gleaned from Saint-Simon’s memoirs and other historical texts, Louis XIV is as darkly funny as it is moving, revealing the absurdity of the rule-bound royal court, but even more so of death itself. ND/NF 2014 gave us Serra's version of Casanova's dying in The Story of My Death, which Cahiers du Cinéma described as "two and a half hours of deadly (we insist, deadly) boredom." Be warned. (From Locarno.)
Thursday, Oct 6, 6pm (ATH)
Friday, Oct 7, 6pm (HGT)

Everything Else/Todo lo demás
Directed by Natalia Almada
Mexico, 2016, 90m
North American Premiere
The first fiction feature by accomplished documentarian Natalia Almada is inspired by Hannah Arendt’s idea that bureaucratic dehumanization is the worst form of violence. Oscar nominee Adriana Barraza (Babel) gives a haunting, unsentimental performance as Dona Flor, an elderly government clerk who punishes her clients as unreasonably as life has punished her. But when she loses the last living creature she cares for, she goes into crisis. Almada reveals a cross-section of Mexico City’s population, creating an intimate portrait of one woman among the multitude who remain resilient despite oppression and corruption. (This blurb fails to mention that Natalia Almada is the great-granddaughter of Mexican president Plutarco Elias Calle, 1924-1928, one of Mexico's most controversial revolutionary figures accused of having been a "dictator.") No listing of having been shown yet.
Friday, Oct 14, 6pm (WRT)
Saturday, Oct 15, 4pm (HGT)

I Had Nowhere to Go
Directed by Douglas Gordon
Germany, 2016, 97m
U.S. Premiere
Autobiography and biography merge in this often shattering, sometimes absurdly funny collaboration between two polymath artists, Douglas Gordon and Jonas Mekas. Gordon’s unlikely project, to bring to the screen Mekas’s prose memoir of his first decade in exile from Lithuania and journey from post-WWII displaced persons camps to New York, where he finds his vocation as a filmmaker, yields an operatic experience of sound and image. The film—which features Mekas reading his own text in haunting, musical voice-over—attests to one extraordinary man’s experience of loss and desire to make a new life, yet also resonates as a tale of the diaspora in which tens of millions exist today. (Another Locarno item.)
Thursday, Oct 13, 6pm (WRT)
Friday, Oct 14, 9:15pm (BWA)

Kékszakállú
Directed by Gastón Solnicki
Argentina, 2016, 72m
U.S. Premiere
The new film from Argentinian director Gastón Solnicki (Papirosen) is a singularity: a playful portrait of spiritual lethargy. Partly inspired by Béla Bartók’s opera Bluebeard’s Castle (vivid passages are heard throughout the film), it is comprised of moments that seem to have been drawn from memory, with an elliptical continuity that moves according to forms, colors, sounds, and states of being. There is no protagonist in Kékszakállú, but several young women blanketed under layers of sunlit lassitude and politely tamped down discomfort. Nevertheless, this is a joyful experience, moving inexorably toward liberation. (Part of the Venice lineup.)
Tuesday, Oct 4, 8:45pm (WRT)
Wednesday, Oct 5, 8:45pm (BWA)

Mimosas
Directed by Oliver Laxe
Spain/Morocco/France/Qatar, 2016, 93m
U.S. Premiere
An intense young man (the haunting Shakib Ben Omar) is tasked with escorting a caravan to safety. Taking a taxi far into the Moroccan desert, he seems to travel to another time as well, joining a band of travelers on horseback—and the dead body they are transporting—on a trek through the treacherous Atlas Mountains. Oliver Laxe’s stunningly shot, suggestively ambiguous follow-up to his acclaimed debut, You All Are Captains, is at once a quest story, a landscape study, and a Western with shades of the uncanny. With the openness of a parable, Mimosas doesn’t dramatize so much as embody the mysteries of faith. Winner of the Grand Prize (Nespresso) at the 2016 Cannes’ Critics Week. (Variety's Ben Konigsberg says this owes a debut to avangardists Ben Rivers, whose Spell to Ward Off the Darkness we waded through in ND/NF 2014, and Lisandro Alonso, whose recent slow, pretentious Jauja of NYFF 2014 lacked the punch of his earlier Los Muertos (SFIFF 2005) and Liverpool.)
Wednesday, Oct 5, 9pm (WRT)
Thursday, Oct 6, 6:45pm (FBT)

The Ornithologist
Directed by João Pedro Rodrigues
Portugal/France/Brazil, 2016, 118 min
U.S. Premiere
In his most audacious film since his groundbreaking debut O Fantasma, João Pedro Rodrigues reimagines the myth of Saint Anthony of Padua as a modern-day parable of sexual and spiritual transcendence. On a bird-watching expedition in the remote wilderness of northern Portugal, Fernando (Paul Hamy) capsizes his canoe and loses his bearings. His ensuing odyssey, both intensely physical and wildly metaphysical, involves sadistic Chinese pilgrims, a deaf-mute shepherd named Jesus, pagan tribes, Amazons on horseback, and a glorious variety of feathered friends. Shot entirely outdoors and in magnificent ’Scope by Rui Pocas, The Ornithologist is a bracing exercise in queer hagiography. "Blasphemous fun," Jay Weissberg writes in his Locarno review in Variety. Possibly the director's "most accessible film to date," Weissberg writes, encouragingly.
Wednesday, Oct 12, 9pm (WRT)
Thursday, Oct 13, 9:15pm (BWA)

SHORTS

Shorts Program 1: Narrative
Showcasing emerging filmmakers, this narrative program features seven unique films from seven countries in six different languages. Programmed by Dilcia Barrera & Gabi Madsen TRT: 103m
Saturday, Oct 1, 4pm (BWA)
Sunday, Oct 2, 6pm (BWA)

The Girl Who Danced with the Devil / A moça que dançou com o Diabo
João Paulo Miranda Maria, Brazil, 2016, 15m
A girl from a very religious family seeks her own paradise.

Be Good for Rachel
Ed Roe, USA, 2015, 19m
World Premiere
Tonight Rachel is double-booked: a babysitting job and a nervous breakdown.

Univitellin
Terence Nance, France, 2016, 15m
A classic love story in a far-from-classic reworking.

Little Bullets / Küçük Kurşunlar
Alphan Eseli, Turkey, 2016, 14m
World Premiere
Forced to flee Syria for the border region of Southeast Anatolia, a mother and daughter struggle to accept their newly found safety.

Dobro
Marta Hernaiz Pidal, Bosnia and Herzegovina/Mexico, 2016, 15m
U.S. Premiere
Selma is determined to get rid of the Romani woman sitting on her apartment’s entrance steps.

Land of the Lost Sidekicks
Roger Ross Williams, USA, 2016, 6m
World Premiere
When his home is magically transformed into a dark forest filled with animated characters from classic Disney movies, a young boy learns to confront his fears.

And the Whole Sky Fit in a Dead Cow’s Eye / Y todo el celo cupo en el ojo de la vaca muerta
Francisca Alegria, Chile/USA, 2016, 19m
World Premiere
Emeteria is visited by a ghost she believes has come to take her to the afterlife. But he has more devastating news.

Shorts Program 2: International Auteurs
This program features new work by four of the most adventurous directors in international cinema today. Programmed by Dennis Lim TRT: 96m
Saturday, Oct 1, 6:45pm (BWA)
Sunday, Oct 2, 8:45pm (BWA)

A Brief History of Princess X
Gabriel Abrantes, Portugal/France, 2016, 7m
U.S. Premiere
Abrantes’s pseudo-doc on Constantin Brancusi’s most infamous sculpture is a short, sweet, and appropriately inappropriate look at how eroticism and scandal played roles in the history of modern art.

Sarah Winchester, Phantom Opera / Sarah Winchester, Opera Fantôme
Bertrand Bonello, France, 2016, 24m
North American Premiere
A film to stand in for an opera unmade: Bonello’s moody, baroque meditation on the heiress to the Winchester rifle fortune plays like a ballet-cum-horror film, an ornate tapestry of enigmatic images, chilling synths, and traces of a tragic and eccentric life.

The Hedonists
Jia Zhangke, China, 2016, 25m
U.S. Premiere
Jia takes on an eclectic tone and tries out some bold new tricks in this comic short commissioned by the Hong Kong International Film Festival, following three unemployed coal miners searching for work in the Shanxi region.

From the Diary of a Wedding Photographer / Myomano Shel Tzlam Hatonot
Nadav Lapid, Israel, 2016, 40m
North American Premiere
Lapid’s latest provocation delves headlong into the absurdities and neuroses of matrimonial rites as an Israeli wedding photographer repeatedly finds himself embroiled in psychodramas with the brides and grooms who hire him.

Shorts Program 3: Genre Stories
This is the second annual edition of a program focusing on the best in new horror, thriller, sci-fi, pitch-black comedy, twisted noir, and fantasy shorts from around the world. Programmed by Laura Kern TRT: 83m
Saturday, Oct 1, 9:15pm (BWA)
Monday, Oct 3, 9:30pm (BWA)

The Signalman
Daniel Augusto, Brazil, 2015, 15m
U.S. Premiere
In a story adapted from Dickens, a reclusive railway worker’s routine is mysteriously disrupted.

Can’t Take My Eyes Off You
Johannes Kizler & Nik Sentenza, Germany, 2016, 11m
North American Premiere
A single mother and her teenage daughter must contend with something far more fraught than their relationship.

New Gods
Jack Burke, UK, 2016, 15m
World Premiere
Sickness challenges the resiliency of a utopian existence.

Quenottes (Pearlies)
Pascal Thiebaux & Gil Pinheiro, Luxembourg/France, 2015, 13m
Small, furry, and ferocious, the tooth fairy will defend its enamel treasures at any cost.

What Happened to Her
Kristy Guevara-Flanagan, USA, 2016, 15m
A biting, beautifully gruesome exploration of female corpses, as portrayed nude on screen.

Imposter
Adam Goldhammer, Canada, 2016, 14m
World Premiere
Since Father’s disappearance, Mother hasn’t quite seemed herself . . .

Shorts Program 4: New York Stories
This program, now in its second year, showcases work from some of the most exciting filmmakers living and working in New York today, including established names and ones to watch. Programmed by Dan Sullivan TRT: 71m
Sunday, Oct 2, 3:30pm (WRT)
Tuesday, Oct 4, 6:15pm (BWA)

Kitty
Chloë Sevigny, USA, 2016, 35mm, 15m
North American Premiere
Sevigny’s highly anticipated directorial debut is an adaptation of a Paul Bowles short story, a hypnotic and ethereal fairy tale for today about a young girl’s feline reveries.

I Turn to Jello
Andrew T. Betzer, USA, 2016, 15m
World Premiere
A metropolitan nightmare unfurls as a nervous cellist (Eleanore Pienta) cracks under pressure at an audition—and again, and again, and . . .

Dramatic Relationships
Dustin Guy Defa, USA, 2016, 6m
North American Premiere
Scenes from the working life of a male director: Defa sophisticatedly lampoons masculinity in filmmaking with this sly, surprising meta-movie.

This Castle Keep
Gina Telaroli, USA, 2016, 14m
World Premiere
The shapeshifting latest from the multi-hyphenate Telaroli is a moving elegy for that which gets lost over the years in a changing city.

Los Angeles Plays New York
John Wilson, USA, 2016, 18m
World Premiere
This hilarious documentary concerns the world of NYC-set courtroom reality shows filmed in L.A.

The Honeymoon
Tommy Davis, USA, 2016, 3m
World Premiere
A campy and cryptic love letter that features a new, quintessentially American take on Morse code.

Shorts Program 5: Documentaries
For its first documentary shorts program, NYFF showcases a selection of the most innovative nonfiction storytelling today, from profound personal chronicles to treatments of significant global issues. Programmed by Dilcia Barrera & Gabi Madsen TRT: 89m
Monday, Oct 3, 6:30pm (BWA)
Tuesday, Oct 4, 9:15pm (BWA)

Legal Smuggling with Christine Choy
Lewie Kloster, USA, 2016, 4m
World Premiere
Academy Award–nominated filmmaker Christine Choy undergoes a wild adventure when she illegally—and accidentally—smuggles cigarettes across the Canadian border.

El Buzo
Esteban Arrangoiz, Mexico, 2015, 16m
Chief diver of the Mexico City sewerage system, Julio César Cu Cámara must repair pumps and dislodge garbage from the gutters to maintain the circulation of sewer waters.

Jean Nouvel: Reflections
Matt Tyrnauer, USA, 2016, 15m
World Premiere
A meditative portrait of Pritzker Prize–winning architect Jean Nouvel and his creation process.

Rotatio
Ian McClerin, USA, 2015, 4m
As part of a healing process from trauma, Shannon May Mackenzie turned words into visual art, constructing a six-foot circle out of sentences and phrases.

The Vote
Mila Aung-Thwin & Van Royko, Canada, 2016, 10m
World Premiere
Strict military rule and international sanctions kept Myanmar sealed off from the world for decades. The Vote observes residents of the bustling city of Yangon as they navigate their first democratic election in over 50 years.

Brillo Box (3¢ off)
Lisanne Skyler, USA, 2016, 40m
Andy Warhol’s Brillo Box sculpture makes its way from a family’s living room to a record-breaking Christie’s auction in this exploration of how we navigate the ephemeral nature of value. An HBO Documentary Films release.

[Chris Knipp]

The 54th New York Film Festival Main Slate: U.S. Theatrical Releases

One asterisk ("NONE YET") means no U.S. release so far, but one possibly coming; two asterisks ("NONE"), that there's a chance there may not ever be one. The latter are the obvious ones to try to see at the festival if those films interest you; it could be your only chance to see them. I'd see Maclean's The Rehearsal and Hong Sang-soo's new one, particularly. Fans of Romanian cinema will want to catch the Mungiu and Puiu (but Mungiu now has a 10 Feb. 2017 release date). in case they're hard to see here. Or the James Gray or Assayas too, you might not want to wait for.


Still from Mclean's The Rehearsal

Opening Night
The 13th
Directed by Ava DuVernay
7 OCT. (theater & internet)

Centerpiece
20th Century Women
Directed by Mike Mills
21 DEC.

Closing Night
*The Lost City of Z
Directed by James Gray
SPRING 2017

Aquarius
Directed by Kleber Mendonça Filho
14 OCT. (limited)

Certain Women
Directed by Kelly Reichardt
14 OCT.

Elle
Directed by Paul Verhoeven
11 NOV.

Fire at Sea / Fuocoammare
Directed by Gianfranco Rosi
21 OCT. (limited)

**Graduation / Bacalaureat
Directed by Cristian Mungiu
NONE

**Hermia and Helena
Directed by Matías Piñeiro
NONE

I, Daniel Blake
Directed by Ken Loach
23 DEC. (limited)

Julieta
Directed by Pedro Almodóvar
21 DEC.

Manchester by the Sea
Directed by Kenneth Lonergan
18 NOV.

Moonlight
Directed by Barry Jenkins
21 OCT.

*My Entire High School Sinking into the Sea
Directed by Dash Shaw
NONE YET

Neruda
Directed by Pablo Larraín
16 DEC.

Paterson
Directed by Jim Jarmusch
28 DEC.

*Personal Shopper
Directed by Olivier Assayas
NONE YET

**The Rehearsal
Directed by Alison Maclean
NONE

**Sieranevada
Directed by Cristi Puiu
NONE

**Son of Joseph / Le fils de Joseph
Directed by Eugène Green
NONE

*Staying Vertical / Rester vertical
Directed by Alain Guiraudie
NONE YET

Things to Come / L’Avenir
Directed by Mia Hansen-Løve
2 DEC. (limited)

Toni Erdmann
Directed by Maren Ade
25 DEC.

*The Unknown Girl
Directed by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne
NONE YET.


**Yourself and Yours
Directed by Hong Sangsoo
NONE

[Chris Knipp]

Another surprise NYFF54 addition: "Special Premiere" of Pablo Larraín's Jackie. (US release 2 Dec.)



This portrait of Jacqueline Kennedy around JFK's assassination, starring Natalie Portman, already got raves at Venice, where it debuted, and Toronto. (Its current Metacritic rating based on 11 reviews is 93%). We have followed Larraín assiduously here through Tony Manero (NYFF 2008), Post Mortem (NYFF 20109), No (NYFF 2012) and The Club. Most of Larraín's work (supported by the NYFF early on) has reveled in the creepy world of the 30-year Pinochet dictatorship that began with the assassination of Salvador Allende September 11 (yes, another September 11th) 1973, the world Larraín grew up in. He was born in 1976.

New York, NY (September 27, 2016) – The Film Society of Lincoln Center announces Pablo Larraín’s Jackie as a Special U.S. Premiere Presentation of the 54th New York Film Festival (September 30 – October 16) on Thursday, October 13 at Alice Tully Hall. Jackie is the director’s second film in this year’s festival, with Neruda, his portrait of the great Chilean poet, screening the week prior.

Pablo Larraín’s first English-language film is a bolt from the blue, a fugue-like study of Jackie Kennedy, brilliantly acted by Natalie Portman. Dramatizing events from just before, during, and after JFK’s assassination, this carefully reconstructed, beautifully visualized film is grounded in Jackie’s interactions with her children, her social secretary (Greta Gerwig), LBJ’s special assistant Jack Valenti (Max Casella), her brother-in-law Bobby (Peter Sarsgaard), a priest (John Hurt), a journalist (Billy Crudup), and others. In this emotionally urgent film, from a script by Noah Oppenheim [who co-wrote The Maze Runner and Insurgent], we feel not only Jackie’s tragic solitude but also her precise awareness that every move she makes carries historical ramifications. A Fox Searchlight Pictures release.
-FSLC press release.

[Chris Knipp]

First look:

AQUARIUS (Kleber Mendoça Filho 2016)

Sly, beautiful, and more brightly colored than Neighboring Sounds and yes, perhaps "more conventionally structured" as D'Angelo says, but rich and surprising and close to the first film in theme and idea at many points. Portrait of a stubborn, regal woman holding onto the lone occupied apartment in a Forties building developers want to tear down for a high rise. Starring the magnificent Sônia Braga in one of her greatest performances. She owns the picture, but it's much more than just her.

Click on the title for the CK review of the film in the Filmleaf Festival Coverage section.

[Chris Knipp]

Fri. 30 Sept. NYFF opens with Ava DuVernay's The 13th

Ava DuVernay's documentary, which critics describe as "a film that hits hard, but it also nails its targets with precision" (Alonso Duralde, TheWrap), premieres on opening night of the NYFF. It opens on Netflix Friday. The theme in this, first documentary to open a NYFF, is mass incarceration, and how it is another form of slavery. The 13th Amendment to the US Constitution said "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted. . ." DuVernay develops the theme with demonstration of the burgeoning and increasingly privatized prison industry in the US. Metacritic rating of the film is 91%.

[Chris Knipp]

PATERSON (Jim Jarmusch 2016)

Some notes on this new film from Jarmusch starring Adam Driver as the titular character, who also lives in Paterson, New Jersey, drives a bus, and writes poetry - like the major American poet William Carlos Williams, who was a physician who lied in New Jersey and wrote an epic poem called Paterson. This may have most in common among Jarmusch's other films with Broken Flowers.

[Chris Knipp]

THE 13TH (Ava DuVernay 2016)

Opening night film at the NYFF, first time in its history a documentary has held that position. Surprisingly, it's not an original work of investigative filmmaking, more just forceful synthesis of ideas with graphics, archival footage, and well-informed and notable talking heads. Theme: the 13th Amendment that ended slavery provides an exception: prisons. And the thesis is that incarceration has always been and still is a form of slavery that, in the US, disproportionally targets the black man. But though most of the information in itself isn't new, DuVernay's connecting of the dots is enlightening and shocking.

[oscar jubis]

I did not get to watch the Errol Morris documentary about Elsa Dorfman that you liked when you reviewed it as part of the 2016 NYFF, as I would expect to find very favorable reviews about every single film (or whatever) that Morris has produced/directed (or whatever). He followed this film with a magnificent 45-hour series that premiered on television in 2017 titled WORMWOOD. I found out about it recently when perusing retired Village Voice film pundit j. Doberman's Top 10s and learning this doc is his favorite "movie thing" that year. It's the same year as the David Lynch series that topped my list. Other than Godard, Lynch is the only living filmmaker whose films require me to understand only halfway in order to love them. Morris puts fiction strategies to documentary purposes and the results are exhilarating. This is about the CIA murdering one of their own back in 1953 and the coverup that kept it secret. There's nothing paranoid about this conspiracy thriller.

[Chris Knipp]

i didn't like that Morris doc about Elsa Dorfman that much. (I think I misspoke in my New York movie journal where I wrote about it: I've corrected that.) I wrote in my review that it "is too careless an effort to rank with Morris' best work." You mean Hoberman, not Doberman, I believe. Dobrerman is the dog. Hoberman's trashing of James Gray's films has not endeared me to him. I haven't seen "Wormwood." I like David Lynch too, and also find him engaging as a person. See the doc bio of his early life, David Lynch: The Art Life.

[oscar jubis]

You mean Hoberman, not Doberman, I believe. Dobrerman is the dog.

I also wrote that it's a FORTY FIVE hour series when a mere 4 hours are required to watch WORMWOOD unfold. I make more mistakes now than ever, that's a fact

The word "infotainment" is mostly understood as pejorative and intended to be critical of entertainment attempting to pass for journalism. Morris relates the concepts of information (imparting of) and entertainment in a positive way. His films use stylized dramatizations of events recounted by a documentary character (a person who exists in the world of the audience) to illuminate, define or clarify them and to amplify their emotional impact. Wormwood feels like the best conspiracy thriller and the best film-noir in recent memory. But it also makes as valid a claim to be telling the truth as any old-fashioned piece of journalism.