New York Film Festival 2018 (forum)

[oscar jubis]

Because of my interests in cinema are broad, contemporary international commercial films have to compete with other things. For example, at the moment I am exploring films by Chicagoan Bill Morrison other than his masterpiece Decasia which I saw at a festival in which I met Morrison and had a chance to talk with him extensively. His filmography has been released on BR in the UK and I have a copy of this voluminous volume.
I have also been paying attention to the (experimental) editing in 2 Dziga Vertov films: 3 Songs for Lenin and Enthusiasm. I am also still shocked by the anti-religiosity in his films. There's a segment in Kino Pravda about a Muslim girl being "liberated" by the revolution from having to cover her head. Enthusiasm begins with the removal of Christian icons from a church.
Latin American is ALWAYS under-represented at US festivals because there is scapegoating of Latinos and immigrants in general throughout the US. Generally speaking, American film festivals and academic institutions are Eurocentric. Miami is the exception. Even in NY and LA I feel like a second class citizen, so I will stay put.

[Chris Knipp]

I'm sure you're right. But as I said the balance for the top films in this year's NYFF arguably tips more toward Asian than Euro. And Cuaron's ROMA is the Centerpiece film, and Zama was one of the big films at last year's NYFF, shown in Alice Tully Hall with a big crowd. Lincoln Center also does have a new Latin American film series, Neighboring Scenes. I haven't seen it. It's a try anyway. https://www.filmlinc.org/daily/neigh...erican-cinema/
Some advantage has been lost since Richard Peña isn't Program Director anymore and Dennis Lim is program director. People notice a shift in taste. Peña was pals with Almodóvar and the Q&As with them were always a lot of fun.

[oscar jubis]

This is very interesting thanks. I depend on your writing more than ever. You certainly know more about contemporary Latin American cinema than I do. I love Ixcanul and Zama, which you've seen and reviewed. The most exciting and unique movie I've discovered recently is Hellzapoppin' (1941)

[Chris Knipp]

You certainly know more about contemporary Latin American cinema than I do.

Hard to believe; but I appreciate the compliment. The Neighboring Sounds FSLC Latin series is new and will need some time to get up to the level of the amazing NYAFF, which I've covered for two years, but has been in existence (not always at Lincoln Center but there now) for seventeen. They had over 50 films and I had access to most of them though I couldn't watch that many! But Latin American doesn't have film industries as well funded as those of China, Hong Kong, Japan, and South Korea I'm guessing, so that is an issue too. I have never seen Helzapoppin'. I am trying to selectively review the oeuvre of Woody Allen now. So far I've watched Match Point, Annie Hall, Manhattan, and Bananas. So entertaining and original.

I'm not accredited for the NYFF anymore, but I still am going and hope to see as many as I can of the Main Slate.

[Chris Knipp]

For you, Oscar~
The new Criterion Collection entries in their August 2018 newsletter include Edward James Olmos' The Ballad of Gregoria Cortez, and the site also has an interview with Chloe Zhao talking about Terrence Malick's The New World, and Jeremiah Zagar, the director of the exciting new film We the Animals, listing his top ten favorite Criterion disks.

[oscar jubis]

Thanks Chris. I think it's very likely I didn't see "The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez". I don't know about you but I cannot remember whether I watchED a movie in full or a trailer or only a part of the movie (perhaps because I watched it on TV and perhaps it had already started when I caught it, or because the TV broadcast version is shorter than the original cut. I look forward to it in this restored version.

As far as Malick is concerned, I am among those who embrace his use of characteristic swirling camera movements while the character's stream-of-consciousness is presented via voice-over. These are Malick's philosophical investigations (some mat call them ruminations). I have see different versions of THE NEW WORLD several times; love it. So I will check out this interview promptly.

I rewatched Jarecki's impassioned THE KING. A top 10 film of 2018 for me along with Jim McKay's EN EL SEPTIMO DIA and Martel's ZAMA.
I watched Alex Garland's ANNIHILATION and I liked the trippy visuals and the performances by Jennifer Jason Leigh and Natalie Portman but its dramaturgy falters and yields a film that constitutes a lesser achievement than the director's own EX MACHINA and recent Sci-Fi films by Cuaron and Villeneuve.

I re-watched Alfred Hitchcock's THE PARADINE CASE. It's very upsetting when you know enough to recognize precisely how David O. Selznick is getting in the way of a potential masterpiece and forces Hitchcock to make compromises for the sake of convention and the bottom line. Like SUSPICION AND REBECCA, It's not a bad film, of course, but it's not prime Hitchcock like other films he made in the 40s such as NOTORIOUS and STRANGERS ON THE TRAIN.

I continue to think that Alexander Payne's DOWNSIZING is very interesting and rewarding film. Plan to rewatch.

The remake of the Argentinian film "Rompecabezas" titled PUZZLE is solid and a pleasant experience to many, as I noticed from the showings in my theater.I don't have strong opinions about it, to be honest.

[Chris Knipp]

Thanks for your views and report. I haven't seen Gregorio Cortez, or En el septimo dia, or Annihilation.

Why are we talking about Terrence Malick? I loved The New World too, and Tree of Life, but lately with To the Wonder and Knight of Cups he has struck out, to the point of self-parody, and I've lost faith. Of course we like the mobile camera like Emmanuel Lubezki's for Cuaron, but we also like the Asian-style static one (Hou Hsiau Hsien). Depends on the individual use of it and its appropriateness to the film.

My Filmleaf review of The King will show as I think I said to you directly before, I sort of found it to be overambitious and overstuffed, though an impressive effort. An editing issue. There's material for a good film there, even if an editorializing, poetic one, rather than an informational one. I like docs that present hard fact like Dark Money or new intimate information that's factual but moving like To Be and To Have and My Architect.

I've seen many of Hitchcock's movies but not The Paradine Case. It sounds like a good display of Hitchcockian technique. Strangers on a Train isn't a Forties film but 1951.

Puzzle (my review) ends up being a watchable but blah, "meh" piece of work; I heard the original is great but didn't get to see it, so far. Irfan Khan is very cool but not Kelly Macdonald.

I still think Downsizing (I repeat) is a meandering, "meh" disappointment, again see my review.

I'm pretty good at remembering movies I've seen, but not every single one.

Have you seen Sorry to Bother You, Blindspotting and BlacKKKlansman? If not, drop everything and go see them.

[oscar jubis]

Hard to believe; but I appreciate the compliment. The Neighboring Sounds FSLC Latin series is new and will need some time to get up to the level of the amazing NYAFF, which I've covered for two years, but has been in existence (not always at Lincoln Center but there now) for seventeen. They had over 50 films and I had access to most of them though I couldn't watch that many! But Latin American doesn't have film industries as well funded as those of China, Hong Kong, Japan, and South Korea I'm guessing, so that is an issue too. I have never seen Helzapoppin'. I am trying to selectively review the oeuvre of Woody Allen now. So far I've watched Match Point, Annie Hall, Manhattan, and Bananas. So entertaining and original.

I'm not accredited for the NYFF anymore, but I still am going and hope to see as many as I can of the Main Slate.

How come you're not accredited? Tell me about this process, if you don't mind. I haven't covered a film festival in about 5 or 6 years. Do festivals still have screenings and screeners? Isn't it all about getting a special code from the publicist so you can download or stream the films they are showing?
The last Woody Allen film I liked may be HUSBANDS AND WIVES, almost 20 years ago. I know Match was good too but it's not a film I'm inclined to re-watch. I like Allen's films of the 70s and 80s less than I used to.

[Chris Knipp]

No, it's not online screeners. It's separate press screenings of all the Main Slate NYFF films (plus a few extras) shown in sequence, starting always in the morning, mostly at the same location, starting a week or two earlier than the public ones. Why am I not accredited now? You tell me. A lot of people have been eliminated over a period of five or so years. I could talk a lot about Woody Allen but I'll save that till later. After all, he's done over fifty films. For now, my description, 'so entertaining and original,' will do.

Let me correct what I said: not to see 'as many as I can of the Main Slate,' but just to see most of the ones that look interesting to me, without knocking myself out.

[Chris Knipp]

More about the NYFF Special Events, and Film Comment Selects for the Festival.

FILMS & DESCRIPTIONS

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
Dir. Rex Ingram, USA, 1921, 132m, 35mm
Rex Ingram’s adaptation of the famous novel by Vicente Blasco Ibáñez gave us one of cinema’s greatest antiwar films and catapulted actor Rudolph Valentino into history as one of the first screen idols. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse is a devastating epic centered around a divided Argentine family fighting on opposite sides during World War I. Famously remembered for the cool, sensual, and powerful tango sequence lead by Valentino, the film endures for Ingram’s meticulous attention to mise en scène—beautiful and macabre compositions alike—and the nuanced performances from a cast including Alice Terry and Josef Swickard. The Film Society is pleased to present the North American premiere of a live score written and performed by Matthew Nolan (electric guitar/electronics), Seán Mac Erlaine (reeds/electronics/vocal), Adrian Crowley (Mellotron/vocal), Kevin Murphy (cello/vocal), and Barry Adamson (bass guitar/percussion/synths/vocal).

The score was commissioned by and premiered at the St. Patrick’s Festival Dublin in March 2018. Supported by Culture Ireland. Special 35mm print courtesy of Martin Scorsese from the M.S. Collection at the George Eastman Museum.


John Huston, Orson Welles, Peter Bogdonovitch

The Other Side of the Wind
Dir. Orson Welles, USA, 2018, 122m
Cinema lovers around the world have been waiting to see this legendary movie for more than 40 years. Orson Welles started shooting in 1970 with a precarious funding scheme, an ever-mutating script, and the lead role of Jake Hannaford, an old-guard macho Hollywood director at the end of his tether, yet to be cast. When he died fifteen years later, the film was not only unfinished but in legal limbo. Almost 50 years after Welles started shooting, The Other Side of the Wind has finally been completed by Welles’s collaborators, including producers Frank Marshall and Filip Jan Rymsza. The film features a collection of actors as eclectic as the cast of Touch of Evil, including John Huston as Hannaford, Peter Bogdanovich, Oja Kodar, Edmund O’Brien, Susan Strasberg, Lilli Palmer, Paul Stewart, Mercedes McCambridge, Cameron Mitchell, Paul Mazursky, Henry Jaglom, Claude Chabrol, and, in a movie-stealing performance as Hannaford’s right-hand man, Welles’s old collaborator Norman Foster. A Netflix release.

They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead
Dir. Morgan Neville, USA, 2018, 98m
The story of the making of The Other Side of the Wind is as engrossing and rich in character and incident, and perhaps even more epic in scale, than the film itself. Morgan Neville’s documentary complements and deepens the experience of Welles’s film by placing it within the context of his life and career, setting the scene and the particular mood of Hollywood in the early 1970s, and chronicling every last creative, legal, financial, and behavioral twist and turn on the circuitous road from the first set-up to the first official screening almost 50 years later. The title, of course, comes from none other than Welles himself. A Netflix release.


Behind the scenes of The Other Side of the Wind.

Film Comment at NYFF 2018

Film Comment Presents:

Border
Dir. Ali Abbasi, Sweden/Denmark, 2018, 108m
Scandinavian mythology makes for a visceral fantastical drama on the mystery of identity in this adaptation of a story by Let the Right One In writer John Ajvide Lindqvist. Ali Abbasi’s twisty Cannes award-winner (Un Certain Regard, 2018) centers on a customs inspector, Tina, who possesses the ability to sniff out contraband and moral corruption. Her findings lead her into a criminal investigation, but the heart of Border lies with Tina, who tires of her deadbeat boyfriend and experiences a full-bodied awakening like little else seen on screen. Grounding it all is Eva Melander’s outstanding, minutely sensitive performance, the true north for Abbasi’s genre-driven momentum. A NEON release.

The Wild Pear Tree
Dir. Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Turkey, 2018, 188m
The gorgeous backdrop of rolling country and idyllic farmland are cold comfort to the frustrated hero of The Wild Pear Tree. Turkish auteur Nuri Bilge Ceylan (Once Upon a Time in Anatolia) captures the wrenching struggles of a bright literary graduate, Sinan (Aydın Doğu Demirko), who is trying to take flight in a world he can’t entirely accept. Ceylan revives a deeply humanist cinema of ideas in tracking Sinan’s path through the more urgent questions of youth, romance, religious orthodoxy, and shaking off the burdens of your family—without ennobling the all-too-human Sinan. Often shooting in unbroken takes, Ceylan compellingly “renders the frustrations of this young man as so much misplaced passion” (Kent Jones, Film Comment). A Cinema Guild release.


The Wild Pear Tree

[Chris Knipp]

NYFF 2018 Festival Coverage thread.

This NYFF 2018 (56) Festival Coverage thread is getting set up now, with titles and images and intros to the films I'm pretty sure to be seeing. Check it out here: CLICK.

[Chris Knipp]

The FSLC poster for NYFF 56.



2018 NYFF Festival Coverage Thread