New York Film Festival 2018 (forum)

[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

[Chris Knipp]

About the poster. It resulted from a spontaneous collaboration between the cinematographer Ed Lachman (left), a regular at Film Society of Lincoln Center screenings (when he is not working), and JR (right), the community-participation French photographer who made Faces, Places with Agnès Varda recently.

On the partnership and thought process behind this year’s poster, Ed Lachman explains, "Being at the Festival is the highlight of the year for me, when I’m not working. It’s a place to meet, share, and experience what cinema can be. The opportunity to create the poster for the New York Film Festival and collaborate with JR was a formidable experience and similar to filmmaking, where one works with other visual artists to create a project. I’ve had the greatest respect and admiration for his work over the years, both visually and how he engages communities he’s portraying within a social context, which I think is so important in today’s world, to find how we're all connected, rather than separated and divided."

According to Lachman, "The idea came together using JR’s emblematic eyes . . . What is cinema without the mind, the heart, and the eyes of the filmmakers? Using the director’s eyes can symbolize the creative force behind the images and the stories that the Festival has championed and represented to New York over the years, supported by the audience holding the placards of their eyes, and what can be more New York than our alleyways?"

A revered and award-winning cinematographer, Ed Lachman has shot more than 100 narrative, experimental, and documentary titles in the United States and internationally. He is known for his collaborations with Todd Haynes, Steven Soderbergh, Robert Altman, Paul Schrader, Todd Solondz, Sofia Coppola, Werner Herzog, Wim Wenders, Volker Schlöndorff, Ulrich Seidl, and Jean Luc-Godard, among others [including Larry Clark].

Lachman’s work has garnered him numerous honors including Academy Award nominations for his work on Carol (2015) and Far from Heaven (2002), as well as an Emmy nomination for the HBO miniseries Mildred Pierce (2011). He has been honored with the American Society of Cinematographers Lifetime Achievement Award, Telluride Medallion Award, Gotham Award, and this year at Cannes with the 2018 Angenieux ExcelLens in Cinematography Award. Lachman is also known as a visual artist who has had installations, videos, and photography at the Whitney Museum of American Art, MoMA, the Ludwig Museum in Germany, and many other museums and galleries throughout the world.

JR exhibits freely in the streets of the world, catching the attention of people who are not typical museum visitors. In 2006, he created Portrait of a Generation, images of suburban "thugs" that he posted in huge formats in the bourgeois districts of Paris. In 2007, with Marco, he made Face 2 Face, large portraits of Israelis and Palestinians standing facing each other in eight Palestinian and Israeli Cities, considered the biggest illegal exhibition ever. In 2011, he received the TED Prize. Later that same year, he created Inside Out, a global participatory art project that transforms messages of personal identity into works of art. As of September 2017, over 350,000 people from more than 140 countries have participated, through mail or gigantic photo booths.

His recent projects include a collaboration with New York City Ballet; the feature documentary Faces Places, co-directed with Nouvelle Vague legend Agnès Varda; seemingly “erasing” the pyramid outside of the Louvre; giant scaffolding installations at the 2016 Rio Olympics; an exhibition on the abandoned hospital of Ellis Island; and a gigantic installation at the U.S.-Mexico border fence. As he remains anonymous and doesn’t explain his enlarged full-frame portraits, JR leaves the space empty for an encounter between the subject/protagonist and the passerby/interpreter.

A special thank you to photographers David Godlis and Julie Cunnah for their photo contributions to the poster. Chantal Akerman photo courtesy of Kenneth Saunders/The Guardian.

These limited-edition posters will be available for purchase during the festival at filmlinc.org/merch. NYFF will also be holding a contest: the person who correctly identifies the most director eyes will receive a pair of festival tickets and a signed poster. See a poster key here and enter the contest here. Ed Lachman will speak to NYFF audiences about the poster concept and creative process at a free NYFF Live talk during the festival, details to be announced. - FSLC press release.

2018 NYFF Festival Coverage Thread

[Chris Knipp]

SORRY ANGEL/PLAIRE, AIMER, ET COURIR VITE (Christophe Honoré 2018)

In a coming of age epic Honoré for the first time (in his eleventh feature) directly confronts his own experience of being French and gay in the age of AIDS. Three characters, who interact, stand in for him as a young man in Brittany who eventually movies to Paris (Vincent Lacoste), a somewhat successful writer he falls in love with who has AIDS (Pierre Deladonchamps) and an older man who must be content with prostitutes (Denis Podalydès). At times harsh, poetic, or funny, Sorry Angel is a brave and accomplished film, and a lot to take in at one sitting.

[Chris Knipp]

A new press release about a surprise NYFF screening: Jonah Hill's directorial debut feature.

New York, NY (October 1, 2018) – The Film Society of Lincoln Center reveals the NYFF secret screening as Jonah Hill’s Mid90s, making its New York premiere at the 56th New York Film Festival (September 28 – October 14).

Jonah Hill’s directorial debut is a frank, intimate, and emotionally layered reflection on an unlikely coming-of-age in the world of 90s L.A. skate culture. Thirteen-year-old Stevie (Sunny Suljic), growing up with a loving but largely absent mother (Katherine Waterston) and a resentful brother (Lucas Hedges), seeks refuge with older kids who hang out (and barely work) at a Los Angeles skate shop. The energy between Stevie and his crew, played by Ryder McLaughlin, Olan Prenatt, Gio Galicia, and Na-kel Smith, fuels a film that is at once lyrical, hilarious, terrifying, and just…real.

The 17-day New York Film Festival highlights the best in world cinema, featuring works from celebrated filmmakers as well as fresh new talent. The selection committee, chaired by Kent Jones, also includes Dennis Lim, FSLC Director of Programming, and Florence Almozini, FSLC Associate Director of Programming.

Tickets for Mid90s are on sale now and are $25; $20 for students and Film Society members

[Chris Knipp]

Click here for thumbnail New York Movie journal revies of five more NYFF Main Slate films: Tamara Jenkins' Private Life,, Olivier Assayas' Non-fiction/Doubles vies, Ying Liang's A Family Tour, Lee Chang-dong's Burning, and Claire Denis' High Life.