New York Film Festival 2019 (forum)

[Chris Knipp]

NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL
Special events, shorts, talks.

Speakers include Scorsese, Almodóvar, Olivier Assayas, Bong Joon-ho and Mati Diop. See filmlinc


FROM AMERICAN TRIAL: THE ERIC GARNER STORY

SPECIAL EVENTS DESCRIPTIONS

American Trial: The Eric Garner Story
Dir. Roee Messinger, USA, 100m
World Premiere
The idea is powerfully simple: engage the services of two actual legal teams to create a rigorous, legally based fictional—yet unscripted—trial that never happened for one of the nation’s most disturbing recent tragedies. The accused is Officer Daniel Pantaleo (only recently fired by New York City Police Commissioner James P. O’Neill), charged in the July 17, 2014 death of Eric Garner with reckless manslaughter and strangulation in the first degree. The judge is played by a seasoned defense lawyer, while the officer is played by the only actor in the cast (Anthony Altieri). Eyewitnesses, bystanders, friends, and his widow, Esaw Snipes, all come to testify; meanwhile, credible expert witnesses who would have likely been called to testify in a real trial provide their testimonies for both the prosecution and the defense to create fair judicial proceedings. Roee Messinger’s film goes deep into the case, placing the audience in the position of the jury. American Trial is a one-of-a-kind film, and this special screening will be free to the public.

The Cotton Club Encore
Dir. Francis Ford Coppola, U.S., 1984, 139m
It’s now clear that Francis Ford Coppola’s eighties constituted his most fruitfully experimental period of filmmaking, when he used the clout from such behemoth masterpieces of the previous decade as the Godfather films and Apocalypse Now to try his hand at films of various genres and budget levels. At the time, The Cotton Club, Coppola’s stylish throwback to those 1930s Hollywood standbys the gangster film and the musical, was considered a costly disappointment, altered seemingly irrevocably due to behind-the-scenes conflicts with producers and financiers. Yet this sophisticated, witty, wildly ambitious movie, starring Gregory Hines and Richard Gere, about the titular Harlem nightclub, where legendary black musicians like Cab Calloway, Lena Horne, and Duke Ellington performed for an exclusively white clientele, was always something special, a rousing American entertainment that was both an evocation of the work of such directors as Raoul Walsh and William Wellman and a loving recreation of the period itself. The brilliance of Coppola’s vision is more apparent than ever in this “reawakened” version, The Cotton Club Encore, for which the director recovered lost negatives to bring the film back to its original length and luster, with restored sound and image.


JOAQUIN PHOENIX IN TODD PHILLIPS' JOKER

Joker
Dir. Todd Phillips, USA, 122m
The Joker began life on April 25, 1940 as the anarchic enemy of DC Comics’ Batman, and his appearance was possibly inspired by Conrad Veidt’s permanently, demonically smiling face from the 1928 silent film The Man Who Laughs. The Joker has gone through many transformations and iterations, but his origin story has never been as vividly or shockingly imagined and realized as it is here, in one of the most anticipated films of the year. Join us for a special screening and discussion with the creative team behind this stunning, truly disturbing vision, led by director Todd Phillips and his brilliant star, Joaquin Phoenix. A Warner Bros. Pictures, Village Roadshow Pictures and BRON Creative release.

Screenwriting Master Class with Olivier Assayas
Presented by Warby Parker
The amazing and eclectic career of French filmmaker Olivier Assayas has encompassed autobiography (Cold Water, Summer Hours, Something in the Air), contemporary meta-fiction (Irma Vep, demonlover, Clouds of Sils Maria), literary adaptation (Les destinées sentimentales), and in the case of the epic Carlos and his latest film in this year's festival, the exhilarating Wasp Network, about a ring of Cuban refugees functioning as spies for the Castro government while living in Miami in the early nineties, intimate narratives based on true stories. In this special discussion, Assayas will talk about the process of turning real events into creative fictions. Starring Penélope Cruz and Édgar Ramirez, Wasp Network is based on Fernando Morais’s meticulously researched 2015 book The Last Soldiers of the Cold War.

SHORT FILM DESCRIPTIONS

Program 1: International (TRT: 89m)
A mixture of narrative and documentary, this program showcases bold, new films by emerging and established filmmakers working in international cinema today.
Programmed by Tyler Wilson.

Party Day / Dia de Festa
Sofia Bost, Portugal, 2019, 17m
Portuguese with English subtitles
North American Premiere
A cash-strapped single mother is pulled into an unresolved family conflict as she struggles to host her daughter’s seventh birthday party. Sofia Bost’s 16mm-shot drama, filled with illuminating performances, renders a complicated depiction of motherhood and the inconsolable grievances inherited by each generation.

Blessed Land / Một Khu Đất Tốt
Phạm Ngọc Lân, Vietnam, 2019, 19m
Vietnamese with English subtitles
North American Premiere
Searching for her deceased husband’s grave, a mother wanders with her son through a cemetery that has been partially remade into a golf course. Phạm Ngọc Lân’s intricately staged single-location film merges two disparate time periods, creating unnerving harmony between sociopolitical conspiracy and the natural erosion of memory, spiritual calm and modern decadence.

Circumplector
Gastón Solnicki, Argentina/France, 2019, 3m
U.S. Premiere
Gastón Solnicki’s miniature of Notre-Dame—filmed days before the fire—impressionistically links various media the cathedral evokes, including still-life painting and Baroque music, to present-day footage of work and performance.

San Vittore
Yuri Ancarani, Italy, 2019, 11m
Observing security guards as they search and escort children through Milan’s oldest prison, San Vittore depicts the lingering effects of the institution on its visitors. Visual artist Yuri Ancarani’s short documentary remains firmly immersed in a child’s-eye point of view, evoking the young subjects’ increasing understanding of the institution’s purpose with quiet, disturbing tension.

She Runs / Nan Fang Shao Nv
Qiu Yang, China/France, 2019, 19m
Chinese with English subtitles
U.S. Premiere
Set in Changzhou, a city in China’s southern Jiangsu province, She Runs follows a young student after she tries to quit her school’s aerobic dance team. Eschewing close-ups for long shots—around building corners, or from entirely different rooms—Qiu Yang’s Cannes-winning short follows its protagonist’s mounting desperation, implicating the underlying foundation of Changzhou as much as people inhabiting it.

Shakti
Martin Rejtman, Argentina/Chile, 2019, 20m
Spanish with English subtitles
U.S. Premiere
Not long after his grandmother dies, a twenty-something man in Buenos Aires breaks up with his girlfriend and begins obsessing over her unexpected reaction—but then he meets someone else. The stylistic exactness, narrative shrewdness, and droll pacing emblematic of Martin Rejtman’s cinematic sensibility are perfectly at home in this short comedy of peculiar minutiae and casual digressions.

Program 2: Documentary (TRT: 68m)
This documentary program connects the imperfections of the human experience to the influence of technology and mass media by pairing Pia Borg’s chilling account of the Satanic Ritual Abuse Panic of the 1980s with Theo Anthony’s wry, imaginative essay film about the instant replay system of professional tennis.
Programmed by Tyler Wilson.

Demonic
Pia Borg, Australia, 2019, 30m
North American Premiere
The real and the imagined fold together in Pia Borg’s horror-documentary about the Satanic Ritual Abuse Panic of the 1980s, a mass hysteria during which people around the world “recovered” memories of debauchery and human sacrifices related to satanic cults. Using a cunning combination of archival media coverage, audio footage, and historical recreation by way of computer animation and 16mm, Demonic reframes our current moment of misinformation and distrust, revealing the forces at play between psychiatry, media, and false memory.

Subject to Review
Theo Anthony, USA, 2019, 38m
World Premiere
The latest from Theo Anthony (Rat Film) charts the rise and development of the instant replay system Hawk-Eye in professional tennis, cleverly relating innovative technology and the imperfections of the human experience to the history of cinema, sports entertainment, and humanity’s desire to objectively interpret the world. Featuring music by composer Dan Deacon, Subject to Review is another odd, imaginative, and accessible documentary essay from the Baltimore-based filmmaker.

Program 3: Narrative (TRT: 96m)
From absurdist thrillers and political fantasies to lo-fi sci-fi and body horror, these seven shorts from emerging and established international filmmakers make up this wildly eclectic narrative program.
Programmed by Tyler Wilson.

Automatic
Emma Doxiadi, Greece, 2019, 10m
Greek with English subtitles
World Premiere
Two young women convince each other they are under threat after accidentally photographing what they believe to be a concealed automatic rifle. Shot in drawn-out, static takes, Emma Doxiadi's comical mystery comments on Greece's ongoing refugee crisis in real time, pointing squarely at foolish knee-jerk reactions.

Mthunzi
Tebogo Malebogo, South Africa, 2019, 9m
North American Premiere
While walking home from the store, a young man is prompted to help a seizing woman, and unknowingly demonstrates the danger of doing the right thing. Cape Town–based filmmaker Tebogo Malebogo's briskly tense script and direction elevate Mthunzi from a simple morality tale into a nervous thriller about implicit biases in unfamiliar circumstances.

Control Plan
Juliana Antunes, Brazil, 2018, 15m
Portuguese with English subtitles
U.S. Premiere
Set shortly after former President Dilma Rousseff's impeachment, Control Plan follows a young Brazilian woman who uses her cell phone's teleportation service to flee the country. Politically serious but always funny, this lo-fi sci-fi from Juliana Antunes (Baronesa) is as much a commentary on the fraught paradigm shifts of 2016 as it is a pointed takedown of limited data plans.

Nimic
Yorgos Lanthimos, Germany/UK/USA, 2019, 12m
North American Premiere
Matt Dillon stars as a professional cellist whose seemingly innocent question to a stranger results in weirdly repetitive consequences to his daily routine. Working with cinematographer Diego García (Cemetery of Splendor), Lanthimos lends his distressing, absurdist vision to the instruments, patterns, and lonesome gestures of modern city life.

Please Speak Continuously and Describe Your Experiences as They Come to You
Brandon Cronenberg, Canada, 2019, 9m
Brandon Cronenberg uses only in-camera effects to tell the hilarious, house-of-mirrors horror story of a patient at an experimental psychiatric facility (Deragh Campbell) who receives a brain implant that allows her to revisit dreams.

Austral Fever / Fiebre austral
Thomas Woodroffe, Chile, 2019, 21m
U.S. Premiere
After an injury places a teenager on bed rest, he and his adult caretaker develop an unusual attraction to his wound. Filmed mostly in dimly lit spaces with southern Chile’s mountain range as its backdrop, Austral Fever is a slow-burning, quietly perverse fantasy about cabin fever, addictive pleasures, and the mysteries of the human body.

The Marvelous Misadventures of the Stone Lady / Les Extraordinaires mésaventures de la jeune fille de Pierre
Gabriel Abrantes, France/Portugal, 2019, 20m
North American Premiere
A female sculpture escapes from the Louvre to experience the aggressive streets of contemporary Paris in this fairy-tale pastiche from Gabriel Abrantes. Slyly raising questions of liberation through crisply rendered CGI characters in direct contact with the harsher outside world, Abrantes critiques the power structures of venerable institutions without ever forgoing his ability to entertain.

Program 4: New York Stories (TRT: 98m
This program, now in its fifth 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 Madeline Whittle and Tyler Wilson.

Good News
Joe Stankus, USA, 2019, 10m
World Premiere
Novelist Evan is excited to share the news that he’s been accepted to a prestigious summer writers’ colony with his husband and their friends over an intimate dinner party. But the big reveal doesn’t go as planned in this finely calibrated domestic-drama-in-miniature.

Caterina
Dan Sallitt, USA, 2019, 17m
World Premiere
Dan Sallitt intimately crafts a small-scale portrait of an inquisitive and compassionate young woman in this subtly episodic slice of life, following the eponymous protagonist through her ongoing, everyday search for connection among friends, lovers, and fellow travelers.

Moving
Adinah Dancyger, USA 2019, 8m
World Premiere
The act of transporting an old mattress into a new walk-up apartment becomes absurdist, cinematic one-woman choreography in this wordless vignette from Adinah Dancyger, full of humor and pathos, and painfully familiar to city-dwellers.

Foreign Powers
Bingham Bryant, USA, 2019, 17m
World Premiere
A nameless young woman recounts a peculiar dream, set in a mysterious fictional city and populated by her real-world friends and acquaintances, in Bingham Bryant’s vivid, precisely conceived exploration into the uncanny logic and banal strangeness of our subconscious wanderings.

the thing that kills me the most
Jay Giampietro, USA, 2019, 5m
World Premiere
Faces, voices, light: language itself is rendered abstract in this impressionistic fugue about fraught interpersonal dynamics at a weekly social engagement, narrated in retrospect by an exasperated fellow guest.

The Sky Is Clear and Blue Today
Ricky D’Ambrose, USA, 2019, 16m
World Premiere
Ricky D’Ambrose brings his trademark marriage of formalist rigor and sly narrative wit to this faux-documentary account of an American director developing an experimental film for German television about the events of September 11, 2001.

Fit Model
Myna Joseph, USA, 2019, 20m
World Premiere
In Myna Joseph’s deft depiction of a woman fiercely determined to get by on her own terms, Lu Simon (Lucy Owen) is a thirty-something struggling actor navigating day jobs and errands across the city, while juggling negotiations with an unhelpful hospital billing department.

Laying Out
Joanna Arnow, USA, 2019, 5m
World Premiere
This tersely lyrical meditation on sex and gender roles from Joanna Arnow features two fed-up mermaids lounging on a beach, drinks in hand, as they vent and commiserate over underacknowledged frustrations and unspoken desires.

TALKS DESCRIPTIONS

On Cinema: Martin Scorsese
In these annual special events, New York Film Festival Director Kent Jones sits down with world-renowned filmmakers for in-depth talks about films from other directors that have influenced them, their discussion illustrated with film clips. In the first of two On Cinema events that the festival is pleased to present this year, Jones will talk with Martin Scorsese, whose epic crime drama The Irishman is this year’s highly anticipated opening night event. Scorsese, known as much for his work as a film historian as for his unparalleled, decades-spanning cinematic career, will guide the audience through a selection of films that inspired this remarkable new work.

On Cinema: Pedro Almodóvar
Among the world’s most beloved auteurs, Pedro Almodóvar has shown films at the New York Film Festival eleven times over the past four decades. This year’s selection is perhaps his most personal film yet: Pain and Glory, starring a Cannes Film Festival–awarded Antonio Banderas in the role of a director—essentially a surrogate Almodóvar figure—who has reached a creative block. As with all of his films, there is a deep wellspring of emotion in Pain and Glory, as well as a rich tapestry of allusions and references to a cinematic past, which this conversation will help elucidate.

Directors Dialogues
The Directors Dialogues are the New York Film Festival’s annual series of intimate conversations, in which a selection of filmmakers from this year’s festival sit down for special Q&As to discuss the ideas and the craft behind their buzzed about newest works. Participating directors include:

Bong Joon-ho
The South Korean filmmaker, whose unpredictable and diverse filmography has taken us from the gonzo monster movie The Host to the intense, bloody melodrama of Mother to the graphic novel action of Snowpiercer, has created perhaps his masterpiece with this year’s Palme d’Or–winner Parasite. Bong will discuss his spring-trap-loaded comedy-drama-thriller with a social conscience—so make sure you see it first to not spoil its many surprises.

Mati Diop
The French-Senegalese director made perhaps the year’s most talked-about debut feature with Atlantics, which earned her the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival. Both ghost and love story, the film feels unlike any other, hypnotic and supernatural yet grounded in the realities of life as it’s experienced by those living in contemporary, working-class Dakar. Diop will be on hand to discuss how she negotiated these registers and how she constructed her singular film.

[Chris Knipp]

NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL
Revivals and retrospective sections


DAYS OF HEAVEN

These two sections allow the NYFF to look at and share great films of the past the juries admire, present new restorations, and remember highlights of earlier festivals. This year it also celebrates American cinematographers.

The NYFF57 Retrospective section is programmed by NYFF director Kent Jones and Film at Lincoln Center (FLC) Assistant Programmer Dan Sullivan. The Revivals section is programmed by Jones, Sullivan, Dennis Lim, and Florence Almozini. Retrospective pays tribute to the 100th anniversary of the American Society of Cinematographers, including a rare I.B. Technicolor print of Francis Ford Coppola'd The Godfather: Part II. shot by Gordon Willis. ("IB" abbreviates "imbibition", a dye-transfer operation.) Revivals showcases 11 restorations of significant works in cinema history, including William Wyler’s Dodsworth and Béla Tarr’s [7-hour plus] Sátántangó.

FILMS & DESCRIPTIONS

RETROSPECTIVE

America, America
Elia Kazan, USA, 1963, 35mm, 174m
The great Haskell Wexler shot any number of films that could be highlighted in this section, but few can match the overwhelming ambition of this epic by Elia Kazan, based on the life of his uncle. Powered by a largely unknown cast, America, America follows Stavros (Stathis Giallelis), a Cappadocian Greek, from his tiny Anatolian village to Constantinople and finally to New York City, encountering poverty, hardship, and struggle all along the way. Wexler’s sumptuous and kinetic black-and-white handheld cinematography suffuses America, America with a spontaneous energy uncharacteristic of period films at the time, greatly enhancing Kazan’s turn-of-the-20th-century portrayal of an immigrant’s journey to a better life.

Dave Chapelle’s Block Party
Michel Gondry, USA, 2005, 35mm, 103m
One of the great recent concert films, Michel Gondry’s 2005 documentary of a free daylong performance in Brooklyn hosted by comedian Dave Chapelle abounds with life, energy, and rhythm—thanks in no small part to DP Ellen Kuras’s nimble camera, which captures the all-star concert as a kaleidoscopic, reverberant event. Featuring the likes of Erykah Badu, Mos Def, Talib Kweli, the Fugees, Jill Scott, and more, Block Party also makes for an indelible portrait of the event’s host, arguably the world’s greatest working standup comedian at the time, operating at the height of his powers, clowning around with members of the lineup, and, most crucially, serving as the catalyst for this unforgettable happening.

Days of Heaven
Terrence Malick, USA, 1978, 94m
Before coming to the United States and joining the ASC, Néstor Almendros cut his teeth as a go-to cinematographer for François Truffaut and Éric Rohmer; his first Hollywood film was Terrence Malick’s anticipated follow-up to his debut, Badlands. Almendros promptly won a 1979 Academy Award for his work. (Haskell Wexler, who received an Additional Photography credit, stepped in to help finish the film.) Hired by Malick for his sure hand with natural lighting, Almendros ravishingly draws out and amplifies the inherent beauty and poetry of Malick’s 1916-set story, concerning a laborer (Richard Gere) who accidentally kills his boss and flees Chicago for the Texas Panhandle with his girlfriend (Brooke Adams) and younger sister (Linda Manz), where they find work with a farmer (Sam Shepard).

Dead Man
Jim Jarmusch, USA, 1995, 129m
Jim Jarmusch’s hypnotic, parable-like, revisionist Western follows the spiritual rebirth of a dying 19th-century accountant (Johnny Depp) named William Blake (no relation to the poet . . . or is there?). Guiding Blake through a treacherous landscape of U.S. Marshals, cannibalistic bounty hunters, shady missionaries, and cross-dressing fur traders is a Plains Indian named Nobody (Gary Farmer), one of the most fully realized Native American characters in contemporary cinema. Dead Man doubles as a barbed reflection on America’s treatment of its indigenous people and a radical twist on the myths of the American West, expressed in no small part by frequent Jarmusch collaborator Robby Müller’s striking black-and-white cinematography.

The Godfather: Part II
Francis Ford Coppola, USA, 1974, 35mm, 212m
Francis Ford Coppola and Gordon Willis enjoyed one of the 1970s’ most defining cinematographic partnerships, and their most astonishing collaboration was this, the second installment of Coppola’s adaptation of Mario Puzo’s best-selling novel. Picking up where the first film left off—with Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) having assumed power over his family’s criminal syndicate—Part II tracks the young don’s move into the casino business in Las Vegas while dealing with increased attention from Washington, D.C. But most striking are the flashbacks to the early life of Michael’s father, Vito (portrayed here by an Oscar-winning Robert De Niro), lent unsurpassed dimension and atmosphere by Willis’s masterful compositions and lighting. Rare I.B. Technicolor print!

The Grapes of Wrath
John Ford, USA, 1940, 129m
Though Gregg Toland is perhaps best known for his work with Orson Welles and William Wyler on such films as Citizen Kane and The Best Years of Our Lives, his camerawork in John Ford’s adaptation of John Steinbeck’s classic novel rates among the influential cinematographer’s greatest achievements. Starring Henry Fonda as Tom Joad, the iconic itinerant ex-con leading his large family down Highway 66 in search of work and a better life in California, The Grapes of Wrath—one of American literature’s great politically liberal books adapted by a famously conservative auteur—stands as perhaps Ford’s most powerfully compassionate movie.

The Hard Way
Vincent Sherman, USA, 1943, 35mm, 109m
The pioneering Chinese-American cinematographer James Wong Howe shot more than 130 films during his distinguished career—perhaps none as engrossing and entertaining as Vincent Sherman’s 1943 genre-melding musical melodrama. Ida Lupino stars as housewife social-climber Helen, who schemes to use the budding career of her singer sister Katie (Joan Leslie) as her ticket out of their dingy steel town (conjured by earlier documentary footage shot by Pare Lorentz). But when Katie falls for an up-and-coming band leader (Jack Carson), she must choose between her new love and her conniving sister. 35mm print courtesy of UCLA Film & Television Archive.

He Walked by Night
Alfred L. Werker, USA, 1948, 35mm, 79m
Alfred Werker’s pseudo-documentary noir is a lean, mean thriller concerning a petty thief (Richard Basehart) who kills a cop and roams Los Angeles, igniting a manhunt—including future Dragnet star Jack Webb as a shrewd LAPD forensics specialist—that culminates in a climactic chase scene reminiscent of Carol Reed’s The Third Man. Finished by an uncredited Anthony Mann, the film represents one of cinematographer John Alton’s crowning achievements, an endless, anxious maze of urban shadows. 35mm restored print courtesy of the UCLA Film & Television Archive. Restoration funding provided by the George Lucas Family Foundation and The Film Foundation.

Leave Her to Heaven
John M. Stahl, USA, 1945, 110m
John M. Stahl’s landmark Technicolor melodrama-noir stars Gene Tierney as Ellen, a young socialite who meets Richard (Cornell Wilde), a reclusive ex-con novelist, on a train; they fall in love and marry after she leaves her fiancé (Vincent Price), setting off a chain of events that leads to Ellen’s escalating suspicion that Richard is actually in love with her adopted sister Ruth (Jeanne Crain). Stahl steers his brilliant cast through a mind-boggling, winding plot, toward its exorable tragic crescendo. Fox stalwart DP Leon Shamroy’s Oscar-winning work on Leave Her to Heaven marks a historically inspired attempt at a kind-of squaring of the circle: shooting a gripping noir in vibrantly beautiful Technicolor.

McCabe & Mrs. Miller
Robert Altman, USA, 1971, 121m
Robert Altman’s revisionist western classic stars Warren Beatty at the height of his powers as fur-clad gambler John McCabe, who blows into a snowy town in Washington State and sets up a brothel. He lucks into a business (and, later, romantic) partnership with a wayward cockney woman (Julie Christie), but their success lands McCabe on the radar of some unsavory types who want to buy the brothel and its adjoining zinc mines and won’t take no for an answer. Equally known for Beatty and Christie’s lead performances, Altman’s signature overlapping dialogue, and use of Leonard Cohen songs, McCabe & Mrs. Miller is defined by Vilmos Zsigmond’s fleet camerawork, which masterfully captures Altman’s characters amid snow-covered landscapes and in candlelit back rooms.

The Passion of Anna
Ingmar Bergman, Sweden, 1969, 100m
Filmed on Fårö, Ingmar Bergman’s bleak island home, The Passion of Anna is the case history of a contemporary Everyman, one Andreas Winkelmann (Max von Sydow), a lost soul ricocheting emotionally among a trio of equally damaged folk. Trapped in one of Bergman’s hellish marriages, Bibi Andersson and Erland Josephson are worlds apart—she, fading from lack of love; he, armored in cold cynicism. Anna (Liv Ullmann), the woman who becomes Andreas’s lover, assaults him with her righteous honesty until he explodes in brutal rage. Passion was filmed by legendary Bergman collaborator Sven Nykvist, who would later secure his American Society of Cinematographers membership working in America with Philip Kaufman, Bob Rafelson, James L. Brooks, Woody Allen, and others.

Soldier Girls
Nick Broomfield & Joan Churchill, USA/UK, 1981, 87m
Following a platoon of female cadets through basic training at Georgia’s Fort Gordon, Nick Broomfield and Joan Churchill’s 1981 documentary endures as a comical and often critical look at the military industrial complex. The film’s subjects have enlisted for a myriad of reasons, ranging from genuine patriotism to socioeconomic circumstance. But once the women begin training, they find themselves performing strange drills, encountering stranger drill sergeants, and experiencing no shortage of sadism and prejudice. In her collaborations with Broomfield, Churchill’s work is always impeccable, but it’s especially striking here, where her dual role as cinematographer and director intensifies her already complicated relationship to the subject.

Street Angel
Frank Borzage, USA, 1928, 102m
In Frank Borzage’s essential silent melodrama, a young woman (Janet Gaynor in an Oscar-winning role) forced into a life of crime by her ailing mother’s escalating medical costs finds herself on the lam, seeking refuge with a traveling circus—where she falls in love with a bad boy painter, played by Borzage axiom Charles Farrell. Brilliantly shot by Ernest Palmer and Paul Ivano, Street Angel has endured as one of Borzage’s most transporting and affecting weepies. The film is also notable for being a key example of the transitional silent/sound hybrid form, featuring no recorded dialogue but nevertheless boasting an early Movietone track of sound effects and passages of recorded music. 4K restoration!

REVIVALS

L’age d’or
Luis Buñuel, 1930, France, 63m
Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí followed up their seminal first collaboration, the short Un chien andalou, with this equally bold, unforgettable surrealist masterpiece, which they co-wrote. In L’age d’or, a documentary about scorpions gives way to a series of seemingly disconnected, absurdist scenarios and Freudian symbols—a young couple writhing in the mud near a religious ceremony, a woman fellating the toe of a statue—adding up to an acridly funny picture of the hypocrisies of modern bourgeois life. Months after its premiere, right-wing groups rioted against the film, leading to its being banned in France until the eighties. L’age d’or eventually came to be seen as an essential modernist work, and this incredible new 4K restoration by the Cinémathèque française and Centre Pompidou (MNAM-CCI expérimental cinema department) has brought its image and sound back to brilliant life. Special thanks to Pathé and Maison de Champagne Piper-Heidsieck.

Dodsworth
William Wyler, 1936, USA, 101m
This worldly, richly layered adaptation of Sinclair Lewis’s 1929 novel is one of the triumphs of the storied career of director William Wyler—and that’s saying a lot. A stoic yet tender Walter Huston brilliantly inhabits the title character, a newly retired Midwestern auto magnate whose marriage to the perpetually dissatisfied Fran (early talkies star Ruth Chatterton in perhaps her finest role) is put to the test during an extended voyage to Europe. Mary Astor, David Niven, and Paul Lukas round out the luminous supporting cast as the various objects of flirtation who guide the Dodsworths as they change life’s course. Considered a high watermark of Hollywood sophistication upon release, this Samuel Goldwyn production (a Retrospective selection in NYFF24) increasingly feels like a singular movie about the variable definitions of American progress, with Wyler effortlessly depicting the shifting tides of marriage with restraint and maturity. Restored by the Academy Film Archive and The Film Foundation, in association with The Samuel Goldwyn Jr. Family Trust, with funding provided by the George Lucas Family Foundation.

The Incredible Shrinking Man
Jack Arnold, 1957, USA, 81m
A dangerous combination of radiation and insecticide causes the unfortunate Scott Carey (Grant Williams) to shrink, slowly but surely, until he is only a few inches tall. His home becomes a wilderness where he must survive everything from spiders living in the cellar to his beloved cat. Through the clarity of its existential vision and trick photography effects, The Incredible Shrinking Man is a cornerstone of the sci-fi B-movie boom of the American fifties, written by the incomparable Richard Matheson, based on his own story, and directed by Jack Arnold, whose credits also include It Came from Outer Space and The Creature from the Black Lagoon. A Universal Pictures release. This is the domestic premiere of a new 4K digital restoration by Universal Pictures; the restoration work was conducted by NBCUniversal StudioPost.

Jazz on a Summer’s Day
Bert Stern, 1959, USA, 85m
One of the most extraordinary concert films ever made, Brooklyn-born fashion photographer Bert Stern’s glistening, full-color document of the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival in Rhode Island is as intimate and gorgeous a depiction of a live music event as one could hope to see. And the lineup of legendary talent truly astonishes: Thelonius Monk, Big Maybelle, Dinah Washington, Chuck Berry, Louis Armstrong, Mahalia Jackson, Anita O’Day, Gerry Mulligan, and many others, all of them performing at the top of their game and captured on warm, saturated color film stock, with close-up camerawork that captures every bead of sweat. New 4K Restoration by IndieCollect, created with support from the Library of Congress.

Le franc + The Little Girl Who Sold the Sun
Djibril Diop Mambéty, 1999/1994, Senegal, 45m/46m
The great Senegalese director Djibril Diop Mambéty, who is best known for 1971’s epochal Touki Bouki—and whose legacy can be felt in this year’s NYFF, with his niece Mati Diop’s masterful, Cannes-awarded Atlantics in the Main Slate—made two wonderful medium-length films in the nineties that were intended to be part of a trilogy titled “Tales of Ordinary People,” but the filmmaker in died 1998 before he could finish. In Le franc, a broke musician comes upon a lottery ticket after his beloved instrument is confiscated by his landlady; in the posthumously released The Little Girl Who Sold the Sun, a young girl decides to sell newspapers on the streets, despite the fact that boys have historically run that racket. The two films function beautifully as a pair of magical realist works grounded in the political realities of Dakar. Restored in 2K in 2019 by Waka Films with the support of the Institut Français, Cinémathèque Afrique and CNC - Centre national du cinéma et de l'image animée, in agreement with Teemur Mambéty, at Éclair Laboratories from the original negative.

Los Olvidados (The Young and the Damned)
Luis Buñuel, 1950, Mexico, 80m
Nearly two decades after the scandals of Un chien andalou and L’age d’or, Luis Buñuel had a major international comeback with Los Olvidados, which remains one of the world’s most influential films in its unsentimental yet vivid, sometimes surreal depiction of impoverished youths in Mexico City. In the story of a juvenile delinquent who reunites with his gang after breaking out of prison, unflinching, desperate violence becomes riveting visual poetry with lyrical experimental flourishes. Buñuel won Best Director at the Cannes Film Festival for this film, which all but reignited his career, leading to two decades of increasingly daring work. Restored by The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project at L’Immagine Ritrovata in collaboration with Fundación Televisa, Televisa, Cineteca Nacional Mexico, and Filmoteca de la UNAM. Restoration funding provided by The Material World Foundation.

Le Professeur
Valerio Zurlini, 1972, Italy/France, 132m
In Valerio Zurlini’s penetrating character study, Alain Delon—who also co-produced—stars as Daniele, a tragically hip poetry and literature professor who travels to Rimini for a four-month teaching assignment with his suicidal wife, Monica (Lea Massari), in tow. During his tenure, Daniele is indifferent to his students, even letting them smoke in class. He spends his free time gambling with locals, and begins an ill-fated affair with one of his students, Vanina (Sonia Petrovna). This melancholic visual poem, a film of cold and fog, shot in shades of gray disaffection, was cut down upon its release at the insistence of Delon. Now, 45 minutes have been added back in for a new generation of viewers. New 4K restoration by Pathé and Films du Camélia, by the lab L’Image Retrouvée (Paris). Special thanks to Ronnie Chammah.

Sátántangó
Béla Tarr, Hungary/Germany/Switzerland, 1994, 432m (plus two intermissions)
Among the world’s most respected and transformative filmmakers, Béla Tarr—whose final film, The Turin Horse, played at NYFF49—made his international breakthrough with this astonishing, singular adaptation of the novel by László Krasznahorkai about the arrival of a false prophet in a small farming collective during the waning days of Communism. Divided into 12 distinct episodes, this seven-and-a-half hour masterpiece weaves in and out of the lives of the locals as the silver-tongued Irimiás (played by Tarr’s longtime musical composer Mihály Vig) promises a bright future in a new promised land. This bleak yet mordantly funny study of domestic and social decay was ranked 36th on the most recent Sight & Sound critics’ poll of the greatest film ever made. Sátántangó has been restored in 4K from the original 35mm camera negative by Arbelos in collaboration with the Hungarian Filmlab. An Arbelos release. Opening October 18 at Film at Lincoln Center.

Three Short Films by Sergei Parajanov
Sergei Parajanov, Soviet Union, 1966–86, 46m
Armenian-Georgian filmmaker and artist Sergei Parajanov’s radical, visually dynamic Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors and The Color of Pomegranates, distinguished by cultural folklore and myth, are only the best known works of this peerless Soviet-era filmmaker, a student of Moscow’s prestigious VGIK film school. Internationally respected, he nevertheless became increasingly controversial in the Soviet Union, dealing with censorship and imprisonment. This program brings together three remarkable short works, meditations on the nature of art and artists that boast his singular, colorful, collage-like style and which have been newly restored: Kiev Frescoes (1966), consisting of the remaining footage of a confiscated project about post–WWII Kiev; Hakob Hovnatanyan (1967), a tribute to the art of nineteenth-century Armenian painter; and Arabesques on the Pirosmani Theme (1986), bringing to life the playful work of Georgian outsider artist Niko Pirosmani. Restorations by Fixafilm (Warsaw), produced within the Hamo Bek-Nazarov Project. Restoration supervised by Lukasz Ceranka and produced by Daniel Bird. Financial support from Kino Klassika Foundation (London).

Preceded by
The House Is Black
Forough Farrokhzad, Iran, 1962, 21m
In her only film—one of the most acclaimed shorts ever made—Iranian director Forough Farrokhzad depicts with compassion and poetry the lives of people living in a leper colony in Northern Iran. Farrokhzad wrote, directed, and edited The House Is Black, and she creates a world unto itself, using unexpected disjunctions between sound and image to enhance the feeling of marginalized experienced by her subjects. Restored by Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna and Ecran Noir productions, in collaboration with Ebrahim Golestan. With the support of Genoma Films and Mahrokh Eshaghian.

Ten Documentary Shorts by Vittorio De Seta
Vittorio De Seta, Italy, 1954*–59, 119m
The extraordinary documentary shorts made by Italian director Vittorio De Seta in the fifties stand alone from the films of his contemporaries for the rigor of their observational eye. Shot in locations around Sicily, Sardinia, and Calabria, these vivid, colorful, narration-free nonfiction works alight on the daily labors and traditional customs of rural workers and their families, bringing out their rituals with such focused determination that they become almost dreamlike. Watching these films together creates a mesmeric immersion into a time, place, and cinema itself. Titles include Lu tempu di li pisci spata (1954), Isole di fuoco (1954), Pasqua in Sicilia (1955), Surfarara (1955), Contadini del mare (1955), Parabola d’oro (1955), Un giorno in Barbagia (1958), Pescherecci (1958), Pastori di orgosolo (1958), and I dimenticati (1959). Restored by the Cineteca di Bologna at L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory and The Film Foundation, with funding provided by the George Lucas Family Foundation.

[Chris Knipp]

The NYFF begins today, Sept. 27, 2019.

I will be attending and reviewing some of the selections right away, others later. Manhola Dargis of the NYTimes gives her opinions of the Main Slate selections and the festival HERE.

“Every fall, the New York Film Festival arrives to remind you of the pleasures of sitting in the dark with a community of movie nuts as new worlds and visions open your mind and blow it. This year’s edition—153 movies, two dozen talks, assorted free events—offers plenty of chances for mind-and-spirit expansion with new and old movies, short and long . . . the festival’s exceptionalism stems not just from Lincoln Center and the city itself but also from its longevity (this is the 57th edition) and ethos of selective programming. Curation is crucial, and is the main reason that while other fests appear overly eager to be part of the Oscar race, New York still seems to hover above the fray, even with its photo calls and red carpet.”

continue reading

[Chris Knipp]

PAIN AND GLORY/DOLOR Y GLORIA (Pedro Almodóvar 2019)

As many know - it's been extensively written about since Cannes - Pain and Glory is a solemn, beautiful kind of summing up for Almodóvar, with a powerful, subtle performance by Antonio Banderas in the lead role as a movie director going through a life and career crisis.

It comes out theatrically in the US next Fri., Oct. 4, 2019. A lovely, moving film.

[Chris Knipp]

Wild Goose Lake

Coming tomorrow: The Wild Goose Lake 南方车站的聚会 Chinese director Diao Yinan's much anticipated follow-up to his breakthrough noir Black Coal. Jessica Kiang of Variety called it "sumptuously sleazy" but thought it was more style than substance. I thought that with Black Coal, but I can find gorgeous visual style very seductive sometimes. However, my initial prediction here,"From everything I have heard and seen about it I will probably love this new film. . ." may have been overoptimistic.

[Chris Knipp]

THE IRISHMAN (Martin Scorsese 2019).

It opened the NYFF Friday night, the official world premiere. I have not seen it yet. It will be Out in theaters November 1 and on Netflix streaming November 27. It is said to be redolent of Scorese's signature gangster movie style and the current review consensus is a rave, Metascore 92%, no less. Scorsese's "next masterpiece," somebody said. "Coldly enthralling, says Variety. I think it will be big fun for everyone who loves Scorsese.

[Chris Knipp]

THE WILD GOOSE LAKE 南方车站的聚会 (Diao Yinan 2019).

Found this somehow insufficiently moving in terms of classic noir, but the mise-en-scène, score, sound design, glowing neon, young men in gaudy T shirts, busy rain machine, and snappy action conspire to make this an arty Asian B picture to beat all. And the mostly young Chinese audience in Alice Tully Hall seemed to be enjoying it very much too and make this American premiere of the Cannes Competition film a festive occasion. Current Metascore 72%.

[Chris Knipp]

COMING NEXT (probably): SYNONYMS (SYNONYMES) (Nadav Lapid 2019)

This Main Slate NYFF film is the third feature from the Israeli director of Policeman and The Kindergarten Teacher. It's about a young Israeli who rejects his country and goes to France to become French. Ir won the Golden Bear at Berlin and is being distributed by Kino Lorber and it's coming to selected US theaters October 25th.


Tom Mercier in Synonymes