Press release
49TH NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL
MAIN SLATE - Films & Descriptions
4:44: LAST DAY ON EARTH
Dir. by Abel Ferrara, 2011, USA,
82min
How would we spend our final hours on Earth?
And what does how we choose to die say about how we have chosen to live?
In the hands of the inimitable Abel Ferrara (Go Go Tales, NYFF '07), this thought experiment takes on a visceral immediacy.
With the planet on the verge of extinction, a New York couple (Willem Dafoe and Shanyn Leigh) cycle through moments of anxiety, ecstacy, and torpor. As they sink into the havens of sex and art, and Skype last goodbyes in a Lower East Side apartment filled with screens bearing tidings of doom and salvation, the film becomes one of Ferrara’s most potent and intimate expressions of spiritual crisis.
An apocalyptic trance film, 4:44 is also a mournful valentine to Ferrara’s beloved New York: the director’s first fiction feature to be filmed entirely in the city in over a decade, and coming 10 years after the September 11 attacks, a haunting vision of doom in the lower Manhattan skyline.
THE ARTIST
Dir. by Michel Hazanavicius, 2011, France, 90min
An honest-to-goodness black-and-white silent picture made by modern French
filmmakers in Hollywood, USA, “The Artist” is a spirited, hilarious and moving
delight. A sensation in Cannes, Michel Hazanavicius' playful love letter to the
movies' early days spins on a variation on an “A Star Is Born”-like relationship
between a dashing Douglas Fairbanks-style star (Jean Dujardin, who won the best
actor prize in Cannes) whose career wanes with the coming of sound and a
dazzling young actress (Berenice Bejo) whose popularity skyrockets at the same
time. Meticulously made in the 1.33 aspect ratio with intertitles and a superb
score, “The Artist” has great fun with silent film conventions just as it
rigorously adheres to them, turning its abundant love for the look and ethos of
the 1920s into a treat that will be warmly embraced by movie lovers of every
persuasion. With James Cromwell, Penelope Ann Miller and John Goodman as a
definitive cigar-chomping studio boss.
CARNAGE
Dir. by Roman Polanski, 2011, France/Germany/Poland
Summoning up the sinister from beneath the veneer of normalcy has always
been Roman Polanski's specialty, so it's no surprise that the great director
does such a smashing job of putting Yasmina Reza's 2009 Tony-winning play “God
of Carnage” on the screen. With the expert cast of Jodie Foster, Kate Winslet,
Christopher Waltz and John C. Reilly, Reza's explosively comic X-ray of the
anger and venality lying just under the surface of the outwardly civilized
behavior of two New York City couples has been fully realized. Returning to the
New York Film Festival with a feature for the first time since he presented his
debut work, Knife in the Water, at the very first festival in 1963, Polanski
pries open the true nature of these characters in something of a companion piece
to his previous New York-set film, “Rosemary's Baby.” Although it was filmed in
Paris, the Brooklyn locale is as convincingly rendered as are the alternately
uproarious and devastating revelations of human nature.
CORPO CELESTE
Dir. by Alice Rohrwacher, 2011,
Italy/Switzerland/France, 100min
“Seeing the Spirit is like wearing really cool sunglasses,” according to the
instructor of 13-year old Marta’s (Yle Vianello) catechism class. Such
observations introduce Marta to the religious climate in the small seaside
Calabrian town to which she, her mother and older sister have just moved from
Switzerland. Marta is sent to the local church to prepare for her Catholic
confirmation and (hopefully) make some new friends. But the religion she finds
there is mainly strange: the way it dominates people’s lives is unlike anything
she’s ever experienced. Alice Rohrwacher’s extraordinarily impressive debut
feature chronicles Martha’s private duel with the Church, carried out under the
shadow of the physical changes coursing through her. Rohrwacher is not
interested in pointing out heroes and villains, but instead in offering a
perceptive look at how the once all-powerful Church has dealt with its waning
influence.
A DANGEROUS METHOD
Dir. by David Cronenberg, 2011,
France/Ireland/UK/Germany/Canada, 99min
David Cronenberg, a filmmaker with a peerless grasp on the mysteries of the
mind and the body, turns his attention to a seminal chapter in the founding of
psychoanalysis. Adapted from Christopher Hampton’s play A Talking Cure, A
Dangerous Method charts the relationship between Sigmund Freud (Viggo Mortensen)
and his protégé turned dissenter Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender), as it was
shaped by the case of Sabine Spielrein (Keira Knightley), a young Russian Jewish
patient of Jung’s. Cronenberg brilliantly dramatizes not just the rivalry and
rupture between two pioneers who defined a field but also the birth of their
groundbreaking theories of the unconscious and the forces of Eros and Thanatos.
Featuring an electrifying trio of lead actors, who turn near-mythic figures into
flesh and blood, this is a film of tremendous vigor and ambition, a historical
drama that brings ideas to life.
THE DESCENDANTS
Dir. by Alexander Payne, 2011, USA, 115min
In his first film since the Oscar-winning Sideways, writer-director
Alexander Payne once again proves himself a master of the kind of smart, sharp,
deeply felt comedy that was once the hallmark of Billy Wilder and Jean Renoir.
Based on the bestselling novel by Kaui Hart Hemmings, The Descendants stars
George Clooney as Matt King, the heir of a prominent Hawaiian land-owning family
whose life is turned upside-down when his wife is critically injured in a
boating accident. Accustomed to being “the back-up parent,” King suddenly finds
himself center stage in the lives of his two young daughters (excellent
newcomers Shailene Woodley and Amara Miller), while at the same time being
forced to decide the fate of a vast plot of unspoiled land his family has owned
since the 1860s. Rooted in Clooney’s beautifully understated performance,
Payne’s film is an uncommonly perceptive portrait of marriage, family and
community, suffused with humor and tragedy and wrapped in a warm human glow. A
Fox Searchlight release.
FOOTNOTE
Dir. by Joseph Cedar, 2011, Israel, 106min
Thanks to a clerical error, Eliezer Shkolnik, a respected if little-known
Talmudic scholar, is informed that he’s won the coveted Israel Prize; in
truth, the prize was meant for his son, Uziel, a much more flamboyant,
widely-read Talmudist. The authorities ask Uziel to help them rectify the
situation, but Uziel argues the case for his father’s deserving the honor;
meanwhile, Eliezer plans to use the occasion as an opportunity to intellectually
take down his son and the whole generation of a la mode Talmudists. Winner of
the prize for Best Screenplay at Cannes, New York born-and-trained Israeli
filmmaker Joseph Cedar has here created the wryest of Jewish comedies, an
emotional competition that pits father against son, built around the
understanding of sacred texts. Rarely has the weight of a culture’s intellectual
past been depicted so forecefully, nor shown to be as vibrant. A Sony Pictures
Classic release.
GEORGE HARRISON: LIVING IN THE MATERIAL WORLD
Dir. by Martin Scorsese, 2011, USA, 208min
Rich in mesmerizing archival footage, Martin Scorsese’s expansive
documentary on the Beatles’ lead guitarist—and of one of the greatest musicians
of the 1960s and ’70s—traces in detail all aspects of Harrison’s professional
and personal life. Friends (Eric Clapton, Eric Idle), family (wives Patti Boyd
and Olivia Harrison), and band mates (Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr) reflect on
Harrison’s mid-’60s embrace of Indian mysticism and music, which forever changed
the sound of the Fab Four. Harrison’s spirituality also defines his masterful
solo work, especially the 1970 triple album All Things Must Pass, produced by
Phil Spector, another subject interviewed in depth. Until his untimely death in
2001, Harrison remained fiercely committed to his music and other passions
(including film producing), earning the admiration of all who were lucky enough
to work with him.
GOODBYE FIRST LOVE
Dir. by Mia Hansen-Løve, 2011,
France/Germany, 108min
In her exceptional third feature, writer-director Mia Hansen-Løve (The
Father of My Children, ND/NF 2010) shows once again her talent for capturing the
agony and the ecstasy of adolescence. Besotted teenagers Sullivan (Sebastian
Urzendowsky) and Camille (Lola Créton) struggle, as all couples must, with a
painful push-pull dynamic, heightened by the young man’s decision to leave Paris
and travel through South America. Over the course of eight years, we watch
Camille, initially devastated by her boyfriend’s departure, emerge with new
passions, intellectual and otherwise. Touchingly illuminating the indelible
imprint that first romance leaves, Hansen-Løve’s film also explores the hard-won
satisfaction of leaving the past behind. A Sundance Selects release.
THE KID WITH A BIKE
Dir. by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, 2011,
Belgium/France, 87min
Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, the
latest film by Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne centers on Cyril, a restless
11-year-old boy (terrific newcomer Thomas Doret) placed in a children’s home
after being abandoned by his father. Unwilling to face the fact that parents are
imperfect people, Cyril runs away to his former apartment block in search of
both dad and his abandoned bicycle. Instead, he meets Samantha (the excellent
Cécile de France), a kind hairdresser who helps to retrieve his bike and
eventually agrees to become his weekend guardian. But literally and
figuratively, Cyril isn’t out of the woods just yet. Shooting once more in the
Belgian seaport town of Seraing, the Dardennes have created another poetic,
universally resonant drama about parents, children and moral responsibility. A
Sundance Selects release.
LE HAVRE
Dir. by Aki Kaurismäki, 2011, Finland/France/Germany,
103min
The latest deadpan treat from Aki Kaurismäki (The Man Without a Past, NYFF
'02) was inspired, the director has said, by his desire to have been born a
generation earlier, so that he could have witnessed the Resistance during World
War II. Thus Le Havre abounds with sly references to classic Resistance dramas
from Port of Shadows to Casablanca as it tells the whimsical tale of Marcel Marx
(André Wilms), a noted Parisian author now living in self-imposed exile in the
titular port city. Dividing most of his time between his neighborhood bar and
caring for his bedridden wife (longtime Kaurismaki muse Kati Outinen), Marcel
finds himself alive with a new sense of purpose when he comes to the aid of a
young African on the run from immigration police and trying to reunite with his
mother in London. Beautifully shot in Kaurismaki’s signature shades of muted
blue, brown and green, with scene-stealing appearances by French New Wave icon
Jean-Pierre Léaud and a dog named Laika, Le Havre is a gentle yet profound
comedy of friendship, random acts of kindness and small acts of revolution. A
Janus Films release.
THE LONELIEST PLANET
Dir. by Julia Loktev, 2011, USA/Germany,
113min
This staggeringly acute examination of the fissures that develop between
couples from Julia Loktev (Day Night Day Night, ND/NF 2007) proves that even the
most wide-open spaces can feel suffocating during romantic discord. Nica (Hani
Furstenberg) and Alex (Gael García Bernal), a few months away from their
wedding, take a hiking trip in the Caucasus in Georgia, led by tour guide Dato
(Bidzina Gujabidze). Nica and Alex appear to be completely in-sync partners,
wildly attracted to each other and sharing the same interests. But a
split-second decision by Alex proves horrifying to Nica and sets off
impenetrable, stony silences. In a film in which so much is communicated
nonverbally, Furstenberg and Bernal astoundingly uncover the toxic, erosive
effects of disappointment and resentment.
MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE
Dir. by Sean Durkin, 2011, USA,
101min
Sean Durkin’s haunting first feature, about a young woman’s halting attempts
to undo the psychic terror of the cult she’s just escaped, heralds the arrival
of a remarkable new talent. Fleeing a Manson-like Catskills compound at dawn,
Martha (Elizabeth Olsen, leading an excellent cast) reconnects with her older
sister, Lucy (Sarah Paulson), a bourgeois New Yorker who takes in her sibling at
the Connecticut country house she shares with her husband, Ted (Hugh Dancy).
Lucy remains unaware of exactly what happened to Martha over the past few
years—details that Durkin slowly but powerfully unveils in uncanny, disorienting
flashbacks. The film’s gorgeous, painterly compositions have the chilling effect
of suggesting that even our worst nightmares still retain a seductive allure. A
Fox Searchlight release.
MELANCHOLIA
Dir. by Lars von Trier, 2011,
Denmark/Sweden/France/Germany/Italy, 135min
The end of the world—and the collapse of the spirit—has never been depicted
as beautifully and wrenchingly as in Melancholia, the latest provocation from
Lars von Trier (Antichrist, NYFF '09). The title refers both to a destructive
planet “that has been hiding behind the sun” and the crippling depression of new
bride Justine (a revelatory Kirsten Dunst, rightful winner of the Best Actress
award at Cannes this year), whose mental illness is so severe that she drives
away her groom during their disastrous wedding reception. As the extinction of
the planet looms ever larger, Justine is desperately tended to by her sister,
Claire (an equally magnificent Charlotte Gainsbourg), herself gripped by anxiety
over the impending doomsday. Melancholia’s premise may be science fiction, but
the feelings of despair it plumbs are the most heart-felt human drama. A
Magnolia Pictures release.
MISS BALA
Dir. by Gerardo Naranjo, 2011, Mexico, 113min
One of the most exciting young talents around, the Mexican director Gerardo
Naranjo (I'm Gonna Explode, NYFF '08) approaches the hot-button topic of drug
violence through the perspective of an unlikely, unwitting heroine: a Tijuana
beauty pageant contestant (Stephanie Sigman) who stumbles into the path of
ruthless cartel operatives and corrupt officials. Although inspired by a true
story, Miss Bala avoids docudrama cliches and tabloid sensationalism, and
instead evokes the pervasive climate of fear and confusion that has enveloped
daily life in some increasingly lawless pockets of northern Mexico. Using long
takes and fluid, precise camera work, Naranjo fashions a highly original
thriller: an anguished and harrowing mood piece with an undertow of bleakly
absurdist humor and moments of heart-stopping action.
MY WEEK WITH MARILYN
Dir. by Simon Curtis, 2011, UK
One of the most exciting actresses working today, Michelle Williams
accomplishes the near-impossible—portraying Marilyn Monroe as an actual person,
not just an easily caricatured icon—in this charming bio-pic centering around
the production of Laurence Olivier's film The Prince and the Showgirl. Based on
two memoirs by Colin Clark (Eddie Redmayne), who worked as an assistant on
Olivier’s film, My Week With Marilyn depicts Monroe’s numerous clashes with her
imperious, classically trained director (played with great relish by Kenneth
Branagh), maddened by his star’s method acting and her ever-present drama coach,
Paula Strasberg (Zoë Wanamaker). Williams captures not only Monroe’s notorious
fragility, both on-screen and off-, but also her magical, unclassifiable
charisma. A Weinstein Company release.
ONCE UPON A TIME IN ANATOLIA
Dir. by Nuri Bilge Ceylan, 2011,
Turkey, 150min
Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes, Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s latest begins
as a small caravan of cars snakes its way through the nocturnal countryside,
looking for where a murdered man was buried. Yet every time the confessed killer
points out the grave, the gravediggers come up empty; much of the landscape
looks alike, it’s dark out, and anyway the killer claims he was drunk. As the
increasingly frustrating investigation wears on, far more is revealed than where
the body is buried; through quick looks, furtive gestures and offhand bits of
dialogue, Ceylan (Climates, NYFF 2006) reveals in this seemingly pacific Turkish
outback a festering world of jealousies and resentments, as the story behind the
murder gradually emerges. Impeccably photographed (by Gökhan Tiryaki) and with a
stand-out performance by Taner Birsel as a police inspector, this is Ceylan’s
most impressive film yet.
PINA
Dir. by Wim Wenders, 2011, Germany/France/UK, 106min
Here revolutionizing the dance film just as he did the music documentary in
Buena Vista Social Club, Wim Wenders began planning this project with legendary
choreographer Pina Bausch in the months before her untimely death, selecting the
pieces to be filmed and discussing the filmmaking strategy. Impressed by recent
innovations in 3D, Wenders decided to experiment with the format for this
tribute to Bausch and her Tanztheater Wuppertal; the result sets the standard
against which all future uses of 3D to record performance will be measured. Not
only are the beauty and sheer exhilaration of the dances and dancers powerfully
rendered, but the film also captures the sense of the world that Bausch so
brilliantly expressed in all her pieces. Longtime members of the Tanztheater
recreate many of their original roles in such seminal works as “Café Müller,”
“Le Sacred du Printemps,” and “Kontakthof.” A Sundance Selects release.
PLAY
Dir. by Ruben Östlund, 2011, Sweden/Rance/Denmark,
124min
A deliberately provoked racial incident, based on numerous similar real-life
transgressions, is played for all it's worth in “Play.” Swedish writer-director
Ruben Östlund has developed mesmerizing visual strategies based on long takes
and fixed camera positions to relate a disturbing tale of how five savvy African
immigrant boys in Gothenberg take advantage of the liberal guilt and placating
temperament of three local kids to rob them and take them for a ride to unknown
destinations. Social, racial and political credos are twisted, pulled inside out
and stood on their head by this bracing and confronting work, which will
challenge the assumptions of many a viewer. Dazzlingly shot on the new Red 4K
camera, “Play” is a considerable achievement both formally and dramatically that
poses more questions than it answers as it lays bare attitudes lurking beneath
the surface tranquility of Scandinavian life—a peacefulness that, as we have
seen of late, can sometimes be tragically shattered.
POLICEMAN
Dir. by Nadav Lapid, 2011, Israel/France, 100min
A boldly conceived drama pivoting on the initially unrelated activities of
an elite anti-terrorist police unit and some wealthy young anarchists,
“Policeman” is a striking first feature from writer-director Nadav Lapid.
Provocatively timely in light of recent unrest tied to social and economic
inequities in Israel, this is a powerfully physical film in its depiction of the
muscular, borderline sensual way the macho cops relate to one another, as well
as for the emphatic style with which the opposing societal forces are contrasted
and finally pitted against one another. Although the youthful revolutionaries
come off as petulant and spoiled, their point about the growing gap between the
Israeli haves and have-nots cannot be ignored, even by the policemen sent on a
rare mission to engage fellow countrymen rather than Palestinians. A winner of
three prizes at the Jerusalem Film Festival and a special jury prize at
Locarno.
A SEPARATION
Dir. by Asghar Farhadi, 2011, Iran, 123min
A critical and audience favorite at this year's Berlin Film Festival, where
it won the Golden Bear as well as acting prizes for all four lead performers, A
Separation is an Iranian Rashomon of searing family drama that turns into an
unexpectedly gripping legal thriller. The film, directed by Asghar Farhadi,
begins with married couple Simin (Leila Hatami) and Nader (Peyman Moadi)
obtaining coveted visas to leave Iran for the United States, where Simin hopes
to offer a better future to their 11-year-old daughter. But Nader doesn’t feel
comfortable abandoning his elderly, Alzheimer’s-stricken father, and so the
couple embark on a trial separation. To help care for the old man, Nader hires
Razieh (Sareh Bayat), a pregnant, deeply religious woman who takes the job
unbeknownst to her husband (Shahab Hosseini), an out-of-work cobbler. Almost
immediately there are complications, culminating in a sudden burst of violence
that constantly challenges our own perceptions of who (if anyone) is to blame
and what really happened.
SHAME
Dir. by Steve McQueen, 2011, UK, 99min
In his much-anticipated encore to his superb first feature, “Hunger,”
British artist Steve McQueen reunites with the extraordinary Michael Fassbender
in the ferociously sexual drama “Shame.” An explosive portrait of a sex addict
walking a tightrope between presentable respectability and the wild side, this
incendiary drama captures the anger and the ecstasy of its anti-hero's incessant
drive for conquest in contemporary New York, where any woman he meets he
believes is ripe for the taking. Madly attractive but with cruelly cold eyes,
this compulsive Casanova finds his style cramped by the abrupt arrival of his
unstable sister (Cary Mulligan), whose insecurities crack open issues of his
own. Daring, stylistically brilliant and erotically charged, McQueen's heady,
beautiful and disturbing film seems as determined to leave the viewer unsettled
as it will surely serve to further propel Fassbender into the front ranks of
contemporary screen actors.
SLEEPING SICKNESS
Dir. by Ulrich Köhler, 2011,
Germany/France/Netherlands, 91min
This remarkably assured third feature by the young German director Ulrich
Köhler—winner of Best Director at this year’s Berlin Film Festival—transports us
to Cameroon, where German doctor Ebbo (Pierre Bokma) and his wife have spent two
decades combating an epidemic of sleeping sickness in the local villages. Soon,
they will return to Europe and to lives long ago put on hold, and this has
created a crisis for Ebbo, who, like Joseph Conrad’s Kurtz, has spent too much
time up river to ever come back down. Meanwhile, a young black doctor—a
Frenchman born to Congolese parents—travels to Africa to evaluate the efficiency
of Ebbo’s program. But when he arrives, nothing goes according to plan, and
despite his heritage, he feels very much a stranger in a strange land. Finally,
the two subjects of this haunting meditation on Africa’s past and future
dovetail—effortlessly, seamlessly—and the cumulative impact is stunning.
THE SKIN I LIVE IN
Dir. by Pedro Almodóvar, 2011, Spain,
113min
At “The Cinema Inside Me” program at the 2009 NYFF, Pedro Almodóvar
surprised many when he spoke of his great love for American horror and science
fiction films—a clue, it turns out, to what he was then just planning. With his
new film, Almodóvar ventures headlong into those very genres. Dr. Robert
Ledgard (a welcome return for Antonio Banderas) is a world famous plastic
surgeon who argues for the development of new, tougher human skin; unbeknownst
to others, Dr. Ledgard has been trying to put his theory into practice, keeping
a young woman, Vera (Elena Anaya), imprisoned in his mansion while subjecting
her to an increasingly bizarre regime of treatments. Fascinated by the thin
layer of appearance that stands between our perception of someone and that
person’s inner essence, Almodóvar here addresses that continuing theme in his
work in a bold, unsettling exploration of identity. A Sony Pictures Classic
release.
THE STUDENT
Dir. by Santiago Mitre, 2011, Argentina, 110min
Politics is a game, a seduction, and a vicious cycle in Santiago Mitre’s
gripping, fine-tuned debut, the story of Roque (Esteban Lamothe), a university
student who falls for a radicalized teacher and organizer (Romina Paula) and
soon finds himself entangled with Buenos Aires campus activists, in a world as
heated and byzantine as the one inhabited by the student revolutionaries of the
mythic 1960s. Anchored by Lamothe’s nuanced, charismatic performance, The
Student complicates the classic bildungsroman narrative of education and
disillusionment, emphasizing the endless adaptability—or malleability—of its
protagonist. An urgent attempt to grapple with the legacy of Peronism in
present-day Argentina, the film abounds with telling details and rich local
color. But it’s also a truly universal political thriller, one that illuminates
the conspiratorial pleasure, the ruthless hustle, and the moral fog of politics
as it is practiced.
THIS IS NOT A FILM
Dir. by Jafar Panahi and Mojtaba Mirtahmasb,
2011, Iran, 75min
Accused of collusion against the Iranian regime and currently appealing a
prison sentence and a ban from filmmaking, Jafar Panahi (a four-time NYFF
veteran with films like Offside and Crimson Gold) collaborated with the
documentarian Mojtaba Mirtahmasb on a remarkable day-in-the-life chronicle that,
as with many great Iranian films, finds a rich middle ground between fiction and
reality. Shot with a digital camera and an iPhone, the movie is almost entirely
confined to the director’s apartment, where he discusses his films and an
unrealized script, while the outside world imposes itself through phone calls,
television news, a few comic interruptions, and the sound of New Year’s
fireworks. Far more than the modest home movie it initially seems to be, This Is
Not a Film is an act of courage and a statement of political and moral
conviction: surprising, radical, and enormously moving.
THE TURIN HORSE
Dir. by Béla Tarr and Agnes Hranitzky, 2011,
Hungary/France/Germany/Switzerland/USA, 146min
After witnessing a carriage driver whipping his horse, the philosopher
Friedrich Nietzsche ran to the scene, threw his arms around the horse and then
collapsed; he would spend the next, final ten years of his life in almost total
silence. Focusing not on Nietzsche but on the driver and his family, Béla Tarr
(Satantango, NYFF 1994) and his longtime collaborator Agnes Hranitzky, working
from a screenplay by Tarr and novelist László Krasznhorkai, create a
mesmerizing, provocative meditation on the unsettling connectedness of things,
in which the resonance of actions and gestures continues long after their actual
occurrence. Beautifully photographed (by Fred Kelemen) on the austere,
unforgiving Hungarian plain lands, The Turin Horse challenges us to enter into a
world just beyond the one we experience daily. Winner of the Silver Bear at this
year’s Berlin Film Festival. A Cinema Guild release.
Film Society of Lincoln Center
Under the leadership of Rose Kuo, Executive Director, and Richard Peña,
Program Director, the Film Society of Lincoln Center offers the best in
international, classic and cutting-edge independent cinema. The Film Society
presents two film festivals that attract global attention: the New York Film
Festival, currently planning its 49th edition, and New Directors/New Films
which, since its founding in 1972, has been produced in collaboration with MoMA.
The Film Society also publishes the award-winning Film Comment Magazine, and for
over three decades has given an annual award—now named “The Chaplin Award”—to a
major figure in world cinema. Past recipients of this award include Charlie
Chaplin, Alfred Hitchcock, Martin Scorsese, Meryl Streep, and Tom Hanks. The
Film Society presents a year-round calendar of programming, panels, lectures,
educational programs and specialty film releases at its Walter Reade Theater and
the new state-of-the-art Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
49TH NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL
MAIN SLATE - Films & Descriptions
4:44: LAST DAY ON EARTH
Dir. by Abel Ferrara, 2011, USA,
82min
How would we spend our final hours on Earth?
And what does how we choose to die say about how we have chosen to live?
In the hands of the inimitable Abel Ferrara (Go Go Tales, NYFF '07), this thought experiment takes on a visceral immediacy.
With the planet on the verge of extinction, a New York couple (Willem Dafoe and Shanyn Leigh) cycle through moments of anxiety, ecstacy, and torpor. As they sink into the havens of sex and art, and Skype last goodbyes in a Lower East Side apartment filled with screens bearing tidings of doom and salvation, the film becomes one of Ferrara’s most potent and intimate expressions of spiritual crisis.
An apocalyptic trance film, 4:44 is also a mournful valentine to Ferrara’s beloved New York: the director’s first fiction feature to be filmed entirely in the city in over a decade, and coming 10 years after the September 11 attacks, a haunting vision of doom in the lower Manhattan skyline.
THE ARTIST
Dir. by Michel Hazanavicius, 2011, France, 90min
An honest-to-goodness black-and-white silent picture made by modern French
filmmakers in Hollywood, USA, “The Artist” is a spirited, hilarious and moving
delight. A sensation in Cannes, Michel Hazanavicius' playful love letter to the
movies' early days spins on a variation on an “A Star Is Born”-like relationship
between a dashing Douglas Fairbanks-style star (Jean Dujardin, who won the best
actor prize in Cannes) whose career wanes with the coming of sound and a
dazzling young actress (Berenice Bejo) whose popularity skyrockets at the same
time. Meticulously made in the 1.33 aspect ratio with intertitles and a superb
score, “The Artist” has great fun with silent film conventions just as it
rigorously adheres to them, turning its abundant love for the look and ethos of
the 1920s into a treat that will be warmly embraced by movie lovers of every
persuasion. With James Cromwell, Penelope Ann Miller and John Goodman as a
definitive cigar-chomping studio boss.
CARNAGE
Dir. by Roman Polanski, 2011, France/Germany/Poland
Summoning up the sinister from beneath the veneer of normalcy has always
been Roman Polanski's specialty, so it's no surprise that the great director
does such a smashing job of putting Yasmina Reza's 2009 Tony-winning play “God
of Carnage” on the screen. With the expert cast of Jodie Foster, Kate Winslet,
Christopher Waltz and John C. Reilly, Reza's explosively comic X-ray of the
anger and venality lying just under the surface of the outwardly civilized
behavior of two New York City couples has been fully realized. Returning to the
New York Film Festival with a feature for the first time since he presented his
debut work, Knife in the Water, at the very first festival in 1963, Polanski
pries open the true nature of these characters in something of a companion piece
to his previous New York-set film, “Rosemary's Baby.” Although it was filmed in
Paris, the Brooklyn locale is as convincingly rendered as are the alternately
uproarious and devastating revelations of human nature.
CORPO CELESTE
Dir. by Alice Rohrwacher, 2011,
Italy/Switzerland/France, 100min
“Seeing the Spirit is like wearing really cool sunglasses,” according to the
instructor of 13-year old Marta’s (Yle Vianello) catechism class. Such
observations introduce Marta to the religious climate in the small seaside
Calabrian town to which she, her mother and older sister have just moved from
Switzerland. Marta is sent to the local church to prepare for her Catholic
confirmation and (hopefully) make some new friends. But the religion she finds
there is mainly strange: the way it dominates people’s lives is unlike anything
she’s ever experienced. Alice Rohrwacher’s extraordinarily impressive debut
feature chronicles Martha’s private duel with the Church, carried out under the
shadow of the physical changes coursing through her. Rohrwacher is not
interested in pointing out heroes and villains, but instead in offering a
perceptive look at how the once all-powerful Church has dealt with its waning
influence.
A DANGEROUS METHOD
Dir. by David Cronenberg, 2011,
France/Ireland/UK/Germany/Canada, 99min
David Cronenberg, a filmmaker with a peerless grasp on the mysteries of the
mind and the body, turns his attention to a seminal chapter in the founding of
psychoanalysis. Adapted from Christopher Hampton’s play A Talking Cure, A
Dangerous Method charts the relationship between Sigmund Freud (Viggo Mortensen)
and his protégé turned dissenter Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender), as it was
shaped by the case of Sabine Spielrein (Keira Knightley), a young Russian Jewish
patient of Jung’s. Cronenberg brilliantly dramatizes not just the rivalry and
rupture between two pioneers who defined a field but also the birth of their
groundbreaking theories of the unconscious and the forces of Eros and Thanatos.
Featuring an electrifying trio of lead actors, who turn near-mythic figures into
flesh and blood, this is a film of tremendous vigor and ambition, a historical
drama that brings ideas to life.
THE DESCENDANTS
Dir. by Alexander Payne, 2011, USA, 115min
In his first film since the Oscar-winning Sideways, writer-director
Alexander Payne once again proves himself a master of the kind of smart, sharp,
deeply felt comedy that was once the hallmark of Billy Wilder and Jean Renoir.
Based on the bestselling novel by Kaui Hart Hemmings, The Descendants stars
George Clooney as Matt King, the heir of a prominent Hawaiian land-owning family
whose life is turned upside-down when his wife is critically injured in a
boating accident. Accustomed to being “the back-up parent,” King suddenly finds
himself center stage in the lives of his two young daughters (excellent
newcomers Shailene Woodley and Amara Miller), while at the same time being
forced to decide the fate of a vast plot of unspoiled land his family has owned
since the 1860s. Rooted in Clooney’s beautifully understated performance,
Payne’s film is an uncommonly perceptive portrait of marriage, family and
community, suffused with humor and tragedy and wrapped in a warm human glow. A
Fox Searchlight release.
FOOTNOTE
Dir. by Joseph Cedar, 2011, Israel, 106min
Thanks to a clerical error, Eliezer Shkolnik, a respected if little-known
Talmudic scholar, is informed that he’s won the coveted Israel Prize; in
truth, the prize was meant for his son, Uziel, a much more flamboyant,
widely-read Talmudist. The authorities ask Uziel to help them rectify the
situation, but Uziel argues the case for his father’s deserving the honor;
meanwhile, Eliezer plans to use the occasion as an opportunity to intellectually
take down his son and the whole generation of a la mode Talmudists. Winner of
the prize for Best Screenplay at Cannes, New York born-and-trained Israeli
filmmaker Joseph Cedar has here created the wryest of Jewish comedies, an
emotional competition that pits father against son, built around the
understanding of sacred texts. Rarely has the weight of a culture’s intellectual
past been depicted so forecefully, nor shown to be as vibrant. A Sony Pictures
Classic release.
GEORGE HARRISON: LIVING IN THE MATERIAL WORLD
Dir. by Martin Scorsese, 2011, USA, 208min
Rich in mesmerizing archival footage, Martin Scorsese’s expansive
documentary on the Beatles’ lead guitarist—and of one of the greatest musicians
of the 1960s and ’70s—traces in detail all aspects of Harrison’s professional
and personal life. Friends (Eric Clapton, Eric Idle), family (wives Patti Boyd
and Olivia Harrison), and band mates (Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr) reflect on
Harrison’s mid-’60s embrace of Indian mysticism and music, which forever changed
the sound of the Fab Four. Harrison’s spirituality also defines his masterful
solo work, especially the 1970 triple album All Things Must Pass, produced by
Phil Spector, another subject interviewed in depth. Until his untimely death in
2001, Harrison remained fiercely committed to his music and other passions
(including film producing), earning the admiration of all who were lucky enough
to work with him.
GOODBYE FIRST LOVE
Dir. by Mia Hansen-Løve, 2011,
France/Germany, 108min
In her exceptional third feature, writer-director Mia Hansen-Løve (The
Father of My Children, ND/NF 2010) shows once again her talent for capturing the
agony and the ecstasy of adolescence. Besotted teenagers Sullivan (Sebastian
Urzendowsky) and Camille (Lola Créton) struggle, as all couples must, with a
painful push-pull dynamic, heightened by the young man’s decision to leave Paris
and travel through South America. Over the course of eight years, we watch
Camille, initially devastated by her boyfriend’s departure, emerge with new
passions, intellectual and otherwise. Touchingly illuminating the indelible
imprint that first romance leaves, Hansen-Løve’s film also explores the hard-won
satisfaction of leaving the past behind. A Sundance Selects release.
THE KID WITH A BIKE
Dir. by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, 2011,
Belgium/France, 87min
Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, the
latest film by Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne centers on Cyril, a restless
11-year-old boy (terrific newcomer Thomas Doret) placed in a children’s home
after being abandoned by his father. Unwilling to face the fact that parents are
imperfect people, Cyril runs away to his former apartment block in search of
both dad and his abandoned bicycle. Instead, he meets Samantha (the excellent
Cécile de France), a kind hairdresser who helps to retrieve his bike and
eventually agrees to become his weekend guardian. But literally and
figuratively, Cyril isn’t out of the woods just yet. Shooting once more in the
Belgian seaport town of Seraing, the Dardennes have created another poetic,
universally resonant drama about parents, children and moral responsibility. A
Sundance Selects release.
LE HAVRE
Dir. by Aki Kaurismäki, 2011, Finland/France/Germany,
103min
The latest deadpan treat from Aki Kaurismäki (The Man Without a Past, NYFF
'02) was inspired, the director has said, by his desire to have been born a
generation earlier, so that he could have witnessed the Resistance during World
War II. Thus Le Havre abounds with sly references to classic Resistance dramas
from Port of Shadows to Casablanca as it tells the whimsical tale of Marcel Marx
(André Wilms), a noted Parisian author now living in self-imposed exile in the
titular port city. Dividing most of his time between his neighborhood bar and
caring for his bedridden wife (longtime Kaurismaki muse Kati Outinen), Marcel
finds himself alive with a new sense of purpose when he comes to the aid of a
young African on the run from immigration police and trying to reunite with his
mother in London. Beautifully shot in Kaurismaki’s signature shades of muted
blue, brown and green, with scene-stealing appearances by French New Wave icon
Jean-Pierre Léaud and a dog named Laika, Le Havre is a gentle yet profound
comedy of friendship, random acts of kindness and small acts of revolution. A
Janus Films release.
THE LONELIEST PLANET
Dir. by Julia Loktev, 2011, USA/Germany,
113min
This staggeringly acute examination of the fissures that develop between
couples from Julia Loktev (Day Night Day Night, ND/NF 2007) proves that even the
most wide-open spaces can feel suffocating during romantic discord. Nica (Hani
Furstenberg) and Alex (Gael García Bernal), a few months away from their
wedding, take a hiking trip in the Caucasus in Georgia, led by tour guide Dato
(Bidzina Gujabidze). Nica and Alex appear to be completely in-sync partners,
wildly attracted to each other and sharing the same interests. But a
split-second decision by Alex proves horrifying to Nica and sets off
impenetrable, stony silences. In a film in which so much is communicated
nonverbally, Furstenberg and Bernal astoundingly uncover the toxic, erosive
effects of disappointment and resentment.
MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE
Dir. by Sean Durkin, 2011, USA,
101min
Sean Durkin’s haunting first feature, about a young woman’s halting attempts
to undo the psychic terror of the cult she’s just escaped, heralds the arrival
of a remarkable new talent. Fleeing a Manson-like Catskills compound at dawn,
Martha (Elizabeth Olsen, leading an excellent cast) reconnects with her older
sister, Lucy (Sarah Paulson), a bourgeois New Yorker who takes in her sibling at
the Connecticut country house she shares with her husband, Ted (Hugh Dancy).
Lucy remains unaware of exactly what happened to Martha over the past few
years—details that Durkin slowly but powerfully unveils in uncanny, disorienting
flashbacks. The film’s gorgeous, painterly compositions have the chilling effect
of suggesting that even our worst nightmares still retain a seductive allure. A
Fox Searchlight release.
MELANCHOLIA
Dir. by Lars von Trier, 2011,
Denmark/Sweden/France/Germany/Italy, 135min
The end of the world—and the collapse of the spirit—has never been depicted
as beautifully and wrenchingly as in Melancholia, the latest provocation from
Lars von Trier (Antichrist, NYFF '09). The title refers both to a destructive
planet “that has been hiding behind the sun” and the crippling depression of new
bride Justine (a revelatory Kirsten Dunst, rightful winner of the Best Actress
award at Cannes this year), whose mental illness is so severe that she drives
away her groom during their disastrous wedding reception. As the extinction of
the planet looms ever larger, Justine is desperately tended to by her sister,
Claire (an equally magnificent Charlotte Gainsbourg), herself gripped by anxiety
over the impending doomsday. Melancholia’s premise may be science fiction, but
the feelings of despair it plumbs are the most heart-felt human drama. A
Magnolia Pictures release.
MISS BALA
Dir. by Gerardo Naranjo, 2011, Mexico, 113min
One of the most exciting young talents around, the Mexican director Gerardo
Naranjo (I'm Gonna Explode, NYFF '08) approaches the hot-button topic of drug
violence through the perspective of an unlikely, unwitting heroine: a Tijuana
beauty pageant contestant (Stephanie Sigman) who stumbles into the path of
ruthless cartel operatives and corrupt officials. Although inspired by a true
story, Miss Bala avoids docudrama cliches and tabloid sensationalism, and
instead evokes the pervasive climate of fear and confusion that has enveloped
daily life in some increasingly lawless pockets of northern Mexico. Using long
takes and fluid, precise camera work, Naranjo fashions a highly original
thriller: an anguished and harrowing mood piece with an undertow of bleakly
absurdist humor and moments of heart-stopping action.
MY WEEK WITH MARILYN
Dir. by Simon Curtis, 2011, UK
One of the most exciting actresses working today, Michelle Williams
accomplishes the near-impossible—portraying Marilyn Monroe as an actual person,
not just an easily caricatured icon—in this charming bio-pic centering around
the production of Laurence Olivier's film The Prince and the Showgirl. Based on
two memoirs by Colin Clark (Eddie Redmayne), who worked as an assistant on
Olivier’s film, My Week With Marilyn depicts Monroe’s numerous clashes with her
imperious, classically trained director (played with great relish by Kenneth
Branagh), maddened by his star’s method acting and her ever-present drama coach,
Paula Strasberg (Zoë Wanamaker). Williams captures not only Monroe’s notorious
fragility, both on-screen and off-, but also her magical, unclassifiable
charisma. A Weinstein Company release.
ONCE UPON A TIME IN ANATOLIA
Dir. by Nuri Bilge Ceylan, 2011,
Turkey, 150min
Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes, Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s latest begins
as a small caravan of cars snakes its way through the nocturnal countryside,
looking for where a murdered man was buried. Yet every time the confessed killer
points out the grave, the gravediggers come up empty; much of the landscape
looks alike, it’s dark out, and anyway the killer claims he was drunk. As the
increasingly frustrating investigation wears on, far more is revealed than where
the body is buried; through quick looks, furtive gestures and offhand bits of
dialogue, Ceylan (Climates, NYFF 2006) reveals in this seemingly pacific Turkish
outback a festering world of jealousies and resentments, as the story behind the
murder gradually emerges. Impeccably photographed (by Gökhan Tiryaki) and with a
stand-out performance by Taner Birsel as a police inspector, this is Ceylan’s
most impressive film yet.
PINA
Dir. by Wim Wenders, 2011, Germany/France/UK, 106min
Here revolutionizing the dance film just as he did the music documentary in
Buena Vista Social Club, Wim Wenders began planning this project with legendary
choreographer Pina Bausch in the months before her untimely death, selecting the
pieces to be filmed and discussing the filmmaking strategy. Impressed by recent
innovations in 3D, Wenders decided to experiment with the format for this
tribute to Bausch and her Tanztheater Wuppertal; the result sets the standard
against which all future uses of 3D to record performance will be measured. Not
only are the beauty and sheer exhilaration of the dances and dancers powerfully
rendered, but the film also captures the sense of the world that Bausch so
brilliantly expressed in all her pieces. Longtime members of the Tanztheater
recreate many of their original roles in such seminal works as “Café Müller,”
“Le Sacred du Printemps,” and “Kontakthof.” A Sundance Selects release.
PLAY
Dir. by Ruben Östlund, 2011, Sweden/Rance/Denmark,
124min
A deliberately provoked racial incident, based on numerous similar real-life
transgressions, is played for all it's worth in “Play.” Swedish writer-director
Ruben Östlund has developed mesmerizing visual strategies based on long takes
and fixed camera positions to relate a disturbing tale of how five savvy African
immigrant boys in Gothenberg take advantage of the liberal guilt and placating
temperament of three local kids to rob them and take them for a ride to unknown
destinations. Social, racial and political credos are twisted, pulled inside out
and stood on their head by this bracing and confronting work, which will
challenge the assumptions of many a viewer. Dazzlingly shot on the new Red 4K
camera, “Play” is a considerable achievement both formally and dramatically that
poses more questions than it answers as it lays bare attitudes lurking beneath
the surface tranquility of Scandinavian life—a peacefulness that, as we have
seen of late, can sometimes be tragically shattered.
POLICEMAN
Dir. by Nadav Lapid, 2011, Israel/France, 100min
A boldly conceived drama pivoting on the initially unrelated activities of
an elite anti-terrorist police unit and some wealthy young anarchists,
“Policeman” is a striking first feature from writer-director Nadav Lapid.
Provocatively timely in light of recent unrest tied to social and economic
inequities in Israel, this is a powerfully physical film in its depiction of the
muscular, borderline sensual way the macho cops relate to one another, as well
as for the emphatic style with which the opposing societal forces are contrasted
and finally pitted against one another. Although the youthful revolutionaries
come off as petulant and spoiled, their point about the growing gap between the
Israeli haves and have-nots cannot be ignored, even by the policemen sent on a
rare mission to engage fellow countrymen rather than Palestinians. A winner of
three prizes at the Jerusalem Film Festival and a special jury prize at
Locarno.
A SEPARATION
Dir. by Asghar Farhadi, 2011, Iran, 123min
A critical and audience favorite at this year's Berlin Film Festival, where
it won the Golden Bear as well as acting prizes for all four lead performers, A
Separation is an Iranian Rashomon of searing family drama that turns into an
unexpectedly gripping legal thriller. The film, directed by Asghar Farhadi,
begins with married couple Simin (Leila Hatami) and Nader (Peyman Moadi)
obtaining coveted visas to leave Iran for the United States, where Simin hopes
to offer a better future to their 11-year-old daughter. But Nader doesn’t feel
comfortable abandoning his elderly, Alzheimer’s-stricken father, and so the
couple embark on a trial separation. To help care for the old man, Nader hires
Razieh (Sareh Bayat), a pregnant, deeply religious woman who takes the job
unbeknownst to her husband (Shahab Hosseini), an out-of-work cobbler. Almost
immediately there are complications, culminating in a sudden burst of violence
that constantly challenges our own perceptions of who (if anyone) is to blame
and what really happened.
SHAME
Dir. by Steve McQueen, 2011, UK, 99min
In his much-anticipated encore to his superb first feature, “Hunger,”
British artist Steve McQueen reunites with the extraordinary Michael Fassbender
in the ferociously sexual drama “Shame.” An explosive portrait of a sex addict
walking a tightrope between presentable respectability and the wild side, this
incendiary drama captures the anger and the ecstasy of its anti-hero's incessant
drive for conquest in contemporary New York, where any woman he meets he
believes is ripe for the taking. Madly attractive but with cruelly cold eyes,
this compulsive Casanova finds his style cramped by the abrupt arrival of his
unstable sister (Cary Mulligan), whose insecurities crack open issues of his
own. Daring, stylistically brilliant and erotically charged, McQueen's heady,
beautiful and disturbing film seems as determined to leave the viewer unsettled
as it will surely serve to further propel Fassbender into the front ranks of
contemporary screen actors.
SLEEPING SICKNESS
Dir. by Ulrich Köhler, 2011,
Germany/France/Netherlands, 91min
This remarkably assured third feature by the young German director Ulrich
Köhler—winner of Best Director at this year’s Berlin Film Festival—transports us
to Cameroon, where German doctor Ebbo (Pierre Bokma) and his wife have spent two
decades combating an epidemic of sleeping sickness in the local villages. Soon,
they will return to Europe and to lives long ago put on hold, and this has
created a crisis for Ebbo, who, like Joseph Conrad’s Kurtz, has spent too much
time up river to ever come back down. Meanwhile, a young black doctor—a
Frenchman born to Congolese parents—travels to Africa to evaluate the efficiency
of Ebbo’s program. But when he arrives, nothing goes according to plan, and
despite his heritage, he feels very much a stranger in a strange land. Finally,
the two subjects of this haunting meditation on Africa’s past and future
dovetail—effortlessly, seamlessly—and the cumulative impact is stunning.
THE SKIN I LIVE IN
Dir. by Pedro Almodóvar, 2011, Spain,
113min
At “The Cinema Inside Me” program at the 2009 NYFF, Pedro Almodóvar
surprised many when he spoke of his great love for American horror and science
fiction films—a clue, it turns out, to what he was then just planning. With his
new film, Almodóvar ventures headlong into those very genres. Dr. Robert
Ledgard (a welcome return for Antonio Banderas) is a world famous plastic
surgeon who argues for the development of new, tougher human skin; unbeknownst
to others, Dr. Ledgard has been trying to put his theory into practice, keeping
a young woman, Vera (Elena Anaya), imprisoned in his mansion while subjecting
her to an increasingly bizarre regime of treatments. Fascinated by the thin
layer of appearance that stands between our perception of someone and that
person’s inner essence, Almodóvar here addresses that continuing theme in his
work in a bold, unsettling exploration of identity. A Sony Pictures Classic
release.
THE STUDENT
Dir. by Santiago Mitre, 2011, Argentina, 110min
Politics is a game, a seduction, and a vicious cycle in Santiago Mitre’s
gripping, fine-tuned debut, the story of Roque (Esteban Lamothe), a university
student who falls for a radicalized teacher and organizer (Romina Paula) and
soon finds himself entangled with Buenos Aires campus activists, in a world as
heated and byzantine as the one inhabited by the student revolutionaries of the
mythic 1960s. Anchored by Lamothe’s nuanced, charismatic performance, The
Student complicates the classic bildungsroman narrative of education and
disillusionment, emphasizing the endless adaptability—or malleability—of its
protagonist. An urgent attempt to grapple with the legacy of Peronism in
present-day Argentina, the film abounds with telling details and rich local
color. But it’s also a truly universal political thriller, one that illuminates
the conspiratorial pleasure, the ruthless hustle, and the moral fog of politics
as it is practiced.
THIS IS NOT A FILM
Dir. by Jafar Panahi and Mojtaba Mirtahmasb,
2011, Iran, 75min
Accused of collusion against the Iranian regime and currently appealing a
prison sentence and a ban from filmmaking, Jafar Panahi (a four-time NYFF
veteran with films like Offside and Crimson Gold) collaborated with the
documentarian Mojtaba Mirtahmasb on a remarkable day-in-the-life chronicle that,
as with many great Iranian films, finds a rich middle ground between fiction and
reality. Shot with a digital camera and an iPhone, the movie is almost entirely
confined to the director’s apartment, where he discusses his films and an
unrealized script, while the outside world imposes itself through phone calls,
television news, a few comic interruptions, and the sound of New Year’s
fireworks. Far more than the modest home movie it initially seems to be, This Is
Not a Film is an act of courage and a statement of political and moral
conviction: surprising, radical, and enormously moving.
THE TURIN HORSE
Dir. by Béla Tarr and Agnes Hranitzky, 2011,
Hungary/France/Germany/Switzerland/USA, 146min
After witnessing a carriage driver whipping his horse, the philosopher
Friedrich Nietzsche ran to the scene, threw his arms around the horse and then
collapsed; he would spend the next, final ten years of his life in almost total
silence. Focusing not on Nietzsche but on the driver and his family, Béla Tarr
(Satantango, NYFF 1994) and his longtime collaborator Agnes Hranitzky, working
from a screenplay by Tarr and novelist László Krasznhorkai, create a
mesmerizing, provocative meditation on the unsettling connectedness of things,
in which the resonance of actions and gestures continues long after their actual
occurrence. Beautifully photographed (by Fred Kelemen) on the austere,
unforgiving Hungarian plain lands, The Turin Horse challenges us to enter into a
world just beyond the one we experience daily. Winner of the Silver Bear at this
year’s Berlin Film Festival. A Cinema Guild release.
Film Society of Lincoln Center
Under the leadership of Rose Kuo, Executive Director, and Richard Peña,
Program Director, the Film Society of Lincoln Center offers the best in
international, classic and cutting-edge independent cinema. The Film Society
presents two film festivals that attract global attention: the New York Film
Festival, currently planning its 49th edition, and New Directors/New Films
which, since its founding in 1972, has been produced in collaboration with MoMA.
The Film Society also publishes the award-winning Film Comment Magazine, and for
over three decades has given an annual award—now named “The Chaplin Award”—to a
major figure in world cinema. Past recipients of this award include Charlie
Chaplin, Alfred Hitchcock, Martin Scorsese, Meryl Streep, and Tom Hanks. The
Film Society presents a year-round calendar of programming, panels, lectures,
educational programs and specialty film releases at its Walter Reade Theater and
the new state-of-the-art Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center.
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