New York Film Festival 2021
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NYFF Critic’s Notebook: The Velvet Underground and The Girl and the Spider
Peter Buck, the guitarist for R.E.M., is often quoted as saying, “The first Velvet Underground album only sold 10,000 copies, but everyone who bought one formed a band.” Now it seems, all those bands are the subjects of documentaries. Finally, even the Velvet Underground. The eponymous film is one that Todd Haynes appeared destined to make. Popular music, rock’n’roll mythology and the vagaries of self-invented personas are a core of the director’s filmography, going back to the Super-8 transgression of Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story, a melodramatic biopic of the ‘70s pop singer cast with Barbie dolls. Velvet Goldmine (1998) […]
by Steve Dollar on Oct 14, 2021 -
Replay Again: On Daniel Chew and Micaela Durand’s NYFF Short, 38
She’s just like a sexy girl. You know the type… goth, horror, self-cutting. She’s like J Lo/Nosferatu. Typical. The whole trend. She’s pinup-y but poseur, like wannabe, like big ass. She probably doesn’t really have a big ass but looks like it in the photos — That’s how the protagonist in Daniel Chew and Micaela Durand’s new film 38 drags the woman who slept with her husband. The film’s action takes place post-affair, centering around the scorned wife (played by Curie Choi) online stalking the “other woman” (played by Alicia Novella Vasquez), an obsessive screen-based fixation uncomfortably relatable to probably […]
by Whitney Mallett on Oct 6, 2021 -
NYFF 2021 Critic’s Notebook: Benedetta, Il buco
Given what it took to arrive back at this point, anyone who introduced the first press and industry screening of this year’s New York Film Festival would have gotten a nice round of applause—I too am excited to be back at the Walter Reade Theater, my favorite NYC auditorium on a sheer projection quality/screen size/audio fidelity basis. But all politics is local, and NYFF’s significance relative to the larger festival landscape shouldn’t obscure the specific context of this year’s edition. With its union chapter recognized, Film at Lincoln Center’s staff are now attempting to negotiate and ratify a contract. The […]
by Vadim Rizov on Sep 24, 2021 -
Film at Lincoln Center Announces 2021 NYFF Main Slate
Jane Campion, Joel Coen, Gaspar Noe, Joachim Trier, Mia Hansen-Love, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Todd Haynes and Pedro Almodovar are some of the heavy-hitting directors whose work will receive U.S. premieres at the 2021 New York Film Festival. Just announced is the main slate, which features many returning veterans as well as filmmakers appearing at the festival for the first time, including Rebecca Hall, Saul Williams and Alexandre Koberidze. Two filmmakers — Ryûsuke Hamaguchi and Hong Sangsoo — are represented by two titles. The festival runs September 24 – October 10, and proof of vaccination will be required at all venues. Festival […]
by Scott Macaulay on Aug 10, 2021
