New York Film Festival
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The Wonders Director Alice Rohrwacher on Being Lincoln Center’s Filmmaker in Residence, Her Next Film and the Unreality of Festivals
“It was important for me to spend time in Coney Island. It’s a beautiful place, very Fellini,” said Alice Rohrwacher in the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center Amphitheater at Lincoln Center. The Italian filmmaker spent the last month in New York because she was selected as the 2016 Filmmaker in Residence, a program co-founded by Film Society of Lincoln Center and Jaeger-LeCoultre to support filmmakers in early development. Previous filmmakers selected for the program include American Honey’s Andrea Arnold and Chevalier’s Athina Rachel Tsangari. Besides participating in a New York Film Festival talk about her career and working on the screenplay […]
by Taylor Hess on Oct 12, 2016 -
Studio 54: The New York Film Festival, Part I
On the evidence of the finest films in the first third of this 54th edition of the New York Film Festival, those familiar with the exhibitionistic, amped-up social set that frolicked in, gawked at, or read about the notorious, dear-departed Manhattan night spot might find it ironic, or a misnomer, that its moniker is my appropriated title for this initial NYFF feature. Sure, Lincoln Center ranks far lower on the cool scale than the legendary club, but, a testament to tenacity, merit, and resilience — how it has managed to survive continuous power struggles and administrative shuffles of parent organization […]
by Howard Feinstein on Sep 29, 2016 -
54th New York Film Festival (NYFF) Announces 2016 Main Slate
Fresh from Lincoln Center, here’s the line-up for the main slate of this year’s New York Film Festival. Amid the usual set of heavy-duty auteurs’ latest works (Jim Jarmusch, Olivier Assayas, the Dardennes, Kelly Reichardt et al.), there are a few outliers as usual, including Dash Shaw’s My Entire High School Sinking into the Sea, which will premiere at this year’s TIFF. NYFF runs from September 30-October 16, kicking off with the world premiere of Ava DuVernay’s new documentary The 13th and closing with another high-profile world premiere, James Gray’s The Lost City of Z. Opening Night The 13th Directed by Ava DuVernay […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Aug 9, 2016 -
NYFF Critics’ Notebook: Paul Thomas Anderson’s Junun
I don’t think it’s unreasonable to speculate that any director, following his second ambitious, divisive high-profile theatrical underperformer/probable money-loser (or anyone fresh off a recently completed production, really), might generally welcome a chance to get out of town. It’s unclear how far in advance Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood planned to go to Rajasthan to collaborate on an album with Israeli-born, Indian-residing Sufi convert Shye Ben Tzur, or whether Paul Thomas Anderson initially committed to tagging along; regardless, it seems to have been restorative fun. Junun is a 54-minute music doc in which Anderson shoots whatever he wants, however he wants to. There are five credited camera operators, including Anderson […]
by Vadim Rizov on Oct 8, 2015 -
NYFF Critics’ Notebook: The Sky Trembles and The Earth is Afraid and the Two Eyes are Not Brothers
The Sky Trembles and The Earth Is Afraid and the Two Eyes are Not Brothers (you can memorize the title after reciting it enough times — don’t fret) opens with a small fleet of ’80s Mercedes-Benz coupes, trailed by dune buggies, speeding across a desert. A chase scene entered in media res? The armed-escort arrival of dubious capitalists on the trail of some as-yet-underexploited resource? (Is there any more potent symbol of ostensibly removed colonialism’s lingering presence than the unkillable, diesel-fueled Mercedes that still stalk the globe?) As the sun sets and the caravan moves closer, the camera inches from a far-off, locked-down wide lens perspective to closer […]
by Vadim Rizov on Oct 2, 2015 -
NYFF Critics’ Notebook: De Palma
Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow’s De Palma is a fans-only interview session with the director. Straightforward, even staid in its construction, it consists almost entirely of two shots of a seated De Palma — one in medium close-up, the other presumably punched-in in post — and appositely illustrative clips and stills. The film currently only has two credits: the opening all-caps title “DE PALMA” scrolling left to right in lurid red, and a closing copyright credit (hard-working editors will, presumably, be thanked at a later date). Interlocutors Baumbach and Paltrow are never heard; according to this useful interview, they never even considered […]
by Vadim Rizov on Sep 30, 2015 -
NYFF Announces Spotlight on Documentary Lineup
The latest slate announcement from the Film Society of Lincoln Center for this year’s New York Film Festival covers the documentary sidebar. There are several world premieres, including new work from Laura Poitras and New Yorkers’ first chance to see In Jackson Heights, Frederick Wiseman’s portrait of the Queens neighborhood. Here’s the lineup, with descriptions from the press release. Everything Is Copy Jacob Bernstein, 2015, USA, DCP, 89m Jacob Bernstein’s extremely entertaining film is a tribute to his mother Nora Ephron: Hollywood-raised daughter of screenwriters who grew up to be an ace reporter turned piercingly funny essayist turned novelist/screenwriter/playwright/director. Ephron comes […]
by Vadim Rizov on Aug 24, 2015 -
Trailer Watch: Robert Zemeckis’ The Walk
Just announced as the Opening Night film of the New York Film Festival, Robert Zemeckis’ The Walk dramatizes Philippe Petit’s 1971 high wire balancing act between the Twin Towers. Staring Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Petit, The Walk was described by NYFF festival director Kent Jones as “a classic heist movie in the tradition of The Asphalt Jungle or Bob le flambeur” but with access in lieu of money as the objective. The Walk is set to open (in IMAX) worldwide in October.
by Sarah Salovaara on Jun 4, 2015 -
Good To Go: New York Film Festival II
Eclecticism governs the second half of the 51st NYFF just as it did the first. According to the Times, several common threads run through the week two batch, but these are little more than on-deadline segues. We could perhaps agree that all the films run at 24 frames per second. Below are recommendations I hope will sate the discerning ticket buyer. These are accomplished movies by directors who are not very well known in this country. Other films will sell out based on name recognition no matter the critical response, so, whether good, bad, or in-between, they will not be […]
by Howard Feinstein on Oct 2, 2013 -
Elaine McMillion and Jeff Soyk on Hollow
Elaine McMillion, one of Filmmaker‘s 25 New Faces of Independent Film for 2013, has been keeping busy since launching her interactive doc Hollow, about life in the hard-hit county of McDowell in south-western West Virginia, in June at http://hollowdocumentary.com. It immediately earned praise and a sizeable audience; she’s since presented for events and organizations like StoryCode and Independent Film Week, and Hollow continues racking up the positive reviews. The project includes an html5 site with dozens of short videos, photographs, text, user-generated content on Instagram, and content such as videos produced by the film’s subjects, many of whom the Hollow […]
by Randy Astle on Sep 26, 2013
