Beach Rats

  • Film Society of Lincoln Center to Spotlight Female Cinematographers in ‘The Female Gaze’

    [caption id="attachment_26747" align="aligncenter" width="1200"]Forrest Goodluck, Sasha Lane and Chloë Grace Moretz appear in The Miseducation of Cameron Post by Desiree Akhavan, an official selection of the U.S. Dramatic Competition at the 2018 Sundance FIlm Festival. Courtesy of Sundance Institute | photo by Jeong Park. Forrest Goodluck, Sasha Lane and Chloë Grace Moretz appear in The Miseducation of Cameron Post by Desiree Akhavan.
    Courtesy of Sundance Institute | photo by Jeong Park.[/caption] The Film Society of Lincoln Center will host The Female Gaze (July 26 – August 9), spotlighting the amazing work of such accomplished international female cinematographers as Agnès Godard, Natasha Braier, Kirsten Johnson, Joan Churchill, Maryse Alberti, Ellen Kuras, Babette Mangolte, and Rachel Morrison. Laura Mulvey’s landmark 1975 essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” suggested an imbalance of power in film dominated by the male gaze and heterosexual male pleasure; this series poses the question: is there such a thing as the “Female Gaze”? This year, Morrison made history as the first woman nominated for the Best Cinematography Oscar for Mudbound, a triumph that also underscored the troubling issue of gender inequality in the film industry. Few jobs on a movie set have been as historically closed to women as that of cinematographer—the persistence of the term “cameraman” says it all. Despite this lack of representation, trailblazing women have left their mark on the field through extraordinary artistry and profound vision. As seen through their eyes, films by directors like Claire Denis, Jacques Rivette, Chantal Akerman, Ryan Coogler, and Lucrecia Martel are immeasurably richer, deeper, and more wondrous. The Female Gaze opens with a double feature of unforgettable collaborations between Agnès Godard and Claire Denis—from the sensual gaze on male bodies in Beau travail to that of familial love in 35 Shots of Rum—launching the series’ central dialogue with Godard in person. Then on July 28, cinematographers Natasha Braier, Ashley Connor, Agnès Godard, and Joan Churchill join Film Society audiences to discuss their careers, experiences in the film industry, and their interpretations of the Female Gaze in a free talk, sponsored by HBO®. “We’re showcasing amazing cinematography in a variety of styles, from women who have worked with directors of all genders, and contemplating what a female gaze might mean,” said Florence Almozini, FSLC Associate Director of Programming. “Some have built long careers with their directors, such as Godard with Denis, while others like Alberti or Louvart have worked with a range of filmmakers from around the world. There’s also a distinctive emerging class of female DPs innovating in the field, and our series reveals how this ‘gaze’ evolves with each new partnership and generation.” Featuring 36 films shot by 23 women, the program includes blockbusters (Creed), independent American fare (Swoon, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), selections from the canon (Jeanne Dielman…), contemporary international arthouse titles (Tokyo Sonata, The Headless Woman, Holy Motors), rarities ripe for rediscovery (La Captive), and two sneak previews: The Miseducation of Cameron Post and I Think We’re Alone Now, both prizewinners at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. The complete lineup is below, arranged by DP. FILMS AND DESCRIPTIONS All screenings held at the Walter Reade Theater (165 West 65th Street) unless otherwise noted.

    Maryse Alberti

    Creed Ryan Coogler, USA, 2015, 133m The legend of Rocky lives on as Michael B. Jordan’s gutsy Adonis Johnson—son of Apollo Creed—sets out to prove he’s got what it takes to be the next champ, leaving his luxe L.A. life behind to train in the hard-knock gyms of Philadelphia with the Italian Stallion himself. After the breakout success of Fruitvale Station, director Ryan Coogler shows his facility for major budget spectacle, balancing a rousing underdog sports story with a poignant portrait of intergenerational friendship. The virtuoso lensing of Maryse Alberti astonishes in a dazzling four-and-a-half minute fight sequence that unfolds in one bruising, breathless take. Velvet Goldmine Todd Haynes, UK/USA, 1998, 35mm, 124m The birth of Oscar Wilde; the staged death of a flamboyant rock star modeled closely after David Bowie; the delirious inebriation of London at the height of the glam era: Haynes’s discourse on celebrity culture is as sprawling and multi-tracked as his previous film, Safe, had been clinically restrained. Much of Velvet Goldmine, the story of a journalist who tries to reconstruct the sordid life story of the failed glam rock star he’d idolized as a young man, was shot in London, and the move gave Haynes a chance to abandon the cloister-like suburbs of his earlier films for a much more colorful, Dionysian milieu. Haynes and cinematographer Maryse Alberti crafted one of the most visually thrilling music movies of the 1990s. An NYFF36 Selection.

    Barbara Alvarez

    The Headless Woman / La mujer sin cabeza Lucrecia Martel, Argentina/France/Italy/Spain, 2008, 35mm, 87m Spanish with English subtitles DP Barbara Alvarez imparts a restrained—and very strange—spatial texture to Lucrecia Martel’s excitingly splintered third feature, about a woman (a stunning María Onetto) in a state of phenomenological distress following a mysterious road accident. Martel’s rare gift for building social melodrama from sonic and spatial textures, behavioral nuances, and an unerringly brilliant sense of the joys, tensions, and endless reserves of suppressed emotion lurking within the familial structure is here pushed to another level of creative daring. An NYFF46 selection. 35mm print courtesy of UCLA Film & Television Archive.

    Akiko Ashizawa

    Tokyo Sonata Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Japan, 2008, 120m Japanese with English subtitles What strange deceptions lurk beneath the placid veneer of the average Japanese family? Horror maestro Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s unexpected—but wholly rewarding—foray into family melodrama-cum-black comedy quivers with an undercurrent of dread as salaryman dad (Teruyuki Kagawa) loses his job and desperately attempts to maintain the illusion that he’s still employed; his grade-school son (Kai Inowaki) rebels by secretly taking (gasp!) piano lessons; and mom (Kyōko Koizumi) finds what she’s been looking for with her own kidnapper. The elegant long shots of Akiko Ashizawa toy with the meticulous framings of Ozu as Kurosawa guides the film through a series of increasingly audacious tonal shifts. An NYFF46 selection.

    Diane Baratier

    The Romance of Astrea and Celadon / Les amours d’Astrée et de Céladon Éric Rohmer, France, 2007, 35mm, 109m At the age of 88, Éric Rohmer bid adieu to cinema with this enchanting mythological idyll, which brims with all the vitality and freshness of youth. Frequent Rohmer cinematographer Diane Baratier conjures a sun-dappled bucolic dream vision of fifth-century Gaul, where a beguiling fable of romantic misunderstanding plays out when a band of druids and nymphs intervene in the lovers’ quarrel between androgynously beautiful shepherd Celadon (Andy Gillet) and his jealous paramour Astrea (Stéphanie Crayencour). Introducing hitherto untapped themes of gender and sexual fluidity into his work, Rohmer crafts an exalted paean to love both spiritual and carnal. An NYFF45 selection.

    Céline Bozon

    La France Serge Bozon, France, 2007, 35mm, 102m French with English subtitles In the fall of 1917, as World War I rages, a lovelorn soldier’s wife (Sylvie Testud) disguises herself as a man and sets off for the front in search of her missing husband. Along the way, she meets up with a company of soldiers under the command of a gruff lieutenant (Pascal Greggory), who reluctantly allows Camille to join their ranks. From time to time, these surprisingly sensitive, introspective men break out an assortment of homemade instruments and perform original songs written for the film by Benjamin Esdraffo and the artist known as Fugu, styled after the American “sunshine pop” of The Beach Boys and The Mamas and the Papas. Exquisitely shot by Céline Bozon (the director’s sister), this unclassifiable hybrid of war movie and movie musical is truly unlike anything you’ve ever seen before. Print courtesy of the Institut Français.

    Natasha Braier

    The Milk of Sorrow / La teta asustada Claudia Llosa, Spain/Peru, 2009, 35mm, 94m Spanish and Quechua with English subtitles Fausta, the only daughter of an aged indigenous Peruvian mother, is said to have been nursed on “the milk of sorrow.” This accursed designation is bestowed on the children of victims of the former terrorist regime. Fausta has learned of her mother’s past and her own presupposed fate through invented song, which is both an art form and oral history tradition. Upon her mother’s death, she must venture beyond the safety of her uncle’s home and choose whether or not to lend her gift of song so that she can pay for a proper burial. Llosa and DP Natasha Braier capture the striking beauty of Lima’s outskirts, as well as a revelatory performance by Magaly Solier, with dignity and grace. Winner of the Golden Bear at the 2009 Berlin Film Festival. A New Directors/New Films 2009 selection. The Neon Demon Nicolas Winding Refn, Denmark/France/USA/UK, 2016, 118m Like a 21st-century Showgirls meets Suspiria, Nicolas Winding Refn’s delirious plunge into the fake plastic horror of the image-obsessed fashion industry trafficks in both high-camp excess and kaleidoscopically stylized splatter. Elle Fanning is the guileless recent L.A. transplant whose fresh-faced youth and beauty almost instantly land her a high-profile modeling contract. Whatever “it” is, she has it. And a coterie of monstrously jealous, flavor-of-last-month Hollyweird burnouts will stop at nothing to get it. Working in a supersaturated, electric day-glo palette, DP Natasha Braier fashions a sleek, freaky-seductive vision of L.A.’s dark side.

    Caroline Champetier

    The Gang of Four / La bande des quatre Jacques Rivette, France/Switzerland, 1989, 160m French and Portuguese with English subtitles Four women, a shadowy conspiracy, and a whole lot of acting exercises: we’re firmly in Rivette territory in one of the director’s most spellbinding explorations of the sometimes terrifyingly thin line between everyday life and the strangeness beneath it. A quartet of aspiring actresses live together while studying with a demanding coach (Bulle Ogier). As they rehearse Pierre Marivaux’s La Double inconstance, offstage drama creeps into their lives in the form of a menacing mystery man (Benoît Régent) with a sinister story to tell. Caroline Champetier’s moody lensing—muted reds, golds, and browns—creates the feeling of an all-enveloping universe operating according to its own paranoid logic.

    Holy Motors

    Leos Carax, France, 2012, 116m French and English with English subtitles Cinematographers Caroline Champetier and Yves Cape both lensed this unclassifiable, expansive movie from Leos Carax about a man named Oscar (longtime collaborator Denis Lavant) who inhabits 11 different characters over the course of a single day. This shape-shifter is shuttled from appointment to appointment in Paris in a white-stretch limo driven by the soignée Edith Scob (Eyes Without a Face); not on the itinerary is an unplanned reunion with Kylie Minogue. To summarize the film any further would be to take away some of its magic; the most accurate précis comes from its own creator, who aptly described Holy Motors after its world premiere in Cannes as “a film about a man and the experience of being alive.” An NYFF50 selection. Le Pont du Nord Jacques Rivette, France, 1982, 129m French with English subtitles Paris becomes a labyrinthine life-size game board in one of the most elaborate of Jacques Rivette’s sprawling, down-the-rabbit-hole cine-puzzles. Bulle Ogier and her daughter Pascale star, respectively, as a hitchhiking ex-con and a leather-clad tough girl who meet by chance on the city streets, come into possession of a curious map, and find themselves caught in a sinister cobweb of underworld conspiracy. Shooting seemingly on the fly, almost documentary-style on the streets of Paris, cinematographers Caroline Champetier and William Lubtchansky telegraph a freewheeling, anything-goes sense of play, as well as a creeping surveillance paranoia. An NYFF19 selection. 4K restoration from the 16mm negative, supervised by Véronique Rivette and Caroline Champetier at Digimage Classic, with the help of the CNC.

    Joan Churchill

    Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer Nick Broomfield & Joan Churchill, UK/USA, 2004, 93m Just months after Monster made Aileen Wuornos a household name—and Charlize Theron an Oscar darling—documentarian Nick Broomfield and co-director/cinematographer Joan Churchill unleashed this riveting portrait of the real-life serial killer. Of the two films, it remains the more chilling experience, an unflinching face-to-face encounter with a deeply damaged soul who, as she prepares for her imminent execution, is at once eager to set the record straight, angrily defiant, and increasingly delusional. Daring to find the humanity in one of the most vilified criminals of the century, Broomfield and Churchill—whose camera remains ever-alert and skillfully unobtrusive—craft a haunting, complex look at a life gone wrong.

    Ashley Connor

    Sneak Preview! The Miseducation of Cameron Post Desiree Akhavan, USA, 2018, 90m Based on the celebrated novel by Emily M. Danforth, Desiree Akhavan’s second feature follows the titular character (Chloë Grace Moretz) in 1993 as she is sent to a gay conversion therapy center after getting caught with another girl on prom night. In the face of intolerance and denial, Cameron meets a group of fellow sinners, including amputee stoner Jane (Sasha Lane) and her friend Adam (Forrest Goodluck), a Lakota Two-Spirit. Together, this group forms an unlikely family with a will to fight. Akhavan and DP Ashley Connor evoke the emotional layers of Danforth’s novel with an effortless yet considered attention to the spirit of the ’90s and the audacious, moving performances of the ensemble cast. A FilmRise release.

    Josée Deshaies

    House of Tolerance / L’Apollonide: Souvenirs de la maison close Bertrand Bonello, France, 2011, 35mm, 122m French with English subtitles “I could sleep for a thousand years,” drawls a 19th-century prostitute—paraphrasing Lou Reed—at the start of Bonello’s hushed, opium-soaked fever dream of life in a Parisian brothel at the turn of the century. House of Tolerance is, among other things, Bonello’s most gorgeous and complete application of musical techniques to film grammar, his most rigorous attempt to sculpt cinematic space, his most probing reflection on the origins of capitalist society, and his most sophisticated study of the movement of bodies under immense constraint. A shocking mutilation, a funeral staged to The Moody Blues’ “Nights in White Satin,” a progression of ritualized, drugged assignations and encounters: Bonello and frequent collaborator Josée Deshaies capture it all with a mixture of casual detachment and needlepoint precision.

    Crystel Fournier

    Tomboy Céline Sciamma, France, 2011, 35mm, 82m French with English subtitles A sensitive, heartrending portrait of what it feels like to grow up different, Céline Sciamma’s beautifully observed coming-of-age tale aches tenderly with the tangled confusion of childhood. When ten-year-old Laure’s family moves to a new neighborhood during the summer, the gender-nonconforming preteen (played by the impressively naturalistic Zoé Héran) takes the opportunity to present as Mickäel to the neighborhood kids—testing the waters of a new identity that neither friends nor family quite understand. Sciamma’s warmly empathetic tone is perfectly complemented by the soft-lit impressionism of Crystel Fournier’s glowing cinematography. Print courtesy of the Institut Français.

    Agnès Godard

    Beau Travail Claire Denis, France, 1999, 35mm, 92m French, Italian, and Russian with English subtitles Denis’s loose retelling of Billy Budd, set among a troop of Foreign Legionnaires stationed in the Gulf of Djibouti, is one of her finest films, an elemental story of misplaced longing and frustrated desire. Beneath a scorching sun, shirtless young men exercise to the strains of Benjamin Britten, under the watchful eye of Denis Lavant’s stone-faced officer Galoup, their obsessively ritualized movements simmering with barely suppressed violence. When a handsome recruit wins the favor of the regiment’s commander, cracks start to appear in Galoup’s fragile composure. In the tense, tightly disciplined atmosphere of military life, Denis found an ideal outlet for two career-long concerns: the quiet agony of repressing one’s emotions and the terror of finally letting loose. An NYFF37 selection. Print courtesy of the Institut Français. 35 Shots of Rum / 35 rhums Claire Denis, France/Germany, 2008, 35mm, 100m French and German with English subtitles When is a rice cooker more than just a rice cooker? When it’s in the masterful hands of Claire Denis, who somehow transforms it into a moving metaphor for the evolving relationship between a Parisian train conductor (Alex Descas) and his devoted twenty-something daughter (Mati Diop) as he gently nudges her out of the nest and each tests the waters of new relationships. Warmed by the ember-glow of Agnès Godard’s beautifully burnished cinematography, Denis’s delicately bittersweet take on the Ozu-style family drama conveys worlds of meaning and emotion—attraction, heartache, loss, hope—in a mere glance, a gesture, and, yes, a kitchen appliance. The Intruder / L’intrus Claire Denis, France, 2005, 35mm, 130m French, English, Korean, Russian, and Polynesian with English subtitles Rich, strange, and tantalizingly enigmatic, Denis’s crypto-odyssey is a mesmeric sensory experience that haunts like a half-remembered dream. Inspired by a book by philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy, The Intruder skips across time and continents—from the Alpine wilds to a neon-lit Korea to a tropical Tahiti suffused with languorous melancholy—as it traces the journey of an inscrutable, ailing loner (Michel Subor) seeking a black market heart transplant and his long-lost son. An impressionist wash of hallucinations, memories, and dreams are borne along on the lush textures of Agnès Godard’s shimmering cinematography. Print courtesy of the Institut Français.

    Kristen Johnson

    Cameraperson Kirsten Johnson, USA, 2016, 102m How much of one’s self can be captured in the images shot of and for others? Kirsten Johnson’s work as a director of photography and camera operator has helped earn her documentary collaborators (Laura Poitras, Michael Moore, Kirby Dick, Barbara Kopple) nearly every accolade and award possible. Recontextualizing the stunning images inside, around, and beyond the works she has shot, Johnson constructs a visceral and vibrant self-portrait of an artist who has traveled the globe, venturing into landscapes and lives that bear the scars of trauma both active and historic. Rigorous yet nimble in its ability to move from heartache to humor, Cameraperson provides an essential lens on the things that make us human. A 2016 New Directors/New Films selection. Derrida Kirby Dick & Amy Ziering, USA, 2002, 35mm, 84m Postmodern intellectual rockstar Jacques Derrida receives an appropriately self-reflexive portrait in this playful, probing documentary. Framed by the French philosopher’s statements about the inherent unreliability of biography, it finds co-director Amy Ziering attempting to tease out the links between Derrida’s radically influential thinking (he expounds on everything from forgiveness to Seinfeld) and his own life. Even as the alternately witty and reflective Derrida remains cagey about personal matters, Kirsten Johnson’s attentive camera captures revealing flashes of the man behind the ideas. What emerges is a fascinating interrogation of filmic truth: a documentary that relentlessly deconstructs itself.

    Ellen Kuras

    Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind Michel Gondry, USA, 2004, 35mm, 108m The feverish imaginations of DIY surrealist Michel Gondry and screenwriter Charlie Kaufman kick into overdrive for the great gonzo sci-fi romance of the early 2000s. When nice guy dweeb Joel (Jim Carrey) encounters blue-haired spitfire Clementine (Kate Winslet) on the LIRR, there’s a spark of attraction, but also something familiar—almost as if they’ve met before… Cue a ping-ponging, time- and space-collapsing journey through memory and a star-crossed love gone sour. The high-contrast handheld camerawork of Ellen Kuras enhances the whiplash sense of disorientation in what is, ultimately, a heart-wounding parable about the ways in which we inevitably hurt those we love most. Swoon Tom Kalin, USA, 1992, 35mm, 93m One of the most daring works to emerge from the New Queer Cinema movement of the early 1990s, Swoon offers a radical, revisionist perspective on the infamous Leopold and Loeb murder case. Channeling the spirits of Dreyer, Bresson, and Jean Genet, director Tom Kalin challenges viewers to identify with two of the most notorious killers of the 20th century, their crime—the Nietzsche-influenced thrill killing of a schoolboy in 1920s Chicago—and punishment recounted in ghostly black and white by Ellen Kuras. Throughout, Kalin cannily deconstructs the ways in which Leopold and Loeb’s homosexuality has been historically sensationalized and demonized—a provocative analogy for queer persecution in the AIDS era.

    Sabine Lancelin

    La captive Chantal Akerman, France/Belgium, 2000, 35mm, 118m French with English subtitles Chantal Akerman’s hypnotic exploration of erotic obsession plays like Vertigo filtered through the director’s visionary feminist formalism. Loosely inspired by the fifth volume of Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, it circles around the very-strange-indeed relationship between the seemingly pliant Ariane (Sylvie Testud) and the disturbingly jealous Simon (Stanislas Merhar), whose need to possess her completely in turn renders him hostage to his own destructive desires. The coolly contemplative camera style of Sabine Lancelin imparts an unbroken, trance-like tension, which finds release only in the thunderous roil of the operatic score. Print courtesy of Cinémathèque Royale de Belgique. The Strange Case of Angelica / O Estranho Caso de Angélica Manoel de Oliveira, Portugal, 2010, 35mm, 97m Manoel de Oliveira’s sly, metaphysical romance—made when the famously resilient director was a mere 102 years old—is a mesmerizing, beyond-the-grave rumination on love, mortality, and the power of images. On a rain-slicked night, village photographer Isaac (Ricardo Trêpa) is summoned by a wealthy family to take a picture of their beautiful, recently deceased daughter Angelica (Pilar López de Ayala). What ensues is a ghostly tale of romantic obsession as Isaac finds his dreams—and his photographs—haunted by the spirit of the bewitching young woman. The crisp chiaroscuro compositions of cinematographer Sabine Lancelin enhance the film’s otherworldly, unstuck-in-time aura. An NYFF48 selection. Eastern Boys Robin Campillo, France, 2013, 128m French with English subtitles Jeanne Lapoirie’s surveillance-style camera, looking from above, masterfully follows the men who loiter around the Gare du Nord train station in Paris as they scrape by however they can, forming gangs for support and protection, ever fearful of being caught by the police and deported. When the middle-aged, bourgeois Daniel (Olivier Rabourdin) approaches a boyishly handsome Ukrainian who calls himself Marek for a date, he learns the young man is willing to do anything for some cash. What Daniel intends only as sex-for-hire begets a home invasion and then an unexpectedly profound relationship. The drastically different circumstances of the two men’s lives reveal hidden facets of the city they share. Presented in four parts, this absorbing, continually surprising film by Robin Campillo (BPM: Beats Per Minute) is centered around relationships that defy easy categorization, in which motivations and desires are poorly understood even by those to whom they belong.

    Rain Li

    Paranoid Park Gus Van Sant, USA, 2007, 35mm, 85m At once a dreamlike portrait of teen alienation and a boldly experimental work of film narrative, Paranoid Park finds Gus Van Sant at the height of his powers. A withdrawn high-school skateboarder (Gabe Nevins) struggles to make sense of his involvement in an accidental death. He recalls past events across tides of memory, and expresses his feelings in a diary—which is, in effect, the movie we are watching. The extraordinary skating scenes, filmed by cinematographers Rain Li and Christopher Doyle in a lyrical mixture of Super 8 and 35mm, depict their subjects soaring in space, momentarily free of the earthly troubles of adolescence. An NYFF45 selection.

    Hélène Louvart

    Beach Rats Eliza Hittman, USA, 2017, 95m Hittman follows up her acclaimed debut, It Felt Like Love, with this sensitive chronicle of sexual becoming. Frankie (a breakout Harris Dickinson), a bored teenager living in South Brooklyn, regularly haunts the Coney Island boardwalk with his boys—trying to score weed, flirting with girls, killing time. But he spends his late nights dipping his toes into the world of online cruising, connecting with older men and exploring the desires he harbors but doesn’t yet fully understand. Sensuously lensed on 16mm by cinematographer Hélène Louvart, Beach Rats presents a colorful and textured world roiling with secret appetites and youthful self-discovery. A 2017 New Directors/New Films selection. A Neon release. Pina [in 3D] Wim Wenders, Germany/France, 2011, 106m German, English, and French with English subtitles 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 dance s and dancers powerfully rendered by Hélène Louvart and Jörg Widmer’s lensing, 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 Sacre du Printemps,” and “Kontakthof.” An NYFF49 selection. The Wonders Alice Rohrwacher, Italy/Switzerland/Germany, 2014, 110m French with English subtitles Winner of the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival, Alice Rohrwacher’s vivid story of teenage yearning and confusion revolves around a beekeeping family in rural central Italy: German-speaking father, Italian mother, four girls. Two unexpected arrivals prove disruptive, especially for the pensive oldest daughter, Gelsomina. The father takes in a troubled teenage boy as part of a welfare program, and a television crew shows up to enlist local farmers in a kitschy celebration of Etruscan culinary traditions (a slyly self-mocking Monica Bellucci plays the bewigged host). Hélène Louvart’s lensing combines a documentary attention to daily ritual with an evocative atmosphere of mystery to conjure a richly concrete world that is subject to the magical thinking of adolescence. An NYFF52 selection.

    Irina Lubtchansky

    Around a Small Mountain / 36 vues du Pic Saint Loup Jacques Rivette, France/Italy, 2009, 35mm, 84m French with English subtitles The final film from arch gamesman Jacques Rivette is a captivating variation on one of the themes that most obsessed him: the ineffable interplay between life and performance. Luminously photographed by Irina Lubtchansky in the open-air splendor of the south of France, it revolves around an Italian flaneur (Sergio Castellitto) who finds himself drawn into the world of a humble traveling circus led by the elusive Kate (Jane Birkin), whose enigmatic past becomes a tantalizing mystery he is determined to solve. In a career studded with sprawling shaggy dog epics, Rivette’s swan song is a deceptively slight grace note that contains multitudes. An NYFF47 selection. Preceded by: Sarah Winchester, Ghost Opera / Sarah Winchester, Opera Fantôme Bertrand Bonello, France, 2016, 24m North American Premiere A film to stand in for an opera unmade: Bonello’s moody, baroque meditation on the heiress to the Winchester rifle fortune plays like a ballet-cum-horror film, an ornate tapestry of enigmatic images, chilling synths, and traces of a tragic and eccentric life. An NYFF54 selection. A Grasshopper Film release.

    Babette Mangolte

    The Camera: Je or La Camera: I Babette Mangolte, USA, 1977, 88m Though perhaps best known as the cinematographer for Chantal Akerman’s groundbreaking 1970s work—as well as for her collaborations with avant-garde icons like Yvonne Rainer, Trisha Brown, and Marina Abramović—Babette Mangolte is a singular cinematic visionary in her own right. In this structuralist auto-portrait, Mangolte allows viewers to peer through the lens of her camera as she produces a series of still photographs, first of models, then of the streetscapes of downtown Manhattan. As we experience the act of image-making through her eyes, what emerges is a heady consideration of the art and act of seeing and of the complex relationship between photographer, subject, and viewer. Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles Chantal Akerman, Belgium/France, 1976, 35mm, 201m French with English subtitles A landmark of feminist art, Chantal Akerman’s minimalist masterpiece is both a monumental and microscopic view of three days in the life of a fastidious Belgian single mother (a sphinx-like Delphine Seyrig) as she goes about her housework, peeling potatoes and washing dishes with the same clinical detachment with which she makes love to the occasional john. And then slowly, almost imperceptibly, things begin to go awry… The rigorous, relentlessly impassive gaze of Babette Mangolte’s camera is transfixing but, in the words of the director, “never voyeuristic”; it’s a uniquely feminine way of seeing made manifest by one of the most sui generis filmmaker-cinematographer partnerships in history.

    Claire Mathon

    Stranger by the Lake / L’inconnu du lac Alain Guiraudie, France, 2013, 97m French with English subtitles Alain Guiraudie’s Cannes-awarded exploration of death and desire unfolds entirely in the vicinity of a gay cruising ground that becomes a crime scene. Franck (Pierre Deladonchamps) is a regular at a lakeside pickup spot, where he finds companionship both platonic and carnal. But his new paramour Michel (Christophe Paou) turns out to be a love-’em-and-leave-’em type, in the deadliest sense… Guiraudie has long been a singular voice in French cinema: anti-bourgeois, at ease in nature, a true regionalist and outsider. Here he and DP Claire Mathon capture naked bodies and hardcore sex with the same matter-of-fact sensuousness they bring to ripples on the water and the fading light of dusk. An NYFF51 selection.

    Reed Morano

    Sneak Preview! I Think We’re Alone Now Reed Morano, USA, 2018, 93m Pulling double duty as director and cinematographer, Reed Morano finds the melancholic beauty in the end of the world with this gorgeous and strange drama starring Peter Dinklage and Elle Fanning as the last people on Earth. When the film opens in a desolate upstate New York, the misanthropic Del (Dinklage) is performing rote, custodial tasks to clean up the chaos left around his hometown—and relishing his newfound solitude—until another, sprightly survivor (Fanning) arrives. Winner of the Special Jury Prize for Excellence in Filmmaking at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival, I Think We’re Alone Now is a visually audacious entry in the postapocalyptic genre and an idiosyncratic take on loneliness and grief.

    Rachel Morrison

    Fruitvale Station Ryan Coogler, USA, 2013, 85m Coogler’s remarkable debut feature explores the life and harrowing death of Oscar Grant (played by Michael B. Jordan), a 22-year-old African-American man killed by police in the early hours of January 1, 2009. Six months after sweeping both the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival, Fruitvale Station opened on the same weekend that jurors in Florida acquitted George Zimmerman in the death of Trayvon Martin. Rachel Morrison’s gripping, exploratory Super 16 on-location camerawork dramatizes the unseen complexities and personal relationships of Grant’s inner circle with a startling sense of urgency, emotion, and the unflagging awareness of a preventable tragedy too often seen in the news cycle. Sunday, August 5, 7:00pm Free Talk: The Female Gaze Join us for an hour-long conversation with cinematographers Natasha Braier, Ashley Connor, Agnès Godard, and Joan Churchill as they discuss the series and reflect on their careers and influences, and how they approach their craft. Sponsored by HBO®. Saturday, July 28, 6:30pm* Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center, Amphitheater, 144 W 65th Street  

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  • 38th London Critics’ Circle Film Awards: “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” Named Film of the Year

    [caption id="attachment_23572" align="aligncenter" width="1000"]THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri[/caption] The UK’s leading film critics handed out their annual prizes on Sunday night at the 38th London Critics’ Circle Film Awards and Martin McDonagh’s drama Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri was named Film of the Year, while McDonagh also collected Screenwriter of the Year and star Frances McDormand won Actress of the Year. Several winners were on-hand to collect their awards: Timothée Chalamet was named Actor of the Year for Call Me By Your Name, Hugh Grant won supporting actor for Paddington 2, Lesley Manville won supporting actress for Phantom Thread, Harris Dickinson won the young performer prize for his work in Beach Rats, and God’s Own Country writer-director Francis Lee took the Philip French Award for Breakthrough British/Irish Filmmaker. The evening’s high point was the presentation of the Dilys Powell Award for Excellence in Film to Kate Winslet, introduced by her friend and costar Jude Law. The critics voted for Paul Verhoeven’s Elle as Foreign-Language Film of the Year, Raoul Peck’s I Am Not Your Negro as Documentary of the Year and Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk as recipient of the Attenborough Award as British/Irish Film of the Year. Sally Hawkins and Daniel Kaluuya were named British/Irish actress and actor, respectively; Sean Baker won best director for The Florida Project; Dennis Gassner won the Technical Achievement Award for his production design on Blade Runner 2049, and We Love Moses was named British/Irish Short Film of the Year.

    Full list of winners:

    FILM OF THE YEAR Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri FOREIGN-LANGUAGE FILM OF THE YEAR Elle DOCUMENTARY OF THE YEAR I Am Not Your Negro BRITISH/IRISH FILM OF THE YEAR: The Attenborough Award Dunkirk DIRECTOR OF THE YEAR Sean Baker – The Florida Project SCREENWRITER OF THE YEAR Martin McDonagh – Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri ACTRESS OF THE YEAR Frances McDormand – Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri ACTOR OF THE YEAR Timothée Chalamet – Call Me By Your Name SUPPORTING ACTRESS OF THE YEAR Lesley Manville – Phantom Thread SUPPORTING ACTOR OF THE YEAR Hugh Grant – Paddington 2 BRITISH/IRISH ACTRESS OF THE YEAR Sally Hawkins – The Shape of Water/Maudie/Paddington 2 BRITISH/IRISH ACTOR OF THE YEAR Daniel Kaluuya – Get Out YOUNG BRITISH/IRISH PERFORMER OF THE YEAR Harris Dickinson – Beach Rats BREAKTHROUGH BRITISH/IRISH FILMMAKER: The Philip French Award Francis Lee – God’s Own Country BRITISH/IRISH SHORT FILM OF THE YEAR We Love Moses – Dionne Edwards TECHNICAL ACHIEVEMENT AWARD Blade Runner 2049 – Dennis Gassner, production design EXCELLENCE IN FILM: The Dilys Powell Award Kate Winslet

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  • THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI Leads 38th London Critics’ Circle Film Awards Nominations

    [caption id="attachment_23572" align="aligncenter" width="1000"]THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri[/caption] Martin McDonagh’s drama Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri lead the nominations for the 38th annual London Critics’ Circle Film Awards with seven nominations, including Film, Director, Screenwriter, Actress for Frances McDormand, and Supporting Actor for both Sam Rockwell and Woody Harrelson. In addition, as a British production the film is nominated for British/Irish Film of the Year. Following close behind with six nominations each are William Oldroyd’s Lady Macbeth and Paul Thomas Anderson’s Phantom Thread. Four films earned five nominations each: Luca Guagadino’s Call Me By Your Name, Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk, Paul King’s Paddington 2, and Francis Lee’s God’s Own Country. The 10 films contending for Film of the Year are Call Me By Your Name, Dunkirk, The Florida Project, Get Out, God’s Own Country, Lady Bird, Loveless, Phantom Thread, The Shape of Water, and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. The winners will be announced at a gala ceremony on Sunday, January 28th at The May Fair Hotel, at which Kate Winslet will receive the critics’ highest honor, The Dilys Powell Award for Excellence in Film. Full List of Nominations: FILM OF THE YEAR Call Me By Your Name Dunkirk The Florida Project Get Out God’s Own Country Lady Bird Loveless Phantom Thread The Shape of Water Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri FOREIGN-LANGUAGE FILM OF THE YEAR Aquarius Elle The Handmaiden Loveless Raw DOCUMENTARY OF THE YEAR 78/52 Human Flow I Am Not Your Negro Jane The Work BRITISH/IRISH FILM OF THE YEAR: The Attenborough Award Dunkirk God’s Own Country Lady Macbeth Paddington 2 Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri DIRECTOR OF THE YEAR Sean Baker – The Florida Project Guillermo Del Toro – The Shape of Water Luca Guadagnino – Call Me By Your Name Martin McDonagh – Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri Christopher Nolan – Dunkirk SCREENWRITER OF THE YEAR Paul Thomas Anderson – Phantom Thread Greta Gerwig – Lady Bird James Ivory – Call Me By Your Name Martin McDonagh – Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri Jordan Peele – Get Out ACTRESS OF THE YEAR Annette Bening – Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool Sally Hawkins – The Shape of Water Isabelle Huppert – Elle Frances McDormand – Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri Florence Pugh – Lady Macbeth ACTOR OF THE YEAR Timothée Chalamet – Call Me By Your Name Daniel Day-Lewis – Phantom Thread James Franco – The Disaster Artist Daniel Kaluuya – Get Out Gary Oldman – Darkest Hour SUPPORTING ACTRESS OF THE YEAR Lily Gladstone – Certain Women Holly Hunter – The Big Sick Allison Janney – I, Tonya Lesley Manville – Phantom Thread Laurie Metcalf – Lady Bird SUPPORTING ACTOR OF THE YEAR Willem Dafoe – The Florida Project Hugh Grant – Paddington 2 Woody Harrelson – Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri Sam Rockwell – Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri Michael Stuhlbarg – Call Me By Your Name BRITISH/IRISH ACTRESS OF THE YEAR Emily Beecham – Daphne Judi Dench – Victoria & Abdul/Murder on the Orient Express Sally Hawkins – The Shape of Water/Maudie/Paddington 2 Florence Pugh – Lady Macbeth Saoirse Ronan – Lady Bird/Loving Vincent BRITISH/IRISH ACTOR OF THE YEAR Daniel Day-Lewis – Phantom Thread Colin Farrell – The Killing of a Sacred Deer/The Beguiled Daniel Kaluuya – Get Out Josh O’Connor – God’s Own Country Gary Oldman – Darkest Hour/The Space Between Us YOUNG BRITISH/IRISH PERFORMER OF THE YEAR Harris Dickinson – Beach Rats Tom Holland – The Lost City of Z/Spider-Man: Homecoming Noah Jupe – Suburbicon/Wonder/The Man With the Iron Heart Dafne Keen – Logan Fionn Whitehead – Dunkirk BREAKTHROUGH BRITISH/IRISH FILMMAKER: The Philip French Award Alice Birch – Lady Macbeth Simon Farnaby – Paddington 2/Mindhorn Francis Lee – God’s Own Country Rungano Nyoni – I Am Not a Witch William Oldroyd – Lady Macbeth BRITISH/IRISH SHORT FILM OF THE YEAR The Cloud of Unknowing – Mike Hannon The Dog and the Elephant – Mike Sharpe Tuesday – Charlotte Wells We Love Moses – Dionne Edwards Your Mother and I – Anna Maguire TECHNICAL ACHIEVEMENT AWARD Baby Driver – Darrin Prescott, stunts Blade Runner 2049 – Dennis Gassner, production design Dunkirk – Hans Zimmer, music God’s Own Country – Joshua James Richards, cinematography Lady Macbeth – Holly Waddington, costumes The Lost City of Z – Darius Khondji, cinematography The Love Witch – Emma Willis, hair & makeup Paddington 2 – Pablo Grillo, visual effects Phantom Thread – Mark Bridges, costumes Star Wars: The Last Jedi – Ben Morris, visual effects EXCELLENCE IN FILM: The Dilys Powell Award Kate Winslet  

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  • CALL ME BY YOUR NAME Leads Nominations for 2018 Film Independent Spirit Awards

    Call Me By Your Name
    Call Me By Your Name

    Call Me by Your Name leads the nominations for the 2018 Film Independent Spirit Awards with eight nods including Best Director and Best Feature. 

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  • 2017 Gotham Awards Nominations – ‘Get Out’, ‘The Florida Project’, ‘Lady Bird’ Among Nominees

    2017 Gotham Awards Nominations - Get Out, Call Me By Your Name, The Florida Project, Lady Bird The nominations for the 27th Annual IFP Gotham Awards are out, and Jordan Peele’s Get Out lead with four nods including Best Feature, Breakthrough Director and Screenplay and Best Actor for Daniel Kaluuya.  Next up with three nominations each were Call Me By Your Name, The Florida Project, and Lady Bird. Mudbound scored an early win for the special Gotham Jury Award for ensemble performance (actors Carey Mulligan, Garrett Hedlund, Jason Clarke, Jason Mitchell, Mary J. Blige, Rob Morgan, and Jonathan Banks). The Gotham Awards signals the kick-off to the film awards season. As the first major awards ceremony on the calendar, the IFP Awards provide critical early recognition and media attention to worthy independent films. “This year offered a bountiful array of diverse, creative work that represents the very best from this community. We’re thrilled to celebrate these achievements,” said Joana Vicente, executive director of IFP and the Made in NY Media Center. In addition to the film awards, Gotham Award Tributes will be given to actors Nicole Kidman and Dustin Hoffman, director Sofia Coppola, producer Jason Blum, cinematographer Ed Lachman, and a Gotham Humanitarian Tribute to Al Gore. The Gotham Awards ceremony will be held on Monday, November 27th at Cipriani Wall Street.

    2017 IFP Gotham Independent Film Award nominations

    Best Feature

    Call Me by Your Name Luca Guadagnino, director; Peter Spears, Luca Guadagnino, Emilie Georges, Rodrigo Teixeira, Marco Morabito, James Ivory, Howard Rosenman, producers (Sony Pictures Classics) The Florida Project Sean Baker, director; Sean Baker, Chris Bergoch, Kevin Chinoy, Andrew Duncan, Alex Saks, Francesca Silvestri, Shih-Ching Tsou, producers (A24) Get Out Jordan Peele, director; Sean McKittrick, Jason Blum, Edward H. Hamm, Jr., Jordan Peele, producers (Universal Pictures) Good Time Josh and Benny Safdie, directors; Paris Kasidokostas-Latsis, Terry Dougas, Sebastian Bear-McClard, Oscar Boyson, producers (A24) I, Tonya Craig Gillespie, director; Bryan Unkeless, Steven Rogers, Margot Robbie, Tom Ackerley, producers (NEON)

    Best Documentary

    Ex Libris – The New York Public Library Frederick Wiseman, director and producer (Zipporah Films) Rat Film Theo Anthony, director; Riel Roch-Decter, Sebastian Pardo, producers (MEMORY and Cinema Guild) Strong Island Yance Ford, director; Yance Ford, Joslyn Barnes, producers (Netflix) Whose Streets? Sabaah Folayan, Damon Davis, directors; Sabaah Folayan, Damon Davis, Jennifer MacArthur, Flannery Miller, producers (Magnolia Pictures) The Work Jairus McLeary, director; Gethin Aldous, co-director; Alice Henty, Eon McLeary, Jairus McLeary, Miles McLeary, producers (The Orchard and First Look Media)

    Bingham Ray Breakthrough Director Award

    Maggie Betts for Novitiate (Sony Pictures Classics) Greta Gerwig for Lady Bird (A24) Kogonada for Columbus (Superlative Films/Depth of Field) Jordan Peele for Get Out (Universal Pictures) Joshua Z Weinstein for Menashe (A24)

    Best Screenplay

    The Big Sick, Emily V. Gordon and Kumail Nanjiani (Amazon Studios) Brad’s Status, Mike White (Amazon Studios) Call Me by Your Name, James Ivory (Sony Pictures Classics) Columbus, Kogonada (Superlative Films/Depth of Field) Get Out, Jordan Peele (Universal Pictures) Lady Bird, Greta Gerwig (A24)

    Best Actor*

    Willem Dafoe in The Florida Project (A24) James Franco in The Disaster Artist (A24) Daniel Kaluuya in Get Out (Universal Pictures) Robert Pattinson in Good Time (A24) Adam Sandler in The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) (Netflix) Harry Dean Stanton in Lucky (Magnolia Pictures)

    Best Actress*

    Melanie Lynskey in I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore (Netflix) Haley Lu Richardson in Columbus (Superlative Films/Depth of Field) Margot Robbie in I, Tonya (NEON) Saoirse Ronan in Lady Bird (A24) Lois Smith in Marjorie Prime (FilmRise)

    Breakthrough Actor

    Mary J. Blige in Mudbound (Netflix) Timothée Chalamet in Call Me by Your Name (Sony Pictures Classics) Harris Dickinson in Beach Rats (NEON) Kelvin Harrison, Jr. in It Comes at Night (A24) Brooklynn Prince in The Florida Project (A24) * The 2017 Best Actor/Best Actress nominating committee also voted to award a special Gotham Jury Award for ensemble performance to Mudbound, The award will go to actors Carey Mulligan, Garrett Hedlund, Jason Clarke, Jason Mitchell, Mary J. Blige, Rob Morgan, and Jonathan Banks.

    Breakthrough Series – Long Form

    Atlanta, Donald Glover, creator; Donald Glover, Dianne McGunigle, Paul Simms, executive producers (FX Networks) Better Things, Pamela Adlon, Louis C.K., creators; Dave Becky, M. Blair Breard, Louis C.K., Pamela Adlon, executive producers (FX Networks) Dear White People, Justin Simien, creator; Yvette Lee Bowser, Justin Simien, Stephanie Allain, Julia Lebedev, executive producers (Netflix) Fleabag, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, creator; Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Harry Williams, Jack Williams, executive producers (Amazon) Search Party, Sarah-Violet Bliss, Charles Rogers, Michael Showalter, creators; Sarah-Violet Bliss, Charles Rogers, Michael Showalter, Tony Hernandez, Lilly Burns, executive producers (TBS)

    Breakthrough Series – Short Form

    555, Kate Berlant, Andrew DeYoung and John Early, creators (Vimeo) Inconceivable, Joel Ashton McCarthy, creator (YouTube) Junior, Zoe Cassavetes, creator (Blackpills and VICE) Let Me Die a Nun, Sarah Salovaara, creator (Vimeo) The Strange Eyes of Dr. Myes, Nancy Andrews, creator (YouTube) (Additional credits to be determined.)  

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  • 28th Stockholm International Film Festival Announces Lineup, THE SHAPE OF WATER, DOWNSIZING and More

    [caption id="attachment_25167" align="aligncenter" width="1200"]The Shape Of Water Sally Hawkins and Octavia Spencer in the film THE SHAPE OF WATER.[/caption] 150 films from 60 different countries have been selected to be screened at the 28th Stockholm International Film Festival that takes place from the November 8th to the 19th. A third of the films in this year’s festival program are directed by first-time filmmakers, the festival is also joined by legends such as this year’s Lifetime Achievement Award-winner Vanessa Redgrave. After a long and successful Hollywood-career 80 year old Vanessa Redgrave makes her debut as a director with the documentary Sea Sorrow. The film focuses on the global refugee crisis and is a part of this years Spotlight – Change. This years Visionary Award recipient is the director Pablo Larraín. Larraín is the director behind the Academy Award-nominated Jackie (2016); he is now attending the Stockholm Film festival with his latest film Neruda. The premiere movie of this year’s film festival is the critically acclaimed film The Shape Of Water by the director behind the Academy Award-winning Pan’s Labyrinth Guillermo del Toro. Del Toro also won the Gold Lion at the Venice Film Festival earlier this year. A selection of other films that will be screened are: Thelma by Joachim Trier, Call Me By Your Name by Luca Guadagnino, The Party by Sally Porter, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri by Martin McDonagh and last but not least Downsizing by Alexander Payne.

    Stockholm International Film Festival – Program 2017

    Stockholm XXVIII Competition

    A Ciambra by Jonas Carpignano (Italy, France, USA, Germany, 120 min) Ava by Léa Mysius (France, 106 min) Beach Rats by Eliza Hittman Co (USA, 95 min) Beast by Michael Pearce (Great Britain, 107 min) Falling by Marina Stepanska (Ukraine, 105 min) Gabriel And The Mountain by Fellipe Gamarano Barbosa (Brazil, France, 127min) God’s Own Country by Francis Lee (Great Britain, 104 min) I Am Not A Witch by Rungano Nyoni (Great Britain, France, 92 min) Insyriated by Philippe Van Leeuw (Belgium, France, Liban, 85 min) Jeune Femme by Léonor Serraille (France, 97 min) King Of Peking by Sam Voutas (USA, Australia, China, 88 min) La familia by Gustavo Rondón Córdova (Venezuela, Chili, Norway, 82 min) Los Perros by Marcela Said (Chile, France, 94 min) No Date, No Signature by Vahid Jalilvand (Iran, 100 min) One Thousand Ropes by Tusi Tamasese (New Zealand, 98 min) The Rider by Chloé Zhao (USA, 105 min) Son of Sofia by Elina Psikou (Bulgaria, France, Greece, 105 min) Where The Shadows Fall by Valentina Pedicini (Italy, 95 min)

    Stockholm XXVIII Documentary Competition

    A Gray State by Erik Nelson (USA, 93 min) Copwatch by Camilla Hall (USA, 99 min) For Ahkeem by Jeremy S. Levine and Landon Van Soest (USA, 89 min) The Force by Peter Nicks (USA, 93 min) Lots of Kids, A Monkey, And A Castle by Gustavo Salmerón (Spain, 90 min) The New Radical by Adam Bhala Lough (USA, 120 min) Step by Amanda Lipitz (USA, 83 min) Tarzan’s Testicles by Alexandru Solomon (Romania, France, 107 min) This is Congo by Daniel McCabe (Democratic Republic of Congo, USA, Canada, 91 min) This Is Everything: Gigi Gorgeous by Barbara Kopple (USA, 91 min) True Conviction by Jamie Meltzer (USA, 84 min) The Venerable W by Barbet Schroeder (France, Switzerland, 100 min)

    Stockholm Impact

    Cardinals by Grayson Moore and Aidan Shipley (Canada, 84 min) The Last Verse by Ying`Ting Tseng (Taiwan, 100 min) My Pure Land by Sarmad Masud (Great Britain, 92 min) Searing Summer by Ebrahim Irajzad (Iran, 83 min) Wild Roses by Anna Jadowska (Poland, 89 min)

    Open Zone

    A Fantastic Woman by Sebastián Lelio (Chile, USA, Germany, Spain, 104 min) A Man Of Integrity by Mohammad Rasoulof (Iran, 117 min) Amant Double by François Ozon (France, 110 min) April’s Daughter by Michel Franco (Mexico, 102 min) Based On A True Story by Roman Polanski (France, 110 min) Call Me By Your Name by Luca Guadagnino (Italy, France, 130 min) Free And Easy by Jun Geng (Honk Kong, 97 minutes) Gisslan by Rezo Gigineishvili (Russian Federation, Georgia, Poland, 103 min) Have A Nice Day by Liu Jian (China, 75 min) Ice Mother by Bohdan Sláma (Czech Republic, Slovakia, France, 105 min) Mr. Long by Sabu (Japan, Hong Kong, China, Taiwan, Germany, 129 min) On The Beach At Night Alone by Hong Sang`Soo (South Korea, 101 min) Our Time Will Come by Ann Hui (Honk Kong, 130 min) Radiance by Naomi Kawase (Japan, France, 101 min) Thelma by Joachin Trier (Norway, France, 109 min) The Shape Of Water by Guillermo del Toro (USA, 119 min) The Wandering Soap Opera by Raúl Ruiz and Valeria Sarmiento (Chile, 80 min) The Workshop by Laurent Cantet (France, 113 min)

    American Independents

    Band Aid by Zoe Lister`Jones (USA, 94 min) The Boy Downstairs by Sophie Brooks (USA, 91 min) Brigsby Bear by Dave McCary (USA, 100 min) Crown Heights by Matt Ruskin (USA, 99 min) The Endless by Aaron Moorhead, Justin Benson ( USA, 111 min) The Florida Project by Sean Baker (USA, 115 min) Gemini by Aaron Katz (USA, 93 min) Ingrid Goes West by Matt Spicer (USA, 97 min) Kings by Deniz Gamze Ergüven (France, Belgium, 86 min Life And Nothing More by Antonio Méndez Esparza (USA, 113 min) The Lovers by Azazel Jacobs (USA, 98 min) Keep The Change by Rachel Israel (USA, 94 min) Most Beautiful Island by Ana Asensio (USA, Spain, 80 min) Permanent by Colette Burson (USA, 97 min) Sollers Point by Matthew Porterfield (USA, France, 101 min) Who We Are Now by Matthew Newton (USA, 99 min)

    Icons

    Battle Of The Sexes by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris (Great Britain, USA, 121 min) Breathe by Andy Serkis (Great Britain, 117 min) Downsizing by Alexander Payne (USA, 135 min) The Final Journey by Nick Baker`Monteys (Germany, 100 min) Final Portrait by Stanley Tucci (USA, 90 min) Hannah by Andrea Pallaoro (France, 80 min) The Hero by Brett Haley (USA, 96 min) Let The Sunshine In by Claire Denis (France, 94 min) The Party by Sally Potter (Great Britain, 71 min) Reinventing Marvin by Anne Fontaine (France, 115 min) Rodin by Jacques Doillon (France, 119 min) Suburbicon by George Clooney (USA, 105 min) Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri by Martin McDonagh (USA, UK, 115 min) You disappear by Peter Schønau Fog (Denmark, 118 min) Wonder Wheel by Woody Allen (USA, 101 min)

    Discovery

    Axolotl Overkill by Helene Hegemann (Germany, 94 min) Daybreak by Gentian Koçi (Albania, Greece, 85 min) Disappearance by Ali Asgari (Iran, Qatar, 88 min) Don’t Swallow My Heart, Alligator Girl! by Felipe Bragança (Brazil, Netherlands, France, Paraguay, 108 min) If You Saw His Heart by Joan Chemla (France, 86 min) Killing Jesus by Laura Mora (Colombia, Argentina, 100 min) Menashe by Joshua Z Weinstein (USA, 82 min) Oh Lucy! by Atsuko Hirayanagi (Japan, USA, 97 min) The Testament by Amichai Greenberg (Israel, 88 min) Vazante by Daniela Thomas (Brazil, Portugal, 116 min)

    Documania

    Chavela by Catherine Gund and Daresha Kyi (USA, 90 min) Dina by Dan Sickles and Antonio Santini (USA, 101 min) Hondros directed by Greg Campbell (USA, 93 min) The Paris Opera by Jean`Stéphane Bron (France, 110 min) Return Of A President – After The Coup In Madagascar by Lotte Mik`Meyer (Denmark, South Africa, France, Madagascar, 78 min) Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked The World by Catherine Bainbridge and Alfonso Maiorana (Canada, 103 min) Ryuichi Sakamoto: Coda by Stephen Nomura Schible (USA, 102 min) Served Like A Girl by Lysa Heslov (USA, 93 min) Shadowman by Oren Jacoby (USA, 83 min) Take Every Wave: The Life Of Laird Hamilton by Rory Kennedy (USA, 118 min) Walk with me by Max Pugh and Marc J. Francis (Great Britain, 94 min)

    Twilight Zone

    A Day by Sun`Ho Cho (South Korea, 90 min) Blade Of The Immortal by Takashi Miike (Japan, 140 min) The Cured by David Freyne (Ireland, Great Britain, France, 95 min) Double Date by Benjamin Barfoot (Great Britain, 90 min) Les Affamés by Robin Aubert (Canada, 100 min) Jailbreak by Jimmy Henderson (Cambodia, 92 min) Lowlife by Ryan Prows (USA, 98 min) The Merciless by Sung`Hyun Byun (South Korea, 120 min) Ugly Nasty People by Cosimo Gomez (Italy, France, 87 min) The Villainess by Byung`Gil Jung (South Korea, 129 min)

    Spotlight

    An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power by Bonni Cohen and Jon Shenk (USA, 99 min) Human Flow by Ai Wei Wei (Germany, 140 min) More by Onur Saylak (Turkey, 115 min) This Is Our Land by Lucas Belvaux (France, Belgium, 118 min) Wasted! The Story Of Food Waste by Anna Chai and Nari Kye (USA, 85 min) Zagros by Sahim Omar Kalifa (Belgium, 100 min)

    Stockholm XXVIII Short Film Competition

    A Gentle Night by Qui Yang (China, 15 min) Aria by Myrsini Aristidou (Cyprus, France, 14 min) Atelier by Elsa María Jakobsdóttir (Denmark, 30 min) Bonboné by Rakan Mayasi (Lebanon, Palestine, 15 min) Hombre by Juan Pablo Arias Muñoz (Chile, 21 min) Into the Blue by Antoneta Kusijanovic (Croatia, Slovenia, 22 min) Kudzu by Connor Simpson (USA, 15 min) Lost Property Office by Daniel Agdag (Australia, 10 min) Marlon by Jessica Palud (France, Belgium, 19 min) The Ogre by Laurène Braibant (France, 10 min) Retouch by Kaveh Mazaheri (Iran, 20 min) Signature by Kei Chikaura (Japan, 13 min) Superpower Girl by Soo`Young Kim (South Korea, 24 min) Time To Go by Grzegorz Mołda (Poland, 15 min) You Will Be Fine by Céline Devaux (France, 15 min)

    Special Event

    Neruda by Pablo Larraín (Chile, Argentina, France, Spain, USA, 107 min) Varg by Frida Kempff and Erik Andersson (Sverige, 11 min) Sea Sorrow by Vanessa Redgrave (Great Britain, 74 min) Surprise film

    1 Km Film

    Förebilder by Elin Övergaard (Sweden,13 min) In Love by Ville Gideon Sörman (Denmark, 29 min) Intercourse by Jonatan Etzler (Sweden, 10 min) Mephobia by Mika Gustafsson (Sweden, 24 min) Min Homosyster by Lia Hietala (Sweden,15 min) Push It by Julia Thelin (Sweden, 8 min) Skuggdjur by Jerry Carlsson (Sweden, 21 min) Stay Ups by Joanna Rytel (Sweden, 11 min) Stranded by Viktor Johansson (Sweden, 11 min) Turkkiosken by Bahar Pars (Sweden, 7 min) Image: Sally Hawkins and Octavia Spencer in the film THE SHAPE OF WATER. Photo courtesy of Fox Searchlight Pictures. © 2017 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation All Rights Reserved

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  • 2017 London Film Festival Unveils Lineup of 242 Feature Films + 128 Shorts

    [caption id="attachment_24242" align="aligncenter" width="1144"]The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)[/caption] The 61st BFI London Film Festival today announced its full program, featuring a diverse selection of 242 feature films including 46 documentaries, 6 animations, 14 archive restorations and 16 artists’ moving image features. The program also includes 128 short films, and 67 countries are represented across short film and features. Alongside the Galas, Special Presentations and films in Competitions, the Festival will show a range of new cinema in sections aka strands titled Love, Debate, Laugh, Dare, Thrill, Cult, Journey, Experimenta and Family. In 2017, the LFF debuts a new strand, Create, featuring films that celebrate artistic practice in all its channels and forms the electricity of the creative process, reflecting London’s position as one of the world’s leading creative cities. Audiences will have the opportunity to hear some of the world’s creative leaders through the Festival’s acclaimed talks’ series LFF Connects, which features artists working at the intersection of film and other creative industries, and Screen Talks, a series of in-depth interviews with leaders in contemporary cinema. Participants this year include Julian Rosefeldt & Cate Blanchett, David Fincher, Demis Hassabis, Nitin Sawhney, Johan Knattrup Jensen, Ian McEwan and Takashi Miike.

    OFFICIAL COMPETITION

    Robin Campillo, 120 BPM (BEATS PER MINUTE) Vivian Qu, ANGELS WEAR WHITE Majid Majidi, BEYOND THE CLOUDS (World Premiere) Nora Twomey, THE BREADWINNER (European Premiere) Juliana Rojas, Marco Dutra, GOOD MANNERS Xavier Beauvois, THE GUARDIANS (European Premiere) Andrew Haigh, LEAN ON PETE Andrey Zvyagintsev, LOVELESS Azazel Jacobs, THE LOVERS (European Premiere) Warwick Thornton, SWEET COUNTRY Cory Finley, THOROUGHBRED (International Premiere) Annemarie Jacir, WAJIB

    FIRST FEATURE COMPETITION

    Daniel Kokotajlo, APOSTASY Léa Mysius, AVA Michael Pearce, BEAST (European Premiere) Ofir Raul Graizer, THE CAKEMAKER Gilles Coulier, CARGO Kogonada, COLUMBUS Rungano Nyoni, I AM NOT A WITCH Léonor Serraille, JEUNE FEMME Ana Asensio, MOST BEAUTIFUL ISLAND Carla Simón, SUMMER 1993 Hlynur Pálmason, WINTER BROTHERS John Trengove, THE WOUND

    DOCUMENTARY COMPETITION

    Maryam Goormaghtigh, BEFORE SUMMER ENDS Elvira Lind, BOBBI JENE Arash Kamali Sarvestani, Behrouz Boochani, CHAUKA, PLEASE TELL US THE TIME (International Premiere) Radu Jude, THE DEAD NATION Shevaun Mizrahi, DISTANT CONSTELLATION Frederick Wiseman, EX LIBRIS – THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY Agnès Varda, JR, FACES PLACES Austin Lynch, Matthew Booth, GRAY HOUSE Brett Morgen, JANE (European Premiere) Lucy Cohen, KINGDOM OF US (World Premiere) Emmanuel Gras, MAKALA Sonia Kronlund, THE PRINCE OF NOTHINGWOOD

    SHORT FILM AWARD

    Gabriel Abrantes, THE ARTIFICIAL HUMORS Phil Collins, DELETE BEACH Billie Pleffer, FYSH (International Premiere) Anna Cazenave Cambet, GABBER LOVER Karishma Dube, GODDESS Aegina Brahim, LAWS OF THE GAME Jonathan Vinel, MARTIN CRIES Patrick Bresnan THE RABBIT HUNT Moin Hussain, REAL GODS REQUIRE BLOOD Kibwe Tavares, ROBOT & SCARECROW Kazik Radwanski, SCAFFOLD Harry Lighton, WREN BOYS (World Premiere) The Festival program is organized in strands: Love, Debate, Laugh, Dare, Thrill, Cult, Journey, Create, Family, Treasures and Experimenta.

    LOVE

    The Love Gala is the European Premiere of Dominic Cooke’s quietly heart-breaking film debut ON CHESIL BEACH. Saoirse Ronan and rising actor Billy Howle star as a young couple in the early 1960s struggling to physically connect on their honeymoon, impeccably adapted for the big screen by Ian McEwan from his own Man Booker-shortlisted novela. Other highlights in this section include: CLOSE-KNIT, Naoko Ogigami’s quietly subversive and emotionally rich portrait of a transwoman whose maternal feelings are stirred by the arrival of her boyfriend’s 11-year-old niece; THE GROWN-UPS, Maïte Alberdi’s tender and bittersweet documentary portrait of Chileans Anita and Andres, who have Down’s syndrome and are very much in love; the World Premiere of Carlos Marques Marcet’s ANCHOR AND HOPE, a London-set story about modern love and family featuring Oona Chaplin; John Cameron Mitchell’s cosmic ride HOW TO TALK TO GIRLS AT PARTIES, sees aliens have landed in 1970s Croydon in a funny, energetic love story starring Elle Fanning, Alex Sharp and Nicole Kidman; the World Premiere of JOURNEYMAN, features Paddy Considine following up his acclaimed debut Tyrannosaur with the story of a boxer who must rebuild his life after a near-fatal injury; GOING WEST, a World Premiere from Norwegian newcomer Henrik Martin Dahlsbakken who delivers a sweetly delicious road movie; LET THE SUNSHINE IN, Claire Denis’ darkly witty drama starring Juliette Binoche as an artist caught up in a series of unsatisfying affairs, and David Gordon Green’s rousing yet devastating true-story drama STRONGER featuring a remarkable performance by Jake Gyllenhaal as a survivor of the Boston Marathon bombing.

    DEBATE

    This year’s Debate Gala is Samuel Maoz’s FOXTROT, a film that combines thrilling cinematography with superb performances, and highlights the absurdities of conscripted service. Debate also includes: BIRDS ARE SINGING IN KIGALI, Joanna Kos-Krauze and Krzysztof Krauze’s hard-hitting drama about the intertwined lives of two refugee survivors reeling from the impact of the Rwandan genocide and containing powerful central performances; the World Premiere of THE CLIMB, Michael Woodward’s debut documentary that charts Greenpeace’s daring all-female team that illegally ascended The Shard in protest against petroleum giant Shell’s plans to dig for oil in the Arctic; the World Premiere of THE FORGIVEN, Roland Joffé’s political drama starring Forest Whitaker as Desmond Tutu and Eric Bana as Piet Blomfeld, asking how far we can go in forgiving past crimes; the World Premiere of ISLAND, Steven Eastwood’s haunting and deeply moving documentary combining observational footage with contemplative shots of the costal landscapes of the Isle of Wight, and set among terminally ill cancer patients, and THE VENERABLE W., Barbet Schroeder’s disturbingly illuminating portrait of Buddhist monk Ashin Wirathu, who was known for espousing anti-Muslim hatred.

    LAUGH

    This year’s Laugh Gala is Noah Baumbach’s THE MEYEROWITZ STORIES (NEW AND SELECTED). A stellar cast give uniformly excellent performances, including Dustin Hoffman, Ben Stiller, Adam Sandler, Elizabeth Marvel and Emma Thompson. Through the madcap antics of a neurotic, failure-obsessed clan, Baumbach surfaces bigger questions about how to value family and the meaning of success. Laugh also includes: the World Premiere of Adrian Shergold’s FUNNY COW, which contains a formidable performance from Maxine Peake as an aspiring stand-up comic confronting her violent husband and the sexist Northern England club circuit; INGRID GOES WEST, Matt Spicer’s jet-black stalker comedy brilliantly skewers dangerous obsession and the sham of Instagrammed perfection with wicked and fearless performances from Elizabeth Olsen and Aubrey Plaza; joy and grace flow out of Dustin Guy Defa’s observational comedy drama PERSON TO PERSON, starring Michael Cera as a reporter keen on quoting (his own) heavy metal lyrics; Daan Bakker’s QUALITY TIME is perfect for lovers of experimental and irreverent cinema offering a portmanteau selection of stories of male arrested development; and Henrik Ruben Genz’s WORD OF GOD is set months after the Chernobyl disaster and provides dark and dirty humour where pretty much nothing is off limits.

    DARE

    The Dare Gala is François Ozon’s frisky new thriller, AMANT DOUBLE, a deliciously duplicitous tale of psychoanalysis and seduction that channels the spirits of Hitchcock and De Palma at their naughtiest and stars Jérémie Renier, Marine Vacth and Jacqueline Bisset. Other highlights in the strand include: Eliza Hittman’s BEACH RATS, a gripping investigation of repressed sexual desire in a hyper-masculine environment; Jon Garaño and Aitor Arregi’s touching drama GIANT, set in 19th century Spain and based on the true story of Mikel Jokin Eleizegi, allegedly the tallest man of his time; Semih Kaplanoğlu’s spellbinding dystopian sci-fi, GRAIN in which climate change has caused the nearextinction of human life; Liu Jian’s adult animé HAVE A NICE DAY, a biting, bone-dry satire on contemporary Chinese social mores and featuring plenty of bloodthirsty Tarantino-esque genre thrills; the European Premiere of Bornila Chatterjee’s THE HUNGRY, which reworks Shakespeare’s bloody Titus Andronicus into a macabre modern tragedy set in Northern India; Barbara Albert’s resplendent drama MADEMOISELLE PARADIS, based on the true story of Maria Theresia ‘Resi’ von Paradis, a gifted blind musician and contemporary of Mozart, paraded through Vienna’s courts to perform; Jean Libon and Yves Hinant’s jawdropping and extraordinary documentary SO HELP ME GOD, which details the work of an unorthodox Belgian judge Anne Gruwez as she tackles gruesome crimes, domestic violence and other sordid cases; and WESTERN, director Valeska Grisebach’s contemporary western in which tensions mount between German construction workers and Bulgarian villagers in a small rural town.

    THRILL

    This year’s Thrill Gala is Takashi Miike’s savage and inventive action thriller, BLADE OF THE IMMORTAL, based on the famous manga series by Hiroaki Samurai about a samurai cursed with immortal life and has the distinction of being Miike’s 100th feature film. Thrill also features: the European Premiere of Nattawut Poonpiriya’s Thai teen thriller BAD GENIUS, in which young brainiac Lynn uses a very special set of skills to cheat on behalf of her classmates in the high-stakes world of entrance exams for elite international universities; the European Premiere of Anurag Kashyap’s THE BRAWLER in which a young and talented Indian boxer dreams of being champion, but is knocked sideways when he falls for the niece of the man blocking his road to success; Aaron Katz’s GEMINI in which a heinous crime tests the complex relationship between a tenacious personal assistant, Jill played by Lola Kirke and her Hollywood movie star boss Heather played by Zoë Kravitz; the Safdie brothers’ latest film GOOD TIME features Robert Pattinson as a small-time New York criminal, who after a bank robbery goes seriously wrong, devises a plan to spring his injured accomplice from police custody; Jennifer Peedom’s spectacular documentary MOUNTAIN, is a mind-blowing symphony of images and sound chronicling the powerful attraction mountains hold over us; love, crime and action combine in a taut and twisty thriller-cum-romance in Michaël R. Roskam’s RACER AND THE JAILBIRD starring Adèle Exarchopoulos as Bibi, a young racing driver and Matthias Schoenaerts as Gigi the Jailbird, a dashing playboy with, it seems, time and money to burn; Ian Nelms and Eshom Nelms’ blackly comic, crime noir, SMALL TOWN CRIME (European Premiere) stars John Hawkes as alcoholic former cop Mike, channelling a drunk Columbo who embarks on his own unofficial crime investigation while Octavia Spencer plays his supportive sister Kelly who is starting to lose patience with Mike’s lying, drifting and drinking; and the International Premiere of Xin Yukun’s sophisticated arthouse thriller, WRATH OF SILENCE featuring martial arts maestro Song Yang, as a mute bruiser who returns to his home, a remote farming village, following the disappearance of his son. With tight plotting, memorable characters and an unforgettable climax, director Xin Yukun establishes himself as a new international filmmaker you need to know.

    CULT

    The Cult Gala is Joachim Trier’s subtle shocker THELMA, a supernaturally-tinged tale of a young woman’s macabre coming of age. Other titles in the strand include: S. Craig Zahler’s genre-bending, bone-crunching exercise in slow-burn suspense, BRAWL IN CELL BLOCK 99, starring Vince Vaughn as a former boxer-turned mechanic involved in a drug deal that goes wrong that sees him behind bars; the walking dead get a second chance at life in David Freyne’s debut THE CURED starring Ellen Page in an inventive and surprising post-zombie era drama where a cure has been found for the infected and the rehabilitated are transitioned back into society; the World Premiere of Jeremy Dyson and Andy Nyman’s GHOST STORIES in which they bring their hit London stage play to the big screen, with suitably chilling results. Nyman plays Phillip Goodman, an academic and professional sceptic out to debunk claims of the supernatural , but when he stumbles across a long lost file containing three unsolved cases of the Occult, his whole belief system – not to mention his sanity – is thrown into question; LET THE CORPSES TAN is directing duo Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani’s adaptation of JeanPatrick Manchette’s influential 1971 crime novel and the result is a sun-drenched Western-tinged, crimecaper; MY FRIEND DAHMER is director Marc Meyers’ adaptation of John Backderf’s revered graphic novel and is an unnerving portrait of one of America’s most prolific murderers, Jeffrey Dahmer; and Paco Plaza’s much-anticipated new horror film, VERONICA, inspired by an actual unsolved case in Spain and a no-holds barred supernatural shocker.

    JOURNEY

    This year’s Journey Gala is Todd Haynes’ new film WONDERSTRUCK, an enthralling adaptation of Brian Selznick’s acclaimed young adult novel. Featuring Julianne Moore and Michelle Williams in supporting roles alongside a gifted young cast, Oakes Fegley and newcomer Millicent Simmonds, a deaf actress making her film debut, it is both a whimsical children’s film for adults and a refreshingly grown-up film for children. Other Journey titles include: Arshad Khan’s ABU, a compelling documentary about a young Pakistani man’s difficulties in coping with migration and the resultant cultural change, his emerging sexuality and an increasingly orthodox father; Iraqi filmmaker Mohamed Jabarah Al-Daradji’s THE JOURNEY, a taut, thoughtprovoking thriller that tackles what might just be the final moments of a potential suicide bomber’s life; David Batty’s stylish documentary MY GENERATION, presented and narrated by Michael Caine, playfully explores the impact of Britain’s working class cultural revolution in the 1960s and features a wealth of archive footage and a spot-on soundtrack from The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Kinks and The Who, which makes for an exhilarating journey back in time; the European Premiere of Egyptian director Amr Salama’s SHEIKH JACKSON, a bittersweet and poignant tale of an Islamist preacher experiencing a crisis of faith following the death of the King of Pop, Michael Jackson; Marc J. Francis and Max Pugh’s fascinating and immersive exploration of mindfulness, WALK WITH ME, featuring narration by Benedict Cumberbatch, follows the daily rituals and routine of Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh and offers a rare insight into life within a monastic community; and the World Premiere of THE WHITE GIRL, where debut director Jenny Suen collaborates with legendary cinematographer Christopher Doyle on an intoxicating and textually rich film.

    CREATE

    The brand new Create strand channels the electricity of the act of creation, celebrating artistic expression in all its forms. The inaugural Create Gala is Michel Hazanavicius’ REDOUBTABLE, an audacious, multi-layered biopic of French cinema’s most notorious director, Jean-Luc Godard. Also in Create: Greg Kohs’ ALPHAGO the story of how Google’s DeepMind team took on Go world champion Lee Sedol, posing questions about whether computers can think creatively and whether there is an algorithm for intuition; the World Premiere of THE BALLAD OF SHIRLEY COLLINS, Rob Curry and Tim Plester’s portrait of one of the great British folks singers who mysteriously lost her voice in 1980; G-FUNK tells the story of how three childhood friends from East Long Beach Warren G, Snoop Dogg and the late great Nate Dogg, transformed hip-hop into a global phenomenon and changed the world; the World Premiere of William Badgely’s HERE TO BE HEARD: THE STORY OF THE SLITS is a riveting film about the game-changing and largely female feminist punk band; Dorota Kobiela and Hugh Welchman’s LOVING VINCENT is a stunning, fully painted animated feature created in the style of Van Gogh’s paintings matching extraordinary style with richly satisfying storytelling, broadcast live from the National Gallery to cinemas nationwide; and Julian Rosefeldt’s MANIFESTO starring Cate Blanchett as thirteen different characters in this energetic tribute to artistic troublemakers.

    FAMILY

    Showcasing films for the young, as well as the young at heart the Family Gala is THE BIG BAD FOX AND OTHER TALES, an outstanding, laugh-a-minute animation from Benjamin Renner and Patrick Imbert, the team behind Ernest & Celestine (LFF 2012, Family Gala) and is guaranteed to appeal to adults as much as it will to children. Other highlights include Chang-yong Moon and Jin Jeon’s beautifully made documentary BECOMING WHO I WAS about a young monk Padma Angdu, who is said to be the latest incarnation of a religious teacher, known as a Rinpoche, and his attempts to reach the home he had in a former life; Xuan Liang and Chun Zhang’s visually breath-taking Chinese animated fantasy, BIG FISH & BEGONIA is as near to the best of Studio Ghibli as you’re likely to find anywhere; Meikeminne Clinckspoor’s family adventure CLOUDBOY is about 12- year-old Niilas who is sent away against his wishes to spend the summer with his estranged mother in Swedish Lapland, among the indigenous reindeer herding Sami people; and winner of the top prize at this year’s Annecy Animation Film Festival, Masaaki Yuasa’s anime LU OVER THE WALL brings human and merfolk together with surprising outcomes. This funky, upbeat tale is full of energy, features cute ‘merdogs’, musical mermaids and a giant humanoid shark and has a really cool soundtrack. This section also includes a program of animated shorts for younger audiences which bring together eclectic, exciting and colourful films from all around the globe.

    TREASURES

    The Treasures selection brings recently restored cinematic classics from archives around the world to the Festival in London. The Archive Gala is the World Premiere of the BFI National Archive restoration of the silent film SHIRAZ: A ROMANCE OF INDIA (1928), a ravishing, romantic tale based on the story of the 17th century Mughal ruler Shah Jahan, his queen and the building of the world’s most beautiful monument to love, the Taj Mahal. Directed by Franz Osten, based on a play by Niranjan Pal and starring and produced by Himansu Rai, the film was shot entirely in India and performed by an all-Indian cast. Other highlights include the World Premieres of the 4K restoration by Sony Pictures Entertainment of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH (1946); the digitally remastered experimental documentary FRANTZ FANON: BLACK SKIN WHITE MASK (1996), directed by artist and filmmaker Isaac Julien, as well as the new 4K restoration, by The BFI National Archive and The Film Foundation, with funding provided by the George Lucas Family Foundation, of Terry Gilliam’s first feature as a solo director, JABBERWOCKY (1977). The Festival will also screen the 4K restoration of Toshio Matsumoto’s FUNERAL PARADE OF ROSES (1969), a wild, kaleidoscopic vision of the underground scene in 1960s Japan and a significant influence on Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange and Italian genre-master Dario Argento’s eye-popping slice of technicolour terror, SUSPIRIA (1977) with stunning 4K restoration.

    EXPERIMENTA

    Experimenta features films and videos by artists who transform our experience of seeing moving images. Highlights include: the World Premiere of Benedict Seymour’s DEAD THE ENDS, a politically urgent retelling of Chris Marker’s La Jetée bookended by the 2011 London riots; ERASE AND FORGET, Andrea Luka Zimmerman’s film is an excavation of the influence of fiction on truth in the American imagination of warfare and gun culture; the World Premiere of LEK AND THE DOGS, Andrew Kötting’s account of the ultimate outsider uses a range of visual styles derived from avant garde and genre cinema, and Kevin Jerome Everson’s TONSLER PARK uses an unobtrusive observational style to divulge the mechanisms behind the operation of Election Day at polling stations in Charlottesville, Virginia.  

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  • VIDEO: Poster + Watch Official Trailer for Eliza Hittman’s Sundance Award Winning Indie Drama BEACH RATS

    Beach Rats Neon has released the official trailer and poster for the Sundance Film Festival award-winning indie drama Beach Rats, from filmmaker Eliza Hittman, a follow-up to her debut It Felt Like Love. The film will be released in select theaters starting August 25th. Beach Rats poster Beach Rats premiered earlier this year at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival where the film won the Best Director award for Eliza Hittman. An aimless teenager (Harris Dickinson) on the outer edges of Brooklyn struggles to escape his bleak home life and navigate questions of self-identity, as he balances his time between his delinquent friends, a potential new girlfriend, and older men he meets online. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=df0TQJBkPP4

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  • CHAVELA, THE WOUND, SIGNATURE MOVE Among Winners of Outfest LA LGBT Film Festival

    [caption id="attachment_23198" align="aligncenter" width="1200"]Chavela Chavela[/caption] The 2017 Outfest Los Angeles LGBT Film Festival, which ran from July 6th to July 16th, announced the award winners.  Chavela won both the Documentary Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award; and Best US Narrative Feature Film prize went to Jennifer Reeder for Signature Move. The 2017 Outfest Los Angeles LGBT Film Festival closed with Trudie Styler’s comedic Freak Show, starring Bette Midler, Alex Lawther, AnnaSophia Robb, Abigail Breslin, Ian Nelson, Larry Pine and featuring a cameo from Laverne Cox.

    Outfest Los Angeles 2017 Award Winners

    Audience Awards

    Best Documentary Short Audience Award Little Potato, Directed by Wes Hurley and Nate Miller Best Documentary Feature Audience Award Chavela, Directed by Catherine Gund and Daresha Kyi Best Narrative Short Audience Award The Real Thing, Directed by Brandon Kelley Best Narrative Audience Award The Chances, Created by Shoshanna Stern and Josh Feldman, Directed by Anna Kerrigan Best Experimental Short Audience Award Pussy, Directed by Renata Gasiorowska Audience Award for Best First U.S. Narrative Feature A Million Happy Nows, Directed by Albert Alarr

    Grand Jury Awards

    Documentary Grand Jury Prize “We award Best Documentary Feature to Chavela, for its artistic style that elegantly and poetically brings together raw archival footage, animation, editing, and sound design.” Documentary Special Mention “For Excellence in Filmmaking we award a Special Jury mention to Girl Unbound: The War to Be Her, for its brave, humorous, and inspired depiction of Maria, a world class SQUASH player and her rock star family who live on their own terms and challenge misconceptions of feminism and Islam in the Muslim and Western worlds. This film illustrates Maria’s nonbinary journey, her quest for athletic excellence and her desire to show all girls everywhere that, “Fear is taught. That you are born free and you are born brave.”” U.S. Narrative Jury Prize Best Actor For his quiet intensity in a fresh and non-traditional coming of age role and his on-screen transformation both physically and emotionally, the US Narrative Jury honors Luka Kain for his outstanding performance in Saturday Church. U.S. Narrative Jury Prize Best Actress In a cast of strong female performances, she not only supported the ensemble cast but stood out with her comic timing and effortlessly hilarious presence. The US Jury Prize for Best Actress goes to Ever Mainard in The Feels. Best Screenwriting in a U.S. Feature For its naturalistic yet spare and unforced dialogue, even in the most harrowing of situations the award for Best Screenwriting in a U.S. Narrative goes to Eliza Hittman for Beach Rats. U.S. Grand Jury Prize For a delightful, well-acted and incisive romp into Chicago’s multi-cultural neighborhoods and a moving exploration of the unique bonds between mothers and daughters. Its inspiring message of love and acceptance explodes with humor and heart. We award the Best US Narrative Feature Film prize to Jennifer Reeder for Signature Move. U.S. Narrative Special Mention The US Narrative Jury would like to present a Special Mention for amplifying unheard voices with authenticity, highlighting the contemporary life of queer black woman with flair, vibrancy and substance to 195 Lewis. International Grand Jury Prize This film breaks new ground through skillful storytelling and stunning cinematography and an unflinching focus on masculinities – toxic or otherwise. The Jury Award for Best International Narrative Feature goes to the South African film The Wound, directed by John Trengove. International Special Mention For authentic, grounded storytelling that successfully captures a universal tale of youth, the International Narrative Feature Special Mention for Directing goes to Marcelo Caetano for his work on Body Electric. Best Documentary Short For its elegant storytelling, its economical sweep of history, and its sensitivity to lovers together in the struggle, whose intimate point of view enlightens and moves us to see the intricacies of the personal & political victories we can achieve together. The Best Documentary short prize goes to: Bayard & Me by Matt Wolf. Creatively employing the few surviving archival interviews to illuminate a forthright, outspoken, dynamic and sexy old school butch who was unstoppable in her quest for equality & fairness for lesbians, women and the queer community. The Best Documentary short prize goes to Jeanne Cordova: Butches, Lies & Feminism by Gregorio Davila. Documentary Short Special Mention The Special Mention goes to Al Otro Lado (The Other Side), directed by Rodrigo Alvarez Flores and Pedazos, directed by Alejandro Pena. Best Narrative Short Demonstrating restraint in both dialogue and narrative while also presenting a rich visual tapestry in a claustrophobic household, the film portrays an intense, simmering passion between two women yearning to break free from the norms of sexuality and caste (class) in a matriarchal Indian household. The Best Narrative Short Film Award goes to Goddess (Devi), directed by Karishma Dube.

    Special Programming Awards

    Emerging Talent This assured debut feature film combines dreamy cinematography, honest and energetic performances, and snappy, contemporary dialogue, heralding the arrival of a fresh new voice in queer Asian cinema, the 2017 Programming Award for Emerging Talent goes to Samantha Lee for Maybe Tomorrow. Freedom This long overdue BIOGRAPHY of a civil rights icon merges empathetic documentary filmmaking with the tenacity of investigative journalism to highlight the injustices that trans people still face today, the 2017 Programming Award for Freedom goes to David France and Victoria Cruz for The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson. Artistic Vision For a chilling tale that blends Hitchcockian suspense filtered through the eerie Icelandic countryside with a rumination on the lingering effects of past trauma, the 2017 Programming Award for Artistic Achievement goes to Erlingur Thoroddsen for Rift. Fox Inclusion Feature Film Award Boys For Sale, Directed by Itako Fox Inclusion Short Film Award Ma, Directed by Vera Miao

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  • Rooftop Films Announces 2017 Summer Series Lineup, BAND AID, THE BAD BATCH and More

    [caption id="attachment_19867" align="aligncenter" width="1200"]Band Aid Adam Pally, Fred Armisen and Zoe Lister-Jones appear in Band Aid by Zoe Lister-Jones[/caption] The Rooftop Films 2017 Summer Series will take place May 19th to August 19th, featuring more than 45 outdoor screenings in more than 10 venues. The series will kick off on Friday, May 19th, with “This is What We Mean by Short Films,” a collection of some of the most innovative, new short films of the past year. The screening will take place on the roof of The Old American Can Factory, in Gowanus, Brooklyn. The following night, Saturday, May 20th Rooftop will present a sneak preview screening of Zoe Lister-Jones’ 2017 Sundance indie hit, Band Aid, free and outdoors at House of Vans in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Starring Lister-Jones, Adam Pally (“The Mindy Project”), and Fred Armisen (“Portlandia”), Band Aid tells the story of a couple attempting to piece their marriage back together by turning their fights into indie rock lyrics.  Band Aid opens in theaters June 2nd, courtesy of IFC Films. Lister-Jones’ film is but one of many of this year’s best independent comedies playing at Rooftop this summer. In addition Rooftop films will present a sneak preview screening of Michael Showalter’s acclaimed new comedy, The Big Sick, starring and co-written by Kumail Nanjiani, prior to its June 23rd theatrical release by Lionsgate and Amazon Studios. Additional high-profile comedies include Rough Night, Lucia Aniello’s bachelorette-party-gone-wrong comedy starring Scarlett Johansson, Kate McKinnon, Jillian Bell, Ilana Glazer, and Zoë Kravitz; Writer, director, and star Noël Wells’ Austin-based feature film debut Mr. Roosevelt; Jessica Williams’ big screen breakout role in Jim Strouse’s The Incredible Jessica James; and Dave McCary’s magical feature film, Brigsby Bear. The 2017 Summer Series also brings with it the triumphant return of Rooftop Films Alumni and Filmmakers’ Fund Grantees. The festival, in partnership with NEON, welcomes back Rooftop Films Piper-Heidsieck Feature Film Grant winner, Ana Lily Amirpour, for a night of complete dystopian debauchery with an exclusive screening of her new film, The Bad Batch, at the House of Vans in Greenpoint. Also returning is Joshua Z Weinstein with his Brooklyn-based, Rooftop/Brigade Festival Publicity Grant winning Menashe and Lauren Wolkstein and Christopher Radcliffe with The Strange Ones, an enigmatic and lush story, adapted into a feature film with the help of the Rooftop Films Eastern Effects Equipment Grant. Rooftop will also present special screenings of some of the most exciting documentaries of the year, including the US premiere of Vanessa Stockley’s fascinating Grey Gardens-in-Manhattan tale, The Genius and the Opera Singer; the NY premiere of Jeff Unay’s much-lauded MMA doc, The Cage Fighter; The US premiere of Maple J. Razsa and Milton Guillén’s The Maribor Uprising: A Live Participatory Film; Jairus McLeary and Gethin Aldous’ powerful SXSW-winning The Work; the gorgeous and sensitive Sundance-winning Dina; and the most entertaining found footage film of the year, Dmitry Kalashnikov’s Russian dash-cam doc, The Road Movie. It wouldn’t be Rooftop Films without cutting-edge evenings of short films. 2017 programming features the return of Summer Series staples, including the romantic short films of “Love is Short,” the innovative animation of “Dark Toons,” the uncanny short films of “Trapped,” the best of this year’s “New York Nonfiction,” and “The New American Paradise,” an evening of WTF short stories from outside the liberal bubble.

    ROOFTOP FILMS 2017 SUMMER SERIES OPENING WEEKEND

    Friday, May 19, 2017 This is What We Mean by Short Films On the roof of The Old American Can Factory. 232 Third St. Brooklyn Rooftop turns 21 this year. We’re legal, but not playing it safe. On opening night, we’re celebrating with our favorite stories from moral grey zones and uncharted territories: a mushroom of colorful balloons kills two before escaping to Canada, an unnatural presence enters tickle fight, a subversive dance number takes down the patriarchy, and a Russian circus meltdown is played in reverse. Saturday, May 20, 2017 Band Aid (Zoe Lister-Jones) Outdoors at House of Vans. 25 Franklin St. Brooklyn Band Aid, the refreshingly raw, real, and hilarious feature debut from Zoe Lister-Jones, is the story of a couple, Anna (Zoe Lister-Jones) and Ben (Adam Pally), who can’t stop fighting. Advised by their therapist to try and work through their grief unconventionally, they are reminded of their shared love of music. In a last-ditch effort to save their marriage, they decide to turn all their fights into song, and with the help of their neighbor Dave (Fred Armisen), they start a band. A story of love, loss, and rock and roll, Band Aid is a witty and perceptive view of modern love, with some seriously catchy pop hooks to boot. An IFC Films release.

    FEATURE FILMS

    The Bad Batch (Ana Lily Amirpour) The Bad Batch follows Arlen (Suki Waterhouse) after she’s left in a Texas wasteland fenced off from civilization. While trying to navigate the unforgiving landscape, Arlen is captured by a savage band of cannibals led by the mysterious Miami Man (Jason Momoa). With her life on the line, she makes her way to The Dream (Keanu Reeves). As she adjusts to life in ‘the bad batch’ Arlen discovers that being good or bad mostly depends on who’s standing next to you. Winner of the Rooftop Films Piper-Heidsieck Feature Film Grant. A NEON release. Beach Rats (Eliza Hittman) Frankie, an aimless teenager on the outer edges of Brooklyn, is having a miserable summer. With his father dying and his mother wanting him to find a girlfriend, Frankie escapes the bleakness of his home life by causing trouble with his delinquent friends and flirting with older men online. When his chatting and webcamming intensify, he finally starts hooking up with guys at a nearby cruising beach while simultaneously entering into a cautious relationship with a young woman. As Frankie struggles to reconcile his competing desires, his decisions leave him hurtling toward irreparable consequences. A NEON release. The Big Sick (Michael Showalter) Based on the real-life courtship between Kumail Nanjiani and Emily V. Gordon, The Big Sick tells the story of Pakistan-born aspiring comedian Kumail (Nanjiani), who connects with grad student Emily (Kazan) after one of his standup sets. However, what they thought would be just a one-night stand blossoms into the real thing, which complicates the life that is expected of Kumail by his traditional Muslim parents. When Emily is beset with a mystery illness, it forces Kumail to navigate the medical crisis with her parents, Beth and Terry (Holly Hunter and Ray Romano) who he’s never met, while dealing with the emotional tug-of war between his family and his heart. The Big Sick is directed by Michael Showalter (Hello My Name Is Doris) and produced by Judd Apatow (Trainwreck, This Is 40) and Barry Mendel (Trainwreck, The Royal Tenenbaums). A Lionsgate and Amazon Studios release. Friday, June 30, 2017 Brigsby Bear (Dave McCary) On the roof of New Design High School. 350 Grand St. Manhattan After 25 years of secluded existence with his protective parents in their isolated, off-the-grid home, James (Kyle Mooney) is tossed out into a new life in relatively daunting Cedar Hills, Utah. As his world upends, the most shocking revelation to James is that he’s the only person who has ever watched his favorite television program, Brigsby Bear Adventures. Struggling to adjust to the show’s abrupt end, he begins to see Brigsby’s lessons as his only way to make sense of a big, scary new world, and James decides to make a movie to end Brigsby’s story—and re-begin his own. A Sony Pictures Classics release. Friday, June 23, 2017 The Cage Fighter (Jeff Unay) On the roof of The Old American Can Factory. 232 Third St. Brooklyn A blue-collar family man breaks the promise he’d made years ago to never fight again. Now 40 years old, with a wife and four children who need him, Joe Carman risks everything—his marriage, his family, his financial security— to go back into the fighting cage and come to terms with his past. After party presented by Visit Seattle. California Dreams (Mike Ott) From acclaimed director Mike Ott (Lake Los Angeles, Actor Martinez) comes the new comedy documentary feature California Dreams, presenting five unique individuals in pursuit of a big life change. Through auditions set up in small towns across Southern California, the film shows genuine characters with big Hollywood aspirations who, for various reasons, have never had the opportunity to pursue their dreams. With subjects including celebrity impersonators, aspiring writers, and a former nurse, this bitingly funny film reveals the strange and entrancing hypnotic grip that Hollywood has, in some way or form, on everyone. Wednesday, August 2, 2017 The Challenge (Yuri Ancarani) Outdoors at Socrates Sculpture Park. 32-01 Vernon Blvd. Queens. If you have it, spend it: Italian artist Yuri Ancarani’s visually striking documentary enters the surreal world of wealthy Qatari sheikhs who moonlight as amateur falconers, with no expenses spared along the way. The Challenge follows these men through the rituals that define their lives: perilously racing blacked-out SUVs up and down sand dunes; sharing communal meals; taking their Ferraris out for a spin with their pet cheetahs riding shotgun; and much more. Ancarani’s film is a sly meditation on the collective pursuit of idiosyncratic desires. A Kino Lorber Release. Dayveon (Amman Abbasi) In the wake of his older brother’s death, 13-year-old Dayveon spends the sweltering summer days roaming his rural Arkansas town. When he falls in with a local gang, he becomes drawn to the camaraderie and violence of their world. A FilmRise release. Dina (Dan Sickles, Antonio Santini) Dina, an outspoken and eccentric 49-year-old in suburban Philadelphia, invites her fiancé Scott, a Walmart door greeter, to move in with her. Having grown up neurologically diverse in a world blind to the value of their experience, the two are head-over-heels for one another, but shacking up poses a new challenge. Scott freezes when it comes to physical intimacy, and Dina, a Kardashians fanatic, wants nothing more than to share with Scott all she’s learned about sensual desire from books, TV shows, and her previous marriage. Her increasingly creative forays to draw Scott close keep hitting roadblocks—exposing anxieties, insecurities, and communication snafus while they strive to reconcile their conflicting approaches to romance and intimacy. An Orchard release. Saturday, May 27, 2017 The Genius and the Opera Singer (Vanessa Stockley) On the roof of New Design High School. 350 Grand St. Manhattan A 92-year-old former opera singer and her volatile daughter have inhabited a rent-controlled Manhattan penthouse for the last fifty-five years – along with their obese chihuahua, Angelina Jolie. An unsettling portrait of a mother-daughter relationship, The Genius and the Opera Singer explores their intense emotional states and the knotted riddle of their past. US Premiere. Tuesday, July 25, 2017 The Incredible Jessica James (Jim Strouse) On the roof of The William Vale. 111 N 12th St. Brooklyn Jessica Williams (“The Daily Show”) stars as a young, aspiring playwright in New York City who is struggling to get over a recent breakup. She is forced to go on a date with the recently divorced Boone, played by Chris O’Dowd (Bridesmaids) and the unlikely duo discover how to make it through the tough times in a social media obsessed post-relationship universe. Lakeith Stanfield (FX’s “Atlanta”, Straight Outta Compton) and Noël Wells (Netflix’s “Master of None”) co-star. The film was written and directed by Jim Strouse and produced by Michael B. Clark and Alex Turtletaub of Beachside. Jessica Williams and Kerri Hundley serve as executive producers. A Netflix release. L.A. Times (Michelle Morgan) Annette (Michelle Morgan) and Elliot (Jorma Taccone) are a mostly-happy, moderately-neurotic LA couple. Maybe Annette doesn’t enjoy game nights or taco stands as much as Elliot does, but no relationship is perfect, right? Rather than embracing their differences, Annette can only compare their relationship to their happy couple friends. This cannot be endorsed by Annette’s beautiful but romantically troubled best friend, Baker (Dree Hemingway), who is very well-versed on the bleakness of the LA dating scene. Taking its cues from classic mid-20th Century comedies with a stylish and contemporary spin, L.A. Times is an irreverent tale of life and the search for elusive love in the 21st Century. Friday, June 16, 2017 The Maribor Uprisings: A Live Participatory Documentary (Maple J. Rasza, Milton Guillén) Outdoors at Metrotech Commons. 5 Metrotech Center. Brooklyn In the once prosperous industrial city of Maribor, Slovenia, anger over political corruption became unruly revolt. In The Maribor Uprisings–part film, part conversation and part interactive experiment–you are invited to participate in the protests. Drawing on the dramatic frontline footage from a video activist collective embedded within the uprisings, you begin in Maribor as crowds surround and ransack City Hall under a hailstorm of tear gas canisters. As a group, you must choose which cameras you will follow and therefore how the events will unfold. Like those who joined the actual uprisings, you will decide between joining non-violent protests or following rowdy crowds towards City Hall and greater conflict. These events stand as an example for any number of ideological stand-offs today. What sparks outrage? How are participants swept up in—and changed by—confrontations with police? Could something like this happen in your city? What would you do? US Premiere. Menashe (Joshua Z Weinstein) Set within the New York Hasidic community in Borough Park, Brooklyn, Menashe follows a kind but hapless grocery store clerk trying to maintain custody of his son Rieven after his wife, Lea, passes away. Since they live in a tradition-bound culture that requires a mother present in every home, Rieven is supposed to be adopted by the boy’s strict, married uncle, but Menashe’s Rabbi decides to grant him one week to spend with Rieven prior to Lea’s memorial. Their time together creates an emotional moment of father/son bonding as well as offers Menashe a final chance to prove to his skeptical community that he can be a capable parent. Winner of the Rooftop Films Brigade Festival Publicity Grant. An A24 release. Tuesday, August 8, 2017 Monkey Business: The Adventures of Curious George’s Creators (Ema Ryan Yamazaki) On the roof of the JCC in Manhattan. 334 Amsterdam Ave. Manhattan Featuring a narrow escape from the Nazis on makeshift bicycles, Monkey Business explores the extraordinary lives of Hans and Margret Rey, the authors of the beloved Curious George children’s books. New York Premiere. An Orchard release. Saturday, June 17, 2017 Mr. Roosevelt (Noël Wells) On the roof of New Design High School. 350 Grand St. Manhattan Emily Martin (Noël Wells) is a struggling 20-something who moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career in comedy after graduating college in Austin, Texas. When a loved one falls sick, she returns to Austin and runs into her ex-boyfriend, as well as his amazing and intimidating new girlfriend. Low on funds and stuck in Texas for the weekend, Emily stays with the two of them in her old, but miraculously remodeled house. She quickly finds her way into the circle of a local female badass who shows Emily a good time and tries to keep her from spinning out as she goes toe-to-toe with the new girlfriend, all the ways her ex has changed, and ultimately, her own choices and guilt about leaving the past behind. Quest (Jonathan Olshefski) Filmed with vérité intimacy for close to a decade, Quest is a portrait of a family in North Philadelphia. Christopher “Quest” Rainey, along with his wife Christine’a (aka “Ma Quest”), open the door to their home music studio, which serves as a creative sanctuary from the strife that grips their neighborhood. Over the years, the family evolves as everyday life brings a mix of joy and unexpected crisis. Set against the backdrop of a country now in turmoil, the film is a tender depiction of an American family whose journey is a profound testament to love, healing and hope. Friday, June 2, 2017 Rat Film (Theo Anthony) On the roof of The Old American Can Factory. 232 Third St. Brooklyn Across walls, fences, and alleys, rats not only expose our boundaries of separation but make homes in them. Rat Film is a feature-length documentary that uses the rat—as well as the humans that love them, live with them, and kill them–to explore the history of Baltimore. “There’s never been a rat problem in Baltimore, it’s always been a people problem.” A Cinema Guild release. The Road Movie (Dmitrii Kalashnikov) A fascinating mosaic of asphalt adventures, landscape photography, and some of the craziest shit you’ve ever seen, Kalashnikov’s THE ROAD MOVIE is a stunning compilation of video footage shot exclusively via dashboard cameras in Russian automobiles. The dash-cam phenomenon permeates Russian roads thoroughly, capturing a vivid range of spectacles through the windshield, including a comet crashing down to Earth, an epic forest fire, and no shortage of angry motorists taking road rage to wholly new and unexpected levels. All the while, accompanied by bemused commentary from unseen and often stoic drivers and passengers. An Oscilloscope Laboratories release. Wednesday, June 14, 2017 Rough Night (Lucia Aniello) On the roof of The William Vale. 111 N 12th St. Brooklyn In Rough Night, an edgy R-rated comedy, five best friends from college (played by Scarlett Johansson, Kate McKinnon, Jillian Bell, Ilana Glazer, and Zoë Kravitz) reunite 10 years later for a wild bachelorette weekend in Miami. Their hard partying takes a hilariously dark turn when they accidentally kill a male stripper. Amidst the craziness of trying to cover it up, they’re ultimately brought closer together when it matters most. A Columbia Pictures release. The Strange Ones (Lauren Wolkstein, Christopher Radcliff) Mysterious events surround two travelers, seemingly brothers, as they make their way across a remote American landscape. On the surface all seems normal, but what appears to be a simple vacation soon gives way to a dark and complex web of secrets. Winner of the Rooftop Films Eastern Effects Equipment Grant. Friday, July 7, 2017 Whose Streets? (Sabaah Folayan, Damon Davis) On the roof of New Design High School. 350 Grand St. Manhattan Told by the activists and leaders who live and breathe this movement for justice, Whose Streets? is an unflinching look at the Ferguson uprising. When unarmed teenager Michael Brown is killed by police and left lying in the street for hours, it marks a breaking point for the residents of St. Louis, Missouri. Grief, long-standing racial tensions and renewed anger bring residents together to hold vigil and protest this latest tragedy. Empowered parents, artists, and teachers from around the country come together as freedom fighters. As the National Guard descends on Ferguson with military grade weaponry, these young community members become the torchbearers of a new resistance. A Magnolia Pictures release. The Work (Jairus McLeary, Gethin Aldous) Set inside a single room in Folsom Prison, The Work follows three men from outside as they participate in a four-day group therapy retreat with level-four convicts. Over the four days, each man in the room takes his turn at delving deep into his past. The raw and revealing process that the incarcerated men undertake exceeds the expectations of the free men, ripping them out of their comfort zones and forcing them to see themselves and the prisoners in unexpected ways. An Orchard release.

    SHORT FILM PROGRAMS

    Thursday, July 27, 2017 Animation Block Party In the courtyard of Industry City. 274 36 St. Brooklyn Experience the year’s best animated short films at the incomparable Animation Block Party! Saturday, June 3, 2017 Dark Toons: Animated Short Films On the roof of New Design High School. 350 Grand St. Manhattan These toons are chocked full of furry animals and imaginative creatures but they are not for Sunday morning. The twisted and perverse landscapes of our annual Dark Toons program provide a unique backdrop for stories of life askew. From a true story of forced labor at communist-era prison that kept megastores in the West fully-stocked to a beautifully-animated and probably-alcoholic badger which has a run-in with the law and a woman who can’t stop growing fingers, these tales remind us that animation is the ideal medium to glimpse the darker side of life. Tuesday, May 30, 2017 Love is Short: Romantic Short Films On the roofs of The William Vale. 111 N 12th St. Brooklyn “Love is so short, forgetting is so long.” Neruda wrote it, but these protagonists live it. In this program of short films, animated birds, sultry nights-in, and dismembered zombie heads are all members of love’s seductive cult. Come relish in these stories of the beautifully imagined and harshly-real consequences of love’s choices. Thursday, May 25, 2017 The New American Paradise: Short Films Outdoors at Metrotech Commons. 5 Metrotech Center. Brooklyn Pop your New York bubble on a journey to the more peculiar corners of the modern U.S of A. In the land of drive-in churches, carnival boardwalks, border walls, and get-rich-quick schemes, any one of us could end up on the downside of the American dream: another desperado with a mask melted onto our face, searching for a nugget at the bottom of a dirty tin can. Friday, June 9, 2017 New York Nonfiction On the roof of New Design High School. 350 Grand St. Manhattan You see them every day. They’re on the train with you. They’re in your bodega. They’re your neighbors. But after this program of short films, we guarantee you’ll see them in a new light. Ours is a city full of record-holding record holders, spousal adoptions, trash havens, civil rights pioneers, lapsed goth kids, sexting teens, rambles full of leathermen, and unending change; and we like it that way… for the most part. Saturday, August 20, 2017 Rooftop Shots In the courtyard of Industry City. 274 36 St. Brooklyn CLOSING NIGHT! It’s hard to say goodbye. These short films will ease the pain. After-party presented by Visit Seattle. Seattle Shorts Presented by Visit Seattle Sundance Short Films Highlights from Sundance 2017 include these wild, weird and wonderful short films. Saturday, July 10, 2017 Trapped: Uncanny Short Films In the courtyard of Industry City. 274 36 St. Brooklyn Join us for a program of stories most unusual: the meeting of a spaceman and a cave man; an encounter with an alien phenomenon via public access television; and the imagined experiences of the forgotten subject of a famous photograph. These amusing and disquieting short films offer mix-tape portraits, analytic tragicomedies of infinite human desire and potentially-killer workplace procedurals. Experience startling cinematic spectacles you won’t soon forget.

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  • 2017 Seattle International Film Festival Announces Lineup of 400 Films, Closes with THE YOUNG KARL MARX

    [caption id="attachment_18956" align="aligncenter" width="1200"]The Young Karl Marx (Le jeune Karl Marx) The Young Karl Marx (Le jeune Karl Marx)[/caption] The 43rd Seattle International Film Festival taking place May 18 to June 11, 2017, today unveiled a lineup of 400 films representing 80 countries. Opening night kicks off Friday, May 18 with The Big Sick, starring and written by Kumail Nanjiani (Silicon Valley) along with his wife Emily V. Gordon.  Closing this year’s Festival is the North American premiere of The Young Karl Marx, directed by Raoul Peck (I Am Not Your Negro). The story follows 26-year-old Karl Marx (August Diehl) and his wife Jenny in exile in Europe, where they meet a man who provides them with the final piece needed for the foundation of Marxist theory. At the annual Centerpiece Gala, SIFF will travel to 1990s Manhattan in the slice-of-life comedy, Landline. Director Gillian Robespierre brings back actress-comedienne Jenny Slate following their SIFF 2014 run of Obvious Child. The World premiere of Theresa Rebeck’s Trouble will screen at Seattle’s historic SIFF Cinema Egyptian as SIFF honors the film’s executive producer and star, Anjelica Huston, with the Career Achievement in Acting Award. In addition to the award presentation and screening, the acclaimed actress is also slated for an on-stage interview at the Wednesday, June 7 event. Also scheduled is An Afternoon with Sam Elliott, where the festival will pay tribute to the all-American actor. Along with his iconic voice, Elliott makes his way to SIFF on Saturday, May 27th for the Seattle premiere of his newest film The Hero following an onstage discussion that afternoon. Receiving raving reviews following its’ world premiere at SXSW is Seattle native S.J. Chiro’s first full-length feature, Lane 1974. Drawing off of Chiro’s own childhood experiences as well as those described in Clane Hayward’s memoir “The Hypocrisy of Disco”, SIFF is thrilled to present this 1970s coming-of-age narrative. One of several interactive events features Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked The World, a documentary by Catherine Bainbridge celebrating the achievements and contributions of Native Americans in modern American music. Along with the screening of the film, guests will also enjoy Indigenous Centered Perspectives, an exhibit showcasing works by four indigenous artists at the Paramount Theater. The Friday, May 26 event is hosted by SIFF in collaboration with Amazon Video Direct, STG, and Longhouse Media. “This year’s robust line-up includes a wide variety of programs ranging from heartfelt features from comedy favorites to thought-provoking documentaries, as well as once in a lifetime conversations with Hollywood legends,” says Interim Artistic Director Beth Barrett. “We are thrilled to jump into our 43rd edition and introduce spectacular programming from across the world to over 150,000 film enthusiasts in Seattle over the course of 25 days.”

    GALAS

    Opening Night Gala The Big Sick The hilarious, romantic, and moving true story of the cross-cultural courtship between Pakistan-born comedian Kumail Nanjiani (“Silicon Valley”) and his wife Emily (Zoe Kazan) comes to life in this utterly delightful comedy from director Michael Showalter and producer Judd Apatow. (d: Michael Showalter c: Kumail Nanjiani, Zoe Kazan, Holly Hunter, Ray Romano, Anupam Kher, USA 2017, 119 min) Centerpiece Gala Landline The director and star of Obvious Child reunite for this uproarious slice-of- life story about two sisters (Jenny Slate and breakout star Abby Quinn) in pre-cell-phone 1990s Manhattan who discover that their father is having an affair, and conspire to expose him. (d: Gillian Robespierre c: Jenny Slate, John Turturro, Edie Falco, Abby Quinn, Jay Duplass, Finn Wittrock, USA 2017, 93 min) Closing Night Gala The Young Karl Marx North American Premiere Director Raoul Peck (I Am Not Your Negro) presents a lush period drama that joins 26-year- old Karl Marx (August Diehl) and his wife Jenny in exile in Europe, where they meet Friedrich Engels, who provides the final piece needed for the foundation of Marxist theory. (d: Raoul Peck c: August Diehl, Stefan Konarske, Vicky Krieps, Hannah Steele, Olivier Gourmet, France/Germany/ Belgium 2016, 118 min)

    SPECIAL GUESTS

    OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT IN ACTING AWARD Anjelica Huston Featuring Trouble Plus screenings of The Grifters and The Witches Anjelica Huston is a powerhouse of a woman whose career has spanned over 50 years: through modeling, film, television, and on the page. Born into the family of renowned film director John Huston and legendary grandfather Walter Huston, Anjelica was sure to make a splash in the industry with both her unique beauty and strong presence.  Her penchant for and exquisite skill in portraying tenacious, crafty, emotionally strong women has undoubtedly made her among the greatest actresses of our time. Past honorees of the SIFF Outstanding Achievement in Acting Award include Laura Dern, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Viggo Mortensen, Kyle MacLachlan, Sir Ben Kingsley, Kevin Bacon, Edward Norton, Sissy Spacek, Joan Allen, and Anthony Hopkins amongst others. AN AFTERNOON WITH Sam Elliott Featuring The Hero He of the gruff baritone voice and the luxuriant mustache, Sam Elliott is the quintessential portrait of the American cowboy, a quality he’s drawn on since he first appeared onscreen in the 1969 Oscar® winner Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. From Tombstone to Gettysburg, The Big Lebowski to Mask, Road House to Thank You for Smoking, ad campaigns for Coors and the American Beef Council, and TV work ranging from “Mission: Impossible” to “Justified,” his rugged, commanding presence is an unmistakable gift to American pop culture and any genre lucky enough to have him.

    COMPETITIONS

    Official Competition

    7 Minutes (d. Michele Placido, Italy/France/Switzerland 2016, North American Premiere) Bad Influence (d: Claudia Huaiqimilla, Chile 2016) Beach Rats (d: Eliza Hittman, USA 2016) Have A Nice Day (d: LIU Jian, China/Hong Kong 2017, North American Premiere) Hedi (d: Mohamed Ben Attia, Tunisia/Belgium/France/Qatar/Uae 2016) My Happy Family (d: Nana Ekvtimishvili, Simon Gross, Georgia/Germany/France 2017) Sami Blood (d: Amanda Kernell, Sweden/Norway/Denmark 2016) Zoology (d: Ivan I. Tverdovsky, Russia/France/Germany 2016)

    New Directors Competition

    Anishoara (d: Ana-Felicia Scutelnicu, Germany 2016) Boundaries (d: Chloé Robichaud, Canada (Québec) 2016) Diamond Island (d: Davy Chou, France 2016) The Inland Road (d: Jackie Van Beek, New Zealand 2017, North American Premiere) I Was A Dreamer (d: Michele Vannucci, Italy 2016, North American Premiere) Kati Kati (d: Mbithi Masya, Kenya 2016) The Man (d: Charlotte Sieling, Denmark 2017) Paris Prestige (d: Hamé Bourokba, Ekoué Labitey, France 2016) Quit Staring at My Plate (d: Hana Jušić, Croatia 2016) Struggle for Life (d: Antonin Peretjatko, Belgium 2016)

    Ibero-American Competition

    Chameleon (d: Jorge Riquelme Serrano, Chile 2016, North American Premiere) Devil’s Freedom (d: Everardo González, Mexico 2017, US Premiere) May God Save Us (d: Rodrigo Sorogoyen, Spain 2016) Pendular (d: Julia Murat, Brazil/Argentina/France 2017) Santa & Andres (d: Carlos Lechuga, Cuba/Colombia/France 2016) Two Irenes (d: Fabio Meira, Brazil 2017, North American Premiere) The Winter (d: Emiliano Torres, Argentina/France 2016) Woodpeckers (d: José María Cabral, Dominican Republic 2017)

    New American Cinema Competition

    American Folk (d: David Heinz, USA 2017) Columbus (d: Kogonada USA 2017) Dara Ju (d: Anthony Onah, USA/Nigeria 2017) The Feels (d: Jenée Lamarque, USA 2017, World Premiere) In The Radiant City (d: Rachel Lambert, USA 2016) The Landing (d: Mark Dodson and David Dodson, USA 2016) Lane 1974 (d: SJ Chiro, USA 2017) Say You Will (d: Nick Naveda, USA 2017, World Premiere)

    Documentary Competition

    Becoming Who I Was (d: Moon Chang-Yong, Jeon Jin, South Korea 2016, US Premiere) Close Relations (d: Vitaly Mansky, Germany/Latvia/Estonia/Ukraine 2016, US Premiere) The Farthest (d: Emer Reynolds, Ireland 2017) Ghost Hunting (d: Raed Andoni, Palestine/France/Switzerland 2016 US Premiere) The Reagan Show (d: Pacho Velez, Sierra Pattengill, USA 2017) Roberto Bolle – The Art Of Dance (d: Francesca Pedroni, Italy 2016, North American Premiere) Those Who Remain (d: Eliane Raheb, Lebanon/Uae 2016, North American Premiere) What Lies Upstream (d: Cullen Hoback, USA 2017) Winnie (d: Pascale Lamche, France/Netherlands/South Africa 2017)

    AFRICAN PICTURES

    Borders (d: Apolline Traoré c: Amelie Mbaye, Naky Sy Savane, Burkina Faso 2017, 90 min, North American Premiere) Hedi (d: Mohamed Ben Attia c: Majd Mastoura, Rym Ben Messaoud, Sabah Bouzouita, Hakim Boumessoudi, Ombia Ben Ghali, Tunisia 2016, 89 min) Investigating Paradise (d: Merzak Allouache c: Salima Abada, Younès Sabeur Chérif, France 2017, 135 min, North American Premiere) Kalushi (d: Mandla Dube c: Thabo Rametsi, Thabo Malema, Welile Nzuza, Jafta Mamabolo, Pearl Thusi, Gcina Mhlophe, South Africa 2016, 107 min) The Nile Hilton Incident (d: Tarik Saleh c: Fares Fares, Mari Malek, Mohamed Yousry, Yasser Ali Maher, Ahmed Selim, Hania Amar, Sweden 2017, 106 min) The Wedding Party (d: Kemi Adetiba c: Adesua Etomi, Richard Mofe-Damijo, Banky Wellington, Nigeria 2016, 110 min) Winnie (d: Pascale Lamche, France 2017, 98 min) Wùlu (d: Daouda Coulibaly c: Ibrahim Koma, Inna Modja, Ismael Ndiaye, Jean-Marie Traore, Dembele Habib, Mariame Ndiaye, Quim Gutierrez, Oliver Rabourdin, France 2016, 95 min)

    CHINA STARS

    The Beautiful Kokonor Lake (d. XING-HAO Shen c: Qin Yi, Jiang Ping, Jennifer Shu Chang. Huang Hong, Tony Rui-Xin, China 2017, 98 min) The Door (d. XING-HAO Shen c: JIANG Wu, JIANG Qingin, ZHU Xu, FU Ying, LI Naiwen, China 2017, 98 min, North American Premiere) Free and Easy (d. JUN Geng c: ZU Gang, ZHANG Zhiyong, XUE Baohe, WANG Xuxu, GU Benbin, ZHANG Xun, YUAN Liguo China 2016, 99 min) God of War (d. Gordon Chan c: Sammo Hung, Vincent Zhao, Regina Wan, Yasuaki Kurata, Keisuke Koide, China 2017, 130 min) Have a Nice Day (d. LIU Jian c: Yang Siming, Cao Kou, Ma Xiaofeng, Zhu Changlong, China 2017, 77 min) Knife in the Clear Water (d. WANG Xuebo c: YANG Shengcang, ZHOU Jinhua, YANG Fan, YANG Xue, China 2016, 93 min, US Premiere) Love and Duty (d. WANCANG Bu c: RUAN Lingyu, JIN Yan, China 1931, 153 min) The Song of Cotton (d. ZHU Yuancheng c: YAN Bingyan, WANG Deshun, China 2016, 90 min) Soul on a String (d. ZHANG Yang c: Kimba, Quni Ciren, Siano Dudiom Zahi, Solange Nima, China 2016, 142 min) Tea Pets (d. Gary Wang v: SHI Lei, YUAN Zeyu, JI Guanlin, China 2017, 93 min) Short films from the Beijing Film Academy: Bloom (d. SUN Yiran and XU Jiyao c: Yiran SUN, Jiyao XU, China 2017, 8 min) Elephant King (d. FU Yan and FU Chao c: Wang Naizhen, Fan Meng, Fu Yan, Fu Yongcha, China 2017, 11 min) Free Throw Line (d. ZHANG Yixin China 2017, 7 min) I Come From Prairie (d. Nuhan Arisbek, China 2017, 8 min) The Sea (d. LI Yifan, China 2017 c: Jinshan Wang Feiyu Chen, Yihao Qian, 7 min)

    CULINARY CINEMA

    Cook Up a Storm (d: Raymond Yip Wai Man c: Alberto Calvet Gonzalez, You Ge, Yong-hwa Jung, Barbora Mottlová, Yan Tang, USA 2017, 97 min) Fermented (d: Jonathan Cianfrani c: Edward Lee, USA 2017, 67 min, World Premiere) Food Evolution (d: Scott Hamilton Kennedy c: Neil deGrasse Tyson, Bill Nye, Michael Pollan, Charles Benbrook, USA 2016, 92 min) Kakehashi: A Portrait of Chef Nobuo Fukuda (d: Andrew Gooi c: Nobuo Fukuda, Sarah Fukuda, Kazuko Fukuda, Japan 2017, 46 min, World Premiere) Lives with Flavor (d: Pablo Gasca Gollas c: Ricardo Muñoz Zurita, Marco Beteta,Martha Ortiz,Israel Ronzon, Alberto Albarran, Patricia Muñoz Zurita, Salomé Freixas, Gonzalo Serrano, Mexico 2017, 52 min, World Premiere) New Chefs on the Block (d: Dustin Harrison-Atlas c: Frank Linn, Aaron Silverman, Kate Diamond, Michel Richard, Danny Meyer, Mike Isabella, Tim Carman, Emily Sprissler, USA 2016, 96 min) The Turkish Way (d: Luis Gonzalez c: Joan Roca, Josep Roca, Jordi Roca, Sabiha Apaydin, Maksut Askar, Mehmet Gurs, Sina Sucuka, Spain 2016, 120 min)

    FACE THE MUSIC

    Behind the Curtain: Todrick Hall (d: Katherine Fairfax Wright f: Todrick Hall, Teresa Stanley, Wayne Brady, Chester Lockhart, Jesse Pattison, Brenda Cornish, Vonzell Solomon, Jenni Thomasson, Jazlyn Nicole Miller, USA 2017, 105 min) Bill Frisell, A Portrait (d: Emma Franz f: Bill Frisell, Paul Motian, Jim Hall, Mike Gibbs, Jason Moran, Jim Woodring, Joey Baron, Tony Scherr, Kenny Wollesen, John Zorn, Australia 2017, 114 min) Chavela (d: Catherine Gund f: Chavela Vargas, Pedro Almodóvar, USA 2017, 90 min) Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde with live soundtrack by The Invincible Czars (d: John S. Robertson c: John Barrymore, Brandon Hurst, Martha Mansfield, Charles Lane, Cecil Clovelly, USA 1920, 79 min) Give Me Future (d: Austin Peters, USA 2017, 85 min) A Life in Waves (d: Brett Whitcomb f: Suzanne Ciani, Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe, Kitaro, Peter Baumann, Dorit Chrysler, Sarah Davachi, Don Buchla, USA 2016, 75 min) On the Road (d: Michael Winterbottom f: Wolf Alice, James McArdle, Leah Harvey, Swim Deep, Bloody Knees, United Kingdom 2016, 112 min) The Paris Opera (d: Jean-Stéphane Bron f: Stéphane Lissner, Benjamin Millepied, France 2016, 110 min)

    NORTHWEST CONNECTIONS

    The Cage Fighter (d: Jeff Unay f: Callie Carman, Joe Carman, Delanee Carman, Vernon Beach, USA 2017, 83 min) Crazywise (d: Phil Borges, Kevin Tomlinson f: Adam Gentry, Ekhaya Esima, Angeles Arrien, Phil Borges, Carroll Dunham, USA 2017, 82 min, World Premiere) Dirtbag: The Legend of Fred Beckey (d: Dave O’Leske, USA 2017, 96 min) Lane 1974 (d: SJ Chiro c: Sophia Mitri Schloss, Katherine Moennig, Annette Toutonghi, Sara Coates, USA 2017, 80 min) Pow Wow (d: Robinson Devor, USA 2016, 75 min) Rocketmen (d: Webster Crowell c: Alycia Delmore, Basil Harris, Christopher Dietz, Ian Fraser, Ben Laurance, USA 2017, 67 min, World Premiere) Wallflower (d: Jagger Gravning c: David Call, Atsuko Okatsuka, Conner Marx, USA 2017, 84 min, World Premiere)

    360˚/VR STORYTELLING POWERED BY WONDERTEK

    360˚/VR STORYTELLING POP-UP, POWERED BY WONDERTEK LABS Weekends from Friday, May 19 – Saturday, June 10 Passholder Happy Hours and Festival Forums times SIFF Lounge, presented by Vulcan Productions While the emerging tech behind-the-scenes of virtual reality and 360˚ have been evolving over the past few years, 360˚ filmmakers and VR content creators have been organically evolving a new language and tools for storytelling in this space. WonderTek Labs has curated a selection of some of the best in 360˚ storytelling from creators from the Seattle region and around the globe, showcased on Google Daydream headsets, that highlight a spectrum of where 360˚ storytelling is today. Selections will include a work-in-progress cut of Seattle-based Mechanical Dreams’ Potato Dreams, the VR companion to SIFF’s short-film selection Little Potato; a reprise presentation of “The Stranger” Genius Award winner Tracy Rector’s Eagle Bone; Madrid-based Future Lighthouse’s groundbreaking branded storytelling piece Beefeater XO (a top-10 finalist for the Tribeca X Prize); an interactive VR episode for Spanish hit television series “El Ministerio Del Tiempo”; a selection of the best work to come out of the four SIXR Cinematic VR Hackathons; and other content TBD. 360˚/VR STORYTELLING PLAYTANK Saturday, June 10 8:30 AM – 1:00 PM SIFF Film Center Are you a filmmaker who wants to learn more about transitioning to 360˚/VR, or a VR dev who wants to connect with filmmakers? Do you have a 360˚ or VR project in mind and want to connect with other folks interested in working on projects? Do you have expertise to share, or things you want to learn? The 360˚/VR Storytelling PlayTank is a hand-on, interactive event intended to bring together the Seattle 360˚/VR and filmmaking communities for a morning of topical small-group breakout conversations, hands-on demos and workshops, and informal opportunities to connect like-minded creatives, show personal projects and demos, and learn about emerging technologies. The PlayTank will kick off with a Geekout Breakout Session Breakfast, where participants will join small, mentor-facilitated, small-group breakout sessions on topics including Spatial Audio, 360˚ Production and Post Production, Branching Narrative in 360˚ Storytelling, 360˚ Documentary Storytelling, and Ethics in Developing 360˚/VR Content. Mettle CEO Chris Bobotis will be on hand to present a hands-on workshop for Mettle’s 360˚ editing plug-ins for Adobe Premiere. Bring your laptop to participate (you must have Adobe Premiere; you can download a free 30-day trial version if you don’t own Premiere). Participants will receive a free temporary license to use Mettle’s products as a part of this workshop. Upstairs in the PlayTank, participants will explore hands-on demos and workshops, and grab another coffee and connect organically with others in the community. The PlayTank is an open and collaborative space. Participants are encouraged to bring their own laptops and demos to share.

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  • Complete Lineup Announced for New Directors/New Films, Opens with PATTI CAKE$

    [caption id="attachment_19920" align="aligncenter" width="1200"]Patti Cake$ Patti Cake$[/caption] The complete lineup of 29 features and nine short films has been announced for the 46th annual New Directors/New Films (ND/NF), taking place March 15 to 26, 2917.  The festival, dedicated to the discovery of new works by emerging and dynamic filmmaking talent, is organized by the Museum of Modern Art and the Film Society of Lincoln Center. The opening, centerpiece, and closing night selections showcase three exciting new voices in American independent cinema: Geremy Jasper’s Patti Cake$, a breakout hit of Sundance, is opening night; Eliza Hittman’s portrait of a Brooklyn teenager’s sexual awakening, Beach Rats, is the centerpiece selection; and Dustin Guy Defa closes the festival with Person to Person, a day-in-the-life snapshot of a group of eccentric New York characters. This year’s lineup boasts eight North American premieres, eight U.S. premieres, and two world premieres, with features and shorts from 32 countries across five continents. A number of films have won major awards on the festival circuit, including Sanal Kumar Sasidharan’s Sexy Durga, winner of Rotterdam’s Tiger Award; Ala Eddine Slim’s accomplished debut The Last of Us, awarded Venice’s Lion of the Future; Dalei Zhang’s Golden Horse best feature winner The Summer Is Gone; as well as Locarno prizewinners The Future Perfect, The Last Family, and The Challenge, which took home honors for best first-time filmmaker, best actor, and the special jury prize, respectively. FILMS & DESCRIPTIONS All films are digitally projected unless otherwise noted. Opening Night Patti Cake$ Geremy Jasper, USA, 2017, 108m New York Premiere Make way for the year’s breakout star: newcomer Danielle Macdonald is Patti Cake$, aka Killa P, a burly and brash aspiring rapper with big plans to get out of Jersey. Patti lives with her mother (Bridget Everett), a former singer who drinks away her daughter’s wages, and ill grandmother (an epic Cathy Moriarty); meanwhile Patti is assisted in realizing her dreams by her hip-hop partner and BFF Hareesh (Siddharth Dhananjay) and their mysterious new collaborator Basterd (Mamoudou Athie). This raucous and fresh tale from first-time writer-director Geremy Jasper—a musician and former music video director from Hillsdale, NJ—follows Patti from gas station rap battles to her shifts at the lonely karaoke bar, while empathetically portraying the aspirations and frustrations of three generations of women. With homegrown swagger and contagious energy, Patti Cake$ announces Jasper and Macdonald as major talents. A Fox Searchlight release. Centerpiece Beach Rats Eliza Hittman, USA, 2017, 95m New York Premiere Eliza Hittman follows up her acclaimed debut It Felt Like Love with this sensitive chronicle of sexual becoming. Frankie (a breakout Harris Dickinson), a bored teenager living in South Brooklyn, regularly haunts the Coney Island boardwalk with his boys—trying to score weed, flirting with girls, killing time. But he spends his late nights dipping his toes into the world of online cruising, connecting with older men and exploring the desires he harbors but doesn’t yet fully understand. Sensuously lensed on 16mm by cinematographer Hélène Louvart, Beach Rats presents a colorful and textured world roiling with secret appetites and youthful self-discovery. A Neon release. Closing Night Person to Person Dustin Guy Defa, USA, 2017, 84m New York Premiere This understated yet ambitious sophomore feature by one of American independent cinema’s most exciting young voices follows a day in the lives of a motley crew of New Yorkers. A rookie crime reporter (Abbi Jacobson of Broad City) tags along with her eccentric boss (Michael Cera), pursuing the scoop on a suicide that may have been a murder, leading her to cross paths with a stoic clockmaker (Philip Baker Hall); meanwhile, a precocious teen (Tavi Gevinson) explores her sexuality while playing hooky, and an obsessive record collector (Bene Coopersmith) receives a too-good-to-be-true tip on a rare Charlie Parker LP while his depressed friend (George Sample III) seeks redemption after humiliating his cheating girlfriend. With Person to Person (exquisitely shot in 16mm by rising-star DP Ashley Connor), Defa matches the sophistication of his acclaimed shorts and delights in the freedoms afforded by a bigger canvas. 4 Days in France / Jours de France Jérôme Reybaud, France, 2017, 141m French with English subtitles North American Premiere An erotic road movie like no other, Jérôme Reybaud’s fiction feature debut begins in the dark, as Pierre (Pascal Cervo) uses his smartphone to snap photos of his lover’s sleeping body. Then, as if in a trance, he hits the road without any clear destination, drawn this way or that only by the connections he forges with strangers on a hookup app. Soon, his lover will set out in hot pursuit of Pierre across four long days and nights, crossing paths with a succession of curious characters. In the sophisticated angle he takes on the state of modern Eros, Reybaud evokes the work of Stranger by the Lake director Alain Guiraudie, imbuing the proceedings with mystery, humor, and a restrained yet pronounced sensuality. Albüm Mehmet Can Mertoglu, Turkey/France/Romania, 2016, 105m Turkish with English subtitles New York Premiere In this shrewd and visually accomplished social satire from Turkish filmmaker Mehmet Can Mertoglu, a taxman named Bahar (Şebnem Bozoklu) and his history teacher wife, Cüneyt (Murat Kiliç), adopt a child, only to find they feel no emotional connection to the kid. Further complicating their own situation, the self-involved couple initiates an elaborate ruse, with the assistance of contemporary social media, to alter the facts about how they came to have a family. Stunningly photographed on 35mm by Marius Panduru (DP of Romanian New Wave cornerstone Police, Adjective), Mertoglu’s debut feature uses biting black humor to lampoon present-day Turkish society, capturing in equal measure the absurdity of reality and the reality of the absurd. Arábia João Dumans & Affonso Uchoa, Brazil, 2017, 97m Portuguese with English subtitles North American Premiere Arábia begins by observing the day-to-day of Andre, a teenager who lives in an industrial area in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais. After a local factory worker, Cristiano, has an accident on the job, he leaves behind a handwritten journal, which the boy proceeds to read with relish. The film shifts into road-movie mode to recount the story of Cristiano, an ex-con and eternal optimist who journeys across Brazil in search of work, enduring no shortage of economic hardship but gaining an equal amount of self-knowledge. Invigorating and ever surprising, Arábia is a humanist work of remarkable poise and maturity. Autumn, Autumn / Chuncheon, chuncheon Jang Woo-jin, South Korea, 2017, 78m Korean with English subtitles North American Premiere With a surprising structure that recalls the work of both Hong Sang-soo and Apichatpong Weerasethakul, this delicate sophomore feature by Jang Woo-jin is a tale of human connection and searching for one’s place in the world. It begins simply enough, with a young man sitting next to an older couple on a train from Seoul to the city of Chuncheon. From there, we follow the man as he copes with the anxiety of trying to find a job, and then the couple, who, as it turns out, don’t know each other as well as it seems. With funny and moving scenes that play out in understated yet bravura long takes, Autumn, Autumn is as attuned to the passage of time and fluctuations of light as it is to everyday human drama. Screens with Léthé Dea Kulumbegashvili, 2016, France/Georgia, 15m Georgian with English subtitles U.S. Premiere A lonely horseman wanders past the river of forgetfulness and through a rural Georgian village where both children and adults explore life’s more instinctual pleasures. Boundaries / Pays Chloé Robichaud, Canada, 2016, 100m English and French with English subtitles New York Premiere Chloé Robichaud’s sophomore feature centers on three women trying to square their political careers with complicated personal lives. Besco, a fictitious island country off the eastern coast of Canada, possesses vast natural resources that foreign companies would love to tap into, which occasions negotiations between Besco’s president (Macha Grenon) and Canadian government reps (including Natalie Dummar as a junior aide from the Ottawa delegation), mediated by a bilingual American (Emily Van Camp). As these three suffer through endless condescensions and mansplanations, they must also contend with an array of outside threats, from lobbyists, terrorists—and their own families. The performances are impeccable, and Robichaud stylishly renders the often absurd mundanity of her heroines’ political ordeal. By the Time It Gets Dark / Dao Khanong Anocha Suwichakornpong, France/Netherlands/Qatar/Thailand, 2016, 105m Thai with English subtitles U.S. Premiere In the beguiling, mysterious second feature by Thai director Anocha Suwichakornpong, the story of a young film director researching a project about the 1976 massacre of Thai student activists at Thamassat University is just the beginning of a shape-shifting work of fictions within fictions, featuring characters with multiple identities. Drifting across a dizzyingly wide expanse of space and time, By the Time It Gets Dark offers a series of narratives concerning love, longing, the power of cinema, and the vestiges of the past within the present. Asking quietly profound questions about the nature of memory—personal, political, and cinematic—this self-reflexive yet deeply felt film keeps regenerating and unfolding in surprising ways. A KimStim release. The Challenge Yuri Ancarani, Italy/France/Switzerland, 2016, 69m Arabic with English subtitles New York Premiere If you have it, spend it: Italian artist Yuri Ancarani’s visually striking documentary enters the surreal world of wealthy Qatari sheikhs who moonlight as amateur falconers, with no expenses spared along the way. The Challenge follows these men through the rituals that define their lives: perilously racing blacked-out SUVs up and down sand dunes; sharing communal meals; taking their Ferraris out for a spin with their pet cheetahs riding shotgun; and much more. Ancarani’s film is a sly meditation on the collective pursuit of idiosyncratic desires. Diamond Island Davy Chou, Cambodia/France/Germany/Qatar/Thailand, 2016, 101m Khmer with English subtitles U.S. Premiere In this stylish coming-of-age story, an 18-year-old from the Cambodian provinces arrives at Diamond Island luxury housing development outside Phnom Penh to work a construction job transporting scrap between building sites. He makes friends and courts a local girl, but things grow ever more complicated when his long-estranged brother resurfaces. Making his feature-length fiction debut, Chou (whose documentary Golden Slumbers explored the vanished past of Cambodian cinema) creates an intoxicating blend of naturalism and dreamy stylization, rendering the ecstasies and agonies of late youth with remarkable attention to detail. The Dreamed Path / Der traumhafte weg Angela Schanelec, Germany, 2016, 86m English and German with English subtitles New York Premiere The Dreamed Path traces a precise picture of a world in which chance, emotion, and dreams determine the trajectory of our lives. In 1984 in Greece, a young German couple, Kenneth and Theres, find their romantic relationship tested after his mother suffers an accident. Thirty years later in Berlin, middle-aged actress Ariane splits with her husband David, an anthropologist. Soon, these two couples’ paths cross in unexpected ways, short-circuiting narrative conventions of cause and effect as well as common conceptions of the self. Angela Schanelec, part of the loose collective of innovative German filmmakers that came to be known as the Berlin School, puts her signature formal control to enigmatic and subtly emotional ends in a film of mesmerizing shots and indelible gestures. The Future Perfect / El Futuro perfecto Nele Wohlatz, Argentina, 2016, 65m Spanish and Mandarin with English subtitles New York Premiere Winner of the Best First Feature prize at the 2016 Locarno Film Festival, Wohlatz’s assured debut is a playful, exceptionally idea-rich work of fiction with documentary fragments. Seventeen-year-old Xiaobin arrives in Argentina from China unable to speak Spanish. Employed at a Chinese grocery store, she saves up enough money to pay for language classes, and enters into a secret romance with a young Indian man, Vijay. As she begins to grasp the Spanish language’s conditional tense, she imagines a constellation of possible futures. Screens with Three Sentences About Argentina / Tres oraciones sobre la Argentina Nele Wohlatz, Argentina, 2016, 5m Spanish and Mandarin with English subtitles U.S. Premiere Nele Wohlatz transposes archival footage of Argentinian skiers into prompts for language exercises in this short made as part of an omnibus feature for the Buenos Aires Film Museum. The Giant / Jätten Johannes Nyholm, Sweden/Denmark, 2016, 86m Swedish with English subtitles U.S. Premiere Rikard lives to play petanque (a kind of lawn-bowling played with hollow steel balls). But his severe physical deformity, coupled with autism, makes communication with the world beyond a very small group of family, friends, and petanque teammates nearly impossible. As Rikard’s team gears up for a prestigious tournament, his fantasies—some involving his mother, who lives in squalor with her pet parrot, and some imagining himself as a giant stomping across a kitschy, romanticist landscape—transport him beyond the confines of the long-term care facility where he lives. Nyholm’s debut feature is a true original: a provocative, grittily realist sports movie, suffused with compassion and humor. Happiness Academy / Bonheur Academie Kaori Kinoshita & Alain Della Negra, France, 2016, 75m French with English subtitles U.S. Premiere Uncannily melding fiction and documentary, Happiness Academy transports us to a hotel retreat for the real-life Raelian Church, a religious sect devoted to the transmission of knowledge inherited from mankind’s extraterrestrial ancestors. As the new candidates for “awakening” (two of whom are played by actress Laure Calamy and musician Arnaud Fleurent-Didier) spend time together at meals, out by the pool, at bonfires, and participating in new age-y group exercises, an unexpected humanism emerges amid the absurd spirituality. Humorous and moving, direct and enigmatic, this singular film meditates on the peculiar ways in which people strive to give their lives meaning. Happy Times Will Come Soon / I Tempi felici verranno presto Alessandro Comodin, Italy/France, 2016, 102m Italian with English subtitles North American Premiere Two young fugitives out in the wild, a series of talking heads recounting a local legend about a wolf on the prowl, a loose dramatization of that same myth… With a narrative that enigmatically leaps from one hypnotic passage to another, Alessandro Comodin’s sophomore feature, set deep in the northern Italian woods and drawing on local folklore, is the work of a true original. This beautiful and haunting meditation on the relationships between imagination, desire, and violence is a dreamlike fable with the weight of documentary reality. Lady Macbeth William Oldroyd, UK, 2016, 89m New York Premiere The debut feature by accomplished theater director William Oldroyd relocates Nikolai Leskov’s play Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District to Victorian England. Florence Pugh is forceful and complex as Lady Katherine, who enters into an arranged marriage with the domineering, repressed Alexander (Paul Hilton), and must contend with her husband’s even more unpleasant mine-owner father (Christopher Fairbank). In this constrictive new milieu, she finds carnal release with one of her husband’s servants (Cosmo Jarvis), but there are profound consequences to her infidelity. Boasting deft performances by an outstanding ensemble cast, Lady Macbeth is a rousing parable about the price of freedom. A Roadside Attractions release. The Last Family / Ostatnia rodzina Jan P. Matuszynski, Poland, 2016, 124m Polish with English subtitles New York Premiere This sort-of biopic of Polish surrealist artist Zdzisław Beksiński, renowned for his stark, unsettling, postapocalyptic paintings, focuses as much on the rest of the funny and reclusive Beksiński family: his religious wife Zofia, a perennially steadying presence; and his son Tomasz, a DJ/translator always on the verge of spiraling out of control. Jan P. Matuszynski’s fiction feature debut renders Beksiński’s home life as a vivid and affecting succession of near-death experiences and psychodramatic blowouts, and shows the brilliant artworks that emerged from all the sturm und drang. The Last of Us / Akher Wahed Fina Ala Eddine Slim, Tunisia/Qatar/UAE/Lebanon, 2016, 95m North American Premiere Two men silently traverse a vast, flat landscape; they get in the back of a smuggler’s truck, and soon after they’re attacked by men with guns; one of them escapes to sea, perhaps headed to Europe. He soon then finds himself in an endless forest, where a kind of spiritual journey unfolds. In Ala Eddine Slim’s mysterious, entrancing, dialogue-free film, the political significance of the unnamed protagonist’s journey is given a metaphysical twist. Urgent and evocative, The Last of Us speaks powerfully about both contemporary migration and the ancient struggle between man and nature. Menashe Joshua Z. Weinstein, USA, 2017, 79m Yiddish with English subtitles New York Premiere Something like Woody Allen meets neorealism in Borough Park, Brooklyn, Menashe follows its titular hapless protagonist through a host of existential, spiritual, and familial crises. In the wake of his wife’s recent death, Menashe must care for his ten-year-old son—despite the fact that he knows bupkis about parenting—at the same time that he finds himself straying from the rigid norms of his Hasidic community. His friends and family insist that he remarry as soon as possible, but since he can’t get over his deceased wife or make enough money to feed his son, an uncle attempts to intervene. Joshua Z. Weinstein’s fiction feature debut is a poignant and funny parable about the tension between our best intentions and our efforts to make good on them. An A24 release. My Happy Family / Chemi bednieri ojakhi Nana Ekvtimishvili & Simon Gross, Georgia/France, 2017, 120m Georgian with English subtitles New York Premiere The second feature by Ekvtimishvili and Gross subtly and sensitively follows a middle-aged woman as she aims to leave her husband and escape from the multi-generational living situation she shares with her aging parents, the aforementioned husband, her son, her daughter, and her daughter’s cheating live-in boyfriend. Lacking both personal space and free time, she breaks out on her own, building a new life for herself piece by piece while contemplating the family structure she has left behind. My Happy Family is a funny, perceptive, and sociologically rich work about the myriad roles we play in life and the obligations we endlessly strive to fulfill. Pendular Julia Murat, Brazil/Argentina/France, 2017, 108m Portuguese with English subtitles North American Premiere A male sculptor and a female dancer live and work together in their big, barren loft, a mere strip of orange tape serving as the boundary between his atelier and her studio. Here, the stage is set for a low-key psychosexual drama centered around the couple’s erotic, artistic, and everyday rituals. This absorbingly intimate third feature by Julia Murat (her second, Found Memories, was a ND/NF 2012 selection) is a moving portrait of a couple caught between rivalry and the desire to build a future with each other. Quest Jonathan Olshefski, USA, 2017, 105m New York Premiere Jonathan Olshefski’s documentary chronicle of an African-American family living in Philadelphia is a powerful and uplifting group portrait rooted in today’s political realities. Beginning at the dawn of the Obama presidency, the film follows the Raineys: patriarch Christopher, who juggles various jobs to support his family and his recording studio; matriarch Christine’a, who works at a homeless shelter; Christine’a’s son William, who is undergoing cancer treatment while caring for his own son, Isaiah; and PJ, Christopher and Christine’a’s teenage daughter. A patient, absorbing vérité epic, Quest covers eight years filled with obstacles, trials, and tribulations. Sexy Durga Sanal Kumar Sasidharan, India, 2017, 85m Malayalam with English subtitles North American Premiere Sasidharan’s third feature, main competition winner at this year’s International Rotterdam Film Festival, is a wildly tense nocturnal thriller with a razor-sharp political message. Late one night, Kabeer and Durga, a young couple on the run, are picked up by two strange men in a minivan who offer them a lift to a nearby train station. However, these men reveal themselves to be anything but benevolent, and so begins a long, claustrophobic drive that feels like Funny Games meets The Exterminating Angel. Sasidharan renders this bad trip with precision and an economy of style. Strong Island Yance Ford, USA/Denmark, 2017, 107m New York Premiere A haunting investigation into the murder of a young black man in 1992, Yance Ford’s Strong Island is achingly personal—the victim, 24-year-old William Ford Jr., was the filmmaker’s brother. Ford powerfully renders the specter of his brother’s death and its devastating effect on his family, and uses the tools of cinema to carefully examine the injustice perpetrated when the suspected killer, a 19-year-old white man, was not indicted by a white judge and an all-white jury. As a work of memoir and true crime, Strong Island tells one of the most remarkable stories in recent documentary; as a political artwork, its resonance is profound. The Summer Is Gone / Ba yue Dalei Zhang, China, 2016, 106m Mandarin with English subtitles New York Premiere Dalei Zhang’s atmospheric debut feature is a portrait of a family in Inner Mongolia in the early 1990s that doubles as a snapshot of a pivotal moment in recent Chinese history. As the country settles into its new market economy, 12-year-old Xiaolei stretches out his final summer before beginning middle school, while his father contends with the possibility of losing his job as a filmmaker for a state-run studio, and his mother, a teacher, worries about her son’s grades and future. Beautifully shot in shimmering black-and-white, The Summer Is Gone is intimate and far-reaching, creating ripples of uncertainty from the microcosm of one family’s everyday life. White Sun / Seto Surya Deepak Rauniyar, Nepal/USA/Qatar/Netherlands, 2016, 89m Nepali with English subtitles New York Premiere The second feature by Nepalese filmmaker Deepak Rauniyar sensitively explores the damage done to the fabric of Nepalese society by the decade-long civil war between the Maoists and Nepal’s monarchical government. On the occasion of his father’s funeral, Chandra returns to the village he left years earlier to join the Maoists, and finds himself united with the daughter he never met and revisiting uneasy relations with family members and neighbors. Past traumas return and cause tensions to boil over. Finding the political within the everyday, White Sun uses one village’s complex tribulations to speak to an entire national history. A KimStim release. The Wound John Trengove, South Africa/Germany/Netherlands/France, 2017, 88m Xhosa with English subtitles New York Premiere In a mountainous corner of the Eastern Cape of South Africa, an age-old Xhosa ritual introducing adolescent boys to manhood continues to this day. This is the backdrop for this stark and stirring first feature by John Trengove, in which Xolani, a quiet and sensitive factory worker (played by musician Nakhane Touré), guides one of the boys, Kwanda, an urban transplant sent against his will from Johannesburg to be toughened up, through this rite of passage. In an environment where machismo rules, Kwanda negotiates his own identity while discovering the secret of Xolani’s sexuality. Brimming with fear and violence, The Wound is an exploration of tradition and masculinity. A Kino Lorber release. Wùlu Daouda Coulibaly, France/Mali/Senegal, 2016, 95m Bambara and French with English subtitles New York Premiere A gangster picture with political resonance, Wùlu tracks the rise to power of Ladji, a 20-year-old van driver in Mali who takes to crime so that his older sister can quit a life of prostitution. He calls in a favor from a drug-dealer friend and soon finds himself deeply involved in a complex and illicit enterprise; as he discovers his knack for his new profession and his lifestyle ostensibly improves, the stakes grow higher and deadlier by the day. Set during the lead-up to 2012’s Malian Civil War, Wùlu is more than an exciting and superbly made thriller—it offers a powerful glimpse at the complexities of a particular historical moment.

    SHORTS PROGRAMS

    Shorts Program 1: Events in a Cloud Chamber Ashim Alhuwalia, India, 2016, 20m New York Premiere Filmed on Super 8mm and 16mm, this documentary traces a collaboration between director Ashim Alhuwalia and Akbar Padamsee, a pioneer of modern Indian painting, to recreate Padamsee’s 1969 film, lost for decades and now regarded as potentially the birth of experimental cinema in India. Old Luxurious Flat Located in an Ultra-central, Desirable Neighborhood / Apartament interbelic, în zona superbă, ultra-centrală Sebastian Mihăilescu, Romania, 2016, 19m Romanian with English subtitles U.S. Premiere A young man spends the night alone in his apartment plagued by jealousy and anxieties as his wife goes out with an old high school friend in an attempt to sell the family car. Spiral Jetty Ricky D’Ambrose, USA, 2017, 15m World Premiere A young archivist is hired to whitewash a late psychotherapist’s legacy in this exquisitely crafted story, imbued with an arch, conspiratorial air and told at a perfectionist’s pace. Manodopera Loukianos Moshonas, France/Greece, 2016, 28m Greek and Albanian with English subtitles North American Premiere Oscillating between labor and leisure, a young man alternates helping an Albanian workhand renovate an Athens apartment and joining in ponderous conversations with his friends on the roof. Nyo Wveta Nafta Ico Costa, Portugal/Mozambique, 2017, 21m Portuguese, Gitonga, and Shitsua with English subtitles U.S. Premiere Ico Costa casually observes the rhythms of daily life in Mozambique in this freeform film shot on 16mm. Shorts Program 2: As Without So Within Manuela De Laborde, Mexico/USA/UK, 2016, 35mm, 25m New York Premiere This experimental meditation on the detailed surfaces of objects confronts representation in theater and cinema and forces the viewer to confront hierarchies of viewership. The Blue Devils / Los diablos azules Charlotte Bayer-Broc, France, 2017, 48m Spanish with English subtitles World Premiere More than 3,000 miners of Chile’s La Pampa were shot down by the national army during a demonstration in Iquique, a massacre told in Luis Advis’s 1969 cantata Santa María de Iquique. In The Blue Devils, Charlotte Bayer-Broc wanders through one of the ghost mining towns—a remote outpost in the Atacama Desert—interpreting Advis’s lament across eerily abandoned landscapes and industrial vistas. Bayer-Broc upends cinematic convention in a beguiling adaptation that is entirely her own; this medium-length musical is at once personal and political, reverent and burlesque.  

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