The 47th Annual New York Film Festival Features The Best In International Filmmakers

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Parent Category: Film Festivals

Category: Previews

Published on Thursday, 03 September 2009 18:51

Written by Jack Angstreich

As in previous years, this year's annual New York Film Festival--running from September 25th to October 11th, 2009--features new works by many established directors and at least one with a rising reputation--Romanian director Corneliu Porumboiu. But, this year, the selection committee has eschewed the major releases of mainstream marquee names such as Clint Eastwood for films by celebrated international filmmakers such as Alan Renais (with the Opening Night film) and Pedro Almodovar (with the Closing Night film) as well as fresh new independent directors such as Lee Daniels with his award-winning "Precious" as the centerpiece. Many of the directors featured will be in NYC during the festival doing Q&A after screenings and other events.

This year, the 47th Festival returns to its larger theater, the restored and renovated Alice Tully Hall, with a state-of-the-art sound and projection system. The 17-day NYFF highlights what the selection commitee feels is the best in filmmaking from around the world. The selection committee--Film Society Program Director Richard Peña, freelance critic Melissa Anderson; LA Weekly Film editor and critic Scott Foundas; Village Voice Senior Film Critic J. Hoberman; Moving Image Source editor Dennis Lim--hand-picked the 29 features that make up the main slate which includes filmmakers from 17 countries.

In addition this year's NYFF introduces Masterworks which will feature works from China--"Re-Inventing China: A New Cinema for a New Society, 1949-1966"--and India--"A Heart as Big as the World: The Films of Guru Dutt." Both series will screen at the FSLC's regular screening room, The Walter Reade Theater.
 
In addition, this year's Spotlight Retrospective will be Victor Fleming's beloved classic, The Wizard of Oz, for its 70th Anniversary presentation in a brand new high-def restoration.

Spotlighting numerous French directors this year, the festival only features four American productions including two documentaries. Don Argott's The Art of the Steal describes the travails of the legendary Barnes collection of art masterworks and the foundation set up to protect it. Sweetgrass by Ilisa Barbash and Lucien Castaing-Taylor, offers a chronicle about a group of modern-day cowboys as they lead a herd of sheep to market. Among the 17 features, there are several that have already prompted reaction at European festivals.
 
This year's festival opens on September 25th with Wild Grass, the acclaimed new work from French grand master, Alain Resnais, a fountainhead of the Nouvelle Vague and of the modern cinema itself. This comedy of manners features a remarkable cast that includes Sabine Azéma, André Dussollier, Emmanuelle Devos and Mathieu Almaric. Resnais began as a high-modernist but his style evolved by the 1980s into an openness toward popular forms and to theatricality, comedy, and a new classicism. Although he no longer appears to be a filmmaker of the stature he once was, his films have continued to provide enjoyment.

 

Lars von Trier's Antichrist--described as "a couple’s efforts to find their love again after a tragic loss"--is also highly anticipated, reportedly as polarizing and controversial as the Danish auteurist's other, provocative, recent works. The director gained recognition for vividly stylized, quasi-expressionistic works before switching to the Dogme method of shooting with handheld video-cameras. With his last two major features, Dogville and Mandalay, von Trier went on to embrace a parabolic, quasi-Brechtian approach. His film screens on October 2nd and October 3rd.

Another grand-maître--and one of the greatest directors in the history of cinema--is France's Jacques Rivette whose new film is Around a Small Mountain, described as a "look at the final days of a small-time traveling circus". Rivette has often employed theatrical metaphors and enigmas--these latter often possess a MacGuffin-like character. Rivette is notable for his creative process which involves the creation of works whose contours and qualities are largely unanticipated by their author. His film screens on October 7th and 9th.

Controversial French director Catherine Breillat, a filmmaker who has grown in stature, is here with Bluebeard (it screens on October 11th), which reportedly "follows two young sisters reading Charles Perrault’s 17th century tale". Breillat's reputation is largely due to her bold explorations of--usually, feminine-- sexuality; but, over the course of several works she has developed a subtle style and revealed considerable versatility as a filmmaker.

Another of the world's greatest directors, Portuguese centenarian Manoël de Oliveira, returns, on September 26th and 27th, with Eccentricities of a Blond Hair Girl, a "tale of a pure if frustrated love" and an adaptation of the great Portuguese novelist, Eça de Queiroz. Oliveira is another arch-modernist, now in the midst of a spectacular late phase. .

Bruno Dumont is represented by Hadewijch, described as "an exploration of the psychology of religious extremism and martyrdom" in which a "young woman searches for an absolute experience of faith". Dumont has proven to be something of a wild card, unafraid to risk the ridiculous -- although he began with a fine, relatively small-scale work, The Life of Jesus. His new film screens on October 4th and 6th.

American indie director Todd Solondz, who has yet to equal his ambitious Happiness, returns to the festival on October 10th and 11th with Life During Wartime, in which "a young man preparing for his bar-mitzvah must deal with his divorced mother’s prospective fiancé as well as rumors that his own father is not really dead". Solondz, a satirist, typically employs a distanced style combined with outrageous shock tactics.

The accomplished director from Mali, Souleymane Cissé, is famous for his elemental, mythographic Yeleen. The director has not produced a work for several years so it is a pleasure to see here on October 5th and 6th, his latest, Tell Me Who You Are, which chronicles the dissolution of an upper-middle class African marriage.

Bong Joon-Ho directed one of the greatest Korean films, Memories of Murder --an engrossing, disturbing, effectively stylized crime-drama --and garnered considerable acclaim for his monster-movie, The Host; he is at the festival with Mother (which screens on October 9th and 10th), in which a widow, convinced that her son has been wrongly accused of murder so she throws herself body and soul into proving his innocence.

Pedro Costa has developed an enormous reputation among cognoscenti internationally for his rigorous style. His new film is Ne Change Rien, described as a "valentine" to French actress, Jeanne Balibar. The film screens only once on October 8th.

Corneliu Porumboiu received international recognition for his feature 12:30 East of Bucharest.  His new film, Police Adjective, is said to be about a young policeman who, upon discovering a teenager with hashish, hesitates to turn him in. The film screens on September 28th and 29th.

The young Russian director, Andrey Khrzhanovsky, gained visibility with his haunting, eccentric film, 4. His new film which can be seen on September 30th, A Room and a Half, is described as a portrait of the celebrated Russian poet, Josef Brodsky, which combines scripted scenes, archival footage and several types of animation.

The eminence of multi-award winning director Andrzej Wajda--the subject of a comprehensive retrospective at the Film Society's Walter Reade Theater earlier this year--rests largely upon the extraordinary series of works he directed in Poland from the late '50s through the '70s. But he has continued to produce worthwhile films even as the scope of his originality has somewhat diminished. Wajda was early associated with a certain expressionist pictorialism but his work, for a time, evolved into a cruder, less formally interesting style. His films of recent years have merited a renewed interest. His latest Sweet Rush--screens on October 2nd and 3rd--juxtaposes a story about a terminally ill doctor’s wife rediscovering romance with scenes of a monologue, written and performed by lead actress Krystyna Janda about the death of her husband.

Marco Bellocchio largely fell into eclipse after his first two films -- the exhilarating and brilliant Fists in the Pocket, followed by the memorable and incisive satire, China is Near. On the basis of those two films, Bellocchio was seen by many to be among the most exciting Italian directors of his generation but, after a decline in visibility for several years, he has recently produced several interesting, well-constructed works. His latest is Vincere, the reported "springboard" for which is Mussolini’s 'secret' marriage to Ida Dalser, afterwards completely denied by Il Duce, along with the son born from the relationship. The film screens on September 26th and 27th.

Claire Denis, a French filmmaker who has moved from strength to strength, is noteworthy for the sensuality of her editing and her exploratory camera-style. She is, too, a consummate director of actors. Her new film is White Material, in which a handful of Europeans try to make sense of--and survive--the chaos happening all around them in an African country torn apart by civil war. The film stars the extraordinary Isabelle Huppert and can be seen on October 9th and 10th.

The rigorous Austrian director Michael Haneke has produced several astonishing works since his stunning debut, The Seventh Continent. Haneke's compositions are typically very controlled, austere, and unsettling; his editing is crystalline in its precision -- Bresson is an acknowledged influence. Haneke is possibly the sternest critic of the bourgeoisie in the modern cinema. His eagerly anticipated film is The White Ribbon, the Palme d’Or winner at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.  Playing on October 7th and 8th, the film has been described as a "meditation on the consequences of violence—physical, emotional, spiritual—in a northern German town on the eve of World War I".

The closing night film is Spaniard Pedro Almodovar's Broken Embraces, starring the gorgeous Penelope Cruz, in which a "blind screenwriter learns of the death of an industrialist, triggering a flood of memories". Almodovar, who oscillates between raucous comedy and florid melodrama, has over the course of many films, consistently refined his craft as an original storyteller. As the festival closer, it screens twice on October 11th.

 

 

New York Film Festival
Lincoln Center's
Alice Tully Hall
Walter Reade Theater
September 25t to October 11th, 2009
To purchase tickets, or for further scheduling info go to: filmlinc.com
 

Image credits:
Antichrist image from film Antichrist.
Broken Embraces image from film Broken Embraces.
Wild Grass image from film Wild Grass.

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