The 42nd edition of the New York Film Festival helmed by Richard Pena opened to raving reviews affirming its unique position as an upscale intellectually oriented fest
not compromising its criteria to compete with the new Tribeca film festival. Out of 25 features from 21 countries produced this year and not shown before in the United States eight were made in the U.S. but none of these films corresponded to “Hollywood fare”. Even Sam Fuller’s reconstructed 1980 studio production THE BIG RED ONE, shown for the first time at the New York Film Fest appeared in its visual eloquence and fluid story telling far superior to Spielberg’s view of the same war in SAVING PRIVATE RYAN through the Hollywood lens. Affirming its preeminent position, the fest was extended to close to three weeks, including a nine part series VIEWS FROM THE AVANT – GARDE premiering experimental film pushing the limits of creative film making. Ironically most of the experimental films screened originated in the United States.

The peculiar position and importance of the New York Film Festival is due to its singular organizational structure and its development into a New York cultural institution. It affirms the selected film maker’s importance, be it as an established director, master in the making, or filmic agent provocateur. To the contrary, the Tribeca Film Festival moves on a different planet. As an industry showcase it caters to commercial tastes though has not yet premiered a single box office hit. It lacks a clear identity, yet offers a strong and impressive community oriented program. Tribeca attempts to foster local productions in the publicly subsidized efforts to enlarge the film business in lower Manhattan. Sundance on the other hand has become with the IFP market the sine qua no for independent productions on the make, a picking ground for the major studio’s specialty division and a marketing hub for indiewood. In the Colorado Mountains the Telluride Film Festival compresses in a 3 ½ day labor weekend package the screening of superb features with the cinematic discourse prevailing over marketing and sales slang.

New York’s Film Festival is different. Organized and funded since the early sixty by the Film Society of Lincoln Center, The New York Film Festival has not entered into a dependency relation with corporate sponsors, though it certainly welcomes such support. This relative autonomy has given the selection committee an artistic freedom most other festivals do not enjoy. Equally important is that the Film Society is a membership organization with a strong proportion of upper middle class cinephiles who are well educated film literati. As in past years, in the weeks before the festival officially began, most of the tickets were gone. Thus four days before the festival opened on October 1, ninety percent of all tickets had been purchased mostly by members of the film society. Any one interested in a sold out show like INTERNAL AFFAIRS, an exquisitely dialogued and filmed Hong Kong triad story directed by Andrew Lau and Alan Mak, had to buy a ticket from scalpers selling them in front of the theatre.

Claus Mueller, New York Correspondent
cmueller@hunter.cuny.edu