The New York Asian Film Festival (June 29 - July 15) returns - and this year we’re bringing crazy back!
The opening night film is Pang Ho-cheung’s astonishingly filthy, extremely hilarious VULGARIA, a movie about making movies, shot in just 12 days, all about gangsters named Brother Tyrannosaur, sleazy lawyers, the sex film industry, and men who love donkeys a little too much. The Hollywood Reporter calls it a “...laugh-out-loud, aptly titled comedy.” Pang himself, Hong Kong's hotte...
The 49th edition of the New York Film Festival, a sure sign of the Fall season, is underway, and in its substantially expanded format, there is literally something for everyone at this year’s event. The Festival, which has prided itself on being a boutique as opposed to the bazaar offered at such events in Toronto, Cannes and Berlin (and at New York’s own Tribeca Film Festival) still offers the cream of the crop from those other festival celebrations, with a sprinkling of highbrow c...
The specialty theatrical scene in New York City is about to get a new jolt with the highly anticipated expansion by the Film Society of Lincoln Center, among the city's most prestigious film institutions. The long-awaited Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center is a gloriously modern 17,500 square-foot venue, will house two theaters, an amphitheater and a café, adding a potential for 4 different screens at the same time (including the Walter Reade Theater, the Film Society's current showca...
THE SLEEPING BEAUTY (Catherine Breillat)
Kathryn Bigelow may have broken through the glass ceiling with her historic Best Director Oscar win last year for THE HURT LOCKER, but the door was not pushed wide open for women directors in the American film industry. Despite strong work by such American indie stalwarts as Lisa Cholodenko (THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT) and Nicole Holofcener (PLEASE GIVE), and the emergence of a number of debut directors (chief among them Debra Granik with WIN...
Films that feature well known figures from history are always intriguing, whether they reflect actual fact or are mere figments of the director's feverish imagination. In the delightfully dishy MAHLER ON THE COUCH, the filmmaking team of Percy Adlon (pere) and Felix Adlon (fils) have made a delicious historical "did-it-ever-happen" that features such historical characters as the classical composer Gustav Mahler, the psychotherapist Sigmund Freud and the Bauhaus design foun...
Films that feature well known figures from history are always intriguing, whether they reflect actual fact or are mere figments of the director's feverish imagination. In the delightfully dishy MAHLER ON THE COUCH, the filmmaking team of Percy Adlon (pere) and Felix Adlon (fils) have made a delicious historical "did-it-ever-happen" that features such historical characters as the classical composer Gustav Mahler, the psychotherapist Sigmund Freud and the Bauhaus design founder Walter Gropius (wi...
With a rare Christmas weekend blizzard extending the holiday in the Northeast corridor of the United States, and before Christmas dinners are completely digested, it is time to clear the palate for a smorgasboard of Jewish-themed films. The Jewish Museum and the Film Society of Lincoln Center will present the 20th annual New York Jewish Film Festival at the Film Society's Walter Reade Theater, The Jewish Museum, and The JCC in Manhattan from January 12 to 27. In all, 36 features and sh...
The revolution in Romanian cinema that began several years ago with the astonishingly original films THE DEATH OF MR. LAZARESCU (2005), 12:08 EAST OF BUCHAREST (2006) and 4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS AND 2 DAYS (2007), continues to flex its muscle, with a strong showing at the New York Film Festival, which opened this past weekend.
Three extraordinary films from Romania will be featured at the Festival, New York's most prestigious film event. AURORA, the latest effort from director Cristi Puiu...
Future generations will be in a better position to determine whether the introduction of social networking technology in the first decade of the 20th century was a blessing or a curse. Certainly for the entrepreneurs who created new ways for us to communicate with one another, it has been both. Such is the case for the multi-billionaire Mark Zuckerberg, who founded the internet phenomenon Facebook, but who has lost as much as he has gained in terms of the trust and love of his friends...
Hard as it is to believe, the summer of 2010 (the hottest on record.....thank you global warming) is coming to an end. The cranking of the film industry's engines begin in earnest in September with the Venice,, Montreal, Toronto, New York and San Sebastian film festivals.....but for the last two weeks of summer, we still can relax with the languid and liquid films of French filmmaker Eric Rohmer.
The Film Society of Lincoln Center in New York is offering a complete retrospective of...
There are a few film directors whose appeal splits people right down the middle. Some hate the work and some are devoted groupies. However, if the response to a particular director bridges the entire spectrum, then it is all the proof needed that this talented film artist's sensibility cannot be ignored. For myself, always a sucker for the sweeping operatic gesture in film, I find myself to be a disciple of the British director Ken Russell.
Russell did not think small in hi...
It may only be July, but already news is beginning to filter out about one of the major events of the Fall film season. The Film Society of Lincoln Center announced that THE SOCIAL NETWORK, the newest fiilm from Oscar-nominated director David Fincher has been selected as the Opening Night film for the 48th Annual New York Film Festival.
The Festival will open at the recently refurbished Alice Tully Hall on the evening of Friday September 24th. The announcement is the first in ...
Actor, director, screenwriter, jazz musician, music composer, politician, philanthropist, film legend.....these attributes could describe a cadre of people, but when they all wrapped into one outsized personality, it is truly impressive. Such is the career of Clint Eastwood, a television and film master who remains at the top of his professional game at 80 years young. To honor the octogenarian's contribution to the history of cinema, the Film Society of Lincoln Center is devoting much of its Ju...
Actor, director, screenwriter, jazz musician, music composer, politician, philanthropist, film legend.....these attributes could describe a cadre of people, but when they all wrapped into one outsized personality, it is truly impressive. Such is the career of Clint Eastwood, a television and film master who remains at the top of his professional game at 80 years young. To honor the octogenarian's contribution to the history of cinema, the Film Society of Lincoln Center is devoting mu...
New Yorkers are in love again, l'amour fou as they say, with French cinema. Not only has the film "Un Prophete" emerged as one of the big international hits of the year (a much deserved Oscar nominee that should have won the prize) but the current program of new Gallic titles that is the 15th Rendez-Vous with French Cinema offers francophiles (count me in) some boundless treats.
The Rendez-Vous, a favorite New York rite of spring, is presented by the Film Society of Li...
It is often said that everyone in New York, no matter what your religion or ethnicity, is just a little bit Jewish. The Jewish influence in culture, art, politics and in every stratum of society gives all New Yorkers a kind of common bond that no other group quite inspires. If you can recite the lines from a Woody Allen film, if you cannot imagine breakfast without a bagel, if you find yourself uttering the words "oy vey" with a heartfelt sigh, you are Jewish, if you are a Ca...
Louis Malle, the legendary French director whose career spanned four decades and whose influence on the language of cinema continues to grow in stature, will be the subject of a mini-retrospective starting New Year’s Day at the Walter Reade Theater in New York, the flagship venue of the Film Society of Lincoln Center.
The week-long celebration will showcase six of the director’s most enduring works, including a special event screening on Wednesday, January ...
It doesn’t get much better than this…..the Film Society of Lincoln Center, which presents the New York Film Festival each Fall, is in the midst of a revelatory review of one of the major film movements of the 20th century, presenting a list of acknowledged classics along with previously unknown (at least to me) gems. ITALIAN NEOREALISM AND THE BIRTH OF MODERN CINEMA is an exhaustive look at the cinema that flourished in Italy in the post-war period and that still remains a high poi...
BLUEBEARD (Catherine Breillat)
With French film master Alain Resnais kicking off the 47th edition of the New York Film Festival last evening with his Cannes Film Festival winner WILD GRASS, this year's event is another example of the New York audience love affair with French cinema. With French filmmakers and actors in town for the Festival, the premieres this week of Cedric Klapisch's PARIS and Anne Fontaine's COCO BEFORE CHANEL (starring Audrey Tautou), not to mention the on...
With French film master Alain Resnais kicking off the 47th edition of the New York Film Festival last evening with his Cannes Film Festival winner WILD GRASS, this year's event is another example of the New York audience love affair with French cinema. For the French, it is almost a semi-invasion of Manhattan island. Other Gallic giants in this year's fest include: HADEWIJCH, directed by Bruno Dumont. The director has directed more than 450 commercials, shorts and documentaries. He is the direct...
For all the information and excitement about the 2009 edition of the NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL, visit: www.filmlinc.com
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There are few filmmakers more controversial or more "difficult" for mainstream audiences to appreciate than the Russian existential master Andrei Tarkovsky. His films are indeed an acquired taste, but for those willing to take the complex cinematic journeys, there are many rewards to be had. A Tarkovsky fan is indeed a Tarkovsky fanatic, and the Film Society of Lincoln Center in New York provides both devoted fans and those new to this important oeuvre a rare opportunity to sample the master's h...
by Sandy Mandelberger, Film New York Editor
There are few filmmakers more controversial or more "difficult" for mainstream audiences to appreciate than the Russian existential master Andrei Tarkovsky. His films are indeed an acquired taste, but for those willing to take the complex cinematic journeys, there are many rewards to be had. A Tarkovsky fan is indeed a Tarkovsky fanatic, and the Film Society of Lincoln Center in New York provide...
These challenging times call for courage, determination and a selflessness that was woefully out of fashion in the Me-Me-Me Decade that preceded the worldwide economic collapse. That there is potential for the global community to learn from its mistakes is always a hopeful sign (although let us remember that the Great Depression was followed almost immediately by its antidote, World War II). When this moral courage needs to be inspired in each one of us, it helps that courageous filmmakers are d...
by Sandy Mandelberger, Film New York Editor
These challenging times call for courage, determination and a selflessness that was woefully out of fashion in the Me-Me-Me Decade that preceded the worldwide economic collapse. That there is potential for the global community to learn from its mistakes is always a hopeful sign (although let us remember that the Great Depression was followed almost immediately by its antidote, World War II). When this moral courage needs to be inspired i...
