New Directors/New Films and Film Comment Selects 2013

[Chris Knipp]

New Directors/New Films and Film Comment Selects 2013

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You'll find a preview of seven of the 2013 New Directors/New Films series and a full list of the program for Film Comment Selects on the Festival Covereage thread. (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3441-New-Directors-New-Films-and-Film-Comment-Selects-2013) I hope to cover ND/NF via the press screenings, and some of Film Comment Selects, which doesn't provide those. When the completely ND/NF slate comes out I'll post it. Meanwhile Film Comment Selects (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3441-New-Directors-New-Films-and-Film-Comment-Selects-2013&p=29387#post29387) and Rendez-Vous (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3443-Rendez-Vous-with-French-Cinema-at-Lincoln-Center-2013&p=29450#post29450) slates are out.

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Amy Seimetz and Shane Carruth in a scene from Upstream Color (ND/NF)


Index of Filmleaf reviews of ND/NF 2013

BLUE CAPRICE (Alexandre Moors 2012) (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3441-New-Directors-New-Films-and-Film-Comment-Selects-2013&p=29785#post29785)
OUR NIXON (Penny Lane 2013) (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3441-New-Directors-New-Films-and-Film-Comment-Selects-2013&p=29874#post29874)
THE ACT OF KILLING (Joshua Oppenheimer 2012) (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3441-New-Directors-New-Films-and-Film-Comment-Selects-2013&p=29809#post29809)
ANTON’S RIGHT HERE (Lyubov Arkus 2012) (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3441-New-Directors-New-Films-and-Film-Comment-Selects-2013&p=29849#post29849)
BURN IT UP DJASSA (Lonesome Solo 2012) (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3441-New-Directors-New-Films-and-Film-Comment-Selects-2013&p=29802#post29802)
LES COQUILLETTES (Sophie Letourneur 2012) (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3441-New-Directors-New-Films-and-Film-Comment-Selects-2013&p=29818#post29818)
THE COLOR OF THE CHAMELEON (Emil Christov 2012) (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3441-New-Directors-New-Films-and-Film-Comment-Selects-2013&p=29789#post29789)
DIE WELT (Alex Pitstra 2012) (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3441-New-Directors-New-Films-and-Film-Comment-Selects-2013&p=29842#post29842)
EMPEROR VISITS THE HELL (Li Luo 2013) (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3441-New-Directors-New-Films-and-Film-Comment-Selects-2013&p=29787#post29787)
A HIJACKING (Tobias Lindholm2012) (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3441-New-Directors-New-Films-and-Film-Comment-Selects-2013&p=29795#post29795)
JARDS (Eryk Rocha 2012) (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3441-New-Directors-New-Films-and-Film-Comment-Selects-2013&p=29871#post29871)
JISEUL (O Muel 2012) 109min (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3441-New-Directors-New-Films-and-Film-Comment-Selects-2013&p=29821#post29821)
KÜF (Ali Aydin 2012) (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3441-New-Directors-New-Films-and-Film-Comment-Selects-2013&p=29789#post29789)
LEONES (Jazmin Lopez 2012) (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3441-New-Directors-New-Films-and-Film-Comment-Selects-2013&p=29823#post29823)
L’INTERVALLO (Leonardo Di Costanzo 2012) (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3441-New-Directors-New-Films-and-Film-Comment-Selects-2013&p=29857#post29857)
PEOPLE’S PARK (Libbie D. Cohn & J.P. Sniadecki 2012) (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3441-New-Directors-New-Films-and-Film-Comment-Selects-2013&p=29848#post29848)
RENGAINE (Rachid Djaïdani 2012) (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3441-New-Directors-New-Films-and-Film-Comment-Selects-2013&p=29803#post29803)
THE SHINE OF DAY (Tizza Covi & Rainer Frimmel 2012) (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3441-New-Directors-New-Films-and-Film-Comment-Selects-2013&p=29808#post29808)
SOLDATE JEANNETTE (Daniel Hoesl 2012) (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3441-New-Directors-New-Films-and-Film-Comment-Selects-2013&p=29810#post29810)
STORIES WE TELL (Sarah Polley 2012) (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3441-New-Directors-New-Films-and-Film-Comment-Selects-2013&p=29856#post29856)
THEY’LL COME BACK (Marcelo Lordello 2012) (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3441-New-Directors-New-Films-and-Film-Comment-Selects-2013&p=29841#post29841)
TOWER ( Kazik Radwanski 2012) (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3441-New-Directors-New-Films-and-Film-Comment-Selects-2013&p=29794#post29794)
TOWHEADS (Shannon Plumb 2013) (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3441-New-Directors-New-Films-and-Film-Comment-Selects-2013&p=29847#post29847)
UPSTREAM COLOR (Shane Carruth 2012) (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3441-New-Directors-New-Films-and-Film-Comment-Selects-2013&p=29855#post29855)
VIOLA (Matías Piñeiro 2013 (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3441-New-Directors-New-Films-and-Film-Comment-Selects-2013&p=29843#post29843)

[Johann]

Awesome. Looking forward to your words. I'm almost settled in Toronto...soon I'll be rockin' and rollin'....

[Chris Knipp]

I am looking forward to them too. Did you get to see THE MASTER in 70mm?

[Johann]

I sure did. (early January). Glorious screening. It only had one trailer, ON THE ROAD, for which the Bell Lightbox dramatically opened the red curtains for and then closed them afterwards...fancy shmantzy...for a weak screen adaptation of a literary classic. ON THE ROAD would deserve such a treatment IF it wasn't made into a movie about idiots ACTING OUT, not being a free spirit.....EPIC FAIL.
I can't look at Kristen Stewart without thinking "SKANK".
She blew it.
Literally.

[Chris Knipp]

Glad you saw the 70mm THE MASTER screening. Did you see ON THE ROAD? I know it's not reportedly a success and I don't contest that, but I'm sorry I inadvertently missed its very brief exposure locally here. Mike D'Angelo reported at Cannes that Sam Riley was useless but Garrett Hedlund makes a star breakthrough, and I wanted to see that, and the impersonations of Beat personalities who matter to me, esp. Viggo's of Bill Burroughs. Here's D'Angelo's AV Club Cannes review (http://www.avclub.com/articles/cannes-2012-day-nine-the-director-of-precious-drop,75685/):
Jack Kerouac’s novel spent decades in development hell, widely considered unfilmable…and it was, frankly, if by “unfilmable” one means that its essential nature just doesn’t translate to another medium. But unfilmable doesn’t necessarily imply unwatchable, and this is pretty painless as prestige-lit adaptations go, moving along at a brisk clip and providing numerous opportunities for talented actors to perform what amount to cameo impersonations. Viggo Mortensen reproduces the stentorian speech patterns of William S. Burroughs; Tom Sturridge is credibly anxious and Ginsberg-y; Mad Men’s Elisabeth Moss steps back a decade to agitate as Helen Hinkle. And Garrett Hedlund, who’s seemed on the cusp of stardom for years, finally makes a major impression, capturing Dean Moriarty’s/Neal Cassady’s magnetic narcissism as well as occasional moment of sad self-awareness. All that’s missing is any sense that you’re seeing something more than a procession of anecdotes meant to provide a colorless protagonist (Sam Riley) with material for his book. In other words, all that’s missing is Kerouac’s voice—the reason the book is worth reading. Grade: C+

[Chris Knipp]

New Directors/New Films 2013 slate (features).

Friday, Feb. 22, 2013: the slate was announced today. Here it is, with their blurbs. The Film Society of Lincoln Center and MoMA sponsor this event. Further information is on the FSLC page for it here (http://newdirectors.org/entry/42nd-new-directors-new-films-unveils-titles-for-march-even)and here (http://www.filmlinc.com/press/entry/moma-and-fslc-announce-lineup-for-42nd-annual-new-directors-new-films-march).

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Blue Caprice

The 42nd New Directors/New Films features selections include:

OPENING NIGHT SELECTION
BLUE CAPRICE (2012) 92min
Director: Alexandre Moors
Country: USA
Alexandre Moors’s remarkable debut feature explores the impulse to commit murder, following two snipers, the elder John and 17-year old Lee, who orchestrate an insidious act of gun violence that is seemingly torn from the front pages. Abandoned by his mother, Lee is taken in by John, who becomes a mentor preaching hate and teaching marksmanship. Blind loyalty grows, and death becomes mundane. Masterfully performed by Isaiah Washington and Tequan Richmond, the characters are disturbingly human. Moors and screenwriter R.F.I. Porto navigate the violence discreetly, focusing on the inner origins of evil. An essential film for our times.

CLOSING NIGHT SELECTION
OUR NIXON (2013) 85min
Director: Penny Lane
Country: USA
As President Richard Nixon tape-recorded his conversations for posterity, so his devoted aides—H.R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, and Dwight Chapin—shot hundreds of rolls of Super-8 film documenting the presidency. Filmmakers Penny Lane (DIR/Co-SCR/Co-PROD) and Brian L. Frye (Co-SCR/Co-PROD) have edited this footage—virtually unseen since the FBI seized it during the Watergate investigation—and interwoven it with period news footage and pop culture, excerpts from the Nixon tapes, and contemporary interviews. OUR NIXON offers an unprecedented, insider’s view of an American presidency, chronicling watershed events including the Apollo moon landing and the path-breaking trip to China, as well as more intimate glimpses of Nixon in times of glory and disgrace.

THE ACT OF KILLING (2012) 116min – theatrical cut, 158min – director’s cut
Director: Joshua Oppenheimer
Country: Denmark
What is one to make of the men who freely admit their involvement—and pleasure—in the mass killing of millions of Indonesians during that country’s bloody anti-Communist campaign in the 1960s? American filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer’s THE ACT OF KILLING bypasses the usual documentary tropes of exposing injustice, instead provoking the viewer to consider the murderers’ sense of responsibility for their crimes. Teetering between sheer horror and grotesque comedy, this is a glimpse into the heart of darkness that’s rarely been achieved in cinema. Both the theatrical version and the longer, director’s cut of the film will be screened at ND/NF. A Drafthouse Films release.

ANTON’S RIGHT HERE (Anton tut ryadom) (2012) 120min
Director: Lyubov Arkus
Country: Russia
Critic-turned-filmmaker Lyubov Arkus finds herself becoming the key caregiver for severely autistic teen Anton Kharitonov and documents over six years, in a reflective and fascinating style, the tremendous obstacles and problems of encouraging and supporting a sensitive but barely communicative boy. What sets Arkus’s work apart from so many other documentaries addressing autism is her majestically artful filmmaking (with a huge contribution by cinematographer Alisher Khamidkhodzhaev), her exceptionally close relationship to her subject, and her powerful voice-over commentary, one of the most sublime to be heard in recent cinema.

BURN IT UP DJASSA (Le djassa a pris feu) (2012) 70min
Director: Lonesome Solo
Countries: Ivory Coast/France
Brimming with the fateful energy of the ghetto, this cinema-vérité-shot, noir-tinged drama was shot in 11 days and created collectively by its streetwise protagonists eager to give voice to their present situation. Tony (Abdoul Karim Konate) is stuck in a rut and desperate to get out of the ghetto; the cocky youth hangs out gambling and hawking cigarettes until bad luck pushes him into an irrevocable dead-end situation. Narrated by a storyteller in Nouchi slang and set to slam poetry this vibrant snap-shot will have you cheering for cosmic justice.

LES COQUILLETTES (2012) 75min
Director: Sophie Letourneur
Country: France
Girls gone wild! Filmmaker Sophie brings her film and friends Carole and Camille to the Locarno Film Festival. The festival is a merry-go-round of parties, and these girls are boy crazy—when Sophie’s not stalking Louis Garrel, ineffectual attempts to hook up with unimpressed guys and emotional meltdowns ensue. Sophie Letourneur’s comedy of arrested development is a delightfully giddy, screwball lark, a self-mocking, thirty-something French counterpart to Lena Dunham’s Girls. Are Letourneur, Camille Genaud, and Carole Le Page playing themselves? Espérons que non!

THE COLOR OF THE CHAMELEON (Tsvetat na hameleona) (2012) 114min
Director: Emil Christov
Country: Bulgaria
Unfolding in the years before and after the fall of Communism, this black comedy
about a rogue secret police informant goes down a rabbit hole into a realm of twisted absurdity. The scenario by Vladislav Todorov, adapting his 2010 novel Zincograph, centers on young misfit Batko Stamenov, who’s recruited to infiltrate…a book club. After being dropped for his strange ideas, Batko embarks on his own private investigation and targets the intellectuals of the “Club for New Thinking,” hatching a scheme that fully exposes the ludicrous reality of secret policing. With its first film at ND/NF in thirty-five years, Bulgaria is back!

DIE WELT (2012) 80min
Director: Alex Pitstra
Country: Netherlands
In his smart debut feature, director Alex Pitstra announces himself as a neo-Tarantino, employing an arsenal of cinematic techniques to explore a life he imagines he could have lived. The director sets his story in post–Jasmine Revolution Tunisia, where young Abdallah (Abdelhamid Naouara), Pitstra’s stand-in and a Tarantino-esque, head-strong twenty-something, dreams of leaving the video store where he works for Europe. Based loosely on his father’s story of coming to Holland, Pitstra's semi-autobiographical voyage is set against the backdrop of a contemporary yet traditional Tunisia trying to find a way forward.

EMPEROR VISITS THE HELL (Tang huang You Di Fu) (2013) 71min
Directors: Li Luo
Countries: China/Canada
Winner of the Dragons & Tigers Award for Young Cinema at the Vancouver Film Festival, Li’s crafty reworking of part of the 16th-century Chinese novel Journey to the West is one of the most inspired recent works from an independent Chinese filmmaker. Emperor Li Shimin is now a bureaucratic boss in a big city, where the crooked Dragon King’s attempt to change the weather has backfired and condemned him to death. Li pulls the rug out from under everyone, from the audience to those whose power has gone to their heads.

A HIJACKING (Kapringen) (2012) 99min
Director: Tobias Lindholm
Country: Denmark
On its way to harbor, cargo ship MV Rozen is seized by pirates in the Indian Ocean. Moving between claustrophobic life on the ship and negotiations by the freight company in Denmark, Lindholm creates a climate of unbearable tension with an unexpected climax. The narrative is based on a true event, and his use of actual locations and people who have been in similar situations create palpable authenticity. Augmented by a terrific cast, Lindholm explores the danger of the disparity between impoverished nations and the developed world. A Magnolia Films release.

JARDS (2012) 93min
Director: Eryk Rocha
Country: Brazil
The celebrated composer and musician Jards Macalé is in the recording studio where director Eryk Rocha captures him in a wide variety of poses and states of creating, imaginatively varying style and shooting formats. Fashioning an intimately attuned portrait of an artist, Rocha uses his camera as an instrument to riff with Jards in a poetic exchange between images and music. The repetitive, time-stopping process of rehearsal and the flow of energy between the two art forms create an elegiac vision of the creativity of some of Brazil’s most beloved singers and musicians.

JISEUL (2012) 109min
Director: O Muel
Country: South Korea
As part of a brutal anticommunist purge of the island of Jiju in 1948, Korean troops hunt down the inhabitants of a village caught in the crossfire. The villagers hide out in a mountain cavern, enduring an extended ordeal of cold and hunger, 120 souls crammed together below ground like the potatoes alluded to in the film’s title. Recounting a forgotten chapter in postwar Korean history, Jiju native O Muel draws out amazing performances from his nonprofessional cast, in an austere, beautifully composed, and deliberately paced requiem.

KÜF (2012) 94min
Director: Ali Aydin
Countries: Turkey/Germany
A railroad inspector spends his days in the gorgeous Anatolian outback looking for cracks on the line and his evenings writing letters to the government looking for news about his son who disappeared 18 years ago. Basri (Ercan Kesal) fights bureaucracy and secrecy in the person of police inspector Murat (Muhammet Uzuner) and the spellbinding character study, with shades of Raskolnikov, is completed by a third man, Cemil, whose anti-social behavior begs confrontation. As tension mounts Aydin shows his considerable talent bringing this poignant tale to its heartbreaking finale. Winner of the Lion of the Future Award at the Venice Film Festival 2012.

LEONES (2012) 80min
Director: Jazmin Lopez
Countries: Argentina/France/Netherlands
Is this a story about five friends wandering through a forest, or is it about a forest that receives five visitors? In this metaphysical trance film, the verdant environment is as much a character as the youngsters, enfolding them as they move through it, their playful banter, word games, and ruminations filling the air. In a succession of long takes, a gliding camera follows this enigmatic hike to nowhere. Nothing is what it seems, but a malfunctioning tape recording may contain an explanation.

L’INTERVALLO (2012) 86min
Director: Leonardo Di Costanzo
Country: Italy
Winner of the Critics’ Prize at the 2012 Venice Film Festival, this portrait of two adolescents thrown together under the eye of the Neapolitan Camorra has an air of menace and sexual tension. A shy ice-cream vendor (Alessio Gallo) guards a feisty girl (Francesca Riso) who has allegedly wronged a local gangster. Holed up in an abandoned building, they warily share dreams of escaping their fate. Director Di Costanzo brings documentary realism and a poetic eye to this quietly intense drama; his nonprofessional actors give beautifully shaded performances in Neapolitan dialect.

PEOPLE’S PARK (2012) 78min
Directors: Libbie D. Cohn & J.P. Sniadecki
Country: USA/China
An immersive, inquisitive visit to the People’s Park in Chengdu, China, this film was created in a single virtuoso tracking shot. The joys of communal play, exercise, and leisure time come under intense scrutiny from the relentless gaze of the directors' lens, creating alternate states of unease and exhilaration.

RENGAINE (2012) 75min
Director: Rachid Djaïdani
Country: France
The French title of this no-budget urban drama translates as “refrain,” and repetition is what it embodies—in this case the well-worn story of Romeo and Juliet. Sabrina (Sabrina Hamida) accepts the marriage proposal of struggling actor Dorcy (Stéphane Soo Mongo), but Dorcy is a black Christian and Sabrina a Muslim Arab. Her eldest brother, Slimane (Slimane Dazi), enlists the 39 “brothers” in their extended clan to prevent the taboo union. Shot in the streets, this film is part love letter to the irresistible energy of Paris, part call for interracial tolerance.

THE SHINE OF DAY (Der Glanz des Tages) (2012) 90min
Directors: Tizza Covi & Rainer Frimmel
Country: Austria
Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel have amply demonstrated, with their previous semi-fictional, semi-documentary films, a generous perspective on people struggling at the fringes of showbiz—namely, the circus. In their latest film, vagabond performer Walter Saabel embraces what he calls “Der Glanz des Tages” (the shine of day) as a personal North Star. His nephew, the great theater actor Philipp Hochmair, finds Walter arriving at his Hamburg home unannounced, and the two begin a fascinating, testy, and wholly unpredictable relationship.

SOLDATE JEANNETTE (2012) 79min
Director: Daniel Hoesl
Country: Austria
Fanni buys clothes from an upscale boutique and lives in a beautifully appointed apartment. But something—well, everything—seems askew in her world, and she leaves town when her games with commerce are discovered. Hiking through the mountains, she encounters Anna, a young woman who has spent her life on a pig farm. Their worlds could collide—or they could help each other find brave new ones. In his first feature, director Daniel Hoesl fashions an absurdist morality play that pits an urban, manufactured world against nature.

STORIES WE TELL (2012) 108min
Director: Sarah Polley
Country: Canada
What is real? What is true? What do we remember, and how do we remember it? Actor/director Sarah Polley turns from fiction to nonfiction, in the process cracking open family secrets. Using home movies, still photographs, and interviews, Polley delves into the life of her mother, a creative yet secretive woman. But while she is talking to her own relatives, Polley’s interest lies in the bigger picture of what families hold onto as truth. STORIES WE TELL is a delicately crafted personal essay about memory, loss, and understanding. A Roadside Attractions release.

THEY’LL COME BACK (2012) 105min
Director: Marcelo Lordello
Country: Brazil
In this gentle, understated drama, an upper-middle-class 12-year-old learns how Brazil’s other half lives when she and her sullen older brother are left behind by their parents in a rural backwater. Soon, Cris (ably played by Maria Luiza Tavares, who carries the film from beginning to end) is taken in by a family living in a squatter farming community, where she waits for mom and pop to return. And waits and waits. Another fine debut from the Recife film scene, source of last year’s ND/NF hit NEIGHBORING SOUNDS.

TOWER (2012) 78min
Director: Kazik Radwanski
Country: Canada
For his feature debut, Kazik Radwanski has opted to train his camera with great intensity and control on a character who utterly lacks a center or direction, even an identity. In his mid-thirties yet still living at home with his parents, Derek (Derek Bogart) struggles to make a small animation about a green creature building rock towers. He can’t maintain any real friendships, let alone romantic involvements, until he encounters Nicole (Nicole Fairbaim), who offers a glint of promise. Radwanski‘s single-minded vision suggests filmmaking of uncommon discipline combined with unmistakable empathy.

TOWHEADS (2013) 86min
Director: Shannon Plumb
Country: USA
The Brooklyn mother of two boys and the wife of a harried theater director, Penelope barely has time to stay sane, much less create art. She finds comic relief from domestic drudgery by inhabiting the world in guises—drag king, pole dancer, Santa Claus—managing to find moments of grace even on thankless days. Accomplished video and performance artist Shannon Plumb makes a wincingly funny feature debut that strikes awfully close to home. The writer-director stars opposite her real-life husband (Derek Cianfrance, director of BLUE VALENTINE) and her talented, towheaded sons (Cody and Walker Cianfrance).

UPSTREAM COLOR (2012) 96min
Director: Shane Carruth
Country: USA
Ever since his 2004 debut, filmmaker Shane Carruth has prompted curiosity over what he’d come up with next. UPSTREAM COLOR meets expectations but is also starkly different and markedly advanced. It represents something new in American cinema, exploring life’s surprising jumps and science’s strange effects. A love story embedded in a kidnap plot, UPSTREAM COLOR leaps with great audacity through its sequences, a cinematic simulacrum of the way we reflect on our lives, astonished at, as in the title of Grace Paley’s fiction collection, our Enormous Changes at the Last Minute. UPSTREAM COLOR opens in NY on April 5.

VIOLA (2013) 63min
Directors: Matías Piñeiro
Country: Argentina
Matías Piñeiro is one of contemporary Argentine cinema’s most sensuous and sophisticated new voices. In his latest film, VIOLA, he ingeniously fashions out of Shakepeare’s Twelfth Night a seductive roundelay among young actors and lovers in present-day Buenos Aires. Mixing melodrama with sentimental comedy, philosophical conundrum with matters of the heart, VIOLA bears all the signature traits of a Piñeiro film: serpentine camera movements and slippages of language, an elliptical narrative and a playful confusion of reality and artifice. A Cinema Guild release.
Combining animation, special effects, and live action, this silent film asks: will a writer who searches for inspiration find it in help or hindrance?

[Chris Knipp]

Here is the FSLC publicity intro for ND/NF 2013:

New Directors/New Films

“Blue Caprice” to Open 42nd ND/NF, Full Lineup Announced
Alexandre Moors's Blue Caprice will open the 42nd New Directors/New Films series co-hosted by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). A favorite at the recent Sundance Film Festival, the film is a fictionalized account of the infamous Beltway snipers John Allen Muhammad and 17-year-old Lee Boyd Malvo.

Twenty-five features will screen over 12 days during the series, taking place March 20 - 31, including eight North American and four U.S. premieres. The annual showcase of emerging artists includes features from North and South America, Europe, Africa and Asia. Additionally, shorts from around the world will screen in three shorts programs and as openers for select features.

In addition to previously-announced new films from rising directors like Sarah Polley (Stories We Tell) and Shane Carruth (Upstream Color), this year's line-up boasts a host of award-winning works from filmmakers who are likely new to New York audiences. Daniel Hoesl's absurdist tale of urbanity versus nature, Soldate Jeannette, won one of three Tiger Awards at the recent International Film Festival Rotterdam. Emperor Visits the Hell, Luo Li's creative reworking of the classic 16th-century Chinese novel Journey to the West, took home the Dragons & Tigers Award for Young Cinema at last year's Vancouver Film Festival. From Turkey, spellbinding character study Küf won director Aly Aydin the Lion of the Future Award at last year's Venice Film Festival.

Penny Lane's Our Nixon will close out this year's ND/NF. The film utilizes hundreds of rolls of Super 8 film shot by Nixon's aides, which remained virtually unseen for 40 years after it was seized by the FBI during the Watergate investegation, to craft an unprecedented portrait of an American president.

[Chris Knipp]

And here is ND/NF '13's list of accompanying shorts:


Shorts Program 1
Chiralia by Santiago Gil, 2013, Germany
A boy’s disappearance at a wooded lake leads to a questioning of memory and perception. (New York Premiere)
The Village (A Cidade) by Liliana Sulzbach, 2012. Brazil
A small village’s inhabitants are all elderly, and no one new is moving in. New York Premiere!
To Put Together a Helicopter (Para armar un helicóptero) by Izabel Acevedo, 2012. Mexico
When summer rains bring power outages to his neighborhood, 17-year-old Oliverio comes up with an ingenious solution. (North American Premiere)

Shorts Program 2
Wonderland by Peter Kerek, 2012. Romania
As a mother seeks to improve life for her family, her son explores the cavernous rooms of a stranger’s house—perhaps costing the two of them a better future.
Southwest by Jordi Wijnalda, 2013, USA/Turkey
In southwest Turkey, a Dutch woman helps save the lives of illegal immigrants but is forced to confront the unattended needs of those who love her. (World Premiere)
What Can I Wish You Before the Fight? (Que puis-je te souhaiter avant le combat?) by Sofia Babluani, 2012, France
A touching story about a case of mistaken identity and communication that transcends barriers. (US Premiere)
Everything Near Becomes Far by Mauricio Arango, 2011, USA/Colombia
The peaceful daily rhythm of a farmer is violently interrupted in the heart of the breathtakingly beautiful Andean mountains. (US Premiere)
Stampede by Cyril Amon Schäublin, 2012. Germany
A masterful short that articulates the moment when a city and its crowds create chaos and claustrophobia.

http://img823.imageshack.us/img823/4481/piratelove.jpg
Pirate of Love

Shorts Program 3
Taboulé by Richard Garcia, 2011. Spain
How can you measure trust? A story about secret codes. (New York Premiere)
The Pirate of Love by Sara Gunnarsdottir, 2012, Iceland/USA
A filmmaker chases the legends surrounding a CD of popular Reykjavik love songs, supposedly written by a lovelorn trucker in Canada. (New York Premiere)
Flamingos (I Fenicotteri) by Francesca Coppola, 2012, Italy
Father and daughter share a sentimental moment, but trouble boils under the surface. (North American Premiere)
Sequin Raze by Sarah Gertrude Shapiro, 2013, USA
A reality-show contestant tries to protect herself from the psychological onslaught of one of the producers.
Ararat by Engin Kundag, 2012, Germany
A man tries to keep the peace in his brother’s home after a ten-year absence.
Take a Deep Breath (Derin Nefes Al) by Basak Buyukcelen, 2012, Turkey
When a teenager’s parents take her to see a gynecologist, her life takes an unexpected turn.

[Chris Knipp]

Mon., Feb. 25, 2013: the Film Society of Lincoln Center and MoMA today announced the New Directors/New Films press & industry screening schedule. I hope to attend these screenings if possible and report on the films.

NEW DIRECTORS/NEW FILMS 2013 PRESS & INDUSTRY SCREENING SCHEDULE

MONDAY, MARCH 4
9:00AM
BLUE CAPRICE (92m), FSLC
10:45AM
EMPEROR VISITS THE HELL (70m), FSLC
12:30PM
THE COLOR OF THE CHAMELEON (114m), FSLC
TUESDAY, MARCH 5
9:00AM
KUF (94m), FSLC
10:45AM
TOWER (78m), FSLC
12:30PM
A HIJACKING (99m), FSLC
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 6
9:00AM
BURN IT UP DJASSA (70m), FSLC
10:20AM
RENGAINE (75m), FSLC
12:00PM
SHORTS PROGRAM #1 (85m), FSLC
THURSDAY, MARCH 7
9:00AM
THE SHINE OF THE DAY (90m), FSLC
10:45AM
THE ACT OF KILLING (115m), FSLC
1:00PM
SOLDATE JEANNETTE (79m), FSLC
FRIDAY, MARCH 8
9:00AM
LES COQUILLETTES (75m), FSLC
10:30AM
JISEUL (108m), FSLC
12:45PM
LEONES (80m)

FSLC REMINDER: ALL SCREENINGS MOVING FORWARD WILL TAKE
PLACE AT THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART:

MONDAY, MARCH 11
9:00AM
THEY’LL COME BACK (105m), MOMA
11:00AM
DIE WELT (80m), MOMA
12:45PM
THE SEARCH FOR INSPIRATION GONE (9m) + VIOLA (63m), MOMA
TUESDAY, MARCH 12
9:00AM
RP31 (5m) + TOWHEADS (86m), MOMA
10:45AM
PEOPLE’S PARK (78m), MOMA
12:30PM
ANTON’s RIGHT HERE (120m), MOMA
3:00PM
SHORTS PROGRAM #2 (83m), MOMA
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 13
9:00AM
UPSTREAM COLOR (96m), MOMA
11:00AM
STORIES WE TELL (108m), MOMA
1:15PM
L’INTERVALLO (80m), MOMA
THURSDAY, MARCH 14
9:00AM
JARDS (93m), MOMA
10:45AM
SHORTS PROGRAM #3 (86m), MOMA
12:45PM
OUR NIXON (85m)MOMA

MEDIA CONTACTS:
Film Society of Lincoln Center
John Wildman, jwildman@filmlinc.com, 212/875-5419
David Ninh, dninh@filmlinc.com, 212/875-5423
The Museum of Modern Art
Meg Montgoris, meg_montgoris@moma.org, 212/708-9757
ONLINE PRESS OFFICE:
Press materials including high-res images and press releases are available for download at
www.filmlinc.com/press and MoMA.org/press

[Chris Knipp]

Above is the press & industry screening schedule for New Directors, which was sent out today (Man., Feb. 25, 2013). I hope to get to these if my energies hold up. The schedule has been too hard for me to see any Film Comment Selects films this year.

As mentioned earlier, I would like to have seen Antonio Campos (afterschool SIMON KILLER, Ben Wheatley's SIGHTSEERS, Marco Bellocchio's DORMANT BEAUTY, and the miniseries one by Kiyoshi Kurosawa.

[Johann]

I hope to get to these if my energies hold up.

Vitamin C.
Make sure you get 100% of your daily intake.

[Chris Knipp]

Oh yes. I'm doing what I can. So far so good.

[Chris Knipp]

ND/NF screenings have begun. No more French movies, most of them pretty mainstream. Edgy stuff from all over now.

NEW DIRECTORS/NEW FILMS OPENING NIGHT FILM:

Alexandre Moors: BLUE CAPRICE (2013) (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3441-New-Directors-New-Films-and-Film-Comment-Selects-2013&p=29785#post29785)

More of a psychological study than a thriller, French-born director Moors' film, written by collaborator R.F. Porto, chooses to investigate the lives of the older man and the teenager he'd adopted in the period leading up to the 2002 Beltway sniper attacks and this crabwise approach to traditional thriller material is arresting and disturbing. Superb performances by Isaiah Washington and Tequan Richmond as John Allen Muhammad and Lee Malvo, handsome images by dp Brian O'Carroll, first feature for Moors and first feature screenplay for Porto.

[Chris Knipp]

Li Luo: Emperor Visits the Hell (2012) (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3441-New-Directors-New-Films-and-Film-Comment-Selects-2013&p=29787&posted=1#post29787)

A modern-day reenactment, shall we say? Of a few chapters from the famous and much-cinema-adapted old Chinese tales of Monkey or Journey to the West. This is, frankly, one of those occasional mainland Chinese ultra-indie films it seems to me a huge stretch to justify considering as ready for an international audience. Li presents a world dominated by small-tim gangsters, corporate stiffs, and petty bureaucrats -- a satirical version of contemporary China. Or just a realistic one? But in the context of the ancient stories, these characters merely seem like odd stand-ins.

[Chris Knipp]

Emil Christov: THE COLOR OF THE CHAMELEON (2012) (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3441-New-Directors-New-Films-and-Film-Comment-Selects-2013&p=29789&posted=1#post29789)

A droll and complicated life story of a state security agent recruited in the latter days of the Soviet empire in which the unnecessary and the parodic and the self-serving are all but indistinguishable. A beautiful an diverting film adapted from Todorov, from his satirical novel Zincograph, which he might have trimmed a bit more ruthlessly to better effect. The first Bulgarian film included in New Directors/New Films in 35 years.

[Chris Knipp]

Ali Aydin: KÜF (2012) (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3441-New-Directors-New-Films-and-Film-Comment-Selects-2013&p=29793#post29793)

Elegant, austere Turksih first film is a slow-moving study of a lonely widower in the Anatolian outback who will not rest till he is told what happened to his dissident son in the Nineties. Won a prize for most promising new work at Venice.

[Chris Knipp]

Kazik Rawwanski: TOWER (2012) (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3441-New-Directors-New-Films-and-Film-Comment-Selects-2013&p=29794#post29794)

Toronto film about a nebbishy 34-year-old living in his parents' basement and not doing much seems a more shallow, non-Jewish version of Todd Solondz's 2012 feature, DARK HORSE. Shot in a hurry with lots of closeups and non-actors. 76 mins. Better luck next time, maybe. The actor doesn't seem quite the nerd he's imagined to be. Shown at Locarno, Viennale, TIFF and ND/NF. Somebody likes it more than I do.

[Chris Knipp]

Tobias Lindholm: HIJACKING (2012) (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3441-New-Directors-New-Films-and-Film-Comment-Selects-2013&p=29795#post29795)

A highly polished action movie about a Somali takeover of a Danish freighter for ransom money and the protracted negotiation with the CEO in Denmark while the crew starve, sweat, and fear for their lives. The action moves back and forth, with good authentic feel in each venue. Lincholm has co-directed one feature before, written a successful TV series and collaborated with Thomas Vinterberg on his recent success for Mads Mikkelsen, THE HUNT. In Danish and English. 99 mins. Magnolia Pictures release.

[Chris Knipp]

Lonesome Solo: BURN IT UP DJASSA (2012) (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3441-New-Directors-New-Films-and-Film-Comment-Selects-2013&p=29802#post29802)

A tragedy told in the ghetto of Abijan, Ivory Coast. An attempt to get the country's filmmaking back on its feet, this is a simple, quickly shot tale about trouble in a family. 70 mins.

[Chris Knipp]

Rachid Djaïdani: RENGAINE (2012) (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3441-New-Directors-New-Films-and-Film-Comment-Selects-2013&p=29803#post29803)

Introduced at the Directors' Fortnight at Cannes, it won the FIPRESCI Prize, and later the César for Best First Film. Composed of many very short scenes, it tells what happens when in Paris an African Christian and an Algerian Muslim fall in love and decide to marry. Her elder brother summons 39 "brothers" to enlist them to prevent what he considers a highly inappropriate union. Djaïdani is multi-talented. He was a champion fighter, actor with Peter Brook's stage troupe, and has published three novels in France, the first a bestseller. "This film," says a festival blurb, "is part love letter to the irresistible energy of Paris, part call for interracial tolerance." Some sloppy handheld camerawork cannot hide the wit and talent.
78 mins.

[Chris Knipp]

Tizza Covi, Rainer Fimmel: THE LIGHT OF DAY (2012) (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3441-New-Directors-New-Films-and-Film-Comment-Selects-2013&p=29808#post29808)

Blending documentary and fiction, which they first did in their 2010 LA PIVELLINA/THE LITTLE GIRL (ND/NF, SFIFF 2010), the Italian-Austrian couple bring together famous German actor Philipp Hochmair and retired bear wrestler and knife thrower Walter Saabel as nephew and uncle, who have never met till Walter turns up where Philipp is working on a new play in Hamburg. He turns up again in Vienna. The development of the two personalties (they essentially play themselves) is engaging, but one wishes the film had somewhere more specific to go.

[Chris Knipp]

Joshua Oppenheimer: THE ACT OF KILLING (2012) (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3441-New-Directors-New-Films-and-Film-Comment-Selects-2013&p=29809#post29809)

Oppenheimer spent seven years exploring the 1965 massacres of a million communists in Indonesia. He focuses on the killers, and gets them to reveal more about their actions (never punished) by having them act in and advise in the making of a lurid Indonesian film depicting their actions in which they play both perpetrators and victims. A shocking revelation that remains morally muddled, and might have used sharper editing. Oppenheimer gained exceptional access to his subjects, but the extent of their self-awareness or repentance remains unclear.

[Chris Knipp]

Daniel Hoesl: SOLDATE JEANNETTE (2012) (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3441-New-Directors-New-Films-and-Film-Comment-Selects-2013&p=29810#post29810)

A beautiful and elegant film of art and ideas by a young Austrian dandy about a woman who flees a posh life and material concerns. A pleasure to look at; I wish there was ultimately a bit more going on in the screenplay.

[Chris Knipp]

Sophie Letourneur: LES COQUILLETTES (2012) (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3441-New-Directors-New-Films-and-Film-Comment-Selects-2013&p=29818#post29818)

This story of three 30-something film festival groupies who go to Locarno in search of men has been compared to Lena Dunham's hip, popular "Girls" TV series. It's a slice of contemporary French life that will not much please fans of Maurice Pagnol.

[Chris Knipp]

O Muel: JISEUL (2012) (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3441-New-Directors-New-Films-and-Film-Comment-Selects-2013&p=29821&posted=1#post29821)

This wintry, visually gorgeous black and white film, full of loud portentous music, about a Korean offshore island is too artfully abstract and impressionistic, chronologically disjointed and hard to follow to do justice to its subject, a long hushed up 1948 war attrocity in which as many as 30,000 people may have been massacred.

[Chris Knipp]

Jazmín López: LEONES (2012) (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3441-New-Directors-New-Films-and-Film-Comment-Selects-2013&p=29823&posted=1#post29823)

This dreamy ramble through the woods is full of portents and hints. Despite the danger of being trumped by THE LONELIEST PLANET, it seems to have a lot of potential. But it feels like it has has too many outtakes and alternative endings tacked onto the end. The 28-year-old López is an Argentinian visual artist who has shown video installations. 80 mins. (the last 15 might have been better cut). Haunting stuff though.

[Chris Knipp]

That's the end of the week's screenings. Next week there will be another 12 films, shown at co-sponsor MoMA instead of Lincoln Center.

This week has had many suggestive if rough efforts. The most finished or impressive:

BLUE CAPRICE, first feature about the Beltway snipers that explores their personalities and motivations.

KÜF, another austere Turkish film, this one about government repression of dissidents.

HIJACKING, strong, realistic, suspenseful Danish film about bargaining with Somali pirates for the lives of a freighter's crew.

RENGAINE, rough but inventive Paris ghetto film about a mixed couple, Arab muslim/African Christian

THE ACT OF KILLING, overlong and morally confused but powerful doc about 1965 Indonesian massacre of communists.

[Chris Knipp]

Marcello Lordello: THEY'LL COME BACK (2012) (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3441-New-Directors-New-Films-and-Film-Comment-Selects-2013&p=29841#post29841)

In this well-written and acted Brazillian film, a 15-year-old girl abandoned with her older brother by the side of the road by their upper middle class parents as punishment is stuck out in the country and has experiences that change her world view. An original and surprising treatment. One of the best of this year's New Direcors/New Films series.

[Chris Knipp]

Alex Pitstra: DIE WELT (2012) (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3441-New-Directors-New-Films-and-Film-Comment-Selects-2013&p=29842#post29842)

The director was raised in Holland and took his Dutch mother's name. He creatively imagines a young man of the time of the "Jasmine" revolution whose experience might be like that of his own Tunisian father. Angry, witty, inventive, multilingual, a bit rough, a welcome viewpoint, first seen at the Doha International Film Festival and admired by the writer for Variety Arabia.

[Chris Knipp]

Matiás Piñero: VIOLA (2012) (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3441-New-Directors-New-Films-and-Film-Comment-Selects-2013&p=29847#post29847)

This young Argentine director makes distinctive and consistent films about actors who live their roles, recently using some of Shakespeare's romantic comedies. He has a team of players, a regular cinematographer, a style, perhaps a cult following, but is largely unknown due to the lack of popular appeal of his work. Distinctive festival-only fare.

[Chris Knipp]

Sharon Plumb: TOWHEADS (2012) (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3441-New-Directors-New-Films-and-Film-Comment-Selects-2013&p=29847#post29847)

A harried Brooklyn housewife with two cute little blond boys resorts to a series of comic stunts to express her creativity. Plumb uses her own boys Walker and Cody and her husband (whose face is not seen) Derek Cianfrance as the dad. Cianfrance directed the Ryan Gosling, Michelle Williams film BLUE VALENTINE. Plumb is a video artist and her story is partly a woman's rights cry but there is no sense of real-life issues or real material hardships here and though pleasant and watchable up to a point, at nearly ninety minutes this film seems pushed.

[Chris Knipp]

Libbie D. Cohn, J.P. Sniadecki: PEOPLE'S PARK (2012) (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3441-New-Directors-New-Films-and-Film-Comment-Selects-2013&p=29847#post29847)

Another documentary with a special use of POV and camera placement from the Harvard ethnography lab headed by Lucien Castaing-Taylor that produeced also SWEETGRASS, FOREIGN PARTS, and LEVIATHAN. This one like RUSSIA ARK done in a single long smooth tracking shot take, roves through a big Chinese park on a Saturday in July when it is full of people dancing, singing, picnicking, drinking tea, or just dozing or walking around. A Steady-Cam in the hands of one filmmaker who sat in a wheelchair pushed around by the other. Intense crowd sounds are an important part of the effect. This is probably the least impressive of the four, and you get the idea long before the 78 minutes have gone by, but both the film and the park are better looking than I had expected and the long tracking shot has a way of feeling soothing and hypnotic, whatever its content.

[Chris Knipp]

Lybov Arkus: ANTON'S RIGHT HERE (2012) (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3441-New-Directors-New-Films-and-Film-Comment-Selects-2013&p=29856#post29856)

Editor and writer Arkus became so involved with the severely austistic teenager Anton that she later "kidnapped" him from a horrific mental institution and arranged for his home care after his mother's death from cancer. Her passionate two-hour documentary about the boy and this process is fascinating if a little less informative and more self-absorbed than it might ideally have been.

[Chris Knipp]

Shane Carruth: UPSTREAM COLOR (2013) (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3441-New-Directors-New-Films-and-Film-Comment-Selects-2013&p=29855#post29855)

"Upstream Color certainly is something to see," wrote McCarthy, "if you're into brilliant technique, expressive editing, oblique storytelling, obscuritanist speculative fiction or discovering a significant new actress" (he refers to the female lead Amy Seimetz). Justin Chang of Variety noted it's "a warmer, less foreboding picture than Primer, not moving in any conventional sense, but suffused with emotion all the same." I say:

If you are into film as art I would consider this one of the year's musts so far, and it should become in some form available to everyone, even with limited theatrical release.

Think Terrance Malick meets David Lynch.

[Chris Knipp]

Sarah Polley: STORIES WE TELL (2012) (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3441-New-Directors-New-Films-and-Film-Comment-Selects-2013&p=29856#post29856)

Accomplished Canadian actress Sarah Polley, whose feature debut got Julie Christie an Oscar nomination, turns successfully to documentary with a portrait of her extended family, with special focus on the discovery that her biological father wasn't her wild mom's husband and how everybody came peacefully to terms with this.

[Chris Knipp]

Leonardo di Constanzo: L'INTERVALLO (2012) (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3441-New-Directors-New-Films-and-Film-Comment-Selects-2013&p=29857#post29857)

Di Constanzo's quiet little film in Neapolitan dialect shows two teenagers whose lives are already under the shadow of La Camorra. One is a girl who made the mistake of getting involved with a man from the rival clan. The other is a boy who runs an ice cream cart, who's sent to guard the girl for a day of punitive detention in a large abandoned building. Eventually they bond. Scripted with Mariangela Barbarnente (Orchestra of Piazza Virtorio) and Maurizio Braucci (Gomorrah and Reality). The young actors, Alessio Riso and Francesca Riso, are fresh discoveries. The film was in the Orizzonti series at the Venice Film Festival and won a raft of awards there.

[Chris Knipp]

Eryk Rocha: JARDS (2012) (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3441-New-Directors-New-Films-and-Film-Comment-Selects-2013&p=29871#post29871)

This introduces someone you may not have heard of, Jards Jacaré, a superb Brazilian singer-songwriter dating from the Seventies like Gaetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil, shown here making a new album in 2011. One could have done without the arty visual approach (extreme closups and no shots of hands or instruments) and the blurry archival Super8 material, but the recorded sound quality, at least, is fine.

[Chris Knipp]

Penny Lane: OUR NIXON (2012) (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3441-New-Directors-New-Films-and-Film-Comment-Selects-2013&p=29874#post29874)

The filmmakers obtained good copies of many hours of Super 8 footage John Haldeman, Bob Erlichman, and Dwight Chapin, Nixon's closest aides, shot at the White House and have woven them into a short history of the Nixon Presidency's rise and fall, woven together with archival TV news and interviews. But do not expect anything new or different. The claim of providing "an unprecedented, insider's view" with this conventional, bright-colored footage is titillating, but quite spurious. Even here the Super 8 is used only as wallpaper for the Nixon for Dummies film. The promise no doubt justifies presenting this as the New Directors/New Films Closing Night presentation, though. It could sell extra tickets and draw a good festival crowd for the March 31 finale.

[Chris Knipp]

http://img546.imageshack.us/img546/2408/veshj.jpg (http://newdirectors.org/)

A reminder that the actual public screenings of the 2013 edition of MoMA and the Film Society of Lincoln Center's NEW DIRECTORS/NEW FILMS series begins today, Wednesday, March 20, and continues through March 31. Click on the logo above for the FSLC's full program, schedule, ticket purchase.


OPENS TONIGHT! Explore this year's cinematic discoveries at the 42nd edition of New Directors/New Films, kicking off this evening with the remarkable BLUE CAPRICE. Hailed by The Hollywood Reporter as "a riveting first feature of startling maturity and intelligence," this chilling examination of gun violence features masterful performances from Isaiah Washington and Tequan Richmond. Director Alexandre Moors and cast in-person. A limited number of tickets available. Buy now (http://newdirectors.org/film/blue-caprice)

FILMLEAF'S Festival Coverage Thread for the 2013 New Directors/New Films series begins HERE. (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3441-New-Directors-New-Films-and-Film-Comment-Selects-2013&p=29717#post29717)

Index of Filmleaf reviews of ND/NF 2013

BLUE CAPRICE (Alexandre Moors 2012) (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3441-New-Directors-New-Films-and-Film-Comment-Selects-2013&p=29785#post29785)
OUR NIXON (Penny Lane 2013) (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3441-New-Directors-New-Films-and-Film-Comment-Selects-2013&p=29874#post29874)
THE ACT OF KILLING (Joshua Oppenheimer 2012) (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3441-New-Directors-New-Films-and-Film-Comment-Selects-2013&p=29809#post29809)
ANTON’S RIGHT HERE (Lyubov Arkus 2012) (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3441-New-Directors-New-Films-and-Film-Comment-Selects-2013&p=29849#post29849)
BURN IT UP DJASSA (Lonesome Solo 2012) (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3441-New-Directors-New-Films-and-Film-Comment-Selects-2013&p=29802#post29802)
LES COQUILLETTES (Sophie Letourneur 2012) (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3441-New-Directors-New-Films-and-Film-Comment-Selects-2013&p=29818#post29818)
THE COLOR OF THE CHAMELEON (Emil Christov 2012) (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3441-New-Directors-New-Films-and-Film-Comment-Selects-2013&p=29789#post29789)
DIE WELT (Alex Pitstra 2012) (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3441-New-Directors-New-Films-and-Film-Comment-Selects-2013&p=29842#post29842)
EMPEROR VISITS THE HELL (Li Luo 2013) (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3441-New-Directors-New-Films-and-Film-Comment-Selects-2013&p=29787#post29787)
A HIJACKING (Tobias Lindholm2012) (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3441-New-Directors-New-Films-and-Film-Comment-Selects-2013&p=29795#post29795)
JARDS (Eryk Rocha 2012) (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3441-New-Directors-New-Films-and-Film-Comment-Selects-2013&p=29871#post29871)
JISEUL (O Muel 2012) 109min (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3441-New-Directors-New-Films-and-Film-Comment-Selects-2013&p=29821#post29821)
KÜF (Ali Aydin 2012) (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3441-New-Directors-New-Films-and-Film-Comment-Selects-2013&p=29789#post29789)
LEONES (Jazmin Lopez 2012) (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3441-New-Directors-New-Films-and-Film-Comment-Selects-2013&p=29823#post29823)
L’INTERVALLO (Leonardo Di Costanzo 2012) (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3441-New-Directors-New-Films-and-Film-Comment-Selects-2013&p=29857#post29857)
PEOPLE’S PARK (Libbie D. Cohn & J.P. Sniadecki 2012) (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3441-New-Directors-New-Films-and-Film-Comment-Selects-2013&p=29848#post29848)
RENGAINE (Rachid Djaïdani 2012) (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3441-New-Directors-New-Films-and-Film-Comment-Selects-2013&p=29803#post29803)
THE SHINE OF DAY (Tizza Covi & Rainer Frimmel 2012) (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3441-New-Directors-New-Films-and-Film-Comment-Selects-2013&p=29808#post29808)
SOLDATE JEANNETTE (Daniel Hoesl 2012) (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3441-New-Directors-New-Films-and-Film-Comment-Selects-2013&p=29810#post29810)
STORIES WE TELL (Sarah Polley 2012) (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3441-New-Directors-New-Films-and-Film-Comment-Selects-2013&p=29856#post29856)
THEY’LL COME BACK (Marcelo Lordello 2012) (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3441-New-Directors-New-Films-and-Film-Comment-Selects-2013&p=29841#post29841)
TOWER (Kazik Radwanski 2012) (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3441-New-Directors-New-Films-and-Film-Comment-Selects-2013&p=29794#post29794)
TOWHEADS (Shannon Plumb 2013) (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3441-New-Directors-New-Films-and-Film-Comment-Selects-2013&p=29847#post29847)
UPSTREAM COLOR (Shane Carruth 2012) (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3441-New-Directors-New-Films-and-Film-Comment-Selects-2013&p=29855#post29855)
VIOLA (Matías Piñeiro 2013 (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3441-New-Directors-New-Films-and-Film-Comment-Selects-2013&p=29843#post29843)

Roundup

The New Directors/New Films series is a very large and varied collection. You have highly polished feature films like Danish director Tobias Lindholm's A Highjacking or the young American Shane Carruth's Upstream Color. Alexandre Moors may be more of an emerging artist, but Blue Caprice also is a fully realized work. So is Brazillian Marcelo Lordello's thought-provoking They'll Come Back. Others, like the African Lonesome Solo's Burn It Up Djassa, Rachid Djaïdani's Rengaine, or Alex Pitstra's Die Welt, are all (despite Rengaine's being made in Paris) in one way or another Third World efforts, working against odds of preparation and funding, bursting with talent and eagerness. Ali Aydin's Küf and Leonardo di Costanzo's L'Intervallo are both polished efforts, but somehow by design marginal and low keyed. Aydin sits at the feet of his countryman Nuri Bilge Ceylan, and probably of the Romanians too. Di Costanzo may suffer from Italy's current cinematic anemia and exhaustion. But both are good films. Sarah Polley's family documentary Stories We Tell hardly seems to need a boost. She's famous, and it's a very successful film. But it's her first documentary. Other inclusions seem doubtful, but not all in a series can be big successes. Our Nixon promises more than it performs if Penny Lane really thinks the archival footage by Nixon's three closest aides shows anything new. Eryk Rocha's Jards is in some ways sloppily done, but I'm happy to learn about this Brazilian musician. People's Park is another example of the Harvard ethnography documentary filmmaking, which is sometimes more exhausting than enlightening. I couldn't remember what The Color of a Chameleon and Viola were: that tells you something. Towheads has the distinction of being the most hated film of the series. I hated The Act of Killing and think somehow its documentary trickery is in bad taste. Les Coquillettes, Soldate Jeanette, Anton's Right Here and Jiseul are films you can have fun debating. Les Coquillettes is so silly and frivolous. But it's successful: it works. Soldate Jeannette doesn't quite work. It fizzles out. Yet it's so elegant and sure of itself at first, it stays with you. I discussed Jiseul with someone who loved it just for its atmosphere and gorgeous photography. I may have convinced her that O Muel doesn't know how to tell a story and that for events that are important and have been hidden for years straightforward storytelling is essential. She and I also differed on the very biased documentary about the Russian boy with severe Alzheimer's, Anton's Right Here. The issue is whether the bias spoils it, as some think. I decided it definitely does. My colleague was moved and thought it worked. Both of us will remember it.

The following are three ND/NF titles the Film Society of Lincoln Center is particularly hyping today, March 20, as the series' public screenings begin (and they are good). After are other choices of mine (with my descriptions).

Alexandre Moors : BLUE CAPRICE. (http://newdirectors.org/film/blue-caprice) Hailed by The Hollywood Reporter as "a riveting first feature of startling maturity and intelligence," this chilling examination of gun violence features masterful performances from Isaiah Washington and Tequan Richmond [as the Beltway sniper killers]. Director Alexandre Moors and cast in-person. A limited number of tickets available.

Ali Aydin : KÜF (http://newdirectors.org/film/kuf)(Mar 21, 23): Venice Film Festival Award-Winner. This spellbinding character study centers on a railroad inspector and the 18-year search for his missing son.

Rachid Djaïdani: RENGAINE (http://newdirectors.org/film/rengaine)(Mar 22, 24): Celebrated by The Hollywood Reporter as "bursting with bravado and brio," this urban contemporary Romeo and Juliet is set in Paris.

Other titles I'd personally particularly recommend (and my description)-- with links to my Festival Coverage reviews:

Tobias Lindholm: A Hijacking (2012)--ND/NF (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3441-New-Directors-New-Films-and-Film-Comment-Selects-2013&p=29795#post29795)
A suspenseful, realistic Danish drama about bargaining with Somali pilates for the freedom of a freighter crew.

Marcelo Lordello: They'll Come Back (2012)--ND/NF (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3441-New-Directors-New-Films-and-Film-Comment-Selects-2013&p=29841#post29841)
Though-provoking Brazilian (Recife) tale of upper class kids dumped on a country road and what the younger girl learns about class and life.

Alex Pitstra: Die Welt (2012--ND/NF (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3441-New-Directors-New-Films-and-Film-Comment-Selects-2013&p=29842#post29842)
An inventive young Dutch-Tunisian filmmaker's rueful re-imagining of how his father's emigration to Europe might have been had it happened now at the time of the "Jasmine" revolt.

Shane Carruth: Upstream Color (2013)--ND/NF (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3441-New-Directors-New-Films-and-Film-Comment-Selects-2013&p=29855#post29855)
Long awaited second film from the brilliant, puzzle-weaving filmmaker of PRIMER. Think Kubrick, Lynch, Malik.

Sarah Polley: Stories We Tell (2012)--ND/NF (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3441-New-Directors-New-Films-and-Film-Comment-Selects-2013&p=29856#post29856)
Canadian actress-filmmaker turns to documentary with an engaging story of her own family and her own paternity -- and the alternate versions and coverups of family secrets.

Leonardo Di Constanzo: L'Intervallo (2012)--ND/NF (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3441-New-Directors-New-Films-and-Film-Comment-Selects-2013&p=29857#post29857)
A quiet, crabwise look at the pervasive power of the La Camorra crime clan network in the world of Naples from the viewpoint of two teenagers caught in its net, screenplay co-authored by the writer of Garrone's REALITY and GOMORRAH.

These are my picks. Go see them or if you can't, keep an eye out for them elsewhere. These are nine great new films by exciting directors you probably never heard of in most cases. And that's what New Directors is all about. (You've heard of Sarah Polley, but you don't know her as the director of a documentary.)

[Chris Knipp]

Note on Upstream Color from New York publicist agent Emilie Siegel:

*An additional screening of UPSTREAM COLOR has been added on Monday, April 1 (details below)


http://img839.imageshack.us/img839/2545/usc2.jpg
UPSTREAM COLOR
(Shane Carruth)

Opens in New York on Friday, April 5
Expands to Top 25 Markets By April 19;
More Cities to Follow in Late April/Early May

[Chris Knipp]

http://img826.imageshack.us/img826/7237/pixotecrop.jpg
PIXOTE (HECTOR BABENCO 1980)

ND/NF Archive index

The FSLC blog provides today an archival index by year of the lineups of every New Directors/New Films series since they began in 1972:

"After we published a brief overview of the four decade history of New Director/New Films festival, we got a lot of requests for a full archive of past ND/NF lineups. Since we aim to please, here is a list of every feature that has been screened at ND/NF since its inception in 1972. Enjoy!" Actually they might better say "Drool!

For the archive/index go here. (http://www.filmlinc.com/daily/entry/new-directors-new-films-ndnf-lineups-archive[)

Discoveries include: LA SALAMANDRE (Alain Tanner), THE SUGARLAND EXPRESS (Steven Spielberg), PIXOTE (Hector Babenco), WILD STYLE (Charlie Ahearn), TAMPOPO (Juzo Itami), SLACKER (Richard Linklater), CLERKS (Kevin Smith), WELCOME TO THE DOLLHOUSE (Todd Solodnz), RUN LOLA RUN (Tom Tykwer), REAL WOMEN HAVE CURVES (Patricia Cardozo), HALF NELSON (Ryan Fleck), THE COVE (Louie Psihoyos), THE BLACK POWER MIXTAPE 1967-1975 (Göran Hugo Olsson, 2011).

I've only done them recently. I do think maybe the last three were better than this year's and to prove it here they are:


39th New Directors/New Films (2010)

3 Backyards (Eric Mendelsohn, 2010)
Amer (Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani, 2009)
Beautiful Darling (James Rasin, 2010)
Bilal’s Stand (Sultan Sharrief, 2009)
Bill Cunningham New York (Richard Press, 2010)
Dogtooth (Yorgos Lanthimos, 2009)
Down Terrace (Ben Wheatley, 2009)
Evening Dress (Myriam Aziza, 2009)
Every Day is a Holiday (Dima El-Horr, 2009)
The Father of My Children (Mia Hansen-Love, 2009)
Frontier Blues (Babak Jalali, 2009)
The Happiest Girl in the World (Radu Jude, 2009)
How I Ended This Summer (Alexei Popogrebsky, 2010)
Hunting & Sons (Sander Burger, 2010)
I Am Love (Kuca Guadagnino, 2009)
I Killed My Mother (Xavier Dolan, 2009)
La Pivellina (Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel, 2009)
The Last Train Home (Lixin Fan, 2009)
The Man Next Door (Mariano Cohn and Gastón Duprat, 2009)
My Perestroika (Robin Hessman, 2010)
Night Catches Us (Tanya Hamilton, 2010)
Northless (Rigoberto Perezcano, 2009)
The Oath (Laura Poitras, 2010)
The Red Chapel (Mads Brügger, 2009)
Samson and Delilah (Warwick Thornton, 2009)
Tehroun (Nader T. Homayoun, 2009)
Women Without Men (Shirin Neshat, 2009)

40th New Directors/New Films (2011)

678 (Mohamed Diab, 2010)
At Ellen’s Age (Pia Marais, 2010)
Attenberg (Athina Rachel Tsangari, 2010)
Belle Epine (Rebecca Zlotowski, 2010)
The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 (Göran Hugo Olsson, 2011)
Circumstance (Maryam Keshavarz, 2011)
Copacabana (Marc Fitoussi, 2010)
Curling (Denis Côté, 2010)
The Destiny of Lesser Animals (Deron Albright, 2011)
El Velador (Natalia Almada, 2011)
Gromozeka (Vladimir Kott, 2010)
Happy, Happy (Anne Sewitsky, 2010)
Hit So Hard (P. David Ebersole, 2011)
Hospitalité (Koji Fukada, 2010)
Incendies (Denis Villenueve, 2010)
Majority (Seren Yüce, 2010)
Man Without a Cell Phone (Sameh Zoabi, 2010)
Margin Call (JC Chandor, 2011)
Memory Lane (Mikhaël Hers, 2010)
Microphone (Ahmad Abdalla, 2010)
Octubre (Daniel and Diego Vega, 2010)
Outbound (Bogdan George Apetri, 2010)
Pariah (Dee Rees, 2011)
Shut Up Little Man! An Audio Misadventure (Matthew Bate, 2011)
Some Days are Better Than Others (Matt McCormick, 2010)
Summer of Goliath (Nicolás Pereda, 2010)
Tyrannosaur (Paddy Considine, 2010)
Winter Vacation (Li Hongqi, 2010)


The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 (Göran Hugo Olsson, 2011). Photo: LOUVERTURE FILMS / THE KOBAL COLLECTION

41st New Directors/New Films (2012)

5 Broken Cameras (Emad Burnat, Guy Davidi, 2011)
The Ambassador (Mads Brügger, 2011)
An Oversimplification of Her Beauty (Terence Nance, 2011)
Beasts of the Southern Wild (Benh Zeitlin, 2012)
Breathing (Karl Markovics, 2011)
Crulic: The Path to Beyond (Anca Damian, 2011)
Donoma (Djinn Carrénard, 2011)
Fear and Desire (Stanley Kubrick, 1953)
Found Memories (Julia Murat, 2011)
Generation P (Victor Ginzburg, 2011)
Gimme the Loot (Adam Leon, 2012)
Goodbye (Mohammad Rasoulof, 2011)
Hemel (Sacha Polak, 2012)
How to Survive a Plague (David France, 2012)
Huan Huan (Song Chuan, 2011)
It Looks Pretty from a Distance (Anka and Wilhelm Sasnal, 2011)
Las Acacias (Pablo Giorgelli, 2011)
The Minister (Pierre Schöller, 2011)
Neighboring Sounds (Kleber Mendonça Filho, 2012)
Now, Forager (Jason Cortlund and Julia Halperin, 2012)
Omar Killed Me (Roschdy Zem, 2011)
Oslo, August 31st (Joachim Trier, 2011)
Porfirio (Alejandro Landes, 2011)
The Rabbi’s Cat (Joann Sfar, Antoine Delesvaux, 2011)
The Raid: Redemption (Gareth Huw Evans, 2011)
Romance Joe (Lee Kwang-kuk, 2011)
Teddy Bear (Mads Matthiesen, 2012)
Twilight Portrait (Angelina Nikonova, 2011)
Where Do We Go Now? (Nadine Labaki, 2010)

[oscar jubis]

If Upstream Color ends up in many Top 10 lists at year's end, it would confirm my impression that this is the most over-rated film in recent years. Ok, let's be diplomatic shall we: there is no other contemporary movie I find less worthy of praise relative to the opinion of the majority of critics. I watched it with 2 friends who are 27 and 32 years old, a filmmaker/archivist and a film professor, and both found the film mannerist, shallow, and juvenile. The frenetic pace of the film (we estimated average shot length (ASL) at bet. 1 to 2 seconds) hides a dearth of ideas or feelings of any substance or consequence. I can see how UC works as a puzzler for some people and probably also as a kind of audiovisual sensation machine but it didn't work for me even within those narrow confines.

[Chris Knipp]

I take your point that all younger, informed viewers (they're not a uniform block, after all) do not praise Shane Carruth's long awaited UPSTREAM COLOR and your disliking it should not be taken as a sign of your age. I shouldn't have implied that, or even hint at it as a possibility, if I seemed to. Artists don't get "old" and good critics don't either.

Adjectives like "mannerist, shallow, and juvenile" have little value, however -- I've said this many times before -- without arguments and examples to explain what one means by them in any particular instance. What's needed from you here then, therefore, is a review, not just a reaction, however that reaction may have been shared with putatively well informed younger viewers. I should think you particularly as a film teacher would be aware that intelligent discourse is not a matter of emoting or tossing out adjectives but of information, illustration, and reasoned argument. Our former contributor arsaib used to say, very wisely and helpfully I think, that what mattered here wasn't evaluations of films but the reasons given for making them. This should be obvious if this is to remain the intelligent, informed film review and discussion site it has always sought to be, often with your strong support. I'd want to know rather what you or your screening comrades thought of PRIMER, if you've thought about his earlier film and how you relate it to this one. That would be interesting, and would carry more weight, even if it were still negative.

You may be right. I may be wrong. That's why I'd like to hear what you really have to say. Or the truth, as so often is the case and then is so much more interesting, may be somewhere in between.

[oscar jubis]

As I said earlier in more than one post, I don't write reviews, not anymore. I write comments and I will continue to write them. It's your choice whether to respond to them or not. I promise to stop posting if no one responds to my posts.

[Chris Knipp]

Well, I got you to write something, anyway. But why not write reviews? Too busy teaching film to write about film for us anymore? What a shame. 25 words don't take long to write, and can constitute a pretty decent review, if well worded. As I said or meant to say, this is a film that needs watching more than once, you often watch films more than once and revise your opinion, and I hope you'll do that for UPSREAM COLOR.

It's a film I wrote about favorably on this site in the New Directors series. Variety and Hollywood Reporter had good things to say about it. Almost everybody did -- but that's why you say it's the Most Overrated. Well. We'll see. Metacritic 80, and the lowest score, the worst review, is rated at a 60. Mike D'Angelo on the Chicago Music Box Theater site (expanded from an earlier review):


You’re Going To Want To
See It More Than Once:
UPSTREAM COLOR By Mike D’Angelo

Nine years ago, an obscenely talented, entirely self-taught filmmaker named shane Carruth made a
cautionary tale called PRIMER, about two engineers who accidentally build a time machine in their
garage. It turned out to be more cautionary than he probably anticipated. Carruth practically shot
the movie in his own garage, on a budget of roughly $7000; it won the grand prize at that year’s
sundance Film Festival, landed a distribution deal, was hailed as a masterpiece of lo-fi sci-fi. For all
its self-evident brilliance, however, PRIMER is a tad impenetrable. Few saw it during its theatrical run,
and those who did often went back multiple times—partly for the sheer pleasure of the experience,
but also in an attempt to work out the precise mechanics of its recursive narrative. Carruth then
spent years struggling in vain to secure financing for an even more ambitious follow-up. It’s not hard
to imagine him identifying with the character he played in his first picture, running himself ragged
trying to capitalize on his astonishing good fortune.

UPstREAM COLOR is Carruth’s second feature. here at last. It’s not the insane project he spent the
last decade pursuing, but you wouldn’t necessarily guess that from watching it. Perhaps no movie you
see this year will excite so much discussion. And while it’s recognizably Carruth’s work—particularly in
its unfashionable emphasis on montage, deriving meaning primarily from the way each brief, precise
shot relates to those before and after—it’s also a dramatic gear-shift from chilly and intellectual to
intuitive and sensual. Indeed, while uPstREAM CoLoR has a fair amount of (purely functional)
dialogue, it’s essentially a silent film, obsessed not just with color but with texture and movement
and rhythm. you’ll want to turn off the decoder ring, if you can manage it, and just allow yourself to
luxuriate in its associative grandeur.

Still, let’s not pretend this is an easy film to grasp—though it’s knotty in a very different way from
PRIMER. What happens isn’t in question this time; what to make of what happens is the tricky
part. here’s what’s certain: We meet a woman, Kris (Amy seimetz), who appears to be an upscale
professional working with special effects in some capacity. she’s drugged, hypnotized, and robbed
of everything she owns. unable to recall or comprehend what’s happened to her, she falls into
a codependent relationship with Jeff (Carruth), a man she meets on a train, who seems to have
undergone the same traumatic experience. Both, meanwhile, have been “sampled” by a strange man
(Andrew sensenig) who has surgically transferred their essence—and while I’ve been working very
hard to obscure the bizarre details up to this point, I can’t keep it up any longer—into some pigs.
henry David thoreau’s Walden plays a key role in the story, as does a grub that inhabits the dirt
underneath certain orchids. Also, pigs. Did I mention pigs?

Trying to make literal sense of this baldly metaphorical picture can be fun but isn’t strictly
necessary—it’s meant to work on a more primal level, bypassing the logic circuits. Visual and aural
rhymes are constant and richly suggestive. Judging from the two films he’s made so far, Carruth
seems particularly interested in destructive feedback loops; one memorable interlude in uPstREAM
CoLoR (there are few conventional “scenes”) finds Kris and Jeff heatedly arguing about whether
certain childhood memories are his or hers. the film is a study of damaged people in which both
the damage and the method of recovery has been made productively strange, allowing Carruth to
reclaim some potent ideas that have become clichés. It’s also a dazzling exercise in pure form, with
a cinematic syntax that’s confident and exacting yet still feels wildly spontaneous—part Kubrick,
part Malick. And it provides seimetz (who’s a filmmaker herself) with a role that in many ways defies
traditional acting, but which she nonetheless makes defiantly vivid.

The most exciting aspect of Carruth’s movies, though, in the end, may be the immense respect they
afford the viewer. Not only does he refuse to spoon-feed, in the tiresome manner of most hollywood
fare (and even a sizable percentage of indie films), but he continually credits you with the intelligence
to infer cause from effect, presenting you with B and trusting that you’ll work out A, which remains
firmly offscreen, on your own. “you can step off the tile,” the thief (thiago Martins) tells a catatonic
Kris at the outset of her ordeal, as her toes hover nervously in mid-air. “the rest of the floor will
support your weight now.” Rather than show us Kris being hypnotized into immobility, as almost any
other filmmaker would do for clarity’s sake, Carruth cuts directly to her release—which is every bit as
clear and far more arresting. And this moment, too, feels vaguely autobiographical. that such a gifted
artist has at long last sprung himself from the imaginary prison of development hell should make film
buffs everywhere let out a mighty cheer.

http://www.musicboxtheatre.com/assets/calendars/MusicBox_Spring2013_FINAL-LoRes.pdf


Playing back to back at Roxie Theater, Amy Seimetz's directorial debut Sun Don't Shine and Shane Carruth's Upstream Color!
--press release from San Francisco Film Society 16 May 2013.

In this wondrously accomplished and furiously expressive drama [Sun Don't Shine] blending the moody rambles of a road movie with the tightly ratcheted criminal tension of a film noir the director Amy Seimetz (Upstream Color), in her first feature, captures the wildly flailing energy and exhausted torpor of grinding frustration as well as the flickering grace of stifled dreams. Her protagonists, Crystal (Kate Lyn Sheil) and Leo (Kentucker Audley), are classic young lovers on the run, driving through rural Florida with a body in the trunk of their car, but violence, fear, and distrust poison their romance from the movie's very start, and things only get worse as they head toward St. Petersburg, where Leo hopes to get help from a former girlfriend (Kit Gwin). - Richard Brody, The New Yorker. For details and tickets, visit roxie.com (http://roxie.com/events/details.cfm?eventID=4F2F67D7-1143-DBB3-C6DAB95F85DCFF29).

[Chris Knipp]

OUR NIXON

http://img17.imageshack.us/img17/6792/ournixon.jpg

An opening date has been announced for Penny Lane's private White House footage film frm ND/NF 2013, OUR NIXON: August 30, 2013.

Review here. (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3441-New-Directors-New-Films-and-Film-Comment-Selects-2013&p=29874#post29874)

[oscar jubis]

I don't know how you manage to write so many well-written reviews in such a short time. You are both very talented and hard-working. And here I am complaining that your review of STORIES WE TELL is unnecessarily revealing, or revealing in a way that would have diminished my enjoyment of the film had I read the review before watching the film. I also wish you would analyze the way this doc is just as much about cinematic narrative as it is about a family's history. This film is as self-conscious as movies get. Brilliant!

[Chris Knipp]

You say
I don't know how you manage to write so many well-written reviews in such a short time.

Then you say
I also wish you would analyze the way this doc is just as much about cinematic narrative as it is about a family's history. Well, there is your answer to the first question. I can manage to write so many well-written reviews in such a short time by not going into every analytical possibility.

I've always been warned I tend to tell too much. However I invariably find out that there have been in-print mainstream reviews in New York publications that turn out to have revealed just as much about the movie in question or even more.

In the case of Sarah Polley's documentary, revelation is the name of the game. What comes up, is whether the revelations are really ultimately true. Or how much the arrangement of revelations is calculated to create a distorting effect. Whatever the case, it all works very well, and though I had doubts about Polley, severe after her second film, this convinces me she is good and has talent and staying power.

However I think, for instance, Alan Berliner's First Cousin Once Removed (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3341-New-York-Film-Festival-2012&p=28570#post28570) (NYFF 2012) makes for a family/personal intimate documentary study that is as deep and interesting or more so. Self-consciousness comes with the game, in making family docs.

[oscar jubis]

You're right.
It's just that for me what truly makes this movie extraordinary, what makes it worth seeing more than once, what elevates this film beyond the curiosity it generates about Polley's origins, are certain notions about the nature of remembrance and memory and, even more so, the self-consciousness of its narrative process.
Do you know whether the Berliner film is scheduled for US release?

[Chris Knipp]

No, it's still being shown at a lot of festivals. Follow it on its Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/pages/Alan-Berliner/110990432250370).

[Chris Knipp]

Viola (MATÍAS PIÑERO) (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3441-New-Directors-New-Films-and-Film-Comment-Selects-2013&p=29843#post29843)

Viola was released theatrically by the Film Society of Lincoln Center Frid., July 12, 2023. It has gotten rave reviews (Metacritic 85), though this is based on only seven reviews, and AV Club (D'Angelo, oft an independent) gives it B- (but in his severe personal rating system only a 46) VIOLA shows promise and a distinctive style and point of view, were the needed jolt out of the hermetic festival world I've spoken of to come. The accolades surprise me; the positive reaction is due to rewakening to Shakespearean cinematic possibilities via Wheedan's MUCH ADO, plus the summer blockbuster doldrums with Guellermo del Toro's new one beautiful but numbing and even Almoddovar coming out with a bad movie.

[Chris Knipp]

Our Nixon (Penny Lane 2013) (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3441-New-Directors-New-Films-and-Film-Comment-Selects-2013&p=29874#post29874)

The film premieres Thursday, Aug. 8, 2013 on CNN. As mentioned theatrical release begins with IFC Aug. 30. The film's own website (http://www.ournixon.com/) will give you locations and dates in the future.

Though I think there's less than meets the eye, or less than people expect, it has botten very good reviews judging by a Metacritic rating: 74.

INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL ROTTERDAM 2103
SXSW 2013
NEW DIRECTORS/NEW FILMS (CLOSING NIGHT FILM) 2013
WINNER, "Best Documentary" Seattle International Film Festival 2013
WINNER, "Adrienne Shelly Award for Excellence in Filmmaking" Nantucket Film Festival 2013
WINNER "Karen Schmeer Editing Award" Independent Film Festival Boston 2013
WINNER "Ken Burns Award for Best of the Festival" Ann Arbor Film Festival 2013

[Chris Knipp]

OSCAR JUBIS:
Do you know whether the Alan Berliner film is destined for US release?

I can answer your question now (Aug. 7, 2013):

HBO Debut: Monday, September 23 [2013]

> Susan Norget Film Promotion | 198 Sixth Avenue | Suite 1 | New York | NY | 10013

"FIRST COUSIN ONCE REMOVED
ACCLAIMED FILMMAKER ALAN BERLINER'S
INTIMATE PORTRAIT OF HIS COUSIN, POET EDWIN HONIG
AND HIS JOURNEY THROUGH ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE
HBO Debut: Monday, September 23"