New Directors/New Films and Film Comment Selects 2012

[Chris Knipp]

The selections of New Directors/New Films (Film Society of Lincoln Center in collaboration with MoMA) have not been announced yet, but the dates have: New Directors/New Films 41 runs from March 21-April 1, 2012. ND/NF tends to be the hottest, most surprising series of my movie year these days. FCS runs February 17-March 1 and I may catch some of those public screenings. The schedule has been announced of FCS and I'll let you know what I'm going to try to see. One wouild be Sokorov's FAUST. Marston's FORGIVENESS OF BLOOD, HABEMUS PAPEM and MARGARET I've already seen. Yorgos Lanthimos has been moved to FCS from ND/NF, where he was last time out. Other FCS items: Koreda's I WISH, the Norwegian thriller HEADHUNTERS, a Jim Hoberman stunt projection omnibus, an arty French psychodrama called MORTEM, a reedit of MY OWN PRIVATE IDAHO by Van Sant and James Franco, a Mathieu Kassovitz counter terrorism thriller called REBELLION; and more. Anyway I expect to attend the press screenings of all the New Directors/New Films series as I did last year, and will report on and review the series.

Festival coverage thread for both ND/NF and FCS is here.



Links to the reviews:

5 Broken Cameras (Emad Burat, Guy Davidi 2011)--ND/NF
Ambassador, The (Mads Brügger 2011)--ND/NF
Breathing (Karl Markovics 2011)--ND/NF
Crulic: The Path to Beyond (Anka Damian 2011)--ND/NF
Donoma (Djinn Carrénard 2011)--ND/NF
Faust (Aleksandr Sokurov 2011)--FCS
Found Memories (Júlia Murat 2011)--ND/NF
Generation P (Vincent Ginzburg 2011)--ND/NF
Gimme the Loot (Adam Leon 2012)--ND/NF
Goodbye (Mohammad Rasoulof 2011)--ND/NF
Hemel (Sacha Polak 2012)--ND/NF
How to Survive a Plague (David France 2012)--ND/NF
Huan Huan (Song Chuan 2011)--ND/NF
I Wish (Hirakazu Koreeda 2011)--FCS
It Looks Pretty from a Distance (Anka, Wilhelm Sasnal 2011)--ND/NF
Las Acacias (Pablo Giorgelli 2011)--ND/NF
Minister, The (Pierre Schöller 2011)--ND/NF
Oslo, August 31st (Joachim Trier 2011)--ND/NF
My Own Private River (James Franco 2012)--FCS
Neighboring Sounds (Kleber Mendoça Filho 2011)--ND/NF
Now, Forager (Jason Cortland, Julia Halperin 2012)--ND/NF
Omar Killed Me (Roschdy Zem 2011)--ND/NF
Oversimplification of Her Beauty, An (Terence Nance 2012)--ND/NF
Porfirio (Alejandro Landes 2011)--ND/NF
Rabbi's Cat, The (Joann Sfar, Antoine Delesvauz 2011)--ND/NF
Raid, The: Redemption (Gareth Evans 2012)--ND/NF
Rebellion (Mathieu Kassovitz 2011)--FCS
Romance Joe (Lee Kwang-kui 2011)--ND/NF
Teddy Bear (Mads Metthieson 2011)--ND/NF
Twilight Portrait (Angelina Nikonova 2011)--ND/NF
Where Do We Go Now (Nadine Labaki 2011)--ND/NF

[Chris Knipp]

This is another FCS film to try for since I am a devote of Nabokov. There are a number of older films in the series this time.

DESPAIR (1978) 121min
Director: R.W. Fassbinder
Country: Germany
Based on a novel by Nabokov, scripted by Tom Stoppard and starring Dirk Bogarde, Fassbinder’s only English-language film has an impeccable Art Cinema pedigree. Set in 1930s Berlin, the film follows Hermann Hermann (Bogarde), a Russian émigré and chocolate manufacturer displaying the early signs of incipient mental breakdown, as he begins to concoct a plan to murder a homeless man he is convinced looks like him in order to facilitate his disappearance, thereby evading business problems and Germany’s political unrest.
Thursday, February 23 at 1:30PM and Wednesday, February 29 at 4:30PM.

[Chris Knipp]

Seven of the New Directors/New Films were announced some time ago. Here they are with the official ND/NF blurbs for those who are interested in a preview of the series. They all sound like strong, interesting, independent filmmaking.

BREATHING (Atmen) (2011) 90min
Director: Karl Markovics
Country: Austria
The remarkably assured directorial debut from veteran Austrian actor Karl
Markovics (THE COUNTERFEITERS) creates a slipstream between the
perilousness of youth and the inevitability of death. Roman (Thomas Schubert) is
an inmate at a juvenile detention center whose last hope of parole rests on his
ability to hold down a job as a morgue assistant. Remorse, horror and ultimately
a glimmer of illumination are cultivated through his work and his attempts to
connect with a life hanging in the balance. BREATHING is a Kino Lorber release.

CRULIC: THE PATH TO BEYOND (2011) 73min
Director: Anca Damian
Country: Romania
When Claudiu Crulic, a young Romanian in Poland, is arrested for a crime he
didn’t commit, he becomes a pawn in a Kafkaesque miscarriage of justice and
goes on a hunger strike to protest his treatment in jail. Filmmaker Anca Damian’s
documentary is by turns chilling and heartbreaking, but also ironic, with a bit of
black humor thrown in for good measure. What makes her extraordinary
documentary even more compelling is its strong visual style: Damian uses hand
drawn, cutout and collage animation techniques to create a strikingly memorable
film.

FOUND MEMORIES (Historias Que So Existem Quando Lembradas) (2011)
98min
Director: Julia Murat
Country: Brazil
The original title, which translates as "stories that only exist when remembered,"
beautifully expresses the theme and core sentiment of Julia Murat's film. FOUND
MEMORIES is a poetic rendering of the fictive town of Jotuomba. A magical
confluence of generations and cultures is occasioned by the visit of Julia, a
young photographer, to this place where time has seemingly stood still and life is
rooted in the fixed roles of tradition soon to be rendered obsolete. FOUND
MEMORIES is a Film Movement release.

LAS ACACIAS (2011) 85min
Director: Pablo Giorgelli
Country: Argentina
A road movie with a difference, LAS ACACIAS takes a 900-mile trip from
Asunción, Paraguay to Buenos Aires, with a gruff, taciturn truck driver and the
two illegal immigrants—a young woman, and her newborn daughter—he is
reluctantly transporting. Largely confined to the cramped confines of the truck’s
cab, Giorgelli’s camera observes the miles passing, and the quiet, subtly evolving
interaction of the trio, while borders are crossed (in more than one sense) and
the driver gradually lowers his defenses and finds himself becoming
unexpectedly attached to his passengers.

OSLO, AUGUST 31ST (2011) 96min
Director: Joachim Trier
Country: Norway
Daylight lingers at the end of August in Oslo, but sunlight is not a friend to
Anders, a semi-recovered addict, facing a new life which may not be appealing
without former habits. Joachim Trier's first feature, REPRISE, was a critical
highlight of New Directors/New Films 2007, and while that antic fiction was about
friendship and hope, his second is quite different, bearing traces of Robert
Bresson. Adapted from the same novel as Louis Malle's THE FIRE WITHIN
(1963), this subtle and haunting film follows Anders, as he tries to adjust - making
love, wandering through Oslo, having a job interview, seeing old friends, and
trying to get comfortable with his situation.

PORFIRIO (2011) 101min
Director: Alejandro Landes
Country: Colombia
Paralyzed from the waist down by a stray police bullet, the title character in
Alejandro Landes' remarkable film spends his days selling minutes on his cell
phone when not flirting with his comely neighbor, and secretly plotting his
revenge. Landes worked on the film for five years, creating a tale that joined the
most intimate details of Porfirio's day-to-day life with an astonishing re-creation of
his attempt to hijack an airplane.

TWILIGHT PORTRAIT (2011) 105min
Director: Angelina Nikonova
Country: Russia
TWILIGHT PORTRAIT is a powerhouse collaboration co-written and coproduced by Angelina Nikonova, who directed, and Olga Dihovichnaya, who
stars in this very dark, provocative and constantly surprising debut feature film. In
a modern Russian city where corruption, apathy and class warfare are the norm,
a woman is raped, rather casually by the police. What follows explodes the
conventions of sexual politics—and will certainly have film-goers talking. This
staggering film features great performances and an unvarnished view of life in
the age of Putin.

[Chris Knipp]

film comment selects

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Films and Descriptions for 2012 Film Comment Selects
I'll be seeing and reviewing Alexandr Sokurov's Faust, James Franco's My Own Private River, Hirakazu Koreeda's I Wish, and Mathieu Kasovitz's Rebellion. I also have reviews of Kenneth Lonergan's Margaret, Joshua Marston's The Forgivemess of Blood, and Nanni Moretti's We Have a Pope.

Festival coverage thread is here.

ALL WATCHED OVER BY MACHINES OF LOVING GRACE (2011) 180min
Director: Adam Curtis
Country: U.K.
THE MONKEY IN THE MACHINE AND THE MACHINE IN THE MONKEY
THE USE AND ABUSE OF VEGETATIONAL CONCEPTS
LOVE AND POWER
The BBC essay filmmaker behind THE POWER OF NIGHTMARES (2007) returns with a new three-part work on mankind’s dependency on computer technology. Among the many topics covered are Alan Greenspan’s links to Ayn Rand; what Silicon Valley owes to Rand’s philosophy of “Objectivism”; and how, after the collapse of the Asian miracle economies in the late 1990s, the Chinese Politburo “designed a system to manage America.”
Saturday, February 18 at 1:30PM.

ALMAYER’S FOLLY (La folie Almayer) (2011) 127min
Director: Chantal Akerman
Country: Belgium/France
Taking Joseph Conrad’s first novel about a Dutch fortune seeker trapped in a loveless marriage and stranded at a river trading post in the Malaysian jungle, Chantal Akerman updates the material from the late 1890s to the 1950s, and uses it as a springboard for an examination of the bankruptcy of colonialism through the struggle between a European father and Malaysian mother for possession of their daughter.
Sunday, February 26 at 1:00PM.

ALPS (Alpeis) (2011) 93min
Director: Yorgos Lanthimos
Country: Greece
Another exploration of cryptic and unnatural doings from the director of DOGTOOTH, the film’s title is the name of a secret society consisting of four members: a hospital night nurse, a gym coach, a gymnast, and the group’s leader, a paramedic. The Alps offer a unique service: the recently bereaved can hire them for a few hours a week to act as surrogates for deceased loved ones—by wearing their clothes, adopting their mannerisms and way of speaking, etc.—in order to help them adjust to their loss.
Thursday, March 1 at 9:30PM.

In Memoriam: Ken Russell
ALTERED STATES (1980) 102min
Director: Ken Russell
Country: U.S.
As a tribute to Ken Russell, the late lamented master of freak-out and fantasia, who died last November, Film Comment Selects presents a special screening of his 1980 head-trip Altered States. A fearless scientist (William Hurt) attempts to plumb nothing less than the unborn soul of mankind, using a sensory-deprivation tank and mushrooms. Russell takes us along for the phantasmagorical ride, merging psychedelic special effects, hyper-real dream sequences, and the director’s typically dazzling and blasphemous take on Christian symbolism. Featuring Blair Brown as his smitten girlfriend, and a timely use of The Doors’ “Light My Fire.”
Friday, February 24 at 9:30PM.

DESPAIR (1978) 121min
Director: R.W. Fassbinder
Country: Germany
Based on a novel by Nabokov, scripted by Tom Stoppard and starring Dirk Bogarde, Fassbinder’s only English-language film has an impeccable Art Cinema pedigree. Set in 1930s Berlin, the film follows Hermann Hermann (Bogarde), a Russian émigré and chocolate manufacturer displaying the early signs of incipient mental breakdown, as he begins to concoct a plan to murder a homeless man he is convinced looks like him in order to facilitate his disappearance, thereby evading business problems and Germany’s political unrest.
Thursday, February 23 at 1:30PM and Wednesday, February 29 at 4:30PM.

FACE TO FACE (Ansikte mot ansikte) (1975) 136min
Director: Ingmar Bergman
Country: Sweden
Liv Ullmann is front and center in Bergman’s film about a disturbed psychiatrist who has an affair with a fellow doctor (Erland Josephson) while her husband is attending a conference in the U.S. (with his lover), only to succumb to a nervous breakdown seemingly triggered by haunting memories from her past. FACE TO FACE was originally made as a four-part miniseries for Swedish television, and represents the midpoint in a cycle of psychodramas that began with CRIES AND WHISPERS and concluded with AUTUMN SONATA.
Wednesday, February 22 at 3:30PM, Friday, February 24 at 1:30PM.

FAUST (2011) 135min
Director: Aleksandr Sokurov
Country: Russia/Germany
Winner of the Venice Film Festival’s Golden Lion, this idiosyncratic and playful reinvention of Goethe’s play marks the return of Aleksandr Sokurov after a four-year absence. The film concludes the “Men of Power” series he initiated in 1999 with MOLOCH as a tetralogy per the classical Greek prescription—a group of four dramas, the first three tragic and the last satiric. Accordingly, Sokurov’s FAUST immediately overthrows Goethe by adopting a broadly comic treatment grounded in scatological touches and slapstick and a nonstop barrage of dialogue.
Friday, February 17 at 8:15PM, Tuesday, February 21 at 3:15PM and Tuesday, February 28 at 9:00PM.

THE FORGIVENESS OF BLOOD (2011) 108min
Director: Joshua Marston
Country: U.S./Albania
The long-awaited follow-up to MARIA FULL OF GRACE (2004) takes American indie director Joshua Marston even further afield—to Northern Albania to be exact—but the results are no less gripping. The action centers on a modern-day blood feud in a rural village: high-schooler Nik is confined to his home under effective house arrest when generations of bad blood between his family and another result in his father killing a neighbor over a petty land-access dispute. According to the 15th-century Balkan code known as the Kanun, the rival clan is entitled to retribution—a life for a life—and since their father is on the run, Nik and his younger brother are the next males in line. Marston and co-writer Andamion Murataj won the Silver Bear for Best Screenplay at the 2011 Berlin Film Festival. THE FORGIVENESS OF BLOOD is a Sundance Selects release.
Saturday, February 18 at 7:15PM.
Joshua Marston, cast members Refet Abazi, Tristan Halilaj, Sindi Lacej and co-writer Andamion Murataj will attend and participate in a post-screening Q&A.

HEADHUNTERS (Hodejegerne) (2011) 101min
Director: Morten Tyldum
Country: Norway
A twist-filled, fast-paced thriller about a slick, charming corporate recruitment specialist (Aksel Hennie in a breakout performance) who leads a double life as an art thief—mainly in order to support the standard of living to which his art-dealer trophy wife Diana (Synnøve Macody Lund) has become accustomed. At five foot four, he suffers slightly from a little-man complex, so though he loves his wife, who really only wants to have a child, he’s not averse to a bit on the side and can be sickeningly smug. But he gets much more than he bargained for when he steals a lost Rubens painting from the home of Clas Greve (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) a candidate for a high-powered job Roger is recruiting for and old friend of Diana’s.
Thursday, February 23 at 6:30PM and Friday, February 24 at 4:15PM.

I WISH (Kiseki) (2011) 128min
Director: Hirokazu Kore-eda
Country: Japan
Japan’s answer to Truffaut, Hirokazu Kore-eda, revisits the terrain of childhood with a truly sweet, low-key film. Living hundreds of miles apart since their parents’ separation, plucky 12-year-old Koichi (Koki Maeda) and his younger brother Ryunosuke (Ohshiro Maeda) hatch a long-distance plan to reunite their family: if they rendezvous at the equidistant point at precisely the moment that north-and south-bound bullet trains pass each other on the line that links their towns, they will be granted a wish.
Sunday, February 19 at 6:15PM and Monday, February 20 at 8:45PM.

LAND PASSION WAR OF THE DEAD CHRIST WORLDS (2012) 127min
Director: Jim Hoberman
Country: U.S.
Based on 25 years of stunt projections and class presentations at NYU and Cooper Union, Jim Hoberman explores the movi-verse, and relives the horror of the Bush years—Katrina, Iraq, 9/11, all allegorized and superimposed! Now, hysteria reigns, synchronicity rules, and consciousness gets crazy mixed-up. It’s Doomsday USA, starring Asia Argento, Tom Cruise, Dakota Fanning, Dennis Hopper, and the mind of Mel “Mad Max” Gibson.
Saturday, February 18 at 10:00PM.
Jim Hoberman will attend and participate in a post-screening Q&A.

LE SAUVAGE (1975) 107min
Director: Jean-Paul Rappeneau
Country: France/Italy
Catherine Deneuve and Yves Montand co-star in this unlikely runaway-paced screwball farce, set in Venezuela. Deneuve gives a game performance as Nelly, a runaway mafia bride and scam artist who barges into the hotel room of Martin (Montand), a self-sufficient“sauvage”who’s in Caracas to pick up supplies before returning to the seclusion of his desert-island retreat. Pursued by both her berserk, ranting fiancé Vittorio (Luigi Vannucchi), and an ex-lover (Tony Roberts) who’s fallen victim to one of her scams, she takes advantage of Martin at every turn while he gives as good as he gets.
Tuesday, February 21 at 9:00PM.

In Memoriam: Bingham Ray
LIFE IS SWEET (1990) 103min
Director: Mike Leigh
Country: U.K.
A rare chance to see Mike Leigh’s breakthrough film in the U.S., unavailable here on DVD. A comic yet gently melancholic story with food and symmetry on its mind and a cast of Leigh all-stars, LIFE IS SWEET twins the humble efforts of good-natured professional chef Andy (Jim Broadbent) to open his own mobile snack bar, sold to him by his drunken friend Patsy (Stephen Rea), with the disastrous nouvelle-cuisine pretensions of the grandiose Aubrey (Timothy Spall), who opens his own bistro, “Regret Rien,” where Andy’s cheerful wife Wendy (Alison Steadman) goes to work as a waitress. LIFE IS SWEET is one of Leigh’s funniest and most tender films, and one of his most optimistic about family ties. Sadly, life is bittersweet in the case of this screening, which pays tribute to the late Bingham Ray, a Mike Leigh character if ever there was one, and the man responsible for this film seeing the light of day in the U.S. as the first release of his fledgling indie distribution company October Films.
Monday, February 20 at 6:30PM.

MAN AT SEA (2011) 92min
Director: Constantine Giannaris
Country: Greece
MAN AT SEA is a visually gorgeous film telling the tale of the transnational now in which characters rarely speak in their native tongues and everybody’s an alien in one way or another. An ocean tanker picks up a boatload of refugees in the Mediterranean, much to the displeasure of the crews’ employers, only to find itself unable to locate a country willing to take them in. Alex (Antonis Karistinos), the ship’s captain, meets with hostility wherever he calls, and meanwhile his crew are becoming increasingly discontented.
Wednesday, February 29 at 7:00PM and Thursday, March 1 at 1:00PM.

MARGARET (2011) 150min
Director: Kenneth Lonergan
Country: U.S.
The story of self-involved teenager Lisa’s emotional turmoil after witnessing (and perhaps being in some way responsible for) the death of a pedestrian hit by a bus, MARGARET was shot in 2007, and then spent three long years in the editing room as writer-director Kenneth Lonergan battled with producer Scott Rudin and the film’s eventual distributor, Fox Searchlight, over its running time (at one point there was rumored to be a four-hour cut). MARGARET, whose title is derived from the poem “Spring and Fall: To a young child” by Gerard Manley Hopkins, is a film of risk-taking ambition that deserves its due as a fascinating and often wrenching drama of moral crisis in post-9/11 New York. The film stars Anna Paquin, Matt Damon, Matthew Broderick, Mark Ruffalo, and Jeannie Berlin.
Saturday, February 25 at 7:15PM
Kenneth Lonergan and cast members will attend and participate in a post-screening Q&A.

MORTEM (2010) 94min
Director: Eric Atlan
Country: France
Describing itself as “a metaphysical thriller,” Eric Atlan’s crepuscular trance film begins with its protagonist, Jena (Panchenko Daria), hurtling through the countryside on a motorcycle. As night falls, a mysterious doppelgänger (Diana Rudychenko) begins to shadow her, but it’s only after Jena checks into the near-deserted hotel and finds herself unable to leave her room that this second, equally ravishing woman becomes visible to her. In the unearthly, at times erotic psychodrama that plays out between the two women (one blonde, one brunette) Jena defies her own soul as she hovers at the threshold of life and death.
Saturday, February 18 at 5:00PM and Tuesday, February 21 at 1:15PM.
Eric Atlan will attend and participate in a post-screening Q&A.

MY CRASY LIFE(1992) 95min
Director: Jean-Pierre Gorin
Country: UK/U.S.
Winner of a special jury prize at the 1992 Sundance Film Festival, the concluding chapter in Gorin’s SoCal trilogy finds the filmmaker intrepidly venturing into the world of the West Side Sons of Samoa, a Long Beach street gang with its own deeply ingrained set of codes and rituals. Not content to merely observe, however, Gorin invites his subjects to become full-fledged collaborators in the filmmaking process, interjecting scripted scenes and monologues (sometimes obviously, often not) that blur the line between documentary and fiction, only to arrive at what feels like poetic truth.
Sunday, February 26 at 3:30PM.

MY OWN PRIVATE RIVER (2011) 102min
Directors: James Franco & Gus Van Sant
Country: U.S.
Music by Michael Stipe
Actor/director James Franco edited together a new version of Gus Van Sant’s MY OWN PRIVATE IDAHO combining footage from the original film and its unused residue. As Franco put it in a piece he wrote for The Paris Review: “Many filmmakers would consider the discarded material worthless, but sometimes—as when they feature an actor like River Phoenix in a film like MY OWN PRIVATE IDAHO, the best of his generation giving his best performance—every scrap is gold. It was overwhelming to be able to cut the raw material of my favorite film, a film that had moved me, that had helped shape me as a teenager.” The end result, MY OWN PRIVATE RIVER, is a dreamlike portrait of both the actor and the character he incarnates.
Sunday, February 19 at 9:00PM.
James Franco will attend and participate in a post-screening Q&A.

PINK FLOYD LIVE AT POMPEII (1971) 85min
Director: Adrian Maben
Country: France/Belgium/West Germany
In October 1971, Pink Floyd gave a spectacular concert to an audience of thousands of ghosts in the volcanically ravaged ruins of Pompeii. Alone in a stone amphitheater (save for the production crew), the prog gods crank out “Echoes,” “Saucerful of Secrets,” “Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun,” and more, captured with slowly circling cameras, totemic framing, and even the occasional split screen. Featuring interview snippets covering the recording of The Dark Side of the Moon, the state of the music industry, and oysters.
Friday, February 17 at 11:00PM.

POTO AND CABENGO (1980) 77min
Director: Jean-Pierre Gorin
Country: U.S./West Germany
Following his work with Jean-Luc Godard as Dziga Vertov Group, director Jean- Pierre Gorin moved to San Diego, where he fell deeply under the influence of Manny Farber and embarked on a sporadic but remarkable solo film career. Inspired by a news item about twin girls, Grace and Virginia Kennedy, believed to be communicating in a language of their own invention, Gorin’s utterly beguiling documentary feature POTO AND CABENGO marked the first in an informal Gorin trilogy on private, closed communities nestled amidst the placid landscape of Southern California.
Sunday, February 26 at 8:15PM

REBELLION (L’ordre et la morale ) (2011) 136min
Director: Mathieu Kassovitz
Country: France
A compelling and tightly directed thriller about a team of elite counterterrorism hostage negotiators who attempt to resolve a standoff between political separatists and the French military in the Pacific island of New Caledonia, REBELLION is based on a controversial real-life incident in 1988. Beginning in the aftermath of a brutal jungle firefight, the film backtracks to the dispatching of the National Gendarmerie Intervention Group team under the leadership of Capt. Philippe Legorjus, effectively played by director/star Mathieu Kassovitz. Arriving on the island, Legorjus is alarmed to find that in response to the killing of three gendarmes and the kidnapping of 27 hostages by Kanak rebels, a full-scale military response is already being prepared. Soon faced with political interference due to France’s impending General Election, and undermined by the French military command, Legorjus races against time to avert further violence by making contact and negotiating with the separatists.
Thursday, February 23 at 8:45PM and Wednesday, February 29 at 1:45PM.

ROLE MODELS (2008) 99min
Director: David Wain
Country: U.S.
Wain’s inspired third feature turns the whole pious, “be yourself” genre deservedly on its ear with its cheerfully irreverent tale of two disillusioned energy-drink salesmen (Paul Rudd and Seann William Scott) who run afoul of the law and get sentenced to community service in a Big Brothers–esque youth mentoring program (run by a hyper-intense ex-addict played brilliantly by Jane Lynch). Barely able to manage their own stuck-in-reverse lives, the pair suddenly find themselves charged with shaping the future of a foul-mouthed fifth grader (scene-stealing Bobb’e J. Thompson) and a shy teenager (Christopher Mintz-Plasse aka McLovin) obsessed with a medieval role-playing game called LAIRE. But who’s really mentoring who?
Wednesday, February 22 at 8:45PM.

ROUTINE PLEASURES (1986) 81min
Director: Jean-Pierre Gorin
Country: West Germany/France/UK
Gorin’s unclassifiable second American feature begins as an affectionate group portrait of devoted model-train hobbyists in the San Diego suburb of Pacific Beach (filmed in lustrous black and white), detours through the painting studio of artist-critic Manny Farber (at work on two of his bustling, crowded canvases), and pauses for ruminations on Thelonius Monk, William Wellman, and Howard Hawks—yet somehow, wonderfully, feels all of a piece. The subjects are all miniaturists of a sort, and so too is Gorin, treating us here to another lyrical, inimitable vision of his shoebox America.
Sunday, February 26 at 6:30PM.

SILENT HOUSE (2011) 86min
Directors: Chris Kentis and Laura Lau
In this perfectly executed minimalist thriller from the directors of 2003’s vérité shark-attack quickie OPEN WATER,Elizabeth Olsen finds herself trapped inside the dilapidated cabin her family is readying for sale. With no contact to the outside world, and no way out, panic turns to terror as events become increasingly ominous in and around the house. Based on Uruguayan director Gustavo Hernández’s 2010 LA CASA MUDA, SILENT HOUSE uses meticulous camera choreography to take the audience on a breathless, real-time journey, experienced in a single uninterrupted shot. SILENT HOUSE is an Open Road Films release.
Thursday, February 23 at 4:00PM and Saturday, February 25 at 10:45PM.

SLEEPWALK (1986) 78min
Director: Sara Driver
Country: U.S.
A beguiling and enigmatic nocturnal adventure set in New York’s no-man’s land, at the intersection of SoHo, Chinatown, and Tribeca, Sara Driver’s first feature begins in mundane daily life but imperceptibly drifts into the dreamlike realm of the trance film. Single mother Nicole (Suzanne Fletcher), a typesetter who happens to speak fluent Mandarin, is hired by mysterious mystic teacher Dr. Gou (Stephen Chen) to translate an equally mysterious manuscript. Almost immediately unexplained, vaguely portentous events and encounters proliferate around Nicole, to increasingly spooky effect—and this sense of the city as a ghostly, emptied-out multicultural space containing infinite potential for the strange and the happenstance not only shapes the film but is effectively its subject. The film also includes appearances by Ann Magnuson, Tony Todd, and Steve Buscemi.
Wednesday, February 29 at 9:00PM.
Sara Driver will attend and participate in a post-screening Q&A.

SNOWTOWN (2011) 119min
Director: Justin Kurzel
Country: Australia
Justin Kurzel’s stark, enormously accomplished debut feature recounts the horrifying crimes discovered in Snowtown, Australia in 1999, where police found dismembered bodies rotting in barrels. In Adelaide’s poor, desolate northern suburbs, single mother Elizabeth Harvey (Louise Harris) is raising her teenage son Jamie (Lucas Pittaway) and his two younger brothers. After her latest boyfriend displays pedophilic tendencies, she takes up with a new man, John Bunting (Daniel Henshall), hoping for security but unknowingly welcoming an even more vicious predator into her home. SNOWTOWN is an IFC Midnight release.
Friday, February 17 at 1:30PM and Sunday, February 19 at 1:30PM.

A STOKER (Kochegar) (2010) 83min
Director: Alexei Balabanov
Country: Russia
At the center of Balabanov’s crime drama is an elderly, not-all-there Afghan war veteran known to his acquaintances as “the major.” He tends the boiler in the miserable basement of a St. Petersburg building to which corrupt cops and mobsters alike bring their murder victims for him to cremate—without question. Devoting his spare time to writing an epic novel about a historical outlaw, the Major’s only personal tie is to his self-involved daughter Sasha, who is engaged to a low-level mobster—who’s cheating on her with his boss’s daughter, who also happens to be Sasha’s fur-store co-worker. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out where this is all heading…
Saturday, February 25 at 5:30PM.

TARGET (Mishen) (2010) 158min
Director: Alexander Zeldovich
Country: Russia
Set in the year 2020 in a world where China is now the planet’s dominant country and Russia is its gateway to Europe, a member of the Russian oligarchy and his wife live lives of privilege, but obsess about staying young and healthy. Together with her brother, a handsome television game show host, and an equestrian champion, they fly from Moscow to Central Asia, and arrive at a wilderness outpost in search of an abandoned astrophysics facility in the back of beyond where mysterious cosmic radiation endows those exposed to it with eternal youth. Rejuvenated, the group returns to their lives, but as each character’s destiny unfolds, it would seem that eternal life has its downside.
Friday, February 24 at 6:30PM and Thursday, March 1 at 3:00PM.

TRANSFER (2010) 93min
Director: Damir Lukacevic
Country: Germany
TRANSFER gives new meaning to the concept of timesharing if you substitute living bodies for apartments. Elderly and wealthy white Germans engage the services of the Menzana Corporation, while the host bodies into which their personalities are downloaded are those of young African refugees who willingly lend out their corporeal residences for 20 hours a day in the knowledge that their families back home are being handsomely compensated in exchange. Therefore, when Anna and Hermann Goldbeck, an elderly but still devoted couple, opt to submit to the transfer procedure for a trial period due to Anna’s terminal illness, they find themselves inhabiting the gorgeous, perfect bodies of Apolain and Sarah—whose personalities remain intact but offline until the wee hours, when they are granted a daily four-hour window to return to consciousness.
Friday, February 17 at 4:00PM, Monday, February 20 at 4:15PM, and Wednesday, February 22 at 1:30PM.

WANDERLUST (2012) 98min
Director: David Wain
Country: U.S.
Meet George (Paul Rudd) and Linda (Jennifer Aniston), a typically overextended, stressed-out Manhattan couple. When George is downsized out of his job, they find themselves with only one option: to move in with George’s obnoxious brother (Ken Marino) in Atlanta. But en route, they stumble upon Elysium, an idyllic community (emphasis on “commune”) populated by a cast of eccentric characters who look at life through a different prism. Money? It can’t buy happiness. Careers? Who needs them? Clothes? Only if you want them. Is Elysium the fresh start George and Linda need? Or will the change of perspective cause more problems than it solves? The film also includes Alan Alda, Justin Theroux, Ray Liotta, and Malin Akerman.
Wednesday, February 22 at 6:15PM.
David Wain, Paul Rudd and Kerri Kenney will attend and participate in a post-screening Q&A.

WE HAVE A POPE (Habemus Papam) (2011) 104min
Director: Nanni Moretti
Country: Italy/France
Screened in competition at the Cannes Film Festival, Nanni Moretti’s new comedy, stars Michel Piccoli as a newly elected pontiff who gets cold feet. Because strict Vatican rules demand that his identity remain secret until the public proclamation, doubt-ridden Cardinal Melville (Piccoli) is confined to the Vatican’s inner sanctum. Enter Moretti as a psychoanalyst tasked with coaxing the Catholic-in-Chief back into action, in the actor-filmmaker’s latest look at inadequacy, narcissism, and the quandary of daily existence. WE HAVE A POPE is a Sundance Selects release.
Friday, February 17 at 6:00PM and Monday, February 20 at 2:00PM.

WHORES’ GLORY (2011) 119min
Director: Michael Glawogger
Country: Austria/Germany
Its provocative and ambiguous title aside, WHORES’ GLORY is an un-sensational, non-exploitative, matter-of-fact study of the world’s oldest profession. That said, it’s no accident that Michael Glawogger’s triptych forgoes examination of the mundane realities of sex work in the West to focus on prostitution in the developing world, traveling from Thailand to Bangladesh to Mexico.
Sunday, February 19 at 3:50PM.


Public S

[Chris Knipp]

Alexandr Sokurov: FAUST (2011)--FCS

Sokurov's strange hyperverbal reinterpretation of the Faust legend,which won the Golden Lion at Venice, is notable for extraordinary visuals. Jay Weissberg of Variety thinks here "the influence of Flemish and Dutch painting on Sokurov's work has never been clearer. . . with its deep debt to the witchcraft paintings of artists such as David Teniers and Herri met de Bles," but what I see is a striking evocation of the look of 19th-century photography. In any case the mise-en-scène and various aspects of the cinematography, perhaps incongrously the work of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and Amélie dp Bruno Delbonnel, are what make this very strange and off-putting film worth our attention.

Film Comment Selects. Screening times (all FCS events at the Walter Reade Theater of Lincoln Center):

Friday, February 17 at 8:15PM, Tuesday, February 21 at 3:15PM and Tuesday, February 28 at 9:00PM

[Chris Knipp]

James Franco: MY OWN PRIVATE RIVER (2012)--FCS

James Franco knew Gus Van Sant after working on Milk. He got to look at some of the 25 hours of film footage connected with My Own Private Idaho the director had still kept in Portland and Van Sant gave him permission to do his own edit of this material. He got funding from Gucci to digitalize the film, and Gagasian Gallery in LA agreed to present his edit as an installation, which was reproduced in the gallery across from the Walter Reade Theater where Film Comment Selects is presented. I watched the installation. I could not attend the big screen presentation and Franco's Q&A, but I saw the material in the installation and you can read the Q&A on Film Comment's blog. The result may be a sketch of another film Van Sant might have made -- Franco has said he was playing Gus when he did his edit -- but also a fascinating picture of a remarkable actor at work improvising and doing alternate takes -- "the best of his generation giving his best performance."

[Johann]

Awesome stuff Chris.
Keep it coming.
These are nice "SELECTS"- I'd see any of them.

Altered States on the big screen would be awesome.

[Chris Knipp]

Thanks, Johann. There's so much new material I am not likely to see any of the revival items due to schedule conflicts, but stay tuned. The Rendez-Vous screenings are the main thing now, then New Directors/New Films, but I will be watching Kassovitz's Rebellion from FCS.

[Chris Knipp]

The 41st New Directors/New Films features selections include:

THE AMBASSADOR (Ambassadøren) (2011) 94min
Directed by Mads Brügger
Country: Denmark
The consummate agent-provocateur--his method fittingly described as “Graham
Greene meets Borat”--Brügger (THE RED CHAPEL, NDNF 2010) shocks and
mightily entertains by performing an artistic intervention in reality using roleplaying and hidden cameras to expose an awful truth about life in central Africa.

BREATHING (Atmen) (2011) 90min
Director: Karl Markovics
Country: Austria
The remarkably assured directorial debut from veteran Austrian actor Karl
Markovics (THE COUNTERFEITERS) creates a slipstream between the
perilousness of youth and the inevitability of death as it tells the story of an
inmate at a juvenile detention center whose last hope of parole rests on his ability
to hold down a job...as a morgue assistant. A Kino Lorber release.

CRULIC: THE PATH TO BEYOND (2011) 73min
Director: Anca Damian
Country: Romania
Anca Damian’s documentary utilizes hand drawn, cutout and collage animation
techniques, combined with some very dark humor to create a striking
documentary about a young Romanian’s hunger strike in a Polish jail.

DONOMA (2011) 133min
Directed by Djinn Carrénard
Country: France
Rumored to have been shot for about $200, DONOMA announces the arrival of
an intriguing new talent on the French scene, Haitian-born, Paris based Djinn
Carrénard. Devised, shot (often guerrilla-style) and edited over a period of years,
the film is a choral piece that chronicles the romantic destinies of three women,
offering a fresh, funny portrait of an emerging French generation.

FEAR AND DESIRE (1953) 72min
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Country: USA
Directed, photographed, and edited by the talented and ambitious 24-year-old
Kubrick, FEAR AND DESIRE was written by his high school classmate, Howard
Sackler, who would go on to win the Pulitzer Prize in playwriting. Some Kubrick
scholars see this wartime drama of five soldiers behind enemy lines and their
encounter with a native woman as a dry run for PATHS OF GLORY; others see it
as the original to the second half of FULL METAL JACKET. A Kino Lorber
release.

5 BROKEN CAMERAS (2011) 90min
Directors: Emad Burnat and Guy Davidi
Countries: Palestine/Israel/France
Emad Burnat’s and Guy Davidi’s documentary began five years ago in the
Palestinian town of Bil’in when Burnat bought a camera to record the birth of his
son Gibreel. Gibreel’s arrival, however, coincided with a period of great unrest in
the area, which is witnessed by five video cameras, each subsequently damaged
by bullets or rocks. A Kino Lorber release.

FOUND MEMORIES (Historias Que So Existem Quando Lembradas) (2011)
98min
Director: Julia Murat
Country: Brazil
The original title, which translates as "stories that only exist when remembered,"
beautifully expresses the theme and core sentiment of Julia Murat's poetic
rendering of the fictive town of Jotuomba. A magical confluence of generations
and cultures is occasioned by the visit of Rita, a young photographer, to this
place where time has seemingly stood still and life is rooted in the fixed roles of
tradition soon to be rendered obsolete. A Film Movement release.

GENERATION P (2011) 116min
Director: Victor Ginzburg
Country: Russia
Ginzburg’s GENERATION P could be described as a metaphysical Mad Men
from the go-go 1990s - a wonderland of images and ideas that emerged from the
rebirth of a nation as a marketer’s paradise. The film offers a “view” of postCommunist Russia as the arrival of democracy and Pepsi-Cola brought the
advance of capitalism with all of its mechanisms and fuzzy messages.

GIMME THE LOOT (2012) 81min
Director: Adam Leon
Country: USA
In his feature film debut, Adam Leon has created a raucous, car-less road trip
that is an homage to street-smart kids and New York City. Malcolm and Sofia,
two determined teens from the Bronx, are the ultimate graffiti writers. When their
latest masterpiece is wiped out by a rival gang, they must hustle, steal and
scheme to get spectacular revenge and become the biggest graffiti writers in the
city.

GOODBYE (Bé omid é didar) (2011) 104min
Director: Mohammad Rasoulof.
Country: Iran
In his latest film, celebrated Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof creates a
dramatic and tense tale set in Tehran, where a young woman is desperately
attempting to acquire a visa to leave the country. The beautifully shot film uses
the confinement of space to cinematically express claustrophobia, its precise
framing catching every subtle expression on the face of the astonishing Leyla
Zareh, who plays the disbarred human rights lawyer, Noora, looking for a way
out.

HEMEL (2012) 80min
Director: Sacha Polak
Country: The Netherlands/Spain
Sacha Polak’s HEMEL features Hannah Hoekstra as a strong-willed,
complicated, and vulnerable heroine who longs (perhaps too much) to connect
with her elusive father and ultimately find herself. The film is a powerful
investigation of a sexually-empowered woman and her search for physical and
intellectual intimacy.

HOW TO SURVIVE A PLAGUE (2012) 109min
Director: David France
Country: USA
David France’s immersive moving-image document chronicling the rise of AIDS
activism shows a movement though the lenses of those who captured it
firsthand. Desperate people leveraged the skills they had—some wrote, some lobbied, many marched, and all mobilized—to flight a plague that vast swaths of
society saw as just punishment for immoral actions. A Sundance Selects release.

HUAN HUAN (2011) 90min
Director: Song Chuan
Country: China
Song Chuan’s first feature captures the dreams and desires, disappointments
and regrets, of a life not fully lived via the title character. In a rural Chinese
village, a young woman who is the local doctor’s mistress struggles against her
family, government bureaucracy and social mores to move away and create a life
for herself.

IT LOOKS PRETTY FROM A DISTANCE (Z daleka widok jest piekny) (2011)
77min
Directors: Anka and Wilhelm Sasnal
Country: Poland
Anka and Wilhelm Sasnal’s film is set in a Polish village effectively cut off from
civilization, where rough and impassive Pawel makes a living scavenging for
scrap metal. There’s bad blood between him and the “community” (a more
spiteful collection of individuals would be hard to imagine), and when he goes
AWOL his neighbors loot and vandalize his home. What if he returns? A
brooding, almost wordless drama vision of a world in an advanced state of
entropy.

LAS ACACIAS (2011) 85min
Director: Pablo Giorgelli
Country: Argentina
One of the discoveries of the 2011 Cannes Critics Week, Pablo Giogelli’s road
movie with a difference takes a 900-mile trip from Asunción in Paraguay to
Buenos Aires in the company of Rubén, a gruff, taciturn truck driver and the two
illegal immigrants—a young woman, and her new-born daughter—he is
reluctantly transporting.

THE MINISTER (L’exercice de l’État) (2011) 115min
Director: Pierre Schöller
Country: France
Pierre Schöller’s political thriller focuses on a cabinet minister (Olivier Gourmet)
in charge of national transportation who believes himself to be a man of the
people. He wants both to be and do good, but in order to get anything done he
must, given the exigencies of compromise, cajole, bend and even betray.

NEIGHBORING SOUNDS (O som ao redor) (2012) 124min
Director: Kleber Mendonça Filho
Country: Brazil
A thrilling debut from a breakout talent, Kleber Mendonça Filho’s NEIGHBORING
SOUNDS delves into the lives of a group of prosperous middle-class families residing on a quiet street, close to a low-income neighborhood. A private security firm hired to police the street becomes the catalyst for an exploration of the
neighbors’ discontents and anxieties, which are exacerbated by a palpable sense
of unease over their society’s troubled past and present inequities.

NOW, FORAGER (2012) 93min
Directors: Jason Cortlund and Julia Halperin
Countries: USA/Poland
A quiet tale about the search for integrity and the perfect mushroom, Jason
Cortlund’s and Julia Halperin’s NOW, FORAGER follows Lucien and Regina, an
urban couple living off the land foraging for fungi in upstate New York with a
dream of following the seasonal emergence of exotic varieties across the
country. That is, until Regina’s decision to take a job in the kitchen of a hip
restaurant offers a more solid opportunity, even as it betrays Lucien’s off-the-grid
ethos.

OMAR KILLED ME (Omar m’a tuer) (2011) 85min
Director: Roschdy Zem
Country: France
Actor-turned-director Roschdy Zem’s OMAR KILLED ME tells a story of racism,
politics, and injustice with the clarity of a documentary and the pacing of a thriller.
When a rich widow was murdered in the south of France 20 years ago, her
Moroccan gardener was convicted and jailed with no evidence; it took a
committed journalist to try to unravel the rush to judgment that laid bare the
racism that was hidden in the French justice system.

OSLO, AUGUST 31ST (2011) 96min
Director: Joachim Trier
Country: Norway
Daylight lingers at the end of August in Oslo, but sunlight is not a friend to
Anders, a semi-recovered addict, facing a new life, which may not be appealing
without former habits. Adapted from the same novel as Louis Malle's THE FIRE
WITHIN (1963), Joachim Trier’s OSLO, AUGUST 31 ST follows Anders as he tries
to adjust - making love, wandering through Oslo, having a job interview, seeing
old friends, and trying to get comfortable with his situation. A Strand Releasing
Film.

AN OVERSIMPLIFICATION OF HER BEAUTY (2011) 95min
Directed by Terence Nance
Country: USA
Frank, funny, and bracingly contemporary, visual artist Terence Nance gleefully
bends the cinematic rules for his personal meditation on love in the new
millennium with his film, AN OVERSIMPLIFICATION OF BEAUTY. Passages of
live action sequences and direct-to-camera interviews are accented with a wide
variety of animation styles as Nance analyzes his amorous history as well as his
current circumstances.

PORFIRIO (2011) 101min
Director: Alejandro Landes
Country: Colombia
Paralyzed from the waist down by a stray police bullet, the title character in
Alejandro Landes' remarkable film spends his days selling minutes on his cell
phone when not flirting with his comely neighbor, and secretly plotting his
revenge. Landes worked on the film for five years, creating a tale that joined the
most intimate details of Porfirio's day-to-day life with an astonishing re-creation of
his attempt to hijack an airplane.

THE RABBI’S CAT (Le chat du rabbin) (2011) 89min
Director: Antoine Delesvaux
Countries: France/Austria
Adapted from the graphic novels by Joanne Sfar, THE RABBI’S CAT is a vivid,
lively, and imaginative animated film co-directed by Sfar and Antoine Delesvaux .
Set in 1920’s Algiers, a widower rabbi lives with his voluptuous and dutiful
daughter and their pesky cat who swallows a parakeet and begins to speak,
driving everyone crazy and moving the plot ahead by insisting on having a barmitzvah.

THE RAID (2011) 100min
Director: Gareth Huw Evans
Countries: Indonesia/USA
In Gareth Huw Evans’ sensational thriller, THE RAID, a police SWAT team
storms a housing project ruled by gangsters and inhabited by machete-wielding
lowlifes—but the mission has been leaked, the tables are turned, and a dwindling
band of elite fighters find themselves massively outnumbered in a lethal game of
cat and mouse. What ensues is a relentless and savage succession of closequarters shoot-outs and punishing martial-arts combat sequences, each jawdropping smackdown unbelievably topping the previous one. This film is wild! A
Sony Pictures Classics release.

ROMANCE JOE (Ro-maen-seu Jo ) (2011) 115min
Director: Lee Kwang-Kuk
Country: South Korea
In his playful first feature, Lee Kwang-Kuk expertly weaves several narrative
strands into an elegant web and a meditation on storytelling. A teasing and
pleasing portrait of a filmmaker in search of a story to tell, ROMANCE JOE
begins as a young, self-possessed barmaid in a remote inn recalls the time she
met the title character.

TEDDY BEAR (2012) 92min
Director: Mads Matthiesen
Country: Denmark
Mads Matthiesen's character-based and understated comedy, TEDDY BEAR
tells the story of a gentle giant of a body builder who self sculpts his muscles by
day and lives quietly at home with his mom at night. But at 38, he really wants a
proper girlfriend, and despite his mother's resistance (she is a master of
emotional manipulation) and his own profound awkwardness, he draws up the
courage to find one--even if he has to leave Denmark to do so.

TWILIGHT PORTRAIT (2011) 105min
Director: Angelina Nikonova
Country: Russia
TWILIGHT PORTRAIT is a powerhouse collaboration co-written and coproduced by Angelina Nikonova, who directed, and Olga Dihovichnaya, who
stars in this very dark, provocative and constantly surprising debut feature film. In
a modern Russian city where corruption, apathy and class warfare are the norm,
a woman is raped, rather casually, by the police. What follows explodes the
conventions of sexual politics—and will certainly have filmgoers talking.

WHERE DO WE GO NOW? (2010) 100min
Director: Nadine Labaki
Countries: France/Lebanon/Italy/Egypt
Labaki’s film focuses on a group of women of different religions in a remote
Lebanese village that band together and invent schemes to prevent their men
from killing each other in the intractable religious conflict that surrounds their
community. This entertaining and unlikely near-musical tears down stereotypes
of women in the Middle East and uses humor to explore serious subjects, with
one eye toward Aristophanes’ Lysistrata and the other toward Bollywood. A Sony
Pictures Classics Release.

The 41st New Directors/New Films shorts selections include:

PROGRAM 1 (In alphabetical order) 84min
CHICA XX MUJER (2011) 12min
Director: Isabell Šuba
Countries: Germany/France
In a country with the highest percentage of cosmetic surgery and beauty queens
per capita, a Venezualian girl prepares to be celebrated like a princess on her
quinceañera.
THE CHILDREN OF THE NIGHT (Les enfants de la nuit) (2011) 26min
Director: Caroline Deruas
Country: France
Girl meets boy, the oldest story in the book: but it’s France in 1944, and he’s
German.
GIONGO (2011) 8min
Director: Colin Elliott
Country: France
What did Shakespeare know of love? How many words are there in Japanese for
rain? Can anyone really dance the Mashed Potato?
MEANING OF ROBOTS (2011) 4min
Director: Matt Lenski
Country: USA
"I’ve been working on this robot movie… and over the years it developed into a
sex movie." Seriously.
THE ROOM (Soba) (2011) 5min
Director: Ivana Jurić
Country: Croatia
Stop motion animation explores sensuality and sex through the eyes of a doll.
STREET VENDOR CINEMA (Cine camelô) (2011) 16min
Director: Clarissa Knoll
Country: Brazil
When a filmmaker and his team set up a shop that makes and sells short films on
demand, wild fantasies come to life in the middle of a bustling marketplace.
SUMMIT (2011) 13min
Director: Medeni Griffiths
Countries: UK/USA
A chance encounter on a mountain road can lead to friendship and
understanding or mistrust and betrayal.

PROGRAM 2 (In alphabetical order) 96min
THE END (2011) 16min
Director: Didier Barcelo
Country: France
A respected actress’ work gets refurbished.
OH SORROW (Ay pena) (2011) 20min
Director: Elisa Cepedal
Country: Spain
When you lose your last connection to the place you once called home, what’s to
keep you there?
THE PLAIN (A chjána) (2011) 21min
Director: Jonas Carpignano
Countries: Italy/USA
Based on real events in Italy, an African immigrant discovers an unexpected cost
to his activism.
REVOLUTION REYKJAVIK (2011) 20min
Director: Isold Uggadottir
Country: Iceland
As Iceland sinks into economic meltdown, 58-year-old Gudfinna tries, against all
odds, not to do the same.
ROLLING ON THE FLOOR LAUGHING (2011) 19min
Director: Russell Harbaugh
Country: USA
Two sons become over-protective with their mother at a dinner to celebrate her
birthday.

[Chris Knipp]

Hirakazu Koreeda: I WISH (2011)--FCS

In what may seem an antidote to Koreeda's powerful and very sad NOBODY KNOWS, he depicts two charming siblings separated by their parents' lack of unanimity. The result may seem more mainstream and conventional but is far from the saccharine and predictable film an ordinary director would have made with this material about boys who use the coming together of two new bullet trains to make a wish.

[Chris Knipp]

Feb. 28, 2012.
The press screening schedule was sent out yesterday:

Monday, March 5
10:00AM – 11:40AM WHERE DO WE GO NOW? (100 min) – MOMA
12PM – 1:40PM THE RAID: REDEMPTION (100 min) – MOMA

Tuesday, March 6
10:00AM – 11:44AM GOODBYE (104 min) – MOMA
12PM – 1:35PM AN OVERSIMPLIFICATION OF HER BEAUTY (90 min) – MOMA

Wednesday, March 7
10:00AM – 11:25AM OMAR KILLED ME (85 min) – MOMA
11:45AM – 1:06PM GIMME THE LOOT (81 min) – MOMA

Thursday, March 8
10:00AM – 11:13AM CRULIC (73 min) – MOMA
11:30AM – 12:50PM HEMEL (80 min) – MOMA
1:15PM – 3:10PM THE MINISTER (115 min) – MOMA

Friday, March 9
10:00AM – 11:25AM LAS ACACIAS (85 min) – MOMA
11:45AM – 1:40PM ROMANCE JOE (115 min) – MOMA

Monday, March 12
10:00AM – 11:29AM THE RABBI’S CAT (89 min) – WRT
11:45AM – 1:49PM NEIGHBORING SOUNDS (124 min) – WRT
2:30PM – 4:19PM HOW TO SURVIVE A PLAGUE (109 min)– WRT

Tuesday, March 13
10:00AM – 11:38AM FOUND MEMORIES (98 min) – WRT
12PM – 1:30PM 5 BROKEN CAMERAS (90 min) – WRT 1:45PM – 3:18PM NOW, FORAGER (93 min) – WRT
3:45PM – 5:09PM SHORTS PROGRAM #1 (84 min) – WRT

Wednesday, March 14
10:00Am – 11:30AM HUAN HUAN (90 min) – WRT
11:45AM – 1:21PM OSLO, AUGUST 31st(96 min) – WRT

Thursday, March 15
10:00AM – 11:30AM BREATHING (90 min) – WRT
11:45AM – 1:02PM IT LOOKS PRETTY FROM A DISTANCE (77 min) – WRT

Friday, March 16
10:00AM – 11:32AM TEDDY BEAR (92 min) – WRT
11:45AM – 12:57PM FEAR AND DESIRE (72 min) – WRT

Monday, March 19
10:00AM – 11:56AM GENERATION P (112 min) – MOMA
12:15PM – 2:28PM DONOMA (135 min) – MOMA

Tuesday, March 20
10AM – 11:45AM TWILIGHT PORTRAIT (105 min) – MOMA
12PM – 1:34PM THE AMBASSADOR (93 min) – MOMA

Wednesday, March 21
10AM – 11:41AM PORFIRIO (106 min) – MOMA
12PM – 1:36PM SHORTS PROGRAM #2 (96 min) – MOMA

[Chris Knipp]

Mathieu Kassovitz: REBELLION--FCS (2011)

A smart historical action film about the revolt and hostage taking in the French territory of New Caledonia and its brutal repression in 1988. The narrator was prevented from doing his job as head negotiator because a presidential election in France -- and heightened political conflict during the time, when there was a socialist President (François Mitterand) and a right wing Prime Minister (Jacques Chirac) -- meant a quick "victory" was desired more than saving lives. Rebellion, ironically titled L'Ordre et la morale ("Order and Morality") in French, has a violent finale that delivers painful truth instead of pleasurable catharsis. With this film Kassovitz, whose youthful Hate made him famous, becomes a significant French director again after years of uneven performance.

[Chris Knipp]

Nadine Labaki: WHERE DO WE GO NOW? (2011)

Lysistrata with song and dance and hashish cookies is what Nadini's sophomore effort is, a benign fantasy of how a Lebanese village might stop its deadly Muslim-Christian clashes if all the women just switched religions and hid their men's weaponry after getting them very stoned. The film is a charmer. . .

(Where Do We Go Now? has been picked up by Sony Pictures Classics for US release, as has the other press screening of today, Garth Evans Indonesian-language martian arts action film The Raid.)

First New Directors/New Films 2012 press screening. New Directors/New Films (at Lincoln Center and MoMA) runs from March 21-!pril. 1, 2012. This is the ND/NF opening night film. It shows:

Wednesday, March 21st | 7 PM | MoMA
Wednesday, March 21st | 8 PM | MoMA

[Chris Knipp]

Gareth Evans: THE RAID: REDEMPTION (2012)--ND/NF

"A SWAT team becomes trapped in a tenement run by a ruthless mobster and his army of killers and thugs." Gareth Evans is a Welsh director who is making relentless martial arts movies in Indonesia with the young Iko Uwais, a champion in the field of Pencat Silat, a traditional kind of martial arts fighting in Indonesia, as his star. "Taking the genre to a higher level of intensity, the Welsh-born Evans continues what he started in previous Indonesia-set actioner "Merantau," but this pic will seal his cult status" -- Robert Koehler, Variety. Images, sets, continuity, edging, sound design, and soundtrack are tops. Sony Pictures Classics releases March 23, 2012. New Directors/New Films screenings:

Thursday, March 22nd | 6 PM | MoMA
Thursday, March 22nd | 11 PM | FSLC

New Directors/New Films is a joint presentation of the Film Society of LIncoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the 2012 edition runs from March 23 to April 1.

[Chris Knipp]

Momammad Rasoulof: GOODBYE (2011)--ND/NF

Another clandestine film from Iran shown with Panahi's at Cannes, but this one is not warm and complicated like A Separation or subtle and ironic like This Is Not a Film. It cold and literal complaint about repression and the difficulty of leaving the country through the claustrophobic first-person study of a woman lawyer who has been disbarred, is dangerously pregnant, and is struggling ineffectively to get an exit visa. The star is beautiful, but the watch is punishment.