Festival Closing Night Gala

Saturday, October 14---The 44th edition of the New York Film Festival is drawing to a close, but not without one more weekend of film excitement and diversity. Saturday sees repeat screenings of two of the Festival's most anticipated and debated films, Sofia Coppola's post-modern take on the French Revolution, MARIE ANTOINETTE, and Emmanuel Bordieu's homo-erotic POISON FRIENDS.

Another film having its final screening on Saturday is the Turkish drama CLIMATES by director Nuri Bilge Ceylan, whose earlier film DISTANT was an international arthouse hit. In this latest analysis of interpersonal relations, a man and his wife drift apart as the film shifts from oppressive heat to wintry snow, as climate modifies the behavior of its two antagonists (or is it the other way around). The director plays the male lead, with his wife playing opposite him, in this unbearably intimate exploration of the death of love and intimacy. CLIMATES screens today at 6:00pm.

Filipino director Lino Brocka was the film laureate of his native The Phillipines, bringing uncommon delicacy to his tales of common people struggling for their piece of the world. In honor of this special filmmaker and to celebrate the 30th anniversary of his masterpiece INSIANG, the New York Film Festival presents a rare screening of this much praised classic. The first Filipino film to show at the Cannes Film Festival is set in the slums of Manila, where a beautiful girl gets raped by her mother's lover, and then learns how to exact revenge. The film screens today at 12 noon.

Canadian director Guy Maddin has carved out a unique niche with his expressionistic tales of human suffering that draw upon the influences of silent cinema and the Brechtian stage. For his latest film BRAND UPON THE BRAIN, the director turns to his own story as a restless young man growing up on a remote island under the watchful eye of a Crazed Mother. The special event screening will be presented on Sunday at 4pm and then again at 8pm, with live orchestral accompaniment and live narration by Maddin muse Isabella Rossellini. Unmissable.

Brand Upon The Brain

Closing out the Festival is the US Premiere of Mexican director Guillermo Del Toro's feverishly inventive supernatural tale, PAN'S LABYRINTH. The surrealistic fantasy drama tells the story of a young girl who travels with her mother and adoptive father to a rural area in northern Spain in the early days of World War II. The girl lives in an imaginary world and sublimates her fear and anxiety of the repressive Franco regime through a highly stylized universe of her own creation. The film has been praised at film festivals internationally and will open in theaters later this year.

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Thursday, October 12----New Yorkers have long had a love affair with French cinema. Each year for the past 44, the New York Film Festival has peppered its program with intriguing films from French talents, old and new. This year, the love affair continues with four films in the main section, as well as seven film classics in the 50 YEARS OF JANUS FILMS retrospective sidebar.

As the Festival enters its final weekend, lovers of French cinema still have an opportunity to sample some tasty hors d'oeuvres. POISON FRIENDS by director Emmanuel Bourdieu is a psychological thriller that combines intrigue with interpersonal relations....a French specialty. Two university friends are intrigued when they meet Andre, a good looking and impossibly brilliant new student. Before too long, Andre is dominating their every move, telling them what to think and how to live. One day, Andre disappears and just as suddenly as he has appeared, the two students' lives are now in complete disarray.

Poison Friends

Andre is brilliantly played by sexy newcomer Thibault Vincon, who has a long career ahead of him as the kind of French seducer who charms both men and women. In only his second film, director Bourdieu has created an intriguing film that has a central character who is both a monster and a charmer rolled into one.

Thibault Vincon

The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and won the Critics Week Prize. It has been praised for its compelling script, its superlative acting and its razor sharp exploration of the pretentiousness of the Paris literary scene. The film has been picked up by arthouse distributor Strand Releasing, a company that specializes in homoerotic cinema, and will be released to theaters later this year. POISON FRIENDS screens on Friday at 6:00pm and again on Saturday at 9:00pm at Alice Tully Hall.

The themes inherent in POISON FRIENDS are modern interpretations of some of the classic themes of earlier French masterworks....love, envy, obsession, sexual tension, mental anguish and the power of emotions. Discriminating filmgoers have an opportunity to see some of these classics of world cinema on the big screen where they belong, as part of the Festival's 50 YEARS OF JANUS FILMS retrospective sidebar.

The film that started it all and launched the New Wave in the 1950s will have a rare big screen presentation in a pristine 35mm film print. Even if you have seen Francois Truffaut's THE 400 BLOWS (1959) on television or on dvd, nothing quite prepares you for the film's power when seen on a large screen. Truffaut's story of a Parisian youth is one of the most cherished films of all time, and has influenced every coming-of-art drama ever since. THE 400 BLOWS has its final screening tonight at 6:15pm at the Walter Reade Theater.

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Tuesday, October 10----If it had not been for the success of THE LADY VANISHES, David O. Selznick perhaps would not have imported its director, Alfred Hitchcock, to Hollywood. If Hitchcock did not have his astonishly long and prolific career in Hollywood, who knows what the landscape of film art would look like. Yes, he was (and is) that influential.

Hitchcock was not only the most popular director in Hollywood history because of his films, although their continued shelf life remains an industry standard. It was because he eventually learned to market his persona (or at least, the persona he wanted us to believe) to a mass public, making the director the star of the picture. Not many others (Capra, Ford) had that kind of cult of personality. In fact, the word Hitchcock became a noun, and even an adjective, to describe a particular kind of exhilirating fear of the unknown.

Hitchcock had been working in the UK film industry for almost a decade, having moved up the ranks from apprentice to director in the late 1920s, to becoming the first director of a sound film, BLACKMAIL (1929). Early successes such as THE THIRTY NINE STEPS (1934) and THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH (1936) helped his name recognition outside of his native England. However, in 1938, when THE LADY VANISHES appeared, the impact was immediate. The film became a major box office hit in the United Kingdom, and eventually in the United States and the rest of Europe.

The film established several key Hitchcock themes, including the audience identification with an innocent, who is suddenly knee-deep in mystery and terror. The premise certainly seemed innocent enough. A rail traveler, played by Michael Redgrave, the pere of Vanessa and Lynne, becomes embroiled in international intrigue when his casual encounter with an old lady throws him into a cauldron of deception and lies. Fifteen minutes into the picture, the lady (played by the indomitable Dame May Whitty) simply vanishes....and Redgrave attempts to uncover the mystery of her disappearance.

The film's success around the world established Hitchcock's reputation as the "master of suspense". The producer David O. Selznick, drowning in Oscar glory following the release of his epic GONE WITH THE WIND, invited the rotund English director (and his screenwriter wife Alma Reville) to come to Hollywood.

Alfred Hitchcock and The Birds

What emerged from this stormy collaboration with Selznick were two film classics: REBECCA, starring Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine (the Best Picture Oscar winner of its year 1940) and SPELLBOUND (1944), a psychological mystery starring Gregory Peck and Ingrid Bergman.

For the next fo (...)

Woody Allen's MANHATTAN

Monday, October 9----The New York Film Festival is presenting two provocative and highly entertaining special programs this week....the first a paen to New York filmmaking, filmmakers and New York as a magical shooting location. The second looks at the 70 year history of jazz, as captured on film.

The New York film program, with the splashy title of SCENES FROM THE CITY: 40 YEARS OF FILMMAKING IN NEW YORK, is a kind of tribute to the city's film and television commission, one of the first in the nation. In 1966, Mayor John Lindsay established the Mayor's Office of Film, Theatre and Broadcasting, to create opportunities for skilled film and television technicians and bring more production back to New York from Hollywood.

The Office is now an indispensable part of the media landscape, helping both mega Hollywood productions get access to locations and services, while also assisting in ways both practical and supportive, the independent spirit of independent film. Of course, many small indie films are non-union, and therefore not on the radar of the Office, but even then, there is often a blind eye cast to allow a small group access to an iconic New York location.

Blake Edwards' BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S

James Sanders, a filmmmaker and writer, is the editor of SCENES FROM THE CITY, a new book produced in conjunction with the Mayor's Office, which traces the evolution and impact of location filmmmaking in New York, from the early 1960s to the present time.

Sanders has curated the program, which includes such memorable New York-centric films as BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S, BAREFOOT IN THE PARK, MEAN STREETS, THE GODFATHER, MANHATTAN, DO THE RIGHT THING, and many, many others. The one-night only event happens this evening at 6:00pm at the Walter Reade Theater.

Martin Scorsese's MEAN STREETS

On Wednesday night, pianist and scholar Lewis Porter hosts an evening exploring the relationship between two of America's greatest art forms....film and jazz. Beginning in the mid 1920s, jazz orchestras were the focus of some of the earliest short sound films, which played as novelty featurettes before the main picture. In the 1930s and 1940s, video jukeboxes, the great-grandfathers of cable music television, had hundreds of under 4 minute selections, which featured talents who would become jazz legends....Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Charlie Parker and Eubie Blake.

Billie Holiday

In the 1960s and 1970s, jazz figured prominently in the independent film scene, including such memorable scores as D.A. Pennebaker's DAYBREAK EXPRESS and the early shorts of Roman Polanski (...)

Scene from Almodovar's VOLVER

As the New York Film Festival moves into its second weekend, a diverse and tantalizing plate of cinematic offerings is on tap, catered to every kind of viewer. The Festival has created a mix of hotly anticipated films, some unknown gems and new works from some cinematic masters, all of which have their initial premieres this weekend.

Three filmmakers who have showcased their past work at the event are presenting their newest films this weekend. Veteran French director Alain Resnais is back, with a tender examination of loss, uncertainty and love in the film PRIVATE FEARS IN PUBLIC PLACES. The celebrated director again collaborates with British playwright Alan Ayckbourn to find the kernels of truth in the on-going battle (and standoff) of the sexes.

Private Fears In Public Places

Ears always perk up when the news of a new David Lynch film is revealed. This time, in a staggering running time of nearly three hours and with a cast that includes Jeremy Irons, Laura Dern, Justin Theoux and Harry Dean Stanton, the envelope-pushing director unveils his first foray into high definition video. INLAND EMPIRE explores the unsettling zeitgeist of fear and anxiety in America, in a style that the director has coined "hypnotic nightmare". The film will certainly be one of the hot ticket items of the weekend.

David Lynch

Also highly anticipated is the return of Festival favorite Pedro Almodovar, whose latest film VOLVER is the Festival's Centerpiece attraction. With a nearly all-female cast, led by such Almodovar muses as Carmen Maura and Penelope Cruz, the film reveals, with great wit and energy, the interlocking stories of women from three generations of the same family. Almodovar's kinetic camera, his use of music and, of course, his unique sensibility have merged to make this one of his most accessible and enjoyable films. VOLVER was recently selected to be Spain's official entry for this year's Academy Awards.

Almodovar, Carmen Maura, Penelope Cruz

With the current tension between the United States and Iran, it is almost an act of revolutionary courage to present a film from that "evil empire". Films buff in the know have long appreciated that the Iranians, far from being the soulless monsters that the Bushies portray them as, are in fact a people with a highly developed sensitivity to life, nature and the passage of time. These themes, and the tensions between the secular and religious tenets of society, are played out wonderfully in OFFSIDE, the latest film from respected Iranian director Jafar Panahi (...)

Thursday, October 5----Certainly one of the most unique film series of all time has been the "UP" series of documentaries that have chronicled the lives of 12 protagonists at age 7 through to their current age of 49.

The series, which began with the landmark television documentary 7 UP, made by Granada Television in 1964, and continues with the newest entry 49 UP, has been the on-going obsession of UK director Michael Apted. He worked on the first film as a researcher, but starting with 7 PLUS SEVEN (also known as 14 UP) in 1971, he has been filming his subjects every seven years for the past 35 years.

The UP series has become a contemporary classic, providing a mesmerizing and provocative study of English society and, more universally, the ups and downs of life as experienced by his expressive subjects.

The latest installment, 49 UP, screens this evening at Alice Tully Hall, with the director Michael Apted and one of the film's subjects, Tony Walker, present at the screening.

Yesterday afternoon, both gentlemen participated in a Press Conference, following the press screening of the film. What follows are excerpts from that provocative session:

Michael Apted

Question: One of the subjects in the film sharply criticizes you and your techniques. You chose to leave that in the film. Do you agree with her comments?

Michael Apted: Yeah, I do. I’ve always felt that documentaries can get off the hook. Documentaries can be manipulated as much as anything else. I’ve tried to correct this, trying to avoid projecting my own insecure middle class ideas on to the film’s protagonists. That’s why I thought it was important to include her objections to my methods in the film. I guess any filmmaker has expectations of what they want to happen in a scene, and it's important that I be reminded that these are real lives I am playing with, not just a fictional screenplay with professional actors.

Question: A question for Tony Walker....what was it like in the intervening years between the films?

Tony Walker: I always knew that there would be another segment coming up and be just around the corner. I always know that pretty soon I would get a call on the phone from Michael or his assistant. But I never felt that the pressure that I needed to accomplish something so that I had more to say. I just tried to be honest about where I was at any given time. A lot people have asked me about being so open on my marriage problems, but that was what was happening at the time. I tried to give a true reflection and personal interview.

Three Participants in 49 UP

Question: Mr. Apted, how has this project affected your life and career?

Michael Apted: Well, I like to think what I would have been liked at seven years, and if you could tell how I would turn out. I don’t think so, since I was very quiet and cowardly. I can reinvent myself if I (...)

Helen Mirren On The Red Carpet

James Cromwell On The Red Carpet

Jeremy Irons On Red Carpet

Inside Alice Tully Hall