Tag Archives: Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center

NYFF57 SPOTLIGHT ON DOCUMENTARY: THE BOOKSELLERS CAPSULE REVIEW

Rare-book dealers such as Adam Weinberger scour through private homes to find buried treasure in The Booksellers

THE BOOKSELLERS (D. W. Young, 2019)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center
144 West 65th St. between Broadway & Amsterdam Ave.
Monday, October 7, Francesca Beale Theater, 6:00
Wednesday, October 9, Howard Gilman Theater, 8:30
Festival runs September 27 – October 13
www.filmlinc.org

D. W. Young’s wonderfully literate documentary The Booksellers is making its world premiere at the New York Film Festival, screening on October 7 at 6:00 and October 9 at 8:30, followed by Q&As with D. W. Young and producers Judith Mizrachy and Dan Wechsler. The film follows the exploits of a wide-ranging group of dedicated bibliophiles who treasure books as unique works of art, buying, selling, and collecting them not merely for the money but for the thrill of it. “The relationship of the individual to the book is very much like a love affair,” Americana collector Michael Zinman explains. Among those who share their thoughts on books are Fran Lebowitz, Susan Orlean, and the owners of such New York City bookstores as Imperial Fine Books, Left Bank Books, the Argosy Book Store, and the Strand. Look for my full review to be posted when the film debuts Monday night.

NYFF57 RETROSPECTIVE: THE PASSION OF ANNA

Andreas Winkelman (von Sydow) and Anna Fromm (Liv Ullmann) seek love, companionship, and the truth in Ingmar Bergman’s The Passion of Anna

THE PASSION OF ANNA (Ingmar Bergman, 1969)
Film Society of Lincoln Center
Howard Gilman Theater, Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center
144 West 65th St. between Broadway & Amsterdam Ave.
Wednesday, October 2, 6:30
Festival runs September 27 – October 13
www.filmlinc.org

The New York Film Festival’s Retrospective tribute to cinematographers continues October 2 with The Passion of Anna, the conclusion to Ingmar Bergman’s unofficial island trilogy that began with Hour of the Wolf and Shame, each work filmed on Fårö island and starring Liv Ullmann and Max von Sydow as a couple. Bergman throws caution to the wind in the film, the Swedish title of which is the more direct and honest The Passion. The 1969 film was made while Bergman and Ullmann’s personal relationship was ending, and it shows. The film opens with Andreas Winkelman (von Sydow) trying to repair his leaking roof. A divorcé, he lives by himself on the island, treasuring his isolation as he smokes his pipe and goes about his basic business. But when Anna Fromm (Ullmann) stops by to use his phone, he gets swept up into Anna’s drama — her husband and child were recently killed in an accident that left her with a bad leg — and that of her best friends, Elis Vergerus (Erland Josephson) and his wife, Eva (Bibi Andersson). Suddenly Andreas is going to dinner parties, taking in a puppy, and getting involved in the mysterious case of a rash of animal killings, which some are blaming on off-kilter local resident Johan Andersson (Erik Hell). And the more his privacy is invaded, the worse it all could become.

For the first time, Bergman, a perfectionist of the highest order, allowed improvisation in several scenes. He gives each actor a few minutes to describe their characters during the film, breaking the fourth wall, while also adding his own narration. “Has Ingmar Bergman made a picture about his cast, or has his cast made a picture about Ingmar Bergman?” the original American trailer asks. Cinematographer extraordinaire Sven Nykvist (The Sacrifice, Persona) uses a handheld camera while switching between black-and-white and color, occasionally focusing on dazzling silhouettes and close-ups that are challenged by the stark reds of a blazing fire and Anna’s hat and the bold blues of the sky and Anna’s penetrating eyes, all splendidly edited by Siv Lundgren. Bergman tackles such regular subjects as God, infidelity, dreams, war, and loneliness with a slow build that threatens to explode at any moment. The film is also very much about the search for truth, both in real life and cinema. It might be called The Passion of Anna, but there is an overarching coldness that pervades everything. The finale is sensational, the scene going out of focus until virtually nothing is left. The Passion of Anna is screening on October 2 at 6:30 at the Howard Gilman Theater; the NYFF57 Retrospective sidebar runs through October 10 with such other visual dazzlers as Terrence Malick’s Days of Heaven, Jim Jarmusch’s Dead Man, and Robert Altman’s McCabe & Mrs. Miller.

NYFF57 SPOTLIGHT ON DOCUMENTARY: FREE TIME

Manfred Kirchheimer’s Free Time is having its world premiere this weekend at the New York Film Festival

FREE TIME (Manfred Kirchheimer, 2019)
Film Society of Lincoln Center
Francesca Beale Theater, Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center
144 West 65th St. between Broadway & Amsterdam Ave.
Sunday, September 29, 6:15
Festival runs September 27 – October 13
www.filmlinc.org

Eighty-eight-year-old Manfred Kirchheimer will be at Lincoln Center’s Francesca Beale Theater tonight to screen and discuss his latest work, the subtly dazzling Free Time, which had its world premiere yesterday in the Spotlight on Documentary section of the fifty-seventh annual New York Film Festival. The German-born, New York-raised Kirchheimer has taken 16mm black-and-white footage he and Walter Hess shot between 1958 and 1960 in such neighborhoods as Hell’s Kitchen, Washington Heights, Inwood, Queens, and the Upper East Side and turned it into an exquisite city symphony reminiscent of Helen Levitt, Janice Loeb, and James Agee’s classic 1948 short In the Street, which sought to “capture . . . an image of human existence.” Kirchheimer does just that, following a day in the life of New York as kids play stickball, a group of older people set up folding chairs on the sidewalk and read newspapers and gossip, a worker disposes of piles of flattened boxes, laundry hangs from clotheslines between buildings, a woman cleans the outside of her windows while sitting on the ledge, a fire rages at a construction site, and a homeless man pushes his overstuffed cart.

Kirchheimer and Hess focus on shadows under the el train tracks, gargoyles on building facades, smoke emerging from sewer grates, old cars stacked at a junkyard, and grave markers at a cemetery as jazz and classical music is played by Count Basie (“On the Sunny Side of the Street,” “Sandman”), John Lewis (“The Festivals,” “Sammy”), Bach (“The Well Tempered Klavier, Book 1 — Fugue in B flat minor”), Ravel (Sonata for Violin & Cello), and others, with occasional snatches of street sounds. The title of the film is an acknowledgment of a different era, when people actually had free time, now a historical concept with constant electronic contact through social media and the internet and the desperate need for instant gratification. Kirchheimer, whose Dream of a City was shown at last year’s festival and whose poetic Stations of the Elevated was part of the 1981 fest (but not released theatrically until 2014), directed and edited Free Time and did the sound, and it’s a leisurely paced audiovisual marvel. The only unfortunate thing is that is only an hour long; I could have watched it for days. The film is screening September 29 at 6:15, preceded by the fifteen-minute Suite No. 1, Prelude, Nicholas Ma’s tribute to his father, cellist Yo-Yo Ma, with both Kirchheimer and Ma participating in a Q&A afterward.

THE LOAD

Leon Lučev stars as a man just trying to get by during the Kosovo war in The Load

THE LOAD (TERET) (Ognjen Glavonić, 2018)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Francesca Beale Theater
Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center
144 West 65th St. between Broadway & Amsterdam Aves.
Opens Friday, August 30
212-875-5600
grasshopperfilm.com
www.filmlinc.org

Eight years in the making, Ognjen Glavonić’s narrative feature debut, The Load, is a tense, gripping drama set amid the NATO bombings during the Kosovo war in Yugoslavia in 1999. After the factory where he worked closes down, Vlada Stefanovic (Leon Lučev) takes a job driving a truck from the countryside to Belgrade. The mission is reminiscent of the ones in Henri-Georges Clouzot’s The Wages of Fear and William Friedkin’s underrated remake, Sorcerer, except in those films, the drivers, played by Yves Montand and Roy Scheider, respectively, knew they were transporting dangerous cargoes of nitroglycerin and dynamite. Not only won’t his facilitators tell Vlada what’s in the back of the truck, but it’s padlocked so he can’t look inside. He just has to follow two very basic rules: “Once you start driving, there’s no stopping” and “Avoid traffic and don’t attract attention.”

The film, inspired by real events that Glavonić documented in 2016’s Depth Two, opens with a dark, beautiful shot of a vast mountain landscape, bombs going off in the distance while a van slowly moves down a winding path. Vlada is first shown from outside the vehicle, his head leaning against the window, a forest and a burning house reflected in the glass; he appears to be trapped inside, resigned to his fate. This is not the life he has chosen, risking everything so he can bring home money to his wife and son. For much of the movie, he is in the claustrophobic cab of his truck or in corners of small rooms, as if there is no way out. He reluctantly picks up a young hitchhiker, Paja (Pavle Čemerikić), who says he knows the way to Belgrade, avoiding roads and bridges that have been bombed.

Paja (Pavle Čemerikić) hitches a ride in Ognjen Glavonić’s suspenseful road movie

Glavonić occasionally strays from the central narrative, temporarily following the stories of minor, peripheral characters — the director has said that he structured the film like a tree, with many branches representing various aspects of everyday life at that harsh time — but he always returns to Vlada, the tree’s trunk, who smokes cigarette after cigarette, using his father’s lighter, an engraved memento from the 1943 Battle of Sutjeska. He doesn’t say much, rarely smiles, just forges ahead. When he walks into the middle of a party, the first words sung by the band are “like a wounded bird”; he is a victim of war, collateral damage. “Take me away from here,” the song continues, but there is nowhere to go but to his mysterious destination.

A coproduction of Serbia, Croatia, France, Qatar, and Iran, The Load is a masterpiece of suspense, a caustic thriller gorgeously photographed by Tatjana Krstevski, often with a roaming, off-balance handheld camera, with subtly immersive sound design by Jakov Munižaba, making it feel like you’re on the road with Vlada, seeing and hearing what he’s experiencing. Croatian actor Lučev (Silent Sonata, I Can Barely Remember the Day) is magnetic as Vlada, a kind of everyman caught up in a terrible situation that he can do nothing about. The Load opens August 30 at Lincoln Center, with Krstevski and producer Stefan Ivančić introducing the 7:15 screening that night; Ivančić will also introduce the 5:00 show on August 31.

WHAT YOU GONNA DO WHEN THE WORLD’S ON FIRE?

Titus Turner looks up to his older brother, Ronaldo King, in What You Gonna Do When the World’s on Fire?

WHAT YOU GONNA DO WHEN THE WORLD’S ON FIRE (Roberto Minervini, 2018)
Film Society of Lincoln Center
Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center, Francesca Beale Theater, Howard Gilman Theater
144 West 65th St. between Broadway & Amsterdam Aves.
Opens Friday, August 16
212-875-5050
www.kimstim.com
www.filmlinc.org

Roberto Minervini follows up his Texas Trilogy – The Passage, Low Tide, and Stop the Pounding Heart – with the powerful sociopolitical call to action, What You Gonna Do When the World’s on Fire? The film is shot in sharp, distinctive black-and-white by cinematographer Diego Romero Suarez-Llanos so that it looks like a fictional work from the civil rights era, but it is an all-too-real documentary that shows what’s happening in the US today, even though far too many Americans would deny the inherent realities the movie depicts. Italian-born director Minervini, who is based in the American south, tells four poignant stories steeped in oppression: Judy Hill is struggling to get by, running a bar that has become an important meeting place for the Tremé community while also caring for her elderly mother, Dorothy; Ashlei King hopes that her young sons, fourteen-year-old Ronaldo King and nine-year-old Titus Turner, come back safe after going out to play in a junkyard; Mardi Gras Indian Chief Kevin Goodman melds black and Native American traditions in changing times; and Krystal Muhammad and the New Black Panther Party for Self Defense protest the killings of two African American men at the hands of police.

The New Black Panther Party for Self Defense fights the power in What You Gonna Do When the World’s on Fire?

Beautifully edited by Marie-Hélène Dozo, the film, which was shot in Louisiana and Mississippi in the summer of 2017, captures the continuing results of institutionalized, systemic racism and income inequality in the United States. “We’ve been set free, but we’re still being slaves,” Judy Hill proclaims. “Nowadays, people don’t fight; they like to shoot,” Ronaldo teaches Titus. What You Gonna Do When the World’s on Fire? is the kind of film that should be widely seen, including in schools around the country, to highlight the everyday impact of racial injustice. There are no confessionals in the film, no so-called experts discussing socioeconomic issues; instead, it’s real people, struggling to survive and fighting the status quo and America’s failure to effectively face and deal with its original sin. The most controversial section involves the New Black Panther Party for Self Defense, the members of which march through town declaring, “Black power!” When they face off against the police, they make some arguable choices, but what’s most important is what has taken place to even put them in that situation. There’s a good reason why the title, What You Gonna Do When the World’s on Fire?, is framed as a question, one that every one of us should look in the mirror and answer for ourselves.

Judy Hill struggles to get by in poignant, important film by Roberto Minervini What You Gonna Do When the World’s on Fire?

A selection of the New York Film Festival and numerous other festivals, What You Gonna Do When the World’s on Fire? opens August 16 at Lincoln Center, with Minervini participating in Q&As with Hill and Muhammad on August 16-17 at 3:30, and Minervini will introduce the 9:00 screening on August 16 with Hill and the 6:00 screening on August 17 with Hill and Muhammad. There will also be a reception after the 6:00 and 9:00 screenings on August 16.

NYFF56: NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL 2018

Emma Stone in the film THE FAVOURITE. (photo by Yorgos Lanthimos. © 2018 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation All Rights Reserved)

Film Society of Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater, Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center, Alice Tully Hall
West 65th St. between Broadway & Amsterdam Ave.
September 28 – October 14
212-875-5601
www.filmlinc.org/nyff2018

The fifty-sixth annual New York Film Festival is under way, consisting of more than two weeks of international shorts, features, documentaries, experimental works, and immersive, interactive virtual reality presentations. There are documentaries about Roger Ailes, Steve Bannon, Carmine Street Guitars, Maria Callas, the Memphis Belle, Bill Cunningham, and Watergate; retrospective tributes to Dan Talbot and Pierre Rissient; talks with Claire Denis, Alfonso Cuarón, Alice Rohrwacher, Errol Morris, Jia Zhangke, Mariano Llinás, Willem Dafoe, Morgan Neville, Frederick Wiseman, and Ed Lachman; revivals of such films as Edgar G. Ulmer’s Detour, Mikhail Kalatozov’s I Am Cuba, and Ronald Neame’s Tunes of Glory; and postscreening Q&As with Jodie Foster, Michael Almereyda, Richard Thompson, Alex Gibney, Elizabeth Holtzman, Lesley Stahl, Emma Stone, Julian Schnabel, Joel and Ethan Coen, Laetitia Casta, Elisabeth Moss, Eric Stoltz, Robert Pattinson, Olivier Assayas, Tamara Jenkins, Vincent Lacoste, Carey Mulligan, Jake Gyllenhaal, and many others. Below is a list of at least one highlight per day; keep checking twi-ny for reviews and further information.

Saturday, September 29
Special Events: The Other Side of the Wind (Orson Welles, 2018), Alice Tully Hall, $25, 2:15

Sunday, September 30
Revivals: Enamorada (Emilio Fernández, 1946), Howard Gilman Theater, $17, 12 noon

Charles Ferguson documentary takes a new look at Watergate break-in and its aftermath

Monday, October 1
Free Events — NYFF Live: In Conversation with Frederick Wiseman, moderated by Kent Jones, EBM Amphitheater, free, 7:00

Tuesday, October 2
Retrospective: A Touch of Zen (King Hu, 1971/75), Howard Gilman Theater, $17, 6:30

Wednesday, October 3
Talks — On Cinema: Claire Denis, Walter Reade Theater, $25, 6:00

Thursday, October 4
Retrospective: Mother India (Mehboob Khan, 1957), Howard Gilman Theater, $17, 6:30

Friday, October 5
Projections: Your Face (Tsai Ming-liang, 2018), Howard Gilman Theater, $17, 4:30

Saturday, October 6
Talks — Directors Dialogues: Alfonso Cuarón, Walter Reade Theater, free, 2:30

Sunday, October 7
Talks — Film Comment Live: Filmmakers Talk, with Louis Garrel, Jodie Mack, Alex Ross Perry, and Albert Serra, EBM Amphitheater, free, 7:00

Monday, October 8
Special Events: An Afternoon with Barry Jenkins, in Conversation with Darryl Pinkney, Alice Tully Hall, $25, 12 noon

Tuesday, October 9
Retrospective: My Dinner with André (Louis Malle, 1981), Howard Gilman Theater, $17, 6:30

Wednesday, October 10
Retrospective: The American Friend (Wim Wenders, 1977), Howard Gilman Theater, 6:30

Thursday, October 11
Convergence: iNK Stories – Fire Escape: An Interactive VR Series (Navid Khonsari, 2018), followed by a Q&A, EBM Amphitheater, 6:00 & 7:30

Friday, October 12
Convergence: Virtual Reality Documentary Program, featuring My Africa (David Allen, 2018), narrated by Lupita Nyong’o, The Drummer (Ana Kler, 2017), and the world premiere of Hope Amongst the Haze (Tiffany Hill, 2018), EBM Amphitheater, $10, 4:00 & 6:00

Saturday, October 13
Spotlight on Documentary — Divide and Conquer: The Story of Roger Ailes (Alexis Bloom, 2018), Howard Gilman Theater, $25, 2:45

Sunday, October 14
Special Events: The Wild Pear Tree (Nuri Bilge Ceylan, 2018), Francesca Beale Theater, $25, 12 noon

LOVE, CECIL

Documentary reveals Sir Cecil Beaton to be an ambitious dandy with many talents (courtesy of the Cecil Beaton Studio Archives at Sotheby’s)

LOVE, CECIL (Lisa Immordino Vreeland, 2017)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Francesca Beale Theater
Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center
144 West 65th St. between Broadway & Amsterdam Aves.
Opens Friday, June 29
212-875-5600
www.filmlinc.org
zeitgeistfilms.com

Love, Cecil is a refreshing, invigorating documentary about Oscar- and Tony-winning fashion and war photographer, diarist, production designer, painter, portraitist, costume designer, illustrator, and one of the most influential dandies of the twentieth century, Sir Cecil Beaton. Writer-director Lisa Immordino Vreeland has followed up her first two feature-length films, Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel, and Peggy Guggenheim: Art Addict — she is Diana Vreeland’s granddaughter-in-law — with another behind-the-scenes journey into the art world and high society, this time explored through the lens of Beaton, who was on a neverending quest to find beauty and success in every part of his life and career. “I started out with very little talent, but I was so tormented with ambition. Once you’ve started for the end of the rainbow, you can’t very well turn back,” he wrote in one of his numerous published diaries, quotes from which are read in voiceover by Rupert Everett throughout the film. The rather self-effacing Beaton, who was born in Hampstead in 1904, was never satisfied, always wanting more. “I exposed thousands of rolls of film, wrote hundreds of thousands of words, in a futile attempt to preserve the fleeting moment,” Everett narrates.

Cecil Beaton catches up on some news in fab documentary, Love, Cecil (courtesy of the Cecil Beaton Studio Archives at Sotheby’s)

A member of Britain’s aristocratic Bright Young Things in the 1920s, Beaton went on to photograph such celebrities as Marilyn Monroe, Orson Welles, Marlene Dietrich, Gary Cooper, Judy Garland, Sugar Ray Robinson, Mick Jagger, and, perhaps most prominently, Queen Elizabeth and the royal family — and he wasn’t afraid to speak his mind about some of his subjects and acquaintances, saving his finest vitriol for Evelyn Waugh, Noël Coward, Katharine Hepburn, and Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. He was taken with patrons Stephen Tennant and Peter Watson, artist and designer Oliver Messel, Olympic fencer Kin Hoitsma, and Greta Garbo, some of whom became his lovers. His tempestuous relationship with Garbo is one of the highlights of the film. Vreeland, cinematographer Shane Sigler, and editor Bernadine Colish maintain a slow, witty, stylish pace, matching Beaton’s general comportment. In addition to home movies, personal photographs, newspaper articles, and archival footage of Beaton on talk shows, the film includes new, revealing interviews with designer Isaac Mizrahi, actors Leslie Caron and Peter Eyre, Vogue international editor at large Hamish Bowles, auctioneer and historian Philippe Garner, model and writer Penelope Tree, Beaton’s sisters Nancy Lady Smiley and Baba Hambro, former museum director Sir Roy Strong, designer Manolo Blahnik, dance critic Alastair Macaulay, interior designer Nicky Haslam, artist David Hockney, and Beaton’s longtime butler, Ray Gurton. There’s a wonderful scene with Diana Vreeland and Truman Capote, and photographer David Bailey gives fabulous insight into his 1971 film, Beaton by Bailey, which Beaton was not very fond of. “There is scarcely a flattering self-portrait, yet truth begins with oneself,” Everett recites from a diary.

“His life was a stage,” notes biographer Hugo Vickers, while photographer Tim Walker explains, “He had a relationship with the idea of the person, not actually the person. There’s truth in fantasy.” Beaton, who redefined fashion layouts while working at Vogue and Vanity Fair, likely would feel right at home in today’s world of selfies and social media, where everyone can create and flaunt their fame. Beaton won four Tonys and three Oscars (including Best Costume Design for the original Broadway production of My Fair Lady and Best Costume Design and Best Art Direction for the movie) and is shown to be both vain and insecure, proud and melancholic, because of and despite his success. Vreeland often cuts to calming shots of Ashcombe House and Reddish House, where Beaton found peace in his garden and with his beloved cat, away from all the hubbub of high society. A splendidly dandy doc, Love, Cecil opens June 29 at the Francesca Beale Theater at Lincoln Center, with Vreeland participating in Q&As after the 7:15 show on June 29 and the 1:15 screening on June 30 (with Sigler) and introducing the 9:45 show on June 29 and the 3:30 screening on June 30.