Tag Archives: film society of lincoln center

NEW YORK ASIAN FILM FESTIVAL 2014

Ning Hao’s NO MAN’S LAND is finally making its North American premiere, at the NYAFF

Film Society of Lincoln Center
Walter Reade Theater
144 West 65th St. between Broadway & Amsterdam Aves.
June 27 – July 10
212-875-5600
www.filmlinc.com
www.subwaycinema.com

Year after year, the New York Asian Film Festival screens the wildest, craziest, most wide-ranging collection of cinematic adventures from China, Japan, Taiwan, Korea, and Hong Kong, delighting fans with premieres from favorite directors, welcome dips into the past, celebrations of cult classics, and intriguing works from up-and-coming artists. The thirteenth annual NYAFF is no exception, consisting of forty-four films from across the spectrum, along with special tributes to Sandra Ng (Queen of Comedy Star Asia Award), Sol Kyung-gu (Star Asia Award), Park Joong-hoon (Celebrity Award), Fumi Nikaido (Screen International Rising Star Award), Lee Jung-jae (Korean Actor in Focus), and Jimmy Wong Yu (Lifetime Achievement Award). Also making appearances will be Alan Mak & Felix Chong, Moon So-ri, Anna Broinowski, Zishuo Ding, Fei Xing, Lee Sujin, Shin Yeon-shick, and Umin Boya. Looking for a sexy comedy? In 3D? Try Lee Kung-lok’s Naked Ambition. Want a peek into the filmmaking side of Dear Leader Kim Jong-il? There’s Anna Broinowski’s Aim High in Creation! In the mood for some Shaw Brothers? Then check out Roy Ward Baker and Change Cheh’s The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires. You can’t leave out Zombies, so Sabu has that covered with Miss Zombie.

A chef decides to do a different kind of slicing and dicing in SOUL

Hungry for a neo-spaghetti Eastern? Ning Hao is serving up No Man’s Land. How about the very first openhanded martial arts film? Jimmy Wang Yu’s 1970 The Chinese Boxer puts you in the middle of the action. You’ll also find new films by such familiar names as Kim Ki-duk, Hideo Nakata, and Kiyoshi Kurosawa and featuring such stars as Andy Lau, Chow Yun-fat, Simon Yam, Hitoshi Matsumoto, and Tadanobu Asano. The opening-night selection is Mak and Chong’s Overheard 3, the international premiere of the conclusion of the gangster trilogy. The centerpiece choice is Boya’s three-hour Kano, about a pioneer Taiwanese baseball team. In conjunction with the NYAFF, the always awesome Japan Cuts follows immediately, running July 10-24 at Japan Society, comprising more than two dozen contemporary films from Japan, only a few of which were also part of the NYAFF.

“ONE DAY PINA ASKED…”

Rarely screened 1983 documentary delves into Pina Bausch’s creative process (photo courtesy Icarus Films)

“ONE DAY PINA ASKED…” (UN JOUR PINA A DEMANDÉ) (Chantal Akerman, 1983)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center
144 West 65th St. between Eighth Ave. & Broadway
June 6-12
212-875-5050
www.filmlinc.com

In 1982, Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman followed Pina Bausch’s Tanztheater Wuppertal on a five-week tour of Europe as the cutting-edge troupe traveled to Milan, Venice, and Avignon. “I was deeply touched by her lengthy performances that mingle in your head,” Akerman says at the beginning of the resulting documentary, “One Day Pina Asked…,” continuing, “I have the feeling that the images we brought back do not convey this very much and often betray it.” Akerman (Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles; Je tu il elle) needn’t have worried; her fifty-seven-minute film, made for the Repères sur la Modern Dance French television series, is filled with memorable moments that more than do justice to Bausch’s unique form of dance theater. From 1973 up to her death in 2009 at the age of sixty-eight, Bausch created compelling works that examined the male-female dynamic and the concepts of love and connection with revolutionary stagings that included spoken word, unusual costuming, an unpredictable movement vocabulary, and performers of all shapes, sizes, and ages. Akerman captures the troupe, consisting of twenty-six dancers from thirteen countries, in run-throughs, rehearsals, and live presentations of Komm Tanz Mit Mir (Come Dance with Me), Nelken (Carnations), 1980, Kontakthof, and Walzer, often focusing in on individual dancers in extreme close-ups that reveal their relationship with their performance. Although Bausch, forty at the time, is seen only at the beginning and end of the documentary, her creative process is always at center stage. At one point, dancer Lutz Förster tells a story of performing Gershwin’s “The Man I Love” in sign language in response to Bausch’s asking the troupe to name something they’re proud of. Förster, who took over as artistic director in April 2013, first performs the song for Akerman, then later is shown performing it in Nelken. (Bausch fans will also recognize such longtime company members as Héléna Pikon, Nazareth Panadero, and Dominique Mercy.)

Documentary includes inside look at such Tanztheater Wuppertal productions as CARNATIONS (photo courtesy Icarus Films)

Documentary includes inside look at such Tanztheater Wuppertal productions as NELKEN (photo courtesy Icarus Films)

Akerman often leaves her camera static, letting the action unfold on its own, which is particularly beautiful when she films a dance through a faraway door as shadowy figures circle around the other side. It’s all surprisingly intimate, not showy, rewarding viewers with the feeling that they are just next to the dancers, backstage or in the wings, unnoticed, as the process unfolds, the camera serving as their surrogate. And it works whether you’re a longtime fan of Bausch, only discovered her by seeing Wim Wenders’s Oscar-nominated 3D film Pina, or never heard of her. “This film is more than a documentary on Pina Bausch’s work,” a narrator says introducing the film. “It is a journey through her world, through her unwavering quest for love.” As a bonus, the Film Society of Lincoln Center will be presenting free 7:30 screenings of Gustavo Beck and Leonardo Luiz Ferreira’s 2010 documentary, Chantal Akerman, from Here, in conjunction with the June 6-12 theatrical run of ”One Day Pina Asked…”

ART OF THE REAL 2014: SWEETGRASS

Sheep are on one of their last trips through the mountains in SWEETGRASS (Photo courtesy Cinema Guild)

SWEETGRASS (Lucien Castaing-Taylor, 2009)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center
Francesca Beale Theater, 144 West 65th St. at Amsterdam Ave.
Thursday, April 17, 6:30
Festival runs April 11-26
212-875-5601
www.filmlinc.com
www.sweetgrassthemovie.com

Husband-and-wife filmmakers Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Ilisa Barbash follow a flock of sheep herded by a family of Norwegian-American cowboys on their last sojourns through the public lands of Montana’s Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness in the gorgeously photographed, surprisingly intimate, and sometimes very funny documentary Sweetgrass. In 2001, Castaing-Taylor, director of the Sensory Ethnography Lab at Harvard, and Barbash, a curator of Visual Anthropology at Harvard’s Peabody Museum, found out about the Allestad ranch, an old-fashioned, Old West group of sheepherders who still did everything by hand, including leading hundreds of sheep on a 150-mile journey into the mountains for summer pasture with only a few dogs and horses. Director Castaing-Taylor uses no voice-over narration or intertitles, instead inviting the viewer to join in the story as if in the middle of the action, offering no judgments or additional information. The film begins with shearing and feeding, then birthing and mothering, before heading out on the long, sometimes treacherous trail, especially at night, when bears and wolves sneak around, looking for food. Slowly the focus switches to the men themselves, primarily an old-time singing grizzled ranch hand and a cursing, complaining cowboy. Castaing-Taylor and Barbash spent three years with the sheepherders and in the surrounding areas, amassing more than two hundred hours of footage and making to date nine films out of their experiences, mostly shorter works to be displayed in gallery installations or for anthropological reasons; Sweetgrass is the only one that has been released theatrically, offering a fascinating look at something that is destined to soon be gone forever. Sweetgrass is screening April 17 at 6:30 in the Focus on the Sensory Ethnography Lab section of the Film Society of Lincoln Center series “Art of the Real,” held in conjunction with the Whitney Biennial, and will be followed by a Q&A with Barbash. The inaugural festival runs April 11-26, featuring more than three dozen works that push the boundaries of documentary film.

ART OF THE REAL 2014: MANAKAMANA

A mother and daughter eat ice cream in experimental documentary MANAKAMANA

MANAKAMANA (Stephanie Spray & Pacho Velez, 2013)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center
Francesca Beale Theater, 144 West 65th St. at Amsterdam Ave.
Saturday, April 12, 1:30
Festival runs April 11-26
212-875-5601
www.filmlinc.com
www.manakamanafilm.com

If you’re an adventurous filmgoer who likes to be challenged and surprised, the less you know about Pacho Velez and Stephanie Spray’s Manakamana, the better. But if you want to know more, here goes: Evoking such experimental films as Michael Snow’s Wavelength, Hollis Frampton’s Zorns Lemma, and Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests as well as the more narrative works of such unique auteurs as Jim Jarmusch and Abbas Kiarostami, Manakamana is a beautiful, meditative journey that is sure to try your patience at first. The two-hour film, which requires a substantial investment on the part of the audience, takes place in a five-foot-by-five-foot cable car in Nepal that shuttles men, women, and children to and from the historic Manakamana temple, on a pilgrimage to worship a wish-fulfilling Hindu goddess. With Velez operating the stationary Aaton 7 LTR camera — the same one used by Robert Gardner for his 1986 documentary Forest of Bliss — and Spray recording the sound, the film follows a series of individuals and small groups as they either go to or return from the temple, traveling high over the lush green landscape that used to have to be traversed on foot before the cable car was built. A man and his son barely acknowledge each other; a woman carries a basket of flowers on her lap; an elderly mother and her middle-age daughter try to eat melting ice-cream bars; a pair of musicians play their instruments to pass the time.

A heavy metal band takes a picture of themselves in meditative documentary

Each trip has its own narrative, which must be partly filled in by the viewer as he or she studies the people in the cable car and the surroundings, getting continually jolted as the car glides over the joins. The film is a fascinating look into human nature and technological advances in this era of surveillance as the subjects attempt to act as normal as possible even though a camera and a microphone are practically in their faces. Produced at the Sensory Ethnography Laboratory at Harvard, Manakamana consists of eleven uncut shots of ten-to-eleven minutes filmed in 16mm, using rolls whose length roughly equals that of each one-way trip, creating a kind of organic symbiosis between the making and projecting of the work while adding a time-sensitive expectation on the part of the viewer. A film well worth sticking around for till the very end — and one that grows less and less claustrophobic with each scene — Manakamana is screening April 12 at 1:30 in the Focus on the Sensory Ethnography Lab section of the Film Society of Lincoln Center series “Art of the Real,” held in conjunction with the Whitney Biennial, and will be followed by a Q&A with Spray and Velez. The inaugural festival runs April 11-26, featuring more than three dozen works that push the boundaries of documentary film.

PERMANENT VACATION — THE FILMS OF JIM JARMUSCH: COFFEE AND CIGARETTES

Alfred Molina and Steve Coogan join Jim Jarmusch in COFFEE & CIGARETTES

COFFEE & CIGARETTES (Jim Jarmusch, 2003)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater
165 West 65th St. between Eighth Ave. & Broadway
Thursday, April 10, 1:15 & 9:00
Series runs through April 10
212-875-5050
www.filmlinc.com

Jim Jarmusch’s entertaining, offbeat, and often frustrating Coffee & Cigarettes consists of eleven vignettes, filmed over the course of more than fifteen years, that pair actors at bars, diners, and the like, drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes, and talking about drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes. Although the actors use their real names, they are put in fictional situations. While Steven Wright and Roberto Benigni are a hoot, Alex Descas and Isaach de Bankolé are annoying. Alfred Molina and Steve Coogan make the best team, while Iggy Pop and Tom Waits should have been better. So should GZA, RZA, and Bill Murray. Jack White and Meg White, despite a liking for Tesla, show they can’t act. Cate Blanchett with Cate Blanchett is okay but not as good as the riotous team of Joe Rigano and Vinny Vella. The film is a must-see for Jarmusch fans and those who need a nicotine/java jolt. All others beware. Coffee & Cigarettes is screening February 10 with The Garage Tapes, three shorts starring Waits, as part of the Film Society of Lincoln Center series “Permanent Vacation: The Films of Jim Jarmusch,” a tribute to the eclectic writer-director upon the occasion of the release of his latest work, Only Lovers Left Alive. The festival continues through April 10 with all of his feature films, which include such gems as Dead Man, Down by Law, Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai, Stranger than Paradise, Mystery Train, and Night on Earth.

NYMPHOMANIAC: VOLUME II

Joe (Charlotte Gainsbourg) continues her search for sexual pleasure and pain in NYMPHOMANIAC VOLUME II (photo by Christian Geisnaes)

NYMPHOMANIAC: VOLUME II (Lars von Trier, 2013)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center, 144 West 65th St. between Broadway & Amsterdam Ave., 212-875-5600
Landmark Sunshine Cinema, 143 East Houston St. between First & Second Aves., 212-330-8182
Opens Friday, April 4
www.magpictures.com

Two weeks ago, when the first half of Lars von Trier’s Nymphomaniac opened at the Landmark Sunshine and Lincoln Center, I reserved judgment until I saw Volume II, which begins April 4 at the same locations. Now that I’ve experienced the second part of von Trier’s four-hour graphic exploration of feminine sexuality and the very nature of storytelling itself, I’m at last ready to render my opinion and publicly declare my admiration for this masterfully crafted, often deadly dull and repetitive, but, in the end, gloriously inventive work. Volume II picks up right where Volume I concludes — it’s actually one film that has been broken into two parts in theaters and on VOD, forcing people to pay twice to see the whole thing — with Joe (Charlotte Gainsbourg) in the midst of telling her brutally in-depth tale of sexual addiction to the sincere and respectful Seligman (Stellan Skarsgård), who brought her into his home upon finding her badly beaten in a dark alley. In the flashbacks, Joe is now played with mystery and complexity by Gainsbourg, after the young Joe had been previously portrayed by the bland and boring Stacy Martin, and the change of actress is one of the key reasons why Volume II works so much better than Volume I. Joe shares details of trying to make a sex sandwich, giving group therapy a shot, becoming obsessed with a violent sadist (Jamie Bell), and accepting a dangerous job with L (Willem Dafoe).

L (Willem Dafoe) offers Joe (Charlotte Gainsbourg) a dangerous job in second volume of controversial Lars von Trier epic (photo by Christian Geisnaes)

L (Willem Dafoe) offers Joe (Charlotte Gainsbourg) a dangerous job in second volume of controversial Lars von Trier sexual epic (photo by Christian Geisnaes)

In between her stories, which are divided into such chapters as “The Eastern and the Western Church (The Silent Duck)” and “The Mirror,” Seligman delves into various intellectual theories to help explain her exploits, discussing religion, paradox, democracy, language, mythology, Freud, and such dichotomies as suffering and happiness, pleasure and pain, Wagner and Beethoven, and the virgin and the whore. Cinematographer Manuel Alberto Claro’s camera is far more steady in these scenes, in contrast to the moving, handheld shots that dominate the flashbacks. The interplay between the calm, gentle Seligman and the lonely, lost Joe is beautifully acted and inherently touching, but, this being von Trier, the film’s ending will further controversies that already involve episodes of extreme violence and actual sexual penetration (the latter performed by body doubles). I certainly would have preferred seeing Nymphomaniac in one complete sitting rather than in two parts, one of which stands head and shoulders above the other (although they do need each other); however, I’m not sure what I’ll do when the five-and-a-half-hour director’s cut is released later this year.

NEW DIRECTORS / NEW FILMS 2014: OF HORSES AND MEN

Human nature is explored through the eyes of horses in wildly entertaining Icelandic tale

OF HORSES AND MEN (HROSS Í OSS) (Benedikt Erlingsson, 2013)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater
165 West 65th St. between Eighth Ave. & Broadway
Monday, March 24, 6:30
Series runs through March 30
212-875-5050
www.newdirectors.org

Iceland’s entry for the 2013 Academy Awards, Benedikt Erlingsson’s black comedy, Of Horses and Men, takes an absurdist look at the relationship between humans and horses, incorporating love, sex, pain, responsibility, friendship, religion, and death in darkly comic and heart-rending ways. In a tight-knit community spread across a sweeping rural landscape in Iceland, horses are far more plentiful than people. One morning, Kolbeinn (Ingvar E. Sigurdsson) goes for a ride aboard his gorgeous white mare as men, women, and children come outside to watch him pass by like it’s a parade. But a shocking, unexpected encounter with Solveig’s (Charlotte Bøving) black stallion sets into motion a series of interconnected vignettes, each successive one featuring a minor character from a previous scene. Lust, land disputes, gender distinction, and other agreements and disagreements lead to either tragedy or joy, but, of course, this being Iceland, the former is far more prevalent, especially as more and more Brennivin (Black Death) and other drink is consumed. Writer-director Erlingsson’s debut feature is gorgeously photographed by Bergsteinn Björgúlfsson, whose camera moves lovingly over the green fields and mountainous valleys, treating the horses like Hollywood sirens, zooming in on their eyes to show the reflection of the people who seek to control them, equating the basic animal instincts of both species. The horses in the film are no mere props; Erlingsson, who grew up in a theatrical family and has directed numerous stage productions (in addition to owning a horse, whom he called his “life companion,” for thirty years until recently having to put her down), treats the animals like characters in their own right, revealing their, dare we say, humanity. Produced by Icelandic cinema legend Friðrik Þór Friðriksson (Children of Nature, Mamma Gógó), Of Horses and Men is a dark, wildly entertaining treatise on human nature among a rather quirky and unusual equestrian set. The film is being shown March 24 at 6:30 at the Walter Reade Theater as part of Lincoln Center and MoMA’s annual “New Directors / New Films” series, with Erlingsson on hand to participate in a postscreening Q&A.