By Ray Pride Pride@moviecitynews.com

THE FILM SOCIETY OF LINCOLN CENTER announces the World Premiere of Ang Lee’s LIFE OF PI

Posted Monday, August 13th, 2012 - Comments Off on THE FILM SOCIETY OF LINCOLN CENTER announces the World Premiere of Ang Lee’s LIFE OF PI
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PRESS RELEASE

THE FILM SOCIETY OF LINCOLN CENTER announces the World Premiere of Ang Lee’s LIFE OF PI as the Opening Night Gala selection for the 50th Anniversary of the NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL 

New York, NY, August 13, 2012 — The Film Society of Lincoln Center announced today that Ang Lee’s LIFE OF PI will make its World Premiere as the Opening Night Gala presentation for the upcoming 50th New York Film Festival (September 28 – October 14). The screening will mark the Academy Award-winning director’s return to NYFF, 12 years after CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON served as the Closing Night Gala presentation (2000). The selection of LIFE OF PI also allows Lee to join Robert Altman, Pedro Almodóvar and François Truffaut as the only directors to have had more than one film chosen to open NYFF. (THE ICE STORM was the Opening Night Gala selection in 1997.)

A respected presence at the New York Film Festival and the Film Society of Lincoln Center, in 2009 FSLC celebrated Lee’s career with a complete retrospective of the director’s work at the Walter Reade Theater. The LIFE OF PI screening will also mark the first time a film has been presented in 3D for NYFF’s Opening Night Gala.

Among the films that have been selected for the prestigious Opening Night Gala slot over the course of NYFF’s 50-year history include Luis Buñuel’s THE EXTERMINATING ANGEL (1963), Gillo Pontecorvo’s THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS (1967), Akira Kurosawa’s RAN (1985), Pedro Almodóvar’s WOMEN ON THE VERGE OF A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN (1988) Quentin Tarantino’s PULP FICTION (1994), Mike Leigh’s SECRETS & LIES (1996), Stephen Frears’s THE QUEEN (2006) and David Fincher’s THE SOCIAL NETWORK (2010) (complete list below).

“LIFE OF PI is a perfect combination of technological innovation and a strong artistic vision. Ang Lee has managed to make a deeply moving, engrossing work that will delight audiences as much as it will astonish them. We’re enormously proud to have this film for our Opening Night for the 50th NYFF,” says Richard Peña, Selection Committee Chair & Program Director, The Film Society of Lincoln Center.

Based on the book that has sold more than seven million copies and spent years on the bestseller list, Academy Award winner Lee’s LIFE OF PI takes place over three continents, two oceans, many years, and a wide world of imagination. Lee’s vision, coupled with game-changing technological breakthroughs, has turned a story long thought unfilmable into a totally original cinematic event and the first truly international all-audience motion picture. LIFE OF PI follows a young man who survives a disaster at sea and is hurtled into an epic journey of adventure and discovery. While marooned on a lifeboat, he forms an amazing and unexpected connection with the ship¹s only other survivor…a fearsome Bengal tiger. The Twentieth Century Fox release is due in theaters on November 21, 2012.

Regarding his return to NYFF, Ang Lee said, “I am both delighted and honored to be back at the New York Film Festival with LIFE OF PI. I have the deepest respect for Richard Peña and his team and to be selected by them as the Opening Night Film for the 50th Anniversary is extremely gratifying. I am also excited because this is my hometown, and to be unveiling this film that I am so proud of here is a real pleasure.”

Rose Kuo, Executive Director, The Film Society of Lincoln Center, added, “Ang Lee has shown us his mastery of intimate psychological drama as well as epic action-adventure and we are thrilled to welcome him back to the New York Film Festival with an exciting film that displays of all his talent.”

The 17-day New York Film Festival highlights the best in world cinema, featuring top films from celebrated filmmakers as well as fresh new talent. The selection committee, chaired by Peña also includes: Melissa Anderson, Contributor, Village Voice; Scott Foundas, Associate Program Director, The Film Society of Lincoln Center; Todd McCarthy, Chief Film Critic, The Hollywood Reporter; and Amy Taubin, Contributing Editor, Film Comment and Sight and Sound.

General Public tickets will be available September 9. There will be an advance ticketing opportunity for Film Society of Lincoln Center Patrons and Members prior to that date. For more information visit www.Filmlinc.com/NYFF or call 212 875 5601.

The New York Film Festival is generously sponsored by Royal Bank of Canada, American Airlines, The New York Times, Stella Artois, HBO, WABC, Trump International Hotel and Tower and the National Endowment for the Arts and New York State Council on the Arts. 

New York Film Festival Opening Night Films 

1963            The Exterminating Angel (Luis Buñuel, Mexico)

1964             Hamlet (Grigori Kozintsev, USSR)

1965             Alphaville (Jean-Luc Godard, France)

1966             Loves of a Blonde (Milos Forman, Czechoslovakia)

1967             The Battle of Algiers (Gillo Pontecorvo, Italy/Algeria)

1968             Capricious Summer (Jiri Menzel, Czechoslovakia)

1969             Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (Paul Mazursky, US)

1970             The Wild Child (François Truffaut, France)

1971             The Debut (Gleb Panfilov, Soviet Union)

1972             Chloe in the Afternoon (Eric Rohmer, France)

1973             Day for Night (François Truffaut, France)

1974             Don’t Cry With Your Mouth Full (Pascal Thomas, France)

1975             Conversation Piece (Luchino Visconti, Italy)

1976             Small Change (François Truffaut, France)

1977             One Sings, The Other Doesn’t (Agnès Varda, France)

1978             A Wedding (Robert Altman, US)

1979             Luna (Bernardo Bertolucci, Italy/US)

1980             Melvin and Howard (Jonathan Demme, US)

1981            Chariots of Fire (Hugh Hudson, UK)

1982             Veronika Voss (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, West Germany)

1983             The Big Chill (Lawrence Kasdan, US)

1984            Country (Richard Pearce, US)

1985            Ran (Akira Kurosawa, Japan)

1986            Down By Law (Jim Jarmusch, US)

1987             Dark Eyes (Nikita Mikhalkov, Soviet Union)

1988             Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (Pedro Almodóvar, Spain)

1989             Too Beautiful For You (Bertrand Blier, France)

1990            Miller’s Crossing (Joel Coen, US)

1991             The Double Life of Veronique (Krysztof Kieslowski, Poland/France)

1992             Olivier Olivier (Agnieszka Holland, France)

1993             Short Cuts (Robert Altman, US)

1994             Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino, US)

1995            Shanghai Triad (Zhang Yimou, China)

1996             Secrets & Lies (Mike Leigh, UK)

1997            The Ice Storm (Ang Lee, US)

1998            Celebrity (Woody Allen, US)

1999            All About My Mother (Pedro Almodóvar, Spain)

2000            Dancer in the Dark (Lars von Trier, Denmark)

2001            Va Savoir (Jacques Rivette, France)

2002            About Schmidt (Alexander Payne, US)

2003            Mystic River (Clint Eastwood, US)

2004            Look At Me (Agnès Jaoui, France)

2005            Good Night, and Good Luck. (George Clooney, US)

2006            The Queen (Stephen Frears, UK)

2007            The Darjeeling Limited (Wes Anderson, US)

2008            The Class (Laurent Cantet, France)

2009            Wild Grass (Alain Resnais, France)

2010            The Social Network (David Fincher, US)

2011            Carnage (Roman Polanski, France/Poland)

Film Society of Lincoln Center

Under the leadership of Rose Kuo, Executive Director, and Richard Peña, Program Director, the Film Society of Lincoln Center offers the best in international, classic and cutting-edge independent cinema. The Film Society presents two film festivals that attract global attention: the New York Film Festival, currently planning its 50th edition, and New Directors/New Films which, since its founding in 1972, has been produced in collaboration with MoMA. The Film Society also publishes the award-winning Film Comment Magazine, and for over three decades has given an annual award—now named “The Chaplin Award”—to a major figure in world cinema. Past recipients of this award include Charlie Chaplin, Alfred Hitchcock, Martin Scorsese, Meryl Streep, and Tom Hanks. The Film Society presents a year-round calendar of programming, panels, lectures, educational programs and specialty film releases at its Walter Reade Theater and the new state-of-the-art Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center.

The Film Society receives generous, year-round support from Royal Bank of Canada, American Airlines, The New York Times, Stella Artois, the National Endowment for the Arts and New York State Council on the Arts. For more information, visit www.filmlinc.com and follow #filmlinc on Twitter.

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