By Ray Pride Pride@moviecitynews.com

The Museum of Modern Art and the Film Society of Lincoln Center announce lineup for the 42nd Annual New Directors/New Films

PRESS RELEASE

Alexandre Moors’ BLUE CAPRICE is the Opening Night

presentation with Penny Lane’s OUR NIXON slated for

the Closing Night slot

New York, NY, February 22, 2013—The Museum of Modern Art and the Film Society of Lincoln Center announced the full lineup today for the 42nd edition of New Directors/New Films (March 20 – 31). Dedicated to the discovery of new works by emerging filmmaking talent, the festival will screen 25 features (19 narrative, 6 documentary) and 17 short films representing 24 countries – all having their New York City premieres.

 

The Opening Night feature selection is Alexandre Moors’s BLUE CAPRICE. Screening on Wednesday, March 20 at MoMA, Moors’s debut film explores gun violence, following two snipers, the elder John and 17-year old Lee, who set out on a shooting spree that is seemingly torn from the front pages. Masterfully played by Isaiah Washington and newcomer Tequan Richmond, the two characters at the center of the story are all too human for the “monsters” they become. When title “character,” a lumbering old Chevy Caprice, enters the picture, the stage is set for John and his charge to embark on their rampage.

 

The found-footage documentary, OUR NIXON, will screen as the Closing Night selection on Sunday, March 31 at Film Society’s Walter Reade Theater. Directed by Penny Lane, the film is edited from hundreds of rolls of Super 8 film shot during the Nixon Presidency by his aides H.R. Haldeman, John Erlichman, and Dwight Chapin. Lane, with co-writer and co-producer Brian L. Frye, has taken that wealth of raw footage and interwoven it with period news and pop culture, excerpts from the infamous White House audio tapes, and contemporary interviews to create an unprecedented insider’s view of an American presidency, chronicling watershed events like the Apollo moon landing, the 1972 trip to China, and Tricia Nixon’s White House wedding, as well as more intimate glimpses of Nixon in times of glory and disgrace.

 

Among the highlights of the festival’s 42nd edition are Shane Carruth’s UPSTREAM COLOR and Sarah Polley’s STORIES WE TELL. UPSTREAM COLOR, a science fiction puzzler, is the second film by Carruth, following his 2004 debut with PRIMER, which garnered awards and almost immediate cult status nine years ago. STORIES WE TELL is an emotional examination of the family story of Sarah Polley and represents the indie actress and filmmaker’s first documentary foray after two critically lauded dramas (AWAY FROM HER, TAKE THIS WALTZ).

 

Another highlight will be Emil Christov’s black comedy, THE COLOR OF THE CHAMELEON, about a misfit secret police informer who infiltrates and investigates a book club dedicated to “new thinking”. The selection will mark the first time in 35 years that a film from Bulgaria has been chosen to screen at New Directors/New Films. THE COLOR OF THE CHAMELEON received a Special Mention at the Thessaloniki Film Festival, a Bronze Horse at the Stockholm Film Festival, and was nominated for a Discovery Award at the Toronto International Film Festival. French filmmaker Rachid Djaidani’s RENGAINE, an ultra-low budget Romeo and Juliet-type drama set in contemporary multicultural Paris, marks Djaidani’s narrative debut. The film won a FIPRESCI Prize at last year’s Cannes Film Festival.

 

Rajendra Roy, MoMA’s Celeste Bartos Chief Curator of Film says, “The filmmakers we welcome into the New Directors family this year are remarkably engaged with issues of our time, and the history that got us here. From the scourge of gun violence, to mental illness to the aftermath of the Arab Spring, this year’s lineup feels particularly relevant to contemporary life.”

 

Among the feature debuts are Ukranian critic-turned-director Lyubov Arkus’s documentary ANTON’S RIGHT HERE, which traces the tremendous obstacles and challenges she faces as she gradually becomes the primary caregiver to a severely autistic teenage boy. Video and performance artist Shannon Plumb’s TOWHEADS is a deadpan comedy about a Brooklyn mother who dons various imaginative guises to keep from going mad as a mother to two rambunctious children and a taken-for-granted wife. Writer-director Plumb’s real-life husbandalso stars in the film opposite her husband, filmmaker Derek Cianfrance (BLUE VALENTINE, THE PLACE BEYOND THE PINES) plays the protagonist’s theater director partner. Following a string of successful short films, Canadian writer-director Kazik Radwanski makes his feature debut with TOWER, an intense character study of a lonely, social-awkward thirtysomething who dreams of making an animated film about a green creature.

 

Additional feature debuts include Dutch filmmaker Alex Pitstra’s semi-autobiographical meta-adventure DIE WELT about a video store clerk with grandiose ambitions in a post-Jasmine Revolution Tunisia. Brazilian Marcello Lordello’s understated drama THEY’LL COME BACK focuses on a privileged 12 year-old who is forced to learn how the other half lives when she and her brother are left behind by their parents in a rural backwater. Danish filmmaker Tobias Lindholm makes his solo debut with A HIJACKING, a tense hostage drama about cargo ship piracy. The film won the Golden Alexander at the Thessaloniki Film Festival, received a FIPRESCI Best Picture nod and an audience award at AFI Fest. Austrian filmmaker Daniel Hoesl’s feature debut SOLDATE JEANNETTE is an absurdist morality play about two women from opposite ends of the social spectrum whose worlds collide was a Tiger Award winner at the Rotterdam International Film Festival.

 

Other films honored at past film festivals include Italian filmmaker Leonardo Di Costanzo’s L’INTERVALLO. An intense drama about two adolescents thrown together under the watchful eye of local gangsters in Naples, the film was honored with the critics’ prize at the Venice Film Festival last year. Also honored at Venice was Ali Aydin’s KÜF. The spellbinding character study, from Turkey, of a railroad inspector who seeks answers from a local police inspector about the disappearance of his son years ago won the 2012 Lion of the Future Award last year. Another film to have made a significant impact at a previous festival was Li Luo’s EMPEROR VISITS THE HELL. This clever reworking of one of the storylines in the 16th-century Chinese novel Journey to the West, about the unintended consequences of a crooked Ming Dynasty king’s attempts to change the weather, won the Dragons & Tigers Award for Young Cinema at the Vancouver Film Festival.

 

Among the other films announced are JP Sniadecki and Libbie Dina Cohn’s PEOPLE’S PARK, which takes an immersive look at a Chinese community via a single tracking shot and was nominated for a Golden Leopard at the Locarno Film Festival, and Joshua Oppenheimer’s documentary on Indonesian death squad members, THE ACT OF KILLING, which received the DOX: AWARD from the Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival.

 

A new feature in ND/NF this year is a mid-festival screening of Sophie Letourneur’s LES COQUILLETTES at the VW Performance Dome at MoMAPS1 in Long Island City. This will be the first ND/NF film festival screening at MoMAPS1, and Letourneur’s comedy about three young women looking for love (or something like it) at the Locarno Film Festival is a perfect fit for the venue.

 

Commenting on this year’s New Directors/New Films lineup, Film Society of Lincoln Center Director of Programming, Year-Round, Robert Koehler said, “This year’s New Directors/New Films filmmakers have demonstrated the kind of daring and innovative approaches to storytelling that exemplifies what ND/NF represents. It will be a great pleasure to introduce many of them to New York audiences for the very first time.”

 

 

Tickets go on sale to the general public at Noon on Sunday, March 10, 2013.

New Directors/New Films tickets can be purchased online at newdirectors.org, or in person at the box offices of the Film Society of Lincoln Center (Walter Reade Theater, 165 W. 65th Street, north side/upper level, and Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center, 144 West 65th Street, south side, both between Broadway and Amsterdam) and The Museum of Modern Art (Film Desk and Information Desk, 11 W. 53rd Street, between Fifth & Sixth Avenues).

 

There are two advance ticketing opportunities:

Film Society and MoMA Members may purchase tickets starting at Noon on Sunday, March 3. To become a Member of the Film Society or MoMA please visit: filmlinc.com and MoMA.org, respectively.

 

 

The 42nd New Directors/New Films features selections include:

 

OPENING NIGHT SELECTION

BLUE CAPRICE (2012) 92min

Director: Alexandre Moors

Country: USA

Alexandre Moors’s remarkable debut feature explores the impulse to commit murder, following two snipers, the elder John and 17-year old Lee, who orchestrate an insidious act of gun violence that is seemingly torn from the front pages. Abandoned by his mother, Lee is taken in by John, who becomes a mentor preaching hate and teaching marksmanship. Blind loyalty grows, and death becomes mundane. Masterfully performed by Isaiah Washington and Tequan Richmond, the characters are disturbingly human. Moors and screenwriter R.F.I. Porto navigate the violence discreetly, focusing on the inner origins of evil. An essential film for our times.

 

CLOSING NIGHT SELECTION

OUR NIXON (2013) 85min

Director: Penny Lane

Country: USA

As President Richard Nixon tape-recorded his conversations for posterity, so his devoted aides—H.R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, and Dwight Chapin—shot hundreds of rolls of Super-8 film documenting the presidency. Filmmakers Penny Lane (DIR/Co-SCR/Co-PROD) and Brian L. Frye (Co-SCR/Co-PROD) have edited this footage—virtually unseen since the FBI seized it during the Watergate investigation—and interwoven it with period news footage and pop culture, excerpts from the Nixon tapes, and contemporary interviews. OUR NIXON offers an unprecedented, insider’s view of an American presidency, chronicling watershed events including the Apollo moon landing and the path-breaking trip to China, as well as more intimate glimpses of Nixon in times of glory and disgrace.

 

 

THE ACT OF KILLING (2012) 116min – theatrical cut, 158min – director’s cut

Director: Joshua Oppenheimer

Country: Denmark

What is one to make of the men who freely admit their involvement—and pleasure—in the mass killing of millions of Indonesians during that country’s bloody anti-Communist campaign in the 1960s? American filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer’s THE ACT OF KILLING bypasses the usual documentary tropes of exposing injustice, instead provoking the viewer to consider the murderers’ sense of responsibility for their crimes. Teetering between sheer horror and grotesque comedy, this is a glimpse into the heart of darkness that’s rarely been achieved in cinema. Both the theatrical version and the longer, director’s cut of the film will be screened at ND/NF. A Drafthouse Films release.

 

ANTON’S RIGHT HERE (Anton tut ryadom) (2012) 120min

Director: Lyubov Arkus

Country: Russia

Critic-turned-filmmaker Lyubov Arkus finds herself becoming the key caregiver for severely autistic teen Anton Kharitonov and documents over six years, in a reflective and fascinating style, the tremendous obstacles and problems of encouraging and supporting a sensitive but barely communicative boy. What sets Arkus’s work apart from so many other documentaries addressing autism is her majestically artful filmmaking (with a huge contribution by cinematographer Alisher Khamidkhodzhaev), her exceptionally close relationship to her subject, and her powerful voice-over commentary, one of the most sublime to be heard in recent cinema.

 

BURN IT UP DJASSA (Le djassa a pris feu) (2012) 70min

Director: Lonesome Solo

Countries: Ivory Coast/France

Brimming with the fateful energy of the ghetto, this cinema-vérité-shot, noir-tinged drama was shot in 11 days and created collectively by its streetwise protagonists eager to give voice to their present situation. Tony (Abdoul Karim Konate) is stuck in a rut and desperate to get out of the ghetto; the cocky youth hangs out gambling and hawking cigarettes until bad luck pushes him into an irrevocable dead-end situation. Narrated by a storyteller in Nouchi slang and set to slam poetry this vibrant snap-shot will have you cheering for cosmic justice.

 

LES COQUILLETTES (2012) 75min

Director: Sophie Letourneur

Country: France

Girls gone wild! Filmmaker Sophie brings her film and friends Carole and Camille to the Locarno Film Festival. The festival is a merry-go-round of parties, and these girls are boy crazy—when Sophie’s not stalking Louis Garrel, ineffectual attempts to hook up with unimpressed guys and emotional meltdowns ensue. Sophie Letourneur’s comedy of arrested development is a delightfully giddy, screwball lark, a self-mocking, thirty-something French counterpart to Lena Dunham’s Girls. Are Letourneur, Camille Genaud, and Carole Le Page playing themselves? Espérons que non!

 

THE COLOR OF THE CHAMELEON (Tsvetat na hameleona) (2012) 114min

Director: Emil Christov

Country: Bulgaria

Unfolding in the years before and after the fall of Communism, this black comedy

about a rogue secret police informant goes down a rabbit hole into a realm of twisted absurdity. The scenario by Vladislav Todorov, adapting his 2010 novel Zincograph, centers on young misfit Batko Stamenov, who’s recruited to infiltrate…a book club. After being dropped for his strange ideas, Batko embarks on his own private investigation and targets the intellectuals of the “Club for New Thinking,” hatching a scheme that fully exposes the ludicrous reality of secret policing. With its first film at ND/NF in thirty-five years, Bulgaria is back!

 

DIE WELT (2012) 80min

Director: Alex Pitstra

Country: Netherlands

In his smart debut feature, director Alex Pitstra announces himself as a neo-Tarantino, employing an arsenal of cinematic techniques to explore a life he imagines he could have lived. The director sets his story in post–Jasmine Revolution Tunisia, where young Abdallah (Abdelhamid Naouara), Pitstra’s stand-in and a Tarantino-esque, head-strong twenty-something, dreams of leaving the video store where he works for Europe. Based loosely on his father’s story of coming to Holland, Pitstra’s semi-autobiographical voyage is set against the backdrop of a contemporary yet traditional Tunisia trying to find a way forward.

 

EMPEROR VISITS THE HELL (Tang huang You Di Fu) (2013) 71min

Directors: Li Luo

Countries: China/Canada

Winner of the Dragons & Tigers Award for Young Cinema at the Vancouver Film Festival, Li’s crafty reworking of part of the 16th-century Chinese novel Journey to the West is one of the most inspired recent works from an independent Chinese filmmaker. Emperor Li Shimin is now a bureaucratic boss in a big city, where the crooked Dragon King’s attempt to change the weather has backfired and condemned him to death. Li pulls the rug out from under everyone, from the audience to those whose power has gone to their heads.

 

A HIJACKING (Kapringen) (2012) 99min

Director: Tobias Lindholm

Country: Denmark

On its way to harbor, cargo ship MV Rozen is seized by pirates in the Indian Ocean. Moving between claustrophobic life on the ship and negotiations by the freight company in Denmark, Lindholm creates a climate of unbearable tension with an unexpected climax. The narrative is based on a true event, and his use of actual locations and people who have been in similar situations create palpable authenticity. Augmented by a terrific cast, Lindholm explores the danger of the disparity between impoverished nations and the developed world. A Magnolia Films release.

JARDS (2012) 93min

Director: Eryk Rocha

Country: Brazil

The celebrated composer and musician Jards Macalé is in the recording studio where director Eryk Rocha captures him in a wide variety of poses and states of creating, imaginatively varying style and shooting formats. Fashioning an intimately attuned portrait of an artist, Rocha uses his camera as an instrument to riff with Jards in a poetic exchange between images and music. The repetitive, time-stopping process of rehearsal and the flow of energy between the two art forms create an elegiac vision of the creativity of some of Brazil’s most beloved singers and musicians.

 

JISEUL (2012) 109min

Director: O Muel

Country: South Korea

As part of a brutal anticommunist purge of the island of Jiju in 1948, Korean troops hunt down the inhabitants of a village caught in the crossfire. The villagers hide out in a mountain cavern, enduring an extended ordeal of cold and hunger, 120 souls crammed together below ground like the potatoes alluded to in the film’s title. Recounting a forgotten chapter in postwar Korean history, Jiju native O Muel draws out amazing performances from his nonprofessional cast, in an austere, beautifully composed, and deliberately paced requiem.

 

KÜF (2012) 94min

Director: Ali Aydin

Countries: Turkey/Germany

A railroad inspector spends his days in the gorgeous Anatolian outback looking for cracks on the line and his evenings writing letters to the government looking for news about his son who disappeared 18 years ago. Basri (Ercan Kesal) fights bureaucracy and secrecy in the person of police inspector Murat (Muhammet Uzuner) and the spellbinding character study, with shades of Raskolnikov, is completed by a third man, Cemil, whose anti-social behavior begs confrontation. As tension mounts Aydin shows his considerable talent bringing this poignant tale to its heartbreaking finale. Winner of the Lion of the Future Award at the Venice Film Festival 2012.

 

LEONES (2012) 80min

Director: Jazmin Lopez

Countries: Argentina/France/Netherlands

Is this a story about five friends wandering through a forest, or is it about a forest that receives five visitors? In this metaphysical trance film, the verdant environment is as much a character as the youngsters, enfolding them as they move through it, their playful banter, word games, and ruminations filling the air. In a succession of long takes, a gliding camera follows this enigmatic hike to nowhere. Nothing is what it seems, but a malfunctioning tape recording may contain an explanation.

 

L’INTERVALLO (2012) 86min

Director: Leonardo Di Costanzo

Country: Italy

Winner of the Critics’ Prize at the 2012 Venice Film Festival, this portrait of two adolescents thrown together under the eye of the Neapolitan Camorra has an air of menace and sexual tension. A shy ice-cream vendor (Alessio Gallo) guards a feisty girl (Francesca Riso) who has allegedly wronged a local gangster. Holed up in an abandoned building, they warily share dreams of escaping their fate. Director Di Costanzo brings documentary realism and a poetic eye to this quietly intense drama; his nonprofessional actors give beautifully shaded performances in Neapolitan dialect.

 

PEOPLE’S PARK (2012) 78min

Directors: Libbie D. Cohn & J.P. Sniadecki

Country: USA/China

An immersive, inquisitive visit to the People’s Park in Chengdu, China, this film was created in a single virtuoso tracking shot. The joys of communal play, exercise, and leisure time come under intense scrutiny from the relentless gaze of the directors’ lens, creating alternate states of unease and exhilaration.

 

RENGAINE (2012) 75min

Director: Rachid Djaïdani

Country: France

The French title of this no-budget urban drama translates as “refrain,” and repetition is what it embodies—in this case the well-worn story of Romeo and Juliet. Sabrina (Sabrina Hamida) accepts the marriage proposal of struggling actor Dorcy (Stéphane Soo Mongo), but Dorcy is a black Christian and Sabrina a Muslim Arab. Her eldest brother, Slimane (Slimane Dazi), enlists the 39 “brothers” in their extended clan to prevent the taboo union. Shot in the streets, this film is part love letter to the irresistible energy of Paris, part call for interracial tolerance.

 

THE SHINE OF DAY (Der Glanz des Tages) (2012) 90min

Directors: Tizza Covi & Rainer Frimmel

Country: Austria

Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel have amply demonstrated, with their previous semi-fictional, semi-documentary films, a generous perspective on people struggling at the fringes of showbiz—namely, the circus. In their latest film, vagabond performer Walter Saabel embraces what he calls “Der Glanz des Tages” (the shine of day) as a personal North Star. His nephew, the great theater actor Philipp Hochmair, finds Walter arriving at his Hamburg home unannounced, and the two begin a fascinating, testy, and wholly unpredictable relationship.

 

SOLDATE JEANNETTE (2012) 79min

Director: Daniel Hoesl

Country: Austria

Fanni buys clothes from an upscale boutique and lives in a beautifully appointed apartment. But something—well, everything—seems askew in her world, and she leaves town when her games with commerce are discovered. Hiking through the mountains, she encounters Anna, a young woman who has spent her life on a pig farm. Their worlds could collide—or they could help each other find brave new ones. In his first feature, director Daniel Hoesl fashions an absurdist morality play that pits an urban, manufactured world against nature.

 

STORIES WE TELL (2012) 108min

Director: Sarah Polley

Country: Canada

What is real? What is true? What do we remember, and how do we remember it? Actor/director Sarah Polley turns from fiction to nonfiction, in the process cracking open family secrets. Using home movies, still photographs, and interviews, Polley delves into the life of her mother, a creative yet secretive woman. But while she is talking to her own relatives, Polley’s interest lies in the bigger picture of what families hold onto as truth. STORIES WE TELL is a delicately crafted personal essay about memory, loss, and understanding. A Roadside Attractions release.

 

THEY’LL COME BACK (2012) 105min

Director: Marcelo Lordello

Country: Brazil

In this gentle, understated drama, an upper-middle-class 12-year-old learns how Brazil’s other half lives when she and her sullen older brother are left behind by their parents in a rural backwater. Soon, Cris (ably played by Maria Luiza Tavares, who carries the film from beginning to end) is taken in by a family living in a squatter farming community, where she waits for mom and pop to return. And waits and waits. Another fine debut from the Recife film scene, source of last year’s ND/NF hit NEIGHBORING SOUNDS.

 

TOWER (2012) 78min

Director: Kazik Radwanski

Country: Canada

For his feature debut, Kazik Radwanski has opted to train his camera with great intensity and control on a character who utterly lacks a center or direction, even an identity. In his mid-thirties yet still living at home with his parents, Derek (Derek Bogart) struggles to make a small animation about a green creature building rock towers. He can’t maintain any real friendships, let alone romantic involvements, until he encounters Nicole (Nicole Fairbaim), who offers a glint of promise. Radwanski‘s single-minded vision suggests filmmaking of uncommon discipline combined with unmistakable empathy.

 

TOWHEADS (2013) 86min

Director: Shannon Plumb

Country: USA

The Brooklyn mother of two boys and the wife of a harried theater director, Penelope barely has time to stay sane, much less create art. She finds comic relief from domestic drudgery by inhabiting the world in guises—drag king, pole dancer, Santa Claus—managing to find moments of grace even on thankless days. Accomplished video and performance artist Shannon Plumb makes a wincingly funny feature debut that strikes awfully close to home. The writer-director stars opposite her real-life husband (Derek Cianfrance, director of BLUE VALENTINE) and her talented, towheaded sons (Cody and Walker Cianfrance).

 

UPSTREAM COLOR (2012) 96min

Director: Shane Carruth

Country: USA

Ever since his 2004 debut, filmmaker Shane Carruth has prompted curiosity over what he’d come up with next. UPSTREAM COLOR meets expectations but is also starkly different and markedly advanced. It represents something new in American cinema, exploring life’s surprising jumps and science’s strange effects. A love story embedded in a kidnap plot, UPSTREAM COLOR leaps with great audacity through its sequences, a cinematic simulacrum of the way we reflect on our lives, astonished at, as in the title of Grace Paley’s fiction collection, our Enormous Changes at the Last Minute. UPSTREAM COLOR opens in NY on April 5.

 

VIOLA (2013) 63min

Directors: Matías Piñeiro

Country: Argentina

Matías Piñeiro is one of contemporary Argentine cinema’s most sensuous and sophisticated new voices. In his latest film, VIOLA, he ingeniously fashions out of Shakepeare’s Twelfth Night a seductive roundelay among young actors and lovers in present-day Buenos Aires. Mixing melodrama with sentimental comedy, philosophical conundrum with matters of the heart, VIOLA bears all the signature traits of a Piñeiro film: serpentine camera movements and slippages of language, an elliptical narrative and a playful confusion of reality and artifice. A Cinema Guild release.

 

 

 

The 42nd New Directors/New Films shorts selections include:

 

 

PROGRAM 1 (In alphabetical order) 86min

 

EVERYTHING NEAR BECOMES FAR (2012) 11min

Director: Mauricio Arango

Countries: USA/Colombia

The peaceful daily rhythm of a farmer is violently interrupted in the heart of the breathtakingly beautiful Andean mountains.

 

SOUTHWEST (2013) 18min

Director: Jordi Wijnalda

Countries: USA/Turkey

In southwest Turkey, a Dutch woman helps save the lives of illegal immigrants but is forced to confront the unattended needs of those who love her.

 

STAMPEDE (2012) 20min

Director: Cyril Amon Schäublin

Country: Croatia

A masterful short that articulates the moment when a city and its crowds create chaos and claustrophobia.

 

WHAT CAN I WISH YOU BEFORE THE FIGHT? (Que puis-je te souhaiter avant le combat?) (2012) 16min

Director: Sofia Babluani

Country: France

An emotionally compelling story about a case of mistaken identity and communication that transcends barriers.

 

WONDERLAND (2012) 21min

Director: Peter Kerek

Country: Romania

As a mother seeks to improve life for her family, her son explores the cavernous rooms of a stranger’s house—perhaps costing the two of them a better future.

 

 

PROGRAM 2  (In alphabetical order) 84min

 

ARARAT (2012) 26min

Director: Engin Kundag

Country: Germany

A man tries to keep the peace in his brother’s home after a ten-year absence.

 

FLAMINGOS (I Fenicotteri) (2012) 16min

Director: Francesca Coppola

Countries: Italy

Father and daughter share a sentimental moment, but trouble boils under the surface.

 

THE PIRATE OF LOVE (2012) 10min

Director: Sara Gunnarsdóttir

Countries: Iceland/USA

In Reykjavik, legends surround a CD of popular love songs, supposedly written by a lovelorn trucker in Canada.

 

SEQUIN RAZE (2013) 20min

Director: Sarah Gertrude Shapiro

Country: USA

A reality-show contestant tries to protect herself from the psychological onslaught of one of the producers.

 

TABOULÉ (2012) 4min

Director: Richard Garcia

Country: Spain

How can you measure trust? A story about secret codes.

 

TAKE A DEEP BREATH (Derin Nefes Al) (2012) 8min

Director: Basak Buyukcelen

Country: Turkey

When a teenager’s parents take her to see a gynecologist, her life takes an unexpected turn.

 

 

PROGRAM 3  (In alphabetical order) 88min

 

CHIRALIA (2013) 26min

Director: Santiago Gil

Country: Germany

A boy’s disappearance at a wooded lake leads to a questioning of memory and perception.

 

TO PUT TOGETHER A HELICOPTER (Para armar un helicóptero) (2012) 37min

Director: Izabel Acevedo

Country: Mexico

When summer rains bring power outages to his neighborhood, 17-year-old Oliverio comes up with an ingenious solution.

 

THE VILLAGE (A Cidade) (2012) 25min

Director: Liliana Sulzbach

Country: Brazil

A small village’s inhabitants are all elderly, and no one new is moving in.

 

 

ADDITIONAL SHORT FILMS

 

OUVERTURE (2013) 5min

Directors: Bracey Smith & Neil Dvorak

Country: USA

This animated film poetically portrays the musicality of life, loss, and family relationships.

(Screens before THE SHINE OF DAY)

 

RP31 (2012) 4:48min

Director: Lucy Raven

Country: USA

Hollywood’s Society of Motion Pictures and Television Engineers (SMPTE) develops image standards that can be used to test the quality of a film projection. Noted artist Lucy Raven riffs on this in RP31, her new animation composed from 31 film projection test patterns and calibration charts.

(Screens before UPSTREAM COLOR)

 

THE SEARCH FOR INSPIRATION GONE (2012) 9min

Director: Ashley Michael Briggs

Country: UK

Combining animation, special effects, and live action, this silent film asks: will a writer who searches for inspiration find it in help or hindrance?

(Screens before VIOLA)

 

 

 

ND/NF 2013 Public Screening Schedule

 

 

Wednesday, March 20

7:00PM          BLUE CAPRICE (MoMA)

8:00PM          BLUE CAPRICE (MoMA)

 

Thursday, March 21

6:15PM          EMPEROR VISITS THE HELL (MoMA)

6:15PM          THE COLOR OF THE CHAMELEON (FSLC)

8:30PM          KÜF (MoMA)

9:00PM          TOWER (FSLC)

 

Friday, March 22

6:15PM          TOWER (MoMA)

6:15PM          A HIJACKING (FSLC)

9:00PM          BURN IT UP DJASSA (MoMA)

9:00PM          RENGAINE (FSLC)

 

Saturday, March 23

1:00PM          Shorts Program #1 (FSLC)

3:00PM          THE SHINE OF DAY (w/OUVERTURE) (MoMA)

3:30PM          EMPEROR VISITS THE HELL (FSLC)

6:00PM          THE ACT OF KILLING (theatrical version, 115m) (MoMA)

6:00PM          KÜF (FSLC)

9:00PM          THE COLOR OF THE CHAMELEON (MoMA)

9:00PM          SOLDATE JEANNETTE (FSLC)

 

Sunday, March 24

2:00PM          THE ACT OF KILLING (director’s cut, 159m) (FSLC)

3:00PM          Shorts Program #1 (MoMA)

6:00PM          RENGAINE (MoMA)

6:00PM          BURN IT UP DJASSA (FSLC)

8:30PM          A HIJACKING (MoMA)

8:30PM          THE SHINE OF DAY (w/OUVERTURE) (FSLC)

 

Monday, March 25

6:15PM          SOLDATE JEANNETTE (MoMA)

6:15PM          LES COQUILLETTES (FSLC)

8:30PM          JISEUL (MoMA)

8:30PM          LEONES (FSLC)

 

Tuesday, March 26

6:15PM          THEY’LL COME BACK (MoMA)

9:00PM          LES COQUILLETTES (PS 1)

6:15PM          DIE WELT (FSLC)

9:00PM          JISEUL (FSLC)

 

Wednesday, March 27

6:15PM          LEONES (MoMA)

6:30PM          VIOLA (w/THE SEARCH FOR INSPIRATION GONE) (FSLC)

9:00PM          TOWHEADS (MoMA))

9:00PM          THEY’LL COME BACK (FSLC)

 

Thursday, March 28

6:15PM          PEOPLE’S PARK (MoMA)

6:15PM          ANTON’S RIGHT HERE (FSLC)

8:30PM          DIE WELT (MoMA)

9:00PM          UPSTREAM COLOR (w/RP31) (FSLC)

 

Friday, March 29

6:15PM          STORIES WE TELL (MoMA)

6:15PM          THE INTERVAL (FSLC)

9:00PM          VIOLA (w/THE SEARCH FOR INSPIRATION GONE) (MoMA)

9:00PM          JARDS (FSLC)

 

Saturday, March 30

12:30PM        STORIES WE TELL (FSLC)

1:00PM          Shorts Program #2 (MoMA)

3:30PM          Shorts Program #3 (FSLC)

3:30PM          ANTON’S RIGHT HERE (MoMA)

6:00PM          PEOPLE’S PARK (FSLC)

6:15PM          UPSTREAM COLOR (w/RP31) (MoMA)

8:30PM          TOWHEADS (FSLC)

9:00PM          JARDS (MoMA)

 

Sunday, March 31

1:30PM          Shorts Program #3 (MoMA)

4:00PM          Shorts Program #2 (FSLC)

4:00PM          THE INTERVAL (MoMA)

7:00PM          OUR NIXON (FSLC)

 

 

About New Directors/New Films

Dedicated to the discovery and support of emerging artists, New Directors/New Films has earned an international reputation as the premier festival for works that break or re-cast the cinematic mold. The New Directors/New Films selection committee is made up of members from both presenting organizations: from The Film Society of Lincoln Center, Marian Masone, Robert Koehler, and Gavin Smith; and from The Museum of Modern Art, Jytte Jensen, Rajendra Roy.and Joshua Siegel.

 

About The Film Society of Lincoln Center and The Museum of Modern Art

Founded in 1969 to celebrate American and international cinema, the Film Society of Lincoln Center works to recognize and support new directors, and to enhance the awareness, accessibility and understanding of film. Among its yearly programming of film festivals, film series and special events, the Film Society presents two film festivals in particular that annually attract global attention: the New York Film Festival which just celebrated 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 almost four decades has given an annual award—“The Chaplin Award”—to a major figure in world cinema. Past recipients of this award include Charlie Chaplin, Alfred Hitchcock, Martin Scorsese, Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, and Sidney Poitier. The Film Society presents its year-round calendar of programming, panels, lectures, educational and transmedia programs and specialty film releases at the famous Walter Reade Theater and the new state-of-the-art Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center.

 

The Museum of Modern Art’s Department of Film was established as the Film Library in 1935, and presented its first series as circulating exhibitions in 1936. The Film Department organizes over 50 film exhibitions every year, including annual programs such as Premiere Brazil, To Save and Project: The MoMA International Festival of Film Preservation and The Contenders.  The Department also organizes exhibitions in MoMA’s galleries, including Tim Burton (2009-10) and Pixar: 20 Years of Animation (2005–06). The department also has an extensive archive of over 27,000 film and video works, including the world’s largest institutional collections of the works of D. W. Griffith, Andy Warhol, and Stan Brakhage. Rajendra Roy is the current Celeste Bartos Chief Curator of Film, appointed in May 2007.

 

New Directors/New Films is presented by The Museum of Modern Art and the Film Society of Lincoln Center and is supported by Kenneth Kuchin, The Junior Associates of The Museum of Modern Art, the New Wave Young Patrons of the Film Society of Lincoln Center, The New York Times, American Airlines, and Stella Artois. 

Special thanks to our hotel sponsor, Dream NY.

 

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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon