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THE NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL
HAS A VERY SPECIAL PENN PAL
Most serious moviegoers would
agree that Sean Penn is a prodigiously talented, fiercely committed
artist. Yet they would have to admit that his light has not blazed
all that boldly in such recent misfires as "I Am Sam,"
"The Weight of Water" and "Up at the Villa."
But things are definitely looking up for Penn and for his fans.
The raves have begun for both of his new movies—"Mystic
River," which opened the New York Film Festival on October
3rd, and "21 Grams," the festival’s closing-night
attraction.
Below, a rundown on the Penn double-play, and a complete list of
the New York Film Festival films and events. For additional information,
visit www.filmlinc.com.
 MYSTIC
RIVER: Sean Penn, Tim Robbins, Kevin Bacon, Laurence
Fishburne, Marcia Gay Harden, Laura Linney, Kevin Chapman, Thomas
Guiry, Emmy Rossum, Spencer Treat Clark, Andrew Mackin, Adam Nelson,
Robert Wahlberg, Jenny O’Hara (Directed by Clint Eastwood;
Warner Bros.) Three boys are at play in a poor Irish neighborhood
in Boston. A pair of strangers, claiming to be cops, force one of
the boys into a car and drive off. The victim eventually escapes
and returns home in a dazed state, haunted by memories of brutal
rape. Decades later, the three former friends—one a cop (Kevin
Bacon), one an occasional crook (Sean Penn, pictured above), and
one a psychological mess (Tim Robbins)—are brought together
again by a gruesome murder. Eastwood’s film, based on Dennis
Lehane’s best seller, was enthusiastically received at Cannes
and will open theatrically on 10/8.
21 GRAMS:
Sean Penn, Benicio Del Doro, Naomi Watts, Charlotte Gainsbourg,
Danny Huston, Clea DuVall, Marc Musso, David Chattam, Teresa Delgado,
Stephen Bridgewate, Kevin Chapman (Directed by Alejandro Gonzalez
Inarritu, USA, Universal/Focus) Following his role as the tormented
father of a murdered girl in "Mystic River," Sean Penn
plays a gravely ill college professor determined to impregnate his
wife (Charlotte Gainsbourg) before his imminent death. Benicio Del
Toro is cast as an impoverished ex-con trying to ease his anguish
through religion, and Naomi Watts is a guilt-driven wife seeking
to atone for her wicked past by being a perfect wife to her decent
husband (Danny Huston). Just when it seems things can’t get
worse, a horrible accident occurs, causing all of these desperate
characters to come into close, traumatic contact with one another.
The film, directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu ("Amores
Perros"), is scheduled for the Venice, Toronto, Montreal and
New York film festivals. Opens theatrically on 11/14
OTHER FESTIVAL FILMS
THE FOG OF WAR
(Directed by Errol Morris, USA, Sony Pictures
Classics) The Festival’s Centerpiece is Errol Morris’s
THE FOG OF WAR, a dazzling cinematic dialogue with the conscience
of Robert S. McNamara—WWII military strategist, auto executive
and, most famously, Secretary of Defense during the escalation of
the Vietnam War. Morris (NYFF 1978 Gates of Heaven; 1981, Vernon,
Florida; 1997, Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control) asks the question:
how can a mere mortal come to terms with history, particularly one
who has done so much to shape it? For the all-too-human McNamara,
past haunts present, hindsight is stopped dead in its tracks by
the lingering reality of military and human catastrophe, and apology
and self-justification keep trumping one another. Morris appears
to let his subject, over 80 but as sharp as ever, lead the way,
and the filmmaker uses archival footage, visual aids and a Philip
Glass score, not to mention his own fiery intelligence, to offer
a subtly ironic counterpoint. What develops is a haunting, crystal-clear
portrait of human error in action. A genuine tour-de-force, from
a filmmaker at the top of his form. (Text courtesy of the Film
Society of Lincoln Center)
 THE
BARBARIAN INVASIONS: Remy Girard,
Stephane Rousseau, Marie-Josee Croze, Marina Hands, Dorothee Berryman,
Johanne Marie Tremblay, Dominique Michel, Louise Portal, Yves Jacques,
Pierre Curzi (Directed by Denys Arcand,
Canada, Miramax) An urbane, womanizing
history professor who is presumably on his deathbed in a Montreal
hospital is paid a visit by his stuffy, estranged son, who turns
out to be something of a miracle worker. A sequel to "The Decline
of the American Empire," Arcand’s splendid 1986 comedy-drama,
the new film brings back some of the actors from the earlier one
playing the mature version of their earlier roles. "Invasions"
was a favorite at the 2003 Cannes Festival, reaping a Best Actress
award for Marie-Josee Croze, who plays the fiancee of the terminal
patient’s son. Opens theatrically on 11/21
BRIGHT LEAVES
(Directed by Ross McElwee, USA) How many documentaries can boast
a featured appearance by Gary Cooper? In BRIGHT LEAVES, the celebrated
nonfiction director Ross McElwee—filmmaker, academic and godfather
to the Boston doc community—returns to his North Carolina birthplace
to root out the story of his family’s agricultural downfall:
were the McElwees swindled out of their rightful share of America’s
tobacco bounty by their rivals, the unscrupulous Duke family? Is
there a lesson or a legacy in all this that will be handed down
to the director’s own son? Did Cooper really portray a character
based on McElwee’s tobacco-baron grandfather? Locating the
universal through the highly personal has always been McElwee’s
modus operandi—see such films as Sherman’s March and Time
Indefinite. And his technique is further distilled in this funny,
leisurely, ironic trip into one man’s obscure family history,
and the smoky haze of a one-crop culture. (Text courtesy of the
Film Society of Lincoln Center)
CRIMSON GOLD
(Directed by Jafar Panahi, Iran, Wellspring Media) The latest provocation
by the politically courageous and visually nimble Iranian director
Jafar Panahi (NYFF 1995, The White Balloon; 2000, The Circle), CRIMSON
GOLD explodes off the screen without the camera ever moving. And
yet the smash-and-crash jewel robbery with which the film opens
is really just a scream of anguish from its chief character Hussein
(Hossain Emadeddin), whose history we learn via flashback and a
cleverly elegant script by Pahani collaborator Abbas Kiarostami.
Pizza delivery-man Hussein—veteran of the Iran-Iraq war, victim
of chemical warfare and casualty of his country’s short-term
memory—is a symbol for Panahi of Iran’s economic stagnation,
the unspoken cruelty of its class distinctions, and the embarrassments
of its past. Hussein’s journeys through the streets of Teheran,
laden with his and his nation’s checkered histories, are funny,
poignant, and devastating. (Text courtesy of the Film Society
of Lincoln Center)
DISTANT
(Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Turkey, New Yorker Films) From Turkish filmmaker
Nuri Bilge Ceylan, whose Clouds of May premiered in the 2001 New
Directors/New Films festival, DISTANT is a subtle and incisive character
study of a big city photographer and his rural cousin who has come
to Istanbul looking for work—hopefully on a ship that will
take him away from his troubled country. The older man's disillusionment—he
has been forced to abandon his artistic ambitions to concentrate
on commercial jobs—provides a funny and revealing contrast
to his young visitor's naiveté and enthusiasm. Shooting with
a tiny, five-man crew (he is the film's director, writer, cinematographer
and co-editor), Ceylan captures a profound feeling of disaffection
and emptiness without losing his sense of humor or his emotional
engagement with his characters. The two lead actors, Muzaffer Özdemir
and Mehmet Toprak, shared the best actor prize at the 2003 Cannes
Film Festival; the film itself won the Grand Jury Prize. (Text
courtesy of the Film Society of Lincoln Center)
 DOGVILLE:
Nicole Kidman, Paul Bettany, Stellan Skarsgaard, Lauren Bacall,
Jean-Marc Barr, Blair Brown, James Caan, Patricia Clarkson, Jeremy
Davies, Siobhan Fallon, Ben Gazzara, Philip Baker Hall, Udo Kier,
Harriet Andersson, Bill Raymond (Directed by Lars von Trier,
Denmark, Lions Gate Films) Lars Von Trier proved
he could be an exciting, innovative filmmaker with "Breaking
the Waves." Then, in "Dancer in the Dark," the daring
Dane proved you don’t have to travel to the United States in
order to become an authority on the country’s mores and morality.
Judging from he reports from Cannes, he’s at it again. In "Dogville,"
shot mostly on a Swedish soundstage, the director shows the dark
side of the American West during the Great Depression. The reaction
at Cannes was mixed—the French loved it and the Americans hated
it.
In the film, Nicole Kidman, an actress who never says no to a challenge,
plays a mystery lady made to feel hideously ill at ease in a rapacious
Rocky Mountain town. Rising star Paul Bettany is cast as a creep
Nicole mistakes for a gentleman. Here’s what Bettany told Guy
Flatley about his experience working working with the uncrowned
king of Dogma 95. "'Dogville' marks a departure for Von Trier.
We didn’t use any natural light, and we worked on a set where
houses, the steeple of a church and the front of a shop were painted
on the floor. There’s a dog in ‘Dogville,’ of course,
and that dog is painted on the floor, and beneath the painting it
says ‘dog.’ There’s no outdoors. Well, the movie
is actually set outdoors, but it’s filmed inside, like it would
be in a theater.
"It takes place in a small mining village in the Rocky Mountains,
where the mine was closed down years ago. I play a 21-year-old philosopher-writer
who’s never written anything and gives speeches to the whole
town about morality and hasn’t got a fucking clue as to what
he’s actually talking about. Then, one night, into our town
comes a girl, played by Nicole Kidman, who’s running away from
gangsters. And I ask the town to take her on. And the film is the
fallout from that decision to welcome this outsider into our world.
"You see, its not really a Dogma film. There’s just me
and Nicole with mikes in our hair--so there’s no boom--and
Lars with a video camera that has a tape in it that runs for an
hour. The good side of that is it’s hard to remain self-conscious
for that length of time, and the bad side of is that you’ve
got an Australian and an Englishman improvising in sort of 1930’s
American accents. You can’t hope to know what you’ve done,
remember what you’ve done…you just have to let go and
know that Lars is the boss. He’s Jackson Pollock, and you’re
just mixing paint. I’ve got no sensation of how I did, because
98 percent of it isn’t going to be in the movie. And 98 percent
of it, I can guarantee you, is some of the worst acting I’ve
ever done in my life. So I’m really banking on the other two
percent being left in the film."
To read the complete interview with Paul Bettany,
click here.
 ELEPHANT:
Alex Frost, Eric Deulen, John Robinson, Elias McConnell, Jordan
Taylor, Carrie Finkea, Nicole George (Directed by Gus van Sant,
HBO Films/Fine Line Features) Those who feel
the French have exhibited anti-American tendencies in recent months
may have been surprised when the jurors at the Cannes Film Festival
awarded the prestigious Palme d’Or to an American movie. On
the other hand, not every U.S. citizen will rush out to see the
movie. That’s because "Elephant"--directed by Gus
Van Sant ("Drugstore Cowboy," "To Die For,"
"Good Will Hunting" and the putrid remake of "Psycho")--depicts
a high school slaughter that mirrors the tragedy at Columbine. The
cast, consisting largely of actual high school students, is topped
by Alex Frost as a baby-faced, gay, neo-nazi assassin. In a double
triumph, Van Sant was also declared Best Director at Cannes. Opens
theatrically on 10/2
THE FLOWER
OF EVIL (Directed by Claude Chabrol, France, Palm
Pictures) Claude Chabrol’s fiftieth feature, THE FLOWER OF
EVIL is a master’s summing up of all that he does best, set
in a milieu that he has made his own. The distinguished facade of
a wealthy French provincial family starts to crack when the wife
(Nathalie Baye) ventures into local politics and a discontented
son (Benoît Magimel) returns from a long sojourn in America.
It isn’t long before buried hints of murder, adultery, incest,
and wartime collaboration are emerging into the open and disrupting
the refined surfaces of a comfortably corrupt dynasty. Chabrol charts
the increasingly venomous proceedings with merciless precision,
an eye alert to the rituals of French political life, and a strong
vein of perverse humor that blossoms in an outrageous (and unexpectedly
hilarious) finale in which predictable notions of good and evil
are turned neatly on their head. Suzanne Flon provides an irresistible
performance as the beloved aunt who retains custody of more than
one lethal family secret. This is Chabrol’s ninth Festival
film, including Les Biches, 1968. (Text courtesy of the Film
Society of Lincoln Center)
FREE RADICALS
(Directed by Barbara Albert, Austria) As she’s leaving the
Rio airport, Manu asks some fellow travelers to snap a last photograph
of her in Brazil; hours later, she’s floating in the Gulf of
Mexico, the only survivor after a freak tornado downs her plane.
Five years later she’s working as a cashier in the supermarket
of a small Austrian town. How does one construct a life after such
an experience, aware that seemingly arbitrary forces can suddenly
rise up and decide who lives and who doesn’t? In FREE RADICALS
Barbara Albert, whose powerful debut Northern Skirts was shown in
the 2000 New Directors/New Films festival, creates an intricate
portrait of Manu and her world, her family, friends and acquaintances,
detailing how "causes" in one life can lead to unintended
"effects" in others. Yet Albert is not interested in the
notion of destiny for its own sake, but rather in how her characters
learn to come to terms with it and even find their own small ways
of triumphing over it. A lovely, thoughtful film from a most promising
young talent. (Text courtesy of the Film Society of Lincoln Center)
GOOD MORNING, NIGHT
(Directed by Marco Bellocchio, Italy) Revisiting the politics of
his own early films, such as China Is Near (1967) and In the Name
of the Father (NYFF1971), Marco Bellocchio in GOOD MORNING, NIGHT
restages one of the most notorious episodes in Italian political
history: the 1978 kidnapping of President Aldo Moro (Roberto Herlitzka)
by a cell of the Red Brigade terrorist group. Bellocchio focuses
on the only female member of the terrorist band, Anna (Maya Sansa),
as she tries to balance her revolutionary dreams with the lulling
routines of everyday life. Posing as a young housewife (Moro is
kept in a tiny cell built behind one of her bookcases), she finds
herself increasingly alienated from her militant comrades, and begins
thinking of a way to turn their prisoner free. Concerned as always
with the intersection of political power and family dynamics, Bellocchio,
who scored a great triumph at the 2002 NYFF with My Mother’s
Smile, has created another challenging and provocative film.
(Text courtesy of the Film Society
of Lincoln Center)
GOODBYE DRAGON
INN (Directed by Tsai Ming-liang, Taiwan) It is nighttime
in Taipei. Half a dozen lonely souls are watching King Hu’s
Dragon Inn in a local revival theater. Or rather, some of them are
watching, communing with the cinema. And some are just marking time,
or looking for love. Meanwhile, a silent cleaning woman is slowly
prowling the backrooms and hallways, the heavy step of her bum leg
echoing down the corridors. "This theater is haunted,"
someone says. And it is, by these people and their desire to connect.
Tsai Ming-liang’s GOODBYE DRAGON INN is the director’s
most minimal film and cinematically his most eloquent. Rarely has
the experience of movie going itself been so beautifully rendered.
Tsai truly understands the wonder of sitting in the darkness before
those flickering images, and he endows the space itself with a ghostly
poetic grandeur. Made up entirely of long takes, Goodbye Dragon
Inn is a daring work and a richly rewarding experience. (Text
courtesy of the Film Society of Lincoln Center)
MANSION BY THE LAKE
(Directed by Lester James Peries, Sri Lanka) Very loosely based
on Anton Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard, Lester James Peries's MANSION
BY THE LAKE follows a family of formerly wealthy, expatriate Sri
Lankan landowners, now impoverished, as they return from England
to the magnificent country estate they left behind. Now 84, Peries
has been making films in his native country since Rekawa in 1956;
his newest is a deeply moving study of a caste and a country torn
apart by social change, told with a sublime serenity and restraint.
Peries's style remains one of unruffled classical realism, situated
in an emotional territory somewhere between Satyajit Ray and John
Ford. Without shock cuts or conspicuous camera movements, this lovely
film creates a sense of the leisurely unfolding of time against
an impassive background of tropical splendor. (Text courtesy
of the Film Society of Lincoln Center)
 MAYOR
OF THE SUNSET STRIP: Rodney Bingenheimer, Mick Jagger,
David Bowie, Courtney Love, Keanu Reeves, Kato Kaelin, Sonny Bono,
Cher, Alice Cooper, Paul McCartney, Lance Loud, Joan Jett, Phil
Spector, Gwen Stefani, Deborah Harry, Pete Townshend, Brian Wilson,
Neil Young, Nancy Sinatra (George Hickenlooper, USA, First Look
Media/Overseas Film Group) A rather morose champion of pop/rock
performers for more than three decades, L.A. entrepreneur Rodney
Bingenheimer was more than ready for his close up in this documentary
by George Hickenlooper, the man who gave us "Hearts of Darkness:
A Filmmaker's Apocalypse" and "Monte Hellman: American
Auteur."
PTU
(Directed by Johnnie To, Hong Kong) One of the few personal filmmakers
still at work in the commercial Hong Kong cinema, Johnnie To specializes
in street-level cop films, shot with a no-nonsense authority that
recalls the work of Don Siegel and Phil Karlson. PTU—the initials
stand for "police tactical unit"—is To's variation
on a classic film noir theme, the corrupt cop who finds he must
finally take a stand. Played by the marvelous character actor Lam
Suet, Lo is a tubby, chain-smoking sergeant who loses his gun in
a fight with a street gang and goes to extraordinary lengths to
get it back. To's natural environment is Hong Kong at night—a
city of eerily deserted streets, glowing neon signs, echoing pools
of darkness and a constant sense of unseen menace. Johnnie To populates
his world with a range of marvelously drawn types, from sadistic
petty hoods to imposing senior officers—such as the upright
captain played by Hong Kong favorite Simon Yam. (Text courtesy
of the Film Society of Lincoln Center)
RAJA
(Directed by Jacques Doillon, France/Morocco) Jacques Doillon’s
unpredictable, multi-layered RAJA addresses the difficult subject
of two individuals trying to correct an imbalance of power. Fredérique
(Pascal Greggory, in a wonderfully intricate performance) is a wealthy
Frenchman who lives the life of a libertine pasha in Morocco. Raja
(Najat Benssallem) is one of the fetching local girls who comes
to work in his garden. They set their sights on one another, and
a battle of wits, libidos and cultural perspectives ensues. Fred,
the pampered, carefree imperialist, slowly begins to comprehend
the hard pragmatism of Raja’s life. Raja, the cunning, tough-minded
journeywoman, who has learned to use her sexuality as the ultimate
bartering tool, comes to understand Fred’s seriousness and
sense of rectitude. And the closer they get, the further away they
are from one another. Doillon (NYFF 1990, A Woman’s Revenge)
masterfully orchestrates this behavioral power struggle in wonderfully
warm images of dappled sunlight and vibrant color, with a visual
scheme that suggests Matisse. Few films have ever been sharper or
more alive to the warring realities and mentalities of the post-colonial
world. (Text courtesy of the Film Society of Lincoln Center)
S21: THE KHMER ROUGE
KILLING MACHINE (Directed by Pithy Panh, Cambodia/France,
First Run Features) In the mid-70s, Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge
converted the Tuol Sleng High School in Phnom Penh into the notorious
S21 detention center. Between 1975 and 1977, roughly 17,000 people
passed through its doors. Only seven survived. In S21: THE KHMER
ROUGE KILLING MACHINE, filmmaker Rithy Panh, who himself spent four
years in a Khmer Rouge labor camp, works with the same sense of
devotion and relentless pursuit of truth as Claude Lanzmann. He
accompanies the detention center’s official painter, Vann Nath,
on his first visit to S21 in more than 20 years, during which he
confronts several of his former captors and tormentors. Like Lanzmann,
Panh uses cinema to get the facts on record: the guards re-enact
their former routines, victims are remembered and named, and their
stories are told. And we learn that the terror of the Khmer Rouge
was felt by torturers and victims alike: for four years, an entire
society was held in the grip of murderous terror. Essential viewing,
a potent, scrupulously constructed act of witness, and a step toward
reconciliation with an unfathomable past. (Text Courtesy of the
Film Society of Lincoln Center)
PORNOGRAPHY
(Directed by Jan Jakub Kolski, Poland) Polish author Witold Gombrowicz
was one of the most remarkable writers of the 20th century; PORNOGRAPHY,
the provocative adaptation of his third novel, which he described
as "a descent to the dark limits of the conscience and the
body," should win him new admirers. Set in Nazi-occupied Poland,
Pornography focuses on two middle-aged men: Frederic, a theater
and film director, and Witold, a writer who serves as a wry commentator.
The two journey out to the country estate of Hippolyte, a friend
of Witold marginally involved in the resistance. There they encounter
German soldiers and partisans, young lovers and even younger murderers,
patriots and Catholics, while Frederic reveals an uncanny ability
to hear clearly even distant and delicate sounds. Director Jan Jakub
Kolski effectively finds the cinematic means to capture Gombrowicz’s
abrupt changes of mood and tone and almost surreal juxtapositions,
while anchoring the story in a very concrete time and place. (Text
courtesy of the Film Society of Lincoln Center)
SINCE OTAR LEFT
(Directed by Julie Bertuccelli, France) How elaborate a fraud would
we perpetrate to protect those we adore? There’s no limit,
of course, and the tangled, pan-generational web spun throughout
SINCE OTAR LEFT—the debut feature by Julie Bertuccelli—is
all about lying for love. Eka (a wonderfully moving Esther Gorintin)
lives on the morsels of communication she gets from her beloved
son, Otar, who long ago left Georgia for Paris and is apparently
thriving—and, just as apparently, never coming back. Eka is
cared for by her daughter, Marina, who resents her mother’s
obsession with Otar and therefore works for her all the harder,
and Marina’s daughter Ada, who is suffocating in the consequent
vacuum. In this tender, wire-walking family drama, Bertuccelli gives
us a deftly drawn, instantly recognizable dynamic of a frustrated
female clan, while never losing sight of the fact that everything
that happens is born of affection. (Text courtesy of the Film
Society of Lincoln Center)
A THOUSAND MONTHS
(Directed by Faouzi Bensaidi, Morocco/France) A THOUSAND MONTHS
takes place in Morocco, in 1981, in a small town in the heart of
the Atlas Mountains during the month of Ramadan. Seven-year-old
Mehdi is a model student, so trusted that he has the special task
of guarding his teacher’s highly valued chair each evening.
He lives with his mother and grandfather while his father—he
thinks—is off working in France; in fact his father is in prison,
but the adults all do their utmost to shield Mehdi from the truth.
Gradually, though, the lies and illusions that define life in this
otherwise seemingly tranquil village begin to come apart. Brilliantly
composing his wide, wide CinemaScope frame, Faouzi Bensaïdi,
who has worked with Andre Techiné and directed prize-winning
short films, makes an extremely impressive feature debut, aided
immeasurably by a wonderfully layered performance by young actor,
Fouad Labied. Bensaïdi creates an indelible portrait of repression
while never forgetting that, even under the harshest conditions,
flashes of joy, friendship and love can be found. (Text courtesy
of the Film Society of Lincoln Center)
 YOUNG
ADAM: Ewan McGregor, Tilda Swinton, Peter Mullan,
Emily Mortimer, Therese Bradley, Ewan Stewart, Stuart McQuarrie,
Pauline Turner, Alan Cooke, Rory McCann (Directed by David Mackenzie,
Scotland) A drifter takes a job working for a married couple who
run a barge between Glasgow and Edinburgh and soon becomes erotically
drawn to his woman boss. One morning the body of a nearly nude woman
surfaces in a canal, and that woman, as it turns out, was not unknown
to the drifter. Those who saw this film at Cannes claim that it
does not shy away from heavy drama or hot sex.
SPECIAL
EVENTS
THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT
(Directed by Jeff Stein, U.K., 109 min., 1979.
Walter Reade Theater) With its canny blend of rare TV clips, superb
concert footage and revealing interviews, THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT,
Jeff Stein's heartfelt celebration of The Who, sets a standard for
the rock documentary that has rarely been matched. To commemorate
the 40th anniversary of the prototype band's first recording session,
The Kids Are Alright now has been digitally restored and re-mastered
to match the director's original theatrical release. The Who has
never looked nor sounded better. Plus the world premiere of a new
production specially created for this year's NYFF, Quintrophenia!,
a quintuple, split-screen rendition of stunning versions of "Baba
O'Reilly" and "Won't Get Fooled Again" with never-before-seen
footage. Produced by Martin Lewis and John Albarian. (Text courtesy
of the Film Society of Lincoln Center)
THE BEST OF YOUTH
(Directed by Marco Tullio Giordana, Italy, 2003,
366 min., Miramax Films, Walter Reade Theater) Conceived
as a TV mini-series but then released theatrically in Italy with
great success, Marco Tullio Giordana’s THE BEST OF YOUTH is
a revealing and deeply touching look at forty years of social and
political change that transformed a nation. Through the lives, loves
and experiences of the Carati family—sons Nicola and Matteo,
daughters Francesca and Giovanna—the film moves from labor
strife in Turin to the flooding of Florence; from terrorist cells
to mafia trials; from the economic boom to the revolution in mental
health care. With a cast featuring many of Italy’s finest young
actors, The Best Of Youth brings to the fore the personal human
dramas behind the ebb and flow of history. (Text
courtesy of the Film Society of Lincoln Center)
PICCADILLY
(Directed by Ewald Andre Dumont, U.K., 1929,
109 min., b&w with live musical accompaniment, Alice Tully Hall)
The British Film Institute, with the support of Simon Hessel, has
restored and commissioned a new score for the 1929 silent PICCADILLY,
a delirious black-and-white spectacle of Jazz Age England shot on
the cusp of silence-to-sound. Directed by E. A. Dupont—the
German-expatriate director of Varieté and the 1928 Moulin
Rouge—Piccadilly features such memorable talents as Charles
Laughton (in his feature debut), Cyril Ritchard and Anna May Wong
who, due to Hollywood’s rigid racial code, had abandoned her
successful American career for more adventurous roles abroad. In
Piccadilly she certainly found one: a dishwasher who becomes the
toast of London, and the object of the nightclub owner’s sexual
obsession. The film is a thrilling jewel and a landmark in the emancipation
of nonwhite actresses. The world premiere live performance of the
new score for a seven-piece ensemble is led by composer Neil Brand.
(Text courtesy of the Film Society of Lincoln Center)
STALINGRAD
(Directed by Sebastian Dehnhardt, Germany, 156
min., 2003, Walter Reade Theater) Stalingrad the city may
no longer exist, but for all time that name will be associated with
perhaps the fiercest and unquestionably the most decisive battle
of World War II. The epic confrontation between German and Soviet
Russian armies—which left almost one million dead—at Stalingrad
in 1942-43 not only decided the outcome of World War II but possibly
the shape of the 20th century as well. Using amazing period footage,
including some 8mm films shot by the soldiers themselves, as well
as interviews with survivors from both sides—ranging from ordinary
conscripts to officers close to the military authorities—Sebastian
Dehnhardt’s STALINGRAD is a fascinating, in-depth look at the
events leading up to the attack, the battle itself and its aftermath.
(Text courtesy of the Film Society of Lincoln Center)
YASUJIRO OZU: A CENTENARY
CELEBRATION (Walter Reade Theater)
On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of his birth, the Festival
will present a retrospective tribute to one of the giants of world
cinema, YASUJIRO OZU: A CENTENIAL CELEBRATION, featuring some 36
films.
VIEWS
FROM THE AVANT-GARDE
(Experimental works by various filmmakers, Walter Reade Theater)
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