the films of
the 37th
new york film festival--main program

September 24 - October 10, 1999

Sponsored by Grand Marnier

Additional suppport from La Perla
and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences

Opening Night: ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER Certainly the hands-down favorite of the Cannes Film Festival this year and the winner of the Best Director prize, this screwball valentine to all women and to all the men who want to be women is lovingly fashioned by the ever-fabulous Pedro Almodóvar. Madrid and Barcelona provide the lurid urban landscapes that harbor Almodóvar's beautifully portrayed characters who brim with compassion and an unstoppable life force. Manuela (exquisitely played by Cecilia Roth) loses her loving son and begins a quest to find his wayward father. En route she encounters and nurses back to sanity several varieties of wounded women. Almodóvar's affection for his subject has never been more fervent and is fully realized by the extraordinary performances of Roth, Marisa Paredes, Penélope Cruz and Antonia San Juan. 100 minutes, Spain; 1999. A Sony Pictures Classics Release. 24A Fri. September 24 at 8:15 pm ATH 24B Fri. September 24 at 9:00 pm AFH

A New York Film Festival Retrospective:
THE EDGE OF THE WORLD
The British Film Institute has made a new 35mm print of this rarely seen treasure by Michael Powell, made under harrowing circumstances on a desolate island in the North Sea in 1937. The wild seas, awe-inspiring rock formations and the sheer feel and look of the climate and topography of the island Foula add emotional intensity to this story of a fishing community struggling to maintain traditions in the face of the inevitable evacuation of their island home. The fish and peat have been depleted and the islanders, most played by the local people, dispute amongst themselves. A love story within two warring families heightens the drama and the Glasgow Orpheus Choir further enhances the high romance of this rare gem. 81 minutes, Great Britain; 1937. Special support provided by the Academy Foundation of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences.
Short: CLOSING TIME
Balint Kenyeres, 30 minutes, Hungary; 1999
25A Sat. September 25 at 12:30 pm

THE COLOR OF HEAVEN
Winner of the Grand Prize at this year's Fajr Festival in Tehran, this most recent film by Majid Majidi (Children Of Heaven) confirms him as one of the greatest talents in the ever-astonishing Iranian cinema. Mohammad, an eight-year old student in a Tehran school for the blind, waits for his father to take him home for summer break. For the boy (played with remarkable delicacy by Mohsen Ramezani), every moment is full of the richness and sensual mysteries of the world; for his father, a bitter widower, life seems little more than a struggle without end, and his son's future prospects could only be as bleak as his own. Yet Majidi is not interested in drawing heroes or villains, saints or sinners; instead, his characters each attempt to deal with the fate given them in the only ways they know how. An extraordinary final sequence, in which the fury of nature collides head-on with the power of faith, is simply a tour-de-force. 90 minutes, Iran; 1999.
Short: EVEN THE WIND / MEME LE VENT
Laurence Attali, 18 minutes, France / Senegal; 1999
25B Sat. September 25 at 3:00 pm
26E Sun. September 26 at 9:30 pm

RIEN SUR ROBERT
You're a writer who has published a scathing attack on a major Balkan movie that you haven't seen (as notoriously happened in France several years ago). You're contrite, but it's not going to help you. That's the situation facing Didier (Fabrice Luchini) in this droll, delicious comedy of bad manners by the critic and screenwriter-turned-director Pascal Bonitzer. Retribution comes in a fabulously withering putdown by a famous scholar (Michel Piccoli) after Didier crashes a dinner party, and a crushing description of wild sex with another man from his girl friend Juliette (the sublimely poker-faced Sandrine Kiberlain). Didier does find solace with the gorgeous Aurelie (Valentina Cervi) in this wry portrait of love, ambition, and regret among the Parisian scribbling class. 110 minutes, France; 1999.
Short: TIME FLIES
Robert Breer, 5 minutes, USA; 1997
25C Sat. September 25 at 6:00 pm
27B Mon. September 27 at 9:00 pm

THE CARRIERS ARE WAITING
Tired of filing scoops wrung from the police radio band for the local newspaper, Roger Closset has a dream: to find a way - by any means necessary - for him or one of his family members to enter into the Guinness Book of World Records. He sets his sights on the record for most door-openings in a 24-hour period, drafts his fifteen-year-old son Michel as the contestant, finds an American-style coach for "scientific training," and sets up a door and jamb in the garden for workouts. Will all this hard work and meticulous planning succeed? This impressive debut feature film by Benoit Mariage boldly charts a razor-thin course between comedy and tragedy, as Roger's manic if hilarious obsession turns increasingly darker. As Roger, Benoit Poelvoorde - first seen by NYFF audiences as the loquacious serial killer in Man Bites Dog - gives a performance at once terrifying and heart-rending. 94 minutes, Belgium/France; 1999. A Samuel Goldwyn Films Release.
25D Sat. September 25 at 9:00 pm
26D Sun. September 26 at 7:00 pm

LICENSE TO LIVE
Yutaka Yoshii (Hidetoshi Nishijima) suddenly wakes from a coma ten years after being hit by a car. Returning to life is not a simple task for this Japanese Rip Van Winkle, who has slept from ages 14 to 24. His mother, father, and sister have gone separate ways, and he settles with a family friend who runs a carp-fishing stand. Soon he reopens a pony ride that his family once operated. From its fanciful and surprising beginning, Kiyoshi Kurosawa's quietly moving film builds a subtle portrait of a world (Yutaka's, and, of course, ours) that appears at once perfectly normal and mundane, and at the same time zany and absurd. Director Kurosawa (no relation to the late Akira Kurosawa) emerges into international prominence with this wacky and masterfully mordant exploration of what it takes to live. 109 minutes, Japan; 1999.
26A Sun. September 26 at 1:30 pm
27A Mon. September 27 at 6:00 pm

SICILIA!
Two of cinema's most uncompromising auteurs (and NYFF favorites), Jean-Marie Straub and Danielle Huillet, have created a bold and beautiful adaptation of Elio Vittorini's masterwork Conversations in Sicily. Published in 1939, and a best seller until banned in 1942, the novel narrates the return of an intellectual to his native Sicily after a long absence. The film is structured as a series of dialogue encounters - with strangers in a port, fellow passengers on a train, the protagonist's mother - each of which conceals more than it reveals, emphasizing the distance between what can be seen and felt and what can be expressed. Moving beyond the original's immediate context - the increasing oppression of pre-war Italy - Straub/Huillet offer a moving look at the state of permanent exile common to all of those who can't go home again. 66 minutes, France; 1999.
Short: MACHORKA-MUFF
Jean-Marie Straub, 17 minutes, West Germany; 1963
26B Sun. September 26 at 4:30 pm

Special Event: PRINCESS MONONOKE Japanese animé-that strain of Japanese animated film featuring brilliantly colored, richly textured backgrounds, child-like heroes and often fantastic, mythical storylines-reached astonishing new heights with PRINCESS MONONOKE, directed by Japan's leading animator Hayao Miyazaki. Mining a treasure chest full of characters and themes from Japanese folklore, the story begins as Ashitaka, the last young warrior of the Emishi clan, is forced to kill a monster threatening his village. After discovering that the beast was actually a forest god, whose death has brought down a curse upon him, Ashitaka leaves his village to try to discover who is transforming these gods into monsters-and in the process upsetting the natural balance which has allowed humans to live in harmony with both nature and the supernatural. The English-language version to be screened was adapted by Neil Gaiman, and features the voices of Billy Crudup, Minnie Driver, Claire Danes, Billy Bob Thornton and Jada Pinkett. 135 minutes, Japan; 1997. A Miramax Films Release. 26C Sun. September 26 at 6:30 pm

THE LETTER
Take the 17th century French novel La Princesse de Clèves, by Madame de Lafayette. Set it in present-day European high society. Dress your performers in designer clothes. Add as love interest a leading Portuguese pop singer, Pedro Abrunhosa, who plays himself. Mix well, but temperately. The result is the captivating new film by the world's most senior active filmmaker, Manoel de Oliveira (Journey to the Beginning of the World), who possesses one of cinema's freshest and most vital sensibilities. Chiara Mastroianni portrays the modern Madame de Clèves, who seeks a contemporary resolution for a centuries-old moral dilemma in this intimate, sad and passionate masterwork. 107 minutes, France/Portugal; 1999.
Short: SEPTEMBER 5:10PM
Mitch McCabe, 9 minutes, USA; 1999
28A Tue. September 28 at 6:00 pm

BEAU TRAVAIL
In the east African enclave of Djibouti, the men of a small French Foreign Legion outpost spend their days practicing military drills, exercising vigorously, pressing their clothes but mostly getting baked by the scorching desert sun. Contact with the locals is minimal, largely limited to nocturnal soirees in open-air discos. Barely older than his charges, Sergeant Galoup (Carax regular Denis Lavant) seems a perfect Legionnaire: a brooding loner, cut off from his past, he runs the troop like a well-oiled machine until the arrival of a new recruit, Sentier (Gregoire Colin), threatens to upset the delicate balance that is his life. Inspired by Melville's Billy Budd, BEAU TRAVAIL is the most provocative film yet by Claire Denis, an exploration of this special, very enclosed male world through its rituals, its codes and its barely contained emotional conflicts. 90 minutes, France; 1999.
Short: COUSIN
Adam Benjamin Elliot, 5 minutes, Australia; 1998
28B Tue. September 28 at 9:00 pm
29A Wed. September 29 at 6:00 pm

TIME REGAINED
Marcel Proust's epic masterwork Remembrance of Things Past comes to shimmering life in this great, ingenious adaptation of its final volume by Raul Ruiz. Working with screenwriter Gilles Taurand (Thieves), Ruiz fashions the narrative action as a series of corridors leading to the images, themes and stories which have coursed through all the novels. A meditation on the distance between immediate physical sensation and the process of memory, the film reflects this very Proustian theme with its evocations of the snapshots of Lartigue and early films of Méliès, among its lode of cultural and historical references. Aided by a splendid cast featuring Catherine Deneuve, John Malkovich, Emmanuelle Beart and Vincent Perez, TIME REGAINED powerfully captures the end of one era as another strains to be born. 158 minutes, France; 1999.
30B Thu. September 30 at 8:30 pm
2A Sat. October 2 at 11:15 am

BOYS DON'T CRY
Brandon Teena, the new man in town, charmed the women of Falls City, Nebraska. Dashing, considerate, sexually skilled, he brought an alluring excitement into their lives. But Brandon wasn't all that he showed himself to be. For one thing, he had fled from a court date in nearby Lincoln. And, for another, how was he a man? Brandon's masquerade courted jealousy and met a violent revenge. The tragic true story- which made national headlines and also has been told in a documentary film-is given sensitive and subtle rendering in Kimberly Pierce's first fiction feature. As Brandon, Hilary Swank creates a compelling character whose reckless courage traverses the boundaries of gender and sexual identity in this daring film. Chloe Sevigny, as Lana, powerfully conveys the complex desires of a woman whose love defied the limitations of gender. 114 minutes, USA; 1999. A Fox Searchlight Films Release.
1A Fri. October 1 at 6:00 pm
2E Sat. October 2 at 12:00 midnight

BEING JOHN MALKOVICH
Screenwriter Charlie Kaufman and director Spike Jonze inaugurate a new vein of American comedy with a surrealist, screwball farce that never stops surprising. An oppressed office worker (John Cusack) discovers a magic passageway behind a file cabinet that leads directly into the subjective experience of actor John Malkovich - where the lucky voyager is allowed to spend 15 minutes before being spat out somewhere along the New Jersey Turnpike. And that's just the premise of this wild ride, which widens to include a love triangle with Cusack's mousy wife (Cameron Diaz) and acerbic co-worker (Cathleen Keener). Graced by a standout comic performance by Mr. M. himself. 112 minutes, USA; 1999. A USA Films Release.
Short: LITTLE ECHO LOST
Armagan Ballantyne, 6 minutes, Australia; 1999
1B Fri. October 1 at 9:00 pm
2B Sat. October 2 at 3:00 pm

Festival Centerpiece: TOPSY-TURVY Mike Leigh directs - a musical! The brilliant chronicler of the emotional currents of everyday life in contemporary London (Naked, Secrets and Lies) turns his biting, comic eye back to the 19th century for a mesmerizing, hugely satisfying tale reminiscent of the grand let's-put-on-a-show Hollywood musical tradition. Leigh's show people aren't his usual ordinary folk, they're the most famous librettist and composer of comic operas in English history, W.S. Gilbert (Jim Broadbent) and Arthur Sullivan (Allan Corduner). In 1884, however, the duo has hit a slump, and may be breaking up. Then Gilbert's wife drags him to a Japanese exhibition, The Mikado is hatched, and the D'Oyly Carte company fills the Savoy Theatre with on-stage preparation and backstage intrigue. Like G&S themselves, Leigh brings marvelous new vitality to a classic form. 160 minutes, UK; 1999. A USA Films Release. 2C Sat. October 2 at 6:00 pm 3A Sun. October 3 at 1:30 pm

JUHA
A bold new technological breakthrough from Finland - a feature filmed entirely in ravishing black and white and joyfully free of dialogue. Aki Kaurismaki, the Nordic master of deadpan comedy and subversive melodrama, directs this third adaptation of the folk novel that has become Finland's national myth. All is well for the happy peasant Juha and his vulnerable young bride (Kati Outinen, of The Match Factory Girl) until a city slicker shows up, his sports car ("SIRK" reads the license plate) having run out of gas. Despite the trappings of camp, Kaurismaki finds unexpected emotional power in this tale of a lost Eden. 78 minutes, Finland; 1999.
Short: LA COMTESSE DE CASTIGLIONE
David Lodge, 14 minutes, UK; 1999
2D Sat. October 2 at 9:30 pm

PRIPYAT
After the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident, over 100,000 people were evacuated from the immediate area and re-settled, while a 20-mile heavily restricted zone was set up around the power plant. Yet, ten years later, people have begun to return. PRIPYAT, named after a city where many of Chernobyl's workers lived, is a remarkable, at times surreal look at a real-life ghost town, a place haunted not by spirits but by radiation that has poisoned the land, water and even the air. Filmmaker Nikolaus Geyrhalter seeks out some of these "returnees," explores their reasons for coming back and their attitudes towards living with constant, potentially lethal health threat. "What can radioactivity do to me?" asks one aged farmer, as he offers the interviewer some homegrown mushrooms. The film's elegant black and white cinematography provides an interesting counterpoint to tranquil landscapes which have come to symbolize a kind of living death. 100 minutes, Austria; 1999.
Short:ANDARES IN THE TIME OF WAR
Alejandra Jimenez Lopez, 5 minutes, UK / Columbia; 1998
3B Sun. October 3 at 5:30 pm

ROSETTA
The surprise winner of this year's Palme d'Or at Cannes offers another uncompromising drama of moral choice from the co-writers and directors of the acclaimed La Promesse, the Belgian brothers Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne. In an impressive debut performance, which won her a share of the Best Actress award at Cannes, 18-year-old Emilie Dequenne creates a memorable portrait of the title character, an impoverished young woman desperate to find a job, dignity, the possibility of an ordinary future. Intense, fast-paced, and shockingly blunt, ROSETTA portrays with unblinking honesty the commonplace hopes but unpredictable deeds of a woman poised on the edge between determination and despair. 95 minutes, Belgium; 1999. A USA Films Release.
Short: END OF THE CENTURY / FIN DE SIGLIO
Maike Höhne, 15 minutes, Germany / Argentina; 1998
3C Sun. October 3 at 8:30 pm
4B Mon. October 4 at 9:00 pm

DOGMA
Kevin Smith (Clerks, Chasing Amy) brings his decidedly absurdist sensibility to a comedy of truly cosmological proportions. Two renegade angels (Matt Damon and Ben Affleck), long ago tossed out of heaven, discover what they think is a loophole in church dogma that will allow them to return to paradise. All they have to do is pass through a certain portal at a certain time in a certain New Jersey cathedral; the problem (ours, not theirs) is that by doing so they'll upset the divine order and obliterate humanity in the process. Standing in the way of utter disaster are a woman having a crisis of faith (Linda Fiorentino), a hitherto unknown 13th Apostle (Chris Rock), a heavenly Muse (Salma Hayak) and two unlikely prophets known as Jay and Silent Bob. Deliriously imaginative and full of offbeat, outrageous humor, DOGMA nevertheless conveys a very human, very touching sense of awe in the face of the eternal mysteries of faith. 125 minutes, USA; 1999.
4A Mon. October 4 at 6:00 pm
5B Tue. October 5 at 9:15 pm

POLA X
Herman Melville's strange and disturbing 1852 novel, Pierre or the Ambiguities, has found an audacious interpreter in director Leos Carax (Lovers on the Bridge). POLA X sets the American author's gothic romance in France of today. Pierre (Guillame Depardieu), a successful young writer soon to be married, lives in a bright sumptuous world at a country chateau with his adoring mother (Catherine Deneuve), until a mysterious woman (Katerina Golubeva) shows up from the Balkans, claiming to be his half-sister. He leaves everything behind to move with her into a dark Parisian netherworld, courting self-destruction in seeking, as Carax has described it, a lost part of himself. Bold, mysterious, gorgeously photographed, POLA X brings a weird and tragic 19th century tale to extraordinary present-day life. 134 minutes, France; 1999.
5A Tue. October 5 at 6:00 pm
6B Wed. October 6 at 8:30 pm

SET ME FREE (EMPORTE-MOI)
Deftly avoiding the pitfalls and clichés of the coming-of-age film, Léa Pool places us in Montreal in 1963 as an adolescent girl tries to make sense of her family and the world around her. Karine Vanasse gives a glowing performance as Hanna, a teenager with a lively imagination and an infatuation for Anna Karina in Godard's Vivre Sa Vie. A Karina-lookalike school teacher fills the void left by her exhausted and overworked mother; her best friend awakens her to a new world of sensual possibilities. The cast is nicely rounded out by the poignant performance of Miki Manojlovic, playing Hanna's impetuous father as an unrecognized poet railing against the world. Pool has spun a charming tale about growing up curious that will resonate for many. 95 minutes, Canada/Switzerland; 1998.
Short: 2 ÷ 3
Richard Press, 6 minutes, USA; 1999
6A Wed. October 6 at 6:00 pm
7B Thu. October 7 at 9:00 pm

THE OTHER
The subject of a special tribute at the 1998 NYFF, Egypt's Youssef Chahine is that rare contemporary artist who is able to create works with enormous popular appeal that feature audacious personal and political dimensions. Partially shot in New York City, THE OTHER is a delirious love story between the son of a corrupt, domineering female industrialist and a crusading journalist from the lower classes. Between passionate embraces and extravagant musical numbers, Chahine somehow finds time to attack global capitalism, fantasize about the information super-highway, and offer a stirring vision of a harmonious, multi-cultural Middle East. The dizzying transitions and vibrant emotions represent Chahine at his best. 105 minutes, Egypt/France; 1999.
Short: DARWIN'S EVOLUNTIONARY STAKES
Andrew Horne, 4 minutes, Australia; 1998
7A Thu. October 7 at 6:00 pm
9D Sat. October 9 at 9:15 pm

THE WOMAN CHASER
Debut writer/director Robinson Devor has crafted a film noir spoof as good as they get. Our hero, Richard Hudson, on a quest for true meaning in his life, is played to deadpan, macho perfection by Patrick Warburton (Elaine's boyfriend, Putty on Seinfeld). Richard runs a crooked used car lot and lives with a family of misfits until the urge to make the great American movie thrusts him into new worlds. Like a ringleader engineering a crime, he eventually completes his grand opus but events soon take a monstrous twist. Devor has assembled a hilarious assortment of oddball characters struggling to make their mark in a low-down LA with glimpses of an unattainable glamour that cruelly beckons. 96 minutes, USA; 1999.
Short: hITCH
Bradley Rust Gray, 18 minutes, USA; 1999
8A Fri. October 8 at 6:00 pm
9B Sat. October 9 at 3:00 pm

HOLY SMOKE
Jane Campion returns to the fiercely inventive visual style and dark themes of Sweetie for this rough, unforgiving look at the struggle between the sexes. Gentle Australian teen Kate Winslet innocently drifts into a Krishna cult; her incensed parents hire a professional American deprogrammer - swaggering Harvey Keitel - to knock some sense back in her. Squaring off in an isolated Outback hut, they throw every weapon they've got at each other, including sex, violence and crafty paternalism. When the smoke clears, no one stays standing. 120 minutes, Australia; 1999. A Miramax Films Release.
8B Fri. October 8 at 9:00 pm
9A Sat. October 9 at 12:00 noon

MOBUTU, KING OF ZAIRE
Even by the standards of other international kleptocrats - those leaders who rob their countries blind as their people sink into misery - Mobuto Sese Seko was something of a legend. With Zaire's diamond mines and other natural resources at his disposal, his personal fortune (measured in billions, and tucked away in foreign banks) eventually surpassed Zaire's international debt. Yet Mobutu was no mere aberration; as veteran filmmaker Thierry Michel's devastating portrait powerfully shows, his every move was supported and indeed encouraged by U.S. and European politicians, who saw him as a bulwark against communism, an island of "stability" in an otherwise turbulent region - or at least as someone always eager to do their bidding. Combining extraordinary material from Mobutu's own personal archive (he liked to have a film crew around), news footage and interviews with his intimates, Michel traces Mobutu's rise and fall while exposing the corruption and cynicism which made him possible. 135 minutes, Belgium; 1999.
9C Sat. October 9 at 6:00 pm

Closing Night: FELICIA'S JOURNEY Director Atom Egoyan smoothly unfolds a modern horror story of innocence, abduction and redemption based on the much acclaimed novel by William Trevor. Felicia, luminously played by Elaine Cassidy, crosses the Irish sea in search of her lover and instead develops a convoluted and ultimately malevolent relationship with a courtly catering manager (Bob Hoskins). Hoskins, in a delicately underplayed performance, delivers a deeply disturbing portrait of a man with dark secrets who struggles to maintain an exterior life of obsessive precision. In flashback, Arsinee Khanjian gives an exuberant performance as Hoskins' celebrity-chef mother providing further depth to his character and further nuance to the story. With characteristic sureness, Egoyan deftly takes a genre format and turns it elegantly and seamlessly into a work most definitely his own. 116 minutes, Canada; 1999. An Artisan Entertainment Release. Short: HERO Jon Mustafa, 8 minutes, Great Britain; 1999 10A Sun. October 10 at 7:30 pm

Main Program | Views from the Avant Garde | Pietro Germi Retrospective |
Kusturica's UNDERGROUND | THE MAN WHO LAUGHS | Lanzmann's A VISITOR FROM THE LIVING | NYFF Archive