Coming soon: Two weeks of the perverse, the weird, and one very special, VICE-filled event!
It's back, and better than ever. Film Comment Selects--the series that last year brought you Kathryn Bigelow's universally lauded The Hurt Locker will be unveiling a whole new line-up of discoveries and movies you can't see anywhere else Feb 19 - Mar 4.
Tickets go on sale this Tuesday, Feb 2. Be sure and join us for a special opening-night co-presentation with VICE Magazine on Feb 19th, featuring Jonathan Kaplan's 1979 teen-rebellion masterwork, Over the Edge.
From our programming staff:
WARNING: ACTUAL DRUNKEN TEENAGERS WERE USED IN THE MAKING OF THIS FILM. In the spring of 1979, a small-budget movie with a somewhat cliché name was released in a handful of New York and Los Angeles theaters. It was pulled a few days later due to concerns that audiences would riot. Directed by Jonathan Kaplan, and based on a true story about bored suburban San Francisco youth gone wild, Over the Edge would never receive wide distribution. The film’s stars include a 15-year-old Matt Dillon and a 17-year-old Vincent Spano. Last year, in an oral history, Vice magazine hailed it as the “greatest teen rebellion movie of all time.” Film Comment Selects and Vice have teamed together for a special-screening that will include a panel discussion with members of the movie’s cast and crew, and an after-party featuring a DJ and open bar. (If there’s trouble, you can’t say we didn’t warn you).
Read more about Film Comment magazine.
Special thanks to our partner, Vice Magazine.
Dance on Camera: A Few Favorite Moments Where Dance and Film Come Together
It’s evident that whether its ballet, ballroom, meringue, or krumping, there is something beautiful and elegant about dance. And when dance collides on film, a special kind of alchemy is born on screen. That’s why we’re so excited to celebrate another year of Dance on Camera, January 29 - February 2, 2010.
To stimulate your appetite for the rarities and new work that will be on display starting this Friday, enjoy these classic dance clips:
Dance on Camera: A Program Guide
The Film Society is thrilled to welcome back the popular annual program Dance on Camera this Friday. Below, programmer Joanna Ney offers her introduction to some of the highlights of the program.
You 'Nutcracker" nuts, yes, we had the holiday spirit and now we welcome 2010. You notice we don't have to say two thousand and ten: 2010 has a clean, pragmatic sound to it. Embrace it!
Now, Dance on Camera Festival 2010 brings tidings of innovation, diversity and daring, while honoring tradition and history.
For ballet fans
So, if you are enjoying New York City Ballet and looking ahead to American Ballet Theater in the spring, you should definitely hone in on Forty Years of One Night Stands, a fun doc about the Royal Winnipeg Ballet and its Brit beginnings in a wild,Canadian outpost. From Flin Flon to Moscow, these dancers set the dance world on fire. Catch the flame on Jan 29. And if you don't know who Marge and Gower Champion were, it's never to late to see the "other half" of the team (Gower died during a performance, put in year), Marge, the model for Disney's "Snow White" and the hippo in "Fantasia" is shown with her current dance partner, the legendary Donald Saddler. Donald turns 90 on Jan 29. Marge already hit the mark. Ballroom dancing is the theme of Keep Dancing but the larger message rings clear: Do what you love and take from life what it gives you, not what it takes away.
dGenerate Poll Ranks Best Chinese-Language Films of the Past Decade
Film Society favorites Jia Zhangke, Ang Lee and Wong Kar-wai make a strong showing in dGenerate Films' poll of top Chinese-language films of the past decade. Below, the top ten and link to complete coverage from dGenerate Films.
1. In the Mood for Love, Wong Kar-wai (28 mentions)
2. Tie Xi Qu: West of the Tracks, Wang Bing (25)
3. Platform, Jia Zhangke (24)
4. Yi Yi, Edward Yang(23)
5. Still Life, Jia Zhangke (18)
6. Devils on the Doorstep, Jiang Wen (12)
7. Oxhide, Liu Jiayin (11)
(tie) Summer Palace, Lou Ye (11)
(tie) The World, Jia Zhangke (11)
10. Blind Shaft, Li Yang (10)
(tie) Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Ang Lee (10)
U.S. Premiere of ‘Saviors in the Night’ kicks off The New York Jewish Film Festival
"'I will leave this film a changed person,' said one audience member of Saviors in the Night, a German World War II drama about the lives of German farmers harboring Jews during that country’s darkest of periods," writes Jaron Gandelman of the opening night of the New York Jewish Film Festival on the Jewish Museum blog.
"Actors Margarita Broich, Lia Hoensbroech, and Veronica Ferres, who plays Marga, spoke of the inspiration they acquired during the shooting of the film, and the constant challenges they faced recounting the horrors of their country’s past. 'My grandparents could survive the War because of farmers,' recalled Ms. Hoensbroech, 'which presented a great challenge and an honor to take part in this film.'"
Read the whole post on the Jewish Museum blog
See the schedule for the New York Jewish Film Festival and buy tickets
Can Art Make Sense of Suffering? Asks Panel at The Center for Jewish History
Can art respond to, or even make sense of, suffering? This was just one of the thorny questions raised at a panel this past Sunday at the Center for Jewish History called "Imagination and Catastrophe: Art and the Aftermath of Genocide." The symposium featured filmmakers Atom Egoyan, poet Peter Balakian, novelist Marcie Hershman, critic R. Clifton Spargo, and was moderated by Donna Lee-Frieze, a scholar of genocide. It's the first of four panels planed at the center to focus on genocide, human rights issues and culture.
From l to r: R. Clifton Spargo, Marcie Hershman, Atom Egoyan and Peter Balakian
As practicing artists, many of the panelists explored their own challenges in terms of grappling with the enormity of suffering on a mass scale. If the Holocaust represents the negation of culture, noted critic Spargo, then we might conclude that it would be impossible for art to bring the divide between the extremity of the experience and the transcendent distillation of experience that art seeks to create. "If you were bearing true witness, you wouldn't be able to tell the story," echoed Egoyan, which led into another provocative issue, namely, should artists try to tackle history's darkest chapters?
NYJFF Program Guide: Boundary Breakers
The New York Jewish Film Festival presents an extraordinary range of films from 14 different countries, including eye-opening documentaries, brand-new dramas with stars like Emily Watson, true historical stories and even an animated film!
Need help navigating the selection? This week, the filmlinc blog will be bringing you several program guides centering on different aspects of the program. Today, we're looking at some of the festival's most exciting and eclectic selections...the boundary breakers:
A true story told in clay? That's Mary and Max, the new animated film from Oscar-winner Adam Elliot. It's the unlikely, but utterly charming story of the correspondence between a chubby, lonely eight-year-old girl in Melbourne, and a 44-year-old, severely obese New Yorker with Asperger’s Syndrome. Featuring the voices of Eric Bana, Toni Colette, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Dame Edna.
Keep on Rockin’ in the Walter Reade: Jonathan Demme presents Neil Young Trunk Show this Friday!
For the Neil Young fans who watched Jonathan Demme's 2006 concert film Heart of Gold, it may have been a bittersweet experience. While the golden lights that bathed the stage in the historical Ryman Auditorium lent a beautiful sheen to the choreographed and immaculate performance, there is a strong feeling that we are only getting one side of the dynamic songwriter. Equally known for his beautiful, intimate country-folk songs and his fierce, shredding jams, it felt like Neil's wild side was being held back. As achingly pretty as many of the songs are on Heart of Gold, I wanted (and I'm sure I'm not alone in this) to see Neil take his clean Western suit off, throw on a ratty flannel and trade the acoustic for his Gibson Les Paul.
Perhaps Demme felt the same way, because his newest concert doc, Neil Young Trunk Show, lets Neil rip loose. Filmed on several handheld cameras during his Chrome Dreams II tour at the Tower Theater in Upper Darby, PA, Demme's newest union with Neil lets the artist play in his natural element -- raw and unrestrained. Like a rock concert home movie, guided by Demme's masterful eye, Neil Young Trunk Show is loose and intimate. It promises to be a perfect companion to Heart of Gold (like a wilder twin brother) that offers the other half of what we love about Neil.
Will there be a third Demme/Young film? Does Demme have a favorite Neil Young album? This Friday, get a chance to ask these questions and more when Jonathan Demme appears at the Walter Reade Theater to introduce Neil Young Trunk Show.
-Kazu Watanabe
NYJFF Program Guide: Documentaries
The New York Jewish Film Festival presents an extraordinary range of films from 14 different countries, including eye-opening documentaries, brand-new dramas with stars like Emily Watson, true historical stories and even an animated film!
Need help navigating the selection? This week, the filmlinc blog will be bringing you several program guides centering on different aspects of the program. Today, we're looking at documentaries:
The Jazz Baroness tells the extraordinary untold story of a Rothschild heiress and her relationship with jazz great Thelonius Monk, featuring illuminating interviews with Quincy Jones, Sonny Rollins and Clint Eastwood.
Everyone's faced a "test of faith" at some point in their lives, but the subjects of Leap of Faith confront stark and dramatic choices while negotiating their conversion to the Orthodox Jewish faith. Subjects include Messianic Jews in Colorado, a youngster whose bat mitzvah is challenged by a Jewish high school and a motivated Trinidadian nanny in New York.
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Carl Craig and nsi. perform LIVE this Friday!
This Friday, February 5th, Detroit techno icon Carl Craig and Berlin duo NSI will perform LIVE to two early Warhol films – Blow Job and Kiss. Buy tickets>>
Writer and filmmaker Peter Gidal wrote the following on Blow Job: "In Andy Warhol's silent black-and-white movie, Blow Job (1964), a youth is filmed as he is apparently being given the sex act named in the title. The 35-minute film is accentuated by the paucity of expression on the actor's face: we see only his head and shoulders, rigidly framed so that all off-screen space has to be imagined, or avoided. Sometimes the young actor looks bored, sometimes as if he is thinking, sometimes as if he is aware of the camera, sometimes as if he is not. Like the protagonists of other Warhol films, he is apparently left to his own devices."
And just in case you’ve never heard of them- here’s some background information on the talented artists who will perform live. (Carl Craig plays with Blow Job, nsi. with Kiss)
NSI. (non standard institute) is the brainchild of Berlin sound engineers Max Loderbauer and Tobias Freund, prominent techno producers whose careers date back to the mid-1980s. Known for their visceral take on minimalism and techno, nsi. has established itself as one of the most inventive and aurally accomplished groups.