FSLC announces On Cinema conversation, HBO Films Directors Dialogues and Masterworks adds to NYFF

THE FILM SOCIETY OF LINCOLN CENTER announces
On Cinema conversation between
Noah Baumbach and Brian De Palma and
HBO Films® Directors Dialogues series with Abbas Kiarostami, David Chase and Robert Zemeckis
at the 2012 NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL

Masterworks additions are highlighted by Director’s Cut screening of LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS, restored versions of FELLINI SATYRICON, HEAVEN’S GATE, RICHARD III and the World Premiere of a new version of THE ROLLING STONES – CHARLIE IS MY DARLING – IRELAND 1965

Special sidebar presentations of CINÉASTES DE NOTRE TEMPS/CINÉMA DE NOTRE TEMPS and MEN OF CINEMA: PIERRE RISSIENT AND THE CINEMA MACMAHON

NEW YORK, August 27, 2012 —The Film Society of Lincoln Center announced today its 2012 NYFF HBO Films® Directors Dialogues participants would be Abbas Kiarostami, David Chase and Robert Zemeckis and the popular On Cinema conversation will feature two directors – Noah Baumbach and Brian De Palma. FSLC also announced additional titles as part of its Masterworks program, including the Director’s Cut of Frank Oz’s LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS, restored versions of Michael Cimino’s HEAVEN’S GATE, Laurence Olivier’s RICHARD III and Peter Whitehead’s THE ROLLING STONES – CHARLING IS MY DARLING – IRELAND 1965, as well as two special sidebar presentations as part of the festival’s 50th Anniversary celebration.

The fourth edition of NYFF’s annual master class, On Cinema, will feature, for the first time, two directors sharing the stage for this expansive dialogue about their influences, filmmaking choices, and their own personal histories of cinema. Brian De Palma (PASSION), a master of suspense; and Noah Baumbach (FRANCES HA) will discuss their influences in film, show clips and take questions from the audience in what promises to be a can’t-miss event on Sunday, October 7.

The popular HBO Films® Directors Dialogues returns to the New York Film Festival with an eclectic trio of filmmakers. The Directors Dialogues pair a director with a journalist as they discuss the filmmaker’s career, views on their own approach to making movies as well as the current state of the art of filmmaking. This year’s lineup will feature Abbas Kiarostami (LIKE SOMEONE IN LOVE), David Chase (NOT FADE AWAY) and Robert Zemeckis (FLIGHT).

Abbas Kiarostami will be joined by Philip Lopate (Former NYFF Selection Committee member and contributor to Film Comment) in conversation on Saturday, October 6 at 2:00PM.

David Chase will be joined by Scott Foundas (NYFF Selection Committee, FSLC Associate Program Director and contributing editor, Film Comment) in conversation on Sunday, October 7 at 1:45PM.

Robert Zemeckis will be joined by Richard Peña (Chairman of the NYFF Selection Committee and FSLC Programming Director) in conversation on Saturday, October 13 at 6:00PM.

Additions to NYFF’s Masterworks lineup are led by a presentation of the Director’s Cut of Frank Oz’s LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS (1986) with the director, Ellen Greene, and film restorer Kurt Galvao attending; restored versions of Laurence Olivier’s RICHARD III (1955); Federico Fellini’s FELLINI SATYRICON (1969); Michael Cimino’s HEAVEN’S GATE (1980); and the World Premiere of a new version of the long unseen Peter Whitehead’s THE ROLLING STONES – CHARLIE IS MY DARLING – IRELAND 1965 (1966/2012).

Other must-sees, include a 30th Anniversary screening of Amos Gitai’s FIELD DIARY (1982), a 40th Anniversary screening of Bob Rafelson’s THE KING OF MARVIN GARDENS (1972), with both screenings including appearances by the filmmakers, and a rare screening of Pierre Chenal’s NATIVE SON (1951) with Mike Mashon, head of the Moving Image division at the Library of
Congress participating in a post-screening discussion.

The two special sidebar presentations added as part of the 50th Anniversary celebration are Cinéastes de notre temps/Cinéma, de notre temps (Filmmakers of Our Time) and Men of Cinema: Pierre Rissient and the Cinema MacMahon.

Cinéastes de notre temps/Cinéma, de notre temps (Filmmakers of Our Time) was created in 1964,when film critic and filmmaker André S. Labarthe, together with Janine Bazin, widow of influential film theorist André Bazin, approached the French television channel ORTF about starting a program that would resemble the long, in-depth interviews with film directors that magazines such as Cahiers du cinéma and Positif regularly published. Many of the programs were dedicated to older directors, then in retirement or in the final stages of their careers. Instead of film critics or journalists, Labarthe and Bazin would often ask well-known film directors to make these programs: thus, Jacques Rivette on Jean Renoir, or Jacques Rozier on Jean Vigo. The New York Film Festival will present 37 of these programs on filmmakers, sometimes in tandem due to length, featuring directors like Chantal Akerman, Busby Berkeley, Luis Buñuel, John Cassavetes, George Cukor, Samuel Fuller, Jerry Lewis, David Lynch, Martin Scorsese, and Raoul Walsh, among several others. André S. Labarthe will also attend the first few days of the series.

The Men of Cinema: Pierre Rissient and the Cinema MacMahon section has its beginnings in the early 1950s, when the future critic-publicist-programmer Pierre Rissient and his band of film-crazed friends (mostly high-school students from the nearby lycée Carnot) convinced the theater owner to let them commandeer the programming, ushering in a tidal wave of American movies—especially film noirs and other genre fare—directed by the likes of Fritz Lang, Joseph Losey, Otto Preminger and Raoul Walsh (collectively dubbed the “Four Aces”).

Of the selection of films for the program, Rissient (who will be in attendance) says: “Along with Mizoguchi’s OHARU and UGETSU, these magnificent seven films make an almost accurate autobiography of my youth and discovery of cinema.”

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

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

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

NYFF Masterworks Added Films and Descriptions
Restorations, revivals and rediscoveries from cinema’s past, as they were meant to be seen on the big screen.

COUSIN JULES (Le cousin Jules) (1972) 91min
Director: Dominique Benicheti
Country: France
A lost masterpiece of cinema, now beautifully restored and available for the first time in years, COUSIN JULES was the result of five years of painstaking work by director Dominique Benichetti and cinematographer Pierre-William Glenn. Over that period, the team photographed and recorded the daily lives of Jules (Benichetti’s cousin) and his wife, French farmers living alone in the countryside. The result is a ravishing, totally immersive work, in which we not only enter into the subjects’ world but also into the very rhythms of their lives, captured with a wonderful sensitivity that never feels condescending or clinical. Highly and widely praised when first seen in 1972, the film slipped from view after Benichetti turned his attention and talents to a host of other projects. Yet the memory of COUSIN JULES lingered for its small but devoted cult of admirers, and now thanks to the generosity of the Gould Family Foundation, and the restoration work done by Arane/Gulliver Laboratories in Paris, this extraordinary film is with us once again.

DOWNPOUR (Ragbar) (1972) 128min
Director: Bahram Beyza’i
Country: Iran
A major figure in both pre- and post-revolutionary Iranian cinema, Bahram Beyza’i burst onto the scene with DOWNPOUR, his remarkable debut feature that won a Special Jury Prize at the First Tehran International Film Festival. Mr. Hekmati (Parviz Fanizadeh) arrives in the poor southern part of Tehran to take up a teaching post. When his students misbehave, he expels one of them. The next day, the boy’s older sister Atefeh comes to the school to plead her brother’s case. Smitten by her beauty, Mr. Hekmati is nevertheless reluctant to approach her, especially after he learns that her hand has already been promised to the local butcher. Beyza’i creates a powerful sense of a closed community still ruled by tradition, where custom always trumps individual desire. Thanks to its restoration by Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Foundation, this key Iranian classic can now be discovered by new generations of filmgoers. In person: Bahram Beyza’i.

FELLINI SATYRICON (1969) 128min
Director: Federico Fellini
Country: Italy
Better late than never, perpetual NYFF bridesmaid Federico Fellini makes his very first festival appearance with this new restoration of his outrageous 1969 classic. In adapting the fragmented novel Satyricon by 1st Century AD author Petronius, Fellini sought, in his own words, “to eliminate the borderline between dream and imagination: to invent everything and then to objectify the fantasy; to get some distance from it in order to explore it as something all of a piece and unknowable.” The result is a phantasmagoric odyssey through ancient Rome, following the misadventures of the student Encolpio and his on-again, off-again boy lover Gitone as they face imprisonment on a pirate ship, kidnap a hermaphrodite demi-god, fight a minotaur, and search for a cure for Encolpio’s impotence. And that’s not even the half of it! Earning Fellini the third of his four Best Director Oscar nominations, FELLINI SATYRICON has been restored to its original visual splendor under the supervision of legendary cinematographer Giuseppe Rotunno. A restoration by the Cineteca Nazionale, with the contribution of Dolce & Gabbana, presented by Ka Studio and Edoardo Ponti.

30th Anniversary screening
FIELD DIARY (Yoman Sadeh) (1982) 83min
Director: Amos Gitai
Countries: Israel/France
In 1982, Amos Gitai took a small camera crew to the West Bank and started filming the day-to-day business of the Israeli occupation. The result was a landmark in Israeli cinema; Gitai has spoken about the film as portraying the end of the “myth of the good occupation”—the belief that, in the territories captured after the 1967 War, Israel would be a very different kind of occupying power; 15 years later, Gitai’s film shows the occupation in a very different light. FIELD DIARY also introduced what would become Gitai’s signature style: the long, lateral tracking shots that, as Yann Lardeau noted in Cahiers du cinéma, “become a question of morality…we never enter into the reality of the war, but we always remain on the edge of the scene.” Gitai will be on hand to introduce and discuss FIELD DIARY and its continuing relevance for Israel today.
In person: Amos Gitai.

HEAVEN’S GATE (1980) 219min
Director: Michael Cimino
Country: USA
How many viewers who think they know the whole story behind Michael Cimino’s legendary western epic have ever actually seen the film in in its full, uncut, big-screen glory? Hastily pulled from American theaters one week into its release and subsequently reissued in a butchered version shorn of some 70 minutes, HEAVEN’S GATE has rarely been revived in the three decades since, even as it has been duly re-appraised by critics as an innovative masterpiece. (Just last year, Time Out London ranked it twelfth in its list of the greatest westerns ever made, ahead of THE WILD BUNCH and UNFORGIVEN.) Now it returns in a stunning new restoration commissioned by The Criterion Collection and supervised by Cimino himself. Based on a despicable episode of rarely told American history, HEAVEN’S GATE recounts the 1892 land war between wealthy cattle barons and immigrant homesteaders in Johnson County, Wyoming—a textbook case of the 99 percent versus the one, and a stinging indictment of American capitalism run amok. Caught in the middle are the lawman James Averill (Kris Kristofferson), the hired gun Nate Champion (Christopher Walken) and the woman (Isabelle Huppert, in her first major Hollywood role) who loves them both, an intimate drama that plays out against the painterly canvases of Cimino and cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond. Featuring a stellar supporting cast that includes Joseph Cotten, Jeff Bridges, Sam Waterston and the young Mickey Rourke.

40th Anniversary screening
THE KING OF MARVIN GARDENS (1972) 103min
Director: Bob Rafelson
Country: USA
Director Bob Rafelson and actor Jack Nicholson’s follow-up to their Oscar-nominated FIVE EASY PIECES didn’t meet with the same level of critical or commercial success, but 40 years later it endures as an even darker, more bleakly poetic portrait of bottomed-out lives in Vietnam-era America. Set during winter in the run-down resort town of Atlantic City, New Jersey (in the days before legalized gambling), THE KING OF MARVIN GARDENS stars the electrifying Bruce Dern as a small-time hustler who attempts to lure his estranged brother (Nicholson), an all-night Philadelphia radio DJ, into a sure-fire, get-rich-quick real estate scheme. The result is a real-life Monopoly game in which everyone goes bust and no one gets out of jail free. With ace support from Ellen Burstyn (as one half of the stepmother-stepdaughter act competing for Dern’s affections), the crackling dialogue of Rafelson and co-screenwriter Jacob Brackman, and the harshly beautiful cinematography of László Kovács, THE KING OF MARVIN GARDENS stands as one of the great and largely unheralded American films of the ‘70s.
In person: Bob Rafelson.

LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS (The Director’s Cut) (1986) 103min
Director: Frank Oz
Country: USA
Director Frank Oz’s ebullient film adaptation of the smash Off-Broadway musical—itself based on a 1960 Roger Corman quickie—developed an instant cult following for its gleefully macabre tale of star-crossed skid-row lovers (the incomparable Rick Moranis and Ellen Greene) brought together and nearly torn apart by a giant, man-eating plant from outer space. But the film that reached theaters differed from Oz and songwriters Howard Ashman and Alan Menken’s original vision, chiefly in a newly invented happy ending added after test audiences rejected the stage version’s darker, apocalyptic finale. For years, that deleted footage was viewable only on a special edition DVD that went out of print (at the behest of producer David Geffen) nearly as soon as it hit stores—and then, only as degraded, black-and-white workprint footage. Now, three decades after its release, LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS has been digitally restored to its original director’s cut, featuring 20 minutes of never-before-seen footage including the full original ending in glorious color! A Warner Home Video release.
In person: Frank Oz, Ellen Greene, film restorer Kurt Galvao.

THE MATTEI AFFAIR (Il caso Mattei) (1972) 116min
Director: Francesco Rosi
Country: Italy
Just as Italy was beginning its industrial boom in the 1950s, businessman Enrico Mattei was developing the methane gas reserves found in the Po Valley—not simply to enrich himself, but to make Italy energy-efficient and free of the control of the multinational energy companies, the “seven sisters.” Working through public companies, Mattei struck deals with Middle East oil producers, with Russia, and had even begun initial talks with China, when, in October 1962, his private plane crashed just outside Milan Airport. Unfortunate accident—or assassination? Thanks to a beautiful restoration by Martin Scorsese’s Film Foundation, this masterpiece by the great Francesco Rosi can be seen once again. Co-winner of the Palme d’Or in Cannes, THE MATTEI AFFAIR is both a revealing investigation into Mattei’s death as well as a provocative assessment of his place in the postwar Italian economy. As Mattei, Gian Maria Volonté gives one of his greatest performances. Restored by Cineteca di Bologna at the lab L’Immagine Ritrovata in collaboration with The Film Foundation, Paramount Pictures and Museo Nazionale del Cinema of Turin. Restoration financed by Gucci, Eni, and The Film Foundation.

NATIVE SON (1951) 104min
Director: Pierre Chenal
Countries: USA/Argentina
When the French director Pierre Chenal teamed with American novelist Richard Wright to create a film version of Wright’s controversial bestseller NATIVE SON, they quickly realized it would be impossible to make such a film in America. The year was 1950, with the Civil Rights Movement still in its infancy and Sidney Poitier just beginning to change the image of blacks in Hollywood movies—and Wright’s novel dealt with that most taboo of subjects: a poor black man charged with the murder of a wealthy white woman. So Chenal and Wright decamped for Buenos Aires, where the author was cast in the lead role of the persecuted Bigger Thomas, and the story’s Chicago setting was meticulously reconstructed on the stages of Argentina Sono Film studio. When it was released the following year, NATIVE SON became a local critical and commercial success, but upon export to the U.S. the film was shorn of nearly 30 minutes—including all of its most provocative racial content—by the New York State Board of Censors. For decades, Chenal’s original version was feared lost, until a complete print recently resurfaced in Argentina, which provided the standard for this restoration undertaken by the Library of Congress. The results reveal a flawed but fascinating film light years ahead of its time in its depiction of race, as well as a rare, very stylish example of African-American film noir. Special thanks for this screening to Edgardo Krebs (Smithsonian Institution) and Fernando Martin Peña (Malba Museo de Arte Latinoamerico de Buenos Aires), who teamed to recover the film and research its complicated history. The screening will be followed by a discussion with Edgardo Krebs and journalist Stanley Crouch.

NOTHING BUT A MAN (1964) 95min
Director: Michael Roemer
Country: USA
A true landmark of American cinema, NOTHING BUT A MAN brought to fiction filmmaking the look and style of the new “cinema vérité” documentary, from which both director Michael Roemer (THE PLOT AGAINST HARRY) and cinematographer Robert M. Young emerged. The film follows the relationship between the African-Americans Duff Anderson (Ivan Dixon) and Josie Dawson (Abby Lincoln). Duff decides it’s time to settle down with Josie, but her father, the local preacher, is opposed to the match. The two marry anyway, and then are forced to confront a host of problems, from illegitimate children to unemployment, racism and Duff’s drunken father. While never ignoring the social background, the film presents Duff and Josie as fully fleshed-out, complex and contradictory individuals, not merely archetypes or symbols. NOTHING BUT A MAN was added to the National Film Registry in 1993. A Cinema Conservancy Release of a Cinedigm/New Video Film. Restored by Library of Congress Packard Campus for Audio Visual Conservation.
In person: Michael Roemer, Robert M. Young.

OLD CZECH LEGENDS (Staré povesti ceské) (1953) 91min
Director: Jiří Trnka
Country: Czechoslovakia
Among the many anniversaries to celebrate this year is the centenary of Jiří Trnka, the great master of puppet animation whose contributions to that special art were as essential as Walt Disney’s were for cel animation. For his OLD CZECH LEGENDS, Trnka chose six classic folktales, while being careful to vary their tone and tempo, and transformed the jaded heroes of national legends into living characters—incarnated, of course, by his specially made puppets. Yet beyond his mastery of puppetry was Trnka’s extraordinary grasp of cinema: his work is equally impressive for his innovative editing, lighting, and sound. Winner of just about every conceivable international film award, Trnka raised the bar for all puppet animators to come, and his influence can be powerfully felt in work by Jan Šjvankmayer and the Quay Brothers. Print courtesy of the Czech National Film Archive.

THE OVERCOAT (Shinel) (1926) 66min
Directors: Grigori Kozintsev and Leonid Trauberg
Country: USSR
The marvelous Alloy Orchestra returns to NYFF to accompany this rarely screened masterpiece of Soviet cinema. A product of the FEKS group, a radical arts collective led by Grigori Kozintsev and Leonid Trauberg (who co-directed this film), FEKS productions combined aspects of circus, music hall, puppet show and American silent comedy. With Gogol’s tragicomic story, THE OVERCOAT, FEKS found fertile ground for experimentation. A minor clerk, Bashmachkin, replaces his threadbare overcoat with one made from the finest materials he can afford. Then one evening ruffians beat him up and steal his cherished new garment. The actors’ highly stylized gestures border on modern dance, and Bashmachkin’s world, especially as he begins to lose his grasp on reality, is powerfully rendered with looming shadows, oblique camera angles and eccentric architecture.

Screening with
FILMSTUDIE (1926) 7min
Director: Hans Richter
Country: Germany
Hans Richter’s experimental Dadaist short, full of geometric shapes, seagulls, flying eyeballs and floating heads.

Re-Introducing Marnie: William Rothman on Hitchcock’s Last Masterpiece
Featuring…
MARNIE (1964) 130min
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Country: USA
For even die-hard Hitchcock fans, MARNIE has long proved somewhat of an enigma, with its admittedly bizarre tale of a thief (played by Tippi Hedren) with an unnatural fear of thunderstorms, men and the color red, who’s forced into marriage with Sean Connery, who likes to watch. Yet seen today, MARNIE seems clearly one of Hitchcock’s most ambitious works, a journey into some of the most dangerous psychological territory Hitchcock ever dared to explore, and a film way ahead of his time. Prof. William Rothman, the dean of American Hitchcock scholars, will introduce and then analyze MARNIE after our screening, the first presentation of a new chapter in the updated edition of his book Hitchcock: The Murderous Gaze.

RICHARD III (1955) 161min
Director: Laurence Olivier
Country: UK
The third and arguably finest entry in Laurence Olivier’s lauded trilogy of big-screen Shakespeare adaptations, RICHARD III stars the actor-director in a bravura performance as the eponymous hunchback duke—a role he first performed on stage at the Old Vic in 1944—who will stop at nothing to wrest the throne away from his brother King Edward IV (Cedric Hardwicke). Featuring one of the finest British casts ever assembled on film, including John Gielgud as the ill-fated Duke of Clarence, Claire Bloom as Lady Anne, Ralph Richardson as the Duke of Buckingham and Stanley Baker as the Earl of Richmond, RICHARD III has been immaculately restored to its full Technicolor glory (and 161-minute running time) from the original VistaVision negative.

World Premiere
THE ROLLING STONES – CHARLIE IS MY DARLING – IRELAND 1965 (1966/2012) 65min
Director: Peter Whitehead
Countries: UK/USA
In 1965 Andrew Loog Oldham, the Rolling Stones svengali, asked filmmaker Peter Whitehead (THE FALL, TONITE, LET’S ALL MAKE LOVE IN LONDON) to accompany them on a quick tour of Ireland. Whitehead was astonished. Not only by the incredible power of the Stones’ performances but especially by the raw energy of the crowds of young people that rushed them everywhere. This new version of this behind-the scenes diary of the early Stones has never been seen; Mick Gochanour and Robin Klein, the team that brought The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus to the screen, have painstakingly restored over 90,000 frames of optical screen prints and negative, going back to the original sound tapes and 3-track live recordings. Included are electrifying performances of “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction,” “The Last Time,” and “Time is on My Side.” CHARLIE IS MY DARLING is an invaluable document, the unseen story of the band before they became a legend.

THE SATIN SLIPPER (Le soulier de satin) (1985) 410min
Director: Manoel de Oliveira
Countries: France/Portugal/West Germany/Switzerland
Manoel de Oliveira’s epic rendering of playwright Paul Claudel’s verse masterwork opens with a quote: “Everything happens for the glory of God, even sin.” Set during Spain’s “Golden Age,” the story then begins as Doña Prouhèze, the wife of a Spanish nobleman, falls in love with Don Rodrigo; Rodrigo is sent to be the Governor of New Spain in America, while Prouhèze becomes the ruler of Mogador in Africa. Yet despite their separation by oceans or continents, their love—of course totally forbidden, and thus impossible—continues to grow, sweeping up all those around them as well as the Spanish Empire in its wake. As always, Oliveira is a master at creating a sense of period and place from the most minimal of details, a talent well on display in a story of unrequited lovers that unfolds across several decades on four continents, the lovers’ separation only increasing the intensity of their feeling. Initially presented at the 1985 NYFF in a drastically edited version running two hours and 10 minutes, THE SATIN SLIPPER screens here at last in its full seven-hour cut. Print courtesy of the Cinemateca Portuguesa.

Cinéastes de notre temps/Cinéma, de notre temps (Filmmakers of Our Time)

Abel Ferrara: Not Guilty (2003) 81min
Director: Rafi Pitts
Country: France
Franco-Iranian director Rafi Pitts arrives in New York to film a portrait of Abel Ferrara, only to find himself dodged by his elusive subject at every turn.

Alain Cavalier: 7 Chapters, 5 days, 2 Kitchens (Alain Cavalier, 7 chapitres, 5 jours, 2 pièces-cuisine) (1995) 55min
Director: Jean-Pierre Limosin
Country: France
Screening with
The “Home Cinema” of the Dardenne Brothers (Le home cinéma des frères Dardenne) (2006) 52min
Director: Jean-Pierre Limosin
Country: France
Episode director Jean-Pierre Limosin films his subject, filmmaker Alain Cavalier, in an intimate, personal style that echoes Cavalier’s own work; a decade later, he brings a similar approach to his portrait of brothers Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne.

Busby Berkeley (1971) 60min
Directors: Hubert Knapp & André S. Labarthe
Country: France
Screening with
A Conversation with George Cukor (Conversation avec George Cukor) (1969) 42min
Directors: Hubert Knapp & André S. Labarthe
Country: France
Legendary director-choreographer Busby Berkeley discusses the technical challenges of his work; seated poolside, George Cukor details his influences and his work with actors.

Chantal Akerman by Chantal Akerman (Chantal Akerman par Chantal Akerman) (1997) 64min
Director: Chantal Akerman
Country: France
Screening with
Philippe Garrel, Artist (Philippe Garrel, Artiste) (1999) 48min
Director: Françoise Etchegaray
Country: France
Approached to direct an episode of the series, Chantal Akerman turns the camera on herself; plus, a rare, intimate portrait of the enigmatic Philippe Garrel.

Erich von Stroheim (1965) 90min
Director: Robert Valery
Country: France
One of the episodes devoted to filmmakers “unavailable for interviews” (i.e. dead) focuses on the enigmatic von Stroheim and attempts to separate the man from his myth.

Eric Rohmer, Evidence (Eric Rohmer: Preuves à l’appui) (1996) 117min
Directors: André S. Labarthe in collaboration with Jean Douchet
Country: France
Over eight days of filming, Eric Rohmer candidly discusses his work, the relationship of literature and film, and much else with co-interviewers Labarthe and Jean Douchet

HHH, A Portrait of Hou Hsiao-hsien (HHH, portrait de Hou Hsiao-hsien) (1996) 91min
Director: Olivier Assayas
Country: France
The first series episode to garner a theatrical release finds Olivier Assayas following Hou Hsiao-Hsien on a disarming guided tour of Taiwan.

Jacques Rivette: The Night Watchman (Jacques Rivette le veilleur) (1990) 124min
Director: Claire Denis
Country: France
The influential critic Serge Daney and filmmaker Claire Denis tag-team interviewed Jacques Rivette (for whom Denis had been an assistant) for this candid, two-part portrait.

Jean-Pierre Melville: A Portrait in 9 Poses (Jean-Pierre Melville (Portrait en 9 poses)) (1971-1996) 52min
Director: André S. Labarthes
Country: France
Screening with
Catherine Breillat: The First Time (Catherine Breillat, la première fois) (2011) 52min
Director: Luc Moullet
Country: France
Labarthe’s reworked version of his film on Jean-Pierre Melville, shot during pre-production on Un Flic; plus, Luc Moullet’s surprisingly tender look at Catherine Breillat and her controversial explorations of female sexuality.

Jean Renoir, The Boss: The Rule and the Exception (Jean Renoir le patron: La Règle et l’exception) (1967) 95min
Director: Jacques Rivette
Country: France
In the third part of a Cinéastes triptych on Jean Renoir, the director sits alone in a cinema analyzing scenes from La Marseillaise and The Rules of the Game, and discussing his editing and storytelling techniques.

Jean Vigo (1965) 94min
Director: Jacques Rozier
Country: France
Jacques Rozier, director of the quintessential New Wave film Adieu Philippine looks at the life and work of the grandfather of all independent filmmakers, Jean Vigo.

Jerry Lewis (Part One) (1968) 56min
Director: André S. Labarthe
Country: France
Screening with
David Lynch, Don’t Look at Me (1989) 59min
Director: Guy Girard
Country: France
Labarthe captures Jerry Lewis during an extraordinary appearance before an audience of London film students in one of the series’ most unusual—and best—films; plus, David Lynch avoids explaining himself during the scoring of Wild at Heart.

John Cassavetes (1969) 50min
Directors: Hubert Knapp & André S. Labarthe
Country: France
Screening with
Rome is Burning (Portrait of Shirley Clarke)(“Rome brûle” (Portrait de Shirley Clarke)) (1970) 54min
Directors: Noël Burch & André S. Labarthe
Country: France
Though it focused in its early days on the titans of old Hollywood, the Cinéastes team also made time for the “New American Cinema,” as seen in these two portraits of the mavericks John Cassavetes and Shirley Clarke.

Joseph Losey (1969) 58min
Director: André S. Labarthe
Country: France
Screening with
Otto Preminger and the Dangerous Woman (Portrait d’Otto Prmeinger) (1972-2012) 58min
Director: André S. Labarthe
Country: France
Two uncompleted episodes of the series, consisting primarily of rushes from interviews with their respective subjects: Losey on the heels of his great triumph in Cannes with The Go-Between and Preminger in conversation with celebrated film scholar Annette Michelson.

Otar Iosseliani, The Whistling Blackbird (Otar Iosseliani, le merle siffleur) (2006) 92min
Director: Julie Bertucelli
Country: France
A fascinating look at Georgian expat filmmaker Otar Iosseliani through the lens of his former assistant Julie Bertucelli, focused on his unique working methods and conception of cinema.

Raoul Walsh or the Good Old Days (Raoul Walsh ou le bon vieux temps) (1966) 62min
Directors: André S. Labarthe & Hubert Knapp
Country: France
Screening with
Josef von Sternberg: From Silence comes the Other (D’un silence l’autre) (1967) 50min
Director: André S. Labarthe
Country: France
Newly retired from filmmaking, Raoul Walsh recounts his work with D.W. Griffith, his beginnings at Warner Brothers, and his adventures with Bogart, Flynn, Gable and Cooper; plus, the elderly Joseph von Sternberg laments the failure of critics and the public to truly understand his work.

Samuel Fuller, Independent Filmmaker (1967) 68min
Director: André S. Labarthe
Country: France
Screening with
Fuller at the Editing Table (Cinéastes à la table: Samuel Fuller) (1982) 11min
Director: André S. Labarthe
Country: France
One of the cinema’s great raconteurs, Fuller here takes on everything from racism to communism, and from money problems to wartime combat; plus, a short film made by Labarthe 15 years later from unused outtakes

The Scorsese Machine (1990) 73min
Director: André S. Labarthe
Country: France
Screening with
Scorsese at the Editing Table (Cinéastes à la table: Martin Scorsese) (1995) 30min
Director: André S. Labarthe
Country: France
In one of the series’ most widely seen episodes, Labarthe and his crew film Scorsese at his office, at home with his parents and elsewhere, allowing him to speak whenever he feels like it rather than asking conventional questions; in the subsequent Scorsese at the Editing Table, Labarthe revisits the filmmaker to discuss several sequences from Taxi Driver.

Luis Buñuel: A Filmmaker of Our Time (Luis Buñuel: Un cinéaste de notre temps) (1964) 44min
Director: Robert Valery
Country: France
Screening with
Lang/Godard: The Dinosaur and the Baby (1967) 61min
Director: André S. Labarthe
Country: France
The inaugural Cinéastes episode follows Luis Buñuel on a visit to spain; plus, a one-of-a-kind 1964 conversation between Fritz Lang and Jean-Luc Godard.

The New Wave: Remedy or Poison? (La Nouvelle vague, remède ou poison?) (1964) 38min
Director: Robert Valery
Country: France
Screening with
Wild Man Pasolini (Pasolini l'enragé) (1966-1991) 65min
Director: Jean-André Fieschi
Country: France
Five years after the explosion of the French New Wave, Labarthe and collaborator Janine Bazin convened a roundtable of prominent filmmakers (plus Henri Langlois) to discuss the past, present and future of the movement; plus, critic and filmmaker Fieschi’s revised version of his portrait of Passolini at his most polemical.

Shohei Imamura: The Free Thinker (Shohei Imamura, Le libre penseur) (1995) 60min
Director: Paulo Rocha
Country: France
Screening with
One Day in the Life of Andreï Arsenevitch (Un journée d’Andreï Arsenevitch) (2000) 55min
Director: Chris Marker
Country: France
Portuguese filmmaker Paul Rocha sets out to visit the the boldly iconoclastic Shohei Imamura, and Chris Marker delivers a brilliant study of Andreï Tarkovsky in the final months of his working life.

Where Does Your Hidden Smile Lie? (Où gît votre sourire enfoui?) (2001) 104min
Directors: Pedro Costa in collaboration with Thierry Lounas
Country: France
Portuguese director Pedro Costa observes the husband-and-wife filmmaking team of Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet as they create a new version of their film Sicilia! together with the art students at la Fresnoy in France.

Men of Cinema: Pierre Rissient and the Cinéma Mac-Mahon

LIEBELEI (1933) 88min
Director: Max Ophüls
Country: Germany
In turn-of-the-century Vienna, a young officer (Wolfgang Liebeneiner) and the daughter of a violinist (Magda Schneider, mother of Romy) fall in love and seem to be destined for happiness. Then, a duel over a married woman puts the lovers in jeopardy. Adapted from the play by Arthur Schnitzler (La Ronde), director Max Ophüls' last German film before exile is a romantic excursion into desire's unexpected detours. The young director's first success shows that, from the start, he reveled in the way music and the moving camera could celebrate the birth and demise of love.

NIGHT AND THE CITY (1950) 101min
Director: Jules Dassin
Country: USA
In one of Jules Dassin's most exciting films, set in pre-Mod London, the great Richard Widmark stars as Harry Fabian, an ambitious hustler who wants to score big by promoting Greco-Roman wrestling, which he thinks will attract customers. Harry works for Philip Nosseross (Francis L. Sullivan), operator of a club with his backstabbing wife (Googie Withers), who dreams of dumping her fatso husband and starting her own place. In this rat race it’s all about control and money and what people will do to get them. The one exception is Gene Tierney, who loves and supports Widmark and tries to steer him in the direction of legitimate work, a patent impossibility.

OBJECTIVE, BURMA! (1945) 102min
Director: Raoul Walsh
Country: USA
In the sixth of their seven collaborations, Errol Flynn stars for director Raoul Walsh as the captain of a platoon of Army paratroopers who land behind enemy lines in Burma with the mission of destroying a Japanese radar station. The mission is a success, but when the soldiers attempt to leave, they find the Japanese waiting for them and must devise an alternate exit strategy in the heat of the moment. Loosely based on the real-life activities of the Army special ops unit under the command of Brigadier General Frank Merrill (also the inspiration for Sam Fuller’s MERRILL’S MARAUDERS) and released in the immediate aftermath of WWII, this superior war film finds Walsh at the peak of his lean, economical direction, featuring Flynn in one of his finest performances, magnificent black-and-white cinematography by the legendary James Wong Howe and an Oscar-nominated Franz Waxman score.

THE PROWLER (1951) 92min
Director: Joseph Losey
Country: USA
Per Manny Farber, who picked it as one of the best films of 1951, THE PROWLER is “a tabloid melodrama of sex and avarice in suburbia, out of [James M.] Cain by Joe Losey, featuring almost perfect acting by Evelyn Keyes as a hot, dumb, average American babe who, finding the attentions of her disc-jockey husband beginning to pall, takes up with an amoral rookie cop (nicely hammed up by Van Heflin).” Factor in a generous life insurance policy on the husband and, well, you get the idea. All that's left to add is that Losey gets a visual lock on the world of the California bourgeoisie with the help of his cinematographer Arthur Miller. Partly ghostwritten by soon-to-be-blacklisted Dalton Trumbo, THE PROWLER is presented here in a beautiful new restoration by the UCLA Film and Television Archive and the Film Noir Foundation.

PURSUED (1947) 101min
Director: Raoul Walsh
Country: USA
Walsh’s powerful, very dark and Freudian film noir/western hybrid—a favorite of Martin Scorsese—stars Robert Mitchum as Jeb, the only survivor of a brutal massacre that wiped out the rest of his family when he was a young boy. Adopted into another family (led by chilly matriarch Judith Anderson) where he comes to fall in love with his foster sister (Teresa Wright), the now-adult Jeb still yearns to untangle the messy, suppressed memories of his childhood trauma, and of the mysterious one-armed man who has haunted and tormented him throughout his life. Told in elaborate flashback, with frequent mindscreens and other expressionistic touches, PURSUED opened up new paths for the western genre and remains one of Walsh’s paramount achievements.

THE TIGER OF ESCHNAPUR (Der Tiger von Eschnapur) (1959) 101min
Director: Fritz Lang
Countries: West Germany/France/Italy
After his long and prolific Hollywood career, Fritz Lang (M, Metropolis) returned to his native Germany at the behest of producer Artur Brauner and embarked on an ambitious two-film project that would eventually become known as his “Indian Epic.” The source material was the novel The Indian Tomb by Thea von Harbou, a book Lang had initially been hired to direct as a silent film in 1921, before being fired and replaced with Joe May. In the first of the two films, THE TIGER OF ESCHNAPUR, Lang tells the story of a German architect (Paul Hubschmid) who arrives in India to build a temple for a Maharaja, whereupon the he promptly falls in love with the Maharaja’s intended bride (Debra Paget), whom he narrowly saves from becoming the titular tiger’s latest meal. Impeccably directed on a modest budget, en route to a thrilling cliffhanger ending, Lang’s late-career triumph proves the old adage that the enemy of art is the absence of limitations.

WHIRLPOOL (1949) 98min
Director: Otto Preminger
Country: USA
“I cannot remember anything about this picture,” Otto Preminger once said, with a mixture of self-deprecation and utter contempt for his interviewer. Which is ironic, since it's one of his best. Ann Sutton (Gene Tierney, owner of one of cinema's sexiest overbites) has a shoplifting problem, and help arrives in the form of hypnotist David Korvo (José Ferrer), who convinces the store where she's caught to drop all charges and leave her in his care. Hypnotism seems to be the cure-all, until Ann gets into even hotter water—emerging from a trance next to a dead body and charged with a murder she didn't commit. WHIRLPOOL ranks among the most fascinating and least known films of Preminger's Fox period, when he brought his dry, mean poetic eye to bear on a variety of genres.

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

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

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