Film at Lincoln Center (FLC) continues to add to its impressive slate of titles for its Virtual Cinema. FLC’s Virtual Cinema was launched in March in response to the coronavirus crisis and showcases a wide-ranging mix of new releases, recent festival favorites, and repertory titles that movie lovers can enjoy in the safety and comfort of their own homes.
On Friday, August 21, FLC will launch its own virtual cinema platform powered by Shift72 as the new home for its curated slate of releases. Audiences will be able to access screenings natively on filmlinc.org for a seamless viewing experience. Films can also be viewed via Airplay, Chromecast, or an HDMI connection, with an intuitive viewing app to launch next month. To celebrate the launch, FLC will offer audiences discounted rentals of select film titles exclusively on this new platform. A portion of all Virtual Cinema rental revenues support Film at Lincoln Center.
August and September additions to the FLC Virtual Cinema lineup include: new 4K restorations of Marcell Jankovics’s animated fantasy adventure, Son of the White Mare, and his feature debut, János Vitéz, plus two newly remastered shorts; The Hole, Tsai Ming-liang’s surreal portrait of love in isolation amid a raging monsoon; Claire Denis’s masterpiece of longing, Beau Travail, available in a new 4K restoration; Sicilia!, Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet’s digitally restored black-and-white tragicomedy; and, Sibyl (NYFF57), a sly, sultry character study from filmmaker Justine Triet.
Holdover titles currently playing include Abel Ferrara’s Willem Dafoe–starring drama Tommaso; the U.S. premiere of NYFF52 selection Hill of Freedom; Route One/USA, Robert Kramer and Paul “Doc” McIsaac’s newly restored documentary following the filmmakers on a deeply personal road trip—Q&A just added; three rarely seen shorts by visionary filmmaker Sergei Parajanov; Bas Devos’s Ghost Tropic, about a woman on a midnight journey through the city of Brussels; John Lewis: Good Trouble from acclaimed documentarian and activist Dawn Porter; four politically incisive shorts by Miguel Gomes; Bill and Turner Ross’s hybrid documentary and Sundance sensation, Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets; Mayak, Maria Saakyan’s debut feature and Armenia’s first film directed by a woman; Koji Fukada’s compelling and beautifully humane drama A Girl Missing and his internationally acclaimed Harmonium; Posters into Film, a series of comic short films by Walerian Borowczyk, Jan Lenica, and Konstanty Gordon; and beautiful restorations of Paulo Rocha’s first two features The Green Years and Change of Life.
Additions to the FLC Virtual Cinema will continue to be shared via our social channels and website in the coming days and weeks. Stay tuned for more exciting updates.
Film descriptions and additional details are listed below. New releases are organized by Florence Almozini, Dennis Lim, and Tyler Wilson.
FILMS & DESCRIPTIONS
Opens August 21 – Opening Week FLC Exclusive
Route One/USA
Robert Kramer, USA, 1990, 255m
In 1988, nearly a decade after leaving the US, Robert Kramer and his friend and frequent collaborator Paul “Doc” McIsaac (Ice, Doc’s Kingdom), a physician who for years worked in Africa, returned to the States to travel the length of Route 1, from the Canadian border to its end in Key West. With Kramer behind the camera and Doc conducting interviews, the pair take on a coolly ambiguous, outside-looking-in perspective toward the personalities and trends of ‘80s America while paying particular attention to the downtrodden, making stops and conversation at, among other places, a Native American reservation in Maine, Walden Pond, a Georgian diner, and evangelical churches that preach the “truth” about the Anti-Apartheid Movement and the dangers of Disney. Made by one of the co-founders of the radical-left documentary film group Newsreel, Route One/USA is an indispensable, sobering portrait of the multitudinous challenges facing the nation—as monumental and relevant today as it was thirty years ago. Newly digitized and restored with the support of the Centre National du Cinema (CNC). An Icarus Films release. Q&A with Paul McIsaac and Richard Copans on Wednesday, August 26 at 5pm ET. Free registration required.
Rental is $10.00, with a special $2.00 discount for Film at Lincoln Center Members.
Opens August 21 – FLC Exclusive
Son of the White Mare / Fehérlófia – New 4K Restoration!
Marcell Jankovics, Hungary, 1981, 81m
Hungarian with English subtitles
One of the great psychedelic masterpieces of world animation, Hungarian animator Marcell Jankovics’s Son of the White Mare is a swirling, color-mad tale of mythic monsters and Scythian heroes, part-Nibelungenlied, part-Yellow Submarine, styled by jagged bolts of lightning and drenched in rivers of blue, red, gold and green. A massive cosmic oak stands at the gates of the Underworld, holding seventy-seven dragons in its roots. To combat these monsters, a dazzling white mare goddess gives birth to three heroes—Treeshaker and his brothers—who embark on an epic journey to save the universe. Never before released in North America, Son of the White Mare has been newly restored in 4K using the original 35mm camera negative and sound elements by Arbelos in collaboration with the Hungarian Film Archive. An Arbelos release.
Screening with:
The Struggle / Küzdök
Marcell Jankovics, Hungary, 1977, 2m
Jankovics’s Palme d’Or-winning short film depicts a sculpture struggling to complete, and eventually overcome, his own creation.
Rental is $10, with a special $2 discount for Film at Lincoln Center Members. A discounted rental package with all of the Jankovics films is $18, and $16 for members.
Opens August 21 – FLC Exclusive
János Vitéz – New 4K Restoration!
Marcell Jankovics, Hungary, 1973, 78m
Hungarian with English subtitles
An achingly beautiful story with marvelous music and clever political commentary Jankovics’s feature debut (and the first feature-length animation ever produced in Hungary) is a resplendent fairytale that mixes the filmmaker’s exquisitely personal, kaleidoscopic visual style with the 1845 epic poem by Hungary’s national poet and revolutionary Sándor Petőfi. Exiled from his village, a valiant young shepherd goes on a swirling, surreal adventure as a soldier in order to reunite with the woman he loves. With its dazzling color palette and unconventional approach to movement, János Vitéz displays the already-breathtaking range of Jankovics’s early animation talent. Newly restored in 4K using the original 35mm camera negative and sound elements by Arbelos in collaboration with the Hungarian Film Archive. An Arbelos release.
Screening with:
Sisyphus
Marcell Jankovics, Hungary, 1974, 3m
Made in response to the difficult production of János Vitéz, Jankovics’s Oscar-nominated short depicts in a single shot the mythical Greek figure’s eternal struggle.
Rental is $10, with a special $2 discount for Film at Lincoln Center Members. A discounted rental package with all of the Jankovics films is $18, and $16 for members.
Opens August 28
Ghost Tropic
Bas Devos, Belgium/Netherlands, 2019, 85m
Dutch and French with English subtitles
A finely observed nocturnal odyssey set in the wake of the 2016 Brussels bombings, Bas Devos’s third feature beholds the quotidian drama of an immigrant’s experience in Belgium with a hushed but deeply expressive intensity, viewed in long takes and vivid 16mm detail. After work one night, Khadija (Saadia Bentaïeb), a cleaning woman of North African origins, falls asleep on the last subway train and wakes up at the end of the line with no choice but to make her way across the city on foot. While friendly encounters and vaguely portentous events proliferate around Khadija, the film gives way to her curiosity of the city and its multicultural spaces with remarkable tenderness and compassion. A Cinema Guild release.
Rental is $12, with a special $2 discount for Film at Lincoln Center Members (limited number vouchers).
Opens August 28 – Opening Week FLC Exclusive
The Hole / Dong
Tsai Ming-liang, Taiwan, 1998, 89m
Mandarin with English subtitles
Set on the eve of the 21st century, Tsai Ming-liang’s fourth feature follows the slow-going, taciturn romance of the director’s muse/alter-ego Hsiao-kang (Lee Kang-sheng) and his hapless downstairs neighbor (Yang Kuei-mei), the remaining residents of a rapidly dilapidating apartment building who refuse to evacuate their homes despite a disease-bearing monsoon raging outside their windows. After a plumber leaves Hsiao with a hole in his floor, the film gradually opens up to a love story punctuated with splendorous musical interludes and Tsai’s distinctive strain of poker-faced, prop-ridden slapstick. A Big World Pictures release.
Rental is $8, with a special $2 discount for Film at Lincoln Center Members.
Opens September 4 – NY Exclusive
Beau Travail – New 4K Restoration!
Claire Denis, France, 1999, 93m
French, Italian, and Russian with English subtitles
Claire Denis’s loose retelling of Billy Budd, set among a troop of Foreign Legionnaires stationed in the Gulf of Djibouti, is one of her finest films, an elemental story of misplaced longing and frustrated desire. Beneath a scorching sun, shirtless young men exercise to the strains of Benjamin Britten, under the watchful eye of Denis Lavant’s stone-faced officer Galoup, their obsessively ritualized movements simmering with barely suppressed violence. When a handsome recruit wins the favor of the regiment’s commander, cracks start to appear in Galoup’s fragile composure. In the tense, tightly disciplined atmosphere of military life—sensuously photographed by frequent collaborator Agnès Godard—Denis found an ideal outlet for two career-long concerns: the quiet agony of repressing one’s emotions and the terror of finally letting loose. An NYFF37 selection. A Janus Films release.
Rental is $12, with a special $2 discount for Film at Lincoln Center Members.
Opens September 4 – NY Exclusive
Sicilia! – New Digital Restoration!
Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, Italy/France/Germany, 1998, 66m
Italian with English subtitles
Allegedly living in New York for fifteen years, a man returns to his native hometown in Sicily to visit his mother after receiving a troubling letter from his father. Taking Elio Vittorini’s 1941 novel Conversations in Sicily as its basis, Sicilia! parlays the allegorical setup into four vivid, euphonious dialogues exploring class, memory, and family in the backdrop of the modern Italian countryside. Filmed in Syracuse and Messina, Straub-Huillet’s pristine black-and-white tragicomedy is an unhurried impression of Vittorini’s classic text, finely honed by the filmmakers’ beguiling approach to composition and performance. An NYFF37 selection. A Grasshopper Film release.
Rental is $12, with a special $2 discount for Film at Lincoln Center Members.
Opens September 11 – Opening Week NY Exclusive
Sibyl
Justine Triet, France/Belgium, 2019, 100m
French with English subtitles
Past and present collide in an increasingly complicated and highly entertaining fashion in Justine Triet’s intricate study of the professional and personal masks we wear as we perform our daily lives. Psychotherapist Sibyl (Virginie Efira) abruptly decides to leave her practice to restart her writing career—only to find herself increasingly embroiled in the life of a desperate new patient: Margot (Adèle Exarchopoulos), a movie star dealing with the aftermath of a traumatic affair with her costar, Igor (Gaspard Ulliel), while trying to finish a film shoot under the watchful eye of a demanding director (Toni Erdmann’s Sandra Hüller, splendidly high-strung), who happens to be Igor’s wife. Sibyl, negotiating her own past demons, makes the fateful decision to use Margot’s experiences as inspiration for her book, as boundaries of propriety fall one after another. As she proved in her previous film In Bed with Victoria, which also starred the magnificently expressive Efira, Triet is a master at creating heroines of intense complexity, and of maintaining a tricky balance between volatile drama and sly comedy. An NYFF57 selection. A Music Box Films release.
Rental is $12, with a special $2 discount for Film at Lincoln Center Members.
