Film at Lincoln Center (FLC) announces additions to the spring 2020 Virtual Cinema lineup. FLC’s Virtual Cinema was launched in response to the coronavirus crisis and showcases a wide-ranging mix of new releases, recent festival favorites, and repertory titles that movie lovers in New York and elsewhere are able to enjoy from the safety and comfort of their own homes. A portion of all Virtual Cinema rental revenues will support Film at Lincoln Center. 

Upcoming releases include Raúl Ruiz’s award-winning six-hour miniseries Mysteries of Lisbon, available for the first time in HD and featuring footage never before seen in the U.S.; Rendez-Vous with French Cinema selections Joan of Arc (Jeanne) by Bruno Dumont and César Award-winner Papicha by Mounia Meddour; and Abel Ferrara’s Italian-set drama Tommaso starring Willem Dafoe. Beginning June 5, Film at Lincoln Center will also present a partial retrospective of the prolific South Korean filmmaker Hong Sangsoo, featuring 2016 New York Film Festival selection Yourself and Yours, the U.S. theatrical premiere of 2014 New York Film Festival selection Hill of Freedom, and a new digital restoration of Woman on the Beach.

Holdover titles currently playing in Film at Lincoln Center’s Virtual Cinema include Nanni Moretti’s Caro Diario and Santiago, Italia; favorites from the New York Film Festival: Albert Serra’s provocative period piece LibertĂ©, Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles’s Cannes prizewinner Bacurau (Film at Lincoln Center is the top grossing venue in the country for this release), BĂ©la Tarr’s seven-hour masterpiece SátántangĂł, Pedro Costa’s Locarno prizewinner Vitalina Varela, and Corneliu Porumboiu’s The Whistlers; three standouts from this year’s Rendez-Vous with French Cinema festival: Quentin Dupieux’s Deerskin, Christophe Honoré’s On a Magical Night, and CĂ©dric Klapisch’s Someone, Somewhere; and more.

New releases are organized by Florence Almozini, Dennis Lim, and Tyler Wilson.

FILMS & DESCRIPTIONS

Opens May 22 – A two-week U.S. exclusive, featuring the HD premiere and never-before-seen footage 
Mysteries of Lisbon: The Complete Miniseries
Raúl Ruiz, Portugal/France, 2010, 333m 
English, Portuguese, French with English subtitles

Arguably Chile’s most internationally-renowned and prolific filmmaker, RaĂşl Ruiz took such delight in the form of plots—the texture of their exposition; the tricks they employed to introduce characters; the jolt their twists could give—that he sometimes mischievously pushed them into incoherence, piling on characters and revelations and backstories and reversals until the plot became a kind of abstract field of information without a clear sequence or plan. In Mysteries of Lisbon, his tremendous adaptation of a novel by the 19th-century Portuguese author Camilo Castelo Branco, he has the space to tell a story of breathtaking complexity that nonetheless keeps its shape. It starts with the reunion of a supposedly orphaned boy with his estranged mother and from there expands into an epic, densely peopled story of deception, intrigue, murder, elopement, and disguise, set against the backdrop of Portugal’s 1820 revolution. Winner of the prestigious Louis Delluc Prize, Film at Lincoln Center is pleased to present the original six-hour mini-series with footage never before seen in the United States. A Music Box Films release.

Rental is $15.00. 50% of proceeds will support Film at Lincoln Center.

Opens May 22 – Opening Week U.S. Exclusive
Joan of Arc / Jeanne
Bruno Dumont, France, 2019, 137m
French with English subtitles

Ten-year-old Lise Leplat Prudhomme commands the center of Bruno Dumont’s inventive reimagining of the story of Joan of Arc, a sequel to Dumont’s musical Jeannette: The Childhood of Joan of Arc (2017) that’s singular and entrancing enough to stand on its own. Joan, compelled by visions of God, leads the French charge against invading English forces, and is later captured and put on trial for heresy. Although this chapter is cinematically well-trod, Dumont turns it into an uncanny, absurdist mood piece, strikingly shot amid rolling hills and vaulted cathedrals. As legendary singer-songwriter Christophe’s synthesizers slice through the droll stillness, Joan comes into her own, gaining a gravitas that makes her a force to be reckoned with. As always, Dumont proves his mastery with this enthralling, witty, and deeply rewarding work. A Rendez-Vous with French Cinema 2020 selection. A KimStim release.

Rental is $10.00. 50% of proceeds will support Film at Lincoln Center. 

Opens May 29 – Opening Week NY Exclusive
Papicha
Mounia Meddour, France/Algeria/Belgium/Qatar, 2019, 106m
French and Arabic with English subtitles

Nedjma (Lyna Khoudri) is a university student during the Algerian Civil War. Although she’s studying French, her passion is fashion design. Defying religious conservatism, she custom-makes dresses for her peers that are examples of individual expression. Attacks on civilians are on the rise from fundamentalist Islamist sects, and a shocking incident drives Nedjma to stage a unique protest: a fashion show centered around repurposing the haik, a traditional veil, into secular garments. Anchored by a remarkable naturalism and camaraderie among its lead actresses (especially from Khoudri and Shirine Boutella), Papicha—a highlight of Cannes’ Un Certain Regard section—tells an unflinching story of resistance and resilience, and marks an inspired, sometimes harrowing debut for Mounia Meddour. The film earned Meddour the AMPAS Gold Fellowship Award for Women and also won César Awards for Best First Film and Best Female Newcomer. A Rendez-Vous with French Cinema 2020 selection. A Distrib Films release.

Rental is $10.00. 50% of proceeds will support Film at Lincoln Center.

Opens June 5 – Opening Week NYC Exclusive
Tommaso
Abel Ferrara, Italy/UK/USA/Greece, 2019, 117m

Abel Ferrara’s first dramatic feature since 2014’s Pasolini reteams the filmmaker and his frequent lead Willem Dafoe, who delivers a career-best performance as the title character, an older American expat living in Rome with his young wife and their daughter. Disoriented by his past misgivings and subsequent, unexpected blows to his self-esteem, Tommaso wades through this late chapter of his life with an increasingly impaired grasp on reality as he prepares for his next film. Tommaso is easily Ferrara and Dafoe’s most personal and engrossing collaboration to date, a delicately surrealistic work of autofiction marked by the keen sensitivity of two consummate artists. A Kino Lorber release. 

Rental is $12.00. 50% of proceeds will support Film at Lincoln Center.

Beginning June 5, we’re presenting a small Hong Sangsoo retrospective with the online releases of Yourself and Yours (June 5), Hill of Freedom (June 12), and Woman on the Beach (June 19):

Opens June 5 – Opening Week NY Exclusive
Yourself and Yours
Hong Sangsoo, South Korea, 2016, 86m
Korean with English subtitles

For his eighteenth feature, Hong boldly and wittily continues his ongoing exploration of the painful caprices of modern romance. Painter Young-soo (Kim Joo-hyuk) hears secondhand that his girlfriend, Min-jung (Lee Yoo-young), has recently had (many) drinks with an unknown man. This leads to a quarrel that seems to end their relationship. The next day, Young-soo sets out in search of Min-jung, while she—or a woman who looks exactly like her and may or may not be her twin—has a series of encounters with strange men, some of whom claim to have met her before.  Yourself and Yours is a break-up/make-up comedy unlike any other, suffused with sophisticated modernist mystery. An NYFF54 selection. A Cinema Guild release.

Rental is $12.00, with a special $2.00 discount for Film at Lincoln Center Members (limited number vouchers). 50% of proceeds will support Film at Lincoln Center.

Opens June 12 – NYC Exclusive of the U.S. Theatrical Premiere!
Hill of Freedom / Jayuui Eondeok
Hong Sangsoo, South Korea, 2014, 66m
Korean and English with English subtitles

Kwon (Seo Young-hwa) returns to Seoul from a restorative stay in the mountains. She is given a packet of letters left by Mori (Ryo Kase), who has come back from Japan to propose to her. As she walks down a flight of stairs, Kwon drops and scatters the letters, all of which are undated. When she reads them, she has to make sense of the chronology… and so must we. Alternately funny and haunting, Hill of Freedom is a series of disordered scenes based on the letters, echoing the cultural dislocation felt by Mori as he tries to make himself understood in halting English. At what point did he drink himself into a lonely stupor? Did he sleep with the waitress from the Hill of Freedom café (Moon So-ri) before or after he despaired of seeing Kwon again? Sixteen films into a three-decade career, Hong has achieved a rare simplicity in his storytelling, allowing for an ever-increasing psychological richness and complexity. An NYFF52 selection. A Grasshopper Film release.

Rental is $12.00, with a special $2.00 discount for Film at Lincoln Center Members. 50% of proceeds will support Film at Lincoln Center.

Opens June 19 – New Restoration! NYC Exclusive
Woman on the Beach 
Hong Sangsoo, South Korea, 2006, 127m
Korean with English subtitles

After creatively blocked filmmaker Jung-rae (Seung-woo Kim) convinces his friend to join him on a brief holiday to finish a script, he begins an affair with the friend’s girlfriend, Mun-suk (Hyun-jung Go). Customary in Hong’s doubled-narrative structures, the film’s second half inverts this triangle when Jung-rae returns to the beach and meets Sun-hee (Seon-mi Song), a woman who resembles Mun-suk. Woman on the Beach revisits the kind of listless coastal resort town of The Power of Kangwon Province, but now during their wintry offseason, where Hong deftly captures the subtle layers of monotony, humor and sadness that connect Jung-rae’s two trips. An NYFF44 selection. A Grasshopper Film release. 

Rental is $12.00, with a special $2.00 discount for Film at Lincoln Center Members. 50% of proceeds will support Film at Lincoln Center.

June 12th – A select Hong Sangsoo retro:

Exclusive offer for a week only, Cinema Guild is making the following Hong Sangsoo titles available to rent on their channel at a discounted price: Grass (2019) $1.99, Hotel by the River (2019) $1.99, The Day After (2018) $0.99, Claire’s Camera (2017) $0.99, On the Beach at Night Alone (2017) $0.99, The Day He Arrives (2011) $0.99. 

Additionally, Grasshopper will offer 50% off their rental or purchase of Right Now, Wrong Then (2015) on selected platforms.

See more in our Virtual Cinema.