James Gray with Joaquin Phoenix on the set of The Immigrant

Filmmaker conversations and two sections focused on emerging talent were unveiled today by the Film Society of Lincoln Center for the upcoming 51st New York Film Festival. Richard Curtis (About Time), Paul Greengrass (Captain Phillips), Agnieszka Holland (Burning Bush) and Frederick Wiseman (At Berkeley) will participate in this year's edition of NYFF's annual HBO Directors Dialogues series, while James Gray (The Immigrant) will take part in the HBO On Cinema conversation.

Organizers also announced that filmmakers Joanna Hogg (Exhibition) and Fernando Eimbcke (Club Sandwich) have been selected for a brand new festival section: Emerging Artists. Three films each by the two filmmakers will be screen during NYFF51. The fest also revealed the lineup for its four Shorts Programs.

James Gray will speak with Kent Jones, NYFF Director of Programming and Selection Committee Chair, for the fifth edition of NYFF's annual master class, HBO On Cinema. Gray will show clips and discuss the filmmakers and films that have inspired him in an event on October 12.


Burning Bush director Agnieszka Holland

Four filmmakers will take part in this year's HBO Directors Dialogues, an annual favorite at the New York film Festival. Paul Greengrass, Frederick Wiseman, Agnieszka Holland and Richard Curtis join the program with each talk lead by a journalist or Selection Committee member. Each filmmaker will discuss his/her career, inspiration, and views on a host of related topics. The schedule for these talks is as follows:

Paul Greengrass: September 28
Frederick Wiseman: September 29
Agnieszka Holland: October 5
Richard Curtis: October 12


Joanna Hogg's Exhibition

The festival's Emerging Artists program is an new initiative of Film Society and co-presenter the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) that aims to promote the work of promising filmmakers and will give this year's participants, Fernando Eimbcke and Joanna Hogg, a spotlight near the beginning of their careers. Mexican director Eimbcke's new film Club Sandwich, which revolves around puberty and separation anxiety as it follows the experiences of a teenage boy taking his first tentative steps into the uncharted waters of sex, will screen at NYFF51 along with his two previous features Lake Tahoe (2008) and Duck Season (ND/NF, 2004).

English filmmaker Hogg's Exhibition, meanwhile, is an intimate look at two married, middle-aged artists that live and work in their unusual London home, at once labyrinth, battleground and refuge. NYFF51 audiences will also have the opportunity to see Hogg's earlier films Archipelago (2010) and Unrelated (2007).


Miguel Gomes’ Redemption

In addition to works by promising new filmmakers, this year's Shorts Programs include a number of films directed by festival alumni. Among them are Miguel Gomes’ Redemption (Tabu, NYFF 2012) and JoĂŁo Pedro Rodrigues’ The King's Body (To Die Like a Man, NYFF 2009), as well as Lav Diaz, whose short film Prologue to the Great Desaparecido will join his feature, Norte, The End of History in the NYFF51 lineup. Nicolas Saada’s Aujourd'Hui, meanwhile, stars Oscar nominee BĂ©renice BĂ©jo (The Artist, NYFF 2011) and includes an appearance by documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman.

General Public tickets to the 51st New York Film Festival go on sale Sunday, September 8 at 12:00pm. Below is the lineup and descriptions for Emerging Artists and Shorts Programs.

Emerging Artists:

Films by Joanna Hogg

Exhibition (2013) 110 min
Director: Joanna Hogg
Country: UK
Joanna Hogg’s exactingly minimal and intimately character-driven portrait of a married middle-aged couple – both artists – living and working in their unusual London home, at once labyrinth, battleground and refuge.

Archipelago (2010) 114 min
Director: Joanna Hogg
Country: UK
A group stay on the island of Tresco off of Sicily, animated by resentments, jealousies, upheavals and revelations that will ring true to anyone who has ever spent a vacation with their family. Tom Hiddleston, a mainstay of Hogg’s films, is the discontented son at a crossroad in his life, at odds with his mother (Kate Fahy) and sister (Lydia Leonard). His priorities are re-set by landscape artist Christopher Baker, who appears as himself, and the pungent, wondrous landscape.

Unrelated (2007) 100 min
Director: Joanna Hogg
Country: UK
Middle-aged, discontented Anna (Kathryn Worth) decides to spend her summer holiday apart from her husband, in Tuscany with her friends. As the days go by, she finds herself more attuned to their teenaged children (Tom Hiddleston and his sister Emma). Hogg’s 2007 debut established her right away as an unusual artist with a place-specific approach to drama.

Films by Fernando Eimbcke

Club Sandwich (2013) 82 min
Director: Fernando Eimbcke
Country: Mexico
The new low-key, slow-burn comedy from Fernando Eimbcke, venturing into the fraught territory of puberty and separation anxiety, focuses on a teenage boy taking his first tentative (and furtive) steps into the uncharted waters of sex.

Lake Tahoe (2008) 85 min
Director: Fernando Eimbcke
Country: Mexico
In this whimsically wayward comedy with a poignant twist, Eimbcke’s ’scope camera follows the meanderings of Juan (Diego Cataño) through the sleepy streets of a small town as he searches for a spare part after crashing the family car.

Duck Season (Temporada de patos) (2004) 85 min
Director: Fernando Eimbcke
Country: Mexico
Two 14 year olds are home alone for the day, with video games, soda and snacks—how bad can it get? Soon they have company: a teenage neighbor who wants to bake herself a birthday cake, and a thirty-something pizza delivery man. Then the power goes out…

NYFF Shorts Programs:

Shorts Program 1 (102 min)

The Air Mattress (2013) 9 min
Director: David Kestin
Country: USA
Sometimes a noisy neighbor isn’t so bad after all…

My Mind's Own Melody (2012) 29 min
Director: Josh Wakely
Country: Australia
A bright, musical world exists within the depths of a comatose state.

9 Meter (2012) 17 min
Director: Anders Walter
Country: Denmark
Daniel believes that his record-breaking jumps are the cause of his mother’s health improvements, but he needs to find a way to do better.

Open House (2013) 11 min
Director: David Kestin
Country: USA
Worst birthday gift ever: find a NYC apartment ASAP.

Samnang (2013) 22 min
Director: Asaph Polonsky
Country: USA
Samnang works long hard nights at a donut shop. One day his steady and solitary routine is shaken by the arrival of another worker.

Tryouts (2013) 14 min
Director: Susana Casares
Country: USA
Nayla discovers that the only way to fit in as a cheerleader is to rebel.

Shorts Program 2 (97 min)

Basically (2013) 15 min
Director: Ari Aster
Country: USA
An actress provides a hilarious tour of her privileged but dysfunctional world.

Butter Lamp (La lampe au beurre de yak) (2013) 15 min
Director: Hu Wei
Country: France
Families of Tibetan nomads get their pictures taken against an array of exotic scenic backdrops.

Carny (Animador) (2012) 20 min
Director: Fernanda Chicolet
Country: Brazil
Ligia’s psyche escapes the dullness of her daily routine in the form of a rabbit at an amusement park, in danger-filled dreams that betray the flip side of her passive nature.

Frayed (2013) 9 min
Director: Georgia Oakley
Country: UK

#Postmodem (2012) 12 min
Directors: Jillian Mayer and Lucas Leyva
Country: USA
A musical satire of preparations for the singularity, based on the theories of Ray Kurzweil.

Subconscious Password (2013) 11 min
Director: Chris Landreth
Country: Canada
Charles’ subconscious plays games with him as he tries to remember an acquaintance’s name.

Uncle Seref And His Shadow (Şeref Dayı ve Gölgesi) (2013) 15 min
Director: Buğra Dedeoğlu
Country: Turkey
In a moment of anger Şeref berates his shadow, which promptly walks out on him.

Shorts Program 3 (61 min)

Aujourd’Hui (2012) 8 min
Director: Nicolas Saada
Country: France
The end of the world as experienced by a young mother (played by BĂ©renice BĂ©jo from The Artist) in Paris. She finds herself face to face with a silent, menacing prophet played by the great documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman.

L’Assenza (2013) 20 min
Director: Jonathan Romney
Country: UK
A young man (Stephen Mangan) goes to see an Italian movie from the 60s with his wife  (Amanda Ryan) and is confronted with a strange apparition; an extra, who appears to be his doppelganger, haunting the edges of the frame.

The Man Who Came Out Only At Night (2013) 15 min
Director: Michael Almereyda
Country: USA
Michael Almereyda’s wry adaptation of Italo Calvino’s folktale, shot in the East Village in black and white, is about a man (James Ransone) who marries the youngest of three sisters (India Kotis), and shares a very strange secret with her on their wedding night.

Whiplash (2013) 18 min
Director: Damien Chazelle
Country: USA
In this wild and intense new film from the director of Guy and Madeline On a Park Bench, a young jazz drummer (Johnny Simmons) beats his brains out trying to please his unforgiving conservatory instructor (J.K. Simmons – no relation).

Shorts Program 4 (89 min)

Three ingenious explorations of history and myth from a trio of NYFF Main Slate alumni.

Redemption (2013) 26 min
Director: Miguel Gomes
Country: Portugal
1975: from a village in northern Portugal, a child writes to his parents in Angola. 2011: an old man in Milan remembers his first love. 2012: a new father in Paris talks to his baby daughter. 1977: in Leipzig, a woman prepares for her wedding day. Where and when did these four poor devils begin searching for redemption? Combining voiceover and image as brilliantly as he did in Tabu (NYFF 2012), Miguel Gomes pairs suggestively edited archival material with bittersweet, wryly funny monologues that put their speakers in a surprising new light.

The King's Body (O Corpo de Afonso) (2013) 32 min
Director: JoĂŁo Pedro Rodrigues
Country: Portugal
Dom Afonso Henriques was Portugal’s first king, a figure whose legendary strength and much-vaunted sword have been subject to considerable myth making over the years. In this sly, playful investigation into the meaning of national identity, director João Pedro Rodrigues (To Die Like a Man, NYFF 2009) stages a casting session of sorts for the king’s body. A group of muscle-bound men, stripping down against a green-screen backdrop, answer questions about the fabled past and the mundane realities of their lives. The results, by turns amusing and poignant, speak volumes about Portugal in the present day.

Prologue to the Great Desaparecido (2013) 31 min
Director: Lav Diaz
Country: Philippines
Andrés Bonifacio, the freedom fighter known as the father of the Philippine revolution, was executed by rival revolutionaries in 1897. His wife, Gregoria de Jesus, searched for his body in the mountains for 30 days. It was never found. The next feature by Lav Diaz — whose latest, Norte, The End of History, is also a Main Slate presentation this year — concerns Bonifacio’s controversial death. Returning to his familiar palette of rich, deep black-and-white after the blazing colors of Norte, this short film about the desperate quest of Bonifacio’s widow is both a haunting standalone work and a tantalizing preview of the film to come.