FLC announces Summer of Film at Lincoln Center, a season of expansive programming including free screenings, free talks, and special summer pricing.
For those craving alternatives to multiplex fare during the hot months, Film at Lincoln Center is the destination. There’s much to celebrate: we have officially been around for half a century; we have a new name and a new look; and more than anything, we continue to celebrate cinema itself. On the occasion, Film at Lincoln Center presents a season of summer programming including audience favorites and lively provocations, engaging free talks, and additional free or discounted summer events that speak to the diversity, breadth, and excitement of what we have to offer.
Highlights include a trio of series featuring special double features: 50th Mixtape, which presents two free films back-to-back every Thursday night, combining all-time and recent favorites of the Film at Lincoln Center programming staff; This Is Cinema Now: 21st Century Debuts, a survey of the most important new filmmakers of the millennium; and Make My Day: American Movies in the Age of Reagan, spun off from the estimable critic J. Hoberman’s new book, which shines a political light on such favorites as The Terminator, Robocop, Desperately Seeking Susan, and Back to the Future. Each double bill in This Is Cinema Now and Make My Day will have special summer pricing—two screenings for the price of one.
The summer slate also features Film at Lincoln Center Free Talks; retrospectives and cinematheque series such as Another Country: Outsider Visions of America, exploring cinematic visions of America through the lens of foreign filmmakers, a survey of the groundbreaking Polish science-fiction director Piotr Szulkin, and a series highlighting the work of comedic actress Lily Tomlin and her longtime partner and writer Jane Wagner; and three outdoor screening programs: the return of Escape In New York: Outdoor Films on Governors Island, a Lincoln Center Out of Doors screening of the delightful Coco, and a screening of Funny Face presented in conjunction with the Met Opera Summer HD Festival. Film at Lincoln Center also continues its eternally popular annual series, with new editions of Dance on Camera and Scary Movies. Summer first-run programming will be announced separately.
Learn more about Film at Lincoln Center’s free event ticket policy and event registration at filmlinc.org/freetix, and register for tickets to 50th Mixtape and Talks beginning June 14.
June 14 – August 9
Free!
Escape in New York: Outdoor Films on Governors Island
After Hours
For the second year, Film at Lincoln Center and the Trust for Governors Island will present three outdoor screenings throughout the summer season, inspired by the city we call home. Taking place on Governors Island’s historic Parade Ground—an eight-acre lawn with expansive open views of Lower Manhattan—the series will feature films that celebrate all the ways in which our city, like cinema itself, provides visitors, new arrivals, and lifelong residents alike with infinite avenues of escape: from the humdrum routines of a straitlaced existence, from the frustrations and indignities of childhood, and from the pain of one’s own past. Each film will be paired with an independent short film by a local filmmaker selected by Film at Lincoln Center’s programming team. Produced by Rooftop Films.
Organized by Madeline Whittle and Tyler Wilson
June 14: School of Rock (dir. Richard Linklater)*, preceded by Mr. Yellow Sweatshirt (dir. Pacho Velez & Yoni Brook)
July 12: After Hours (dir. Martin Scorsese), preceded by Ada (dir. Eleanore Pienta)
August 9: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (dir. Michel Gondry), preceded by To the Unknown (dir. Michael Almereyda)
*Please note the June 14 screening has been changed from the previously scheduled Men In Black
June 27 – September 11
Free weekly double features!
50th Mixtape
It’s our golden anniversary, and as a special gift to our audiences—and all New York movie lovers—we’ve put together a free summer playlist. From June to September, Film at Lincoln Center will continue to celebrate its semi-centennial with a series of double features presented free of charge. We have handpicked 20 films—a combination of our all-time and recent favorites—to be screened across 10 Thursdays, culminating on September 11 with a final selection to be decided by a public vote. Our “mixtape” zigzags across recent film history, pairing titles in a way that speaks to cinema’s diversity of expression, and includes important premieres and acclaimed films from our most popular year-round festivals, series, and new releases. As these selections illustrate, we plan to extend our commitment to introducing New York audiences to cinema’s most vital and innovative voices—past, present, and future.
Organized by Florence Almozini and Tyler Wilson.
June 27: Cleo from 5 to 7 (dir. Agnès Varda) + The Portrait of a Lady (dir. Jane Campion)
July 11: Two English Girls (dir. François Truffaut) + Mulholland Dr. (dir. David Lynch)
July 18: Come Drink with Me (dir. King Hu) + The Assassin (dir. Hou Hsiao-hsien)
July 25: The Leopard (dir. Luchino Visconti) + Happy as Lazzaro (dir. Alice Rohrwacher)
August 1: Stalker (dir. Andrei Tarkovsky) + High Life (dir. Claire Denis)
August 8: School Daze (dir. Spike Lee) + Sorry to Bother You (dir. Boots Riley)
August 15: Nocturama (dir. Bertrand Bonello) + Burning (dir. Lee Chang-dong)
August 22: demonlover (dir. Olivier Assayas) + Elle (dir. Paul Verhoeven)
August 29: Velvet Goldmine (dir. Todd Haynes) + Her Smell (dir. Alex Ross Perry)
September 5: Three Times (dir. Hou Hsiao-hsien) + Moonlight (dir. Barry Jenkins)
September 11: Audience choice!
June 27
Free!
Film Comment Talk: Queer & Now & Then
6:30pm at the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center Amphitheater
Join us for the latest in our monthly Film Comment talk series. This June’s special guests include Melissa Anderson (critic/editor, 4Columns), Wesley Morris (critic, The New York Times), Mark Harris (author, Pictures at a Revolution, Five Came Back), and Farihah Zaman (filmmaker and critic), joining Film Comment’s Michael Koresky—writer of its biweekly column Queer & Now & Then—for a discussion about the changing landscape of LGBTQ cinema and criticism, just in time for Pride Month.
Opens June 28
Peter Parlow, USA, 2019, 76m
Co-written by experimental filmmakers James N. Kienitz Wilkins and Robin Schavoir, The Plagiarists is at once a hilarious send-up of low-budget American indie filmmaking and a probing inquiry into race, relationships, and the social uncanny. A young novelist (Lucy Kaminsky) and her cinematographer boyfriend (Eamon Monaghan) are waylaid by a snowstorm on their way to visit a friend in upstate New York and are taken in by the kindly yet enigmatic Clip (Michael “Clip” Payne of Parliament Funkadelic), who puts them up for the night. But an accidental discovery months later recasts in an unnerving light what had seemed like an agreeable evening, stoking resentments both latent and not-so-latent. Exhilaratingly intelligent and distinctively shot on a vintage TV-news camera, The Plagiarists is a work whose provocations are inseparable from its pleasures. A 2019 New Directors/New Films selection. A KimStim release. Filmmakers in person opening weekend!
July 9
Free!
Film Comment Talk: Ari Aster
Ari Aster at Film at Lincoln Center’s 50th Anniversary Gala. Photo by Sean DiSerio.
7:00pm at the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center Amphitheater
We’re pleased to welcome back filmmaker Ari Aster for another free summer Film Comment Talk, following his conversation with us last year on the eve of Hereditary‘s release. This summer, Aster will talk about the inspirations and ideas around his latest chilling vision, Midsommar, starring Dani (Florence Pugh) and Christian (Jack Reynor) as a young American couple whose relationship is on the brink of falling apart. But after a family tragedy keeps them together, a grieving Dani invites herself to join Christian and his friends on a trip to a once-in-a-lifetime midsummer festival in a remote Swedish village. What begins as a carefree summer holiday in a land of eternal sunlight takes a sinister turn. Midsommar is an A24 release.
July 12–15
Yuli
Featuring 11 programs over four days, including films from 17 countries, Dance on Camera Festival celebrates its 47th edition with a selection of titles that explore dance from a variety of perspectives. From a film in which a woman dances off a rocky cliff in Greenland, to a tribute to the great Cuban dancer Carlos Acosta, to stories of women overcoming great odds while taking control of their destinies through dance, this festival bears witness to the power of dance to ignite humanity. Highlights this year include a special Charles Atlas tribute to the artistry of legendary choreographer Merce Cunningham with rare footage of their collaborations.
Opens July 12
Benjamín Naishtat, Argentina/Brazil/France/Netherlands/Germany/Belgium/Switzerland, 2018, 109m
English and Spanish with English subtitles
In mid-’70s Argentina, at the height of that country’s infamous Dirty War, Claudio (Darío Grandinetti) is a well-heeled, cool-headed lawyer living with his wife and teenage daughter in a comfortable provincial suburb. When an innocuous dinner date ends in a startling altercation with a stranger, Claudio’s apparently placid lifestyle is disrupted, and fault lines begin to appear in the frictionless surface of his professional and domestic existence. What follows is a brooding, warm-hued fugue, where political calculations, economic stratagems, and tenuous social mores are played out with slow-burning ferocity against a harmonic bassline of barely repressed indignation and simmering paranoia. A Distrib Films release.
July 19-31
2-for-1 Double Features!
This Is Cinema Now: 21st Century Debuts
Kaili Blues
This summer, we’re highlighting those directors who have made their feature debuts since the year 2000—and who have all but begun to define what a 21st century cinema might look like. The past two decades have been a transformative period shaped by new technologies, transnational cinemas, and hyper-expanding media culture, and a different cinematic landscape has emerged, along with new directors who have built upon its ever-shifting terrain. Made up of a series of double features, pairing such exceptional debuts as Jordan Peele’s Get Out with Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook and Maren Ade’s The Forest for the Trees with Andrew Bujalski’s Funny Ha Ha, This Is Cinema Now: 21st Century Debuts celebrates our unpredictable cinematic present and recognizes the new class of filmmakers who will be defining the medium for years to come.
Organized by Dennis Lim, Florence Almozini, and Tyler Wilson.
July 19 & 23: Mysterious Object at Noon (dir. Apichatpong Weerasethakul) + Kaili Blues (dir. Bi Gan)
July 19 & 27: Policeman (dir. Nadav Lapid) + 12:08 East of Bucharest (dir. Corneliu Porumboiu)
July 20: The Forest for the Trees (dir. Maren Ade) + Funny Ha Ha (dir. Andrew Bujalski)
July 20: Primer (dir. Shane Carruth) + Donnie Darko (dir. Richard Kelly)
July 20: Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench (dir. Damien Chazelle) + Medicine for Melancholy (dir. Barry Jenkins)
July 21 & 26: Oxhide (dir. Liu Jiayin) + La Cienaga (dir. Lucrecia Martel)
July 21 & 31: O Fantasma (dir. João Pedro Rodrigues) + Neighboring Sounds (dir. Kleber Mendonça Filho)
July 23 & 30: Mundane History (dir. Anocha Suwichakornpong) + Nana (dir. Valérie Massadian)
July 24 & 29: Unrelated (dir. Joanna Hogg) + Bungalow (dir. Ulrich Köhler)
July 24 & July 29: La Libertad (dir. Lisandro Alonso) + Japon (dir. Carlos Reygadas)
July 25 & 30: All Is Forgiven (dir. Mia Hansen-Løve) + Corpo Celeste (dir. Alice Rohrwacher)
July 26: The Face You Deserve (dir. Miguel Gomes) + Frownland (dir. Ronald Bronstein)
July 27: Get Out (dir. Jordan Peele) + The Babadook (dir. Jennifer Kent)
July 28: Historias Extraordinarias (dir. Mariano Llinás)
July 31: The Human Surge (dir. Eduardo Williams) + Drift (dir. Helena Wittmann)
July 25
Free!
Lincoln Center Out of Doors Coco screening
Latin fusion band La Santa Cecilia—named for the patron saint of music—seamlessly integrates cumbia, bossa nova, rumba, bolero, tango, jazz, rock, klezmer, and any other musical genre that crosses its path. Following a performance by this Grammy-winning band, fronted by the charismatic Marisol Hernandez (aka La Marisoul), stay for a screening of Disney/Pixar’s Oscar-winning Coco, which centers on a young musician in Santa Cecilia named Miguel who is accidentally transported to the Land of the Dead. While on this extraordinary journey, he seeks the help of his deceased musician great-great-grandfather to return him to the living.
August 2-14
Another Country: Outsider Visions of America
News from Home
Some of the most influential and incisive observations about the United States have historically been made by those born beyond its shores, from Alexis de Tocqueville to Oscar Wilde. Continuing the story of how exiled European directors transformed Hollywood in the 1930s and ’40s, this series considers the many ways that foreign and immigrant auteurs of the modern era have depicted and otherwise apprehended America, from period adaptations to diary films to action blockbusters. Examples include the imagined geographies of the spaghetti western, where Italian landscapes might stand in for 19th-century Utah, but we also see the U.S. shot on location, like the Los Angeles of Jacques Demy and Haile Gerima, or the New York of Chantal Akerman and Sylvia Chang. In these films one can find many Americas, perspectives on a nation that reveal the peculiarities of its customs, the drama of its natural splendor, and the lacerating contradictions of its political mythologies.
Organized by Thomas Beard, Dan Sullivan, and Shanay Jhaveri.
Opens August 2
La Flor
Mariano Llinás, Argentina, 2018, 803m (screening in 4 parts)
A decade in the making, Mariano Llinás’s follow-up to his 2008 cult classic Extraordinary Stories is an unrepeatable labor of love and madness that redefines the concept of binge-viewing. The director himself appears at the start to preview the six disparate episodes that await, each starring the same four remarkable actresses: Elisa Carricajo, Valeria Correa, Pilar Gamboa, and Laura Paredes. Overflowing with nested subplots and whiplash digressions, La Flor shape-shifts from a B-movie to a musical to a spy thriller to a category-defying metafiction—all of them without endings—to a remake of a very well-known French classic and, finally, to an enigmatic period piece that lacks a beginning (granted, all notions of beginnings and endings become fuzzy after 14 hours). An adventure in scale and duration, La Flor is a marvelously entertaining exploration of the possibilities of fiction that lands somewhere close to its outer limits. An NYFF56 selection. A Grasshopper Film release. Filmmaker in person opening weekend!
Part 1: 203m / Part 2: 188m / Part 3: 205m / Part 4: 207m
Parts 1 & 2 screen August 2-8 and parts 3 & 4 screen August 9-15; check back for more details.
Opens August 2
Piranhas
Claudio Giovannesi, Italy, 2019, 112m
Italian with English subtitles
The latest from Claudio Giovannesi (Fiore) is this singular coming-of-age story that won the Silver Bear for Best Screenplay at the Berlin Film Festival. Newcomer Francesco Di Napoli stars as 15-year-old Nicola, who leads a pack of cocksure hellions captivated by the lifestyle of the local Camorra as they descend into the violent, paranoid world of Naples’s dominant crime group. Based on the novel by Roberto Saviano, who co-wrote the screenplay and mined similar territory in his devastating Gomorrah, Piranhas is a haunting reflection on doomed adolescence. A 2019 Open Roads selection. A Music Box Films release.
August 16-21
Scary Movies XII
Boogeyman Pop crew at Scary Movies XI. Photo by Mettie Ostrowski.
Join Film at Lincoln Center for the 12th edition of Scary Movies, New York City’s top horror festival. Bringing you the genre’s best from around the globe, Scary Movies, which returns as a summer series for the third year, offers moviegoers the increasingly rare, cathartic treat of experiencing the exhilaration of suspense, thrills, and gore on the big screen as part of an audience. Stay tuned for more details about what is sure to be another week of hair-raising premieres and rediscoveries, themed parties, guest appearances, and more.
Organized by Laura Kern and Madeline Whittle.
Opens August 16
What You Gonna Do When the World’s on Fire?
Roberto Minervini, Italy/USA/France, 2018, 123m
Italian-born, American South–based filmmaker Roberto Minervini’s follow-up to his Texas Trilogy is a portrait of African-Americans in New Orleans struggling to maintain their unique cultural identity and to find social justice. Shot in very sharp black and white, the film is focused on Judy, trying to keep her family afloat and save her bar before it’s snapped up by speculators; Ronaldo and Titus, two brothers growing up surrounded by violence and with a father in jail; Kevin, trying to keep the glorious local traditions of the Mardi Gras Indians alive; and the local Black Panthers, trying to stand up against a new, deadly wave of racism. This is a passionately urgent and strangely lyrical film experience. An NYFF56 selection. A KimStim release.
August 23
Free!
Met Opera Summer HD Festival: Funny Face
For the sixth year in a row, the Met and Film at Lincoln Center co-present an opera-related film screening that anticipates the annual Metropolitan Opera Summer HD Festival. Directed by the legendary Stanley Donen, who died this year at age 94, Funny Face is one of the most delightful movies of the 1950s, a Paris-set musical featuring Audrey Hepburn and Fred Astaire at their most charming. Featuring gowns by Hubert de Givenchy and a selection of beloved songs by George and Ira Gershwin (including “S’wonderful” and “Let’s Kiss and Make Up”), Funny Face follows the transformation of Hepburn’s demure bookstore girl into a fashion icon, with the help of Astaire’s photographer (a character inspired by Richard Avedon). Kay Thompson—best known for writing the Eloise book series—makes a rare and scene-stealing screen appearance as a character based on real-life magazine editors Diana Vreeland and Carmel Snow. Nominated for four Academy Awards, Funny Face continues to enchant audiences more than 60 years after its premiere. This free outdoor screening will take place at the Josie Robertson Plaza starting at 8:00pm on Friday, August 23.
August 23 – September 2
2-for-1 Double Features!
Make My Day: American Movies in the Age of Reagan
Blow Out
The presidency of Ronald Reagan was marked by such 80s movie events as Raiders of the Lost Ark, The King of Comedy, First Blood, Ghostbusters, Back to the Future, and Blue Velvet. These films, plus the birth of MTV, helped form the pop-cultural backdrop for the Cold War and the delirious 1984 presidential campaign that led to Reagan’s re-election. In his latest book, Make My Day: Movie Culture in the Age of Reagan—the culmination of a trilogy he began with The Dream Life and An Army of Phantoms—critic/historian J. Hoberman contextualizes and examines Reagan as historical figure and symbolic totem, placing the key American films released during his presidency within a narrative bookended by the bicentennial celebrations (coinciding with the beginning of Reagan’s national ascendency) and the Iran-Contra Affair. On the occasion of this essential new book’s publication, Film at Lincoln Center will present a series of special double features selected by Hoberman from the films he discusses.
Organized by J. Hoberman and Dan Sullivan.
August 23 & September 1: Conan the Barbarian (dir. John Milius) + First Blood (dir. Ted Kotcheff)
August 23 & 26: Cutter’s Way (dir. Ivan Passer) + Blow Out (dir. Brian De Palma)
August 24 & September 1: Gremlins (dir. Joe Dante) + The Terminator (dir. James Cameron)
August 24 & 31: The King of Comedy (dir. Martin Scorsese) + Videodrome (dir. David Cronenberg)
August 25 & 27: Risky Business (dir. Paul Brickman) + Sudden Impact (dir. Clint Eastwood)
August 25 & 30: Back to the Future (dir. Robert Zemeckis) + Desperately Seeking Susan (dir. Susan Seidelman)
August 26 & 28: True Stories (dir. David Byrne) + Pee-wee’s Big Adventure (dir. Tim Burton)
August 27 & September 2: Near Dark (dir. Kathryn Bigelow) + River’s Edge (dir. Tim Hunter)
August 28 & September 3: Salvador (dir. Oliver Stone) + Walker (dir. Alex Cox)
August 30 & September 2: Robocop (dir. Paul Verhoeven) + The Running Man (dir. Paul Michael Glaser)
August 31 & September 3: The Last Temptation of Christ (dir. Martin Scorsese) + They Live (dir. John Carpenter)
Opens August 23
Genesis
Philippe Lesage, Canada, 2018, 130m
French with English subtitles
Following his autobiographical 2015 narrative debut The Demons, Philippe Lesage continues to chronicle the life of young Felix (Édouard Tremblay-Grenier), now diverging to capture the romantic trials and tribulations of two Quebecois teen siblings. While the charismatic, Salinger-reading Guillaume (Théodore Pellerin) wrestles with his sexual identity at his all-boys boarding school, the more ostensibly grown-up Charlotte (Noée Abita) discovers the casual cruelty of the adult world that awaits her post-graduation. Lesage and his young actors depict the aches of becoming oneself with nuance, honesty, and compassion, and the result is one of the most beautiful coming-of-age stories in years. A 2019 New Directors/New Films selection. A Film Movement release.
August 30
Ognjen Glavonić, Serbia/France/Croatia/Iran/Qatar, 2018, 98m
Serbian with English subtitles
Ognjen Glavonić’s wintry road movie concerns a truck driver (Leon Lucev) tasked with transporting mysterious cargo across a scorched landscape from Kosovo to Belgrade during the 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia. A companion piece to the director’s 2016 documentary Depth Two, The Load is a work of enveloping atmosphere that puts a politically charged twist on the highway thrillers it recalls: Henri-Georges Clouzot’s The Wages of Fear and William Friedkin’s retelling, Sorcerer. The streamlined premise gives way to a slow-dawning reckoning, in which implications of guilt and complicity slowly but surely sink in. A 2019 New Directors/New Films selection. A Grasshopper Film release.
Opens September 6
Say Amen, Somebody
George T. Nierenberg, USA, 1982, 101m
One of the most acclaimed music documentaries of all time, Say Amen, Somebody is George T. Nierenberg’s exuberant, funny, and deeply moving celebration of 20th-century American gospel music. With unrivaled access to the movement’s luminaries, Thomas Dorsey and Mother Willie Mae Ford Smith, Nierenberg masterfully records their fascinating stories alongside earth-shaking, show-stopping performances by the Barrett Sisters, the O’Neal Twins, and others. As much a fascinating time capsule as it is a peerless concert movie, Say Amen, Somebody returns to Film at Lincoln Center in a gorgeous 4K restoration by Milestone Films, with support from the National Museum of African American History and Culture. An NYFF20 selection. A Milestone Films release.
September 6-9
The Cult of Sci-Fi Visionary Piotr Szulkin
Golem
This September, Film at Lincoln Center is pleased to celebrate one of Poland’s most visionary filmmakers. Piotr Szulkin (1950-2018) was a director, screenwriter, novelist, theatrical director, and painter whose profoundly imaginative works rendered 20th-century philosophy and Polish medieval literature through speculative fiction, noir, and grotesque allegories. Best known for his tetralogy of wildly iconoclastic sci-fi movies—Golem (1979), The War of the Worlds: Next Century (1981), O-Bi, O-Ba: The End of Civilization (1985), and Ga-ga: Glory to Heroes (1986)—Szulkin regularly faced censorship from the Communist regime of the late ’70s and early ’80s for his unabashedly political works. Film Is a Scream offers a selection of new digital restorations and imported film prints; whether viewed as existential tales, absurdist parables, or premonitions about modern society’s hostility and the evils of totalitarianism, they continue to resonate with chilling truth about humankind. Presented in collaboration with the Polish Cultural Institute New York.
Organized by Florence Almozini and Tyler Wilson.
September 12-16
Two Free Women: Lily Tomlin & Jane Wagner
Jane Wagner and Lily Tomlin
A testament to the collaborative nature of art and show business, the career of beloved comic actor Lily Tomlin has long been intimately connected to that of her partner Jane Wagner. This dual retrospective considers their projects together across a variety of formats, in which writer and sometimes director Wagner’s sharp-eyed observations and deftly drawn characters are animated through Tomlin’s tremendous versatility on screen. Two Free Women highlights a diverse selection of their films, including the classic one-woman opus The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, in which Tomlin shape-shifts between a dozen different personas; the underrated and misunderstood May-December romance Moment by Moment; Tomlin’s brilliant performances in such movies as Nashville, 9 to 5, and All of Me; and a bevy of rarities, including the tender, Wagner-penned childhood drama J.T. The scope of their work suggests the breadth of a lasting and fruitful partnership that reshaped the art of American comedy, and expanded its feminist imagination.
Organized by Hilton Als and Thomas Beard.
New releases are organized by Dennis Lim and Florence Almozini.
