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The History of Film at Lincoln Center
Film at Lincoln Center (FLC) is a nonprofit organization that celebrates cinema as an essential art form and fosters a vibrant home for film culture to thrive. FLC presents premier film festivals, retrospectives, new releases, and restorations year-round in state-of-the-art theaters at New York’s Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. FLC offers audiences the opportunity to discover works from established and emerging directors from around the world with a passionate community of film lovers at marquee events including the New York Film Festival and New Directors/New Films.

Founded in 1969, FLC is committed to preserving the excitement of the theatrical experience for all audiences, advancing high-quality film journalism through the publication of Film Comment, cultivating the next generation of film industry professionals through our FLC Academies, and enriching the lives of all who engage with our programs.
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1990s

1990

James Stewart Honored at the Chaplin Award Gala

ND/NF Debuts

Whit Stillman (Metropolitan)
Michael Haneke (The Seventh Continent)
Nanni Moretti (Palombella rossa)

Read Jonathan Romney on Metropolitan for Film Comment:

A quarter-century on, Metropolitan has become a very different film. Once a movie about young people, it now feels—especially if you saw it back then—like a movie about eternally young people, these characters’ freshness and naïveté preserved in the warmly glowing amber of a bygone Manhattan winter. (The feeling that its characters were fated never to age is accentuated by the fact that the actors haven’t been very visible since, although some of those who didn’t become attorneys or religious ministers did establish acting careers, notably Eigeman and Nichols).

NYFF Debuts

Abel Ferrara (King of New York)
Yvonne Rainer (Privilege)
Charles Burnett (To Sleep with Anger)

NYFF28 Main Slate Selections

Miller’s Crossing (Joel & Ethan Coen) with Eternity (Sheryl Sardina) (Opening Night)
The Nasty Girl (Michael Verhoeven) with The Lunch Date (Adam Davidson) (Closing Night)
American Dream (Barbara Kopple) with Siberian Summer (Andras Der)
An Angel at My Table (Jane Campion)
L’Atalante (Jean Vigo) (Retrospective selection) with To the Top (Anita Thacher)
“Avant-Garde Visions”: Pièce Touchée (Martin Arnold), Scenes from the Life of Andy Warhol (Jonas Mekas), and Sink or Swim (Su Friedrich)
Doctor Petiot (Christian de Chalonge) with The Space Between the Door and the Floor (Pauline Chan) and Hang Up (Pauline Chan)
Freeze Die Come to Life (Vitaly Kanevski)
The Golden Boat (Raúl Ruiz) with Inside the Circle of Love (J.P. Somersaulter)
Golden Braid (Paul Cox) with Touch My Lips (Jim Garrard)
I Hired a Contract Killer (Aki Kaurismäki)
Ju Dou (Zhang Yimou) with Macha’s Curse (Rose Bond)
King of New York (Abel Ferrara) with Nowon (Peter Judson)
Listen Up: The Lives of Quincy Jones (Ellen Weissbrod & Courtney Sale Ross)
The Match Factory Girl (Aki Kaurismäki) with That Burning Question (Alan Taylor)
Night Sun (Paolo & Vittorio Taviani) with Mr. Tao (Bruno Bozzetto)
No, or the Vain Glory of Command (Manoel de Oliveira) with The Magical Stories (Ondrej Rudavsky)
Nouvelle Vague (Jean-Luc Godard) with Save the Last Dance for Me (Lewis Furey)
Open Doors (Gianni Amelio) with Hiding Out from Heaven (Fred Marx)
Privilege (Yvonne Rainer) with Night Cries: A Rural Tragedy (Tracey Moffat)
Siddheshwari (Mani Kaul) with A Nice Arrangement (Gurinder Chadha)
The Sting of Death (Kohei Oguri) with Another Damaging Day (Stacy Cochran)
A Tale of Springtime (Eric Rohmer)
Taxi Blues (Pavel Lounguine) with Wonderland (Zoe Beloff)
Tilai (Idrissa Ouedraogo) and All My Relations (Jonna Priestley)
To Sleep with Anger (Charles Burnett) with Fat Monroe (Andrew Garrison)
A Woman’s Revenge (Jacques Doillon)

1991

The Walter Reade Theater Opens

Wendy Keys, Joanne Koch, and Richard Peña.

Throughout the 1970s and ’80s, the Film Society was recognized and admired by New Yorkers and the international community for its various programs. Yet it still had no dedicated year-round venue. Establishing a location on campus had been a priority for the organization at least since the late ’70s. In 1980, an opportunity arose when Lincoln Center acquired a significant plot of land on 65th Street—a new building on this site would satisfy the needs of a variety of constituents. For the Film Society, this became the location for a possible theater, one it would take more than a decade to realize. With the help of architects Igor Hilbert (based in France) and Lew Davis (New York); the oversight of Board members Alfred Stern, Sheldon Gunsberg, and Roy Furman; the stewardship of Executive Director Joanne Koch; and the ambition of newly hired Program Director Richard Peña (who had been in charge of the film program at the Art Institute of Chicago), the 268-seat Walter Reade Theater was planned for the Rose Building, already occupied by the Juilliard School and the School of American Ballet. The name of the venue came from of a generous gift from the Walter Reade Foundation (Reade died in an avalanche while skiing in 1973), while Furman, who became the Film Society’s President in 1988, provided the naming gift for the reception and exhibition space across the lobby from the theater—the Frieda and Roy Furman Gallery. Officially opening its doors on December 3, 1991, the Walter Reade was instantly recognized as the best place to see repertory film programming in New York, and it remains a state-of-the-art facility for digital projection. In September 2016, A.O. Scott in The New York Times called the Walter Reade “still the best place in Manhattan to watch a movie.”

First screening at the Walter Reade Theater.

First screening at the Walter Reade Theater.

First screening at the Walter Reade Theater.

Audrey Hepburn Honored at the Chaplin Award Gala

Harry Belafonte and Audrey Hepburn in 1991. Photo by Larry White.

Read Molly Haskell’s appreciation of Audrey Hepburn from Film Comment‘s March-April 1991 issue:

From bit parts in British films of the early ’50s, to her great ’50s and ’60s roles in Roman HolidaySabrinaWar and PeaceFunny FaceLove in the AfternoonThe Nun’s StoryBreakfast at Tiffany’sCharadeMy Fair LadyTwo for the RoadWait Until Dark, and finally (after nine years of inactivity) the glorious twilight Robin and Marian, Audrey Hepburn had a career that was unusually long and substantial for her era—a time when actresses’ careers were growing drastically shorter, terminated either by studio mishandling or by themselves. Yet why is it that when we think of her it is less in terms of a career than as an apparition, a chimera? It’s as if she dropped out of the sky into the ’50s, half wood-nymph, half princess, and then disappeared in her golden coach, wearing her glass slippers and leaving no footprints.

ND/NF Debuts

Wong Kar-wai (Days of Being Wild)
Richard Linklater (Slacker)

NYFF Debuts

Gus Van Sant (My Own Private Idaho)
Theo Angelopoulos (The Suspended Step of the Stork)
Atom Egoyan (The Adjuster)

The Double Life of Veronique (Krzysztof Kieslowski) (Opening Night) with Home Stories (Matthias Müller)
Homicide (David Mamet) (Closing Night) with Fast Food Matador (Vincent Cafarelli and Candy Kugel)
Adam’s Rib (Viatcheslav Krichtofovitch) with The Tennis Ball (John Dobson)
The Adjuster (Atom Egoyan) with The Visible Compendium (Larry Jordan)
Amelia Lopes O’Neill (Valéria Sarmiento) with Cairo as Told by Youssef Chahine (Youssef Chahine)
“Avant-Garde Visions”: Flaming Creatures (Jack Smith), The Making of “Monsters” (John Greyson), and Opening the Nineteenth Century: 1896 (Ken Jacobs)
Beauty and the Beast (Gary Trousdale & Kirk Wise)
La Belle Noiseuse (Jacques Rivette)
Delicatessen (Jean-Pierre Jeunet & Marc Caro) with New Fangled (George Griffin)
Earth Entranced (Glauber Rocha) (Retrospective selection) with Suburban Route (Francisco Cesar Filho)
Intimate Stranger (Alan Berliner) and The Body Beautiful (Ngozi Onwurah)
Inventory (Krzysztof Zanussi) with With Raised Hands (Mitko Panov)
Jacquot de Nantes (Agnès Varda)
Life on a String (Chen Kaige) with A Year Along the Abandoned Road (Morten Skallerud)
Locked Up Time (Sibylle Schönemann) with Great Regular Flavor (Rudy Burckhardt)
My Own Private Idaho (Gus Van Sant) with Backyard Movie (Bruce Weber)
Night on Earth (Jim Jarmusch)
No Life King (Jun Ichikawa) with Shirt (Kenji Larsen)
The Other Eye (Johanna Heer & Werner Schmiedel) with Schönberg (Gerhard Ertl and Sabine Hiebler)
Pictures from a Revolution (Susan Meiselas & Richard P. Rogers & Alfred Guzzetti) with Post No Bills (Clay Walker)
Prospero’s Books (Peter Greenaway)
The Rapture (Michael Tolkin) with Resonance (Stephen Cummins and Simon Hunt)
Rocco and His Brothers (Luchino Visconti) (Retrospective selection)
The Suspended Step of the Stork (Theo Angelopoulos)
Toto the Hero (Jaco van Dormael) with Puppenhead (David Cox)
Une chambre en ville (Jacques Demy) (Retrospective selection) with La Plage (François Goize)
Woman of the Port (Arturo Ripstein) with After the Fall (Joanna Priestly)
Zombie and the Ghost Train (Mika Kaurismäki) with Tender, Slender and Tall (Lesley Ellen)

Gus Van Sant and River Phoenix at the 29th New York Film Festival in 1991.

1992

The New York Jewish Film Festival Begins

Natalie Portman introduces her film, A Tale of Love and Darkness at the Closing Night of the New York Jewish Film Festival. Photo by Sean DiSerio.

Charlotte Gainsbourg at Promise at Dawn, the Opening Night Film of the 2019 New York Jewish Film Festival. Photo by Sean DiSerio.

Richard Kind at the 25th New York Jewish Film Festival following a screening of the festival's shorts program. Photo by Sachyn Mital.

Director Amos Gitai discussed his film diary Shalom Rabin after its world premiere screening at the New York Jewish Film Festival. Photo by Sean DiSerio.

Todd Solondz at the 25th Anniversary screening of Welcome to the Dollhouse at the New York Jewish Film Festival. Photo by Sean DiSerio.

Director Yared Zeleke and producer Ama Ampadu at a Q&A following a screening of Lamb at the Opening Night of the New York Jewish Film Festival. Photo by Mettie Ostrowski.

Director Marianne Lambert participates in a Q&A after the U.S. premiere of I Don’t Belong Anywhere: The Cinema of Chantal Akerman at the New York Jewish Film Festival. Photo by Maren McGlashan.

Thomas Beard, Stuart Comer, Chrissie Iles, and Dennis Lim discuss film curating and engaging film audiences in the 21st century at the New York Jewish Film Festival. Photo by Maren McGlashan.

Presented by The Jewish Museum and the Film at Lincoln Center, the New York Jewish Film Festival highlights the finest films from around the world that explore the diversity of Jewish experience, featuring exciting lineups of documentary, narrative, and short films, ranging from restored international classics, to iconoclastic debuts from new voices.

Gregory Peck Honored at the Chaplin Award Gala

Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn at the 1992 Chaplin Award Gala.

Walter Reade Theater Programs





ND/NF Debuts

Tom Kalin (Swoon)
Gregg Araki (The Living End)

NYFF Debuts

Abbas Kiarostami (Life, and Nothing More…)
Djibril Diop Mambéty (Hyenas)
Michael Haneke (Benny’s Video)
Arnaud Desplechin (La sentinelle)
Guy Maddin (Careful)
Baz Luhrmann (Strictly Ballroom)

NYFF30 Main Slate Selections

Olivier Olivier (Agnieszka Holland) (Opening Night)
Night and the City (Irwin Winkler) (Closing Night)
Allah Tantou (David Achkar) and Lumumba: Death of a Prophet (Raoul Peck)
And Life Goes On, aka Life and Nothing More… (Abbas Kiarostami) with My Little Eye (Benjamin Ross)
Autumn Moon (Clara Law) with Are We Still Married? (Brothers Quay)
“Avant-Garde Visions”: John Five (James Herbert), Short Fuse (Warren Sonbert), and Side/Walk/Shuttle (Ernie Gehr)
Benny’s Video (Michael Haneke) with Deeper Still (Anthony Nielson)
Careful (Guy Maddin) with Amelia Rose Towers (Jackie Karkas)
The Crying Game (Neil Jordan)
Delivered Vacant (Nora Jacobson) with Shown with Southwest (Richard R. Hall)
Dream of Light (Víctor Erice)
Hyenas (Djibril Diop Mambéty) with Perpetual Motion (Karen Aqua)
Idiot (Mani Kaul)
In the Soup (Alexandre Rockwell) with Milk of Amnesia (Jeffrey Noyes Scher)
Léolo (Jean-Claude Lauzon) with One Thousand Dollars (Sergio Castilla)
The Lovers on the Bridge (Leos Carax)
Man Bites Dog (Rémy Belvaux, André Bonzel, and Benoît Poelvoorde) with Rapture (Sara Whitely)
The Oak (Lucian Pintilie)
La sentinelle (Arnaud Desplechin)
Stone (Aleksandr Sokurov) with Definitely Sanctus (Gerhard Ertl and Sabine Hiebler)
The Story of Qiu Ju (Zhang Yimou) with Square of Heroes, March 12, 1988 (Johannes Rosenberger)
Strictly Ballroom (Baz Luhrmann) with Mon Desir (Nicky Marshall)
“Taking the Pulse” – three short works by master cinematic satirists: Pets or Meat: The Return to Flint (Michael Moore), Seen from Elsewhere (Denys Arcand), and A Sense of History (Mike Leigh)
A Tale of Winter (Eric Rohmer)
La vie de bohème (Aki Kaurismäki) with The Addict (Matt Thomas Draper)
Zebrahead (Anthony Drazan) with Light Years Through the Heart: The Story of Fei & Miguel (Catherine Tse)

Read Michael Koresky on Víctor Erice’s Dream of Light for Film Comment:

You may watch movies for aesthetic awakening. You may watch movies to learn a little something about processes outside your personal experience. You may watch them for emotional comfort or, conversely, to challenge your perceptions about art and the world. Movies may help you breathe a little easier, see the world a little clearer, and maybe, just maybe, help you drift away into reverie. Encompassing all of these, Víctor Erice’s Dream of Light is one of the fullest movies I’ve ever seen, at once limning the contours of what cinema is and expanding what it can be.

1993

Jack Lemmon Honored at the Chaplin Award Gala

Jack Lemmon in 1993. Photo by Stephanie Berger.

Walter Reade Theater Programs





ND/NF Debuts

Sally Potter (Orlando)
Michael Almereyda (Another Girl, Another Planet)

Michael Koresky on Orlando for Film Comment:

[Sally] Potter’s film is somewhat faithful to the literal events as they unfold in [Virginia] Woolf’s book, but the author was writing about something difficult to literalize in a cause-and-effect narrative, which is that Orlando is a constant in a transitory world: his/her ability to traverse centuries, and therefore bear witness to enormous societal and political change, is not the result of fantastical intervention but, in Woolf’s philosophical framework, a natural outgrowth of the fact that time is a construct, elastic and false.

NYFF Debuts

Todd Haynes (Dottie Gets Spanked)
Henry Selick (The Nightmare Before Christmas)
Gregg Araki (Totally Fucked Up)

NYFF31 Main Slate Selections

Short Cuts (Robert Altman) (Opening Night)
The Piano (Jane Campion) with The Perfect Woman (Illeana Douglas) (Closing Night)
Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer (Nick Broomfield) with Small Change (David Farr)
“Avant-Garde Visions”: Dottie Gets Spanked (Todd Haynes), Passage à l’acte (Martin Arnold), Poverties (Laurie Dunphy)
Birthplace (Pavel Lozinski) with Libertas (Zoran Jovanovic) and The Unproductives (Pierre Isoard)
Blue (Derek Jarman) with Sleepy Haven (Matthias Müller)
Blue (Krzysztof Kieslowski) with Deraillement (Unni Straume)
The Blue Kite (Tian Zhuangzhuang)
Calendar (Atom Egoyan) and Moving In (Chantal Akerman) with Just Desserts (Monica Pellizzari)
Farewell My Concubine (Chen Kaige)
Fiorile (Paolo and Vittorio Taviani) with Pitchmaster 2000 (Bill Allard)
It’s All True: Based on an Unfinished Film by Orson Welles (Bill Krohn, Myron Meisel, and Richard Wilson) with Humboldt Street Family, Brazil (Luciano Moura)
Naked (Mike Leigh) with These Boots (Aki Kaurismäki)
The Night (Mohamad Malas)
The Puppetmaster (Hou Hsiao-hsien
Raining Stones (Ken Loach) with The Darra Dogs (Dennis Tupicoff)
Ruby in Paradise (Victor Nuñez) with Excursions to the Bridge of Friendship (Christina Andreef)
The Scent of Green Papaya (Tran Anh Hung) with First Train, Indonesia (Dicky Irawan)
Shades of Doubt (Aline Issermann) with Grown Up, USA (Joanna Priestly)
The Snapper (Stephen Frears) with Dinner with Malibu (Jon Carnoy)
The Story of a Cheat (Sacha Guitry) with The Taste of Iron (Rémi Bernard) (Retrospective selection)
The Nightmare Before Christmas (Henry Selick) with Vincent (Tim Burton)
Totally F***Ed Up (Gregg Araki) with Coffee and Cigarettes (Jim Jarmusch)
Valley of Abraham (Manoel de Oliveira)
The War Room (Chris Hegedus and D.A. Pennebaker) with Hoping for Better Times (Jonas Raeber)
Wendemi (S. Pierre Yameogo) with Untrue Stories (Cezary Jaworski and John Petrizelli)
The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl (Ray Müller)

1994

Robert Altman Honored at the Chaplin Award Gala

Lily Tomlin and Robert Altman at the 1994 Chaplin Award Gala. Photo by Bill Davila.

Read Jan Dawson’s interview with Robert Altman on the making of The Long Goodbye, from Film Comment‘s March-April 1974 issue:

Most people feel that, with The Long Goodbye, I’ve deserted Raymond Chandler. But Chandler had to be deserted, because Chandler left us in the ’50s. So it’s my interpretation, my presumption, of what Chandler would have remarked about—had he been here to remark.

Walter Reade Theater Programs



ND/NF Debuts

Guillermo del Toro (Cronos)
Kevin Smith (Clerks)

New York African Film Festival Begins

Reaching back into the past and forward into the unknown, the New York African Film Festival takes cinema of all genres throughout Africa and the African Diaspora to weave a story of the present. From the archival to the experimental, classic fictional narrative to documentary, the festival selects treasured stories of the past to contextualize the present and all of its possible futures. Co-presented with African Film Festival, Inc.

The opening night of the 25th New York African Film Festival featuring Borders. Photo by Lindsey Seide.

The opening night of the 25th New York African Film Festival featuring Borders. Photo by Lindsey Seide.

The opening night of the 25th New York African Film Festival. Photo by Lindsey Seide.

A discussion at the 23rd New York African Film Festival town hall event. Photo by Lindsey Seide.

Queen Nanny: Legendary Maroon Chieftainess director Roy T. Anderson and Yemanjá: Wisdom from the African Heart of Brazil director Donna C. Roberts discuss their films. Photo by Victoria Trentacoste.

Director Bentley Dean talks about his film Tanna (Best Foreign-Language Film) on Opening Night of the New York African Film Festival. Photo by Lindsey Seide.

On Closing Night, historian and Director of Columbia University's Institute for African Studies Mamadou Diouf discussed Negritude: A Dialogue Between Wole Soyinka and Senghor. Photo by Daniel Rodriguez.

NYFF Debuts

Wong Kar-wai (Chungking Express)
Quentin Tarantino (Pulp Fiction)
Steve James (Hoop Dreams)
Olivier Assayas (Cold Water)
Edward Yang (A Confucian Confusion)
Béla Tarr (Sátántangó)
Jacques Audiard (See How They Fall)
Hal Hartley (Amateur)
Nanni Moretti (Caro diario)

NYFF32 Main Slate Selections

Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino) with Michelle’s Third Novel (Karryn de Cinque) (Opening Night)
Bullets Over Broadway (Woody Allen) (Centerpiece)
Hoop Dreams (Peter Gilberg, Steve James, and Frederick Marx) (Closing Night)
Amateur (Hal Hartley) with Suspicious (David Koepp)
“Avant-Garde Visions”: The Cloud Door (Mani Kaul) and Whispering Pages (Aleksandr Sokurov) with Roig (Teresa de Pelegri)
Caro Diario (Nanni Moretti) with Attempt at an Opening (Luc Moullet)
Chungking Express (Wong Kar-wai) with Eating Out (Pål Sletaune)
Cold Water (Olivier Assayas) with Jump (Melissa Painter)
A Confucian Confusion (Edward Yang)
Crumb (Terry Zwigoff) with Shut Up Jerk! (Craig McGillivray) and Spot-Check (Gerhard Ertl and Sabine Hiebler)
Ed Wood (Tim Burton)
Exotica (Atom Egoyan) with All the Kind People (Erlend Eriksson)
Ladybird Ladybird (Ken Loach) with Cross Examination (Lori Hiris)
Martha (Rainer Werner Fassbinder) with Mrs. Matisse (Debra Solomon) (Retrospective selection)
Postcards from America (Steve McLean) with The Salesman and Other Adventures (Hannah Weyer)
Red (Krzysztof Kieslowski) with Bête de Scène (Bernard Nissille)
The Red Lotus Society (Stan Lai)
Sátántangó (Béla Tarr)
See How They Fall (Jacques Audiard) with A Pair of Boots (John Cassavetes)
The Silences of the Palace (Moufida Tlatli)
Strawberry and Chocolate (Tomás Gutiérrez Alea and Juan Carlos Tabío) with Catalina (Tommy O’Haver)
Theremin: An Electronic Odyssey (Steven M. Martin) with Carnival (Ondrej Rudavsky)
Through the Olive Trees (Abbas Kiarostami)
To Live (Zhang Yimou)
To the Starry Island (Park Kwang-su) with Home, Israel (David Ofek)
The Troubles We’ve Seen (Marcel Ophuls)
Wild Reeds (André Téchiné) with Crawl (Lara Shapiro)

Robert Horton on the 32nd New York Film Festival for Film Comment‘s November-December 1994 issue:

I haven’t seen many people use the word “exquisite” to describe Tarantino’s movies. But they should. What better word for the delicacy of conversation, the specificity of reference, the suspended-in-air anticipation of violence, the judicious counterpoint of the soundtrack songs? It’s frigging exquisite, I’m telling you. Pulp Fiction was not merely an apt Opening Night film for the 32nd New York Film Festival, it was the unavoidable, exquisite choice—the American movie of the year, but also a collage of every other type of festival movie in sight: gangster opus, Hong Kong schlock, Downtown chic, avant-garde vision, self-aware arthouse deconstruction, screwball comedy, French film noir. It has everything but a theremin mixed into the music, and I’m not entirely sure it doesn’t have that.

1995

Shirley MacLaine Honored at the Chaplin Award Gala

Walter Reade Theater Programs





ND/NF Debuts

Tsai Ming-liang (Vive L’amour)
Tom Tykwer (Deadly Maria)

Read Michael Koresky on Vive L’amour for Film Comment:

If we’re lucky, we will encounter a handful of artworks in our lives that hit us like thunderbolts, which communicate something true about the world we live in but which also instantly open up new avenues of awareness and understanding about the medium in which they function. Such eureka moments for me include the first time I saw Matisse’s The Piano Lesson, heard Debussy’s “Arabesque,” or the second time I read Woolf’s To the Lighthouse. (A painting, piece of music, a novel can do that?) In terms of cinema, there’s Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, but there was also, for me, the revelation of Taiwanese director Tsai Ming-liang, and specifically his Vive L’amour (1994), a film I first watched on a crummy VHS rented from Kim’s Video in 2002.

Human Rights Watch Film Festival Comes to Walter Reade

Human Rights Watch is one of the world’s leading independent organizations dedicated to defending and protecting human rights, and its annual film festival is a vital forum for movies that tackle important global issues. Showcasing an international selection of acclaimed works that bring human rights struggles to life through storytelling, the Human Rights Watch Film Festival presents challenging, provocative art that calls for justice and social change. Selections in recent years have included some of the most urgent documentary and fiction films of our time (including The Act of Killing, Born Into Brothels, The Cleaners, Dheepan, Incendies, The Invisible War, Iraq in Fragments, The Oath, and Restrepo), essential and entertaining films that everyone will be talking about.

NYFF Debuts

Jafar Panahi (The White Balloon)
Kathryn Bigelow (Strange Days)
Noah Baumbach (Kicking and Screaming)

NYFF33 Main Slate Selections

Shanghai Triad (Zhang Yimou) with The First Screening (Lumière Brothers) (Opening Night)
Strange Days (Kathryn Bigelow) (Centerpiece)
Carrington (Christopher Hampton) with Surprise! (Veit Helmer) (Closing Night)
“Avant-Garde Visions”: Alpsee (Matthias Müller), River Colors (Christoph Janetzko), and Zone (Takashi Ito) with Warren (Jeffrey Noyes Scher)
The Celluloid Closet (Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman) with Alkali, Iowa (Mark Christopher)
Cinema of Unease (Sam Neill and Judy Rymer) and Citizen Langlois (Edgardo Cozarinsky) with Evidence, Italy (Angela Melitopulos and Godfrey Reggio)
The Convent (Manoel de Oliveira) with Odilon Redon (Guy Maddin)
Cyclo (Tran Anh Hung) with Supermarket (David Byrne)
Dead Presidents (Albert and Allen Hughes)
“Discovering Max Linder” – a selection of seven short films: Arranged Marriage, 1916; A Disturbing Night, 1912; The Little Novel, 1912; Max Afraid of the Water, 1912; Max and His Mother-in-Law, 1915; Max and the Bag, 1916; Max Creates a Fashion, 1912.(Retrospective selections)
Flamenco (Carlos Saura)
Flirt (Hal Hartley) with The Beast (Ric Montgomery)
The Flower of My Secret (Pedro Almodóvar) with Altair (Lewis Klahr)
“Fortune Smiles” – two comedies about remarkable reversals of fortune: Le Franc (Djibril Diop Mambéty) and Augustin (Anne Fontaine) with When It Rains (Charles Burnett)
From the Journals of Jean Seberg (Mark Rappaport) with Joy Street (Suzan Pitt) and A Thousand Years of Cinema (Kurt Kren)
The Gate of Heavenly Peace (Richard Gordon and Carma Hinton)
Georgia (Ulu Grosbard) with Depth Solitude (Thomas Lien and Joachim Solum)
Good Men, Good Women (Hou Hsiao-hsien) with Revolver (Stig Bergquist, Martti Ekstrand, Jonas Odell, and Lars Ohlson)
Guimba (Cheikh Oumar Sissoko) with Coloured (Barrie White)
La Haine (Mathieu Kassovitz) with Flying Geraldo (Bruno Vianna)
Kicking and Screaming (Noah Baumbach) with White Autumn Chrysanthemum (Patrick Ruane) and Swinger (Gregor Jordan)
Lamerica (Gianni Amelio) with Bathing Boxes (Ann Turner)
Land and Freedom (Ken Loach) with Mausoleum (Alexei Khanyutin)
The Neon Bible (Terence Davies) with Polio Water (Caroline Kava)
“The Rossellini War Trilogy”: Open City, Paisan, and Germany Year Zero (Retrospective selections)
Sixteen-Oh-Sixty (Vinicius Mainardi) with Red Card (Lais Bodanzky)
The Son of Gascogne (Pascal Aubier) with Sheller Shares Her Secret (Sarah Turner)
The White Balloon (Jafar Panahi) with The Silence Between Us (Jacqueline Turnure)

1996

Rendez-Vous with French Cinema Begins

French cinema pioneer Agnès Varda at opening night of Rendez-Vous with French Cinema. Photo by Julie Cunnah.

Rendez-Vous with French Cinema exemplifies the variety and vitality of contemporary French filmmaking. The films on display, by emerging talents and established masters, raise ideas both topical and eternal, and many take audiences to entirely unexpected places. Highlights from recent Rendez-Vous with French Cinema editions include Bertrand Bonello’s Nocturama, Julia Ducournau’s Raw, Mia Hansen-Løve’s Maya, Bruno Dumont’s Jeannette, The Childhood of Joan of Arc, Robin Campillo’s Eastern Boys, Justine Triet’s Victoria, and Mathieu Amalric’s Barbara. Co-presented with UniFrance Films, Rendez-Vous demonstrates that the landscape of French cinema is as fertile, inspiring, and distinct as ever.

Isabelle Huppert attends Opening Night at Rendez-Vous with French Cinema. Photo by Julie Cunnah.

Louis Garrel at the 21st annual Rendez-Vous with French Cinema. Photo by Olga Bas.

Mia Hansen-Løve discusses Maya at Rendez-Vous with French Cinema 2019. Photo by Godlis.

Opening Night of Rendez-Vous with French Cinema 2019. Photo by Julie Cunnah.

New French Comedies talk at Rendez-Vous with French Cinema. Photo by Sean DiSerio.

Opening night of Rendez-Vous with French Cinema. Photo by Julie Cunnah.

Paul Schrader and Russell Banks at Rendez-Vous with French Cinema. Photo by Arin Sang-urai.

Film Comment presented an advance screening of one of the most controversial films of the year Raw at Rendez-Vous with French Cinema, which was followed by a Q&A with director Julia Ducournau and actor Garance Marillier. Photo by Daniel Rodriguez.

Clint Eastwood Honored at the Chaplin Award Gala




ND/NF Debuts

Hirokazu Kore-eda (Maborosi)
Todd Solondz (Welcome to the Dollhouse)
Nicole Holofcener (Walking and Talking)
Mary Harron (I Shot Andy Warhol)
Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky (Paradise Lost)

Dance on Camera Begins

Dance on Camera Festival honors ballet and contemporary dance personalities through documentaries and narrative films, while also demonstrating dance’s capacity to change lives and contribute to well-being.

Her Magnum Opus at Dance on Camera Festival 2018. Photo by Sean DiSerio.

If the Dancer Dances at Dance on Camera Festival 2018. Photo by Mettie Ostrowski.

If the Dancer Dances at Dance on Camera Festival 2018. Photo by Mettie Ostrowski.

American Tap at the opening night of Dance on Camera Festival 2018. Photo by Maren McGlashan.

Tiler Peck at Ballet Now at Dance on Camera Festival 2018. Photo by Maren McGlashan.

Ballet Now at Dance on Camera Festival 2018. Photo by Maren McGlashan.

A young dancer poses with her parents at the opening night reception. Photo by Sachyn Mital.

The performance of Aether—a live motion capture dance performance designed and choreographed from the ancestral use of sacred geometry and the embodied elements of water, fire, earth, and wind. Photo by Daniel Rodriguez.

Director Eva Vila at a Q&A following the New York premiere of Bajarí. Photo by Lindsey Seide.

Tom Moore, and trapeze artists Tito Gaona, Chela Gaona, and Richie Gaona talking about The Flight Fantastic on the Opening Night of Dance on Camera Festival. Photo by Julie Cunnah.

NYFF Debuts

Lars von Trier (Breaking the Waves)
Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne (La Promesse)
Richard Linklater (SubUrbia)

NYFF34 Main Slate Selections

Secrets & Lies (Mike Leigh) with Pieces of the Moon (Kirkham Jackson) (Opening Night)
Thieves (André Téchiné) (Centerpiece)
The People vs. Larry Flynt (Milos Forman) with Tracks (Carlotta Cerquetti) (Closing Night)
Beyond the Clouds (Michelangelo Antonioni) with The Grateful Dead (Paul McCartney)
Breaking the Waves (Lars von Trier)
“Culture Shock” – two films on nationalism, culture and their discontents: Frantz Fanon: Black Skin, White Mask (Isaac Julien) and Umm Kulthum: A Voice Like Egypt (Michal Goldman)
Emigration, N.Y. (Egon Humer)
Fire (Deepa Mehta) with The Secret Story (Janie Geiser)
Gabbeh (Mohsen Makhmalbaf) with The Mail (Laila Pakalnina)
Le garçu (Maurice Pialat) with So Many Things to Consider (Sandye Wilson)
Goodbye South, Goodbye (Hou Hsiao-hsien) with Summer Cannibals (Robert Frank)
illtown (Nick Gomez) with 15th February (Tim Webb)
Irma Vep (Olivier Assayas) with Tuning the Sleeping Machine (David Sherman)
Lilies (John Greyson) with Amor (Robert Beavers)
Mahjong (Edward Yang)
Mandela (Angus Gibson and Jo Menell)
My Sex Life… or How I Got Into an Argument (Arnaud Desplechin)
Nobody’s Business (Alan Berliner) and Trofim (Alexei Balabanov)
La Promesse (Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne) with Lulu (Lewis Klahr)
Salut cousin! (Merzak Allouache) with The Day “Close Up” Premiered (Nanni Moretti)
A Self-Made Hero (Jacques Audiard) with Bad Animal (Doug Aitkin)
Sling Blade (Billy Bob Thornton)
subUrbia (Richard Linklater)
Suzanne Farrell: Elusive Muse (Anne Belle and Deborah Dickson)
Temptress Moon (Chen Kaige)
Three Lives and Only One Death (Raúl Ruiz)
Underground (Emir Kusturica)

1997

Sean Connery Honored at the Chaplin Award Gala

Sidney Lumet and Sean Connery in 1997. Photo by Stephanie Berger

Walter Reade Theater Programs








ND/NF Debuts

Neil LaBute (In the Company of Men)
Kirby Dick (Sick: The Life and Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist)

NYFF Debuts

Paul Thomas Anderson (Boogie Nights)
Ang Lee (The Ice Storm)
Bruno Dumont (La vie de Jésus)
Takeshi Kitano (Hana-bi)

NYFF35 Main Slate Selections

The Ice Storm (Ang Lee) with Knitwits (Vincent Cafarelli and Candy Kugel) (Opening Night)
The Sweet Hereafter (Atom Egoyan) with Today, Finland (Eija-Liisa Ahtila) (Centerpiece)
Live Flesh (Pedro Almodóvar) with The Bloody Olive (Vincent Bal) (Closing Night)
The Apostle (Robert Duvall)
Boogie Nights (Paul Thomas Anderson)
Deep Crimson (Arturo Ripstein)
Destiny (Youssef Chahine)
Fallen Angels (Wong Kar-wai) with Rocking Horse Winner (Michael Almereyda)
Fast, Cheap & Out of Control (Errol Morris) with Whiplash (Warren Sonbert)
From Today Until Tomorrow (Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet) with The Man Who Couldn’t Open Doors (Paul Arden)
Hana-Bi (Takeshi Kitano) with Balloons, Streamers (Josh Sternfeld)
Happy Together (Wong Kar-wai) with The Hidden (Carina Reich and Bogdan Szyber)
Kiss or Kill (Bill Bennett) with Where’s the Money, Ronnie? (Shane Meadows)
Kitchen (Yim Ho)
Love and Death on Long Island (Richard Kwietniowski)
Marcello Mastroianni: I Remember (Anna Maria Tatò)
Martin (Adolfo Aristarain)
Ma vie en rose (Alain Berliner) with Breeze (Barbara Sanon)
Mother and Son (Aleksandr Sokurov) with Insight (Georg Misch)
Post Coitum, Animal Triste (Brigitte Roüan) with Majorettes in Space (David Fourier)
Public Housing (Frederick Wiseman)
The Saragossa Manuscript (Wojciech Has) (Retrospective selection)
Taste of Cherry (Abbas Kiarostami) with The House Is Black (Forough Farrokhzad)
Telling Lies in America (Guy Ferland)
La vie de Jésus (Bruno Dumont) with Sans Titre (Leos Carax)
Voyage to the Beginning of the World (Manoel de Oliveira) with Sea Space (William Farley)
Washington Square (Agnieszka Holland)

Paul Thomas Anderson in 1997 at the 35th NYFF. Photo by Godlis.

1998

Martin Scorsese Honored at the Chaplin Award Gala

Martin Scorsese in 1998.

Walter Reade Theater Programs



ND/NF Debuts

Darren Aronofsky (Pi)
Vincent Gallo (Buffalo ’66)
Denis Villeneuve (The Technetium)
François Ozon (See the Sea and A Summer Dress)

NYFF Debuts

Wes Anderson (Rushmore)
Abderrahmane Sissako (Life on Earth)
Aleksei German (Khrustalyov, My Car!)
Thomas Vinterberg (The Celebration)
Todd Solondz (Happiness)
Gaspar Noé (I Stand Alone)

NYFF36 Main Slate Selections

Celebrity (Woody Allen) with Shown with Yours (Jeff Scher. (Opening Night)
Black Cat, White Cat (Emir Kusturica) (Centerpiece)
The Dreamlife of Angels (Erick Zonca) with Fetch, Australia (Lynn-Maree Danzey) (Closing Night)
The Apple (Samira Makhmalbaf) with Gasman (Lynn Ramsay)
Autumn Tale (Eric Rohmer) with Theo, Are You There? (Julie Lipinski)
The Celebration (Thomas Vinterberg) with Let’s Be Friends! (Thomas Bardinet)
Dr. Akagi (Shohei Imamura)
Flowers of Shanghai (Hou Hsiao-hsien)
The General (John Boorman)
Gods and Monsters (Bill Condon) with My Ex (Steve Salinaro)
Happiness (Todd Solondz)
The Inheritors (Stefan Ruzowitzky)
I Stand Alone (Gaspar Noé) with Horseshoe (David Lodge)
The Joyless Street (G.W. Pabst) (Retrospective selection)
Khrustalyov, My Car! (Aleksei Guerman)
Late August, Early September (Olivier Assayas) with Day to Day (Flavio Frederico)
My Name Is Joe (Ken Loach) with Keep in a Dry Place and Away from Children (Bolex Brothers)
Point Blank (John Boorman) with The Sickroom (Serge Marcotte) (Retrospective selection)
River of Gold (Paulo Rocha) with Shaman (Ondrej Rudavsky)
Rushmore (Wes Anderson) with Interview (Xavier Giannoli)
Same Old Song (Alain Resnais)
Slam (Marc Levin)
“2000 Seen By…” – two films of the 10 commissioned by French television to take place on December 31, 1999: Life on Earth (Abderrahmane Sissako) and The Book of Life (Hal Hartley)
Velvet Goldmine (Todd Haynes) with Tangerine Dream (Keri Light)
You Laugh (Paolo and Vittorio Taviani) with I’m On Fire (Ryan Rowe)

1999

Mike Nichols Honored at the Chaplin Award Gala

Steve Martin and Mike Nichols in 1999. Photo by Stephanie Berger.

Walter Reade Theater Programs





ND/NF Debuts

Jia Zhangke (Xiao Wu)
Christopher Nolan (Following)

NYFF Debuts

Claire Denis (Beau travail)
Hayao Miyazaki (Princess Mononoke)
Kiyoshi Kurosawa (License to Live)
Spike Jonze (Being John Malkovich)
Harmony Korine (julien donkey-boy)
Kevin Smith (Dogma)

NYFF37 Main Slate Selections

All About My Mother (Pedro Almodóvar) (Opening Night)
Topsy-Turvy (Mike Leigh) (Centerpiece)
Felicia’s Journey (Atom Egoyan) with Hero (John Mustafa) (Closing Night)
Beau travail (Claire Denis) with Cousin (Adam Benjamin Elliot)
Being John Malkovich (Spike Jonze) with Little Echo Lost (Armagan Ballantyne)
Boys Don’t Cry (Kimberly Peirce)
The Carriers Are Waiting (Benoît Mariage)
The Color of Paradise (Majid Majidi) with Even the Wind (Laurence Attali)
Dogma (Kevin Smith)
The Edge of the World (Michael Powell) with Closing Time (Bálint Kenyeres) (Retrospective selection)
Holy Smoke (Jane Campion)
Juha (Aki Kaurismäki) with La comtesse de Castiglione (David Lodge)
julien donkey-boy (Harmony Korine)
The Letter (Manoel de Oliveira) with September 5:10PM (Mitch McCabe)
License to Live (Kiyoshi Kurosawa)
Mobutu, King of Zaïre (Thierry Michel)
The Other (Youssef Chahine) with Darwin’s Evolutionary Stakes (Andrew Horne)
Pola X (Leos Carax)
Princess Mononoke (Hayao Miyazaki)
Pripyat (Nikolaus Geyrhalter) with Andares in the Time of War (Alejandra Jiménez López)
Rien sur Robert (Pascal Bonitzer) with Time Flies (Robert Breer)
Rosetta (Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne) with End of the Century (Maike Höhne)
Set Me Free (Léa Pool) with 2 ÷ 3 (Richard Press)
Sicily (Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet) with Machorka-Muff (Jean-Marie Straub)
Time Regained (Raúl Ruiz)
The Woman Chaser (Robinson Devor) with hITCH (Bradley Rust Gray)

Read Chris Chang on Being John Malkovich from the September-October 1999 issue of Film Comment:

Being John Malkovich, the debut feature from Spike Jonze, is as paradoxically cerebral and patently ridiculous as its title implies. Jonze, a director who cut his teeth on the world of music video and TV commercials (is there a distinction?), is an artist who revels in the cult of offbeat aura. He also brings to each of his projects an unmistakable love for the visually illogical. What one becomes acutely aware of when watching his commercial showreel is a truly subversive mind working away, anonymously, within the most massive of mass media: television.

Hayao Miyazaki in 1999 at the 37th NYFF. Photo by Godlis.

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