Currents complements the Main Slate, tracing a more complete picture of contemporary cinema with an emphasis on new and innovative forms and voices.
NYFF61 Currents features are sponsored by:
Currents Opening Night · U.S. Premiere · Q&A with Eduardo Williams on Sept. 30 & Oct. 1
Armed with a 360-degree camera, Argentinean director Eduardo Williams returns to the bold, time-and-continent-skipping world of his 2016 film The Human Surge and constructs something even more immense, fearless, and breathtakingly beautiful, shooting in Taiwan, Sri Lanka, and Peru and achieving an unprecedented fluidity between spaces and feelings.
Q&A with James Benning and Kevin Jerome Everson on Oct. 8 & 9
The town of Allensworth, California, was founded in 1908, established, run, and entirely financed by African Americans; decades later, the once thriving town was all but abandoned, later to be reconstructed. In his new film, James Benning uses his structuralist approach to landscape to etch an evocative portrait of the town. Preceded by Kevin Jerome Everson’s Air Force Two and Boyd v. Denton.
Ends Thursday!
In her unsparing, acerbically funny feature debut, Joanna Arnow stars as an emotionally detached young Brooklynite drifting through unremarkable days and nights, which include an on-again-off-again BDSM relationship with a mildly disinterested older dom. Arnow finds a core of poignant truth about the ways people search for those elusive, ever-shifting things like emotional happiness and sexual gratification. Preceded by Ted Fendt’s Unhappy Hour.
Presented on 35mm • Q&A with Deborah Stratman and Blake Williams on Oct. 7 & 8
An active decentering of the human or animal, Deborah Stratman’s mesmeric new film is a geohistorical inquiry into life on earth from the perspective of rocks: those formations of crystal and mineral that existed before the existence of people—and will one day outlive us. Preceded by Blake Williams’s Laberint Sequences.
U.S. Premiere • Q&A with Rosine Mbakam on Oct. 9 & 10
In her captivating, quietly powerful new film, Rosine Mbakam returns to her home country of Cameroon to follow the daily life of a good-natured yet exhausted seamstress (played by the director’s cousin Pierrette Aboheu Njeuthat) struggling to make ends meet in the city of Douala.
World Premiere • Q&A with Michael Gitlin, Leonardo Pirondi, and Zazie Ray-Trapido on Oct. 1 & 3
Film and video artist Michael Gitlin (The Earth Is Young) magnifies the surreal beauty and ecological significance of moths in his eye-opening and richly philosophical experimental documentary/essay film that explores a crucial element of our planet’s biodiversity that many of us may never consider. Preceded by Leonardo Pirondi and Zazie Ray-Trapido’s When We Encounter the World.
U.S. Premiere • Virtual Q&A with Miko Revereza on Sept. 30 & Oct. 1
Both diaristic and delicately abstract, this long-gestating, ruminative work from Miko Revereza reflects the filmmaker’s attempts to understand his and his family’s experiences as undocumented Filipino immigrants in the U.S.
North American Premiere · Q&A with Pierre Creton on Sept. 30 & Oct. 1
In the alternately blissful and forbidding French countryside, an enveloping, cross-generational saga unfolds among a young gardening apprentice and the three men training him, all of whom become instrumental in both his professional tutelage and sexual coming-of-age.
Q&A with Wang Bing on Oct. 2 & 3
Featuring Jean-Luc Godard’s Trailer of a Film That Will Never Exist: Phony Wars, the intricate and beautiful “trailer” that Godard put together in preparation for another feature film; the North American premiere of Wang Bing’s Man in Black, a minimalist yet intensely emotional portrait of Wang Xilin, one of China’s leading classical composers; and the U.S. premiere of Pedro Costa’s The Daughters of Fire (As Filhas do Fogo), an entirely entrancing musical of ecstasy and ache.
Q&A with Tulapop Saenjaroen and Joshua Gen Solondz on Oct. 2 & 3
Featuring the North American premiere of Tulapop Saenjaroen’s blend of family drama and process documentary, Mangosteen, and the U.S. premiere of Joshua Gen Solondz’s travelogue-cum-cinematic noise show We Don’t Talk Like We Used To.
Q&A with Carolina Fusilier, Adam Piron, Aria Dean, and Narges Kalhor on Oct. 5 & 7
Featuring the North American premiere of Aria Dean’s Abattoir U.S.A.!, the world premiere of Carolina Fusilier’s Mercurial Currents, the U.S. premiere of Narges Kalhor’s Sensitive Content, Adam Piron’s Dau:añcut (Moving Along Image), and the North American premiere of Jeamin Cha’s Nameless Syndrome.
Q&A with Justin Jinsoo Kim, Mackie Mallison, Jorge Jácome, Shambhavi Kaul, and Kim Torres on Oct. 7 & 8
Featuring the world premiere of Mackie Mallison’s Live From the Clouds, Jorge Jácome’s Shrooms, the U.S. premiere of Justin Jinsoo Kim’s The Far and Near, the U.S. premiere of Shambhavi Kaul’s Slow Shift, and the U.S. premiere of Kim Torres’s Solo la Luna comprenderá (The Moon Will Contain Us).
Q&A with Whammy Alcazaren, Jordan Strafer, Jamie Crewe, and Steve Reinke on Oct. 7 & 8
Featuring Takeshi Murata and Christopher Rutledge’s Larry, Whammy Alcazaren’s Bold Eagle, the world premiere of Jordan Strafer’s LOOPHOLE, the North American premiere of Jamie Crewe’s False Wife, and the U.S. premiere of Steve Reinke’s Sundown.
Q&A with Kevin Jerome Everson, Ross Meckfessel, and James Edmonds on Oct. 8 & 9
Featuring Richard Tuohy and Dianna Barrie’s Intersection, Maryam Tafakory’s Mast-Del, the U.S. premiere of James Edmonds’s Disappearances, the North American premiere of Kevin Jerome Everson’s If You Don’t Watch the Way You Move, the world premiere of Luke Fowler’s N’Importe Quoi (for Brunhild), and the world premiere of Ross Meckfessel’s Spark from a Falling Star.
Q&A with Julio Hernández Cordón, Tomás Paula Marques, Sonia Oleniak, and Charlotte Pryce on Oct. 8 & 9
Featuring Tomás Paula Marques’s Dildotectonica, Charlotte Pryce’s and so it came about (A Tale of Consequential Dormancy), Sonia Oleniak’s Coral, the North American premiere of Catarina Vasconcelos’s Nocturne for a Forest, and the North American premiere of Julio Hernandez Cordón’s The Rays of a Storm.
Q&A with Ayo Akingbade and Huw Lemmey on Oct. 9 & 11
Featuring the North American premiere of Dane Komljen’s Projekt, the U.S. premiere of Ayo Akingbade’s The Fist, and the North American premiere of Huw Lemmey and Onyeka Igwe’s Ungentle.
