The fine folks at The Film Society of Lincoln Center never seem to fail when it comes to providing a cinephile with year-long movie goodness. Come January and February, a near dozen films will be playing as part of their NYFF 50th Anniversary series. Films on tap include Wim Wender's Kings of the Road, Werner Herzog's The Enigma of Kasper Hauser and Truffaut's The Last Metro. Full list of films and play dates are below!
50 Years of the New York Film Festival
The Film Society of Lincoln Center's year-long countdown to the New
York Film Festival's historic 50th edition continues through January and
February, offering the rare opportunity to view several undisputed
classics of the big screen, many of which were introduced to the world
at NYFF. These include breakthrough films of Jonathan Demme and Errol
Morris, and Oscar-nominated classics from François Truffaut and Andrzej
Wajda.
Special appearances by Jonathan Demme and Paul Le Mat at the HANDLE
WITH CARE screening on Wednesday, February 1 have been announced.
The serious cinephile should mark their calendars for a regular
standing date at the Walter Reade Theater for the best in world cinema.
Starting with the January and February lineup, there is a special
package discount - 4 tickets for the price of 3. The Jonathan Demme
Double Feature, which includes screenings of HANDLE WITH CARE (aka
CITIZEN'S BAND) and MELVIN AND HOWARD as well as a discussion with the
director and actor Paul Le Mat is only $13 for general public, $8 for
members $9 for students and $9 for seniors. Special $6 kids price (ages
4 to 12, accompanied by an adult) for the screening of the beloved
classic THE BLACK STALLION. Visit www.filmlinc.com for details.
The schedule of screenings set for the rest of the series in 2012 will be announced at a later date. ALI: FEAR EATS THE SOUL (Angst essen Seele auf) (1974) 93m
Director: Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Country: Germany
Representing NYFF 1974 In the 1970s, the New York Film Festival became a major port of call
for the filmmakers of the burgeoning New German Cinema, introducing
American audiences to the work of Werner Herzog, Wim Wenders, Alexander
Kluge and, of course, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, the staggeringly
prolific enfant terrible who presented new films at all but three
editions of the festival from 1971 to 1982 (the year of his untimely
death). Shot quickly and on a low budget at the peak of Fassbinder's
creative powers, ALI: FEAR EATS THE SOUL uses the basic framework of
Douglas Sirk's classic melodrama ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWS (later the
inspiration for Todd Haynes's FAR FROM HEAVEN) to tell the unlikely love
story of Ali, a thirty-something Moroccan immigrant working as a garage
mechanic, and Emmi, a German widow old enough to be his mother. When
they marry, their relationship is put to the test by prejudice and
discrimination from friends and family on both sides (including
Fassbinder himself as Emmi's son-in-law). Beautifully acted by
Fassbinder muses Brigitte Mira and El Hedi ben Salem, this wry and
tender romance-cum-social-commentary stands as one of the director's
most accomplished and enduringly popular films. ALI: FEAR EATS THE SOUL screens at Walter Reade Theater on Friday, January 13 at 6:00PM. THE ENIGMA OF KASPAR HAUSER (Jeder für sich und Gott gegen alle) (1974) 110m
Director: Werner Herzog
Country: Germany
Representing NYFF 1975 The inimitable Werner Herzog made the fourth of his eight NYFF
appearances with this strange and haunting drama inspired by the case of
Kaspar Hauser, a real-life "wild child" who appeared as a teenager in
the streets of Nuremberg claiming to have been raised since infancy in a
small dark cell, divorced from all contact with the outside world.
Sparking the curiosity of a compassionate schoolmaster, who attempts to
civilize this strange creature, Kaspar soon becomes a cause célèbre of
the local clergy, academy and high-society elites, before meeting an end
as abrupt and mysterious as his beginnings. Built around a hypnotic
central performance by the late Bruno S., a street performer who had
spent much of his life in a mental institution, THE ENIGMA OF KASPAR
HAUSER is no ordinary bio-pic, but an unforgettable, dreamlike
meditation on the nature of civilization and the fine line between
sanity and madness. THE ENIGMA OF KASPAR HAUSER screens at Walter Reade Theater on Friday, January 13 at 8:00PM. KINGS OF THE ROAD (Im Lauf der Zeit) (1976) 176m
Director: Wim Wenders
Country: Germany
Representing NYFF 1976 Four decades before PINA, Wim Wenders made his international
breakthrough with a loosely structured "road movie trilogy," consisting
of ALICE IN THE CITIES (1974), WRONG MOVE (1975) and the magisterial
concluding chapter, KINGS OF THE ROAD. The travelers here are movie
projector repairman Bruno (frequent Wenders alter-ego Rüdiger Vogler)
and hitchhiker Robert (Hanns Zischler), who has sunk into a suicidal
depression following the breakup of his marriage. Together, they travel
the ghostly border region between the two Germanys, tending to worn-down
cinemas and their own wounded souls, longing for a woman's gentle
touch. Brilliantly photographed in black-and-white by the legendary
Robby Müller and carrying its three hours of screen time with lightness
and grace, this one-of-a-kind masterwork is Wenders's own LAST PICTURE
SHOW --a melancholic valentine to the cinema, the irretrievable past, and
the long cultural shadow cast by America. KINGS OF THE ROAD screens at Walter Reade Theateron Saturday, January 14 at 1:00PM. HANDLE WITH CARE (aka CITIZEN'S BAND) (1977) 98m
Director: Jonathan Demme
Country: United States Representing NYFF 1977
Oscar-winning director Jonathan Demme (THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS) made
his first NYFF appearance with this high-spirited comic panorama focused
on a collection of eccentric characters who broadcast their alter-egos
over that primitive social network known as citizen's band radio.
AMERICAN GRAFFITI alumni Paul Le Mat and Candy Clark respectively star
as good samaratin "Spider" (all the characters are known by their CB
"handles") and his ex-fiancee, a cheerleading coach who moonlights as CB
seductress "Electra." Also figuring into the mix are a bigamist trucker
known as "Chrome Angel," a white supremacist who calls himself "The Red
Baron," and Spider's own father, "Papa Thermodyne." Scripted by future
RISKY BUSINESS auteur Paul Brickman, HANDLE WITH CARE finds Demme
already in full possession of the humanist screwball touch he would
later bring to SOMETHING WILD and MARRIED TO THE MOB. Little wonder that
the studio (Paramount) didn't know what to make of the film and,
despite strong reviews, promptly buried it.
Also screening with: MELVIN AND HOWARD (1980) 95m
Director: Jonathan Demme
Country: United States Demme and Le Mat reunited for this double 1980 Oscar-winner (Best
Original Screenplay and Best Supporting Actress, Mary Steenburgen) based
on the stranger-than-fiction tale of one Melvin Dummar (Le Mat), a Utah
gas-station owner who became the subject of a national media feeding
frenzy when he was named as a beneficiary in the much-contested "Mormon
will" of eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes. In vintage Demme fashion,
however, the movie is much less interested in Hughes (an Oscar-nominated
Jason Robards) and his estate than in Dummar, an enduring small-town
rube who, no matter how badly he stumbles, never stops reaching for the
big, shiny American dream. Opening night of the 1980 New York Film
Festival. HANDLE WITH CARE (aka CITIZEN'S BAND) and MELVIN AND HOWARD screens at Walter Reade Theater on Wednesday, February 1 at 6:00PM. Discussion with director Jonathan Demme and actor Paul Le Mat in between screenings. Special pricing for both films and discussion: $13 for general public, $8 for members, $9 for students and seniors. GATES OF HEAVEN (1978) 85m
Director: Errol Morris
Country: United States
Representing NYFF 1978 Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker Errol Morris's uncanny debut
feature--hailed by critic Roger Ebert as one of the 10 greatest films
ever made--follows the shifting fortunes of two Bay Area pet cemeteries.
One, San Francisco's Foothill Memorial Gardens, stems from the lifelong
dream of owner Floyd McClure to give Fido the dignity of a human-style
burial. But when McClure goes bankrupt, some 450 sets of remains are
shipped north to the Napa Valley's Bubbling Well Memorial Park, and
Morris goes with them. In between, Morris casts his deadpan gaze on pet
owners, a professional animal byproducts recycler, and other richly
bizarre exponents of the old, weird America. A world premiere at the
1978 NYFF, GATES OF HEAVEN famously won Morris a bet with his erstwhile
mentor, Werner Herzog, who said he would eat one of his own shoes if
Morris ever managed to complete the film and get it publicly shown--a
promise Herzog later made good on before a live audience in Berkeley. GATES OF HEAVEN screens at Walter Reade Theater on Tuesday, February 7 at 6:15PM. THE BLACK STALLION (1979) 118m
Director: Carroll Ballard
Country: United States
Representing NYFF 1979 Initially the object of indifference from its distributor, United
Artists, first-time director Carroll Ballard's intensely lyrical film of
Walter Farley's classic children's novel was buoyed by its inclusion in
NYFF (and the good reviews that followed) to become a major hit and one
of the most beloved family films of all time. The superb child actor
Kelly Reno (in his film debut) stars as the survivor of a fiery
shipwreck off the North African coast, now stranded on a deserted island
save for the company of a wild stallion (also a refugee from the
sinking ship). Slowly, the boy and horse come to earn each other's
trust, before they are rescued and returned to America, where the boy
sets about training "The Black" with some help from a kindly ex-jockey
(Mickey Rooney, in an Oscar-nominated performance). Breathtakingly
photographed by Caleb Deschanel, with soaring music by Carmine Coppola
(father of Francis, whose Zoetrope Studios produced), THE BLACK STALLION
instantly affirmed the prodigious Ballard (NEVER CRY WOLF, FLY AWAY
HOME) as one of the cinema's most poetic observers of man, beast and
nature. Print courtesy of Academy Film Archive. THE BLACK STALLION screens at Walter Reade Theater on Saturday, February 18 at 11:00AM. Special $6 ticket for children ages 4 to 12, accompanied by an adult for THE BLACK STALLION THE LAST METRO (Le dernier metro) (1980) 131m
Director: François Truffaut
Country: France
Representing NYFF 1980 Catherine Deneuve, gives one of her greatest performances as the wife
of a Jewish theater director in Nazi-occupied Paris in François
Truffaut's classic wartime melodrama. While her husband takes refuge in
the theater's basement, Deneuve's Marion takes the reigns of their
latest production, in which she also stars opposite a womanizing actor,
Bernard (Gérard Depardieu), who is also a member of the resistance. As
the two performers grow closer, their relationship tests Marion's
ambivalent feelings about the Nazis, and the stability of her marriage. A
taut, deeply romantic portrait of ordinary people caught up in the tide
of extraordinary events, THE LAST METRO would become one of Truffaut's
biggest popular hits, earning an Academy Award nomination for Best
Foreign Film and 10 French César awards, including Best Film, Best Actor
and Best Actress. THE LAST METRO screens at Walter Reade Theater on Tuesday, February 21 at 6:00PM. MAN OF IRON (Czlowiek z zelaza) (1981) 153m
Director: Andrzej Wajda
Country: Poland
Representing NYFF 1981 Legendary Polish director Andrzej Wajda made his fourth NYFF
appearance with this epic chronicle of the birth of the Solidarity labor
movement. In a demanding dual role, the great Jerzy Radziwilowicz stars
as Maciej, a union organizer at the Gdansk shipyards (modeled on
real-life Solidarity leader Lech Walesa) and, in flashback, Maciej's
father Mateusz, the "model worker" hero of Wajda's 1977 Man of Marble.
Sent to dig up dirt on Maciej and the other movement leaders, Winkel
(Marian Opania), a former radical journalist now working for
state-sponsored media, infiltrates the yards by posing as a sympathizer.
But the more Winkel learns about his subjects, the more he feels his
old idealism returning to the fore. Winner of the Palme d'Or at the 1981
Cannes Film Festival and an Academy Award nominee for Best Foreign
Film, MAN OF IRON is as much about the end of an era as the dawn of a
new one: within months of the movie's completion, martial law was
declared and Solidarity repressed MAN OF IRON screens at Walter Reade Theater on Tuesday, February 28 at 6:00 PM.
Do you feel this content is inappropriate or infringes upon your rights?
Click here to report it, or see our DMCA policy.