Upcoming Appearances:
THURSDAY, November 29
7:00PM Making Waves: New Romanian Cinema screening of OF SNAILS AND MEN with director Tudor Giurgiu and actors Monica Bîrlădeanu and Andi Vasluianu attending and participating in a post-screening Q&A.
THURSDAY, November 30
8:30PM Making Waves: New Romanian Cinema screening of EVERYBODY IN OUR FAMILY withproducer Ada Solomon attending and participating in a post-screening Q&A.
SUNDAY, December 2
7:00PM Making Waves: New Romanian Cinema screening of THREE DAYS TILL CHRISTMAS withdirector Radu Gabrea and actress Victoria Cocias attending and participating in a post-screening Q&A.
UPCOMING FILM EVENTS
MAKING WAVES: NEW ROMANIAN CINEMA Special Program:
Creative Freedom Through Cinema: Romania and Hungary
Among the highlights of the festival this year is a special program addressing the important political and cultural policy changes that have been taking place in Romania and Hungary in the recent past. Entitled “Creative Freedom Through Cinema: Romania and Hungary” and curated by Corina Șuteu and László Jakab Orsós (PEN World Voice Festival director), this program aims to offer a better understanding of the sociopolitical context in these two countries and to address the relationship between arts and politics. Special screenings of Alexandru Tatos’s SEQUENCES (Romania, 1982) and Péter Gothár’s TIME STANDS STILL (Hungary, 1982) will be followed by two panel conversations with Romanian and Hungarian artists and cultural critics.
Participants include film directors Tudor Giurgiu (OF SNAILS AND MEN) and Mona Nicoară (OUR SCHOOL), visual artist Dan Perjovschi, arts curator György Szabó, and essayist Eszter Babarczy.
Saturday, December 1 at 6:00PM
SEQUENCES (Secvențe) (1982) 98min
Director: Alexandru Tatos
Country: Romania
Ask almost any director of the Romanian New Wave which classic Romanian films influenced their work and you will hear two titles mentioned above and beyond all others: Lucien Pintilie’s REENACTMENT and Alexandru Tatos’ SEQUENCES. And like Reenactment, Sequences is also a film about filmmaking: a Romanian DAY FOR NIGHT that follows a film crew (played by Tatos and his actual crew) during the shooting of a feature film in which life frequently imitates art and vice-versa. In the first of the film’s three extended set pieces, the words of the film-within-the-film’s protagonist come to describe the director’s own life. In the second sequence, a restaurateur’s seemingly insignificant family drama conceals deeper tensions off the set. In the startling final episode, two extras threaten to upstage the stars of the scene as they discover a shared secret from their long-ago past. Full of provocative political metaphors, SEQUENCES is a powerful meditation on the role of the arts in rigidly controlled society.
Followed by a panel discussion moderated by Mihai Chirilov
Sunday, December 2 at 1:00PM
TIME STANDS STILL (Megáll az idö) (1982) 103min
Director: Péter Gothár
Country: Hungary
A selection of the 1982 New York Film Festival, TIME STANDS STILL begins in Budapest in 1956, as the father of two boys escapes to America. We then skip forward 10 years to find the boys at school trying to live down the fact that their father is “an enemy of the people.” Shot in an expressionistic manner—oddly angled shots, surreal lighting effects, elliptical editing—Péter Gothár’s superb second feature as director is a frightening indictment of life under a socialist regime, all the more so because it shows how even school life and adolescent love affairs can become totally permeated and perverted by political dishonesty. Celebrating 30 years since its release, TIME STANDS STILL was the winner of the 1983 New York Film Critics Circle award for Best Foreign Language Film.
Followed by a panel discussion moderated by Scott Foundas
ImageNation: Celebrate Brazil
December 6 at 7:00PM
ImageNation and the Film Society of Lincoln Center will present CELEBRATE BRAZIL. Produced in association with CrossPath Culture and Acrobeat, this festive affair will include a live performance by Brazil’s own Beatriz Azevedo, a screening of the official Cannes Film Festival selection, 5x Favela: Now by Ourselves, photography by Brazilian artist Andre Cypriano and Cannon Hersey, and a post-reception. This evening is sponsored by the Brazilian Consulate.
5 x Favela, Now By Ourselves/5x Favela, Agora por Nós Mesmos (2010) 96min
Directors: Wagner Novais, Luciano Vidigal, Cacau Amaral, Manaíra Carneiro, Luciana Bezerra, Cadu Barcellos and Rodrigo Felha
Country: Brazil
5x Favela is composed of five short films all written, directed, and acted by promising artists from the favelas of Brazil’s Rio. The culmination of a years-long project to cultivate talented young filmmakers from the favelas (slums), 5x Favela’s well-crafted episodes offer a rare glimpse of the dynamic culture emerging from these communities, debunking the popular myth that favelas are merely hotbeds of drugs and violence.
5x Favela includes:
SOURCE OF INCOME
A young man fulfils his dream to go to Law University, but is faced with difficulties paying for his expenses in terms of books and transportation. He feels tempted to sell drugs to his friends at university, thus raising the money to fund his studies.
Wesley, a young boy, listens to a confession by his father: he is tired of the household menu, always consisting of a plate filled with rice and stewed beans. The boy, joined by his friend Orelha, decides to find some money to buy a chicken.
CONCERT FOR VIOLIN
The children Márcia, Jota and Ademir vow to remain friends forever. Later, in their adulthood, Jota is involved in drug trafficking while Ademir has joined the police force. If the two are brought against each other, Márcia may be prevented from fulfilling her dream to play the violin.
LET IT FLY
Flávio lets his friend’s kite fall across the other quarter of the favela, which is run by a rival gang. Even though he is aware of the prohibition, Flávio decides to collect the kite.
LET THERE BE LIGHT
On Christmas Eve, the shanty town hill has been out of power for three days. The engineers who have been sent over by the power utility company have not managed to fix the problem. The residents kidnap one of the engineers, taking him as a hostage until the light supply is restored.
Indie Night – I AM NOT A HIPSTER
December 17 at 8:00PM
I AM NOT A HIPSTER (2012) 90min
Director: Destin Cretton
Country: USA
An official selection of the NEXT section at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, writer-director Destin Cretton’s stunningly assured debut feature A AM NOT A HIPSTER has less in common with most of today’s American independent cinema than it does with the New Hollywood masterpieces of filmmakers like Hal Ashby and Bob Rafelson: think FIVE EASY PIECES with San Diego indie-rock substituted for classical piano. In a powerful performance that also involves performing much of the film’s haunting original music (composed by real San Diego musician Joel P. West), Dominic Bogart stars as Brook Hyde, a singer-songwriter with a successful first album in his past and a somewhat directionless future. Already disillusioned with the music biz and troubled by the unresolved past he left behind in Ohio, Brook is forced to confront his inner demons when his three sisters show up on his doorstep unannounced…with his estranged father in tow.
Q&A with writer-director Destin Cretton will follow the screening.
Art of the Real – MONEY FOR NOTHING: INSIDE THE FEDERAL RESERVE
December 18 at 6:30PM
MONEY FOR NOTHING: INSIDE THE FEDERAL RESERVE (2012) 110min
Director: Jim Bruce
Country: USA
Jim Bruce’s engrossing documentary brings you behind the scenes in the decision-making processes of the Federal Reserve chairmen over the decades through extensive interviews with Fed officials, economists, historians and traders. Bumped along by ideology, belief and hubris, the country continues to cycle from boom to bust while the leadership grapples with the question of what role the central bank should play going forward. Bruce unravels the tangle of ideas leaving us to ask how, after the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, we can hold the Fed accountable for the outcome of its policies when so few people have an understanding of the complex financial world it is part of.
Q&A with director Jim Bruce will follow the screening.
LOOKING FORWARD: MORE FOR DECEMBER AND JANUARY
Spanish Cinema Now
(December 7-16)
All the Right Moves: The Films of Tom Cruise
(December 17-20)
See it in 70mm!
(December 21-January 1)
Foreign Award Hopefuls
(January 3-6)
New York Jewish Film Festival
(January 8-24)
Australian New Wave
(January 25-31)
