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<\/a><\/p>\nNew restorations of Kenji Mizoguchi\u2019s Ugetsu, Marlon Brando\u2019s One-Eyed Jacks, Edward Yang\u2019s Taipei Story, Tom\u00e1s Guti\u00e9rrez Alea\u2019s Memories of Underdevelopment, anniversary revivals of The Battle of Algiers and Harlan County USA, long-lost shorts by late master Jacques Rivette, and more<\/h3>\n
Revivals,<\/em> taking place during the 54th New York Film Festival, September 30 \u2013 October 16, showcases masterpieces from renowned filmmakers whose diverse and eclectic works have been digitally remastered, restored, and preserved with the assistance of generous partners.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Gillo Pontecorvo\u2019s The Battle of Algiers, the NYFF Opening Night selection in 1967, returns to the festival for its 50th anniversary in a new 4K restoration. Boasting a score by legendary composer Ennio Morricone and black-and-white cinematography with the dizzying effect of newsreel footage, this potent retelling of the Algerian uprising still makes an impact. Also returning are Robert Bresson\u2019s astonishing final film, L\u2019argent (NYFF 1983), and Barbara Kopple\u2019s Oscar-winning document of a Kentucky miners\u2019 strike, Harlan County USA, which debuted at the festival 40 years ago.<\/p>\n Revivals also pays tribute to late French New Wave titan Jacques Rivette with a program of his long-unseen first three short films. Discovered by his widow earlier this year, these works offer a fascinating glimpse into Rivette\u2019s early process and experimentation, from a journey through Paris to a chamber drama featuring a young Jean-Luc Godard. Rounding out the lineup are Edward Yang\u2019s Taipei Story, co-written by and starring Hou Hsiao-hsien; Kenji Mizoguchi\u2019s haunting masterpiece Ugetsu; Tom\u00e1s Guti\u00e9rrez Alea\u2019s portrait of the Cuban revolution through the eyes of a disenchanted writer, Memories of Underdevelopment; Marlon Brando\u2019s sole directorial effort, One-Eyed Jacks; Albert Lewin\u2019s wild curio The Living Idol; and cinema poet Julien Duvivier\u2019s Panique.<\/p>\n The 17-day New York Film Festival highlights the best in world cinema, featuring works from celebrated filmmakers as well as fresh new talent. The selection committee, chaired by Jones, also includes Dennis Lim, FSLC Director of Programming; Florence Almozini, FSLC Associate Director of Programming; Amy Taubin, Contributing Editor, Artforum and Film Comment; and Gavin Smith, who serves as a consultant.<\/p>\n NYFF previously announced Ava DuVernay\u2019s documentary The 13th as the Opening Night selection, Mike Mills\u2019s 20th Century Women as Centerpiece, and James Gray\u2019s The Lost City of Z as Closing Night.<\/p>\n Tickets for the 54th New York Film Festival will go on sale September 11. Becoming a Film Society Member at the Film Buff Level or above provides early ticket access to festival screenings and events ahead of the general public, along with the exclusive member ticket discount. Learn more at filmlinc.org\/membership<\/a>.<\/p>\n For even more access, VIP passes and subscription packages offer the earliest opportunities to purchase tickets and secure seats at some of the festival’s biggest events including Opening and Closing Nights, and Centerpiece. VIP passes also provide access to many exciting events, including the invitation-only Opening Night party, \u201cAn Evening With\u2026\u201d dinner, Filmmaker Brunch, and VIP Lounge. Benefits vary based on the pass or package type purchased. VIP passes and subscription packages are on sale now. Learn more at filmlinc.org\/NYFF<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n FILMS & DESCRIPTIONS<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n L\u2019argent<\/em> Restored by MK2, in 2K from a 4K scan of the original negative.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Battle of Algiers<\/em> Restored by Cineteca di Bologna and Istituto Luce \u2013 Cinecitt\u00e0 at L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory, in collaboration with Surf Film, Casbah Entertainment Inc. and CultFilms.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Harlan County USA<\/em> The restoration of Harlan County USA was funded by New York Women in Film & Television in 2004 through a Women’s Film Preservation Fund Legacy Grant and underwritten by the Academy Film Archive.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Jacques Rivette Shorts<\/strong><\/p>\n Aux quatre coins<\/em> Le quadrille<\/em> Le divertissement<\/em> The films have been restored by Les Films du Veilleur and the Cin\u00e9math\u00e8que fran\u00e7aise, in partnership with the Cin\u00e9math\u00e8que de Toulouse, le laboratoire Hiventy, Festival C\u00f4t\u00e9 Court, and the Forum des Images\u2014Mairie de Paris, with the support of CNC. Special thanks to V\u00e9ronique Rivette, and Samantha Leroy and Emilie Cauquy (Cin\u00e9math\u00e8que fran\u00e7aise).<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Living Idol<\/em> Memories of Underdevelopment<\/em> A presentation by the Instituto Cubano del Arte e Industria Cinematogr\u00e1ficos (ICAIC), Les Films du Cam\u00e9lia, and the Cineteca di Bologna. Restored by the Cineteca di Bologna\/L\u2019Immagine Ritrovata laboratory and financed by The Film Foundation\u2019s World Cinema Project.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n One-Eyed Jacks<\/em> Restored by Universal Studios in collaboration with The Film Foundation. Special thanks to Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg for their consultation on this restoration.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Panique<\/em> Restored from a nitrate interpositive by TF1 Droits Audiovisuels at Digimage.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Taipei Story<\/em> Restored by The Film Foundation\u2019s World Cinema Project at Cineteca di Bologna\/L\u2019immagine Ritrovata laboratory in association with the Cin\u00e9math\u00e8que Royale de Belgique and Hou Hsiao-hsien.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Ugetsu Monogatari<\/em> Restored by The Film Foundation and KADOKAWA Corporation at Cineric Laboratories. Special thanks to Masahiro Miyajima and Martin Scorsese for their consultation on this restoration. Restoration funding provided by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association in association with the Film Foundation and KADOKAWA Corporation.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n Directed by Robert Bresson<\/em>
\n 1983, France, 83m<\/em>
\nRobert Bresson\u2019s final film, an adaptation of Tolstoy\u2019s story The Forged Coupon, is simultaneously bleak and luminous, and sharp enough to cut diamonds. The story of a counterfeit bill\u2019s passage from hand to hand and the resulting tragic consequences is rendered with a clean force that would be startling from a filmmaker of any age; coming from one in his early 80s, it was, and still is, astonishing. L\u2019argent burns white hot\u2014not with anger but with a perfect clarity of purpose: to direct us to see that habitual human callousness is what keeps us out of paradise. Restored in 2K, scanned in 4K from the original negative. A Janus Films release.<\/p>\n
\n Directed by Gillo Pontecorvo<\/em>
\n 1966, Italy\/Algeria, 120m<\/em>
\nGillo Pontecorvo\u2019s account of the popular uprising that led to Algerian independence from the French took \u201cdocumentary realism\u201d to a new level, electrifying and polarizing audiences throughout the world. Pontecorvo created a de-centralized structure in which the events themselves took center stage, cast the film almost entirely with non-actors, and filmed in grainy black-and-white to create a heightened \u201cyou are there\u201d immediacy. Banned in France, embraced by the Black Panthers, and studied by the Pentagon following the 2003 invasion of Iraq, The Battle of Algiers, based on the book Souvenirs de la bataille d\u2019Alger by Saadi Yacef (who also plays a character based on himself), returns in a new 4K restoration. A Rialto Pictures release.<\/p>\n
\n Directed by Barbara Kopple<\/em>
\n 1976, USA, 103m<\/em>
\nThe mighty Barbara Kopple\u2019s 1976 film, an impassioned documentary record of the year-long Brookside, Kentucky, miners\u2019 strike that came to be known as \u201cBloody Harlan,\u201d celebrates its 40th anniversary with a return to the festival where it had its premiere\u2014before going on to win the Oscar for Best Documentary. Kopple and her crew spent a year and half in Harlan County, often under volatile conditions\u2014she would later learn that there had been a price on her head. \u201cIt was an astounding experience,\u201d she has said. \u201cI learned what life-and-death was all about.\u201d She also made a great film. A Cabin Creek Films release.<\/p>\n
\n Jacques Rivette, France, 1949, 20m<\/em>
\n French intertitles with English subtitles<\/em><\/p>\n
\n Jacques Rivette, France, 1950, 40m<\/em>
\n French intertitles with English subtitles<\/em><\/p>\n
\n Jacques Rivette, France, 1952, 45m<\/em>
\n French intertitles with English subtitles<\/em>
\nRediscovered by V\u00e9ronique Rivette this year and digitally restored by the Cin\u00e9math\u00e8que fran\u00e7aise, these three shorts offer a fascinating glimpse of the earliest stages of Jacques Rivette\u2019s artistic development. In these \u201cpractice films,\u201d the late New Wave master searches for the themes and approach to mise-en-sc\u00e8ne that would later define his inexhaustibly rich oeuvre. Aux quatre coins is pure visual experimentation, while Le quadrille\u2014co-written by and co-starring a baby-faced Jean-Luc Godard\u2014is a chamber drama with two men and two women in a room, their relations expressed as a game of suggestive glances and the lighting and stubbing-out of cigarettes. Le divertissement presages Rivette\u2019s gift for rendering Paris as a labyrinth of intrigues. Together, these films provide a crucial perspective on Rivette\u2019s creativity before Cahiers du Cin\u00e9ma<\/i> and his incomparable filmmaking career.<\/p>\n
\n Directed by Albert Lewin<\/em>
\n 1957, USA, 100m<\/em>
\nAlbert Lewin began as a critic, went to work for Samuel Goldwyn in the 1920s, became Irving Thalberg\u2019s right-hand man in the 1930s, and produced a handful of excellent films before becoming a director at age 48. Each of his six movies is rarefied, proudly literary, mythic, meticulously art-directed, and delicately haunting. His last\u2014and strangest\u2014is The Living Idol, based on his own novel about an archeologist who comes to believe that a jaguar in captivity is the physical manifestation of a Mayan god. This is not a great film, but it is a very unusual and a uniquely compelling one: it feels like an emanation from an alternate world of moviemaking. A Cohen Media Group release.<\/p>\n
\n Directed by Tom\u00e1s Guti\u00e9rrez Alea<\/em>
\n 1968, Cuba, 97m<\/em>
\nWhen Tom\u00e1s Guti\u00e9rrez Alea\u2019s 1968 film was finally released here in 1973, it startled film critics and casual moviegoers alike. No one was expecting such a film out of Castro\u2019s Cuba: a sharp, funny, pro-revolutionary period piece (the action is set in 1961, right after the Bay of Pigs) with a disaffected intellectual hero (Sergio Corrieri) who, as Vincent Canby wrote, \u201cmoves through Havana as if he were a scuba diver exploring the ruins of a civilization he abhorred but cannot bear to leave.\u201d The English critic Derek Malcolm wrote that Memories of Underdevelopment is \u201cone of the best films ever made about the skeptical individual’s place in the march of history.\u201d A World Cinema Project release.<\/p>\n
\n Directed by Marlon Brando<\/em>
\n 1961, USA, 141m<\/em>
\nThe only film directed by Marlon Brando, an adaptation of Charles Neider\u2019s novel (inspired by the life of Billy the Kid), is an unorthodox western that\u2019s as fresh, unpredictable, and physical as Brando\u2019s lead performance. This visually stunning production\u2014the last Paramount film shot in VistaVision\u2014could for many years be seen only in substandard public domain prints and discs. It has now been beautifully restored by Universal, with the support of The Film Foundation, and under the supervision of Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg. The formidable cast includes Karl Malden, Katy Jurado, Slim Pickens, Ben Johnson, Timothy Carey, Elisha Cook Jr., and the wonderful Mexican actress Pina Pellicer.<\/p>\n
\n Directed by Julien Duvivier<\/em>
\n 1947, France, 91m<\/em>
\n\u201cIf I were an architect and I had to build a monument to the cinema,\u201d wrote Jean Renoir, \u201cI would place a statue of Julien Duvivier above the entrance.\u201d Duvivier made 70 films between 1919 and 1967, many of them landmarks of French cinema. His first postwar project, a High Noir adaptation of Georges Simenon\u2019s Mr. Hire\u2019s Engagement (later adapted by Patrice Leconte as Monsieur Hire) stars Michel Simon as a reviled voyeur framed for a murder by the girl he adores. Widely considered the finest Simenon adaptation but criticized at the time for its bleakness, the long-unseen Panique has finally been given the vivid restoration it deserves. A Rialto Pictures release.<\/p>\n
\n Directed by Edward Yang<\/em>
\n 1985, Taiwan, 110m<\/em>
\nEdward Yang\u2019s second feature stars Hou Hsiao-hsien (who cowrote the script and mortgaged his house to fund the production) as a former baseball player who has come home to manage the family textile business, and Tsai Chin as his property-developer girlfriend. \u201cThe two main characters represent the past and the future of Taipei,\u201d said Yang. \u201cI tried to bring enough controversial questions onto the screen, so that viewers would ask themselves about their own lives.\u201d Taipei Story is early evidence of Olivier Assayas\u2019s assessment of Yang, who died far too young, as \u201cthe great Chinese filmmaker of modernity.\u201d A World Cinema Project release.<\/p>\n
\n Directed by Kenji Mizoguchi<\/em>
\n 1953, Japan, 94m<\/em>
\nKenji Mizoguchi\u2019s 1953 adaptation of two 18th-century Japanese ghost stories (tempered with elements from Guy de Maupassant) is a peak in the history of cinema, a work of multiple mysteries, terrors, wonders, and ecstatic flights that takes audiences where few films do: to the realm of the unnameable. Ugetsu\u2019s power can be felt in even the most degraded prints, but this restoration, made from a master positive print and a dupe negative, allows us to really see and appreciate the exquisite visual beauty achieved by the director and his cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa.<\/p>\n