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\nThis year\u2019s three-part Retrospective section pays tribute to late film industry luminaries Dan Talbot and Pierre Rissient, and spotlights three documentary odes to cinema. Said NYFF Director and Selection Committee Chair Kent Jones, \u201cFor Pierre and Dan, two genuine heroes, everything to do with cinema was urgent. This year\u2019s retrospective section pays tribute to both men, who passed away within six months of each other.\u201d<\/p>\n
Founder of New Yorker Films and longtime director of Lincoln Plaza Cinemas, beloved exhibitor and distributor Dan Talbot championed countless foreign and independent art-house titles throughout his career. He introduced films such as Bernardo Bertolucci\u2019s Before the Revolution to U.S. audiences and supported the work of notable auteurs Straub-Huillet, Nagisa Oshima, Jean-Luc Godard, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, and more stateside.<\/p>\n
Producer, publicist, distributor, curator, and cinema polymath Pierre Rissient was known for his unparalleled taste and industry wisdom. He has been credited with shaping the careers of filmmakers from Clint Eastwood to Joseph Losey to King Hu, and counted Raoul Walsh and Fritz Lang among his personal favorites.<\/p>\n
The Retrospective section also includes three special and very different documentaries about the movies: a lament for Viennese film critic and festival director Hans Hurch, a portrait of the great cinema pioneer Alice Guy-Blach\u00e9, and a tribute to Ingmar Bergman.<\/p>\n
The Revivals section showcases important works from renowned filmmakers that have been digitally remastered, restored, and preserved with the assistance of generous partners. Highlights this year include Edgar G. Ulmer\u2019s noir road movie Detour, which gleams anew in this gorgeous restoration; Djibril Diop Mamb\u00e9ty\u2019s neocolonialist satire Hyenas, the Senegalese auteur\u2019s adaptation of Friedrich D\u00fcrrenmatt’s play The Visit; a 20th anniversary restoration of Alexei Guerman\u2019s Khrustalyov, My Car!, a nightmarish portrait of Stalin-era paranoia; and J.L. Anderson\u2019s American independent curio Spring Night, Summer Night, which was disinvited from the 5th New York Film Festival but returns for its due just over 50 years later.<\/p>\n
The NYFF56 Retrospective is co-programmed by Kent Jones and Dan Sullivan, FSLC Assistant Programmer. Revivals are programmed by the NYFF56 Selection Committee, chaired by Jones and including Dennis Lim, FSLC Director of Programming, and Florence Almozini, FSLC Associate Director of Programming.<\/p>\n
As part of their commitment to celebrating filmmaking talent (both current and classic), Warby Parker is proud to be the presenting partner for this year\u2019s Retrospective section.<\/p>\n
As previously announced, the NYFF56 Opening Night is Yorgos Lanthimos\u2019s The Favourite, Alfonso Cuar\u00f3n\u2019s ROMA is Centerpiece, and Julian Schnabel\u2019s At Eternity\u2019s Gate will close the festival. The complete lineup for the Main Slate can be found here, for Projections here, and for Convergence here. NYFF Special Events and Shorts sections, as well as filmmaker conversations and panels, will be announced soon.<\/p>\n
Tickets for the 56th New York Film Festival go on sale to the general public on September 9. Film Society Members at the Contributor Level will receive an early access period in advance of the public, along with $5 off all Festival and year-round tickets. Learn more at filmlinc.org\/membership<\/p>\n
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Detour<\/span> Now we have a restoration of a different order, made from vastly superior elements. \u201cTo be able to see so much detail in the frame, in the settings and in the faces of the actors,\u201d says Martin Scorsese, \u201cis truly startling, and it makes for a far richer and deeper experience.\u201d<\/p>\n Restored by the Academy Film Archive and The Film Foundation, in collaboration with the Cin\u00e9math\u00e8que Royale de Belgique, The Museum of Modern Art, and the Cin\u00e9math\u00e8que Fran\u00e7aise, with funding from the George Lucas Family Foundation.<\/p>\n Enamorada<\/span> Restoration led by UCLA Film & Television Archive and The Film Foundation\u2019s World Cinema Project in collaboration with Fundacion Televisa AC and the UNAM Filmoteca, funded by Material World Charitable Foundation.<\/p>\n Hyenas \/ Ramatou<\/span> \u201cI do not refuse the word didactic,\u201d said Mamb\u00e9ty of his very special body of work, and of the particular plight of African cinema. \u201cMy task was to identify the enemy of humankind: money, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank. I think my target is clear.\u201d A Thelma Film AG release.<\/p>\n Restored over the course of 2017 by Eclair Digital in Vanves, France. Restoration was taken on by Thelma Film AG (Switzerland).<\/p>\n I Am Cuba<\/span> Milestone Film & Video’s 4K restoration from the original Gosfilmofond 35mm interpositive and mag tracks was done at Metropolis Post with Jason Crump (colorist) and Ian Bostick (restoration artist). 4K scan by Colorlab, Rockville, MD.<\/p>\n Khrustalyov, My Car! \/ Khrustalyov, mashinu!<\/span> Guerman\u2019s lustrous black and white images and meticulously constructed soundscape are permeated with the feel of life in a totalitarian society, where something monumental is underway but no one knows precisely what or when or how it will break.<\/p>\n The original 35mm fine grain positive was scanned in 2K resolution on an Arriscan at Eclair, Paris. The film was graded and restored at Dragon DI, Wales. Restoration supervised by James White, Arrow Films; restoration produced by Daniel Bird.<\/p>\n Neapolitan Carousel<\/span> Giannini assembled an amazing roster of talent for his film, including one-time Ballets Russes principal dancer and Powell-Pressburger mainstay L\u00e9onide Massine (who also choreographed), the great comic actor Paolo Stoppa, and a young Sophia Loren.<\/p>\n Restored by the Cineteca di Bologna at L\u2019Immagine Ritrovata laboratory and The Film Foundation with funding provided by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association.<\/p>\n None Shall Escape<\/span> Alexander Knox is the German everyman, a WWI vet who slowly, gradually accepts National Socialism and becomes a mass murderer. With Marsha Hunt\u2014her career and Knox\u2019s would both be affected by the Red Scare. A Sony Pictures Repertory release.<\/p>\n 4K digital restoration from original nitrate negative and original nitrate track negative.<\/p>\n The Red House<\/span> Meg becomes increasingly attached to a sweet local boy (Lon McAllister), and together they venture into the woods in search of a red house that Pete has forbidden them to enter. The emotional heart of The Red House can be found in the extraordinary close-ups of Roberts and McAllister, shot by the great DP (and frequent John Ford collaborator) Bert Glennon.<\/p>\n Restored by the UCLA Film & Television Archive and The Film Foundation, with funding provided by the George Lucas Family Foundation.<\/p>\n Spring Night, Summer Night<\/span> Spring Night, Summer Night has had an extremely checkered history, including a release in a version crudely recut for the exploitation market with the title Miss Jessica Is Pregnant. It was invited to the 1968 New York Film Festival, only to be unceremoniously bumped to make way for John Cassavetes\u2019s Faces. Fifty years later, we\u2019re re-extending the invitation and promising that it\u2019s solid.<\/p>\n A Restoration and Reconstruction Project of Cinema Preservation Alliance by Peter Conheim and Ross Lipman. Produced by Nicolas Winding Refn.<\/p>\n Tunes of Glory<\/span> At its center are two breathtaking performances: John Mills as the Colonel and Alec Guinness, in a genuine tour de force, as the Major (apparently, after they had read the script, each actor had originally wanted to play the other\u2019s role). With Dennis Price, Kay Walsh, Susannah York, and Gordon Jackson.<\/p>\n Restored by the Academy Film Archive and The Film Foundation in collaboration with Janus Films and The Museum of Modern Art. Restoration funding provided by the George Lucas Family Foundation.<\/p>\n The War at Home<\/span> One of the great works of American documentary moviemaking, The War at Home has also become a time capsule of the moment of its own making, a welcome emanation from the era of analog editing, and a reminder of how much power people have when they take to the streets in protest. A Catalyst Media Productions release.<\/p>\n New 4K restoration by IndieCollect.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Tribute to Dan Talbot<\/em><\/p>\n Before the Revolution<\/span> Set in the director\u2019s hometown of Parma, it follows the travails of a young student struggling to reconcile his militant views with his bourgeois lifestyle (and his fianc\u00e9e), who drifts into a passionate affair with his radical aunt. One of the key films of the \u201960s, Before the Revolution set many aspiring filmmakers on their own autobiographical courses. 35mm print from Istituto Luce Cinecitt\u00e0.<\/p>\n Straub-Huillet Program:<\/strong><\/span> In 1966, Dan and Toby Talbot went to a party thrown by Bertolucci and his friend and co-writer Gianni Amico in Rome. Suddenly, the bell rang. \u201cShh-sh,\u201d said Bertolucci. \u201cGet rid of the pot! Put the drinks away. The Straubs are here!\u201d That someone would pick up any single film directed by Jean-Marie Straub and Dani\u00e8le Huillet is utterly unthinkable in the context of the present moment, but for decades New Yorker Films handled all of them.<\/p>\n These three films, often shown together, are among their very best: an idiosyncratic adaptation of Heinrich B\u00f6ll\u2019s short story \u201cBonn Diary,\u201d about a former Nazi colonel cynically reflecting on the sheer stupidity of the bourgeoisie; a three-part short comprised of a nocturnal tour of Munich, a high-speed stage production of Bruckner\u2019s Sickness of Youth, and the marriage of James and Lilith, who guns down her pimp (played by Rainer Werner Fassbinder); and their stunning, thrillingly compressed adaptation of B\u00f6ll\u2019s novel Billiards at Half-Past. A Grasshopper Film release.<\/p>\n The Ceremony<\/span> Operating at the height of his iconoclastic powers, Oshima renders the family\u2019s unraveling with an arresting sense of foreboding and an air of gothic fatalism, enriched by T\u00f4ru Takemitsu\u2019s quintessentially modernist score.<\/p>\n Every Man for Himself \/ Sauve qui peut (la vie)<\/span> Over the years, New Yorker handled many of Godard\u2019s films, including his return to 35mm character-based storytelling after a decade of experimentation in video. What Godard called his \u201csecond first film\u201d is a moving portrait of restless, intertwining lives, and the myriad forms of self-debasement and survival in a capitalist state, with Jacques Dutronc (as \u201cPaul Godard\u201d), Nathalie Baye, Isabelle Huppert, and, in an unforgettable anti-cameo, the voice of Marguerite Duras. An NYFF18 selection.<\/p>\n The American Friend<\/span> Dennis Hopper is the sociopathic charmer Tom Ripley, transformed by Wenders into an urban cowboy peddler of forged paintings who ensnares Bruno Ganz\u2019s gravely ill Swiss-born art framer into a plot to assassinate a Mafioso.<\/p>\n Shot in multiple New York and European locations in low-lit, cool blue and gold tones by the great Robby M\u00fcller, this brooding, dreamlike thriller conjures a world ruled by chaos and indiscriminate American dominance. It also features a stunning array of performances and guest appearances by filmmakers, including Nick Ray, G\u00e9rard Blain, Sam Fuller, Jean Eustache, Daniel Schmid, and Peter Lilienthal. An NYFF15 selection.<\/p>\n The Marriage of Maria Braun<\/span> So one can imagine the surprise at their offices when this 1979 film about a poor German soldier\u2019s wife (Hanna Schygulla) who uses her wiles and savvy to rise as a businesswoman and take part in the \u201cwirtschaftwunder\u201d or postwar economic miracle, became an arthouse hit\u2014per Fran\u00e7ois Truffaut, this was the movie that broke Fassbinder \u201cout of the ivory tower of the cinephiles\u201d and earned him the acclaim he had always sought. The Marriage of Maria Braun was also the Closing Night selection of the 17th New York Film Festival.<\/p>\n My Dinner with Andr\u00e9<\/span> Tribute to Pierre Rissient<\/strong><\/p>\n Manila in the Claws of Light \/ Maynila: Sa mga kuko ng liwanag<\/span> As Todd McCarthy wrote, it was Pierre who \u201csingle-handedly brought the work of the late Filipino director Lino Brocka to the world\u2019s attention.\u201d This searing melodrama, with Bembel Roco and Hilda Koronel as doomed lovers, is one of Brocka\u2019s greatest. \u201cLino knew all the arteries of this swarming city,\u201d wrote Pierre, \u201cand he penetrated them just as he penetrated the veins of the outcasts in his films. Sometimes a vein would crack open and bleed. And that blood oozed onto the screen.\u201d<\/p>\n A Touch of Zen<\/span> A Touch of Zen was released in truncated form in Hong Kong in 1971 and yanked from theaters after a week. Four years later, after Rissient saved the film from oblivion and it won a grand prize for technical achievement, the unthinkable occurred: King Hu received an apology from his studio heads.<\/p>\n Time Without Pity<\/span> The narrative, unfurling at a breakneck pace, chronicles the plight of a recovering alcoholic (Michael Redgrave) with a mere 24 hours to prove the innocence of his son, accused of murdering his girlfriend. The first film that Losey signed with his own name after his flight to Europe in the early \u201950s, Time Without Pity established him as an essential auteur in the eyes of French cinephiles.<\/p>\n Play Misty for Me<\/span> Mother India<\/span> Striving to raise her sons and make ends meet in the face of poverty and natural disasters alike, Radha endures through the strength of her convictions and her unflappable sense of morality. Mother India is a powerful experience, for both its place in film history and its incarnation of human resilience.<\/p>\n House by the Rive<\/span>r The Man I Love<\/span> Ida Lupino is the Manhattan lounge singer who heads to Los Angeles to live with her family and start a new life. Bruce Bennett is the musician she falls for, and Robert Alda is the brash club owner who won\u2019t take no for an answer. If one were pressed for a single word to describe this movie, it would be \u201csoulful.\u201d<\/p>\n In this year\u2019s retrospective section, we also include three special and very different documentaries about the movies: a lament for Viennese film critic and festival director Hans Hurch, a portrait of the great cinema pioneer Alice Guy-Blach\u00e9, and a tribute to Ingmar Bergman.<\/p>\n Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blach\u00e9<\/span> But by 1919, Guy-Blach\u00e9\u2019s career came to an abrupt end, and she and the 1000 films that bore her name were largely forgotten. Pamela B. Green\u2019s energetic film is both a tribute and a detective story, tracing the circumstances by which this extraordinary artist faded from memory and the path toward her reclamation. Narration by Jodie Foster.<\/p>\n Preceded by: Music composed and performed by Makia Matsumura. A collaborative restoration for the Alice Guy-Blach\u00e9 retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Mastered from a 2K scan of a surviving nitrate print received by the Library of Congress in 1983 from the Public Archives of Canada\/Jerome House Collection. 2018 Digital restoration produced by Bret Wood for Kino Lorber, Inc.<\/p>\n Introduzione all\u2019Oscuro<\/span> Solnicki pays tribute to Hurch by creating a cinematic form for his own mourning. He doesn\u2019t simply visit his friend\u2019s old haunts, he responds rhythmically, in images and sounds, to Hurch\u2019s recorded voice delivering admonitions and gentle warnings during the editing of an earlier film. Introduzione all\u2019Oscuro is truly a work of the cinema, and a moving communion with a friend whose presence is felt in the memory of the places, the people, the coffee, and the films he loved.<\/p>\n Searching for Ingmar Bergman<\/span> <\/p>\n Film Society of Lincoln Center<\/strong> The Film Society receives generous, year-round support from Shutterstock, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature. American Airlines is the Official Airline of the Film Society of Lincoln Center.<\/p>\n Support for the New York Film Festival is generously provided by Official Partners HBO\u00ae and The New York Times, Benefactor Partners Dolby and illy caff\u00e8, Supporting Partners Warby Parker, MUBI, and Manhattan Portage, and Hospitality Partner Hudson Hotel. JCDecaux, Variety, Deadline Hollywood, WABC-7, WNET New York Public Media, and The Village Voice serve as Media Sponsors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This year\u2019s three-part Retrospective section pays tribute to late film industry luminaries Dan Talbot and Pierre Rissient, and spotlights three documentary odes to cinema. <\/p>\n
\nDir. Edgar G. Ulmer, USA, 1945, 68m
\nEdgar G. Ulmer\u2019s 1945 classic, made at the Poverty Row production company PRC somewhere between 14 and 18 shooting days for $100,000, has come to be regarded, justifiably, as the essence of film noir. Ulmer and his team turned the very cheapness of the enterprise into an aesthetic asset and created a film experience that reeks of sweat, rust, and mildew. For years, Detour was only available in dupey, substandard prints, which seemed appropriate. In the \u201990s, a photochemical restoration improved matters, but the quality was far from optimal.<\/p>\n
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\nDir. Emilo Fern\u00e1ndez, Mexico, 1946, 99m
\nThis wildly passionate and visually beautiful love story from director Emilio Fernand\u00e9z and cinematographer Gabriel Figueroa, a follow-up to their wildly successful Maria Candelaria, remains one of the most popular Mexican films ever made. As Farran Smith Nehme has written, it was \u201cone of the biggest hits of Fern\u00e1ndez\u2019s career and a high-water mark for nearly everyone involved.\u201d The romance between between a revolutionary General (Pedro Armendariz) and the daughter of a nobleman (Maria F\u00e9lix) set during the Mexican revolution (in which Fernand\u00e9z himself fought) was inspired by The Taming of the Shrew and, for the finale, by the end of Sternberg\u2019s Morocco.<\/p>\n
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\nDir. Djibril Diop Mamb\u00e9ty, Senegal\/Switzerland\/France, 1992, 110m
\n\u201cWhen a story ends\u2014or \u2018falls into the ocean,\u2019 as we say\u2014it creates dreams,\u201d said the great Senegalese director Djibril Diop Mamb\u00e9ty in an interview after the completion of his second film, Hyenas, a wildly freeform adaptation of Friedrich D\u00fcrrenmatt\u2019s The Visit. A wealthy woman (Ami Diakhate) returns to her\u2014and Mamb\u00e9ty\u2019s\u2014home village, and offers the inhabitants a vast sum in exchange for the murder of the local man who seduced and abandoned her when she was young.<\/p>\n
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\nDir. Mikhail Kalatozov, Cuba\/USSR, 1964, 108m
\nMikhail Kalatozov\u2019s wildly mobile, hallucinatory film was initially rejected by both Cuban and Soviet officials for excessive naivet\u00e9 and an insufficiently revolutionary spirit, and went largely disregarded and almost unknown for nearly 30 years. That all changed in the early nineties \u2013 a remarkable era in film culture, chock full of rediscoveries \u2013 when G. Cabrera Infante programmed it at the Telluride Film Festival, and Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola co-presented a Milestone Films release. I Am Cuba is a one-of-a-kind film experience, a visually mind-bending bolt from the historical blue.<\/p>\n
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\nDir. Alexei Guerman, USSR\/France, 1998, 150m
\nThe time is 1953, the place is Moscow; the Jewish purges are still on, and Stalin is on his deathbed. When General Yuri Glinsky, a military surgeon, tries to escape, he is abducted, taken to the lowest rungs of hell, and deposited at the heart of the enigma. Alexei Guerman\u2019s deeply personal penultimate film is a work of solid and constant disorientation, masterfully orchestrated. Enigmatic phrases, sounds, gestures, and micro-events pass before our eyes and ears before we or the alternately jumpy and exhausted characters can make sense of them.<\/p>\n
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\nDir. Ettore Giannini, Italy, 1954, 129m
\nOne of the first color films made in Italy, Ettore Giannini\u2019s 1954 film version of his stage musical begins in the present day, with sheet music hanging on a barrel organ blown through the streets of Naples: every individual song tells a story of the history of the city, from the Moorish invasion in the 14th century through the arrival of the Americans at the end of WWII.<\/p>\n
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\nDir. Andr\u00e9 de Toth, USA, 1944, 85m
\nThe Hungarian emigr\u00e9 Andr\u00e9 de Toth directed this unflinching look at the rise of Nazism right before the end of the war, the first Hollywood film to address Nazi genocide. Written by Lester Cole, soon to become a member of the Hollywood Ten, None Shall Escape is structured as a series of flashbacks that dramatize the testimony of witnesses in a near-future postwar tribunal.<\/p>\n
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\nDir. Delmer Daves, USA, 1947, 100m
\nThis moody, visually potent film, directed by Delmer Daves and independently produced by star Edward G. Robinson with Sol Lesser, is something of an anomaly in late \u201940s moviemaking, a piece of contemporary gothic Americana. Robinson plays Pete, a farmer who shares his home with his sister (Judith Anderson) and his adopted niece Meg (Allene Roberts).<\/p>\n
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\nDir. J.L. Anderson, USA, 1967, 82m
\nJ.L. Anderson\u2019s haunted Appalachian romance occupies a proud place alongside such similarly hand-crafted, off-the-grid American independent films as Carnival of Souls, The Exiles, Night of the Living Dead, and Wanda. Made in coal-mining country in northeastern Ohio with local amateur actors, the film is carefully observed (Anderson and his producer Franklin Miller spent two years scouting locations becoming familiar with the place and the people) and beautifully and lovingly realized.<\/p>\n
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\nDir. Ronald Neame, UK, 1960, 106m
\nRonald Neame\u2019s adaptation of James Kennaway\u2019s novel is a spare, dramatically potent war of nerves, about the power struggle between a tough lower-middle-class Scottish Major due to be replaced as Battalion commander of a Highland regiment and an aristocratic Colonel traumatized by captivity during the war.<\/p>\n
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\nDir. Glenn Silber and Barry Alexander Brown, USA, 1979, 100m
\nThis meticulously constructed 1979 film recounts the development of the movement against the American war in Vietnam on the Madison campus of the University of Wisconsin, from 1963 to 1970. Using carefully assembled archival and news footage and thoughtful interviews with many of the participants, it culminates in the 1967 Dow Chemical sit-in and the bombing of the Army Math Research Center three years later.<\/p>\nRETROSPECTIVE<\/strong><\/h3>\n
\nDir. Bernardo Bertolucci, Italy, 1964, 105m
\nDan Talbot began as an exhibitor, and he started his distribution company, New Yorker Films, for the best possible reason: he saw a film that he loved and he wanted to share it with as many people as possible. The film was Bernardo Bertolucci\u2019s masterful second feature, a deeply personal portrait of a generation gripped by political uncertainty.<\/p>\n
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\nMachorka-Muff<\/span><\/p>\n\n
\nDir. Jean-Marie Straub, Dani\u00e8le Huillet; West Germany; 1968; 23m<\/li>\n
\nDir. Jean-Marie Straub, Dani\u00e8le Huillet; West Germany; 1965; 55m<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
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\nDir. Nagisa Oshima, Japan, 1971, 123m
\nNew Yorker developed a close relationship with the filmmaker once known as \u201cthe Japanese Godard,\u201d Nagisa Oshima, and they programmed a groundbreaking retrospective of his early films during their brief tenure at the Metro on 100th Street. This disarmingly atmospheric portrait of a family\u2019s collective psychopathology recounts the saga of the Sakurada clan, whose decline plays out over the course of 25 years and multiple funerals and weddings.<\/p>\n
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\nDir. Jean-Luc Godard, France\/Austria\/West Germany\/Switzerland, 1980, 87m
\n\u201cDan jumped straight to the point,\u201d wrote Toby in her book The New Yorker Theater and Other Scenes from a Life at the Movies. \u201c\u2018I love your work and would like to distribute anything you make.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
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\nDir. Wim Wenders, West Germany\/France, 1977, 125m
\nDan Talbot and New Yorker Films put the New German Cinema of the 1970s on the map in this country, and one of their key titles was Wim Wenders\u2019s spellbinding adaptation of Patricia Highsmith\u2019s Ripley\u2019s Game (and a little bit of Ripley Underground).<\/p>\n
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\nDir. Rainer Werner Fassbinder, West Germany, 1979, 120m
\n\u201cI bought 11 Fassbinders in one shot, like rugs,\u201d Dan told Anthony Kaufman in a 2009 interview. As was the case with every New Yorker acquisition, the motive was not financial.<\/p>\n
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\nDir. Louis Malle, USA, 1981, 110m
\nWhen Dan read Wallace Shawn and Andr\u00e9 Gregory\u2019s script for My Dinner with Andr\u00e9, he was so excited that he helped Louis Malle procure production funding from Gaumont. The film, an encounter between the two writers playing themselves discussing mortality, money, despair, and love over a meal at an upper west side restaurant (according to Gregory, Malle\u2019s one direction was \u201cTalk faster\u201d), becoming a sensation at the art house, playing to packed houses for a solid year, and a favorite on the brand-new home video circuit. My Dinner with Andr\u00e9 is entertaining, confessional, funny, moving, and suffused with melancholy and joy\u2026like life.<\/p>\n
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\nDir. Lino Brocka, Philippines, 1975, 124m
\nPierre Rissient championed the work of countless filmmakers\u2014as a programmer of the MacMahon Theatre in Paris, as a publicist in partnership with his lifelong friend Bertrand Tavernier, as a scout for Cannes, as a distributor and producer, and always as a lover of cinema with an avid desire to always learn and see more.<\/p>\n
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\nDir. King Hu, Hong Kong, 1971\/1975, 200m
\nPierre developed a special love for Asia and its many cinemas, and he was the one who properly introduced the great wuxia master King Hu to the west, bringing the uncut version of his masterpiece, A Touch of Zen, to the 1975 Cannes Film Festival. Supreme fantasist, Ming dynasty scholar, and incomparable artist, Hu elevated the martial-arts genre to unparalleled heights. Three years in the making and his greatest film,<\/p>\n
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\nDir. Joseph Losey, UK, 1957, 85m
\nPierre was close to many of the American writers and directors who had been through the blacklist, including Jules Dassin, Abraham Polonsky, John Berry, and Cy Endfield, and he was a great admirer of the films of Joseph Losey (his feelings about the man himself were another matter). Rissient was crucial in bringing attention to this consummately tense noir, one of Losey\u2019s greatest films.<\/p>\n
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\nDir. Clint Eastwood, USA, 1971, 102m
\nWhen Clint Eastwood won his first Oscar, in 1992 for Unforgiven, he thanked \u201cthe French\u201d for their support. But it was one French citizen in particular who was there from the start of his career as a filmmaker. Eastwood\u2019s first film, about a casual romantic encounter between a Northern California DJ (played by the director) and a woman named Evelyn (Jessica Walter) that turns harrowingly obsessive, is an essential film from an essential moment in cinema known as Hollywood in the \u201970s. While the film was well-received, it was Pierre who recognized that Play Misty for Me marked the debut of a truly distinctive talent. From there, a close and abiding friendship bloomed.<\/p>\n
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\nDir. Mehboob Khan, India, 1957, 172m
\nWhen we gave this film a run at the Walter Reade Theater in 2002, Pierre was only too happy to provide a simple but eloquent quote: \u201cAir\u2026space\u2026light\u2014that\u2019s Mother India.\u201d This seminal Bollywood film, a remake of Khan\u2019s earlier Aurat (1940), is about the trials and tribulations of Radha (Nargis), a poor villager caught in the historic whirlwind of the struggles endured in her country after gaining its independence from Britain.<\/p>\n
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\nDir. Fritz Lang, USA, 1950, 89m
\nThere were few filmmakers whose work Pierre revered more than Fritz Lang, whom he counted among his friends. When Lang came to the Cin\u00e9math\u00e8que Fran\u00e7aise for a retrospective of his work in the late 1950s, Pierre and Claude Chabrol asked him about this wild gothic period melodrama, made at Republic Pictures, starring Louis Hayward and Jane Wyatt, a print of which could not be found and which was still unseen in France. Lang, said Pierre, \u201ccould describe shot by shot the first ten, twelve minutes of the film. It was almost as if we were seeing the film.\u201d Pierre not only found a way of seeing House by the River, he acquired the rights and distributed the film himself.<\/p>\n
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\nDir. Raoul Walsh, USA, 1947, 96m
\nRaoul Walsh was another honored figure in Pierre\u2019s pantheon. On one occasion, when the subject of one of Walsh\u2019s films came up, Pierre simply whistled in admiration. This 1947 film, somewhere between noir, musical, and melodrama, is one of Walsh\u2019s least recognized and most moving, rich in the \u201cdaily human pathetique\u201d that Manny Farber identified as the director\u2019s richest vein.<\/p>\nThree Documentaries on Cinema<\/h1>\n
\nDir. Pamela B. Green, USA, 2018, 103m
\nAlice Guy-Blach\u00e9 was a true pioneer who got into the movie business at the very beginning\u2014in 1894, at the age of 21. Two years later, she was made head of production at Gaumont and started directing films. She and her husband moved to the United States, and she founded her own company, Solax, in 1910\u2014they started in Flushing and moved to a bigger facility in Fort Lee, New Jersey.<\/p>\n
\nFalling Leaves (1912)<\/span>
\nOne of Alice Guy-Blach\u00e9\u2019s most beautiful films, this two-reeler concerns a girl who tries to keep her consumptive sister alive by magical means.<\/p>\n
\nDir. Gast\u00f3n Solnicki, Argentina\/Austria, 2018, 71m
\nNorth American Premiere
\nThe new film from Gast\u00f3n Solnicki (K\u00e9kszak\u00e1ll\u00fa, NYFF54) is a tribute to his great friend Hans Hurch, one-time film critic and assistant to Jean-Marie Straub and Dani\u00e8le Huillet, and director of the Vienna International Film Festival from 1997 to his unexpected death from a heart attack last July at the age of 64.<\/p>\n
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\nDir. Margarethe von Trotta, Germany\/France, 2018, 99m
\nU.S. Premiere
\nOn the occasion of Ingmar Bergman\u2019s centenary comes this lovely, personal film from one of his greatest admirers, Margarethe von Trotta. This is a tribute from an artist with a such a deep affinity for the subject that it opens to genuine and sometimes disquieting inquiry. In his writings and in his films, Bergman himself strove for an honest accounting and true self-revelation, but it is fascinating to hear and see the observations of loved ones and collaborators (often one and the same), particularly his son Daniel, whose relationship with his father was multi-layered. A rich and quietly absorbing portrait of an immense artist. An Oscilloscope Laboratories release.<\/p>\n
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\nThe Film Society of Lincoln Center is devoted to supporting the art and elevating the craft of cinema. The only branch of the world-renowned arts complex Lincoln Center to shine a light on the everlasting yet evolving importance of the moving image, this nonprofit organization was founded in 1969 to celebrate American and international film. Via year-round programming and discussions; its annual New York Film Festival; and its publications, including Film Comment, the U.S.\u2019s premier magazine about films and film culture, the Film Society endeavors to make the discussion and appreciation of cinema accessible to a broader audience, as well as to ensure that it will remain an essential art form for years to come.<\/p>\n