New Directors/New Films
March 26–April
6, 2003
For the
32nd consecutive year, the Department of Film and Media of The Museum
of Modern Art and the Film Society of Lincoln Center present New
Directors/New Films. The festival, which opens Wednesday, March
26, at Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center, takes place for the first
time at three venues: Alice Tully Hall and the Walter Reade Theater
at Lincoln Center and MoMA Film at The Gramercy Theatre at 127 E.
23 St. at Lexington Ave.
New Directors/New Films 2003 includes 48 screenings
of 34 works from 24 countries, from Hong Kong to Slovenia,
from Mexico to Bangladesh, from Italy to Cameroon.
There are 23 feature films and 11 short films in the
festival, among them 4 American features and 6 American
shorts. Each film will screen twice for the public
(except The Day I Will Never Forget, which has four
screenings at the Walter Reade). The festival ends
on Sunday, April 6.
New Directors/New
Films is one of the country’s premier showcases for the
work of fresh and unsung international and American filmmakers.
Over the course of three decades, the series has introduced to U.S.
audiences a host of innovative works by talented directors from
all over the world, many of whom have gone on to become major figures
in world cinema, including Chantal Akerman, Pedro Almodóvar,
Theo Angelopoulos, Hector Babenco, Terence Davies, Atom Egoyan,
Haile Gerima, Peter Greenaway, Lasse Hallström, Chen Kaige,
Spike Lee, Richard Linklater, Sally Potter, Arturo Ripstein, John
Sayles, Steven Spielberg, and Wim Wenders.
During
its 32-year history, New Directors/New Films has premiered
scores of films that have gone on to enjoy great critical and popular
success, including in recent years The Fast Runner (Atanarjuat),
Real Women Have Curves, El Bola, and Late Marriage
in 2002; The Day I Became a Woman, Lift, L.I.E.,
and Nine Queens in 2001; The Eyes of Tammy Faye, Jesus’
Son, Ratcatcher, Human Resources, and Our Song
in 2000; and Judy Berlin, Run Lola Run, Sitcom,
Following, Twin Falls Idaho, and Lovers of the
Arctic Circle in 1999, to name only a few. Films in the festival
are selected by a six-person committee from the Department of Film
and Media of The Museum of Modern Art and the Film Society of Lincoln
Center.
Tickets
go on sale at Alice Tully Hall for all three venues (Alice Tully
Hall, Walter Reade Theater, and MoMA Gramercy) on Friday, February
28. MoMA Gramercy will sell tickets to Gramercy performances only,
beginning February 28. The Walter Reade will sell tickets to Walter
Reade performances only, beginning March 20. Tickets are $12 general
admission and $9 for Film Society and MoMA members. Contact the
Tully box office at (212) 875-5050 for more information.
Please
note that tickets for New Directors/New Films do not give
the ticket bearer admission to the Matisse Picasso exhibition
at MoMA QNS and that Matisse Picasso tickets are not good
for admission to the New Directors/New Films series.
See www.filmlinc.com for
additional information. New Directors/New Films is sponsored by National Geographic
Traveler Magazine and Kenneth Cole Productions, with
additional support from The Irene Diamond Fund, The
Julien J. Studley Foundation, The New York State Council
on the Arts, and The Junior Associates of The Museum
of Modern Art. Special support provided by the Academy
Foundation of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and
Sciences.
. 2002. USA. Directed by Peter
Sollett. This remarkable feature debut by Peter Sollett (Five
Feet High and Rising, NDNF 2000) captures adolescence at its
most tender and hilarious. Manhattan’s Lower East Side is
the sweltering playground for Victor, a self-styled teenage Casanova
who has a lot to learn about love. Scared that he’ll lose
street cred when his friends find out he’s been sleeping with
his overweight neighbor, Victor sets out to get a new girl. Thus
does Judy find herself the object of his affections, much to her
annoyance. Victor juggles family commitments (he lives with two
younger siblings and his old-fashioned Dominican grandmother) while
he tries to bypass Judy’s cold shoulder and reach her heart.
88 min. A Samuel Goldwyn Films/Fireworks Pictures release.
.
2002. Brazil. Directed by José Padilha. Unfolding virtually
in real time, director José Padilha’s
harrowing account of a Rio de Janeiro hijacking in 2000 interweaves
news footage and interviews with survivors, law enforcement officials,
and journalists with the hijacker’s personal history. What
emerges is not only a detailed, up-close account of a siege that
turns into disaster when the police fail to keep things under control,
but a compassionate examination of why Brazil and countries with
similar social problems are so violent. An explosive film, indicting
a society where the only kind of visibility left for the poor is
acts of televised crime. 122 min.
.
2002. Hong Kong. Directed by Andrew Lau and Alan Mak. A blockbuster
in Asia, Internal
Affairs,
co-directed by Andrew Lau and Alan Mak, is hailed as the best example
of new
Hong Kong film. Recruited by the triads as a teenager, Ming (Andy
Lau) is a mole working in the police department’s Criminal
Intelligence Bureau. After being thrown out of the police academy,
Yan (Tony Leung) moves into the criminal underworld while secretly
working for the police. These two double agents are on a collision
course that finally will leave only one man standing. Visually
dazzling—ace cinematographer Christopher Doyle served as
visual consultant—Infernal Affairs trades the
high-octane ballistics of earlier Hong Kong films for a cooler,
crisper style
and plot twists that keep you guessing until the very end. 100
min.
A Ninja Pays Half My Rent. 2002. USA. Directed by Steven
K. Tsuchida. Well, you can’t
always pick your roommates. 6 min.
.
2002. Spain. Directed by Fernando
León de Aranoa. The Spanish port city of Vigo is the backdrop
for this powerful third feature
by
Fernando
León de Aranoa
(Barrio, NDNF 1999). Javier Bardem leads an ensemble of
superb performers who portray working class men who suffer a rude
awakening
when they are laid off from the local shipyard—the only
work they’ve known. No longer needed, they spend their days
in a seesaw of denial and anger. Santa (Bardem) idly beds women
and improbably turns to babysitting for cash, his friend José comes
to terms with his wife’s new role as the family’s breadwinner,
and their friends apply for jobs they’ll never get. Misadventures
ensue as they try to put their lives back on course. 113 min. A
Lions Gate Films release.
.
2002. Italy. Directed by Emanuele Crialese. On Lampedusa, a sun-swept
island near western Sicily, life can be as cruel as it is seductive,
as oppressive as it is
blissful. Vibrant and full of life, Grazia (the magnificent Valeria
Golino) is an affectionate young mother of three whose behavior
is often wild and unpredictable. At first her husband stands by
her in the face of the islanders’ gossip, but as her antics
become more reckless only the fierce love of her eldest son can
protect her. Director Emanuele Crialese creates a sensual atmosphere
that combines the physical beauty and harshness of the setting
with the complex relationships of a loving family. Winner of Critic's
Week at the 2002 Cannes Festival. 95 min. A Sony Pictures
Classics release.
.
2002. Tajikistan/Italy/Switzerland/France. Directed
by Jamshed Usmonov. An
unrepentant prodigal son straight out of a Russian jail returns
to his hometown,
Asht,
to help his mother
die with dignity. But his debts are many and long overdue, the
townspeople are tough as nails, and he gets more than he expected
from the quiet village. In this dark comedy, his third feature,
writer-director Jamshed Usmonov casts the population of Asht as
its own persuasive self and his own mother and brother as the fractured
yet formidable domestic couple. 89 min.
2002. USA. Directed
by Jay Duplass. Perfecting the art of answering machine greetings.
8
min.
.
2002. United Kingdom. Directed by Kim Longinotto. Although now
illegal, female circumcision continues in Kenya today. Kim
Longinotto’s
intimate and sensitive documentary gives us a no-holds-barred
sense of the horror and
pain of this dreadful practice, while allowing older Kenyan women
to defend their traditions. More than a simple list of outrages,
the film follows one brave nurse who tries to turn the tide, as
well as a group of children who defy their parents and go to court
to protect themselves. It’s clear that the clash between
law and tradition will continue, but the film offers a vision of
hope for these girls and others. 92 min. A Women Make
Movies release.
.
2002. Palestine/Netherlands/France. Directed by Rashid Musharawi.
Writer/director Rashid Masharawi’s
inspired hybrid of documentary and fiction begins in a refugee
camp near Ramallah. Jaber runs a mobile cinema from his old truck
throughout the West Bank while his wife works to bring emergency
medical care to Palestinians. Both navigate endless checkpoints
and other obstacles by looking for creative solutions. When Jaber
is invited by a spirited schoolteacher to make an open-air screening
in the old city of Jerusalem, he becomes obsessed with the idea
of this pilgrimage and begins to investigate the possibilities—even
though it is illegal for him to enter Jerusalem. 85 min. A Global
Film Initiative release.
. 2003. Australia.
Directed by Janet Merewether. Janet Merewether’s
trip to the crossroads of cinema, where art, commerce, and home
movies meet. 6 min.
.
2003. USA. Directed by Nathaniel Kahn. Louis Kahn, a giant among
twentieth-century architects, left a legacy of brilliantly
designed
and engineered buildings
with a tough beauty and deep spirit. His work challenges us to
discover an astonishing sensibility and poetry through light, space,
and texture. Kahn’s personal life was even more mysterious,
and his death, alone and unidentified in Penn Station in 1974,
revealed that he led not a double but a triple life, shuttling
between his legitimate family and two women and the children they
bore him. One of these, his son Nathaniel, takes us on a personal
journey to consider the contradictions of this complicated genius
and eccentric parent. A wonderfully engaging, astute, keenly felt
investigation, Nathaniel Kahn’s first feature film delights
even as it delivers its emotional punches. World Premiere. 116
min.
.
2002. Italy. Directed by Matteo Garrone. Working as a waiter, Valerio
slides through life comfortably but with few prospects
for the
future. Then he meets
Peppino, a very short, very gregarious man with a quick smile and
infectious laugh. A taxidermist and embalmer, he invites Valerio
to learn the trade. Valerio soon discovers that working with Peppino
requires more commitment than he imagined. A taut atmospheric thriller
with strains of black comedy, Matteo Garrone's fourth film, a box
office smash in Italy, captures its characters’ quiet desperation
and intense emotional longing as their world becomes increasingly
macabre. 101 min. A First Run Features release.
.
2002. Argentina/France/Spain. Directed by Israel Adrian Caetano.
Combining domestic drama and contemporary crime thriller, writer/director
Israel Adrian Caetano’s
stylish film crosses social realism with a healthy dose of western
outlaw morality.
Out on parole, the unpredictable and violent Oso (Bear) has not
seen his daughter since he was arrested on her first birthday seven
years before. His primary goal is to get to know her and take care
of his family, but he’s also intent on looking up the people
who owe him from before. Veteran actor Julio Chavez brings a colorful
dimension to Oso’s personal brands of nobleness and justice.
94 min.
.
2002. Israel. Directed by Igal Bursztyn. Successful businessman
and former general Uriel Morag heads to the country to spend a
quiet
weekend
with old army buddies
and his young girlfriend Mona. More than years separate the couple,
though, and each wonders about their future together. Finding the
area under a security alert, Morag tries to summon extra patrols,
but the phones are dead, the radio emits a strange hum, and an
eerie glow is moving across the nearby hills. A provocative take
on a society rife with generational, sexual and political conflicts—and
one obsessed with the question of "Who's an alien?"—Igal
Bursztyn's The Glow offers further evidence of an exciting
new Israeli cinema. 86 min.
.
2002. Japan. Directed by Miwa Nishikawa. A comedy of surprising
twists and turns, Wild
Berries follows
a dysfunctional family on its
road to perdition. Beautifully
paced, the film creates absurd yet believable incidents to get
at deeper truths about contemporary Japanese middle-class culture.
Lies and evasions are everywhere (especially at the funeral parlor)
as each character pursues a new life, while all are trapped by
family ties. Director Miwa Nishikawa’s highly entertaining
debut is enriched as she centers whatever moral values survive
in the heart-wrenching depiction of the daughter, the only member
of this crazy family with clarity of vision, and the ability to
love and yet do the right thing. 108 min.
. 2002. United Kingdom. Directed
by Michael Baig Clifford. They protect the club from crashers;
who protects
them?
10
min.
.
2002. Iran. Directed by Fariborz Kamkari. Parviz marries Goli
and a camera enters their lives, at first like
a watchful pet, recording the absurdist beginnings of their relationship
through Goli’s pregnancy, as Parviz makes a deal that she
bear him a child. But Goli is a Kurd, her father was a rebel, and
Parviz is a tyrant. Using the handheld camera as narrator, witness,
and participant, director Kamkari’s Black Tape turns
from beauty to cruelty, laughter to savage struggle on its dizzying,
take-no-prisoners ride. Goli and Parviz play a game neither can
win, as truths are flung about in this highly daring tale. A stunning
debut. 83 min.
. 2002. USA. Directed by Sandy
McLeod. Sandy McLeod documents a Ghanian woman’s flight from
forced genital mutilation. 20 min.
.
2002. USA. Directed by Jim Simpson. Based on the experiences of
journalist Anne Nelson, who helped a fire captain write eulogies
for the eight
men in his
company who died at the World Trade Center, The Guys is
a powerfully moving first feature written and directed by Jim Simpson,
whose
previous extensive experience has been in the theater. Sigourney
Weaver plays the journalist with insight and compassion and Anthony
LaPaglia delivers a tour de force performance as the bereaved fire
captain. As their collaboration progresses, the two form an unexpected
bond and we rediscover the quiet heroism that has become part of
our daily lives since 9/11. 88 min. A Focus Features
release.
.
2002. China. Directed by Lu Chuan. Looking like no other film from
China, Lu Chuan's debut feature is a firecracker revelation. Wild,
original, and
comic, The Missing Gun is a postmodern film noir in which
a small-town policeman wakes one morning to find his loaded gun
missing. Since
gun ownership in China is strictly forbidden and the gun is state
property, the disappearance of the weapon is a serious matter.
As the policeman navigates between dishonor and jail (losing
his gun is a crime), he attempts his own hapless investigation.
This
high-energy whodunit becomes a roiling journey into a surprisingly
modern provincial China where nothing is as it seems. 87 min.
A Columbia Pictures/Film Production Asia release.
. 2002. Mexico.
Directed by Sergio Umansky. A pot bust turns deadly serious for
a couple of rich kids in a new
kind
of
morality
story by Sergio
Umansky.
21 min.
.
2002. Czech Republic. Directed by Vladimír Michálek. A
refreshingly positive and often hilarious perspective on aging
about a pensioner who
amuses himself by concocting elaborate
practical jokes. The games backfire when his funeral savings are
jeopardized and his wife of 44 years seeks a divorce. The three
lead actors’ combined 125 years of experience is affirmed
by their sublime characterizations under Vladimír Michálek's
assured direction. This delightful movie confronts society's stereotypes
of the elderly with wry observations on marriage, friendship, and
hypocrisy, gently persuading us how to live until we die. 97 min.
A First Look Pictures release.
. 2002. USA. Directed by David
Zackin. A casserole is served by grandpa with a tale of heroism
at the beach in David Zackin’s delicious animated film. 10
min.
.
2002. Slovenia. Directed by Maja Weiss. A trio of stunning students
on summer break, bored with partying, decide to take a
canoe trip
down the
river Kolpa. Their pleasure cruise becomes a journey into fear,
tinged perhaps with the supernatural, when the young women discover
that the woods hide not only the border between Slovenia and Croatia,
but also that between the permissible and the forbidden. This erotic
and menacing fairy tale is a dazzling debut by Maja Weiss, whose
eye is equally keen for color and incident, fantasy and politics,
and the intimate landscape along the river as it is for contemporary
life in her country in tough times. 100 min.
.
2002. Italy. Directed by Roberta Torre. As Mafia wives go, Carmela
Soprano has nothing on Angela. Married to an older, drug-dealing
don,
she dutifully runs her husband’s
shoe store, but subtly takes on other duties as she hides drugs
inside shoe boxes and makes deliveries in the sleazier districts
of Palermo. She observes her husband’s cronies with a poker
face. No one would know that she longs for more. And then one day
she gets more—Masino, her husband’s lieutenant. The
lust and desire are palpable, and they both do their best to avoid
their desires, until finally they succumb. Now things really heat
up. Passion battles power in Roberta Torre’s tale of love
run amok in the underworld. A First Look Pictures release. 87 min.
. 2002. USA. Directed by Julia
Solomonoff. A young woman, alone in the city, finds a willing accomplice
in her shoplifting
schemes. 25 min.
. 2003.
USA. Directed by Todd Graff. "You've
got nothing to hit but the heights",
goes the Stephen Sondheim lyric, and the terrific young cast
in this
dynamite first feature by Todd Graff hits those heights again and
again. At Camp Ovation, a bus ride from New York City, talented
young performers spend the summer rehearsing for potential careers
in American musical theater by putting on Broadway shows. The camp
is thrown into a tizzy by two new arrivals—a straight boy flush
with enthusiasm and an embittered composer/lyricist who had a single
hit show many years ago. A clear-eyed look at hopes and dreams,
Camp is tuneful, wise and simply exhilarating. 115 min.
An IFC Films release.
.
2002. Hungary. Directed by György Pálfi. Writer/director
György Pálfi’s
daringly inventive debut features stunning cinematography and
a gloriously
imaginative soundscape punctuated by an old man’s hiccups
("hukkle" in Hungarian!). As we are brought into
the life of plants, animals, and people in a small village, we
slowly
realize that we’re in the middle of a murder mystery. A technical
tour de force in which the director organically teases complexity
from simplicity, Hukkle is graced by a wealth of visual
surprises and endless delight. 75 min.
. 2002. Slovenia. Directed
by Stefan Arsenijevic. A choir on its way to perform interacts
with a traumatized cow
struggling to give birth in this gem by Stefan Arsenijevic. 14
min.
.
2002. Chad/France. Directed by Mahamat Saleh Haroun. In a hot,
dusty town near the border of Chad and Cameroon, a father abandons
his
family, changing
the lives of his two young
sons forever. When he fails to appear for their amateur soccer
match, they search for him high and low. One day at the local cinema,
the boys believe they see him on screen, and steal a reel of the
film as proof. Beside herself, their mother sends them off to a
strict boarding school where things become increasingly intolerable.
Director Mahamat Saleh Haroun (Bye Bye Africa) has brought
us an accomplished and ultimately optimistic work, with outstanding
charismatic
performances by the young actors. 84 min.
. 2002. Cameroon/USA. Directed by Victor Viyuoh.
A twelve-year-old boy proves his worth to his family in Victor
Viyuoh’s coming-of-age
tale. 14 min.
.
2002. Bangladesh/France. Directed by Tareque Masud. A gentle marvel,
Tareque Masud's first feature is set during the brutal 1971 civil
war
in which East Pakistan
emerged as Bangladesh. The events that tear family and homeland
apart are seen through the eyes, playful and irrepressible, of
a young boy, Anu, whose father trades his European ways for a stricter
Islamic life. Anu is sent to a Koranic school but remains fascinated
by the Hindu rituals of which his father has become so suspicious.
Although originally banned at home, the reception to The Clay
Bird abroad has been so positive that it became
the first film officially submitted by Bangladesh for Academy Award
consideration for Best
Foreign-Language Film. 94 min.
.
2001. United Kingdom. Directed by Nilesh Patel. Director Nilesh
Patel pays tribute to his mother’s
nurturing ways through the seemingly simple preparation of samosas.
10 min.
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