San Siro. 2014. Italy. Directed by Yuri Ancarani
At its core, New Directors/New Films celebrates the unexpected and cutting-edge in movie making, and the 16 short films in this year’s festival offer plenty of excitement about the future of the medium.
A notable amount of these short films experiment with modes of storytelling, at times eschewing dialogue-driven narratives altogether.
Trap Street. 2013. China. Directed by Vivian Qu
Even after 43 years, each edition of New Directors/New Films feels like a revelation. Maybe it has something to do with the crisp March air, the unshakeable sense of spring’s impending blossom and bloom.
If you’ve got Irish blood in your veins or you’re simply keen to kick off the week with a pint, you can celebrate Saint Patrick’s Day and take in some modern art at the same time.
Buzzard. 2014. USA. Directed by Joel Potrykus
One of the highlights of this year’s New Directors/New Films festival, Joel Potrykus’s Buzzard is a darkly comical look at a slacker office temp who gets by on cold SpaghettiOs while getting off on stealing refund checks from his employer.
Most of my friends are seasoned New Yorkers who know their way around the city—where to find the best restaurants, sample sales, and live music—but whenever I invite them to see a film at MoMA with me, I hear, “Oh, MoMA shows film? I had no idea! What, like black-and-white art flicks?”
New Directors/New Films 2012 opens on March 21 with the New York premiere of Nadine Labaki’s Where Do We Go Now?, and continues through April 1 with screenings of 28 more feature films from around the world.
All of us have had the experience of being green (in the “inexperienced” sense, not the “Kermit” sense); that nervousness, insecurity, and exhilaration that propels us through uncharted territory. There are moments like this that are universal: first day of school, new job, first date. For artists, the moment when they present themselves for the first time to critics and discerning audiences can be extremely unsettling. Over the past 40 years the organizers of New Directors/New Films at MoMA and the Film Society of Lincoln Center have embraced the challenge of creating moments of nervous exhilaration for artists and audiences at every screening.
Chief Curator of Film Rajendra Roy
Last week we asked you to submit your burning questions about the New Directors/New Films Festival or about MoMA’s film program in general. In addition to quite a few inquiries about how to get your film into MoMA’s collection (don’t worry I answered one of those), your curiosity covered quite a range of subjects, so I’ve done my best to answer five of your questions—as well as one irresistible bonus question—as selected by the MoMA blog editors. Thank you all for your interest!
1. What criteria do you employ in choosing films for the festival? Political, artistic, plot, cultural, etc.? [from Jules Margalit]
The essential, and perhaps only, unifying criterion for a film in New Directors/New Films is that it be innovative. This of course can manifest in many ways; often it is structurally, but my no means universally so. Our opening film, Bill Cunningham New York, is a traditional portrait doc. It is the subject himself that is sui generis. Director Richard Press has the presence of mind to allow his film to exist as an open road for Cunningham to navigate (on his Schwinn). Alexei Popogrebsky’s How I Ended This Summer, for example, is formally as well as narratively innovative, immersing us in a landscape that is brand new.
We asked you to take inspiration from Bill Cunningham’s off-the-cuff, street-level style, and post pictures of your fellow New Yorkers on our New Directors/New Films Facebook page. What resulted was a colorful patchwork of images—some funny, some quirky, some beautiful and poignant—as varied as New York City itself. Thank you all for your submissions!
A winner was chosen randomly, and the lucky photographer won a series pass, plus two tickets to see Bill Cunningham, New York at the Film Society of Lincoln Center on Thursday, March 25. Congrats to our winner, Andrew Piccone!
And here are a few selected entries:
Rajendra Roy. Photo: Scott Rudd
With preparations underway for New Directors/New Films—now less than a week away, the festival has been generating buzz since the lineup was announced earlier this month—and a nice write-up in yesterday’s New York Times piece about young curators making waves in New York City, Rajendra Roy, MoMA’s Chief Curator of Film, is having quite a week. That’s why we’re thrilled he’s agreed to answer some of our readers’ questions in what we hope will be an ongoing feature of our blog. Our curators are a varied and fascinating bunch, and from the looks of our comments, Facebook page, and Twitter feed, so are our online fans. Why not bring the two together and spark a conversation?
So, think about what you’ve always wanted to know about the New Directors/New Films festival or about MoMA’s film program, and submit your questions via comments to this blog post. We’ll select the five most intriguing questions, and Raj will answer them here next Friday, so stay tuned!
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