QPORIT

Mia Wasikowska, an Australian actress, stars in the Australian epic film TRACKS, about Robyn Davidson's epic journey across the Australian desert with four camels and a dog, occasional visits from National Geographic photographer Rick Smolan, and assorted brief encounters with other people.

(Robyn’s phenomenal solo trek from Alice Springs to Uluru and on to the Indian Ocean saw her traverse nearly 2,000 miles of spectacular yet unforgiving Australian desert accompanied only by her loyal dog and four unpredictable camels.)

It is an interesting film, slow moving but never dull, inspiring to those who wish to undertake an impossible task that is both pointless and important at the same time.

The acting is excellent: the dog, the camels, the two principal humans, the landscape, and all the supporting players.

It is always hard to consider -- in isolation -- a film that is about a book that is about a real event. (In this case, actually, there are at least two books, an essay, the book TRACKS by Robyn Davidson herself, who made the trip, and a photo book by Rick Smolan with text by Robyn.)

While it is perhaps easiest to concentrate only on the film, just noting where it may collide with the books or the real world, it does collide in a few important ways.

First, the film portrays the motivation for the trip in a very (too?) simple way. To me it seems to be saying she just got this (crazy) idea in her head to do something extreme that requires total self reliance -- with no backstory and no future plans. That seems hard to accept, especially since we know she went on to write about this, and then write more books. And most people have some kind of idea about the future, and a backstory.

Second, although the cinematography is very good, it is not spectacular (at least not in the relatively small-screen screening room in which I saw it). Part of the reason Robyn's story had resonance was the extraordinary photos of Rick Smolan. The film, while it uses the character of Smolan (played nicely in low key by Adam Driver) to keep the story moving, does not celebrate the visual representation of the experience.

Third, the film does celebrate the charismatic camels, who seem to be almost pussycats in their demeanor (except when males are horny). What I've previously heard about camels was mostly about their nasty disposition. (Are Australian camels different?)

Finally, though Mia does a great job of carrying the film (and even seems to bear a close resemblance to Robyn), whenever she kissed a camel or looked particularly haggard and sunburnt, I stopped thinking of her character and began wondering how the actress was feeling.

TRACKS manages to convey the difficulty and tedium of a marathon trek without ever becoming tedious (a trap that is hard to avoid -- think of Kelly Reichardt's Meek's Cutoff, which conveyed the enormous effort of a long, long wagon train cross-country journey by seeming to take forever itself.)

The collision of a film with its real life origins and literary sources certainly helps generate its resonance.

That said, returning to the film itself, TRACKS is a well-told, well acted story of an epic adventure.


TRACKS may be inspirational to many; and even more, it should be an absolute delight to anyone who loves camels and dogs, travel, solitude, and achieving personal goals.





TRACKS - WIKIPEDIA
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tracks_(2013_film)

MIA WASIKOWSKA - WIKIPEDIA
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mia_Wasikowska

MIA WASIKOWSKA - IMDB
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1985859/

ROBYN DAVIDSON - WIKIPEDIA
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robyn_Davidson

RICK SMOLAN - WIKIPEDIA
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Smolan

Labels: Adam Driver, Australia, camels, desert, John Curran, Mia Wasikowska, TRACKS

The 2014 New York Film Festival CONVERGENCE WEEKEND will take place on Saturday, September 27 and Sunday, September 28. Now in its third year, the annual program delves into the world of transmedia with a mix of unique films, panels, and immersive experiences.

The advent of the digital age has created a new audience who are no longer passive consumers of entertainment, but active participants in their media. The traditional lines separating the arts are being blurred by innovative makers who are creating stories that span multiple platforms and include interaction with the audience.

Focusing on the intersection of technology and storytelling, NYFF Convergence offers audiences and creators the unique opportunity to experience a curated selection of some of the most exciting interactive projects being produced today. With the projects and presentations falling under three categories (Films, Panels, and Interactive Presentations), the two-day event will highlight the fact that in the digital world every member of the audience is not just an observer but an active participant in building their entertainment.


Interactive presentations this year include:

• .Theo Rigby’s Immigrant Nation, which comprises of a series of short documentary films, live events, an online Interactive Story Hub, and roving storytelling stations that enable audiences to upload and share their own personal immigrant narratives.
• Audiences can also participate in their own storytelling process by creating personal interactive videos through the The Vidzor Experience, which invites attendees to build their own interactive videos using the Vidzor platform in a “Production 101” class.
• Personal stories are spotlighted in Jake Price and Visakh Menon’s poignant Artifacts of Fukushima: Selections from Unknown Spring, which will present fragments of what was left behind and still remains of the area around Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant power plant, through a combination of video, audio, and photography—immersing viewers into stark empty cityscapes, guided by the voices of those who fled this devastating nuclear disaster.

A special presentation panel for We The Economy will serve as a kickoff to an ambitious cross-platform project launching this fall with a series of diverse short films by award-winning filmmakers to help demystify the U.S. economy. The panel includes participating directors Morgan Spurlock (Super Size Me) and Shola Lynch (Chisholm ’72); and Adam Davidson (NPR’s “Planet Money”), Braden King (Truckstop Media), and Carole Tomko (GM & Creative Director Vulcan Productions). We The Economy is a partnership between Paul G. Allen’s Vulcan Productions and Morgan Spurlock’s Cinelan that will launch this fall with genre-crossing short films (scripted, animated, documentary) to drive awareness and a better understanding of our economic system. The films will be released on multiple platforms—online, mobile, and more. Audiences participating in this panel will get a special sneak peek at unique materials created for the project.

Media scholar and Convergence Culture author Henry Jenkins will make the Keynote Address for the 2014 NYFF Convergence.


Additional selections include:

• The North American Premiere of the interactive elements of Tommy Pallotta and Femke Wolting’s Last Hijack;
• a 30th Anniversary screening of Diego Echeverria’s 1984 Living Los Sures. Nearly lost, the restored, reframed, and remixed documentary is now part of a multi-platform participatory media project by Brooklyn-based UnionDocs;
• and a creator-guided tour of Futurestates, the compelling ITVS series that imagines the impact of technology on humanity in the not-so-distant future.

Convergence tickets are $10 for Film Society Members and $15 for Non-Members. A limited number of Convergence All Access Passes, which include one ticket to all programs in Convergence, will be available for just $99. Tickets for the 52nd New York Film Festival are on sale to the general public.

To learn more about the festival and purchasing options, including the VIP Pass, which offers unparalleled access to all programs throughout the festival, visit



To find out how to become a Film Society member, visit







Artifacts of Fukushima: Selections from Unknown Spring
(Interactive Presentation)

Jake Price & Visakh Menon, USA, 2014
March 11, 2011: An earthquake off the coast of Tohoku spawns a tsunami that would destroy swaths of the Japanese coast and initiate a nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant power plant. Nearly four years after the reactors at the Fukushima began melting down, nature has reclaimed every vestige of civilization and transformed the landscape, blurring the lines between once refined humanity and unrestrained nature. In the middle of this borderland are the survivors who cannot abandon their homes, ornate temples, and ancient Buddhist carvings from time immemorial. Artifacts of Fukushima will present fragments of what was left behind and still remains—where memory and abandonment, unrestrained nature and humanity intersect. Combining projected video, audio, and photography, Artifacts will immerse viewers in the cityscapes of the abandoned towns, guided by the voices of those who fled their homes but can never leave in their hearts.
September 28


Creators on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown
(Panel)

The tools to write, shoot, edit, and distribute films and interactive content are widely available to anyone with a story and the will to see it realized. Crowdfunding and crowdsourcing add even more powerful resources to the budding creative’s personal arsenal. While wearing many hats has long been a hallmark of independent filmmaking, contemporary makers must balance art and business to become more than the writer-director-producers of yesterday. This is the age of the hyper-hyphenate, in which creative professionals juggle vast social networks, new technologies, and creative ambition in order to bring their stories to life. Our panel of storytellers will touch on their own successes and failures navigating our wired, content-rich world—and hopefully remind us all what really matters in the end: telling a killer story.
September 28


Ft. McMoney
(Interactive Presentation)

David Dufresne, Canada, 2013
Ft. McMurray a small town like many others in central Canada… at least it used to be before the discovery of the vast (and vastly profitable) oil sands. Thrust into the center of the world’s largest energy project, Ft. McMurray has experienced tremendous economic growth that brings with it a wealth of challenges for city leaders and an ever-growing population hoping to cash in on the boom. Ft. McMoney is an online documentary and game that entrenches its audience within this community, allowing a viewer/player to meet and interact with a cast of larger-than-life characters struggling with a host of social, cultural, and environmental concerns. Director David Dufresne (Prison Valley) will lead audiences through this immersive experience and offer insight into the process of creating this engaging online world.
September 27


Futurestates
(Interactive Presentation)

Produced by ITVS, USA, 2014, 90m
What will America look like in 10, 15, even 20 years? Futurestates, the revolutionary series produced by ITVS, has been proposing answers to these questions since 2010. For its fifth and final season, Futurestates is presented as an immersive online video experience featuring short films that imagine robots with feelings, what education looks like in a wired world, and the future of prisons and our penal system. The central question at the heart of Futurestates is how technologies we may take for granted have a profound effect on our capacity to feel, create, live... and be human.
September 28


Immigrant Nation
(Installation and Interactive Presentation)

Theo Rigby, USA, 2014
Whether having arrived in the U.S. recently or many generations ago, the millions of immigrants and their descendants who make up our nation have something important in common: unique experiences, aspirations, and stories that deserve—and need—to be told. Immigrant Nation is a new interactive storytelling project designed to collect a vast range of immigrant narratives and experiences and share them with the world. It is comprised of a series of short documentary films, live events that engage diverse communities in telling their individual and collective stories, and an online Interactive Story Hub that enables participants to upload and share their own personal tales. Throughout the opening weekend of NYFF Convergence, iNation installations and roving storytelling stations will be available to festival attendees so they can contribute their stories. The weekend culminates with a live presentation by creator Theo Rigby about the future of the Immigrant Nation project.
September 27


Keynote: A Brief History of Transmedia Worlds

Henry Jenkins, University of Southern California
Today’s films, television series, games, comics, novels, and even documentaries and journalism rely heavily on the concepts of world-building and world-mapping. The idea of the “fictional world” took roots in and around fantasy and science fiction in the first half of the 20th century, pushed forward by writers like L. Frank Baum and J.R.R. Tolkien, but it has gained greater and greater traction as transmedia production practices seek to disperse meaningful parts of an entertainment experience across multiple delivery platforms, as production designers exert much greater influence over the creative vision behind popular fictions, and as networks of fans seek to pool knowledge via social media.

The concept of a fictional world enables certain kinds of immersive experiences, providing both authors and readers with the cognitive structures they need to deal with enormous complexity—stories with vast time scales and ensemble casts. They encourage a kind of encyclopedic relationship with what's presented on the screen, a relationship that may exist with the information being conveyed by a documentary, the nuances of historical fictions, or the sprawl of a genre franchise. 

In this talk, I will provide a conceptual map for understanding what we mean by “worlds,” what roles they are playing in the production and consumption of popular media, how thinking in terms of worlds involves a shift from more traditional focuses on character and narrative, and why this concept has gained such traction in an era of networked communication and transmedia entertainment.—Henry Jenkins

Henry Jenkins is the Provost's Professor of Communication Journalism and Cinematic Arts at USC’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. He joined USC from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he was Peter de Florez Professor in the Humanities. He is Principal Investigator on the Media Activism Participatory Politics project. His most recent books include Reading in a Participatory Culture: Remixing Moby-Dick in the Literature Classroom (with Wyn Kelley, Katie Clinton, Jenna McWilliams, Ricardo Pitts-Wiley, and Erin Reilly) and Spreadable Media: Creating Meaning and Value in a Networked Society (with Sam Ford and Joshua Green).
September 27


Last Hijack
(film)

Tommy Pallotta & Femke Wolting, Netherlands, 2014, DCP, 83m
Mohamed is your average middle-aged man trying to make ends meet in his homeland: the failed state of Somalia. One of the country’s most experienced pirates, he is faced with constant pressure—from his fiancée, family, and friends—to get out of his dangerous profession. Sensing the end of an era, Mohamed must decide if he should risk everything and do one last hijack. As he wrestles with these very real problems, a dramatic tale of survival unfolds. Last Hijack is both a feature-length film, combining documentary footage and animation, and an online transmedia experience, allowing viewers a unique and original way to explore the story of Somali piracy from different perspectives.
September 28


Last Hijack
(Interactive Presentation)

Tommy Pallotta & Femke Wolting, Netherlands, 2014
With their feature documentary Last Hijack, Tommy Pallotta and Femke Wolting introduced audiences to Mohamed, an accomplished pirate considering a career change. Where that film ends, Last Hijack’s transmedia experience begins. Join Pallotta and Wolting as they explore the immersive components of their interactive project, offering a bird’s-eye view of the online elements of their doc that investigates modern-day piracy. Using data visualization, animation, live footage, and audio, the online experience paints a picture not of perpetrators of crimes and victims but of real people whose actions have an effect on the world around them. North American Premiere
September 28


Los Sures
Diego Echeverria, USA, 1984, 16mm, 66m
Diego Echeverria’s Los Sures skillfully represents the challenges of its time: drugs, gang violence, crime, abandoned real estate, racial tension, single-parent homes, and inadequate local resources in Brooklyn’s Los Sures neighborhood. Yet Echeverria’s portrait also celebrates the vitality of this largely Puerto Rican and Dominican community, showing the strength of their culture, their creativity, and their determination to overcome a desperate situation. Nearly lost, this 16mm film has been restored, reframed, and remixed by Southside-based UnionDocs just in time for the 30th anniversary of its premiere at the New York Film Festival.
September 27


Living Los Sures
(Interactive Presentation)

Produced by UnionDocs, USA, 2014
Using Escheverria’s 1984 documentary Los Sures as a starting point, UnionDocs has created Living Los Sures, a massive mixed-media project that defies easy categorization. Composed over the course of four years and pulling on the talents of over 30 different artists, Living Los Sures paints a picture of a neighborhood from street level, an ever-evolving mosaic of people and places captured through film, audio, and now an online participatory experience. With the premiere of two new elements—Eighty-Nine Steps, a continuation of the story of one of the original characters from Los Sures, and Shot by Shot—that invite people to share their personal stories inspired by the shots and locations of the original film, the UnionDocs team will take audiences through the process of building this unique documentary storyworld.
September 27


Loves of a Cyclops
(Screening and Interactive Presentation)

Nathan Punwar, USA, 2013, DCP, 25m
Loves of a Cyclops is the sprawling life story of Francis, a modern-day one-eyed man, as he struggles to see the world the same way as everyone else. Taken under the wing of Bill Vernon, a scientist who hopes the cyclops will prove his theories of seeing beyond multiple dimensions, Francis also finds a kindred lost soul in Lina Rae Pearson, a young woman who was once the most prolific narrator of books on tape. Together, the trio try to make sense of Francis’s strange vision, as he careens from one group of people to another, in search of someone who will understand his perspective. Francis’s story extends far beyond the short film, unfolding through a series of archival documents—artifacts, oddities, and abandoned films—and the audience will experience these elements firsthand with a guided tour from director/creator Nathan Punwar following the screening.
September 27


Movies You Play: The Future of Interactive Cinema
(Panel)

Participants: Adam Cassels (Audience Entertainment), Christian Nielsen (Vidzor). Moderator: Jennifer Begeal (JLB Hart Media).
An audience settles into a theater to take in the latest blockbuster. A family gathers in their living room to watch a movie. A traveler loses herself in her favorite show in an airport lounge. Despite the different places we can watch films, the experience remains relatively unchanged: we tune in, we sit back, and stories are told to us. This all may be about to change. Interactive music videos, in-theater immersive experiences, and virtual-reality systems present audiences with experiences that ask them to play an active part in telling the stories they consume. Are we approaching a time when filmmaking and game design will collide to create something new? Our panel of creators, filmmakers, and technologists will take a look at the state of this nascent art and explore what it could mean for filmmakers and audiences.
September 28


The ‘New’ New Wave: Indie Games and Indie Film
(Panel)

One need only look at the record-breaking sales of Grand Theft Auto V or the devoted fandom swirling around Bethesda’s “Fallout” and “Elder Scrolls” franchises to see proof that video games have gone mainstream like never before. Yet for all the attention these major releases receive, we are witnessing an equally impressive new wave of independent game titles. These games combine incredible design and compelling storytelling to bring new life to the form. Could we be living in an era that will see the roll out of games that will do what Easy Rider or Reservoir Dogs did to the film industry? Our panel of designers, developers, and critics will discuss the state of the art and explore some of the parallels between the two worlds of film and games.
September 28


The Vidzor Experience
(Workshops, Lab)

Within the last five years, a host of Internet-based technologies have enabled an explosion of interactive video experiences. From choose-your-own adventure feature films to immersive music videos, artists and brands are creating engaging content that empowers audiences to step into the story. Convergence invites NYFF attendees to explore the possibilities by building their own interactive videos using the Vidzor platform, participating in a series of short workshops, and hearing about the future of interactive cinema from some of the top minds in film, technology, and art. A primer workshop will help participants explore the core concepts of what interactive video actually is, and will screen examples of interactive shorts created by Vidzor. They will then get to take a “Production 101” class, in which members of the Vidzor Team will give them hands-on help to create their own short interactive videos.
September 28


We The Economy
(Panel)

Participants: Morgan Spurlock (Super Size Me), Adam Davidson (NPR’s “Planet Money”), Shola Lynch (Chisholm ’72), Braden King (Truckstop Media), and Carole Tomko (GM & Creative Director, Vulcan Productions). Moderator: Neil Irwin (Senior Economic Correspondent, The New York Times).
Our lives—arguably the lives of every person on the planet—are governed by the ebbs and flows of the U.S. economic system. For many, the concept of the economy is just as abstract as time; it is something that we know affects us daily yet we can’t begin to describe why or how. Paul G. Allen’s Vulcan Productions and Morgan Spurlock’s Cinelan have partnered to produce the short-film series We The Economy to further promote awareness of the vital role that we the people play in driving these complex systems. Featuring genre-crossing shorts (scripted, animated, and documentary, five to eight minutes in length) by award-winning filmmakers; an online, mobile, and offline experience; and support from top economic experts, We The Economy aims to shine a light on how our individual decisions play a critical role in the state of our local and global financial stability. Be among the first to experience this ambitious cross-platform project at a presentation featuring filmmakers, economists, and the creators of the mobile and online elements.
September 27


Women’s Impact: Producing in a Convergent World (Panel)
Presented in partnership with The Producers Guild of America New Media Council & The Producers Guild of America Women’s Impact Network (PGA WIN)
As the entertainment industry shifts from linear models of broadcast to interactive, multiplatform paradigms, there is one metric that seems to move at a snails pace: employment and empowerment of women. The case for diversity in production has been made, and while studios, networks, and publishing houses struggle to increase the number of women in decision-making positions many female producers are creating opportunities for themselves. This year, the Producers Guild of America launched the Women’s Impact Network as a portal for organizations and programs for women in media to collaborate and work toward a more equitable industry. PGA members from film, games, and interactive will share their work initiatives and ask: What are the barriers to establishing a better environment for female creators? What are the new opportunities on the horizon for women entering the media workplace? And, most vitally, these speakers will share stories about their work and experiences as producers, regardless of gender.
September 28


For more information, visit www.filmlinc.com and follow @filmlinc on Twitter.




NYFF 52 -- OVERVIEW 
http://qporit.blogspot.com/2014/09/nyff-2014-overview.html


Preview: NYFF 52 MAIN SLATE - 2014 NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL
http://qporit.blogspot.com/2014/08/preview-nyff-52-main-slate-2014-new.html


NYFF 2014 - ADDS WORLD PREMIERE OF LAURA POITRAS' "CITIZENFOUR" TO THE MAIN SLATE
http://qporit.blogspot.com/2014/09/nyff-2014-adds-world-premiere-of-laura.html


Preview: NYFF 2014 - DIRECTORS DIALOGS
http://qporit.blogspot.com/2014/09/nyff-2014-directors-dialogs.html


TRANSMEDIA AT NYFF 50
http://qporit.blogspot.com/2012/09/transmedia-at-nyff-50.html

Labels: Artifacts of Fukushima, convergence, FutureStates, Henry Jenkins, New York Film Festival, NYFF, We The Economy

The Film Society of Lincoln Center has just made an unprecedented addition to the New York Film Festival’s Main Slate with the World Premiere of Laura Poitras’s CITIZENFOUR as a Special Presentation on Friday, October 10 at 6PM in Alice Tully Hall.

Tickets are on sale now at filmlinc.com/nyff.

Poitras will also participate in a free HBO® Directors Dialogues the following day, October 11 at 4PM, at the Walter Reade Theater.

Free tickets will be distributed an hour prior to the talk. Visit filmlinc.com/nyff for more information.

The film will open theatrically on October 24.

New York Film Festival Director Kent Jones said, “Seeing CITIZENFOUR for the first time is an experience I’ll never forget. The film operates on multiple levels at the same time: a character study (of Edward Snowden)… a real-life suspense story… and a chilling exposé. When the lights came up, everyone in the room was alternately stunned, excited, and deeply troubled. A brave documentary, but also a powerful work from a master storyteller.”

In January 2013, filmmaker Laura Poitras was several years into the making of a film about abuses of national security in post-9/11 America when she started receiving encrypted e-mails from someone identifying himself as “citizen four,” who was ready to blow the whistle on the massive covert surveillance programs run by the NSA and other intelligence agencies.  In June 2013, she and reporter Glenn Greenwald flew to Hong Kong for the first of many meetings with the man who turned out to be Edward Snowden. She brought her camera with her. The film that resulted from this series of tense encounters is absolutely sui generis in the history of cinema: a 100% real-life thriller unfolding minute by minute before our eyes.

The Film Society of Lincoln Center has long been a supporter of Poitras’s work, premiering several of her films throughout the years and honoring her as the 2011 recipient of the 25th anniversary Martin E. Segal Award, given annually to two rising young artists in recognition of exceptional accomplishments. 

CITIZENFOUR marks the final film in her 9/11 trilogy. The first film, My Country, My Country focused on the Iraq War and had its New York premiere in 2006 at the Film Society’s New Directors/New Films series. My Country, My Country was nominated for an Academy Award, an Independent Spirit Award, and an Emmy Award. The second installment in the trilogy, The Oath, was about Guantánamo and also received its New York premiere at New Directors/New Films, in 2010. The Oath won the Sundance Cinematography Award, the Edinburgh Film Festival Documentary Jury Award, and a Gotham Award for Best Documentary. 

Poitras has taught filmmaking at Duke and Yale Universities, and in 2012, her work was selected for the 2012 Whitney Biennial. She is also the recipient of a 2012 MacArthur Fellowship. Her NSA reporting contributed to a Pulitzer Prize awarded to The Guardian and The Washington Post.  Along with Glenn Greenwald and Jeremy Scahill, she is co-founder of the digital magazine The Intercept. She currently lives in Berlin.

More information about CITIZENFOUR can be found at 

www.citizenfourfilm.com

Laura Poitras is one of the bravest figures in documentary filmmaking. Her 2006 film My Country, My Country and its 2010 follow-up The Oath—respectively, about life in Iraq during the U.S. occupation and about Guantánamo and the war on terror—garnered great acclaim and numerous accolades for Poitras, but they also led to years of intense scrutiny and harassment whenever she crossed the U.S. border. The final film in her 9/11 trilogy, CITIZENFOUR, about Poitras’s encounter with Edward Snowden along with reporter Glenn Greenwald, is perhaps even more explosive—a true-life thriller unfolding in real time. We’re proud to have this remarkable artist joining us for a Directors Dialogue.



Tickets for the upcoming New York Film Festival range in price from $15 & $25 for most screenings to $50 & $100 for Gala evenings. Film Society members receive a discount on tickets as well as the benefit of a pre-sale opportunity.

For NYFF Free events: Starting one hour before the scheduled time of the event, complimentary tickets will be distributed from the box office corresponding to the event's venue. Limit one ticket per person, on a space available basis. Please note that the line for tickets may form in advance of the time of distribution.

Please note: All sales are final. No refunds or exchanges. Tickets are subject to availability. Programs and prices are subject to change.

Visit filmlinc.com for more information. The updated NYFF App is available for download on iOS and Android

Labels: CITIZENFOUR, Edward Snowden, Laura Poitras, New York Film Festival, NYFF, The Film Society of Lincoln Center

The core of the NYFF is the Main Slate of 30 films - among the most interesting and important new features from all over the world. But the festival is much more than that!

There are old and avant-garde features, shorts, personal talks and Q&A appearances by actors and directors, a whole weekend of "convergence" (transmedia) and still more!



Feature films are included in several different sections, in addition to the Main Slate. The Spotlight on Documentary includes 15 films by Ethan Hawke, Martin Scorcese, Frederick Wiseman and others. Revivals and Retrospectives include films by Alfred Hitchcock, Robert Flaherty and a large collection of films by Joseph L Mankiewicz. Alain Renais' early Hiroshima Mon Amour is paired with his last film, Liife Of Riley (Aimer, boire et chanter) in the Main Slate. Projections (formerly "Avant-Garde") are more experimental films. Opening Acts are early features by Festival Directors.

There's a large program of short films, including a stand-alone program of shorts, and shorts before some features.

The Convergence weekend -- the third (annual) time this event has been held -- is one of the central transmedia events in the New York area. The event includes a Keynote by Henry Jenkins, and films, interactive experiences, and panels. Convergence is "the intersection of storytelling and technology". More broadly, transmedia is -- loosely -- the combination of several different media elements, plus (usually) some ways of involving the audience directly. It is, perhaps, the most important new trend in media. (Do note, however, that religion is as old as humanity and religion is a rich example of transmedia: using, for example, theater, music, art, and personal live interactions -- eg in prayer meetings, and ritual transitions like weddings, birth and death.)

Live appearances include Evenings With Ethan Hawke and Richard Gere, HBO Dialogs with Directors, including Mathieu Amalric, the On Cinema conversation with Paul Thomas Anderson, and Q&A's with directors and actors during Main Slate screenings.  Also, Convergence includes many live events.

The NYFF even begins before NYFF begins(!) with Opening Acts, "a sampling of past triumphs by its Main Slate directors. From David Fincher to Olivier Assayas to the late Alain Resnais, NYFF Opening Acts takes you deep into the back catalogs of today’s foremost talents." Opening Acts starts on the 15th.

NYFF also designates a Director in Residence and holds a "Critics Academy".


Here's an outline of some of NYFF's sections:

FILM SECTIONS

• Main Slate
• Spotlight on Documentary
• Revivals
• Retrospective
• Projections (Avant-Garde)
• Opening Acts
• Special Events
• Shorts

TRANSMEDIA

• Convergence

LIVE EVENTS

• On Cinema
• HBO Director Dialogs
• Evenings With

SPECIAL PROGRAMS

• Director In Residence
• Critics Academy

The selection committee, chaired by Kent Jones, includes Dennis Lim, FSLC Director of Programming; Marian Masone, FSLC Senior Programming Advisor; Gavin Smith, Editor-in-Chief, Film Comment; and Amy Taubin, Contributing Editor, Film Comment and Sight & Sound.

Tickets for the upcoming New York Film Festival range in price from $15 & $25 for most screenings to $50 & $100 for Gala evenings. Film Society members receive a discount on tickets as well as the benefit of a pre-sale opportunity. Please note: All sales are final. No refunds or exchanges. Tickets are subject to availability. Programs and prices are subject to change. Please note that the line for tickets may form in advance of the time of distribution.

Visit filmlinc.com/NYFF for more information.

The updated NYFF App is available for download on iOS and Android.

For NYFF Free events: Starting one hour before the scheduled time of the event, complimentary tickets will be distributed from the box office corresponding to the event's venue. Limit one ticket per person, on a space-available basis. 

Please note that the line for tickets may form in advance of the time of distribution.

Please note: All sales are final. No refunds or exchanges. Tickets are subject to availability. Programs and prices are subject to change.

"The Film Society Of Lincoln Center was founded in 1969 to celebrate American and international cinema. The Film Society of Lincoln Center works to recognize established and emerging filmmakers, support important new work, and to enhance the awareness, accessibility, and understanding of the moving image. The Film Society produces the renowned New York Film Festival, a curated selection of the year’s most significant new film work, and presents or collaborates on other annual New York City festivals including:

• Dance on Camera,
• Film Comment Selects,
• Human Rights Watch Film Festival,
• Latinbeat,
• New Directors/New Films,
• NewFest,
• New York African Film Festival,
• New York Asian Film Festival,
• New York Jewish Film Festival,
• Open Roads: New Italian Cinema, and
• Rendez-Vous with French Cinema.

In addition to publishing the award-winning Film Comment magazine, The Film Society recognizes an artist's unique achievement in film with the prestigious Chaplin Award.

The Film Society’s state-of-the-art Walter Reade Theater and the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center, located at Lincoln Center, provide a home for year-round programs and the New York City film community."


The list of supporters is not just "boilerplate". The expansive program of FSLC would not be possible without them!

"The Film Society receives generous, year-round support from Royal Bank of Canada, Jaeger-LeCoultre, American Airlines, The New York Times, HBO®, Stella Artois, The Kobal Collection, Variety, Trump International Hotel and Tower, Row NYC Hotel, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York State Council on the Arts.

Support for the New York Film Festival is also generously provided by KIND Bars, Portage World Wide Inc., WABC-7, and WNET New York Public Media."


(And lets not forget all the film journalists that help promote the films to the general public!)




THE FILM SOCIETY OF LINCOLN CENTER
www.filmlinc.com

NYFF 2014
http://www.filmlinc.com/nyff2014

NYFF 2014 - THE COMPLETE SCHEDULE
http://www.filmlinc.com/nyff2014/nyffschedule

NYFF 2014 - LINEUP - A GUIDE TO THE SECTIONS
http://www.filmlinc.com/nyff2014/series



QPORIT - NYFF 2014 - OVERVIEW (THIS STORY!)

QPORIT - Preview: NYFF 2014 - MAIN SLATE
http://qporit.blogspot.com/2014/08/preview-nyff-52-main-slate-2014-new.html

QPORIT - Preview: NYFF 2014 - WORLD PREMIERE - CITIZENFOUR
http://qporit.blogspot.com/2014/09/nyff-2014-adds-world-premiere-of-laura.html

QPORIT - Preview: NYFF 2014 - CONVERGENCE WEEKEND
http://qporit.blogspot.com/2014/09/preview-nyff-52-convergence-weekend-2014.html

QPORIT - Preview: NYFF 2014 - DIRECTORS DIALOGS
http://qporit.blogspot.com/2014/09/nyff-2014-directors-dialogs.html




QPORIT - TRANSMEDIA
qporit.blogspot.com/2012/09/transmedia-at-nyff-50.htm

Labels: CITIZENFOUR, convergence, Directors Dialogs, New York Film Festival, NYFF, NYFF 2014, The Film Society of Lincoln Center, transmedia

The 2014 NYFF Talks will feature Paul Thomas Anderson in conversation for On Cinema, and the HBO Directors Dialogues participants will be Mathieu Amalric, Pedro Costa, Mike Leigh, and Bennett Miller. 

All five events are sponsored by HBO. Tickets for On Cinema go on sale at noon Sunday, September 7, and are $12 for students, $15 for Members and $20 for General Public. The HBO Directors Dialogues are free to the public and will be distributed one hour prior to the event. 


 
The sixth edition of NYFF’s annual master class, On Cinema, will feature Paul Thomas Anderson (Inherent Vice) in conversation with the New York Film Festival Director, Kent Jones, on Sunday, October 5 at 12:30PM at Alice Tully Hall. 

The films of Paul Thomas Anderson will come back to you with a visceral force—the ill-fated visit to the drug dealer’s house in Boogie Nights… the ocean of oil cascading from the derrick in There Will Be Blood… the troubled emotional momentum of The Master… these are some of the great visionary passages in modern movies. Anderson will discuss select clips from the films that have inspired and excited him.


The popular HBO Directors Dialogues return to the New York Film Festival with four filmmakers, paired with a member of the NYFF Selection Committee as they discuss their careers, views on their own approach to making movies as well as the current state of the art of filmmaking. 

This year’s lineup will feature:

• Mathieu Amalric (The Blue Room) on Monday, September 29 at 6PM, 
• Pedro Costa (Horse Money) on Wednesday, October 8 at 6PM, 
• Mike Leigh (Mr. Turner) on Sunday, October 5 at 2:30PM, and 
• Bennett Miller (Foxcatcher) on Tuesday, October 7 at 6:30PM.

 
  

Mathieu Amalric

Mathieu Amalric entered the world of cinema with the intention of becoming a director, but his friend and close collaborator Arnaud Desplechin launched him on an alternative path when he cast him in the lead of his 1996 film My Sex Life. In the years that followed, Amalric honed his craft in dozens of films with directors as varied as Olivier Assayas, Julian Schnabel, and Steven Spielberg, and he has become one of the finest actors in modern cinema. At the same time, he has maintained an equally impressive parallel career as a filmmaker, culminating in his stunning adaptation of Georges Simenon’s The Blue Room (in which he stars with his wife Stéphanie Cléau, who co-wrote the screenplay).





Pedro Costa

In Pedro Costa’s cinema, one can see the past, present, and possible future of movies. Drawing from the traditions of John Ford and Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, Costa has created films that are at once hypnotic; pictorially and texturally stunning; attuned to the lives, dreams, and tragedies of Ventura and the Cape Verdean immigrants who are his stars; politically and historically grounded; and made in a state of absolute independence. Costa will discuss his towering new film Horse Money and the path that took him there.

 
Mike Leigh

A master filmmaker, Mike Leigh is just as well known for his working methods as he is for his finished products: throughout lengthy periods of exploration and improvisation, Leigh and his collaborators build their characters and narratives from the inside out, creating films that seem to have been woven from the very fibers of lived experience. The better part of Leigh’s work has dealt with contemporary life, but on a few occasions he has looked to the past—postwar England in Vera Drake; Victorian London in Topsy-Turvy, his marvelous film about Gilbert and Sullivan; and now, with his remarkable and long-gestating Mr. Turner, the early-19th-century world of Britain’s greatest painter (played by the inimitable Timothy Spall).
 

Bennett Miller

With one documentary (The Cruise) and three fiction films (Capote, Moneyball, and the new Foxcatcher), Bennett Miller has carved out a unique space in contemporary cinema, and touched on troubled and mysterious pockets of existence that no one else has even glanced at. In his powerful new work, he examines the “super-terrestrial twilight” world (to quote Edith Wharton) of the billionaire du Pont family’s Foxcatcher Farm, and has produced a powerfully physical tragedy that unfolds incrementally, one gesture at a time. Miller will be discussing his working relationships, his singular approach to filmmaking, and his attraction to American enigmas.
 

Tickets for the upcoming New York Film Festival range in price from $15 & $25 for most screenings to $50 & $100 for Gala evenings. Film Society members receive a discount on tickets as well as the benefit of a pre-sale opportunity.
 
For NYFF Free events: Starting one hour before the scheduled time of the event, complimentary tickets will be distributed from the box office corresponding to the event's venue. Limit one ticket per person, on a space-available basis. 

Please note that the line for tickets may form in advance of the time of distribution.
 
Please note: All sales are final. No refunds or exchanges. Tickets are subject to availability. Programs and prices are subject to change.
 
Visit filmlinc.com for more information. The updated NYFF App is available for download on iOS and Android.


 
For more information, visit www.filmlinc.com and follow @filmlinc on Twitter.

Labels: Bennett Wilson, Film Talks - On Cinema, HBO Directors Dialogs, Mathieu Amalric, Mike Leigh, New York Film Festival, NYFF 2014, Paul Thomas Anderson, Pedro Costa