Thursday, September 27, 2012
TRANSMEDIA AT NYFF 50
TRANSMEDIA AT NYFF50
THE 2012 NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL
TRANSMEDIA
A NEW WORD
FOR AN OLD IDEA
WITH NEW TECHNOLOGICAL POWER
The New York Film Festival, the Tribeca Film Festival and SXSW have all announced TRANSMEDIA programming! NYFF50 is having a special all day, two day event on transmedia, with presentations of immersive experiences, panels and workshops, running with concurrent sessions in three venues! (See below for the schedule and complete details about all the events).
What is TRANSMEDIA?
Frankly, I never heard the term before the NYFF programming announcement.
But I do know “live, immersive, interactive, site-specific, location based, loose-linked synchronous and asynchronous multimedia, with archived and streaming video, audio, music, dance, chat and social media commenting.”
I guess TRANSMEDIA is a better term.
According to Wikipedia, the term, “transmedia” was coined in 1991 by USC professor Marsha Kinder, and “Transmedia Storytelling” was later used as the title of a 2003 article in the MIT Technology Review by MIT media professor Henry Jenkins. In the storytelling community, “transmedia” has been gaining more and more currency for years.
It could become a buzzword now with a major two day event at NYFF50 and events at TFF and SXSW.
Transmedia storytelling puts an emphasis on telling a strong, coherent story using diverse media.
“CONVERGENCE” is a term also sometimes used when talking about transmedia projects. It has (at least) two similar, but not identical meanings. In the sense that is being used here, CONVERGENCE is the idea that diverse media will converge in the seamless telling of a single story.
“TRANSMEDIA” has a similar meaning, expressed in the opposite way: TRANSMEDIA is the seamless telling of a single story across diverse media.
Note: “Convergence” is actually most often used in a slightly different way, to describe the fact that many media – TV, web, radio, music can be (someday) presented on unified hardware and software. All the various media will be able to converge on a single device with software that can be used to select and play whatever you want.
Note: Cross-media is also sometimes used as a synonym for transmedia.
Some examples of transmedia are:
Sleep No More – It takes place in the fictional, but fully realized “McKittrick Hotel” (location) where the audience follows the actors from room to room (immersion). The actors sometimes engage audience members one-on-one (interaction). There is music and abstract dramatic movement. Thematically, the actions are derived from Shakespeare and Hitchcock (theater and film). Before and after you are in a cabaret. Even before that, the tickets and web site are in character – they are part of the show.
The Lion King – After the movie there was a Broadway play. There are toys.
Star Wars – The story (aka “the franchise”) is expanded into six films, a TV show, games, theme park rides, books…
American Idol – After each show, the audience votes. The voting is an integral part of the show. Then there’s “The Results,” a different but related show. There are visits by the contestants to their home town. The judges talk about the show on talk shows… it’s all part of a transmedia experience.
Playing with Reality invites a member of the audience to come on stage. That person becomes the central figure of an improvised story. (Theater with audience interaction.)
Before TV, Broadway shows would release singles of their best tunes to radio to build up interest in the show. (Asynchronous use of a different medium for marketing.)
Sports events are live, on TV, webcast, have a statistics website, and there are pre-shows and after-shows.
Many TV shows now have affiliated web sites which provide more information about the show, sometimes adding scenes that were not on TV, sometimes having the characters create blog posts, sometimes allowing the audience to interact with the characters. Many post full episodes online so that someone who misses an episode live can catch up, and not drop out as a viewer because they’ve lost the thread of the plot.
Many TV shows now have affiliated web sites which provide more information about the show, sometimes adding scenes that were not on TV, sometimes having the characters create blog posts, sometimes allowing the audience to interact with the characters. Many post full episodes online so that someone who misses an episode live can catch up, and not drop out as a viewer because they’ve lost the thread of the plot.
And, going back a bit, it has been pointed out that the Greeks used drama, music, dance, poetry performance, prose, sculpture and other arts to tell the stories of their myths and their gods.
All of these are examples of productions which employ diverse media as part of a single, unified project. (The project as a whole is sometimes called the “franchise” – especially when it was not originally conceived and designed as a transmedia project, but started out as, say, “Superman” in a comic book, and then built upon that.)
There are many media and many techniques that can be used. Of course, recent developments in computer and web technology have opened up many new possibilities.
And there are many flavors of transmedia, depending, for example, on whether the project is fiction or non-fiction, on whether live events are primary or secondary, and on whether the project is episodic, like a TV show or webisodes, or essentially singular, like a theatrical show or a feature film. A production can be conceived as transmedia storytelling, or transmedia elements can be (and often are) used for marketing and promotional support for projects conceived as film, or theater or TV. (Currently, marketing and promotional projects are where most business models and most $$ for transmedia are!)
The use of diverse media, especially giving the audience an important role, is important in some exciting new theatrical productions (such as Sleep No More). In theater, and for storytelling, live elements are usually primary.
In film circles, transmedia elements other than the film itself have usually been ancillary – used for enrichment (both intellectual enrichment and $$$ enrichment) or marketing. It is somewhat unusual for a film festival to put as much emphasis on transmedia that is significantly live as is the case in the NYFF programming detailed below.
The Film Society of Lincoln Center, in collaboration with StoryCode and KillScreen Magazine has a long running project in place to study, discuss, and experiment with transmedia. (http://www.filmlinc.com/films/series/convergence-immersive-media-at-lincoln-center ). There is a sign-up on this filmlinc convergence page to receive notices about future events. Also, to keep up with some transmedia events around the city, join the Transmedia NYC Meetup Group (http://www.meetup.com/Transmedia-New-York-City/) which is closely affiliated with StoryCode.
Music, movement, and many other media are integrated into transmedia productions. The audience, through interactivity in any number of ways, is often an important ingredient of transmedia.
In the following video, Diane Paulus, who brought Sleep No More to the American Repertory Theater (ART) in Cambridge , MA
Note: Click on the 3D-icon-button to select the viewing mode: Normal 2D; Or 3D using Red/Cyan glasses; Or on a 3D monitor; Or on a glasses-free 3D lenticular screen. Click on the gear-icon-button to set the resolution.
One of the difficulties with using ancillary media to extend a project that has been created and thought-through in some other medium is that the new element must be executed to be effective in its own right, and it must make sense as an extension of the original project, enriching rather than demeaning it. A simple example is a sequel to a great movie. It’s difficult, and it takes great effort to make the sequel work. When it works, the underlying project can be enriched and enlarged.
Another one of the difficulties with some transmedia projects is that they may be underfunded (or at least the elements of transmedia which are not central to the project are underfunded), so that the result becomes more of an experiment than a creative masterpiece. The transmedia elements are just a “demo.” Or an inexpensive (aka underfunded) promotional add-on.
It can be a goal to make a “transmedia project,” (much as one sets out to make a “feature film”). Tribeca and the Ford Foundation, in fact, have just awarded grants for transmedia projects and have announced the application period for grants for next year. (http://www.tribecafilminstitute.org/filmmakers/newmedia/about/)
Or one can tell a story, make a film, present a play, and when you look at all the elements that have gone into it, you describe it as a “transmedia project”.
Or, you can have a project and then think about all the disparate techniques and media that are now available in the toolbox of transmedia elements, and see what elements might be used to develop your project to its best advantage.
A DESCRIPTION OF THE ELEMENTS OF TRANSMEDIA
A project might be described as TRANSMEDIA if it contains some (but probably not all) of the following features (this list itself is not necessarily all of the possible transmedia elements):
LIVE
Audience members and a cast are there when it is happening! It can be a theatrical event, a convention, the telling of a story, a meet-up…
SYNCHRONOUS OR ASYNCHRONOUS
Transmedia events can all occur simultaneously, or some events can be before, after or during others. A TV series or webisodes can use web and other events in-between the main shows as marketing, enhancements to the story, or part of the story. On American Idol, the voting occurred after the performances and before the results are announced.
IMMERSIVE, LOCATION BASED, SITE-SPECIFIC
The venue (or venues) where the event takes place can be a specific part of the story. There may be many sites, as in a scavenger hunt. Murder mystery dinner parties can be about a murder that takes place in a dinner party. Tony n' Tina’s Wedding is a story that takes place at a wedding in a wedding hall. Sleep No More takes place at the “McKittrick Hotel” and the audience follows the action into the rooms in which the events occur.
In shows by Playing With Reality, a member of the audience becomes a central part of the show. This is immersion in the story, rather than immersion in a physically realized location.
Here is a backstage moment (in 3D) with the cast of Playing With Reality, (Note: Jeff Wirth, who is presenting WHISPERS IN THE DARK --see the program below-- helped coach the cast of Playing With Reality.)
INTERACTIVE
The audience can follow actors around; the actors may talk directly to the audience; the actors may talk one-on-one with members of the audience; members of the audience may become a central part of the action; the audience can collectively decide the action (as in American Idol where viewers vote to determine the outcome).
VIDEO
The project may use videos on the stage, post videos on the web about the show, post videos “by” the characters, embed or link to related videos. Theatrical films, as part of their promotion, may use videos by or for their audience, or to supplement the information in the film (for example, with an expert commenting on the material in a documentary). The Daily Show, for example, tapes extended interviews with interesting subjects and posts them on the web.
VIRTUAL REALITY, AUGMENTED REALITY, 3D,
VIBRATIONS, AROMAS & OTHER NEW TECHNOLOGIES
Why not?
WEB AND SOCIAL MEDIA, COLLABORATION AND COMMUNITY
Social media can interact with the audience. The audience can contribute to social media and form a community. (There’s an ad-hoc community, for example, forming around Sleep No More.) The characters can take a presence on social media with twitter accounts, blogs, or other postings. (For example, The Blair Witch Project used the web to promote the film before it was released.)
ANYTHING RELATED…
GAMES, MUSIC, DANCE, ABSTRACT MOTION, CLOWNING,
BOOKS, PRODUCTS…
Well, in fact, basically anything that can be related to the story or the project can become a transmedia element in the project.
LOOSE-LINKED
The elements of a transmedia project can be any kinds of media, and can either be synchronous or asynchronous with respect to other elements. There must be some method of linking to the disparate elements, but it’s not necessarily a direct hyperlink. We’ll call them LOOSE-LINKED together. It’s a generalization of “hyperlinked,” which normally means simply that when you are on a website, you can click on a link to another URL and bring up a copy of a new web page. Loose-links can be as simple as a hyperlink, or as complex as needing to complete a scavenger hunt to find the next connected media element.
The point, of course (or a point… there are others) is to use -- as appropriate -- the full panoply of available media and technologies to create the most interesting, most compelling, (and in some cases, most educational, and in some cases, most profitable) project experience possible.
TRANSMEDIA PROGRAMMING AT NYFF50 (2012)
Here is the description (from the Film Society) of the TRANSMEDIA programming event during the NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL
1 – AN OVERVIEW OF THE PROGRAM
2 – A DESCRIPTION OF EACH EVENT
3 – A SCHEDULE OF EVENTS BY DATE/TIME
4 – A SCHEDULE OF EVENTS BY VENUE
AN OVERVIEW OF THE PROGRAM
"Serving as the crowning event for the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s year round programming commitment to transmedia, NYFF Convergence will be presented on Saturday, September 29 and Sunday, September 30 at the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center with two full days of panels, workshops and “immersive experiences” designed to be an intimate gathering for creators, designers, thinkers and fans.
"Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Director of Digital Strategy, Eugene Hernandez, said, “The way stories are being told is changing, or rather expanding, thanks to new tools and technologies that allow storytellers to engage and involve an audience in new ways. With NYFF Convergence we're focusing expressly on those artists and filmmakers rather than the technology.”
"The inaugural event will include a Keynote Conversation between visionary storyteller Tommy Pallota (A SCANNER DARKLY, ”Collapsus”) and Hernandez. Pallotta was most recently responsible for the Emmy-Nominated transmedia thriller ‘Collapsus’. He first connected Richard Linklater with animation when he produced the award-winning feature film WAKING LIFE. He followed up with Philip K. Dick’s A SCANNER DARKLY, starring Keanu Reeves and Robert Downey Jr. Pallotta is currently directing a hybrid documentary about Somali pirates and survival in a failed state called, THE LAST HIJACK.
"Other special guests include Bill Plympton, Andrew Evans, Nick Bernadone, Andrea Phillips, Mark Harris, Caitlin Burns, Jeff Wirth, George Strayton, Amy Neswald, Steve Schultz, Laura Steritt, Jason DeMarco, Brian Fountain, Blaine Graboyes, Jamin Warren, Barry Alexander Brown, Michael Knowlton, Nina Lassam, Amanda Harvard, James Carter, Daniel Laikind, Lindsay Ellis, Jeremy Redleaf, Scott Newman, Garry Delfiner, Lina Srivistava, Pamela Vitale, and many more.
"Highlights of the two-day event include immersive experiences for the attendees. The premiere of the film component of indie transmedia projectMCCARREN PARK features an educational, multiplatform experience that pits Brooklyn hipsters against raging dinosaurs. RENGA, a feature length film in which the audience completely controls the Space Invaders-like action, surviving or perishing together.
"TEDxUpperWestSide BREAK will be an exploration of what story means in the 21st Century all done in the signature TED style. TRANSMEDIA TEST KITCHEN will put the audience in the middle of a first-of-its-kind exhibition-style transmedia showdown between two competing storytelling teams, and WHISPERS IN THE DARK is an immersive fiction experience that plunges a non-actor participant into a ghost story that plays out over 24 hours in settings throughoutNew York City .
"Panels announced will feature discussions with transmedia content innovators and a look at how the explosion of digital technologies have helped and hindered storytelling. Other topics that will be explored will include showing and sharing the similarities and differences in producing for multiple platforms, dynamic new opportunities for non-profits, and looking at how transmedia can provide different forms of artistic expression outside of the traditional record release format for musicians, among other topics.
"Transmedia workshops will offer attendees a guide to producing cross-platform projects on a budget, offer pitching strategies, and instruction on developing story and structure for the aspiring transmedia producer in a world where the audiences can become the main characters."
"Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Director of Digital Strategy, Eugene Hernandez, said, “The way stories are being told is changing, or rather expanding, thanks to new tools and technologies that allow storytellers to engage and involve an audience in new ways. With NYFF Convergence we're focusing expressly on those artists and filmmakers rather than the technology.”
"The inaugural event will include a Keynote Conversation between visionary storyteller Tommy Pallota (A SCANNER DARKLY, ”Collapsus”) and Hernandez. Pallotta was most recently responsible for the Emmy-Nominated transmedia thriller ‘Collapsus’. He first connected Richard Linklater with animation when he produced the award-winning feature film WAKING LIFE. He followed up with Philip K. Dick’s A SCANNER DARKLY, starring Keanu Reeves and Robert Downey Jr. Pallotta is currently directing a hybrid documentary about Somali pirates and survival in a failed state called, THE LAST HIJACK.
"Other special guests include Bill Plympton, Andrew Evans, Nick Bernadone, Andrea Phillips, Mark Harris, Caitlin Burns, Jeff Wirth, George Strayton, Amy Neswald, Steve Schultz, Laura Steritt, Jason DeMarco, Brian Fountain, Blaine Graboyes, Jamin Warren, Barry Alexander Brown, Michael Knowlton, Nina Lassam, Amanda Harvard, James Carter, Daniel Laikind, Lindsay Ellis, Jeremy Redleaf, Scott Newman, Garry Delfiner, Lina Srivistava, Pamela Vitale, and many more.
"Highlights of the two-day event include immersive experiences for the attendees. The premiere of the film component of indie transmedia project
"TEDxUpperWestSide BREAK will be an exploration of what story means in the 21st Century all done in the signature TED style. TRANSMEDIA TEST KITCHEN will put the audience in the middle of a first-of-its-kind exhibition-style transmedia showdown between two competing storytelling teams, and WHISPERS IN THE DARK is an immersive fiction experience that plunges a non-actor participant into a ghost story that plays out over 24 hours in settings throughout
"Panels announced will feature discussions with transmedia content innovators and a look at how the explosion of digital technologies have helped and hindered storytelling. Other topics that will be explored will include showing and sharing the similarities and differences in producing for multiple platforms, dynamic new opportunities for non-profits, and looking at how transmedia can provide different forms of artistic expression outside of the traditional record release format for musicians, among other topics.
"Transmedia workshops will offer attendees a guide to producing cross-platform projects on a budget, offer pitching strategies, and instruction on developing story and structure for the aspiring transmedia producer in a world where the audiences can become the main characters."
EVENT DESCRIPTIONS
NYFF CONVERGENCE
PANELS
BEST OF BREED Transmedia Content Innovators
Sunday, September 30 (12:00–1:00), BEALE
Presented in collaboration with Digital Hollywood
Guests: Daniel Laikind (Stickfigure Productions); Lindsay Ellis (Nostalgia Chick, Blip); Jeremy Redleaf (Brackets Creative): Scott Newman (Revel In New York), Gary Delfiner (Popcornflix.com)
From web series, content applications, social media, and beyond, this panel of established creators will discuss the state-of-the art of transmedia, where it has been and where it is going in a lively debate-style presentation.
BRIDGING THE TECH DIVIDE
Saturday, September 29 (4:30-5:30) GILMAN
Speakers: Mark Harris (THE LOST CHILDREN), Barry Alexander Brown (LAST LOOKS), Michael Knowlton (Murmur, StoryCode)
The recent popularity of transmedia storytelling has been enabled by the explosion of digital technologies that most of us take for granted. From the front lines of the movement - the creators, builders, and fans - new technologies are born everyday that may be useful tools in telling stories. But these same elements that excite the core audience may very well be a barrier to entry for a broad portion of the population. This panel will explore how we bring transmedia into more homes, free it from cult status, and create experiences designed for our moms. Join filmmaker/technologist Mark Harris (creator of immersive film experience THE LOST CHILDREN), filmmaker Barry Alexander Brown (Editor on DO THE RIGHT THING, MALCOLM X, Creator of LAST LOOKS), and Mike Knowlton (Murmur Co, Co-founder of StoryCode) for what promises to be a lively discussion.
LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION: Place-based Storytelling
Saturday, September 29 (11:30-12:30); BEALE
Speakers: Steve Schultz, CEO Moveable Feast Media; Andrew Evans from National Geographic ; Bill Plympton, animator; Casey Neistat, filmmaker
In this dynamic presentation, we will explore location as a backdrop for filmed entertainment and compelling narrative. In the first half of the presentation, three leading-edge storytellers will present their “films”, each of which were created on the Moveable Feast Mobile Media platform for location-based storytelling. These filmmakers will then join Steve Schultz, creator of Moveable Feast, to discuss the future of multimedia in a geo-tagged world. The panel will cover topics including immersion, curation, and the interplay between “online experiences” and “offline experiences”. The discussion will also explore the meaning of “relevance” as it relates to audiences who are fully mobile-enabled.
MULTIPLE PRODUCERS, MULTIPLE PLATFORMS
Saturday, September 29 (1:00-2:00) AMP
Presenter: Produced in Partnership with the Producer’s Guild of America, East.
Moderator:
Guests: TBD
Today's producers are working on every platform including film, TV, social, games, mobile, events, comics, ARGs, and more. This panel features members from The Producers Guild (PGA) who will share the intimate details on the past, present, and future of producing for multi-platform distribution. Each presenter will discuss a similarly sized project (approximately $1MM budget) with a focus on a specific platform. We will discuss the process, team, budget, tools, goals, metrics, marketing, audience, and business structure of each project, as well as push each producer to predict the future of their work and industry. Our goal is to show and share the similarities and differences in producing for multiple platforms and to get a sense of how these formats are blending to create new opportunities for producers and new experiences for viewers. This session will be accessible and relevant to all audiences, and will combine technical, business, and creative concepts to present a complete picture of producing for today’s platforms.
NON PROFIT DESIGN
Sunday, September 30 (1:00-2:00) AMP
Guests: Lina Srivistava (Mod)
Immersive storytelling presents many new opportunities for traditional cultural institutions to engage new audiences. After spending the day in intensive small group discussion, leaders from several
NOVELS IN NEW FORMS
Sunday, September 30 (10:00-11:00) BEALE
Presented in collaboration with Digital
Guests: Nina Lassam; Amanda Harvard (SURVIVORS SERIES, IMMERSEDITION)
Authors and technologists discuss online publishing and the power of the tablet computer as a storytelling tool. It’s a world of boundless possibilities, time for a deep dive!
WIN/WIN: Transmedia, Adult Swim, and it’s Musical Partnerships
Saturday, September 29 (11:00-12:00); AMP
Speakers: Laura Steritt, Writer: Starlight Runner, Founder: Transchordian; Jason DeMarco, Adult Swim/Cartoon Network
As the music industry changes, musicians and record labels must create new revenue streams and alternative avenues to potential fans. Transmedia storytelling can not only fulfill these needs, but also provide different forms of artistic expression outside of the traditional record release format. Almost since its inception, the television network Adult Swim has established a powerful relationship with various musicians and independent record companies. With their classic bumps, music video production, original programming, and even their own label, Adult Swim has created innovative content that benefits all parties involved: the network, the musician, and the viewers. This panel brings together Jason DeMarco, VP of Strategic Marketing & Promotions and overseer of all music programs, and two of his co-creators, [musician], and [record label head], to speak to the process and benefits of their creative partnerships.
WORK IN PROGRESS: NY_HEARTS
Sunday, September 30 (10:30-11:30) GILMAN
Guests: James Carter, Cast of NY_HEARTS: LES
NY_Hearts blends love stories with a multimedia storytelling iPhone app, and the sights and sounds of
WRITING TRANSMEDIA
Saturday, September 29 (3:00-4:00) AMP
Presenter: Presented in Partnership with Writer’s Guild of America, East
Guests: Nick Bernadone (30 ROCK); George Strayton (TRANSFORMERS)
Writing for open, interactive worlds is a wholly different enterprise than creating a typical screenplay. This panel will feature writers from television, the web, and feature films and explore the creative process from the writer’s unique perspective.
WORKSHOPS
TRANSMEDIA ON $8.00 A DAY
Saturday, September 29 (12:30-1:30) - GILMAN
Presenter: Brian Fountain
The world of transmedia is a beautiful place to visit but telling your story there can get expensive quickly. Whether you are seasoned producer or a greenhorn looking to dip your toe into the water, this handy guide will show you how to affordably produce a compelling cross-platform project without compromising on quality. Join tour guide Brian Fountain, and discover some of Transmedia’s best kept secrets. You’ll learn about emerging technologies that are affordable or free. Plus insider secrets on how to recruit top talent to your next project. All for the price of a Starbucks Venti Caramel Macchiato per day.
XYEYE: STORY PITCH PROGRAM
Sunday, September (2:30-3:30), GILMAN
Presented by: Pamela Vitale, XYEYE
Engage yourself in our transmedia frenzy! Join the team from XYEYE as they present their nine step strategy mapping formula in a play-by-play demonstration with a real client during our multi-media presentation. Learn about our process, its origins, purpose and cycle from beginning to end and even become a part of the action, riffing with the XYEYE as they brainstorm live. Watch an idea grow into a concept and end as a strategic plan with blazing momentum.
YOU’RE SUCH A CHARACTER: New Roles for Audiences in Storytelling
Sunday, September 30 (11:00-12:00), AMP
Presenter: Andrea Phillips
Transmedia forms can turn the relationship between the audience and the story on its head. A compelling transmedia narrative can turn the audience from a collection of passive consumers into an active character in the story — a character whose actions are absolutely pivotal in driving the plot forward. That feeling of agency can make an already-great story into something even more amazing. We'll discuss how to structure a story so that the audience has a part to play, too, and explain why it can create a more intense experience for a player -- and ultimately even lets a creator tap into a whole new range of emotions, like pride, frustration, and guilt.
IMMERSIVE EXPERIENCES
MCCARREN PARK PART I: HIPSTER DINOS, TRANSMEDIA, and Producing Something for Nothing
Saturday, September 29 (2:00-3:00) BEALE
Presenters:
Date: Saturday, September 29 (4:00-5:00) BEALE
Presenters: Caitlin Burns
"Nothing ruins a good party like a Velociraptor attack. And when a group of urban hipsters gets caught up in a whirlwind of Mesozoic fury, it’ll take more than PBR and vinyl records to get them out alive."
RENGA: THE NYC PREMIERE!
Sunday, September 30 (12:30-2:00) GILMAN
Guests: Adam Russell & Jonathan Sear, Dir.
Renga is about finding a way home. Attacked and left for dead, our hero must carefully marshal their resources to build a new ship, confront their nemesis and finally return home. Only this hero isn't visible on the screen - it's the entire audience, working collectively to control the action using laser pointers directed at the screen. Turning the traditional hero's journey on its head, Renga asks the question - what if the ultimate reward can only be grasped by many hands? The show combines real-time crowd interaction technology, retro videogame aesthetics and a wry sense of humor to bring the audience together and leave them feeling a deep sense of camaraderie. The title refers to a form of collaborative poetry with 100 verses that blossomed in 15th century
TEDxUpperWestSide BREAK
Saturday, September 29 (5:00-6:00), AMP
Presented by: TEDxUWS
Story is everywhere. In recounting to your friends over drinks, "You will not believe what happened on the subway," in epic
TRANSMEDIA TEST KITCHEN
Sunday, September 30 (3:00-4:00), AMP
Presented by: Brian Fountain and Matt Bolish
Two teams enter, but only one will leave victorious. Witness this first-of-its-kind exhibition-style transmedia showdown. Over the course of an hour, two teams of elite storytellers will conceive, build and pitch their best cross-media story. Not crazy enough for you? Wait! There’s more. In an unforeseen and dramatic twist, which you will already know about because you are reading this now, the teams learn they must also incorporate a secret ingredient. Spoiler Alert! The secret ingredient is you, the audience. That’s right you will be part of history. And who will decide the fate of these two teams? Some Ivy-league eggheads? Nope. Some B-list celebrities? Not happening! Those guys are way too expensive to book. In a stunning conflict of interest, you (yes you!) will be casting your vote to decide the outcome of this event. One team will be crowned victorious. The other will suffer the deep humility of having to watch the other team being crowned victorious.
WHISPERS IN THE DARK
Sunday, September 30 (2:00-3:00) BEALE
Presented by: Jeff Wirth
Whispers in the Dark is an immersive fiction experience in which a non-actor participant will become the lead character in a story that plays out over 24 hours in settings throughout
THE SCHEDULE OF EVENTS BY DATE/TIME
PLEASE CHECK THE OFFICIAL SITE
FOR LAST MINUTE CHANGES TO THE SCHEDULE!!!
29SATURDAY
- Keynote Conversation: Tommy Pallotta10:00am
- Adult Swim and the Power of Music Partnerships11:00am
- Location, Location, Location: The Future of Film In a Geotagged World11:30am
- Transmedia on $8.00 a Day12:30pm
- Multiple Producers, Multiple Platforms1:00pm
- McCarren Park Part I: Hipster Dinos, Transmedia, and Producing Something for Nothing2:00pm
- Modding Minecraft: The Voxel Box and the Art of Immersion2:30pm
- Writing Transmedia
3:00pm - McCarren Park Part II: Hipster Dinos, Transmedia, and How to Get Noticed Without Paying For It4:00pm
- Bridging the Tech Divide4:30pm
SUNDAY
- Novels in New Forms10:00am
- Work in Progress: NY_Hearts10:30am
- You’re Such a Character: New Roles for Audiences in Storytelling11:00am
- Best of Breed Transmedia Content Innovators12:00pm
- Transmedia Test Kitchen1:00pm
- Whispers in the Dark2:00pm
- XYEYE_storyFormula: Ingenuity & Vertical Immersion Meet2:30pm
- Renga: The NYC Premiere!3:00pm
- Keynote Conversation: Jason Wishnow
LINKS
For a preview of the Main Slate of films at The New York Film Festival 2012 see:
NYFF 50 – MAIN SLATE
DESCRIBING TRANSMEDIA
WIKIPEDIA – TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING
THE TECHNOLOGY REVIEW INTRODUCTION TO TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING
TRANSMEDIA - AN ARTICLE AND A VIDEO INTERVIEW
TRANSMEDIA AT NYFF50
THE NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL 2012
FILM SOCIETY OF LINCOLN CENTER
TRANSMEDIA AT FILMLINC
COLLABORATORS ON THE
CONVERGENCE/TRANSMEDIA PROJECT
AT FILMLINC
CONVERGENCE/TRANSMEDIA PROJECT
AT FILMLINC
STORYCODE
KILL SCREEN MAGAZINE
SITES RELATED TO IMMERSIVE EXPERIENCE
TRANSMEDIA PROGRAMMING AT NYFF50
NY HEARTS – OFFICIAL SITE
WHISPERS IN THE DARK – OFFICIAL SITES
SIGN-UP FOR WIRTH CREATIVE ANNOUNCEMENTS (AND AUDITIONS!)
http://wirthcreative.us2.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=ec9eb30effb75f850eb2abdee&id=214eb8b14e
TRIBECA
TRANSMEDIA AT TRIBECA
TRANSMEDIA GRANTS FROM TRIBECA
SXSW
TRANSMEDIA AT SXSW
SXSW INTERACTIVE 2013
QPORIT
QPORIT – Preview: THE NYFF50 MAIN SLATE
QPORIT ON SLEEP NO MORE
QPORIT ON DIANE PAULUS AND RANDY WEINER
QPORIT ON OCULUS RIFT – VR HEADSET
(The significance of this device for transmedia is that it promises a whole slew of new types of media opportunities.)
MORE ABOUT TRANSMEDIA
TRANSMEDIA - AN ARTICLE
TRANSMEDIA NEWSWIRE
TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING IN ACTION
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Thursday, August 16, 2012
2012 NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL -- NYFF50!
THE FILM SOCIETY OF LINCOLN CENTER
2012 NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL
NYFF 50
September 28-October 14
September 28-October 14
MAIN SLATE
The festival will open with Ang Lee's LIFE OF PI
NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL 2012
and close with Zemeckis' FLIGHT starring Denzel Washington.
CLOSING NIGHT
NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL 2012
The selections include major award winners at major prize-awarding festivals (NYFF itself does not award prizes... other than being accepted), films by important new directors and major returning directors, and films of many styles, from straight-forward narrative, to absurdist, surrealist cinema. The oldest filmmaker is 90 year old Alain Renais, who challenges with YOU AIN'T SEEN NOTHIN' YET. Renais is a returning filmmaker: his film MURIEL, OR THE TIME OF RETURN screened at the very first New York Film Festival!
A quartet of World Premieres among the main slate lineup include Alan Berliner’s unflinching essay on the fragility of being human, FIRST COUSIN ONCE REMOVED, joining the Opening Night, Centerpiece and Closing Night Gala trio of Ang Lee’s LIFE OF PI, (Opening Night), David Chase’s NOT FADE AWAY (Centerpiece) and Robert Zemeckis’s FLIGHT (Closing Night).
Films that have won awards earlier this year at major festivals and are coming to NY for the first time include:
- The universally acclaimed winner of the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, AMOUR, Michael Haneke’s portrait of a couple dealing with the ravages of old age, with Haneke returning to NYFF following the presentation of THE WHITE RIBBON in 2009;
- Christian Petzold’s Cold War thriller, BARBARA, a winner of the SIlver Bear for Best Director at this year’s Berlin Film Festival;
- Cristian Mungiu’s BEYOND THE HILLS, a portrait of dogma at odds with personal liberty in a society still emerging from the shadow of Communism, featuring screen newcomers Flutur and Stratan who shared the Best Actress prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, where Mungiu also received the Best Screenplay award. The presentation will also mark a return to the film festival by Mungiu (4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS AND 2 DAYS, NYFF 2007).
- Two debut features include Antonio Mendez Esparza’s film about the US/Mexican border experience, HERE AND THERE, the winner of the Grand Prize at this year’s Critics Week in Cannes, and Song Fang’s film about a woman that travels from Beijing to Nanjing for a visit with her family, MEMORIES LOOK AT ME, the winner of the Best First Feature prize at this year’s Locarno Film Festival.
- Pablo Larrain’s engrossing political thriller NO, starring Gael Garcia Bernal, was the winner of the top prize in this year’s Directors’ Fortnight in Cannes, and
- Miguel Gomes’s surrealist drama TABU was the winner of the Alfred Bauer Prize (for a work of particular innovation) and FIPRESCI (International Film Critics) award at this year’s Berlin Film Festival.
Additional returning NYFF filmmakers are; João Pedro Rodrigues (TO DIE LIKE A MAN, NYFF 2009) with THE LAST TIME I SAW MACAO; Olivier Assayas (CARLOS, NYFF 2010), with SOMETHING IN THE AIR; Lucien Castaing-Taylor (SWEETGRASS, NYFF 2009) and Véréna Paravel (FOREIGN PARTS, NYFF 2010), with LEVIATHAN; Abbas Kiarostami (CERTIFIED COPY, NYFF 2010), with LIKE SOMEONE IN LOVE; and -- as mentioned -- the 90-year-old Alain Resnais, whose MURIEL, OR THE TIME OF RETURN screened at the very first New York Film Festival, returns with YOU AIN’T SEEN NOTHING YET.
NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL 2012
Founded in 1963, the New York Film Festival is North America’s second oldest film festival, launching just as the auteur theory and European cinematic modernism were crashing upon the shores of American film culture. 50 years later, NYFF continues to introduce audiences to the most exciting, innovative and accomplished works of world cinema.
Additional special events, sidebars, panels and first–time programs will be announced in subsequent weeks as well as additional programming to complement the main-slate of films, including NYFF’s Masterworks programs and Views from the Avant-Garde, which will include additional works by Main Slate filmmakers João Pedro Rodrigues and Raul Ruiz.
The 50th New York Film Festival main-slate:
Opening Night Gala Selection
LIFE OF PI
Director: Ang Lee
Centerpiece Gala Selection
NOT FADE AWAY
Director: David Chase
Closing Night Gala Selection
FLIGHT
Director: Robert Zemeckis
AMOUR
Director: Michael Haneke
ARAF – SOMEWHERE IN BETWEEN
Director: Yeşim Ustaoğlu
BARBARA
Director: Christian Petzold
BEYOND THE HILLS (După dealuri)
Director: Cristian Mungiu
BWAKAW
Director: Jun Robles Lana
CAESAR MUST DIE (Cesare deve morire)
Directors: Paolo and Vittorio Taviani
CAMILLE REWINDS (Camille redouble)
Director: Noémie Lvovsky
THE DEAD MAN AND BEING HAPPY (El muerto y ser feliz)
Director: Javier Rebello
FILL THE VOID (Lemale et ha'halal)
Director: Rama Burshtein
FIRST COUSIN ONCE REMOVED
Director: Alan Berliner
FRANCES HA
Director: Noah Baumbach
THE GATEKEEPERS (Shomerei Ha’saf)
Director: Dror Moreh
GINGER AND ROSA
Director: Sally Potter
HERE AND THERE (Aquí y Allá)
Director: Antonio Mendez Esparza
HOLY MOTORS
Director: Leos Carax
HYDE PARK ON HUDSON
Director: Roger Michell
KINSHASA KIDS
Director: Marc-Henri Wajnberg
THE LAST TIME I SAW MACAO (A Última Vez Que Vi Macau)
Director: João Pedro Rodrigues
LEVIATHAN
Directors: Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Véréna Paravel
LIKE SOMEONE IN LOVE
Director: Abbas Kiarostami
LINES OF WELLINGTON (Linhas de Wellington)
Director: Valeria Sarmiento
MEMORIES LOOK AT ME (Ji Yi Wang Zhe Wo)
Director: Song Fang
NIGHT ACROSS THE STREET (La Noche de enfrente)
Director: Raul Ruiz
NO
Director: Pablo Larrain
OUR CHILDREN (À perdre la raison)
Director: Joachim Lafosse
PASSION
Director: Brian De Palma
SOMETHING IN THE AIR (Après Mai)
Director: Olivier Assayas
TABU
Director: Miguel Gomes
YOU AIN’T SEEN NOTHIN’ YET (Vous n'avez encore rien vu)
Director: Alain Resnais
The selection committee, chaired by Peña also includes: Melissa Anderson, Contributor, Village Voice; Scott Foundas, Associate Program Director, The Film Society of Lincoln Center; Todd McCarthy, Chief Film Critic, The Hollywood Reporter; and Amy Taubin, Contributing Editor, Film Comment and Sight and Sound.
General Public tickets will be available September 9th. There will be an advance ticketing opportunity for Film Society of Lincoln Center Patrons and Members prior to that date. For more information visit www.Filmlinc.com/NYFF or call 212 875 5601.
50TH NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL
Films & Descriptions
AMOUR (2012) 127min
Director: Michael Haneke
Country: Austria/France/Germany
The universally acclaimed winner of the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, AMOUR is arguably Michael Haneke’s crowning achievement to date, a portrait of a couple dealing with the ravages of old age that is as compassionate as it is merciless. The great veteran French actors Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva are staggering as Georges and Anne, long-married music teachers living out their final years surrounded by the comforts of books and music in their warm Paris apartment. After Anne suffers a stroke, Georges attends to her with firmness shot through with love. The underlying unease, as well as some abrupt surprises, are hardly unexpected from Haneke, who challenges the viewer to confront the experience of his characters as directly as he does. But he rewards the effort with a film that is all the more moving for its complete avoidance of sentimentality. An unquestionable masterpiece. A Sony Pictures Classics release.
ARAF – SOMEWHERE IN BETWEEN (2012) 124min
Director: Yeşim Ustaoğlu
Country: Turkey/France/Germany
The title refers as much to the film’s main location—a tiny Turkish town comprised of no more than a few houses and a large motorway rest stop where the locals work impossibly long hours—as it does to adolescence, the way station where the child transforms into an adult. What seems at first like a piece of low-key realism comes into dramatic focus when an adolescent girl begins an obsessive sexual relationship with a middle-aged trucker, fueling the fury of the teen-aged boy who hoped to marry her. Yesim Ustaoglu, whose debut feature JOURNEY TO THE SUN is one of the treasures of the New Turkish cinema, is not only a visual poet of her country’s harshly beautiful landscapes; she also depicts with great empathy and uncompromising honesty the heart’s desires and the body’s needs.
BARBARA (2012) 105min
Director: Christian Petzold
Country: Germany
Set in 1980, Christian Petzold’s latest masterfully controlled, absorbing work centers around a doctor—played by the incomparable Nina Hoss, in her fifth film with the director—exiled to a small town from East Berlin as punishment for applying for an exit visa from the GDR. Planning to flee for Denmark with her boyfriend, Barbara remains icy and withdrawn around her colleagues, particularly with the lead physician (the excellent Ronald Zehrfeld), who is hiding a secret of his own. With her patients, however, the guarded doctor is kind, warm, and protective, even risking her own safety for one of her charges. This subtle, perfectly calibrated Cold War thriller expertly details the costs of telling and withholding the truth. Winner of the SIlver Bear for Best Director at this year’s Berlin Film Festival. An Adopt Films Release.
BEYOND THE HILLS (După dealuri) (2012) 150min
Director: Cristian Mungiu
Country: Romania
This harrowing, visually stunning new film from director Cristian Mungiu (4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS AND 2 DAYS) unfolds in and around a remote monastery where pious young women toil dutifully under the ever-watchful eye of an austere priest known as Papa (the excellent Valeriu Andriuta). As the film opens, Alina (Cristina Flutur) arrives to visit her friend Voichita (Cosmina Stratan), one of the nuns in training. As children, the two women lived together in an orphanage where the tough, short-tempered Alina served as a protector for her more delicate friend. Now, Alina wants Voichita to leave her cloistered life and return with her to Germany, but as the fateful hour draws near, Voichita seems disinclined to go, and so Alina stays on for a while, which is when the real trouble begins. Inspired by a case of alleged demonic possession that occurred in Romania’s Moldova region in 2005, BEYOND THE HILLS is not a supernatural film but rather an all too believable portrait of dogma at odds with personal liberty in a society still emerging from the shadow of Communism. For their remarkable lead performances, screen newcomers Flutur and Stratan shared the Best Actress prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, where Mungiu also received the Best Screenplay award. A Sundance Selects release.
BWAKAW (2012) 110min
Director: Jun Robles Lana
Country: Philippines
BWAKAW is the film you hope for at any festival, a work by an unknown director that comes out of nowhere to captivate and enthrall with its emotional truth, high humor and sage assessment of the human condition. Filipino cinema great Eddie Garcia gives a career-capping performance as Rene, a 70-plus single gent in a quiet provincial town who, having alienated almost everyone with his caustic comments, is resigned to seeing out his days alone, save for the company of his loyal canine companion (whose name gives the movie its title). Rene has his secrets but is disinclined to share them until he befriends a brawny tricycle taxi driver. Employing frequent outrageous humor, director Jun Robles Lana elegantly captures the quality of everyday life in this backwater while crafting a superior character study of a man who has allowed most of life to pass him by until an emotional jolt emboldens him to go where he's never dared venture before.
CAESAR MUST DIE (Cesare deve morire) (2012) 76min
Directors: Paolo and Vittorio Taviani
Country: Italy
Paolo and Vittorio Taviani (Padre Padrone, The Night of the Shooting Stars) triumphantly reasserted their eminence among modern Italian directors by winning the Golden Bear at this year’s Berlin Film Festival with CAESAR MUST DIE. The sight of inmates putting on a play in prison is not entirely new, but beginning with the brilliant opening scenes of convicts with wildly differing accents and backgrounds auditioning for the immortal roles of Brutus, Anthony, Cassius and, most impressively and menacingly, the title character in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, this approach resonates in ways that both Pirandello and Brecht would have appreciated. The play’s director must not only help guide these amateurs in their performances, but is also forced to police real-life rivalries and rages that threaten to derail the production before it can ever be seen. Vital, provocative and entirely engaging, CAESAR marks a wonderful late-career triumph for this still-formidable brother act. An Adopt Films release.
CAMILLE REWINDS (Camille redouble) (2012) 110min
Director: Noémie Lvovsky
Country: France
Noémie Lvovsky’s ebullient twist on the comedy of remarriage transposes Frances Ford Coppola’s PEGGY SUE GOT MARRIED to present day France, which means that when the titular Camille—who’s in the throes of divorcing her husband of 25 years—passes out drunk, she wakes up as a high school senior in the mid-1980s (leg warmers, “Walking on Sunshine” on the turntable, and no cell phones in sight.) Lvovsky is hilarious and touchingly vulnerable as Camille. Hard as she tries to avoid the classmate (Samir Guesmi) who she knows will become her first love, her husband, and the father of her daughter, and who will ditch her after she turns 40, she nevertheless winds up in his arms. Her double take, just before their lips meet for a first kiss the second time around, is indescribably delicious. In the tiny role of a watchmaker who may have set Camille’s time travel in motion, New Wave icon Jean-Pierre Léaud is perfect.
THE DEAD MAN AND BEING HAPPY (El muerto y ser feliz) (2012) 94min
Director: Javier Rebello
Country: Spain/Argentina
For his third feature, the gifted Spanish director Javier Rebollo (WOMAN WITHOUT PIANO) has decamped to Argentina and created a literate, screwball road movie that Borges surely would have loved. The “dead man” of the title is Santos (veteran Spanish screen star José Sacristán), a cancer-stricken hired killer who flees his Buenos Aires hospital bed and sets off on one last assignment. It is a journey that takes him through an interior Argentina rarely glimpsed in movies, from the Cordoba resort town of La Cumbrecita (with its disproportionate—and disconcerting—population of elderly Germans) to the northern province of Santiago del Estero. Along the way, Santos finds himself joined by Alejandra (the wonderful Roxana Blanco), an attractive middle-aged woman who impulsively jumps into his vintage Ford Falcon at a gas station and soon thwarts him from his intended path. At one point, our curious couple stops off at a decrepit beach town described by one of the film’s dueling voice-over narrators as “a strange mix of paradise and apocalypse”—which, as it happens, also perfectly sums up Rebollo’s playful and unexpectedly moving reverie on love, death and the open highway.
FILL THE VOID (Lemale et ha'halal) (2012) 90min
Director: Rama Burshtein
Country: Israel
With her first dramatic feature, writer-director Rama Burshtein has created a work that is very likely unprecedented: a woman's view of Tel Aviv's ultra-orthodox Hasidic community from the inside. Typically, a story about a devout 18-year-old Israeli being pressured to marry the husband of her late sister, would include the option of the woman declaring her independence in the modern fashion. Such a choice is not even on the table in this cloistered, intimately rendered world where religious law, tradition and the rabbis' word are absolute. A graduate of the Sam Spiegel Film and Television School in Jerusalem and Hassidic herself, Burshtein startlingly brings to life a world known to few in this provocative, undeniably talented debut from a most unlikely source.
WORLD PREMIERE
FIRST COUSIN ONCE REMOVED (2012) 78min
Director: Alan Berliner
Country: USA
Sometime in the new millennium, Edwin Honig—the distinguished poet, translator, critic and university professor—began showing signs of Alzheimer’s disease, which gradually but inexorably brought on the loss of his memory, command of language and relation to the past. Filmmaker Alan Berliner—for whom Honig was a cousin, a friend and a mentor—documented their meetings over five years; his new film chronicles the steady decline of Honig’s mind and body, but also the strength and stamina of his spirit, as well as his innate charm and wonderfully playful way with words and sounds. Occasional moments of lucidity offer an insight as to the ways in which Honig attempts to make sense out of what is happening to him. FIRST COUSIN ONCE REMOVED is an unflinching essay on the fragility of being human, and a stark reminder of the profound role that memory plays in all of our lives. An HBO Documentary Films release.
WORLD PREMIERE
FLIGHT (2012) 138min
Director: Robert Zemeckis
Country: USA
Triumphantly returning to live-action filmmaking for the first time since Cast Away 12 years ago, Robert Zemeckis teams with Denzel Washington on the tense and edgy thriller FLIGHT. In a brilliant, heart-stopping sequence, pilot Whip Whitacker (Washington), after an all-nighter of booze, sex and drugs, boldly guides a crippled airliner to a crash landing that nearly all the passengers survive. Although he is acclaimed as a hero, the legal, moral and ethical aspects of Whip’s behavior before and after the accident are much more ambiguous than initially meet the public eye. A study of addiction far more complex than the norm, FLIGHT is a compelling drama anchored by a great performance from one of our most distinguished actors. John Goodman, Don Cheadle, Melissa Leo and Kelly Reilly offer vibrant supporting turns in what is certain to be one of the most talked-about movies of the season. A Paramount Pictures release.
FRANCES HA (2012) 86min
Director: Noah Baumbach
Country: USA
Reminiscent of Jean-Luc Godard’s celebration of the mystery and vulnerability of his muse Anna Karina in BANDE Á PART, Noah Baumbach’s love poem to Greta Gerwig is an effervescent, seeming effortless comedy about a young woman taking the first shaky, post-Ivy League steps in what will become her real life. Gerwig, who also co-wrote the script, proves herself far more articulate and funny than any of her former Mumblecore colleagues. Her Frances arrives in New York determined to become a post-modern dancer despite the fact that she’s constantly falling over her feet or putting one of them in her mouth. The movie is lightning-in-a-bottle–deft, sophisticated, and, in its myriad shades of digital gray, radiantly beautiful in a brand new way.
THE GATEKEEPERS (Shomerei Ha’saf) (2012) 90min
Director: Dror Moreh
Country: Israel
Since its stunning military victory in 1967, Israel has hoped to transform its battlefield success into the basis for long-lasting peace. Simply put, this hasn’t happened: 45 years later, violence continues unabated while the mistrust between both sides increases daily. In what can only be called an historic achievement, filmmaker Dror Moreh has brought together six former heads of the Shin Bet, Israel’s Secret Service, who reflect on their successes and failures to maintain security while responding to the shifting politics and imperatives of the “peace process.” Each man weighs in on topics ranging from preemptive strikes to confronting terrorists both Palestinian and Israeli; their thoughts and responses are candid, well-informed and rarely short of remarkable. An insider’s guide—and what insiders!—to five decades of Israeli history, THE GATEKEEPERS will surely be one of the most widely and hotly discussed films of the year.
A Sony Pictures Classics release.
GINGER AND ROSA (2012) 89min
Director: Sally Potter
Country: UK
In 1962 London, two teenage girls, best friends since they were toddlers, are driven apart by a scandalous betrayal. Making her NYFF debut, writer-director Sally Potter (ORLANDO, ND/NF 1993) has crafted an intimate, riveting coming-of-age story—one made all the more powerful by a revelatory performance by Elle Fanning as the bright, anxious Ginger, increasingly affected by both the misery of her parents (deftly played by Alessandro Nivola and Christina Hendricks) and the era’s all-too-real fears of nuclear destruction. As her private dramas unfold against the backdrop of broader historical terrors, Ginger proves to be one of cinema’s most fascinating and formidable young heroines. Talented newcomer Alice Englert, the daughter of filmmaker Jane Campion, makes her impressive feature film debut as the troubled Rosa.
HERE AND THERE (Aquí y Allá) (2012) 110min
Director: Antonio Mendez Esparza
Country: Spain/USA/Mexico
Pedro returns home to a small mountain village in Guerrero, Mexico after years of working in the U.S. His daughters feel more distant that he imagined, but his wife Teresa is delighted he’s back. With the money he’s earned he can create a better life for his family, and maybe even start the band with his cousins he’s dreamed about for years. But work back home remains scarce, and the temptation of heading back north of the border remains as strong as ever. Antonio Mendez Esparza has made a most remarkable debut; rarely, if ever, has a film about US/Mexican border experience felt so fresh or authentic. Using non-professionals, Mendez Esparza gets remarkably nuanced performances that gives a richness of nuance and detail to each of his characters that goes way beyond cliché and stereotype. Winner of the Grand Prize at this year’s Critics Week in Cannes.
HOLY MOTORS (2012) 115min
Director: Leos Carax
Country: France
This unclassifiable, expansive movie from Leos Carax (Lovers on the Bridge)—his first feature in 13 years—operates on the exhilarating logic of dreams and emotions. After a prologue in which Carax himself, clad in pajamas, walks through a corridor that leads to a theater full of silent spectators, HOLY MOTORS segues to actor Denis Lavant, Carax’s longtime collaborator, playing a mysterious man named Oscar who inhabits 11 different characters over the course of a single day. This shape-shifter is shuttled from appointment to appointment in Paris in a white-stretch limo driven by the soignée Edith Scob (EYES WITHOUT A FACE); not on the itinerary is an unplanned reunion with Kylie Minogue. To summarize the film any further would be to take away some of its magic; the most accurate précis comes from its own creator, who aptly described HOLY MOTORS after its world premiere in Cannes as “a film about a man and the experience of being alive.” An Indomina release.
HYDE PARK ON HUDSON (2012) 95min
Director: Roger Michell
Country: UK
Bill Murray provides a career-topping performance as President Franklin D. Roosevelt in this captivating, winningly acted comedy-drama that pulls back the curtain on the complicated domestic arrangements at FDR’s beautiful New York country estate. Told from the perspective of Roosevelt's little-known sixth cousin Margaret “Daisy” Suckley (Laura Linney), a member of the president's intimate inner circle of women, HYDE PARK ON HUDSON revolves around the royal visit of King George VI (yes, him again!) to the United States on the eve of World War II. In a film both buoyantly comic and inescapably serious, screenwriter Richard Nelson and director Roger Michell (NOTTING HILL, VENUS) subtly examine the tricky dynamics of the chief executive's relationships with his wife, mother and devoted female staff while also taking stock of his ego, shrewd manipulations and consummate ability to win people's favor and confidence—most notably in the case of the insecure young king. It's an entrancing peek at a time when the personal secrets of our leaders were well and truly kept. A Focus Features release.
KINSHASA KIDS (2012) 85min
Director: Marc-Henri Wajnberg
Country: Belgium/France
Perhaps the most ebullient “musical” you’ll see this year, Marc-Henri Wajnberg’s singular documentary/fiction hybrid follows a group of street kids—kicked out of their homes for being “witch children”—in the titular Congolese capital. These ever-resourceful youngsters decide to form a band and team up with Bebson, an eccentric impresario and one-time recording star; he’s just one of many unforgettable adults who, whether as informal instructors, fellow musicians, or menacing pursuers, impact the lives of these indefatigable tykes. Completely devoid of sentimentality and condescension, KINSASHA KIDS celebrates and honors both the resilience of its young protagonists and the chaotic city in which they live.
THE LAST TIME I SAW MACAO (A Última Vez Que Vi Macau) (2012) 82min
Director: João Pedro Rodrigues
Country: Portugal/France
This stunning amalgam of playful film noir and Chris Marker–like cine-essay from João Pedro Rodrigues (TO DIE LIKE A MAN, NYFF 2009) and João Rui Guerra da Mata explores the psychic pull of the titular former Portuguese colony. After a spectacular opening scene, in which actress Cindy Scrash lip-synchs, as tigers pace behind her, to Jane Russell’s “You Kill Me”—from Josef von Sternberg’s MACAO (1952), a key reference here—the film shifts to da Mata’s off-screen recollections of growing up in this gambling haven in the South China Sea. He’s come back to Macao to help a friend who later vanishes—a mystery that begets not only poetic ruminations on time, place, and memory but also magnificent compositions of flora, fauna, and cityscapes. Rodrigues will also have his work presented during NYFF’s soon-to-be-announced Views From the Avant-Garde schedule.
LEVIATHAN (2012) 87min
Directors: Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Véréna Paravel
Country: USA
Having previously immersed us into the worlds of Montana sheep herding and Queens auto salvaging, respectively, NYFF alumni Lucien Castaing-Taylor (Sweetgrass) and Véréna Paravel (Foreign Parts) team for another singular anthropological excavation, this time set inside one of the world’s most dangerous professions: the commercial fishing industry. Taking to the high seas of the North Atlantic—Herman Melville territory—the filmmakers capture this harsh, unforgiving world in all of its visceral, haunting, cosmic detail, using an arsenal of cameras that pass freely from film crew to ship crew, and swoop from below sea level to literal bird’s-eye views. The result is a hallucinatory sensory experience quite unlike any other. To paraphrase Francis Coppola describing his Apocalypse Now, LEVIATHAN isn’t a movie about commercial fishing; it is commercial fishing.
WORLD PREMIERE
LIFE OF PI (2012)
Director: Ang Lee
Country: USA
Based on the book that has sold more than seven million copies and spent years on the bestseller list, Academy Award winner Lee's LIFE OF PI takes place over three continents, two oceans, many years, and a wide world of imagination. Lee’s vision, coupled with game-changing technological breakthroughs, has turned a story long thought un-filmable into a totally original cinematic event and the first truly international all-audience motion picture. LIFE OF PI follows a young man who survives a disaster at sea and is hurtled into an epic journey of adventure and discovery. While marooned on a lifeboat, he forms an amazing and unexpected connection with the ship¹s only other survivor…a fearsome Bengal tiger. A Twentieth Century Fox release.
LIKE SOMEONE IN LOVE (2012) 109min
Director: Abbas Kiarostami
Country: Japan/Iran/France
Fresh from the triumph of his Tuscany-set CERTIFIED COPY (NYFF 2010), master filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami travels even further afield from his native Iran for this mysteriously beautiful romantic drama filmed entirely in Japan. LIKE SOMEONE IN LOVE revolves around the brief encounter between an elderly professor (the wonderful 81-year-old stage actor Tadashi Okuno, here playing his first leading role in a film) and a sociology student (Rin Takanashi) who moonlights as a high-end escort. Dispatched to the old man by her boss—one of the professor’s former students—the young woman finds her latest client less interested in sex than in cooking her soup, talking, and playing old Ella Fitzgerald records (like the one that gives the film its allusive title). Eventually, night gives way to day and a tense standoff with the student’s insanely jealous boyfriend (Ryō Kase); but as usual in Kiarostami, nothing is quite as it appears on the surface. Are these characters—who conjure in one another the specters of regret and roads not taken—meeting by chance, or is it fate? Is this love, or merely something like it? A Sundance Selects release.
LINES OF WELLINGTON (Linhas de Wellington) (2012) 151min
Director: Valeria Sarmiento
Country: France/Portugal
After conquering Spain, Napoleon Bonaparte sent a powerful army to invade Portugal in 1810. The French plowed through the resistance mounted against them until, as they approached Lisbon, they were met by a combined British and Portuguese army under the command of the Viscount Wellington. That’s the general historical outline for Valeria Sarmiento’s extraordinarily intimate epic of the Peninsular War. Along the way, we witness love affairs and treachery, noble action and selfish cruelty, from the highest social echelons to the most humble quarters. Prepared by the late Raul Ruiz from a screenplay by Carlos Saboga (Mysteries of Lisbon), LINES OF WELLINGTON was completed by Sarmiento—Ruiz’s longtime editor as well as his widow—who has created a revealing portrait of life during what has been called one of the first examples of “total war.” The all-star cast includes Catherine Deneuve, Mathieu Amalric, Elsa Zylberstein, Marisa Paredes, and John Malkovich as Wellington.
MEMORIES LOOK AT ME (Ji Yi Wang Zhe Wo) (2012) 91min
Director: Song Fang
Country: China
Song Fang’s remarkable directorial debut, in which she travels from Beijing to Nanjing for a visit with her family (many of whom play themselves), gracefully expounds on several poignant topics: how an adult child’s relationship with her parents changes as they grow older, and how to negotiate one’s place as a single woman in a world of married couples. Song, who many will remember for her wonderful performance as the nanny and aspiring filmmaker in Hou Hsiao-hsien’s Flight of the Red Balloon (NYFF 2007), perfectly captures the rhythms of brief sojourns home, trips filled with reunions (both joyful and heart-wrenching), reminiscences, and moments of feeling painfully out of place. Winner of the Best First Feature prize at this year’s Locarno Film Festival.
NIGHT ACROSS THE STREET (La Noche de enfrente) (2012) 107min
Director: Raul Ruiz
Country: France/Chile
In August 2011, the cinema sadly lost one of its most magical artists, director Raul Ruiz—but, happily, not before he left us with one final masterpiece. Returning to his native Chile, Ruiz introduces us here to Don Celso, a bespectacled office worker heading into retirement. After an evening’s poetry class, Celso starts to narrate several tales from his childhood to his teacher, guiding the audience both within and outside the film through various levels of reality that mix the private and the public, the historical and the mythic, the here and the beyond. The journey is, of course, full of Ruizian flights of visual and verbal wit, where resonances between words and images form connections that at times defy traditional storytelling. NIGHT ACROSS THE STREET is both a moving meditation on one man’s mortality as well as an insightful summation of an artist’s brilliant career. A Cinema Guild release. Ruiz will also have his work presented during NYFF’s soon-to-be-announced Views From the Avant-Garde schedule.
NO (2012) 110min
Director: Pablo Larrain
Country: Chile/USA/Mexico
In 1988, in an effort to extend and legitimize its rule, the Pinochet military junta announced it would hold a plebiscite to get the people’s permission to stay in power. Despite being given 15 minutes a day to plead its case on television, the anti-Pinochet opposition was divided and without a clear message. Enter Rene Saavedra (an excellent Gael Garcia Bernal), an ad man who, after a career pushing soft drinks and soap, sets out to sell Chileans on democracy and freedom. Winner of the top prize in this year’s Directors’ Fortnight in Cannes, NO is little short of a miracle: shooting on U-matic video tape to give the film the look of the Eighties, filmmaker Pablo Larrain (TONY MANERO, POST MORTEM) has created a smart, funny and totally engrossing political thriller with a powerful resonance for our times. A Sony Pictures Classics release.
WORLD PREMIERE
NOT FADE AWAY (2012) 112min
Director: David Chase
Country: USA
The time is the 1960s, on the cusp of the summer of love. The place, suburban New Jersey. The music, 100 percent pure rock and roll. For his feature filmmaking debut, The Sopranos creator David Chase has crafted a wise, tender and richly atmospheric portrait of a group of friends trying to do what so many awkward suburban kids of the time dreamed of doing: form their own rock band. And these guys are good, fronted by a preternaturally gifted singer-songwriter (terrific newcomer John Magaro) who’s a dead ringer for the young Bob Dylan, even if dad (James Gandolfini) doesn’t take kindly to seeing junior strut around in long hair and Cuban heels. Masterfully capturing the era’s conflicting attitudes and ideologies, all set to a killer soundtrack produced by the legendary Steven Van Zandt, NOT FADE AWAY just might be the best coming-of-age movie since Barry Levinson’s Diner—and one of the best rock movies ever. A Paramount Vantage release.
OUR CHILDREN (À perdre la raison) (2012) 111min
Director: Joachim Lafosse
Country: Belgium
How does it happen that a vibrant, capable young woman loses her sense of self-worth and ends up destroying what she most loves? Belgian director Joachim Lafosse structures an all too familiar contemporary story that was headline news in Europe as a classical tragedy. Émilie Dequenne more than fulfills the promise of her award-winning performance in the Dardenne brothers’ Rosetta with this portrait of a young school teacher who marries a Moroccan immigrant (Tahar Rahim) and has four children with him, while gradually becoming aware of how much he is in thrall to his mentor, a domineering doctor (Niels Arestrup). Rahim and Arestrup reprise their father/son relationship from Jacques Audiard’s A Prophet but with an even more corrupt twist. Lafosse’s direction of this perverse narrative of patriarchal power and female oppression is like steel wrapped in silk.
PASSION (2012) 94min
Director: Brian De palma
Country: USA
Brian De Palma exhibits great panache and a diabolical mastery of frequent, small surprises in his first fiction feature since his magical comedy-of-coincidences, FEMME FATALE. With tongue planted in cheek, or maybe not—it’s up to you to decide—De Palma turns French director Alain Corneau’s 2010 LOVE CRIME into a far more droll, erotic tale of female competition. Noomi Rapace more than matches her performance in the original GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO as the assistant to an unscrupulous advertising honcho (Rachel McAdams), who steals her ideas and acts as if it’s all good sport. It’s great fun until De Palma zeros in on the fury in Rapace’s eyes. The De Palma trademarks are all present and deployed with coolly calculated abandon: a brilliant use of split screen; a confusion of identical twins; dreams within dreams; and shoes to die for.
SOMETHING IN THE AIR (Après Mai) (2012) 122min
Director: Olivier Assayas
Country: France
In the months after the heady weeks of May ’68, a group of young people search for a way to continue the revolution believed to be just beginning. For Gilles (newcomer Clément Mettayer), this means having to balance his political commitments with his desire to explore painting and filmmaking; for his girlfriend Christine (GOODBYE, FIRST LOVE star Lola Créton), this means throwing herself wholeheartedly into the task of organizing. Olivier Assayas (CARLOS, SUMMER HOURS) here describes the sentimental education of a generation that was too young to have been on the barricades; he brilliantly captures its explorations of new lifestyles, the arguments about strategies and tactics, and above all its music, a constant presence that becomes something like the artistic unconscious of an era. The period details are perfect, but what makes this film so special is the sense it conveys of history as lived experience. A Sundance Selects release.
TABU (2012) 118min
Director: Miguel Gomes
Country: Portugal
The ghosts of F.W. Murnau, Luis Buñuel, Joseph Cornell and Jack Smith hover above Miguel Gomes’s third feature—an exquisite, absurdist entry in the canon of surrealist cinema. Shot in ephemeral black-and-white celluloid, TABU is movie-as-dream—an evocation of irrational desires, extravagant coincidences, and cheesy nostalgia that nevertheless is grounded in serious feeling and beliefs, even anti-colonialist politics. There is a story, which is delightful to follow and in which the cart comes before the horse: the first half is set in contemporary Lisbon, the second, involving two of the same characters, in a Portuguese colony in the early 1960s. “Be My Baby” belted in Portuguese, a wandering crocodile, and a passionate, ill-advised coupling seen through gently moving mosquito netting make for addled movie magic. The winner of the Alfred Bauer Prize (for a work of particular innovation) and FIPRESCI (International Film Critics) award at this year’s Berlin Film Festival. An Adopt Films release.
YOU AIN’T SEEN NOTHIN’ YET (Vous n'avez encore rien vu) (2012) 115min
Director: Alain Resnais
Country: France
From its impish title to its vibrant formal experimentation, YOU AIN’T SEEN NOTHIN’ YET proves that, at age 90, master French filmmaker Alain Resnais (HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR, WILD GRASS) is indeed still full of surprises. Based on two works by the playwright Jean Anouilh, the film opens with a who’s-who of French acting royalty (including Mathieu Amalric, Michel Piccoli and frequent Resnais muse Sabine Azéma) being summoned to the reading of a late playwright’s last will and testament. Upon their arrival, the playwright (Denis Podalydès) appears on a TV screen from beyond the grave and asks his erstwhile collaborators to evaluate a recording of an experimental theater company performing his Eurydice—a play they themselves all appeared in over the years. But as the video unspools, something curious happens: instead of watching passively, these seasoned thespians begin acting out the text alongside their youthful avatars, looking back into the past rather like mythic Orpheus himself. Gorgeously shot by cinematographer Eric Gautier on stylized sets that recall the French poetic realism of the 1930s, YOU AIN’T SEEN NOTHIN’ YET is an alternately wry and wistful valentine to actors and the art of performance from a director long fascinated by the intersection of life, theater and cinema.
Labels: Abbas Kiarostami, Alain Renais, Ang Lee, Brian De Palma, Denzel Washington, film society of lincoln center, FilmLinc, Michael Haneke, New York Film Festival, NYFF, NYFF50
