The Film Society of Lincoln Center has shared their lineup for the 15th edition of Film Comment magazine’s essential, eclectic festival, taking place February 20 – March 5, 2015.
It’s an annual event and full of discoveries—of the coming soon and the never-coming-back, the rare and the rediscovered, the unclassifiable and the underrated, handpicked by the magazine’s editors after scouring the international festival circuit of the past year.
“In the years we've been programming Film Comment Selects, no edition has ever quite turned out as we expected, and this one is no exception. The competition for New York premieres has never been fiercer and this year's lineup reflects the resurgence of the extreme cinema stuff that we've specialized in over the years,” says Film Comment magazine’s editor-in-chief Gavin Smith. “At the other end of the spectrum, we're going out on a limb with a retrospective of an unknown Danish art-cinema master. So it could be a kind of snapshot of what you might find in any issue of Film Comment—old and new, genre movies and art films, the familiar and the unknown.”
Below are just a few highlight. To really get a good handle on the unique films, just take a visit to the web site and marvel at the creative spirit.
Good News - - - you are a New Yorker and seeing these films is just a quick subway —for most or a brisk walk for luck others that call, that part of uptown, their ‘hood.’
In January, please take a quick review.
FILM COMMENT JANUARY PREVIEW
The Duke of Burgundy
Peter Strickland, UK, 2014, DCP, 104m
A Sundance Selects release.
Followed by:
Mano Destra
Cleo Übelmann, Switzerland, 1986, Digibeta, 53m
Cleo Übelmann’s seldom-seen meditation on restraint and anticipation transcends its bondage trappings with obsessively composed cinematography and evocative foley. At first, reminiscent of Chris Marker’s La Jetée, the seeming stillness is betrayed by the occasional twitch of a calf muscle under the severe rope trickery. Übelmann’s ice-cold approach to form serves the subject matter perfectly, as both willing “captive” and audience submit to waiting and waiting. High-heel footsteps within varying distances are what either promise or deny us and the submissive any release, both literal and metaphorical. I saw Mano Destra at London’s Scala Cinema over 20 years ago, and some of the ideas found in it, as well as some of its tenderness (underneath the minimal, chilly surfaces), were strong influences on The Duke of Burgundy. Along with the films of Monika Treut, MM Serra, and Maria Beatty, Mano Destra is a vital and covert exploration of different desires in the absence of men.—Peter Strickland
Friday, January 16, 7:00pm (Q&A with Peter Strickland)
Public Screening Schedule
Screenings will take place at Walter Reade Theater, 165 W. 65th Street
Friday, Jan. 16
7:00pm The Duke of Burgundy with Mano Destra (Q&A with Peter Strickland)
Friday, Feb. 20
6:30pm Tales
8:30pm Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films
10:45pm Ninja lll: The Domination
Saturday, Feb. 21
1:00pm The Last American Virgin
3:00pm 10 to Midnight
5:15pm Fires on the Plain
7:30pm Shock Value: The Movie—How Dan O’Bannon and Some USC Outsiders Helped Invent Modern Horror (Presented by USC archivist Dino Everett & author Jason Zinoman)
10:30pm Spring
Sunday, Feb. 22
1:00pm Gremlins (preview cut)
3:15pm The Yakuza
5:45pm Spring
8:15pm Tales
Monday, Feb. 23
6:30pm How to Live
8:30pm Faults
Tuesday, Feb. 24
6:30pm Un ange passe
8:30pm Belluscone: A Sicilian Story
Thursday, Feb. 26
6:30pm Bypass
8:45pm The Smell of Us (Q&A with Larry Clark)
Friday, Feb. 27
6:30pm Pain of Love
9:15pm Sorrow and Joy
Saturday, Feb. 28
1:00pm Facing the Truth
3:15pm Tree of Knowledge
6:00pm High Society (Q&A with Ana Girardot)
8:30pm Phoenix
Sunday, March 1
1:00pm Boys
3:30pm Århus by Night
6:30pm The Golden Era
Tuesday, March 3
6:30pm Voice Over
9:00pm Anarchy (Q&A with Michael Almereyda)
Thursday, March 5
6:30pm The Fortune
8:30pm The World of Kanako
For more information, visit www.filmlinc.com, follow @filmlinc on Twitter, and download the FREE Film Society app, now available for iOS (iPhone and iPad) and Android devices.
Here is a quick look at the rest of the 2015 festival.
This year’s series opens with Mark Hartley’s Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films, a hilarious tell-all oral history of the exploits of schlockmeisters Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus in ’80s Hollywood, followed by a three-film retrospective of some of their greatest hits: J. Lee Thompson’s slashfest 10 to Midnight, starring Charles Bronson; Boaz Davidson’s teenage sex-comedy The Last American Virgin; and Sam Firstenberg’s delirious cult classic Ninja III: The Domination.
Other vintage films being screened in the series include Philippe Garrel’s ultra-rare 1975 elegy, Un ange passe; in tribute to the late, great Mike Nichols, his seldom-screened and underrated The Fortune, starring Warren Beatty and Jack Nicholson; and Sydney Pollack’s The Yakuza, starring Ken Takakura and Robert Mitchum.
Genre fans will be delighted with a special screening of the original preview cut of Joe Dante’s Gremlins, featuring five additional minutes! Horror fans can also get revved up with a unique feature-length compilation of the student-film work of Dan O’Bannon, John Carpenter, and others who helped redefine the horror genre in the 1970s in Shock Value: The Movie—How Dan O’Bannon and Some USC Outsiders Helped Invent Modern Horror.
The 15th edition will also include a six-film retrospective of the deeply personal autobiographical dramas of acclaimed Danish director Nils Malmros, whose works from the past 30 years have made him a leading auteur in his home country. His latest film, Sorrow and Joy, retells the painful story of his wife’s killing of their baby during a psychotic episode in 1983.
Additional new international fare is highlighted by Cristián Jiménez’s Voice Over from Chile. The loving serio-comic story of the unexpected family issues revealed when a 35-year marriage disintegrates will share its U.S. Premiere with the Miami International Film Festival 2015. Other international selections include Franco Maresco’s Belluscone: A Sicilian Story from Italy, Duane Hopkins’s Bypass from the UK, Hong Kong New Wave axiom Ann Hui’s The Golden Era, Julie Lopes Curval’s High Society from France, Rakhshan Bani-Etemad’s Tales from Iran, two thrilling imports from Japan, Tetsuya Nakashima’s The World of Kanako and Shinya Tsukamoto’s Fires on the Plain; and The Smell of Us by Larry Clark, who sets his new film in the streets and rave clubs of Paris.
On January 16, prior to the festival, Film Comment Selects will kick off a year-round screening series with a special sneak preview of Peter Strickland’s highly anticipated 1970’s “Euro lesbian fantasia” The Duke of Burgundy, followed by a Q&A with the director and a screening of Cleo Übelmann’s Mano Destra, one of the films that inspired Strickland’s latest.
Film Comment Selects series tickets will go on sale Tuesday, February 10. A pre-sale to Film Society members will begin Friday, February 6.
FILM COMMENT SELECTS
February 20 – March 5, 2015
Opening night is Mark Hartley’s hilarious tell-all
Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films
Highlights include a six-film spotlight on
autobiographical Danish auteur Nils Malmros;
Larry Clark’s unflinching portrait of Parisian youth, The Smell of Us;
and Philippe Garrel’s rarely screened elegy Un ange passe
On January 16, Film Comment Selects will present
a special sneak preview of Peter Strickland’s The Duke of Burgundy
followed by Q&A with the director
Friday, February 20, 8:30pm
Anarchy
Michael Almereyda, USA, 2014, DCP, 97m
Tuesday, March 3, 9:00pm (Q&A with Michael Almereyda)
Un ange passe
Philippe Garrel, France, 1975, 35mm, 79m
French with English subtitles
Tuesday, February 24, 6:30pm
Belluscone: A Sicilian Story
Franco Maresco, Italy, 2014, DCP, 95m
Italian with English subtitles
Tuesday, February 24, 8:30pm
Bypass
Duane Hopkins, UK, 2014, DCP, 105m
Thursday, February 26, 6:30pm
Faults
Riley Stearns, USA, 2014, DCP, 89m
Monday, February 23, 8:30pm
Fires on the Plain
Shinya Tsukamoto, Japan, 2014, DCP, 87m
Japanese with English subtitles
Saturday, February 21, 5:15pm
The Fortune
Mike Nichols, USA, 1975, 35mm, 88m
Thursday, March 5, 6:30pm
The Golden Era
Ann Hui, China/Hong Kong, 2014, DCP, 177m
Sunday, March 1, 6:30pm
Gremlins (preview cut)
Joe Dante, USA, 1984, 35mm, 112m
Sunday, February 22, 1:00pm
High Society / Le beau monde
Julie Lopes Curval, France, 2014, DCP, 95m
French with English subtitles
February 28, 6:00pm (Q&A with Ana Girardot)
How to Live
Marcel Lozinski, Poland, 1977, 35mm, 83m
Polish with English subtitles
Monday, February 23, 6:30pm
Phoenix
Christian Petzold, Germany, 2014, DCP, 98m
German with English subtitles
A Sundance Selects release.
Saturday, February 28, 8:30pm
Shock Value: The Movie—How Dan O’Bannon and Some USC Outsiders Helped Invent Modern Horror
John Carpenter, Dan O’Bannon, Terence Winkless, Alec Lorimore & Charles Adair, USA, 2014, DCP, 80m
For this unique feature-length compilation, archivist Dino Everett has assembled the student-film work of Dan O’Bannon, John Carpenter, and others who helped redefine the horror genre in the ’70s, to demonstrate that USC was a hotbed of genre filmmaking. Featuring recently uncovered and previously unseen student films by O’Bannon, Carpenter, and classmates Terence Winkless (co-writer of The Howling), Alec Lorimore (an Oscar-nominated documentary producer), and Charles Adair (co-writer of Bleeders). The highlight is Winkless and Lorimore’s 1971 15-minute short Judson’s Release (aka Foster’s Release), starring O’Bannon as a killer, which became the blueprint for Halloween.
Saturday, February 21, 7:30pm (Presented by USC archivist Dino Everett & author Jason Zinoman)
The Smell of Us
Larry Clark, France, 2014, DCP, 92m
French, English, and Japanese with English subtitles
Thursday, February 26, 8:45pm (Q&A with Larry Clark)
Spring
Saturday, February 21, 10:30pm
Sunday, February 22, 5:45pm
Tales
Rakhshan Bani-Etemad, Iran, 2014, DCP, 88m
Persian with English subtitles
Friday, February 20, 6:30pm
Sunday, February 22, 8:15pm
Voice Over
Cristián Jiménez, 2014, Chile, DCP, 99m
Spanish with English subtitles
Co-presented with the Miami International Film Festival 2015.
Tuesday, March 3, 6:30pm
The World of Kanako
Tetsuya Nakashima, Japan, 2014, DCP, 118m
Japanese with English subtitles
Thursday, March 5, 8:30pm
The Yakuza
Sydney Pollack, USA, 1975, 35mm, 112m
Sunday, February 22, 3:15pm
Cannon Tribute:
10 to Midnight
J. Lee Thompson, USA, 1983, 35mm, 101m
Death Wish II marked the beginning of a beautiful relationship between Cannon and the then 61-year-old tough-guy icon Charles Bronson—in this, the second of six films he would make with them, he plays an LAPD detective fired for planting evidence on a serial killer who murders in the nude (late-night cable superstar Andrew Stevens). When his daughter becomes the next target in the ensuing grudge match, it’s a case of “Forget what’s legal, do what’s right!” as the film’s tagline went.
Saturday, February 21, 3:00pm
The Last American Virgin
Boaz Davidson, USA, 1982, 35mm, 92m
An early Cannon hit, this leering but ultimately surprisingly serious-minded teen sex comedy (virtually a scene-for-scene remake of Menahem Golan’s 1977 Israeli smash hit Lemon Popsicle) is a mash-up of Porky’s and Fast Times at Ridgemont High with a trio of suburban L.A. youths chasing girls and competing for the attentions of a cute transfer student. Time Out’s Sheila Johnston’s memorably blinkered review had it that “fear/contempt for the female festers like a squeezed pimple; an abortion is shown more lasciviously than any sex,” but she misses the point: as with Cameron Crowe’s Fast Times, the film’s rites of puberty hijinks eventually give way to darker, more painful experiences, until the true meaning of the film’s title becomes clear.
Saturday, February 21, 1:00pm
Ninja III: The Domination
Sam Firstenberg, USA, 1984, 35mm, 95m
A relentless no-holds-barred comic strip of a film, Ninja III: The Domination marks the ne plus ultra culmination of Cannon’s Ninja martial-arts obsession. An action-packed but cut-price cult classic, it features arguably one of the Go-Go Boys’ most ludicrous plots, with Breakin’ lead Lucinda Dickey (who was being groomed to be a Cannon star) as an aerobics instructor and telephone repair woman who is intermittently possessed by the spirit of a Black Ninja who uses her to exact bloody revenge on the cops who killed him, using all his formidable Ninja powers and the sword he handily passed on to her before dying. (As the tagline goes: “He’s the Ultimate Killer. She’s the perfect weapon.”) But as silly as it sounds, the fight choreography is actually top-notch, and the fusion of martial arts and horror/fantasy results in some striking setpieces.
Friday, February 20, 10:45pm
Nils Malmros in Focus:
Århus by Night
Nils Malmros, Denmark, 1981, DCP, 101m
Danish with English subtitles
Sunday, March 1, 3:30pm (Q&A with Nils Malmros)
Boys
Nils Malmros, Denmark, 1977, Digibeta, 86m
Danish with English subtitles
Sunday, March 1, 1:00pm (Q&A with Nils Malmros)
Facing the Truth
Nils Malmros, Denmark, 2002, Digibeta, 98m
Danish with English subtitles
Saturday, February 28, 1:00pm (Q&A with Nils Malmros)
Pain of Love
Nils Malmros, Denmark, 1992, Digibeta, 120m
Danish with English subtitles
Friday, February 27, 6:30pm (Q&A with Nils Malmros)
Sorrow and Joy
Nils Malmros, Denmark, 2013, DCP, 107m
Danish with English subtitles
Friday, February 27, 9:15pm (Q&A with Nils Malmros)
Tree of Knowledge
Nils Malmros, Denmark, 1981, DCP, 110m
Danish with English subtitles
Saturday, February 28, 3:15pm (Q&A with Nils Malmros)
For more information, visit www.filmlinc.com, follow @filmlinc on Twitter, and download the FREE Film Society app, now available for iOS (iPhone and iPad) and Android devices.
