Film at Lincoln Center Podcast

This week on the Film at Lincoln Center podcast, we’re featuring a special programmer's preview of the 21st Open Roads: New Italian Cinema, our annual series featuring a diverse and extensive lineup of contemporary Italian films. Join FLC Assitant Programmer Dan Sullivan in an overview of the hidden gems in this year’s festival, taking place June 9 - 15. Explore the lineup and filmmaker Q&As, and get tickets at filmlinc.org/openroads. After the preview, listen to a Q&A from the 59th New York Film Festival with Saul Williams and Anisia Uzeyman on their Main Slate selection Neptune Frost, moderated by NYFF Director Eugene Hernandez. Multi-hyphenate, multidisciplinary artist Saul Williams brings his unique dynamism to this Afrofuturist vision, a sci-fi punk musical that’s a visually wondrous amalgamation of themes, ideas, and songs that Williams has explored in his work, notably his 2016 album MartyrLoserKing. Co-directed with his partner, the Rwandan-born artist Anisia Uzeyman, the film takes place amidst the hilltops of Burundi, where a collective of computer hackers emerges from within a coltan mining community, a result of the romance between a miner and an intersex runaway. Set between states of being—past and present, dream and waking life, colonized and free, male and female, memory and prescience—Neptune Frost is an invigorating and empowering direct download to the cerebral cortex and a call to reclaim technology for progressive political ends. Neptune Frost is now playing in select theaters.

This week on the Film at Lincoln Center podcast, we’re featuring a special Q&A on Hedwig and the Angry Inch with co-creator, director, and lead John Cameron Mitchell and makeup artist and hairstylist Mike Potter, moderated by FLC’s President Lesli Klainberg. After falling in love with a U.S. Army sergeant, an East Berlin boy named Hansel undergoes a sex-change operation so that he can legally marry his beloved. But the operation goes awry, leaving the boy less than a man, but not quite a woman. Deserted in a Kansas trailer park, now Hedwig reinvents themself as a rock star. Based on the hit off-Broadway musical.  Catch Hedwig and the Angry Inch for free this Friday on Governors Island, presented in association with Newfest, with a pre-show DJ set from John Cameron Mitchell and Michael Cavadia starting at 7pm, and an introduction from John Cameron Mitchell before the screening. Ferry ticket reservations are required before the event. Go to filmlinc.org/hedwig for more information.

This week on the Film at Lincoln Center podcast, we’re featuring a Q&A from the 59th New York Film Festival with The Tsugua Diaries directors Maureen Fazendeiro, Miguel Gomes, moderated by FLC Programmer Tyler Wilson. The rigorous process of moviemaking meets the torpor of pandemic life in this beguiling new film co-directed by Maureen Fazendeiro and Miguel Gomes (Arabian Nights, NYFF53). A daily journal that unfolds in revelatory reverse order, this playful rug-puller begins by surveying the mundane routines of three housemates (Carloto Cotta, Crista Alfaiate, and João Nunes Monteiro) living in rural peace during the COVID lockdown: impromptu dance parties, cleaning, building a backyard butterfly house. Soon, we discover that there’s more going on beyond the limits of the camera frame. Cockeyed, funny, and slyly meta-cinematic, The Tsugua Diaries, lovingly shot on 16mm, demonstrates the possibility of artistic creation out of sheer will. The Tsugua Diaries opens this Friday in our theaters. For showtimes and tickets, go to filmlinc.org/tsugua

This week on the Film at Lincoln Center podcast, we’re featuring a Q&A with Hong Sangsoo on his new film In Front of Your Face, moderated by FLC’s Director of Programmer Dennis Lim, and a special programmers preview of Human Conditions: The Films of Mike Leigh. After years of living abroad, a middle-aged former actress has returned to South Korea to reconnect with her past and perhaps make amends. Over the course of one day in Seoul, via various encounters—including with her younger sister; a shopkeeper who lives in her converted childhood home; and, finally, a well-known film director with whom she would like to make a comeback—we discover her resentments and regrets, her financial difficulties, and the big secret that’s keeping her aloof from the world. Both beguiling and oddly cleansing in its mix of the spiritual and the cynical, In Front of Your Face finds the endlessly prolific Hong Sangsoo in a particularly contemplative mood; it’s a film that somehow finds that life is at once full of grace and a sick joke. Get showtimes and tickets at filmlinc.org/face. Before the Q&A, listen to a programmer’s preview of Human Conditions: The Films of Mike Leigh, our upcoming retrospective on the British filmmaker, with FLC programmers Dan Sullivan and Maddie Whittle. Taking place May 27 - June 8, Human Conditions: The Films of Mike Leigh, co-presented with Janus Films, will feature brand new restorations, 35mm print screenings, and in-person Q&As with Leigh himself. Get tickets at filmlinc.org/leigh.

This week on the Film at Lincoln Center podcast, we’re featuring a Q&A from the 51st New Directors/New Films with Eskil Vogt, director of The Innocents, moderated by FLC’s Director of Programming Dennis Lim and a programmers preview of the 29th New York African Film Festival. Perhaps best known as the co-screenwriter of acclaimed Norwegian director Joachim Trier (The Worst Person in the World), Eskil Vogt proves himself to be a filmmaker of astonishing skill and elemental force in his own right with this daring supernatural thriller. Set during the summer at an apartment complex surrounded by an ominous, fairy-tale-like forest, The Innocents follows the sinister, increasingly alarming interactions of a group of prepubescent children: Ida, feeling ignored next to her autistic older sister Anna; the bullied Ben; and the angelic Aisha, who appears to communicate telepathically—and feel through—the nonverbal Anna. With unforgettable, dark images and fleet visual storytelling, Vogt’s film pushes the “evil children” subgenre into more philosophical territory, creating a morally askew universe controlled by a child’s primitive understanding of the world. The Innocents is now playing in our theaters. Go to filmlinc.org/innocents for showtimes and tickets. Before the Q&A, listen to a programmers preview of the 29th New York African Film Festival, now playing in our theaters and virtually nationwide through May 17. Explore the lineup, Q&As, info on a free digital art exhibition, a free masterclass, and more at filmlinc.org/african.

This week on the Film at Lincoln Center podcast, we’re featuring a Q&A from the 51st New Directors/New Films with Happening director Audrey Diwan and lead Anamaria Vartolomei on their Opening Night selection. The conversation was moderated by The Museum of Modern Art programmer Josh Siegel. Winner of the Venice International Film Festival’s prestigious Golden Lion, Audrey Diwan’s exceptionally well-observed breakthrough is an unsparing, gripping portrait of a young woman’s attempts to secure an illegal abortion in 1960s France. A student of ambition and promise, hoping to leave her small town and embark on a professional life of the mind, Anne Duchesne (Anamaria Vartolomei in a brave, overwhelming performance) finds her entire future thrown into doubt upon discovering that she’s pregnant. Sure to be one of the most talked-about movies of the year, Happening, based on the semi-autobiographical novel by acclaimed author Annie Ernaux, is a drama that incrementally builds in power, showing the step-by-step process by which an ordinary young woman attempts to establish her freedom and ownership of her body. Happening opens in theaters on May 6th.

This week on the Film at Lincoln Center podcast, we’re featuring a Q&A from the 49th New Directors/New Films, with Los conductos director Camilo Restrepo and FLC’s Director of Programming Dennis Lim. A former criminal and cult member living under cloak of night in the crevices and corners of the Colombian city of Medellín makes his way back into civilization, yet is gripped by a shadowy past, in this fragmented first feature from Camilo Restrepo. After his memorable shorts Cilaos and La bouche, the director proves his mastery at economical yet expansive storytelling here, taking a complex narrative about the possibility of regeneration within a society all too willing to discard its outcasts and boiling it down to a series of precise shots, sounds, and gestures of off-handed beauty. Winner of the Best First Feature prize at the 2020 Berlin Film Festival and a New Directors/New Films 2020 selection, Los conductos opens exclusively in our theaters this Friday, with live Q&As with the director and cast during the opening weekend. For showtimes and tickets go to filmlinc.org/conductos.

This week on the Film at Lincoln Center podcast, we’re featuring a special programmers preview of the 51st New Directors/New Films, our annual festival celebrating filmmakers who speak to the present and anticipate the future of cinema, and whose bold work pushes the envelope in unexpected, striking ways, co-presented with the Museum of Modern Art. Join FLC programmer Tyler Wilson and MoMA programmers La Frances Hui and Rajendra Roy as they highlight films from the 51st edition of the festival. This year’s lineup will introduce 26 features and 11 shorts, a total of 39 directors, 21 of which are women. New Directors/New Films takes place from April 20 - May 1. Explore the films and get tickets at newdirectors.org.

This week on the Film at Lincoln Center podcast, we’re featuring a Q&A from the 59th New York Film Festival with The Tale of King Crab directors Alessio Rigo de Righi and Matteo Zoppis and NYFF programmer Tyler Wilson. This rich, engrossing fiction feature debut from documentary filmmakers Rigo de Righi and Zoppis takes storytelling itself as its subject. Based on a legendary figure about whom the filmmakers first heard while making their previous collaboration, 2015’s Il Solengo, this rousing, bifurcated tale follows the improbable adventures of Luciano, played by a bewitching Gabriele Silli, a village outcast in late-19th-century rural Italy. In the film’s first half, set in the countryside near Rome, his life is undone by alcohol, forbidden love, and an escalating quarrel with a local aristocrat; in the second, Luciano is in the distant Argentine province of Tierra del Fuego, hunting for a mythic treasure with the help of a compass-like crab. Rigo de Righi and Zoppis have created a highly unconventional narrative of redemption, alternating images of grandeur and folkloric idiosyncrasy The Tale of King Crab opens exclusively in our theaters this Friday. Get showtimes and tickets at filmlinc.org/crab.

This week on the Film at Lincoln Center podcast, we’re featuring a special Q&A from the 59th New York Film Festival with Silvan Zürcher, one of the directors of The Girl and the Spider, and NYFF programmer Rachel Rosen. Everything is in its right place, yet nothing is ever what or where it seems in this alternately droll and melancholy new film from the Zürcher brothers, whose The Strange Little Cat was one of the most striking and original debut features of recent years. Their latest charts a few days in the lives of two young people on the verge of change: Lisa (Liliane Amuat), who is in the process of moving into a new apartment, and her current roommate, Mara (Henriette Confurius), who’s staying behind. Though its setup is simple, the film—and the ambiguous relationship between the women—is anything but. The architectural precision of the filmmaking belies the inchoate longings and desires that appear to course through Lisa and Mara, as well as the various characters who come in and out of their homes. The Girl and the Spider is a minor-key symphony of inscrutable glances and irresolvable tensions.  The NYFF59 Main Slate selection opens this Friday in our theaters! Get showtimes and tickets at filmlinc.org/spider