Film at Lincoln Center Podcast

This week on the Film at Lincoln Center podcast, we’re featuring a special talk with the legendary filmmaker, Madeline Anderson. Cited as the first Black woman to direct a televised documentary film, Anderson’s work shines a light on the workers and activists in the civil rights movement. Originally recorded in 2015, following a screening of I Am Somebody, Integration Report #1, and A Tribute to Malcolm X at Film at Lincoln Center's series 'Tell It Like It Is: Black Independents in New York, 1968 – 1986,' Anderson sat down with moderator Michelle Materre, an Associate Professor of Media Studies and Film at The New School and the producer, host, and founder of the Creatively Speaking Film Series. When asked about her career, Anderson stated, “I was determined to do what I was going to do at any cost. I kept plugging away. Whatever I had to do, I did it.” Three of Anderson’s films are now playing on the Criterion Channel.

This week on the Film at Lincoln Center podcast, we're featuring a special Q&A on Ailey, an affectionate portrait of the world-renowned dancer and choreographer, Alvin Ailey, with director Jamila Wignot, and producer Lauren DeFilippo. The two filmmakers discussed the new film with Liz Wolff, Co-Curator of the Dance on Camera Festival, following our outdoor screening at Lincoln Center’s Restart Stages.  Ailey poetically examines how its subject’s fascinating life inspired his passion for dance, suffusing rare archival footage with Ailey’s own words, in addition to interviews with celebrated company dancers and choreographers. Beginning with Ailey’s early experiences in the rural South, which would eventually inspire some of his most memorable works, and culminating in the creation of a dance inspired by his life, this documentary captures the artist’s enduring impact on modern dance and the preservation of the African-American cultural experience with fresh insight. Ailey is now playing in our theaters, with special Q&As with the director, Jamila Wignot, on July 23 & 24 at the 6:15pm screenings. Go to filmlinc.org/ailey for more information.

This week on the Film at Lincoln Center podcast, we’re featuring two Q&As with filmmakers whose debut features are arriving this month. Our first Q&A is with director Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson discussing his first film, Summer of Soul, with NYFF Director Eugene Hernandez, presented after our outdoor screening at Lincoln Center’s Restart Stages. This conversation is followed by a Q&A from the 50th New Directors/New Films with the director duo Chuko and Arie Esiri and their debut film Eyimofe (This Is My Desire), moderated by FLC’s Assistant Programmer Dan Sullivan. In Summer of Soul, Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson presents a powerful and transporting documentary—part music film, part historical record, created around the epic Harlem Cultural Festival, which was filmed in Mount Morris Park in 1969. The footage was never seen and largely forgotten–until now. Inspired by the legacies of neorealism, the Esiri brothers’ fluid and precise Eyimofe (This Is My Desire) is a tale consisting of two parallel narratives, following a pair of characters trying to transcend their daily struggles in teeming Lagos. Summer of Soul is now playing on Hulu and in theaters, and Eyimofe (This Is My Desire) is coming to theaters next week.

This week on the Film at Lincoln Center podcast, we’re revisiting a directors dialogue from the 55th New York Film Festival with Hong Sangsoo in anticipation of the filmmaker’s latest feature, The Woman Who Ran, opening in our theaters. Moderated by Dennis Lim, Director of Programming for Film at Lincoln Center and the New York Film Festival. Divided into three casually threaded yet distinct sections, Hong Sangsoo’s latest delight follows Gamhee—played by the director’s regular collaborator Kim Minhee—as she travels without her husband for the first time in years, reconnecting with a succession of friends, on purpose and by chance. The Woman Who Ran is now playing in our theaters. Get tickets at filmlinc.org/womanwhoran

This week on the Film at Lincoln Center podcast, we’re featuring a special roundtable from the 58th New York Film Festival on a pair of intimate, rarely seen portraits of two towering figures of American history: Terrence Dixon’s Meeting the Man: James Baldwin in Paris and William Klein’s Muhammad Ali, the Greatest. In capturing the tensions experienced by both Baldwin and Ali as outspoken Black public figures in the ’70s, the films raise questions that are strikingly relevant to the present moment. What are the burdens placed on Black artists and athletes in the public eye? Can they act as political—perhaps even revolutionary—agents of change? What place do Black American arts and culture occupy in international movements for justice and equality? To reflect on these timely themes, Soraya Nadia McDonald (critic, The Undefeated), Rich Blint (professor and writer, The New School), Samantha Sheppard (professor, Cornell University; author, Sporting Blackness), and Kazembe Balagun (project manager, Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung—New York Office) came together for a rich and enlightening roundtable discussion moderated by writer and critic Nicholas Russell. See Muhammad Ali, the Greatest and Meeting the Man: James Baldwin in Paris, along with over 30 other NYFF58 selections, at Film at Lincoln Center’s theaters during Big Screen Summer. Get tickets at filmlinc.org/nyff58redux

This week on the Film at Lincoln Center podcast we’re featuring a special discussion from the 58th New York Film Festival about filmmakers around the world breaking boundaries and inventing new international canons. Featuring directors Dea Kulumbegashvili (Beginning), Chaitanya Tamhane (The Disciple), Philippe Lacôte (Night of the Kings), and members of The Living and the Dead Ensemble (Ouvertures), moderated by NYFF Talks programmer and Co-Deputy Editor of Film Comment, Devika Girish. The filmmakers touched upon their varied experiences of cinema while growing up, the particularities of making films in their home countries and navigating the festival circuit in the West, and the importance of both specificity and universality in their cinematic visions. See Beginning, The Disciple, Night of the Kings, and Ouvertures, along with over 30 other NYFF58 selections, at Film at Lincoln Center’s theaters during Big Screen Summer: NYFF58 Redux. Get tickets at filmlinc.org/nyff58redux

This week on the Film at Lincoln Center Podcast, we’re featuring a special conversation on Summer of 85 from Rendez-Vous with French Cinema 2021 as it begins its theatrical release in our theaters Join director François Ozon, stars Benjamin Voisin and Félix Lefebvre, and FLC’s programming assistant Maddie Whittle in a discussion about the making of the coming of age romance.  After meeting in Normandy in 1985, Alexis and David become fast friends, and Alexis starts working for David’s affectionate but scattered mother. Alexis’s attraction to David soon blossoms into passion, but turns, by the end of the summer, into a deeper meditation on mortality and the unknown. Awash in sun-kissed pastels and period-appropriate tracks from The Cure, Summer of 85 is a cursed romance in the key of Rimbaud and Verlaine that pulls apart the comforts of nostalgia in the heat of the present. Summer of 85 opens in our theaters this Friday, June 18. Get tickets: https://www.filmlinc.org/85

This week on the Film at Lincoln Center podcast, we’re presenting a conversation with Steve McQueen, the director of Small Axe, and Dennis Lim, Director of Programming for Film at Lincoln Center and the New York Film Festival. Among the most remarkable achievements in recent world cinema, Steve McQueen’s anthology Small Axe consists of five films that stirringly chronicle the experiences of London’s West Indian immigrant community across a tumultuous period from the 1960s through the 1980s. Each film is a distinct and singular work in its own right; taken together, they form a powerful, complex, immersive, and endlessly rich historical portrait of oppression, resistance, and survival, glimpsed through the prism of the post-colonial experience. Join Film at Lincoln Center to celebrate McQueen’s accomplishment with a series of screenings of all five films within Small Axe, including a special two-week run of Lovers Rock, the Opening Night Film at the 58th New York Film Festival. See Steve McQueen's Small Axe, along with over 30 other NYFF58 selections, at Film at Lincoln Center’s theaters during Big Screen Summer. All screenings of Alex Wheatle and Education are free to the general public! Reserve your tickets on our website while they're still available. Get tickets at filmlinc.org/nyff58redux

This week on the Film at Lincoln Center podcast we’re presenting a special conversation with Damiano & Fabio D’Innocenzo, the directors of Bad Tales, an Open Roads: New Italian Cinema 2021 selection, moderated by FLC’s Assistant Programmer Dan Sullivan and translated by Michael Moore. Bad Tales is an absorbing, richly traced group portrait of youth on the precipice of puberty, set on the outskirts of Rome. Our protagonists are the children of dysfunctional homes, and we observe them as they go about their daily lives amid the frequently apathetic, at times violent world of adults. An energetic work that is at once a kind of dark fairy tale and a stylish act of sociological inquiry, Bad Tales is a wild ride that captivatingly makes the case that the kids are not, in fact, alright. Bad Tales is now playing nationwide in our Virtual Cinema. Visit filmlinc.org/badtales for tickets.

This week on the Film at Lincoln Center podcast, we’re revisiting our conversation with Jia Zhangke from the 58th New York Film Festival, moderated by NYFF programmer K. Austin Collins, in anticipation of the filmmaker’s latest feature, Swimming Out Till the Sea Turns Blue, which is now playing in our theaters. The preeminent cinematic chronicler of 21st-century China, Jia Zhangke turns his sights to the more distant past in his surprising, complexly wrought new documentary. In Shanxi province, where Jia grew up, the filmmaker gathers three prominent authors to create a tapestry of testimonies about the drastic changes in Chinese life and culture that began with the social revolution of the ’50s. Jia tells a wide-ranging, discursive story that functions as a reminder of the essential power of verbally passing down history to future generations. Continue the conversation with the filmmaker by tuning into a virtual live discussion on June 2 at 8PM, hosted by the Asia Society. Go to filmlinc.org/swimming for tickets and more information.