Film at Lincoln Center Podcast

This week on the Film at Lincoln Center podcast, we’re featuring a special preview in anticipation of the 59th New York Film Festival, taking place September 24 – October 10, 2021. An annual bellwether of the state of cinema that has shaped film culture since 1963, the festival continues a long-standing tradition of introducing audiences to bold and remarkable works from celebrated filmmakers as well as fresh new talent. Join NYFF Director Eugene Hernandez, NYFF Director of Programming Dennis Lim, and the programmers of NYFF59 as they discuss their top picks from this year’s festival. Explore the full lineup, see the festival schedule, and get tickets at filmlinc.org/nyff. This talk was first available to FLC members, who play such a vital role in all we do. If you're interested in supporting FLC by becoming a member and exploring member benefits, visit filmlinc.org/members for more information.

This week on the Film at Lincoln Center podcast, we're featuring a Q&A from the 50th New Directors/New Films with Andreas Fontana on his feature debut, Azor. Swiss director Andreas Fontana brings an astonishingly assured eye to this gripping debut feature set in the cloistered world of high finance in Argentina in the 1970s. With a finely tuned sense of impassive anxiety, Fabrizio Rongione plays a banker who has traveled from Geneva to Buenos Aires with his wife to disentangle the complicated threads left behind by a colleague who has mysteriously disappeared. Once there, he finds himself descending ever deeper into a sinister inner circle, connecting the country’s upper classes to the military junta’s ongoing “Dirty War.” Azor is now playing daily in our theaters. For tickets and showtimes, go to filmlinc.org/azor.

This week on the Film at Lincoln Center podcast, we’re featuring a Q&A from the 50th New Directors/New Films with Jessica Beshir on her hypnotic documentary feature, Faya Dayi. In Faya Dayi, Beshir returns to her hometown of Harar and explores the coexistence of everyday life and its mythical undercurrents in the city, its rural Oromo community of farmers, and the harvesting of the country’s most sought-after export (the euphoria-inducing khat plant). Faya Dayi is neither a straightforward work of nostalgia nor an issue-oriented doc about a particular drug culture. Rather, she has constructed something dreamlike: a film that uses light, texture, and sound to illuminate the spiritual lives of people whose experiences often become fodder for ripped-from-the-headlines tales of migration. Faya Dayi is now playing daily in our theaters. For tickets and showtimes, go to filmlinc.org/faya.

This week on the Film at Lincoln Center Podcast, we’re featuring a Q&A on Liesl Tommy’s Respect with screenwriter Tracey Scott Wilson, moderated by Emil Wilbekin, former editor of Vibe, Essence and founder of Native Son, a platform created to inspire and empower Black Gay Men. Following the rise of Aretha Franklin’s career from a child singing in her father’s church’s choir to her international superstardom, Respect is the remarkable true story of the music icon’s journey to find her voice, starring Jennifer Hudson, Forest Whitaker, Mary J Blige, and more. This talk was first available to FLC patrons and members, who play such a vital role in all we do. If you're interested in supporting FLC by becoming a member and exploring member benefits, visit filmlinc.org/members for more information. Respect is now playing in theaters.

This week on the Film at Lincoln Center podcast, we’re featuring a conversation from the 58th New York Film Festival with filmmakers Matías Piñeiro and Nicolás Pereda. In Matías Piñeiro’s Isabella and Nicolás Pereda’s Fauna, one never knows where performance ends and life begins. The two films meditate in poignant ways on storytelling as both an artistic and an everyday act: Isabella continues Piñeiro’s wryly quotidian takes on Shakespearean dramas, while Fauna unearths the violence haunting a Mexican village beneath a veneer of fabrications and arch comedy. In a sprawling conversation moderated by NYFF program advisor Gina Telaroli, the two filmmakers chatted about their shared affinities, inimitable idiosyncrasies, and respective approaches to collaboration, color, structure, and more. Matías Piñeiro’s Isabella opens in our theaters on August 27. For showtimes and tickets visit filmlinc.org/isabella.

This week on the Film at Lincoln Center podcast, we’re featuring an incredibly special conversation from the opening weekend of Annette. Director Leos Carax sat down with Film Comment’s Co-Deputy Editor Devika Girish, to discuss the making of his much-anticipated follow-up to 2012’s Holy Motors. A years-spanning musical melodrama drenched in greens and yellows, scored by oddball art-pop duo Sparks and based on their original story, Annette marks the French director’s first English-language film, which revolves around a celebrity couple in present-day Los Angeles. Henry (Adam Driver), a towering stand-up comedian, and Ann (Marion Cotillard), a world-famous singer, are living life happily in the spotlight until their world is upended after the birth of their first child, Annette, a mysterious little girl with a peculiar talent. Annette is now playing daily in our theaters. For tickets and showtimes, go to filmlinc.org/annette.

This week on the Film at Lincoln Center podcast, we’re featuring a talk from the 58th New York Film Festival with Tsai Ming-liang, the director of Days, moderated by NYFF Director of Programming Dennis Lim and interpreted by Vincent Cheng. The great Taiwanese filmmaker Tsai Ming-liang has been directing exquisite examinations of alienation, isolation, and the fleeting beauty of human connection featuring his muse Lee Kang-sheng for decades. His latest film, Days will undoubtedly stand as one of his best, sparest, and most intimate works. Lee once again stars as a variation on himself, wandering through a lonely urban landscape and seeking treatment in Hong Kong for a chronic illness; at the same time, a young Laotian immigrant working in Bangkok, goes about his daily routine. These two solitary men eventually come together in a moment of healing, tenderness, and sexual release. Among the most cathartic entries in Tsai’s filmography, Days is a work of longing, constructed with the director’s customary brilliance at visual composition and shot through with profound empathy. Days opens in our theaters on August 13th. For tickets and showtimes, visit filmling.org/days

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.