The 38th edition of New Directors/New Films, the longstanding collaboration between The Museum of Modern Art and The Film Society of Lincoln Center, hits screens at both venues, March 25 – April 5. The 2009 slate will premiere 25 feature films and six shorts from 24 countries and host numerous filmmakers and special guests on stage.
Cherien Dabis’s debut feature “Amreeka,” about a Ramallah family’s move to the American Midwest, is the festival’s Opening Night film. Ondi Timoner’s “We Live in Public” will be honored as the Closing Night selection. An insider’s view of ’90s Manhattan and the rise and fall of Internet pioneer Josh Harris, the award-winning documentary moves from Harris’s groundbreaking and highly controversial performance live-in “QUIET, We Live In Public” to his life in upstate New York more than a decade later. Timoner cuts together Harris’s footage with her own verite images to capture the innovative artist and his unique interpretations of technology-as-voyeur.
These portraits of America present and past bookend an adventurous international slate featuring the world premiere of Bob Byington’s “Harmony and Me;” the U.S. premiere of James D. Stern and Adam Del Deo’s “Every Little Step;” celebrated new titles including Sophie Barthes’s “Cold Souls,” Louie Psihoyos’s “The Cove,” and Sterlin Harjo “Barking Water;” and vital discoveries such as Claudia Llosa’s “The Milk of Sorrow,” Tatia Rosenthal’s “$9.99,” and Vladimir Kott’s “The Fly.” Esther Rots’s mesmerizing debut “Can Go Through Skin,” about the effect of two violent events on the life of an Amsterdam woman, has been added to the slate.
New Directors/New Films hosts an annual roundtable of festival alumni and special guest directors and producers to explore aspects of the filmmaking process. This year, Teaming Up: A Conversation welcomes filmmaking team Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden, whose short film “Gowanus, Brooklyn,” resulting Oscar-nominated feature “Half Nelson,” and documentary “Young Rebels” have all screened in the festival. They will join audience members in a discussion of their personal process and the advantages and difficulties of teaming up to make a dream film a reality at the Frieda and Roy Furman Gallery, adjacent to The Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Walter Reade Theater, Sunday, April 5, at noon.
The festival also salutes 75 years of the New York Film Critics Circle with the matinee series Critic’s Choice. Featuring five groundbreaking titles—“Big Night,” Frozen River,” “Half Nelson,” “In the Company of Men,” and “Metropolitan”—the series looks back at New Directors/New Films premieres that went on to receive the Best New Director Prize from the nation’s first and most prestigious film critics organization. Each screening in this week long special event will be introduced by a current NYFCC member and held at The Film Society’s Walter Reade Theater at 3:00 p.m.
Finally, with an eye to feature filmmaking’s horizon, six innovative short films from as many countries round out this year’s offerings: Mads Matthiesen’s “Cathrine;” Nicolas Engel’s “Copy of Coralie;” Kei Ishikawa’s “It’s All in the Fingers;” Adam Leon and Jack Pettibone Riccobono’s “Killer;” Bastian Caspar, Sebastian Natto, and Denis Trumbach’s “Releve;” and Kimi Takesue’s “Suspended.” They screen with select features throughout the slate. -- www.moma.org
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