The Close-up

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 brill

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

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, fo

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 Luxembu

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

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 t

This week on the Film at Lincoln Center podcast we’re featuring a conversation from the 49th New Directors/New Films with The Killing of Two Lovers director Robert Machoian and star Clayne Crawford. After a startling opening image of extreme tension, first-time solo director Robert Machoian’s stark, slow-burn drama never quite goes where you expect. An evocative and atmospheric transmission from wintry Utah, The Killing of Two Lovers is a compact, economical portrait of a husband and father and a compassionate depiction of a family in crisis, which moves at the ominous pace of a thriller. The Killing of Two Lovers is now playing in select theaters.

This week on the Film at Lincoln Center podcast, we’re featuring a special Q&A from the 50th edition of New Directors/New Films. Founding ND/NF programmer and current FLC board member Wendy Keys sat down for an extended conversation with Sara Driver about her acclaimed first feature, Sleepwalk, a selection from the 16th ND/NF in 1987. The two also discussed Driver’s distinctive and idiosyncratic body of work. This event was part of the 50th edition of New Directors/New Films, the annual festival that celebrates filmmakers who represent the present and anticipate the future of cinema. Presented by Film at Lincoln Center and The Museum of Modern Art. Film at Lincoln Center Talks are presented by HBO.

This week on the Film at Lincoln Center podcast we’re featuring a special conversation from the 50th edition of New Directors/New Films, with Theo Anthony the director of All Light, Everywhere, this year's closing night selection, and FLC’s assistant programmer Tyler Wilson. Theo Anthony’s breakthrough sophomore feature uses the increased regularity of body cams in U.S. law enforcement as the anchor point for an ever-expanding exploration on perception, power, and policing. All Light, Everywhere is now playing nationwide in our Virtual Cinema through May 13 during New Directors/New Films. If you missed a film from the first half of the festival, you can still watch it with our Virtual All-Access Pass. To celebrate this milestone year of ND/NF, use promo code “SAVE40” during checkout in our Virtual Cinema to get 40% off the pass.

This week on the Film at Lincoln Center podcast we’re featuring a special conversation between recent Oscar-winner Youn Yuh-jung and FLC’s Director of Programming Dennis Lim. Introduced to a wide American audience just last year as a strong-willed grandmother in Lee Isaac Chung’s Minari, Youn Yuh-jung has been a celebrated screen performer in her native Korea for half a century, giving life to a roster of singularly formidable women across genres and generations. In honor of her historic win for Best Supporting Actress at the 93rd Academy Awards, our retrospective of her recent work has been extended to May 3! Go to filmlinc.org/youn for nationwide tickets in our virtual cinema.

This week on the Film at Lincoln Center Podcast, we’re featuring a special conversation with the cast and crew of French Exit, the closing night selection at the 58th New York Film Festival. Director Azazel Jacobs, writer Patrick deWitt, and actors Michelle Pfeiffer and Lucas Hedges joined NYFF Director of Programming Dennis Lim to discuss the making of the film Michelle Pfeiffer is entirely bewitching as Frances Price, an imperious, widowed New York socialite whose once-extreme wealth has dwindled down to a nub. Facing insolvency, she makes the decision to escape the city by cruise ship and relocate to her friend’s empty Paris apartment with her son, Malcolm (played by Lucas Hedges), and their cat, Small Frank (voiced by Tracy Letts). An adaptation of the best-selling novel by Patrick deWitt, French Exit is a rare American film of genuine eccentricity. The film is now playing in our theaters! For showtimes and our reopening health and safety policies, visit filmlinc.org/frenchexit.

This week on the Film at Lincoln Center podcast, we’re featuring a preview in anticipation of the 50th-anniversary edition of New Directors/New Films, a festival that has celebrated filmmakers who represent the present and anticipate the future of cinema, taking place virtually and in theaters from April 28 to May 8. In celebration of this year’s milestone, we’re excited to also present ND/NF@ 50, a free virtual retrospective looking back on the festival’s history, available nationwide in our Virtual Cinema from April 16 - 28. Join the programmers from Film at Lincoln Center, Florence Almozini, Dan Sullivan, Tyler Wilson, and Madeline Whittle, and the Museum of Modern Art, La Frances Hui, as they discuss their top picks from this year’s festival and retrospective, moderated by Wendy Keys. The 2021 feature committee comprises Florence Almozini (Co-Chair, FLC), La Frances Hui (Co-Chair, MoMA), Rajendra Roy (MoMA), Josh Siegel (MoMA), Dan Sullivan (FLC), and Tyler Wilson (FLC), and the shorts were programm

This week on the Film at Lincoln Center Podcast, we’re featuring a special conversation between Cinema Tropical’s Co-founder and Executive Director, Carlos A. Gutiérrez, and Argentine director Martín Rejtman. A key figure of contemporary Argentine cinema, Rejtman discussed his filmography and the landmark deadpan comedy, Silvia Prieto. Silvia Prieto is a 1999 comedy of details that follows a young woman through a short, precarious stretch of her life in Buenos Aires. The new restoration of the Argentine gem is now playing during Neighboring Scenes. This talk was part of the 6th edition of Neighboring Scenes, the annual festival celebrating New Latin American Cinema, presented by Film at Lincoln Center and Cinema Tropical, now playing in our Virtual Cinema through April 12. This talk is presented by HBO. This episode of the Film at Lincoln Center podcast is sponsored by Amazon Studios, presenting Sound of Metal and One Night in Miami. Now streaming on Amazon Prime Video. For your consideration. Visit the li

This week on the Film at Lincoln Center Podcast we’re featuring a special discussion with Lost Course director Jill Li and producer Peter Yam, moderated by Film at Lincoln Center’s Assistant Programmer Tyler Wilson. Nearly 10 years in the making, Jill Li’s revelatory debut film—a documentary about the struggle against corruption in South China—follows the grassroots movement for justice led by a group of people from the fishing port of Wukan. Lost Course offers a timely and deeply affecting look at government wrongdoing and its infective reach into even the most idealistic minds. Lost Course is now playing in our Virtual Cinema.