OPENING NIGHT-New York, 2012

What an ask/task! Damned if you do and damned if you don't. How to programme the opening night for the 50th New York Film Festival. There will be detractors claiming that Life of Pi is insubstantial fare compared to many other films in this year's festival. And indeed, Lucien Castaing-Taylor at the press conference the same afternoon for Leviathan (a much more close up and personal cine-look at fishy things), made clear that films with an 'agenda' -whatever- just weren't as powerful. Nay- meaningless. Ang Lee is a rare breed of director that doesn't harbour an agenda. God knows how difficult that must have been to keep faith to that throughout his career. He is interested in life. The way life always betrays itself because the truth is always too painful to bear. The very reason cinema exists. Arguably;) His adaption of Yann Martel's bestseller book is so quintessentially Ang Lee. Everyone in life has a shipwreck. Everyone finds themselves afloat. Everyone finds that nobody wants to believe their story. Life of Pi is all about cinema i.e life. What dreams may come. What shadows may fall. What beliefs dare to state they exist. The still from the film is the poster for this year's New York Film Festival. Making and believing. One has to smile broadly about the minute detail Ang Lee gives every one of his films. Whether it be the director himself experiencing The Incredible Hulk and getting the microscope DNA believable. Or whether it be the meercats on Pi's island that almost drop off their perch as they doze off (Ang Lee avoided comedy when in fact there is a documentary that clearly shows a meercat literally plummeting off its sleepy daylight perch). As many viewers do in the cinema. Not for a moment forensically proving they don't care. So far is the truth from such logic.

There's a wondrous documentary in the New York Film Festival Celluloid Man about P.K. Nair, the founder and patron saint of the National Film Archive of India. The saddest thing is (in a country obsessed with film, Bollywood, etc etc ) that there is no one to follow in his footsteps. And moreover, though he may be a 'fuddy-duddy' - how dare they ban him from the archive that he created! To use a very hackneyed quote from Picasso: "We all know that art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realise truth, at least the truth that is given us to understand. The artist must know the manner whereby to convince others of the truthfulness of his lies." Picasso, his life, his women, his art, his politics was no exception to his dictum.

I keep being asked if I am a CRITIC? And my only ever response is that I want to enjoy going to the movies. In that very strange thing is a healing. Like nothing else on this earth. And if one can't be constructive in writing then really what is the point in destroying someone else's creativity when you have very, very little to offer in exchange. Which in itself is somewhat blasphemous because one ought to assume that ALL people are creative. But going to the movies can most probably make them so. At least GREAT cinema. Somewhat. More. And Life of Pi achieves exactly. Reading for many is torturous. But I challenge anyone not to seek the last pages of Martel's book after seeing Ang Lee's movie and then to begin reading from Page 1: "My suffering left me sad and gloomy." One will read and watch. And seek, perhaps, again. The tiger inside could never be your friend: but such an animal could never either be one's enemy. We are all in the same boat. Now.

50th New York Film Festival

The New York Film Festival is 50 years old. (New York Times article about the change of artistic director. Rather than this blog covering the London Film Festival this year, The New York Film Festival seemed a must. The former festival screens around 75-80% of what the New York festival offers. But it's a missing percentage that is well worth the visit. Look back to the opening year of 1963. How few of those films ever see the light of a cinema screen these days or even DVD! Many, however, do manage a further theatrical release. In time. Now with the new Elinor Bunn Monroe Film Center complex across the street from the simply but splendidly proportioned Walter Reade cinema, these Lincoln Center cinemas offer an oasis of both art house and more interesting mainstream films throughout the year for New York. For the first time this year there is a Midnight Movies slot, that includes recent Brit chiller release Berberian Sound Studio. 

Photos and video will be added every few days at end of post - in the order that they were taken.

Christian Petzold (Barbara) Press conference HERE

Aquí y Allá (Here and There)

Yeşim Ustaoğlu (Araf) Pres conference HERE

Christian Mungui (Beyond the Hills) Press conference HERE

Keith Jones (Punk in Africa) Press conference HERE

Mikey Sumner, Noah Baumbach, Greta Gerwig (Frances Ha)
Press conference HERE 

Richard Foreman (Once Every Day)

Press conference HERE

Jun Robles Lana (Bwakaw)

Press conference HERE

 Song Fang (Memories Look at Me)

Press conference HERE

Linhas de Wellington 

                                                           Press conference HERE (audio only)

Paolo Taviani (Caesar Must Die) and Richard Peña 

Press conference HERE

more Taviani Brothers photos HERE

Véréna Paravel (Leviathan)

Lucien Castaing-Taylor (Leviathan)

 Press conference HERE

Ang Lee (Life of Pi)

Press conference HERE

Night Across the Street 

Press conference HERE 

Alan Berliner (First Cousin Once Removed)

 Press conference HERE

David Oyelowe, Lee Daniels (director), Nicole Kidman (The Paperboy)
more photos Here

 Press conference HERE

NYFF Amphitheater talks HERE 

Michael Haneke (Amour)

Press conference HERE

another photo HERE 

David Chase (L), Steven van Zandt (R)-Not Fade Away

Press conference HERE

                                   another photo HERE

India Menuez (actress), Olivier Assayas (director), Clément Métayer (actor): Something in the Air

                                    Press conference HERE
                                    more photos HERE

Abbas Kiarostami and Richard Peña (Like Someone in Love)

Press conference HERE

Sally Potter (Ginger and Rosa)

 Press conference HERE

another photo HERE

Leos Carax (Holy Motors)

 Press conference HERE

Dror Moreh (The Gatekeepers)

Press conference HERE

Richard Peña (L) and Javier Rebollo (R) -The Dead Man and Being Happy

 Press conference HERE

more photos HERE 

João Rui Guerra da Mata (co-director)-The Last Time I Saw Macao 

Press conference HERE 

Pablo Larraín (No)

Press conference HERE

more photos HERE 

David Thomson

David Thomson's new book The Big Screen

 video of his chat at the NYFF HERE

 all photos and video on the site are copyright Andrew Lucre (with

 relevant credits wherever appropriate)

Gravity and borders

Some food for thought footage from New York about boundaries. At the Cervantes Institute Young Architects from Spain. Opening reception panel HERE

and at the German Consulate General, Berlin-based Constantin Hartenstein's work (video HERE) opens a discussion on migrating carpets and migrating people: he wants to be with his American boyfriend but although there are 6 states where it is legal is not a Federal law. So he is unable to obtain a long-tern visa.

Makes for very interesting juxtaposition with Simon Dinnerstein's painting The Fulbright Triptych (1971) (NYT review) and Stephan Balkenhol's (seen at this year's Kassel dOCUMENTA (13) little human figures in the foyer.