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ABOUT SCHMIDT (Opening Night)
Jack Nicholson, in a performance to be remembered at Oscar time, is Warren Schmidt, an insurance executive in Omaha, Nebraska, who loses, in quick succession, his job (retirement), his wife (stroke), and his daughter (marriage to a moron). Climbing into the mobile home purchased for his golden years, he embarks on a journey of self discovery that, while it resembles previous Nicholson road trips in Easy Rider and Five Easy Pieces, owes more to the poignant displacements of the elderly couple in Ozu's Tokyo Story. Alexander Payne has created a comic drama of Middle America that is honest, humorous, and tremendously moving. With Hope Davis, Dermot Mulroney, and the inimitable Kathy Bates. 125 min. USA, 2002. A New Line Cinema Release
Preceded by: Tick (New Zealand, 2002, 7 min). Director Rebecca Hobbs's underachiever is a heartbeat away from losing the job of a lifetime.
27A Fri. Sept 27, 7:45pm ATH
27B Fri. Sept. 27, 8:30pm AFH
THE SON
Belgian brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne's (La Promesse, Rosetta, NYFF '96,'99) newest film is as moving as it is profound. One day, Olivier (Olivier Gourmet, winner of Best Actor in Cannes), who teaches carpentry to wayward teenagers, takes as a new student a shy, diffident teenager recently released from prison. Unknown to the boy, a past tragedy connects him to his teacher, one that forces Olivier to confront conflicting emotions when dealing with his new charge. For his part, the boy simply wants a chance to learn a trade and form a relationship with a man who seems a natural father. An intimate portrait of loss and connection, a tale of compassion in a world too often lacking in forgiveness. 103 min. Belgium/France, 2002 A New Yorker Films Release
Preceded by: Lamb (Australia, 2002, 15 min). In Emma Freeman's moving film, life on a remote farm in the outback is basic; a solitary father gruffly cares for his blind son. The boy's sole companion is a small white lamb. Or is it?
28A Sat. Sept. 28, 12:00 noon
29C Sun. Sept. 29, 6:45pm
RUSSIAN ARK
After months of rehearsal and the deployment of 867 actors and 3 live orchestras, the new film by Russian master Alexander Sokurov (Mother and Son, NYFF '97) unfolds in one fluid, unbroken shot, the camera floating through the majestic spaces of The Hermitage in St. Petersburg, engaging real and imagined characters from Russian and European history. Sokurov's nameless protagonist, a 19th-century diplomat, guides us through the lost, sumptuous, dream that was the Enlightenment, and the film, staged among some of the Western Art tradition's greatest masterpieces, climaxes in a glorious pageant of color, motion, and music. An astonishing technical feat, a genuine tour de force, and a brilliant meditation on the delirium of history. 96 min. Russia/Germany, 2002 A Wellspring Films Release
Preceded by: The Projectionist (Australia, 2002, 14 min). In Michael Bates's film, a projectionist, on his final day of work, takes the long, scenic way home.
28B Sat. Sept. 28, 3:00pm
CHIHWASEON
Capturing the artistic process is a daunting challenge for filmmakers. But in the right hands, the story can be a genuine revelation-not only of the artist and his work and but also of the moment when inspiration becomes creation. Korean director Im Kwon-Taek (Chunhyang, NYFF '00) recounts the life and hard rollicking times of one of his country's most celebrated painters, Jang Seung-Up, known as Ohwon. Born into poverty, Ohwon painted his way to the heights of 19th century Korean society while indulging a voracious appetite for alcohol and women. Fueled by a lust for life, Ohwon lived and breathed his art - a lesson that's fully realized in a film as bawdy and honest as its subject. 117 min. South Korea, 2002
28C Sat. Sept. 28, 6:00pm
30B Mon. Sept. 30, 9:00pm
THE MAGDALENE SISTERS
The Dickensian horrors of Peter Mullan's daring film would be appalling in any case, but are more so because they're true: Until the mid '90s, profitmaking laundries operated by the Sisters of the Magdalene Order used wayward Irish girls-often unmarried mothers-as virtual slave labor. (An estimated 30,000 women passed through the laundries.) The characters in this tale of bondage, blind injustice, and church-sanctioned oppression are all sharply drawn, especially the four brave young women at the center of the film. But no character is more memorable than the unspeakable Sister Bridget, whom Geraldine McEwan turns into one of the great screen villainesses-a combination Mrs. Danvers and Captain Bligh with a side order of Livia Soprano. 119 min. Scotland/Ireland, 2002
Preceded by: A Social Call (England, 2002, 6 min). Jonathan Romney's
virtuoso turn defies description. Would you believe, pure Pinter without
a word spoken? An unexpected visit, an unwanted visitor, a recurrent motif.
28D Sat. Sept. 28, 9:00pm
29A Sun. Sept. 29, 1:30pm
TEN
The set-up in this elegant and engrossing new film by celebrated Iranian writer-director Abbas Kiarostami is deceptively simple: over a period of days, a woman ferries passengers by car from one place to another in Tehran. Among them are her young son, who can't grumble and complain enough about her, and five very different women. The ramifications of these journeys, however, are anything but elementary, since the women are traveling the emotional and political breadth-indeed, the heart and soul-of modern Iran. The entire film takes place within the car, a formal conceit that gains deep metaphoric resonance as each woman reveals a bit of her life and, in turn, life for Iranian women. 94 min. Iran/France, 2002
29B Sun. Sept 29, 4:15pm
1A Tues. Oct. 1, 6:00pm
UNKNOWN PLEASURES
Bin Bin and Xiao Ji are shiftless teenagers prowling the city of Datong. Xiao Ji falls for Qiao Qiao, a singer promoting Mongolian King liquor and the girlfriend of a local loan shark, while Bin Bin is involved with a clean-cut college-bound student. The world around these couples keeps shifting, leaving them looking for answers in bars, nightclubs, and American movies. Just as Godard nailed the Marx-and-Coca-Cola generation in Masculine Feminine, the talented Jia Zhang Ke (Platform, NYFF '00) has a pitch-perfect understanding of the current generation of disaffected Chinese youth-call them the children of karaoke and Tarantino. Intimately and beautifully shot, UNKNOWN PLEASURES is another major work from one of the most exciting talents in contemporary cinema. 113 min. China/Japan, 2002
Preceded by: Exceed (USA, 2002, 9 min). Director Julian M. Kheel wittily demonstrates that in the world of the hard sell, no one is without opinions.
29D Sun. Sept. 29, 9:30pm
30A Mon. Sept. 30, 6:00pm
THE UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLE
The indomitable Manoel de Oliveira at 93 shows no signs of slowing down. Based on a novel by collaborator Augustina Bessa-Luis, his newest film concerns two friends, wealthy Antonio and servant's son José, who have shared everything since childhood. The friendship is challenged when Antonio marries Camila, whom José has always loved, and mistreats her, openly taking José's business partner, Vanessa, as his lover. As in earlier masterworks, Oliveira weaves philosophical speculation - here, free will and the nature of sin - with hothouse melodrama packed with sudden revelations and unexpected reversals. Oliveira regulars Leonor Silveira and Luis Miguel Cintra are joined by impressive newcomer Leoner Baldaque as Camila, described by Variety as a combination of "angel, witch, gold-digger, Madonna, and bride of Dracula." 133 min. Portugal/France, 2002
1B Tues. Oct. 1, 8:30pm
BLOODY SUNDAY
A stirring political work in the tradition of Battle of Algiers, Paul Greengrass's passionate and suspenseful retelling of the tragic events that took place in Derry, Northern Ireland, in January 1972, won the grand prize at this year's Berlin Film Festival. It stars James Nesbitt (Waking Ned Devine, Lucky Break) as Ivan Cooper, a Catholic activist who sees his well-meaning attempt to stage a peaceful protest march turn into a massacre at the hands of English paratroopers. This bold film meticulously reconstructs the incident's cultural context, delving with evenhanded interest and compassion into the lives of the Irish protestors and the British soldiers. Its release earlier this year stirred fervent debate and much soul-searching throughout Britain. 110 min. UK/Ireland, 2002 A Paramount Classics Release
Preceded by: Burn (USA, 2002, 10 min). Directors Patrick Jolley and Reynold Reynolds offer a pyromaniac's paradise in which fire becomes a domesticated ritual for the entire family.
2A Wed. Oct. 2, 6:00pm
3B Thurs. Oct. 3, 9:00pm
THE MAN WITHOUT A PAST
Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki has a trademark style: deadpan, droll, and, despite a minimalist approach, intimate with the nobility of the modernized and brutalized human heart. Robbed and beaten, Kaurismäki's hero, M, awakens in a hospital with amnesia, straightens his broken nose, and sets out to find out to remake his life from scratch. Along the way, he discovers generosity among the needy, rapacity among the authorities, and love with a Salvation Army soldier (Kati Outinen, winner of Best Actress at Cannes) that brings him back from the brink of despair. Often hilarious, the film is a classic Kaurismäki construction of overripe dialogue, chinless Finns, and the incongruously subtle gestures. Winner, Grand Jury Prize at Cannes. 97 min. Finland, 2002 A Sony Pictures Classics Release
Preceded by: Don't Have, Don't Give (Poland/USA, 17 min). In David Turner's ironic treatment of sibling rivalry, the favorite son returns home for a reunion with his ailing mother and caretaker brother. As they air their differences, a reconciliation seems certain.
2B Wed. Oct. 2, 9:00pm
3A Thurs. Oct. 3, 6:00pm
MY MOTHER'S SMILE
Marco Bellocchio rolls the clock back to the heyday of 60s Italian art cinema, when he made groundbreaking works Fists in the Pocket and China Is Near. Sergio Castellitto, the soulful Italian comic from Va Savoir, stars as an illustrator of children's books who is amazed to discover that his mother - murdered years earlier by his brother - is being considered for sainthood by the Catholic Church. Nothing could come as a greater shock to this staunch socialist-atheist, who finds himself drawn into a shadowy, surreal netherworld of decadent priests and cunning politicians. His one way out: the impossibly angelic young woman (Chiara Conti) who appears at his door, claiming to be his son's grade school teacher. 103 min. Italy, 2002
Preceded by: Lifeline (Spain, 2002, 10 min). The rhythms of daily are interrupted in Victor Erice's beautiful metaphor for a new Spain.
4A Fri. Oct. 4, 6:00pm
6A Sun. Oct. 6, 1:30pm
AUTO FOCUS
Wildly funny, shocking, and poignant, AUTO FOCUS tracks the rise and fall of Bob Crane, star of TV's Hogan's Heroes. Crane began acting in his early 30s hoping to become the next Jack Lemmon. Instead, he became Robert Hogan, suavely unctuous leader of American POWs interred by history's most inept Nazis. The show was tasteless but it was a hit and it brought Crane fame, fortune, and some unusual temptations. In a dazzling performance, Greg Kinnear plays Crane as an innocent wallowing in vice who remained oblivious to the damage to his family, career, and, finally, his own soul. Paul Schrader, reigning auteur of male panic, done the impossible: He's turned a cipher into a human being. 104 min. USA, 2002 A Sony Pictures Classics Release
4B Fri. Oct. 4, 9:00pm
5B Sat. Oct. 5, 2:00pm
TRUE LIVING COLOR: RACE IN FILM AND TELEVISION IN AMERICA TODAY AND TOMORROW. AN HBO FILMS PUBLIC FORUM
The thunderous applause on Oscar night for Halle Berry and Denzel Washington echoed throughout America. But were we watching a true watershed in American culture - or a reminder of how far we have to go? How does the concept of race figure in the art, politics, and industry of film and television today? And what might happen as the concept of race in America further expands to include Latinos, Asians, Arabs, and others? Thanks to HBO, the 40th New York Film Festival will bring together film artists, social critics, and industry professionals to explore and discuss the reality of race in American film and television today - and to think about the rapidly changing role of race in the future. General admission, non-reserved seating.
5A Sat. Oct. 5, 11:00AM
SPRINGTIME IN A SMALL TOWN
Fifth Generation director Tian Zhuangzhuang's first film since The Blue Kite (NYFF '93) is an exquisite remake of Fei Mu's classic melodrama about a sickly young landowner named Li-yan whose lovely, dissatisfied wife finds her passion for her old lover unabated. To make things more complicated, the lover happens to be her husband's oldest friend. Tian renders the interplay of conflicting emotions with an unearthly delicacy that reaches a peak during a birthday dinner for Li-yan's sister, in which each gesture and glance sets off a new vibration of feeling. The director is aided in no small measure by Hou Hsiao-hsien's customary cinematographer Mark Li Ping-bing, who brings every shade of springtime to eye-filling life. 116 min. China, 2002
Preceded by: Jealousy (USA/Spain, 9 min). Dania Saragovia's mini Marienbad for a colonial love triangle. One of the domestic trio is the spitting image of his well-known father.
5C Sat. Oct. 5, 5:00pm
6C Sun. Oct. 6, 7:30pm
PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE (Festival Centerpiece)
A first New York Film Festival appearance for Adam Sandler, who stars as the socially impaired owner of a small business - distributing novelty toilet plungers - in the San Fernando Valley. Dominated by seven sisters, he is unlikely to find romance unless romance finds him and when one of his sisters fixes him up with a lovely Englishwoman (Emily Watson), his emotions go haywire, fluctuating between lust, self-doubt, and uncontrollable rage. This delightful and surprising comedy by Paul Thomas Anderson (Magnolia, Boogie Nights NYFF '97) is at once a savvy appraisal of Sandler's screen personality and a transcendent redemption of it. Filmed in wide, wide, wide screen format, the film is full of Anderson's lyrical touches and observational wit. 95 min. USA, 2002 A Columbia Pictures Release
Preceded by: Hyper (USA, 2002, 5 min). Michael Canzoniero and Marco Ricci's very accurate and very funny account of life in the big city. A person needs all the help he can get.
5D Sat. Oct. 5, 8:00pm
5E Sat. Oct. 5, 11:00pm
TURNING GATE
In the Korean legend of the turning gate, there's easily as much heartbreak as happiness in love. Sorely disappointed by his role in a box-office flop, unemployed actor Kyeong-su gratefully leaves town to pay a visit to an old school friend. There he finds himself becoming involved, one after the other, with two beautiful women: Myeong-suk, a sultry dance teacher whom he belatedly realizes is adored by his friend; and Seon-yeong, a married woman who turns out to be someone he crossed paths with long ago. In Hong Sang-soo's film full of pathos, eroticism, and rueful experience, the three beautifully controlled lead performances instill a lyrical sense of the heart's journey as, finally, a tug of war between desire and loss, coincidence and fate. 115 min. South Korea, 2002.
Preceded by:
Hammerbrook (Germany, 2001, 9 min). Director Elmer Freels sets up a mood of unease. As a young man walks through a desolate part of Hamburg, he is plagued by a persistent voice in his head to which he must, inevitably, respond.
6B Sun. Oct. 6, 4:30pm
9A Wed. Oct. 9, 6:00pm
WAITING FOR HAPPINESS
Abderrahmane Sissako (Life On Earth, NYFF '98) returns with this beautifully observed mosaic of life in a West African seaside village. The story's touchstone is Abdallah, a young man away from his homeland for so long that he's forgotten the local dialect. As he prepares to emigrate to Europe he encounters several villagers, each of whom provides a counterpoint to his story. Devising their own contemporary realities, Sissako's characters transcend the conventional oppositions of tradition vs. modernity, local vs. foreign, to produce new kinds of synthesis. Witness the scene in which a Chinese man sings karaoke in a Mauritanian bar - as powerful an image of globalization as you're likely to find in cinema today. 95 min. Mauritania/France, 2002 A New Yorker Films Release
Preceded by:
Candidate (Iran, 2000, 15 min) In Mohammad Schirvani's film, a matchmaking mother recruits marriage candidates for her son as she waits for him to come home from the war.
7A Mon. Oct. 7, 6:00pm
9B Wed. Oct. 9, 9:00pm
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DIVINE INTERVENTION
Not since Auden defined our Age of Anxiety has screen angst had as eloquent a spokesperson as Elia Suleiman. With DIVINE INTERVENTION he has given cinematic expression to Palestinian outrage. Abstract in structure, yet Chaplinesque in its knack for finding humor in tragedy and politics, the film is episodic, satiric, generously human, and rich in absurd hilarity. (In one delirious sequence, a female Palestinian ninja takes on a unit of Israeli rangers in a near-kaleidoscopic riot of Jewish, Islamic, and Christian imagery.) Defying assumptions on both sides of the conflict, DIVINE INTERVENTION is a provocation, but one rooted in a reasoned expectation of both justice and peace.
92 min. France/Palestine, 2002 An Avatar Films Release
Preceded by: We Wuz Robbed (USA, 2002, 10 min). Spike Lee takes on the 2000 presidential elections, with particular attention to Florida, an open-and-shut case of how they stole it fair and square.
7B Mon. Oct. 7, 9:00pm
8A Tues. Oct. 8, 6:00pm
SAFE CONDUCT
Bertrand Tavernier has wrought a hilarious and hair-raising portrait of French filmmaking during the German Occupation, based on real events in the lives of screenwriter Jean Aurenche and assistant director Jean Devaivre. A hard-living womanizer, Aurenche makes no secret of his disdain for the occupying forces and their French factotums, while, at first blush, the pragmatic Devaivre appears more resigned to the new reality. It's an honest and impassioned account of life in an occupied country, where resistance must be weighed against the need to put food on the table and keep your family safe. Tavernier's episodic narrative offers more than one breathtaking climax - Devaivre's interrogation by the British army alone is worth the price of admission. 170 min. France, 2002. An Empire Films Release
8B Tues. Oct. 8, 8:45pm
10B Thurs. Oct. 10, 8:45pm
BLIND SPOT: HITLER'S SECRETARY
Traudl Junge was Adolf Hitler's private secretary from 1942 on, working at his mountain retreat Wolfsschanze, on his private train, and finally in the bunker where she transcribed his last will and testament. André Heller and Othmar Schmiderer convinced the 81-year-old to break her fifty years of silence and record on camera her memories about Hitler and the Reich in a series of interviews conducted just months before she died. The result is a fascinating, harrowing voyage into the heart of the most terrible darkness of the twentieth century - a man who the 20-year-old Junge saw as a "pleasant boss and fatherly friend," more concerned with daily menus and petty squabbles than the devastation he unleashed on the world. 90 min. Austria, 2002 A Sony Pictures Classics Release
Preceded by:
The Erlking (USA, 2002, 5 min). Director Ben Zelkowicz's strikingly haunting animation of the Goethe poem. Schubert's music is sung by baritone Paul Berkolds and played by Peter Miyamoto.
10A Thurs. Oct. 10, 6:00pm
FRIDAY NIGHT
Claire Denis (Beau Travail, NYFF '99) conjures up a spellbound night in Paris. Valérie Lemercier plays Laure, who, having packed up her possessions to move in with her lover, is more unsettled than she appears. Needing to get out in the fresh air, she jumps in her car, only to become stuck in a terrible traffic jam. As she takes in the sights and sounds around her - the blare of horns and arguments, the shimmer of lights and camaraderie - Laure notices the stranger (Vincent Lindon) who will that night change her life. Intensely erotic and romantic, FRIDAY NIGHT is a lyrical ode to unexpected pleasures, to the independence of one's true self, and to the most beautiful city in the world. 86 min. France, 2002
Preceded by: Tango de Olvido (France/Argentina, 2002, 15 min). Alexis Mital Toldeo's reverie on a era in Argentine history when thousands of people fled the dictatorship and went into exile in Europe. Some of them had children. Some of the children knew nothing of their parents' past·
11A Fri. Oct. 11, 6:00pm
12D Sat. Oct. 12, 9:00pm
MONDAY MORNING
Georgian-born, French-based director Otar Iosseliani takes a familiar genre - the self-rediscovery of a frustrated, middle-class drudge - and turns it and its clichés inside out, producing a tapestry of comic delights. A factory-employed welder ignored by his children and bossed around by his wife, Vincent's only real pleasure is painting. One day, without malice and without warning, he picks up his art supplies and travels to Venice, where he replenishes his soul. In the meantime, life at home goes on much as before; that is, accidentally and on purpose. A worthy successor to Jacques Tati, Iosseliani directs with such close observation and nuanced humor that MONDAY MORNING becomes a provocative and hilarious meditation on human foibles, hidden strengths, and capacities for love. 122 min. France/Italy, 2002
11B Fri. Oct. 11, 9:00pm
12C Sat. Oct. 12, 6:00pm
LOVE AND DIANE
This epic documentary is destined to become one of the touchstones of American nonfiction cinema. Jennifer Dworkin spent years following the story of Diane Hazzard - recovering crack addict, penitent parent - and what she creates is the Moby-Dick of drug addiction, welfare, and a certain kind of agonizing experience in America. Beginning with the birth of Diane's HIV-positive grandson, born to her teenage daughter, Love, the film follows the family through the riptides of parenthood, joblessness, and poverty, as well as the temptation to simply give up. LOVE AND DIANE is a social statement, an indictment of a system, and a lesson in personal responsibility. 155 min. USA, 2002
12A Sat. Oct. 12, 11:00am
TO BE AND TO HAVE
One of today's most sensitive and expressive documentary filmmakers, Nicolas Philibert crafts works that have the elegance and emotional breadth of great fiction. TO BE AND TO HAVE, which recounts a year in the life of a one-room schoolhouse in northern France, is his most exquisite film yet. Philibert makes something momentous of each interaction between the children and their ineffably gentle teacher, each in his or her own way coming to terms with the reality of change. Tender, wise, and lyrical, TO BE AND TO HAVE is heartbreakingly beautiful and uplifting in the best sense of the word. Assigned viewing for anyone who has ever set foot in a classroom. 105 min. France, 2002 A New Yorker Films Release
Preceded by: Two Hundred Dirhams (Morocco/France, 2002, 15 min). In Laila Marrakchi's film, a young boy finds a 200-dirham bill drifting alongside the new highway that cuts through his town. A sign from heaven·or something else.
12B Sat. Oct. 12, 3:00pm
TALK TO HER (Closing Night)
Following the international success of All About My Mother (NYFF '99), Pedro Almodóvar returns with an extraordinary film that blends melodrama and black comedy into something deeply moving and utterly unique. TALK TO HER is about two men in love: Benigno, a male nurse devoted to the care of a beautiful coma victim, and Marco, a middle-aged writer involved with a striking female bullfighter. Almodóvar decorates his drama with subtle suggestive details - in scenes that mirror and invert each other as the story moves back and forth in time-but his emotions are undisguised and immense. Featuring original performances by Pina Bausch, singer Caetano Veloso, and an eye-popping film-within-a-film devised by Almodóvar himself. 112 min. Spain, 2002 A Sony Pictures Classics Release
Preceded by: Play with Me (The Netherlands, 2002, 13 min). In Esther Rots' beautifully shot film, a young woman is pulled along a calm current of a bucolic summer day; suddenly, a wave of unresolved emotions rises to the surface, changing everything.
13A Sun. Oct. 13, 8:30pm AFH
SPECIAL EVENTS: at the Walter Reade Theater
FAUST
A brand-new 35mm print of the long-unavailable 116-minute FAUST, Goethe's classic tale of a man who gives his soul to the devil in exchange for youth. Adapted brilliantly by F.W. Murnau into an evocative and sweeping film that many consider to be his masterpiece, this baroque, bizarre, and unforgettable film established Murnau as the premier German director months before he would move to Hollywood to make Sunrise. Starring Emil Jannings (Mephisto), Gösta Ekman (Faust) and Camilla Horn (Marguerite), with the world premiere of a new score by Phillip Johnston, with lyrics by Hilary Bell, performed live by Johnston's quartet. 116 min. Germany, 1926 Print courtesy of Kino International. Special support provided by the Academy Foundation of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
5Y Sat. Oct. 5, 4:00pm
5Z Sat. Oct. 5, 8:00pm
COME DRINK WITH ME
Before there was Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon there was King Hu, whose COME DRINK WITH ME helped revolutionize the martial-arts costume drama. A magnificent mysterious swordswoman named Golden Swallow (Cheng Pei-pei) is sent to rescue him a young official who has been kidnapped. Aided by Drunken Cat, a kung-fu master disguised as a beggar, she hatches a daring plan to assault the corrupt monastery where he is held. Beautifully restored, the film is a visual tour-de-force of color, movement, and high-flying action. Young star Cheng Pei-pei, who wields a sword like nobody's business, would later win acclaim as the evil Nanny in Crouching Tiger. 95 min. Hong Kong, 1965 Special support provided by the Academy Foundation of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
11Y Fri. Oct. 11, 6:30pm
11Z Fri. Oct. 11, 9:00pm
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