The Film Society of Lincoln Center’s annual showcase is on every New York cinephile’s calendar. The highly selective lineup stretches out over more than two weeks, spotlighting some of the best US and world cinema. While the festival has typically included some non-fiction, in a very welcome development this year, in addition to a few works in the accompanying Views from the Avant-Garde program and in the fest’s Main Slate, organizers have grouped an additional ten documentaries as “special presentations.” Following are the non-fiction projects I am most interested in screening:
The Main Slate includes two titles I hope to finally have a chance to see: Wim Wenders’ PINA (pictured above) and Jafar Panahi and Mpjtaba Mirthahmasb’s THIS IS NOT A FILM. Music/musician-focused docs don’t tend to be amongst my favorites, so I confess a general lack of interest in seeing Martin Scorsese’s take on George Harrison, or three additional docs in the Special Presentations on Andrew Bird, Mott the Hoople, and Tom Jobim. I’m open to be proven wrong, but I have to say, none of these is presently at the top of my must-see list.
That spot belongs to another of the Special Presentations: Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky’s PARADISE LOST 3: PURGATORY (pictured). I passed on seeing the film during Toronto chiefly because the NYFF boasts the world premiere of the newly-added ending to the torturous saga of the West Memphis 3. As I noted in my posts about TIFF, I saw one hour of Frederick Wiseman’s CRAZY HORSE and am looking forward to seeing the rest of the master’s behind-the-scenes portrait of the creation of a new erotic stage show.
A master of another kind of cinema – the more lowbrow, exploitative – is the focus of CORMAN’S WORLD: EXPLOITS OF A HOLLYWOOD REBEL. Alex Stapleton’s doc premiered earlier this year at Sundance, and offers much to appreciate about the indie producing wonder (my thoughts on the film may be found here). Susan Ray offers a portrait of another filmmaker in DON’T EXPECT TOO MUCH (pictured), about her celebrated late husband, Nicholas Ray, and one of his last films, WE CAN’T GO HOME AGAIN.
Continuing the focus on film-related portraits, Jeffrey Schwarz’s VITO (pictured) promises to capture the critic and LGBT activist behind THE CELLULOID CLOSET – a presence who continued to loom large over NewFest when I ran the organization. Modern-day activists fighting a different battle are the subjects of Stefano Savona’s TAHRIR, on the revolution in Cairo that finally brought down Hosni Mubarak. It will be interesting to view a film from a foreigner’s perspective, so soon after seeing Egyptian filmmakers’ take on the same history-changing events in Toronto’s TAHRIR 2011: THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE POLITICIAN (which I wrote about here).
Finally, I’m intrigued by a couple of feature-length works in the NYFF’s experimental sidebar, Views from the Avant-Garde. I was in Berlin for too short a time this year to be able to catch James Benning’s TWENTY CIGARETTES, in which the acclaimed structural filmmaker films a series of people for the length of time it takes them to smoke a cigarette. The sidebar is also showcasing the work of UK director Ben Rivers through three pieces. The newest, TWO YEARS AT SEA (pictured), revisits the subject of one of Rivers’ earlier short films, Jake, an older man who lives in a forest, and brings the director, and by extension, the viewer into Jake’s domain to experience life (and time) through his eyes.
what (not) to doc 