Film at Lincoln Center Podcast

This week we’re excited to present a conversation with with cult-favorite director Park Chan-wook. Three decades into his feature filmmaking career, Korean filmmaker Park Chan-wook—recipient of the Best Director award at last year’s Cannes Film Festival—made his New York Film Festival debut with Decision to Leave, an intricate Hitchcockian epic that both draws on familiar genres like the crime thriller and the melodrama and takes them in entirely new formal and psychological directions. We were thrilled to welcome Park to NYFF60 last October for a deep-dive conversation delving into his long and acclaimed career, his affinity for genre filmmaking, his artistic influences and inspirations, and the making of his latest feature. For our event, Deep Focus: Park Chan-wook, the filmmaker spoke with film critic Farran Smith Nehme.

This week we’re excited to present a conversation with documentary filmmaker Mark Cousins, who recently joined us for a screening of his latest feature, The March on Rome. Filmmaking’s role in influencing the political landscape and popular consciousness has been a well-established subject in cinema, but few works have performed as deep an investigation into it as the latest from Mark Cousins, The March on Rome. Using a propagandistic documentary depicting Mussolini and the Black Shirts’ seizure of power as his point of departure, Cousins captivatingly delves into the film’s cinematographic particulars and political context to demonstrate that the rise of fascism in the first half of the 20th century had little to do with its supposed popularity—rather, its ascent was just another spellbinding illusion on the silver screen, albeit one with tragic real-life consequences. Alba Rohrwacher appears periodically in staged interludes as a woman whose initial enthusiasm for fascism tarnishes when she witnesses firsthand the fallout from Mussolini’s rise.

This week we’re excited to present a conversation with the great Hungarian filmmaker, Béla Tarr, who recently joined us for screenings of four films from his acclaimed filmography, three of which were new restorations, courtesy of Janus Films. Three years in the making, Werckmeister Harmonies is a sustained, real-time immersion in the universe of weatherbeaten villages and full-contact metaphysics in which co-directors Béla Tarr, Ágnes Hranitzky, and writer László Krasznahorkai specialize. A curiously smart paper carrier named János (Lars Rudolph, in an astonishingly complex performance) observes a mysterious traveling circus—complete with a stuffed whale—that comes to town, and marks a sea change in relationships of all kinds—between families, lovers, peasants and royals. In this movie, voted as one of the best of its decade by Film Comment, each action, however small, carries the weight of revolution. With Fassbinder icon Hanna Schygulla.

This week we’re excited to present a conversation with actress Françoise Lebrun, who appeared in Jean Eustache’s 1973 masterpiece, The Mother and the Whore, and Charles Gillibert, the producer of the film’s new restoration. The Mother and the Whore will be opening in our theaters in a new 4K restoration as part of “The Dirty Stories of Jean Eustache,” a 12-film retrospective of the French director’s work, from June 23–July 13, courtesy of FLC and Janus Films. Tickets are on sale now at filmlinc.org/eustache. After the French New Wave, the sexual revolution, and May 1968 came The Mother and the Whore, the legendary, autobiographical magnum opus by Eustache that captured a disillusioned generation navigating the post-idealism 1970s within the microcosm of a ménage à trois. The aimless, clueless, Parisian pseudo-intellectual Alexandre (Jean-Pierre Léaud) lives with his tempestuous older girlfriend, Marie (Bernadette Lafont), and begins a dalliance with the younger, sexually liberated Veronika (Françoise Lebrun, Eustache’s own former lover), leading to a volatile open relationship marked by everyday emotional violence and subtle but catastrophic shifts in power dynamics. Transmitting his own sex life to the screen with startling immediacy, Eustache achieves an intimacy so deep it cuts. Lebrun and Gillibert spoke with FLC Senior Director of Programming Florence Almozini following a screening of the film in the Revivals section of the 60th New York Film Festival.

This week we’re excited to present a career-spanning conversation with actress Virginie Efira, who next appears in Alice Winocour’s Revoir Paris, opening in our theaters on June 23rd. Tickets are on sale now at filmlinc.org/revoir Efira has attracted a dedicated following in recent years with her rigorous, singularly sensitive performances, including star-making turns in NYFF selections Benedetta and Sibyl. In this year’s edition of Rendez-Vous with French Cinema she took center stage, with lead roles in Revoir Paris (the Opening Night selection) and Rebecca Zlotowski’s Other People’s Children. During the festival, Efira participated in a wide-ranging conversation with FLC Assistant Programmer Maddie Whittle in which Efira discussed the evolution of her craft and approach to portraying profoundly complicated, endlessly compelling characters.

Welcome to a new episode of the Film at Lincoln Center podcast. This week we’re excited to present a conversation with director Pietro Marcello about his latest feature, the NYFF60 Main Slate selection, Scarlet, opening in our theaters next Friday, preceded by a special one night only screening of his previous feature, Martin Eden, on June 8th. Tickets are on sale now at filmlinc.org/scarlet. Marcello, one of contemporary cinema’s most versatile talents, follows his dramatic breakthrough, Martin Eden, with an enchanting period fable based on a beloved 1923 novel by Russian writer Alexander Grin. The film begins as the tale of a sensitive brute who returns home from World War I to his rural French village to discover that his wife has died and he must take care of their baby daughter, Juliette, then blossoms into a pastoral portrait of Juliette as a free-spirited young woman reckoning with a local witch’s prophecy for her future and falling for the modern man who literally drops from the sky. In his first film made in France, Marcello proves again that he is as comfortable in the realm of folklore as he is in creative nonfiction, delicately interweaving realist drama, ethereal romance, and musical flights of fancy. Following our screening of Scarlet, Marcello spoke with NYFF selection committee member, Florence Almozini.

Welcome to a new episode of the Film at Lincoln Center podcast. This week we’re excited to present a conversation with director Paul Schrader about two of his recent features, First Reformed and The Card Counter. We were delighted to have the filmmaker recently join us in anticipation of the opening of his latest feature, the NYFF60 Main Slate selection, Master Gardener, now playing in our theaters. For nearly half a century, Schrader has crafted a personal and provocative body of work typified by an obsessive focus on moral decay, isolation, and self-redemption across various dispirited pockets of the United States. Rounding out an era-delineating thematic trilogy that began with First Reformed (2017) and The Card Counter (2021), Master Gardener  (NYFF60) continues what the writer-director has referred to as his “man in a room” movies with a startling tale of dormant violence and the possibility of regeneration. Following our screenings of First Reformed and The Card Counter, Schrader spoke with FLC Assistant Programmer Maddie Whittle about his recent trilogy of films.

Welcome to a new episode of the Film at Lincoln Center podcast. This week we’re excited to present a conversation with director Apichatpong Weeraseth-akul about his 2002 feature, Blissfully Yours. We were delighted to have the Thai director recently join us at FLC as part of our complete retrospective, The World of Apichatpong Weerasethakul. A mesmerizing and sensuous meditation on love and desire, Apichatpong’s second (and first fully fictional) feature film established him as one of world cinema’s most essential talents. The plot follows a romance between a Thai nurse and her boyfriend who go on a jungle picnic with an older woman (whom they both seem to know) in hot pursuit. The tranquility of their date, enveloping and tender as it may initially seem, slowly recedes to reveal a more complex emotional picture, one marked by Apichatpong’s sophisticatedly low-key and true-feeling approach to rendering human desire.

Welcome to a new episode of the Film at Lincoln Center podcast. This week we’re excited to present two conversations, the first a Programmers Preview with the team behind the New York African Film Festival, currently taking place in our theaters through May 16, followed by a Q&A with writer/director Ari Aster from a recent screening of his latest feature, the Joaquin Phoenix-starring Beau Is Afraid. Launched in 1993, the New York African Film Festival was one of the first film festivals in the United States to reflect on the myriad ways African and diaspora filmmakers have used the moving image to tell complex nuanced stories of cultural and aesthetic significance. Under the banner title, Freeforms, the festival will present over 50 films from more than 25 countries that explore and embrace the visionary, probing, and fearless spirit of African film and diaspora storytelling. Listen to our discussion with New York African Film Festival's Founder and Executive Director, Mahen Bonetti, Program Manager, Dara Ojugbele, and Curator and Office Manager, Farima Kone Kito. To view the lineup and get tickets to this year’s festival, please visit filmlinc.org/african. On the occasion of the release of his latest feature, Beau Is Afraid, Film at Lincoln Center recently presented a curated selection of films handpicked by Ari Aster to complement the director’s highly anticipated new film. This eclectic and unexpected collection of masterworks drawn from seven decades of film history across a range of genres and production contexts shed light on the inspirations and influences behind one of the most compelling directorial voices in Hollywood today. Following a screening of Beau Is Afraid, Aster joined us to speak with FLC Assistant Programmer Maddie Whittle about his inspirations for making the film.

Welcome to a new episode of the Film at Lincoln Center podcast. This week we’re excited to present a special episode featuring the star-studded speeches from our recent 48th Chaplin Award Gala honoring Viola Davis. Having taken place on April 24 at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, the Gala encompassed a joyful celebration of the actor and producer’s incredible body of work, featuring notable speakers and film clips, and culminating in the presentation of the Chaplin Award, an annual honor bestowed upon cinema’s most outstanding talents. The evening’s guest speakers included, in order of appearance, Jayme Lawson, who starred in THE WOMAN KING, George C. Wolfe, who directed Davis in NIGHTS IN RODANTHE and MA RAINEY’S BLACK BOTTOM, Meryl Streep, who co-starred in DOUBT, Gina Prince-Bythewood, who directed THE WOMAN KING, Jessica Chastain, who co-starred in THE HELP and THE DISAPPEARANCE OF ELEANOR RIGBY with Davis, and, presenting Davis with the Chaplin Award, Steve McQueen, who directed the actor in WIDOWS.