NYFF 2012

 The Satin Slipper

Leviathan

The Last Time I Saw Macao

At last the full 2012 New York Film Festival 50th Anniversary schedule is posted online, and it is overflowing with great films in the Main Slate, Masterworks, Views from the Avant-Garde and this year's remarkable sidebar program, featuring 37 films from the great French TV series about filmmakers, Cineastes de Notre Temps. I laboriously went through the lineup today, prioritizing my choices in order to see as much as possible. I'm delighted that Manoel de Oliveira's 7-hour film The Satin Slipper will be shown early in the festival on Sunday, September 30 and does not conflict with any of my other selections. One critic tweeted that this may be the repertory event of the year, which it may well turn out to be. Oliveira's 1985 film directly follows three other masterpieces based on literary or theatrical works, Benilde, Doomed Love and Francisca, which he made from 1974 to 1981.

From the main slate I'm planning to see the following films:

Amour (Michael Haneke)

Araf - Somewhere In Between (Yeşim Ustaoğlu)
Barbara (Christian Petzold)
Bwakaw (Jun Robles Lana)
Here and There (Aquí y Allá) (Antonio Méndez Esparza)
Holy Motors (Leos Carax)
The Last Time I Saw Macao (João Pedro Rodrigues and João Rui Guerra da Mata)
Leviathan (Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Véréna Paravel)
Like Someone in Love (Abbas Kiarostami) and the HBO Directors Dialogue with Kiarostami
Memories Look at Me (Song Fang)
Night Across the Street (La noche de enfrente) (Raul Ruiz)
Our Children (Joachim Lafosse)
Something in the Air (Olivier Assayas)
Tabu (Miguel Gomes)
You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet (Vous n'avez encore rien vu) (Alain Resnais)

The Walker

In addition, Views from the Avant-Garde features Raul Ruiz's 1990 La chouette aveugle, Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Mekong Hotel and short films by Tsai Ming-Liang (The Walker) and João Pedro Rodrigues (Morning of St. Anthony's Day).

Pursued

Tabu

Of the many Cineastes filmmaking documentaries, I will definitely see Chantal Akerman by Chantal Akerman and Pedro Costa's Where Does Your Hidden Smile Lie?, and try to fit in as many others as my schedule and sanity permit. In the Masterworks section, I plan to see again Max Ophuls's exquisite Liebelei and perhaps Raoul Walsh's Pursued. I will update this post in the next few weeks.