NYFF 2013 -- Documentaries and Revivals

 Manakamana (Stephanie Spray and Pacho Velez)

 

What Now? Remind Me (Joaquim Pinto)

 

 Providence (Alain Resnais)

 

Manila In the Claws of Neon (Lino Brocka)

 



The New York Film Festival has announced a large selection of documentaries and revivals to play alongside the Main Slate discussed previously. The two most interesting documentaries, both prizewinners at the recent Locarno Film Festival, are Manakamana, the newest film from the Sensory Ethnography Lab that made last year's Leviathan which is set entirely inside a mountain cable car in Nepal, and What Now? Remind Me, an intimate personal diary film by gay Portuguese director Joaquim Pinto.

There are a number of great revivals, including Lino Brocka's gritty Manila In the Claws of Neon, Alain Resnais's exquisite Providence, Apichatpong Weerasethakul's first feature Mysterious Object at Noon, Cy Endfield's politically charged film noir Try and Get Me, two great Nicholas Ray films, They Live by Night and The Lusty Men, and Leos Carax's first two films, Boy Meets Girl and Mauvais Sang.

NY Film Festival 2013

The main slate of the 2013 New York Film Festival was announced today, with a record 35 films screening this year. Recalling the films from Cannes which I was hoping to see at the NYFF, I can't think of any that didn't make it into this year's program. I think Kent Jones, the new head of the Festival Selection Committee, and Dennis Lim, the Film Society's new Cinematheque programmer, are having a very positive influence on the direction of the festival in its 51st edition. Among my must-sees in this year's lineup are the following:

 Norte, the End of History (Lav Diaz)

Stray Dogs (Tsai Ming-Liang)
 

A Touch of Sin (Jia Zhangke)

 

Like Father, Like Son (Hirokazu Kore-eda)

 

Nobody's Daughter Haewon (Hong Sang-Soo)

 

The Stranger by the Lake (Alain Guiraudie)

 

Bastards (Claire Denis)

 

Only Lovers Left Alive (Jim Jarmusch)

 

Near the top of my list is Tsai Ming-Liang's Stray Dogs, which will have its world premiere this month at Venice. I couldn't find any stills yet but the trailer looks very powerful. Apichatpong Weerasethakul has tweeted his love for this film, which makes me even more enthusiastic.

 

The festival's Special Presentations, Retrospectives and Views from the Avant-Garde programs are still to be announced.