photo by Karina Longworth

Last year at a New York Film Festival press conference following the premiere of Inland Empire, David Lynch announced that he would never again go back to shooting on film. Yesterday, at the press conference following the New York Film Festival press screening of his HD-shot feature, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, veteran filmmaker Sidney Lumet made an almost identical declaration, predicting that celluloid will be all but obsolete in five years. “I don’t think there’s one director who has ever liked film,” Lumet said. “It’s a pain in the ass, it’s cumbersome, and it’s rigid in its rules.”

Check out the audio clip below for Lumet’s elaboration on the rise of HD, why he thinks “naturalistic photography” is an oxy moron, and anecdotes on the how the drawbacks of celluloid stifled both Dog Day Afternoon and John Schlesinger’s Midnight Cowboy (the female voice heard at the beginning and end of the clip is NYFF selection committee member/EW film critic Lisa Schwarzbaum, who moderated yesterday’s conversation). We’ll have more coverage of Lumet’s excellent Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead later today.

 

 Sydney Lumet On Film vs. HD @ NYFF 2007: Play Now | Download