photo by Karina Longworth

At Monday afternoon’s press conference following the NYFF screening of Go Go Tales, the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Richard Pena introduced Abel Ferrara as “a dear old friend of the Festival,” but the maverick filmmaker went on to tell one or two stories that put that characterization into question. I had never seen Ferrara in person, but I thought I was prepared for his persona: something like the drunken, half-psychotic uncle that you can’t help but love. That perception didn’t turn out to be totally off, but I was surprised by Ferrara’s extremes: passive-aggressively needling Pena and the Festival one minute, lapsing into by all indications heartfelt tributes to his influences the next.

I’ll have more on Ferrara’s gaga Go Go Tales later today. For now, you’ll find transcribed highlights from the press conference after the jump, including Ferrara’s thoughts on Cassavetes, Leonardo DiCaprio, and how Harvey Keitel convinced him to start shooting digitally.

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Day 3 of NYFF 2007 brought surprisingly strong late-career efforts from two esteemed filmmakers previously thought to be several decades past their prime. To my mind, Eric Rohmer’s Les Amours d’Astrée et de Céladon is a greater creative success than Sidney Lumet’s Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, although I suppose there’s no doubt as to which film will manage the greater commercial success (it’s not even a contest, really–the Rohmer has no U.S. distributor). Lumet’s film is a proper comeback, the work of a filmmaker returning to familiar themes and, if not exactly reinventing them, then certainly doing his most solid and engaging work in some time. But the Rohmer picture feels like a true farewell, and as final films go, I can’t imagine a more poignant send off.

Céladon won quite a few hearts in Toronto, but it didn’t seem to go over so well here in New York. I know more than a few members of the press corps didn’t make it to the final frame, and after the screening, I heard a lot of “awful”s and “interminable”s. I’ll admit that it may not be Rohmer’s finest hour in terms of filmmaking craft; when Alison Willmore compares the film to a high school production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, she’s not entirely wrong. But I would argue that the plotting needs to be as deliberate as it is, and the overall technique as rudimentary, in order for the film to work as a romantic fable.

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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

For the New York coterie of film critics, bloggers, and anyone else who can make a reasonable case for a press or industry pass, the first day of New York Film Festival press screenings every September is something akin to the first day of school. (That is, for people who really, really liked school.) But it’s also kind of like embarking on a four-week vacation right in the middle of the city. Screenings are held at Lincoln Center on the Upper West Side, a part of town that I personally rarely have occasion to visit, and once you’ve made your way through a maze of construction and up a hidden escalator to the Walter Reed Theater, it’s difficult to hold on to everyday concerns and not get completely wrapped up in the excitement of what is about to unfold.

NYFF press screenings are perhaps most appreciated for their leisurely schedule. Each day starts out with a fair amount of breakfasty schmoozing over the bagels, juice and coffee provided every morning by the press screening sponsor. There are generally just two screenings a day, five days a week, for four weeks. Most screenings are followed by a lengthy press conference; this year, the only American filmmaker whose work is in the fest who is conspicuously absent from the press conference schedule is Gus Van Sant. It’s the rare film festival that’s actually possible to cover in the nooks and crannies of a normal day job––although, having tried that last year, I have to say that I far prefer camping out at Lincoln Center for full days to sneaking in screenings here and there during lulls in the odd work day.

Because I’m still working on some Toronto odds and ends, I was only able put in a half day at yesterday’s NYFF 2007 opener, but I’ll be able to catch the afternoon film, Masayuki Suo’s I Just Didn’t Do It, when it re-screens later in the fest (if you can’t wait, Keith Uhlich has already reviewed it here). In the morning, I did catch Julian Schnabel’s The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. More on that after the jump.

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